King Neptune’s motley gang of cutthroats greeted the pollywogs with whoops and howls as the tram car glided to a stop. One was a barber pole painted with alternating diagonal stripes of white and red. Another was a cannibal with a spear in his hand and a bone through his nose; a third was Abe Lincoln in morning coat, stovepipe hat, and chin whiskers. There was even an ambulatory can of Campbell’s clam chowder. Surrounding the pollywogs in a milling, shouting, shoving crowd, the costumed men hurried them across the ice to where King Neptune awaited them on his golden throne, a gilded barber’s chair.
Ripley Forte, caught up in the mob, was craning his neck to get a view of the proceedings, when he felt a piece of paper thrust in his hand. He looked around to see who could have put it there but realized it might have been any one of the dozen jeering, shouting, laughing men who were jostling him from every side. He held up the paper and read:
“Forte: there is a bomb in the radio-shack gear locker. It is set to go off at precisely 10:10.”
The words on the note were typewritten, except for the time: that was inscribed in pencil.
He looked at his watch. It was 9:53. The communications shack was half a mile away, near the midline of the Alamo.
Again he scanned the faces–or what he could see of them through their disguises–of the excited men around him but knew he was wasting his time.
He jogged over to where half a dozen motor scooters were parked nearby, mounted one, and switched on the engine. He went flying over the Ultravac-covered ice toward the radio shack. Nobody was in sight in any direction across the wide flat expanse except for the crowd he had left behind him.
He braked to a stop at the flimsy aluminum structure and mounted the three wooden steps. Inside, the radioman was trussed up with adhesive tape like a man with multiple fractures. Over his head was a paper bag. Forte pulled it off, saw by the frantic eyeball gestures that his man was alive and indignant, and stripped the tape off his mouth.
“Where’s the gear locker?”
“There.” The bound man nodded toward a bank of metal lockers along the bulkhead opposite radio equipment. ‘The first locker.”
The locker was standing invitingly ajar. Forte picked up a flashlight from a desk and inspected the slit for wires of a booby trap. There didn’t seem to be any. He eased the door open.
He saw a foxtail and dustpan, a damp and dirty swab, a broom, a bucket with some rags on top, an assortment of soap powders, and a couple of dog-eared magazines. Under the rags in the bucket was the bomb. It weighed in at about five kilos, probably enough to destroy the radio shack and certainly enough to knock out all the communications gear and kill the hapless radioman. The timer indicated that six minutes remained before the bomb would be detonated. Forte, who had seen explosive devices like it during his guerrilla days in the Marine Corps, disarmed it by cutting one of the contact wires.
He examined the bomb. It was of the simplest construction: three canisters of blasting powder used for seismic surveys, to be triggered with a standard industrial timing device. Taped to the canisters was an envelope with “Forte” typed on it. He held it up to the light, looking for the faint wires that might indicate a letter bomb. There were none. He ripped it open.
“Say, Mr. Forte,” said the radioman plaintively. “Would you mind getting this damned tape off of me?”
Forte paused. “Did you get a look at who did this?”
The radioman shook his head. “Didn’t see a thing. I’m transmitting the nine o’clock weather report, and then the lights went out–my lights.”
“Be with you in a minute,” Forte said, unfolding the single sheet within.
The typed message read:
For breakfast this morning, Mrs. Red Cloud had orange juice, half a grapefruit, two eggs over light, home fries, four rashers of crisp bacon, a stack of wheat cakes with honey, and coffee. Mr. Yussef Mansour had for breakfast this morning a pear and a bunch of grapes, a menouchi with lebni, and oolong tea.
At 3:35 this afternoon, the Alamo will be attacked by three aircraft which will deposit a layer of carbon black over the entire surface. You are expected to believe that the carbon black is for the purpose of absorption of the sun’s rays, to cause a catastrophic melting of the berg. As you realize, this is a useless exercise, as the melting would be minimal, even without the iceberg’s Ultravac covering. Your natural reaction will be, therefore, to dismiss the attack as frivolous. This would be a mistake: the carbon black is impregnated with anthrax bacilli.
