He sat next to Manny and kissed her hair, grateful to her in ways he knew he could never express. How would you like to go to Brooklyn for breakfast?
HANS GALT was seated at a back booth in the diner, drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. He was a tiny man with fierce eyes under steel-rimmed glasses, a face like a ferret, and graying black hair. He grunted a hello to Jake and glanced suspiciously at Manny, even when Jake said he could trust her with any secret. Before he spoke, he glanced around the room; it was deserted save for a waiter who took their orders for coffee.
He leaned toward them, a finger to his lips. Experiments, he said.
What? said Manny.
The radioactivity, Jake said, feeling a swell of anger. Someone was using live people?
Hans nodded. Its not just the radioactivity. Theres a lot more. But lets start with the humerus.
Jake looked at Manny, who was sitting with her mouth slightly open, breathing rapidly, entranced by this brilliant little man who had shared secrets with him on so many cases in the past.
Shes beyond beautiful.
Okay, start there.
You know I worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The humerus contains a higher level of radiation than anything I saw there: strontium ninety. By the nineteen fifties we knew it was one of the most deadly carcinogens on the planet. It still is. Even a minuscule amount can cause bone cancer, leukemia, and soft-tissue malignancies called sarcomas.
He addressed this last to Manny, professor to student. And the humerus? she asked.
Contains more than a minuscule amount. It has a half-life of twenty-nine years, but it can be active in the body for many decades.
Terrifying, she said. Where would it come from?
Terrorists, Jake answered, governments
And scientists who make bombs, Hans finished. Its in the fallout of exploded nuclear devices.
Manny was mystified. But they werent making nuclear devices at Turner. Its a mental hospital.
They werent
making
them there, Hans said, but maybe they were testing their effects.
Human guinea pigs, she breathed.
Hans seemed almost pleased. It gets worse. We found other things in the samples. The hair of Skeletons Two and Three contained mescaline again, high levels and also lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD. And in the hair of Skeleton Four, the woman, there was no LSD but there was mescaline in an amount a hundred times greater than in the other two.
Manny had some expertise. I know mescaline occurs naturally in the peyote plant and can be synthetically made, and its mind-altering effects can be enhanced by the use of other chemicals. But why at Turner?
How do you know so much about drugs? Jake asked.
Represented a Native American in a freedom-of-religion case. Used drugs in their rituals.
Why doesnt that surprise me? He turned to Hans. Did you do a segmental analysis?
Whats that? asked Manny.
Body hair is a storehouse for drugs, Jake explained. Head hair grows about half an inch a month, so we can determine not only if there are drugs or poison present but also when and how many times the substance was taken and in what quantities. He picked off one of her long hairs from her sweat suit and held it to the light. With this, I could find out every drug youve taken in the last two years.
She threw up her hands. Innocent!
The segmental analysis revealed that Skeletons Two and Three had been getting mescaline for months, Hans continued, oblivious to the byplay. But Skeleton Four only started receiving it within the last few weeks of her life. She must have been given massive doses.
Manny shuddered. Poor, poor woman. Im calling Patrice. Shes got to let me go on with the investigation.
If she doesnt agree, we have enough to go after them ourselves.
You have more, Hans said. In Skeleton One: osteomyelitis in the hand bone.
Bone infection, Jake said.
The DNA obtainable from the osteomyelitic cavity is from bacteria,
Serratia marcescens,
but a very virulent type of Serratia, one Ive never seen before.
Holy shit! Jakes eyes were wide.
Explain, Manny said.
Its a natural bacterium. Scientists like to play with it in the laboratory, because its red when it grows in the laboratory and you can easily distinguish it from other bacteria.
There was no pleasure left in Hanss demeanor. The American government played with Serratia bacteria during the forties and fifties to see if it could be used as a weapon. Sprayed it secretly over areas of San Francisco, painted it on doorknobs and banisters. Spraying didnt work because too little was inhaled by people on the ground
One of the reasons the anthrax scare is overblown, Jake interrupted.
but over the years its sickened some people who inhaled it. One even died. Its much more prevalent now than it was before the spray.
It was Serratia that infected the flu vaccine at the Chiron plant in England in 2004, Jake pointed out. They had to destroy the stockpile and couldnt send any over here. Hence our shortage.
Some people think the Chiron contamination was part of another experiment, Hans said, but thats conjecture. What we do know is that
Serratia marcescens,
the type in Skeleton One, is far more aggressive than the strain used in San Francisco. Its a superbug, Jake, enhanced by humans, the kind thats not supposed to exist. But it does. I saw it yesterday in my petri dish. My guess is the government was using Turner as a lab, with humans for rats. And they sometimes slipped up hence the bones.
