“The phrase means ‘Death-by-Fire’ in your language,” Putilov said. “It means I put a blowtorch to Conley’s innards.”
Russian President Mikhail Ivanovich Putilov had just gotten the autopsy report on that ex-FBI jerk, Jonathan Conley. His new poison had put that asshole through the tortures of the damned. Putilov was so pumped up he had to share his excitement with someone who would understand. For the first time in his life he felt the need to call Tower.
Tower was so shocked to get an unsolicited call from Putilov, he picked up immediately—even though it was the middle of the night in New York.
“You have to hear this,” Putilov said. “For two decades I’ve sent my people all over hell’s creation, researching the most obscure, most painful poisons on earth. I’ve had them comb the planet—from the frozen mountains of Tierra del Fuego to Uganda’s sweltering jungles, from the Pacific Ring of Fire to the darkest depths of Chile’s most noxious guano pits. I’ve had them tracking poisons for decades, and guess what? They’ve found a toxin down along Brazil’s Rio Negro has to be the most diabolically depraved substance anyone’s ever heard of.”
“The Rio what—?” Tower asked, confused.
It was 3:37 A.M. Eastern Time in the States, he was half-asleep, and he had no idea what Putilov was talking about.
“We’ve extracted a hideously horrifying toxin from a deadly flower one of our botanists discovered in the Amazonian rain forest. It’s an exceedingly rare blossom—found only on small, isolated, floating islands on the Rio Negro and—”
“No one calls black people ‘negroes’ anymore,” Tower pointed out, yawning.
“Not negroes,” Putilov shouted, incensed at the man’s stupidity. “Rio means ‘river’ in Spanish. Negro means ‘black.’ It’s a South American waterway called the Rio Negro—the River Negro. Get it?”
“Oh, I get it,” Tower said quietly, still finding it hard to focus.
“This flower grows only on these floating islands on the Lower Rio Negro, a blackwater tributary to the Amazon, coursing through the heart of the Brazilian rain forest. The plant’s extract incites the most agonizing death throes of any of my poisons yet. And best of all, no one will know what killed that asshole Conley.”
“That’s what you killed Conley with?” Now Tower was awake.
“Hell, yes,” Putilov said. “We tested it on apes first, and they yiped and convulsed for hours on end like their insides were being incinerated. But even weirder was its etiology: We couldn’t find any. No one could identify the cause of death. The apes’ autopsy reports listed cause of death as nonidiopathic.”
“Nonidiopathic?” Tower asked, repeating the word, confused.
“Don’t you get it?” Putilov shouted. “I can kill anyone I want, and no one will know how I did it!”
“That’s amazing,” Tower said. “How did you say this poison works?”
“Didn’t you read Conley’s autopsy report?”
“No.”
“Okay. Here, I’ll show you. I just sent an email. Open the attachment.”
Tower’s bedroom laptop was at his desk and still on, so he got out of bed, crossed the room and went into his inbox. Clicking on Putilov’s email, he opened the attachment. It read:
GROSS ANATOMY: The abdomen was markedly distended and contained feces, gas and approximately one liter of congealed blood. There was edema of both the small and large intestines obscuring the normal anatomic boundaries. The entire colon from the ileocecal valve to the anorectal junction appeared homogeneously black indicating intramural hemorrhage. A single large perforation was identified in the sigmoid colon that was associated with frank hemorrhage and extravasation of fecal material into the abdominal cavity. The lumen of the colon contained feces and approximately one liter of congealed blood. The greater and lesser omenta were edematous with patchy areas of hemorrhage, and the mesenteric lymph nodes were atrophic.
MICROSCOPIC ANATOMY: Sections of multiple regions of both the small and large bowel were cut with a microtome, stained with hematoxylin and eosin and examined at both 10X and 100X magnification. There was complete effacement of the villi, denuding of the mucosa and transmural thickening (approximately 2-fold normal) in both the small intestine and colon. There was marked mucosal edema in the small bowel, and transmural hemorrhagic necrosis of the colon. The intima and adventitia of both the small and large bowel were diffusely infiltrated with inflammatory cells that appeared to be mostly neutrophils, macrophages and natural killer cells. Pneumatosis cystoides intestinalis was present in the sigmoid colon most prominently at the site of perforation. The greater and lesser omenta were diffusely inflamed and contained aggregates of acute inflammatory cells.
IMPRESSION: major blowout in the sigmoid colon due to toxin-induced hemorrhagic necrosis.
“Sounds pretty bad,” Tower had to admit. “What’s all that jargon mean?”
“It means I fried the inside of Conley’s intestines like they were kolbasa and eggs—for five straight hours,” Putilov roared. “That autopsy means Conley died a thousand deaths!”
“Jesus,” Tower muttered under his breath, clearly stunned.
“I thought you’d be pleased,” Putilov said.
“I am,” Tower said nervously. “It’s just a little late here in the Big Apple. I’m still kind of groggy.”
“Understood. I just wanted to share the good news with someone who’d appreciate it.”
“And I do,” Tower said. “Does this poison have a name?”
“Of course,” Putilov said. “I named the toxin myself. I call it Cmeptb-Ha-Koctpe.”
“I don’t speak Russian,” Tower said.
“The phrase means ‘Death-by-Fire’ in your language,” Putilov said. “It means I put a blowtorch to Conley’s innards.”
“That certainly sounds … intense,” Tower said, not knowing what to say.
“People better take notice,” Putilov said. “From now on, anyone who wants to fuck with Mikhail Ivanovich Putilov ought to think about what happened to Nemerov, Kazankov and Conley. They ought to think long and hard.”
“I certainly would,” Tower said with surprising sincerity.
Then Putilov’s laughter brayed mule-like in Tower’s ears until finally the Russian leader put down the phone.
Frozen in his chair, Tower stared at the autopsy report on his computer screen, aghast at the sheer horror and the unspeakable sadism of Putilov’s revenge.
At the same time he couldn’t help but be impressed. No one could doubt that Putilov was effective and knew what he was doing. In fact, Tower had a couple of people he’d like to settle up with, and Putilov was a dyed-in-the-wool expert on settling scores.
He wondered if Putilov would loan him a couple of vials of that poison.