by Phil Swann
“Totally awesome,” Stewart said, taking a notepad and pen from his pocket.
“What are you writing?”
“A note to myself to learn how to play the lyre,” Stewart answered as he scribbled.
“Of course you are,” Ellie replied.
“Do you know how the lyre came to be, Dr. Scotes? I mean, according to myth.”
“I’m third generation Greek, Stewart. Of course I—”
“The god Hermes stole a herd of sacred cows from Apollo,” Stewart interrupted.
Ellie smiled, laid down the magnifying glass, and took a seat on a stool.
Stewart continued. “Apollo tried to track down the cows but couldn't because Hermes had made shoes for their hooves that made them walk backward. Hermes slaughtered one of the cows and offered everything but the animal's entrails to the gods. From the leftover entrails he created the lyre. Eventually, Apollo figured out it was Hermes who stole his cows. He was just about to bring his wrath down on the young god when he heard the beautiful sound of Hermes’ lyre. Apollo was so taken with the instrument that he offered to trade his sacred herd for the lyre. Hermes agreed, and hence, the lyre became the fabled instrument of Apollo.”
“Well, there you have it,” Ellie said, getting up. “If only one could explain everything as easily as putting shoes on a cow.”
“You're making a point, ma’am?”
“How did this thing end up in Nigeria?” Ellie said, going to the other side of the lab to refill her coffee mug. “Moreover, why is this the only ancient Greek artifact I found on that cliff? Why isn't there other stuff? Where did this damn thing come from?”
“I might have some information on that subject.”
“You might have some…? Okay, what?”
“Dirt,” Stewart said, holding up a baggie. “I just finished running tests on soil samples you inadvertently acquired when you pulled the lyre from the ground. I also ran tests on the soil and organics left on the lyre itself.”
“And?”
“Well, it's a bit confusing. Most of the soil is coarse with very low vegetation. What organics I found were wind-borne deposits and riverine sands, all of which would be expected from soil found on the savanna. But on the lyre itself, I found trace amounts of ultisol.”
“Red clay?” Ellie responded.
“Yes. Small amounts but definitely there.”
“Can you identify where it's from?”
“I believe so., but it's…”
“…it's what?” Ellie asked, prying the words from Stewart's mouth.
“From pH levels, acidity, tropical plant nutrients, and the ion levels adjusted for—”
“Stewart,” Ellie interrupted. “Where's it from?”
Stewart ran his hand through his mop of red hair. “I can't tell you how, or why, but at some point this lyre was in contact with soil from the southern region of America.”
“What?” Ellie said, her eyes getting wide and her jaw literally dropping. “Are you sure?” Ellie knew it was a stupid question—this was Stewart, of course he was sure.
Stewart nodded.
“Age?”
“I can't say, except that the organics aren't old enough to carbon date. And there's something else.” Stewart picked up the lyre and rested it on its side with the bottom of the instrument facing them. “I found this while doing a computer scan.” Ellie watched as Stewart picked up a small knife and used it to slide a three-inch slit of wood from the bottom of the lyre, revealing a hollowed out nook.
“What are you—?”
Stewart handed Ellie the magnifying glass. “Look.”
Ellie bent over and looked through the lens. She saw eight symmetrical shapes, each varying in size and depth, etched evenly in a single line.
“It's not any language I can identify,” Stewart said. “I've eliminated all known ancient cuneiform and hieroglyph writing including Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Hittite, Hattic, Urartian, even Phoenician and neo-Assyrian, it's none of them. I also considered Linear B and Linear A, not even close.”
“Of course not, because it's music notation,” Ellie stated, transfixed on the symbols.
“Music notation,” Stewart reiterated, nodding in agreement. “Isn't the oldest known piece of notated music something like three thousand years old?”
