The Prodigal Son. Colleen McCullough

      John Hall died eleven minutes after he started feeling hot. Dr. Al Markoff knelt to one side of him fighting to keep him alive, Dr. Jim Hunter knelt to his other side holding his hand for comfort. But life was gone, and of comfort there was none.

      PART ONE

       From

       THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1969

       until

       WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 1969

      THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 1969

      “Daddy, what’s the procedure when I’m missing a toxin?”

      Patrick O’Donnell’s startled blue eyes flew to his daughter’s face, expecting to see it laughing at having successfully pulled Daddy’s leg. But it was frowning, troubled. He gave her a mug of coffee. “It depends, honey,” he said calmly. “What toxin?”

      “A really nasty one—tetrodotoxin.”

      Holloman County’s Medical Examiner looked blank. “You’ll have to be more specific, Millie. I’ve never heard of it.”

      “It’s a neurotoxin that blocks nerve transmission by acting on the pores of the voltage-gated, fast sodium channels of the cell membrane—or, in simpler words, it shuts the nervous system down. Very nasty! That’s what makes it so interesting experimentally, though I’m not interested in it per se. I use it as a tool.” Her blue eyes, so like his, gazed at him imploringly.

      “Where did you get it from, Millie?”

      “I isolated it myself from its source—the blowfish. Such a cute little critter! Looks like a puppy you’d just love to hug to death. But don’t eat it, especially its liver.” She was perking up, sipping the coffee with enjoyment now. “How do you manage to make a good brew in this godawful building? Carmine’s coffee sucks.”

      “I pay for it myself and severely limit those invited to drink it. Okay, you’ve jogged my memory cells. I have heard of tetrodotoxin, but only in papers, and in passing. So you actually isolated it yourself?”

      “Yes.” She stopped again.

      “I’ll do a Carmine: expatiate.”

      “Well, I had a tank of blowfish, and it seemed a shame to waste all those livers and other rich bits, so I kept on going and wound up with about a gram of it. If taken by mouth, enough to kill ten heavyweight boxers. When I finished my experimental run I sealed the six hundred milligrams I had left over in glass ampoules, one hundred milligrams to each, slapped a poison sticker on the beaker holding the six ampoules, and put it in the back of my refrigerator with the three-molar KC1 and stuff,” said Millie.

      “Don’t you lock the refrigerator?”

      “Why? It’s mine, and my little lab. My grant doesn’t run to a technician—I’m not Jim, surrounded by acolytes.” She held out her mug for more coffee. “I lock my lab door when I’m not in it. I’m as paranoid as any other researcher, I don’t advertise my work. And I’m post-doctoral, so there’s no thesis adviser looking over my shoulder. I would have thought that no one even knew I had any tetrodotoxin.” Her face cleared, grew soft. “Except for Jim, that is. I mentioned it in passing to him, but he’s not into neurotoxins. His idea of soup is E. coli.”

      “Any idea when it disappeared, sweetheart?”

      “During the last week. I did a stocktake of my refrigerator on Christmas Eve, and the beaker was there. When I did another stocktake this morning, no beaker anywhere—and believe me, Dad, I looked high and low. The thing is, I don’t know what to do about losing it. It didn’t seem like something Dean Werther is equipped to deal with. I thought of you.”

      “Reporting to me is fine, Millie. I’ll notify Carmine, but only as a courtesy. It can’t be equated with someone’s stealing a jar of potassium cyanide—that would galvanize everybody.” Patrick gave a rueful grin. “However, my girl, it’s time to shut the stable door. Put a lock on your refrigerator and make sure you have the only key.”

      He leaned to take her hand, long and graceful, but marred by bitten nails and general lack of care. “Honey, where you did go wrong was in keeping what you didn’t use up. You should have disposed of it as a toxic substance.”

      She flushed. “No, I don’t agree,” she said, looking mulish. “The extraction process is difficult, painstaking and extremely slow—a lesser biochemist would have botched it. I’m no Jim, but in my lab techniques I’m way above your run-of-the-mill researcher. At some time in the future I might need the leftover tetrodotoxin, and if I don’t, I can legitimately sell it to get my investment in the blowfish back. My grant committee would love that. I’ve stored it under vacuum in sealed glass ampoules, then slowed its molecules down by refrigerating it. I want it potent and ready to use at any time.”

      She got to her feet, revealing that she was tall, slender, and attractive enough to turn most men’s heads. “Is that all?” she asked.

      “Yes. I’ll talk to Carmine, but if I were you I wouldn’t go to Dean Werther. That would start the gossip ball rolling. Are you sure of the amount in each ampoule? A hundred milligrams in—liquid? Powder?”

      “Powder. Snap the neck of the ampoule and add one milligram of pure, distilled water for use. It goes into solution very easily. Ingested, one heavyweight boxer. Injection is a very different matter. Half of one milligram is fatal, even for a heavyweight boxer. If injected into a vein, death would be rapid enough to call nearly instantaneous. If injected into muscle, death in about ten to fifteen minutes from the onset of symptoms.” Such was her relief at sharing her burden that she sounded quite blithe.

      “Shit! Do you know the symptoms, Millie?”

      “As with any substance shutting down the nervous system, Dad. If injected, respiratory failure due to paralysis of the chest wall and the diaphragm. If swallowed, nausea, vomiting, purging and then respiratory failure. The duration of the symptoms would depend on dosage and how fast respiratory failure set in. Oh, I forgot. If swallowed, there would be terrible convulsions too.” She had reached the door, dying to be gone. “Will I see you on Saturday night?”

      “Mom and I wouldn’t miss it, kiddo. How’s Jim holding up?”

      Her voice floated back. “Okay! And thanks, Dad!”

      Snow and ice meant that Holloman was fairly quiet; Patrick made his way through the warren of the County Services building sure he would find Carmine in his office—no weather to be out in, even black activists knew that.

      Six daughters, he reflected as he plodded, did not mean fewer headaches than boys, though Patrick Junior was doing his solo best to prove boys were worse. Nothing in the world could force him to take a shower; two years from now he’d be a prune from showers, but that shimmered on a faraway horizon.

      Millie had always been his biggest feminine headache, he had thought because she was also his most intelligent daughter. Like all of them, she had been sent to St. Mary’s Girls’ School, which for masculine company tapped the resources of St. Bernard’s Boys. Including, over eighteen years ago—September 1950, so long ago!—a special case boarder from South Carolina, a boy whose intelligence was in the genius range. On the advice of their priest, an old St. Bernard’s boy, his parents had sent him to Holloman for his high schooling. With good reason. They were African Americans in a southern state who wanted a northern education for their precious only child. Their Catholicism was rare, and Father Gaspari prized them. So Jim Hunter, almost fifteen, arrived to live with the Brothers at St. Bernard’s: James Keith Hunter, a genius.

      He and Millie met at a school dance that happened to coincide with her fifteenth birthday;