The enormity of what she was hearing set off explosions in Mannys brain. She vowed revenge legal revenge.
And it wasnt just at Turner, Hans continued. The man who oversaw future testing, Sidney Gottlieb, testified about other tests in secret and under a pseudonym before the U.S. Senates Church Committee in 1975. A lot of doctors were involved, including many of the best-known psychiatrists of the day. The top New York State Health Department doctor approved the mind-control experiments, some done in conjunction with other countries. We know of at least two people who died as a result of these experiments: a CIA agent who had been given surreptitious doses of LSD and jumped to his death from a hotel window, and a tennis pro who was given huge doses of mescaline after checking himself into a hospital for depression. Doctors notes show he never consented to anything. He was clearly being experimented on against his will.
I remember the case! Manny said. The family sued the government, claiming it withheld the information that their son had died because of what theyd done to him.
Who won? Jake asked.
Guess. But damn it, if Id been the lawyer, thered have been a different verdict.
I found the same army mescaline, EA-1298, developed at the Edgewood Arsenal Military Base that allegedly killed that tennis pro in your skeletons, Hans said. It and other variations are delineated by code numbers that mean
not to be used on humans.
Ha! The world hasnt changed, only the level of the cover-ups.
Didnt President Nixon order all chemical and bacteriological weapons destroyed?
Galts eyes shone. Glad you asked. He produced a copy of a memo regarding CIA activities at Fort Detrick in Maryland, signed by Donald F. Chamberlain, Inspector General of the United States, and read it aloud:
On 25 November 1969, President Nixon ordered the Department of Defense to recommend plans for the disposal of existing stocks of bacteriological weapons. On 14 November 1970, he included all toxic weapons. It is our understanding that these materials were destroyed in compliance with President Nixons directives.
We cannot, however, locate the records that establish this fact.
So for all we know, bacteriological experiments are still going on, Jake said.
But
why
? Manny asked. Our governments not monstrous, at least not most of the time. And even if they were, how could they recruit the scientists to do it?
Self-preservation, Hans said. Enemies were doing mind-control experiments to get our secrets. We had to know how to counteract them. Again, its nothing new. In the seventeen hundreds, Lord Jeffrey Amherst gave American Indians blankets soaked in smallpox. You might argue that it led to a cure for the disease.
Or that it killed many Indians. Manny was at her boiling point. She stood. Come on, Jake. Time to go to work.
I dont have to go in. Pedersons concerned that since the mob missed me at home, theyll try again at the office. Hes given me a few days off until they figure out what to do with me.
We have our own corpses to worry about. Well work on
our
investigation. She put a hand on his shoulder. First, though, home. Im not going out again without makeup. Thank you, Mr. Galt. I havent had this much education since the autopsy.
THEY BOUGHT CHINOS and a sweatshirt for Jake on the way home, then slept for three hours, made love, showered, dressed, and emerged into blazing sunlight.
My idea of a perfect morning,
Manny thought.
Wouldnt Pete be appalled if he knew the story behind the bones, Jake said. He took it hard that there was a young womans skeleton. Imagine how much worse if hed realized she was poisoned.
They were on the steps of the public library. Manny wanted to see if they could find anything in the Church Committee hearings that would lead back to Turner Psychiatric.
The librarian in the subbasement microfiche room told them she was required to log in any documents they reviewed or copied. Courtesy of the Patriot Act, she said. In case you two are terrorists, the government can hunt you down.
The army sanctioned the mescaline and LSD experiments Hans told us about as early as 1952, Jake said, reading through a file on the period. Listen to this:
There is ample evidence in the reports of innumerable interrogations that the Communists were using drugs, physical duress, electric shock and possibly hypnosis against their enemies. With such evidence, it is difficult not to keep from becoming rabid about our apparent laxity. We are forced by this mounting evidence to assume a more aggressive role in the development of these techniques, but must be cautious to maintain strict inviolable control because of the havoc that could be wrought by such techniques in unscrupulous hands.
Jesus, the guy was a physician. Hadnt he heard of the Hippocratic oath?
They put LSD in cigarettes with a tuberculin needle and syringe, Manny exclaimed, looking at the same disc over his shoulder. Also in ice cream. They even specified the flavor: chocolate.
To hide the taste of the LSD, Jake said.
Manny remembered the historical information shed read at the Academie. Turner had an ice cream parlor and a dairy farm. Do you think?
Could be a coincidence, Jake said. We need more.
They opened documents at random. Much of the information had been redacted with swipes of a black Magic Marker.