“Yes. It's called the Hurrian song, excavated from the Hurrian city of Ugarit and dated to have been written around 1400 BC. But that's written in a cuneiform that doesn't resemble this at all. I think what we have here is a singular notation specific to one person or one small group of people.” Ellie put down the magnifying glass and began to pace across the lab. She spoke as if giving a lecture by rote; it was obvious her mind was somewhere else. “Music notation wasn't really unified until Pythagoras and the Greeks created a system in the sixth century BC. Until then, music notation was like all writing, individual from tribe to tribe and person to person. What most of the world agrees as standard music notation today didn't come about until Europe in the middle ages. No, this is a singular work of music notation, not an established system, I'm sure of it.” Ellie’s voice trailed off, and Stewart could see something was troubling her.
“Dr. Scotes, is everything all right?”
Ellie turned. “I’ve seen these symbols before.”
“You have?” Stewart responded. “Where, ma’am?”
“Well, not exactly these symbols, but the…form.” Ellie returned to the table and picked up the magnifying glass. “Why do you look familiar? Think, Ellie.”
“There’s another mystery, Dr. Scotes.”
“What?” Ellie replied, studying the carvings.
“I've studied these carvings in the computer and have run fairly sophisticated remodeling programs in order to reproduce them. It's clear to me that there is no known Bronze Age tool that could have carved these.”
Ellie looked up. “What are you saying?”
“I'm saying this form of music notation, that we’re fairly sure predates the Hurrian song, was created by a tool made no earlier than the late twentieth century.”
Ellie said nothing. She had no words.
Stewart continued, “Dr. Scotes, we've got trace amounts of red clay from the United States, carvings made by modern tools on a near perfectly preserved Mycenaean lyre you found in the Nigerian savanna. Ma'am, I think someone is messing with us.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Scopolamine!” Assistant Director Bob Greenfield exclaimed. “Grey, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m not,” he answered calmly.
It was ten in the morning, and Grey had been up all night preparing for this conversation. He had gone back over every page of the autopsy report and was sure, and a bit stunned, at what he’d found—or in this case, what he didn’t find.
“Grey,” Greenfield said, “I think you need to talk to somebody.”
“Talk to whom?”
“You’ve been under a lot of pressure. You’ve lived and breathed this case day and night. You’ve done an amazing job, Grey, and it’s not unusual for an agent to have trouble letting—”
“I’m not cracking up, Bob,” Grey snapped. “And I’m not having some cop version of separation anxiety. This is real. This is new information. I’m just asking—”
“You’re asking me to reopen a case on the assassination of the president of the United States based on a hunch the shooter was slipped a mickey.”
Grey sat down across the desk from Greenfield. When he spoke, it was with as much calm as he could possibly muster. “You don’t have to officially reopen anything. Just get me a warrant to exhume Jackson’s body, that’s all.”
“Oh, is that all? Nothing to it.”
Grey stood back up. “The damn test was never done, Bob. We ordered the Davidson County ME to keep his hands off. When we finally gave him the okay to cut the guy open, eight hours had passed. Look, everyone knew what killed Jackson, a hail of bullets, so nobody was looking for anything else. That’s why only a standar
d tox screen was run.”
“So?”
“A standard tox can’t detect scopolamine, especially God knows how many hours after Jackson might have ingested it. It takes something called a…hang on, I have it here,” Grey fumbled through his notes, “high-performance liquid chromatography. It’s not standard protocol when running toxicology panels, and even if you do run it, you have to be specifically looking for scopolamine to find it. When we got the body back to DC, we didn’t run the test either. It slipped through the cracks, and yes, I’ll take complete blame for that. But the bottom line, Bob, is the test was never run.”
Greenfield leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “And you think Jackson could have been under the influence of this stuff.”
“I think it would explain a lot of unanswered questions,” Grey replied.
Greenfield went silent. He looked at Grey and then swiveled his chair around and gazed out the window. Grey knew to leave the man to his internal debate and say nothing. Finally, Greenfield turned back around. “If I agree to this, it’s kept so far on the down-low that—”
“Absolutely,” Grey cut in.
“Another thing—and Grey, I’m not kidding about this—if the test turns up negative for scopolamine, or even inconclusive, that’s it, it’s over, the case is closed. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Grey promised, raising his hand like a boy scout.
