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Was it a premonition? The elderly poet began his recital with a verse about the suddenness of death:

Death which appears

Like a silent dragonfly

Like the dew on the mountain

Like the foam on the river

Like the bubble on the spring.

Part Three

THREE SARCOPHAGI UNDER THE MOON

36

Three Sarcophagi under the Moon

In their reinforced concrete tomb, the three tanks, two yards high and thirteen long, looked like enormous sarcophagi left behind by some pharaoh. They lay, half buried, side by side, at the foot of the metal structures on view to Dilip and Padmini’s wedding guests. They had no names on them, only numbers: 610, 611, 619. These tanks were masterpieces of the most advanced metallurgy. No acid, liquid or corrosive gas could eat into their shells, which were made out of SS14 stainless steel. At least, that was the theory: methyl isocyanate had not yet revealed all of its secrets. A complex network of pipes, stopcocks and valves linked the tanks to each other and to the reactors that produced the MIC and Sevin. To prevent any accidental leakage of their contents into the atmosphere, each tank was connected to three specific safety systems. The first was a network of fine piping contained in the tank’s lining. When freon gas flowed through it, the MIC would be constantly refrigerated to a temperature close to 0° C. The second was a monumental cylindrical tank called a “decontamination tower.” It contained caustic soda to absorb and neutralize any escaping gas. The third was a 120-foot-high flare. Its role was to burn off any effluents that might have escaped the barrage of caustic soda.

That December 2, 1984, there were sixty-three tons of methyl isocyanate in the tanks—a “real atomic bomb right in the middle of the plant” as the German chemist from Bayer had described it to Eduardo Muñoz—and not one of the three safety systems was operational. The refrigeration had been off for a month and a half and the MIC was being kept at the ambient temperature, about 20° C in a winter month. The alarm that was supposed to go off in case of any abnormal rise in temperature in the tanks had been disconnected. As for the decontamination tower and the flare to incinerate the gases, several of their components had been dismantled the preceding week for maintenance.

No mention was made of it in the technical handbooks, but there was a fourth safety device. Neither corrosion nor cutbacks could put this one out of commission because the only power source this funnel-shaped piece of material needed was the breath of the winds. The wind sock fluttering over the factory supplied the plant workers with an essential piece of information: the wind direction. Lit up at nightfall, it was visible from all workstations. The occupants of the surrounding neighborhoods, however, could not see it. No one had thought to fly another one over their bustees.

There were further grounds for concern. With forty-two tons of MIC inside, tank 610 was almost full, and that was in absolute violation of Carbide’s safety regulations. The tanks were never meant to be filled to more than half their capacity, just in case a solvent had to be injected to stop a chemical reaction. Tank 611, next to it, contained twenty tons of MIC. As for the third tank, 619, which was supposed to remain empty to act as an emergency tank in case the other two suffered an accident, it contained one ton of MIC.

Since October 26, the day on which the factory stopped production, the contents of these tanks had not been analyzed. That was another serious breach of regulations. Methyl isocyanate is not an inert substance. Because it is made up of multiple gases, it has a life of its own and is constantly changing and reacting. Was the MIC inside the three tanks still the “pure, clear mineral water” Shekil Qureshi, Pareek’s young assistant, had admired? Or had it been polluted by impurities likely to cause a reaction? Broken down by heat, the MIC could then emit all kinds of gases, including the deadly hydrocyanic acid. In the event of a leak, these