There was no signature.
“Hey, Mr. Forte,” came the radioman’s plaintive voice. “What about me?”
“Shut up!” snapped Forte, thinking hard.
He strode over to the radio panel, switched on the radiotelephone circuit, and punched in the code of Joe Mansour’s ship, the Linno.
A few seconds later came a voice: “This is the Linno.”
“Ripley Forte here. Switch to scramble code 9178.” He punched in the numbers on his own set.
A moment later came the voice again. “Do you read me, Mr. Forte?”
“Five by five. Where’s the Linno?”
“We are off the coast of Antakya, Turkey.”
“Get me Mr. Mansour, on the double.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
There was another pause, and then the voice said: “Mr. Mansour is swimming off the fantail, sir. He’ll be aboard in a moment.”
“Then give me his steward.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is Godolphin, Mr. Forte,” said a British voice after an interval.
“Godolphin, what did Mr. Mansour have for breakfast this morning?”
“Sir?”
“Breakfast. What did Mr. Mansour eat?”
“Oh. Well, sir, Mr. Mansour had Magdouche grapes, a pear from Ashkelon, and a menouchi with some of my own lebni, sir,” he replied with the aplomb of one who answered such a question every morning. “And oolong tea.”
“Is that his usual breakfast?”
“No, sir. He always has oolong, of course, but rarely a menouchi, as he finds it fattening. As a matter of fact–”
But Forte had ceased to listen. He put his foot against the radio console and pushed, and his wheeled chair went scooting across the radio shack to the computer on the other side of the room.
He entered the access code for El Mundo Data Bank and then the single word “Anthrax.”
One second later there appeared on the screen several options. Forte chose “Brief Description–Cause, Effect, Prophylaxis, Cure.”
The screen filled with print. Forte entered the “scroll” command and mentally registered the passages that interested him as paragraphs passed in review.
“Anthrax, a.k.a. splenic fever, malignant pustule, woolsorter’s disease… acute, specific, infectious, febrile disease caused by Bacillus anthracis… highly resistant spores capable of maintaining virulence for many years… in acute forms in man there is excitement and rise in body temperature followed by depression, spasms, respiratory or cardiac distress, trembling, staggering, convulsions terminating in death within a day or two… in humans can be a cutaneous, pulmonary, or intestinal infection… in pulmonary form, inhaling anthrax spores causes disease to run rapid course, usually terminating fatally… prompt diagnosis and treatment imperative…. Antianthrax serum, arsenicals, and antibiotics used with excellent results.”
In the background, he heard a voice calling his name. He shuttled back across the room.
“This is Joe Mansour, Rip,” the voice was saying.
“Joe, we’ve got a little problem.”
28. BLACK SNOW
21 FEBRUARY 2008
ABOARD THE FOURTEEN-PLACE PIPER TILTPROP LIAISON plane headed for Swedru, Ghana, just six hundred kilometers to the north, Ripley Forte had time to reflect on the significance of the two messages he had received.
For one thing, there was the disquieting fact that somebody had at least two agents among his crew. One would have had access to the breakfast menu of the Linno, the other the opportunity to receive the message from agent number one, tie up the radioman, type up the two notes– both had been written on the radio-shack typewriter– plant the bomb with its message, and then hurry to the disembarkation of Forte and his party from the Sun King and slip him the monitory note. Not only was the organization impeccable, the timing was perfect. Somebody knew exactly what he was doing.
But it wouldn’t be somebody from Raynes Oceanic Resources. In the first place, he doubted that ROR would have been able to plant an agent aboard the Linno. Joe Mansour had confirmed that his crew was the same that he had before Raynes and Forte had collided over Triple Eye, and until that moment ROR would have had no reason to be interested in Joe Mansour’s activities. More germane was the fact that if the note about the sowing of anthrax spores was true, among the victims would probably be Mrs. Red Cloud herself.