Greenfield nodded. “Now I just have to figure out how to tell the director.”
“Thank you,” Grey said over a sigh. “I’ll get Dr. Bhatti and his team to head to Baltimore today to exhume the body.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Greenfield replied.
“But you said I could—”
“Jackson’s body isn’t in Baltimore.”
“Not in…where is he?”
“He’s a popsicle in a lab at a black site in Annapolis.”
“What?”
“Jackson had no family. The eggheads at Intelligence saw an opportunity to do some postmortem science on a certified presidential assassin.”
“Oh God,” Grey moaned. “Please tell me they haven’t cut him up into pieces.”
“No, nothing’s been done yet, and you should be happy they wanted to save Jackson’s body. He was going to be cremated, not buried. You’re lucky the guy’s not ashes to ashes.”
“So how do we get him?”
“I’ll call Jim Speeks over at Homeland. I’ll have him send Jackson’s body to Dr. Bhatti’s lab this afternoon.”
“Can you trust Speeks to keep quiet about it?”
“Oh yeah,” Greenfield replied with a sly grin. “I know too much about Jim…if you know what I mean. His lips will be sealed for as long as I tell him they’re sealed.”
Grey pretended to shiver. “Wow. Remind me never to cross you.”
Greenfield picked up the phone. “Consider yourself reminded. Sandy, get me Jim Speeks at Homeland.” Greenfield hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair. “It’s been a year and a half since Jackson was killed. You think Bhatti’s tests can still turn up anything?”
“I called him this morning, and he said they could. And don’t worry, I didn’t say anything about Jackson. I just asked him if he could identify scopolamine in a person years after death. He said he’d done it on Aztec mummies, so he didn’t see a problem.”
Greenfield chuckled and then went silent. He looked at Grey with an expression that bordered on sadness. “I pray to God he doesn’t turn up anything, Grey.”
Grey nodded. “I know.”
“Because if he does, then that means we—”
“Have a Grassy-Knoll-On-LSD-Conspiracy on our hands. I know, Bob. But let’s take it one step at a time. With any luck, I’m wrong and you just have an overworked agent in dire need of a long vacation on your hands.”
“Amen to that, Grey. Amen to that.”
»»•««
Grey was at the FBI forensics lab in Roslyn when Jackson’s body arrived via a nondescript white van. The driver and another man—both Hulk-ish men well over six-feet-four inches tall—stepped from the vehicle, removed the body, and rolled it into the examination room. Grey, as well as Dr. Rajesh Bhatti, a happy-go-lucky Indian man in his late sixties, followed them in. Bhatti pulled down the sheet covering Jackson’s head. If he was surprised to see who the corpse turned out to be, he didn’t show it. He simply nodded at the two gorillas from Homeland and waited for them to leave.
“So, Mr. Jackson, we meet again, sir,” Dr. Bhatti said, putting on latex gloves.
Earlier, Grey had informed Bhatti he’d be working on an extremely classified case. Bhatti, a thirty-five-year veteran forensic pathologist with the Bureau, questioned Grey no further. He assured Grey no other personnel would be present when the body arrived. He was true to his word; the lab was empty. Grey had a sense the doctor knew all along who was arriving on his table, but Bhatti was too much of a professional to ever say as much. Grey watched the doctor poke and prod Jackson’s body.
“Well, he doesn’t look the worse for wear,” Bhatti said. “They’ve done a fine job preserving the body. It actually might make detecting the toxin all the easier.”
“What are you going to do?” Grey asked.
“I’ll do blood panels, but I don’t expect anything to come from that. I’ll also check the protein in the liver and any urine left in the bladder. However, if we are to find Devil’s Breath in this fellow, I suspect we will need to go for the hair follicles.”
“Devil’s Breath?”
