The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [102]
Davis held the safe "blue" pen. It was a little bulky, like a third-grader might use on his first official introduction to a ballpoint pen after using thick-barrel pencils and crayons for a couple of years. So, as you approached your subject, you took it out of your coat pocket, and swung it in a reverse stabbing motion, and just kept going. Your backup hitter would watch the subject fall to the sidewalk, maybe even stop to render assistance, then watch the bastard die, and get up and go on his way-well, maybe call an ambulance so that his body could get sent to the hospital and be properly dismantled under medical supervision.
"Tom?"
"I like it, Gerry," Davis replied. "Doc, how confident are you about this stuff dissipating after the subject goes down for the count?"
"Confident," Dr. Pasternak answered, and both of his hosts remembered that he was professor of anesthesiology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He probably knew his stuff. Besides, they'd trusted him enough to let him in on the secrets of The Campus. It was a little late to stop trusting him now. "It's just basic biochemistry. Succinylcholine is made up of two acetylcholine molecules. Esterases in the body break the chemical down into acetylcholine fairly rapidly, so it is very likely to be undetectable, even by someone up at Columbia-Presbyterian. The only hard part: to have it done covertly. If you could bring him into a doctor's office, for example, it would just be a matter of infusing potassium chloride. That would put the heart into fibrillation. When cells die, they give off potassium anyway, and so the relative increase would not be noticed, but the IV mark would be hard to hide. There are a lot of ways to do this. I just had to pick one that is applied relatively conveniently by fairly unskilled people. As a practical matter, a really good pathologist might not be able to determine the exact cause of death-and he would know that he didn't know, and that would bother him-but that's only if the body is examined by a really talented guy. Not too many of them around. I mean, the best guy up at Columbia is Rich Richards. He really hates not knowing something. He's a real intellectual, a problem solver, and genius biochemist in addition to being a superb physician. I asked him about this, and he told me it would be extremely difficult to detect even if he had a heads-up on what to look for. Ordinarily, extraneous factors come into play, the specific biochemistry of the victim's body, what he's had to eat or drink, ambient temperature would be a huge factor. On a cold winter day, outside, the esterases might not be able to break down the succinylcholine because of a diminution of chemical processes."
"So, don't do a guy in Moscow in January?" Hendley asked. This deep science stuff was troublesome for him, but Pasternak knew his stuff.
The professor smiled. Cruelly. "Correct. Also Minneapolis."
"Miserable death?" Davis asked.
He nodded. "Decidedly unpleasant."
"Reversible?"
Pasternak shook his head. "Once the succinylcholine is in the bloodstream, there's nothing you can do about it well, theoretically you could put the guy on a ventilator and breathe for him until the drug metabolizes-I've seen that done with Pavulon in an OR-but that would be a stretch. Theoretically possible to survive, but very, very unlikely. People have survived being shot right between the eyes, gentlemen, but it's not exactly common."
"How hard do you have to hit your target?" Davis asked.
"Not very, just a good poke. Enough to penetrate his clothing. A thick coat might be a problem because of the length of the needle. But ordinary business wear, no problem."
"Is anyone immune to the drug?" Hendley asked.
"Not to this one, no. That would be one in a billion."
"No chance he'd make noise?"
"As I explained, it's like a bee sting at most-more than a mosquito, but not enough to make a man cry out in pain. At most, you'd expect for the victim to be puzzled, maybe to turn around and see what caused it, but your agent