Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [38]
“We have a diagnosis on him yet?” a nurse asked the senior physician who’d been assigned the case.
“No, dammit. I’ve ordered more tests, but the way he’s going, I doubt if the results will matter.”
By the next day, Mutki had begun to hallucinate and suffered a series of seizures. There was blood in his urine.
“His body’s shutting down,” the physician told colleagues as they pulled out everything from their medical bag of tricks in an attempt to save his life.
That afternoon, Mutki’s kidneys, spleen, and liver failed. He was pronounced dead at 8:51 that night.
Afran Mutki was fifty-three years old, married, had three children, and worked as a journalist. His home was Erbil, the largest Kurd city in northern Iraq. As far as the hospital staff knew, he and his wife were in the United States on a tourist visa, seeing the sights, buying souvenirs and gifts to take back to their children. His wife, shaken by the sudden loss of her husband, was now faced with arranging for his remains to be transported back to Iraq. But those plans would be put on hold after two calls from the hospital.
The first was made to Dexter, the slender man with the pinched voice, by a member of the hospital’s administrative staff. “There’s been a death in the family,” was all he said before hanging up.
The second call was to the Washington MPD. It was placed by Dr. George Bennett, the physician who’d tried valiantly to save Afran Mutki’s life. Bennett had been practicing medicine for forty years and was close to retirement. He’d seen it all and was considered a superb diagnostician. Before making the call, he’d huddled with the younger physicians who’d assisted him.
“He went fast,” one said.
“A hell of an infection,” said another.
“Ricin,” Bennett said flatly.
They looked at him quizzically.
“It has all the trappings of ricin poisoning,” Bennett said. “You’re too young to remember the Markov case. About thirty years ago in London. He was a Bulgarian, a journalist who defected to London, where he kept up his criticism of the Bulgarian government. They—or someone working on their behalf, probably the Russians—got rid of him, poisoned him with ricin. That red pimple on Mr. Mutki’s lower leg. He complained about it, said he thought that he’d been stung by some insect. Markov, as I recall, had a similar complaint. His assassin—and he was assassinated—had used a specially rigged umbrella to inject him with a tiny pellet containing ricin.”
“Real cloak-and-dagger stuff,” said one of the younger physicians, chortling.
“Real life-and-death,” Bennett corrected. “I have no idea whether it was ricin or not but it’s a suspicious death in any case. The police have to be informed, an autopsy performed.”
Bennett reported Mutki’s death to the authorities and ordered an autopsy with instructions to pay particular attention to the tiny raised red mark on the deceased’s lower leg.
• • •
Interest in the sudden, unexplained death of the Kurdish journalist, Afran Mutki, wasn’t limited to the physicians who’d treated him, the MPD, and the man known as Dexter.
Mutki’s handler at the State Department knew of his illness only hours after he’d been admitted to the hospital. His death spurred an emergency meeting of the handler and others at State who gathered in the Iraq Section in the agency’s Foggy Bottom facility. Also present were two CIA agents who worked the Iraq Desk at Central Intelligence.
“Go over Mutki’s importance again,” one of the agents said.
The handler obliged. “Mutki, as you know, has been a leading voice in the Kurds’ dissatisfaction with the approach taken by Baghdad. He’s been writing and broadcasting his belief that the Kurds are victims of the Iraqi central government and of our government. President Jamison has been particularly interested in Mutki and his activities and isn’t happy with what he’s learned. This is a delicate time in Iraq.