“The street name in Columbia for scopolamine. That’s where this hideous poison is most prevalent. I’ve heard it’s starting to pop up in Afghanistan, but the few cases I’ve seen are all from South America. It’s a nasty business, scopolamine. Many consider it the world’s most dangerous drug. Have you dealt with it before, Agent Pryce?”
“Not personally. I’ve just heard stories.”
“Yes, still relatively uncommon here, thankfully. I ran across my first case about twenty years ago. A female missionary working in Bogotá went missing. Three days later she showed up in a village with no idea how she’d gotten there. When she got back to the States, she found her bank account was empty and she was pregnant. That’s when her family contacted the Bureau. Thus, my introduction to scopolamine.”
“What exactly is it, doctor?”
“It’s an alkaloid obtained from plants of the solanaceae family such as henbane or jimson weed. The plant grows wild around Bogotá as the borrachero tree. It has a long and storied history dating back to antiquity, but in more recent times Nazi’s used scopolamine as a truth serum. Our CIA even experimented with it in the early sixties. It’s been used for many legitimate medical reasons: childbirth, as a sleep aid, antidepressant, and more recently for motion sickness and treating people with Parkinson’s. But the dosage for medical use is very small, less than one third milligrams. The more nefarious doses are as high as five to seven milligrams. At that level a person is rendered into a complete zombie-like state. At ten milligrams the person is rendered dead.”
“What do you mean zombie-like state?”
“The victim is a complete zombie. That’s why scopolamine is such a popular date-rape drug. Unlike Rohypnol that basically renders the victim unconscious, scopolamine puts the victim in a state of utter compliancy. They’re awake and can participate in the rape. They remember nothing, of course, when they come out of it, just suffering from a severe headache. It’s this control that enables criminals to get their victims to commit crimes on their behalf.”
“What kind of crimes? I mean, how far would a person go?”
“The victims have absolutely no free will. They are complete puppets and at the mercy of the one in control.”
“Robbery?”
“Oh, yes, even against themselves, as was the case with my young missionary twenty years ago. Her bank account was completely emptied via an ATM machine in Bogotá. Security footage showed it was indeed her who accessed the machine and e
mptied the account. She simply took out all her money and gave it to her captors.”
“How about murder?”
“In theory, yes. Furthermore, the person would appear as looking and acting absolutely normal while committing the crime, even exhibiting free will, but I assure you if they are under the power of Devil’s Breath, they have no free will.”
“How is the drug administered?”
“A number of ways: liquid form, a topical butter, or even as a powder. It can be slipped into a person’s drink, sprinkled on food, rubbed on the skin, or blown directly into a person’s face. The results are the same. Complete compliance as long as the victim is under…or alive.”
Grey chose his next words carefully. “Doc, I know you know who this is. That being the case, I suspect you also know why I’m asking you to do this reexamination.”
“Yes, I do,” Dr. Bhatti answered with no expression.
“If your tests turn up scopolamine, then—”
“Yes,” Bhatti interrupted. “I am aware of the ramifications. I will be thorough with my examination, Agent Pryce.”
Grey nodded. “I know you will be. When will you have the results?”
“In a few hours…but give me the rest of the day. I will want to triple and quadruple check all my findings. Given the magnitude of this case, I think it prudent, don’t you?”
“I do,” Grey answered. “I most emphatically do.”
»»•««
He’d never seen his dad look this way. Ben sat in the corner of the living room, doing his best to be invisible. There was nothing he could say or do. This was happening whether he liked it or not. It was all so weird. This guy is the definition of predictable; steady, obvious, the kind of person you could literally set your watch by. He had no moods, he had one mood. It was irritating as hell, but at least it was normal. This wasn’t normal at all. Might the old man start crying? Ben wondered, watching his father drop a large duffle bag by the door before turning to stand beside his mother. Ben decided in that moment he didn’t like this version of his father, it wasn’t him. Then he studied his mother. She, on the other hand, was acting exactly like herself; wringing her hands, talking too much but not really saying anything, pretending everything was okay when obviously it wasn’t. Just then, Ben heard the upstairs bedroom door open and close.
