Free The Green Ripper by John D. MacDonald Page B

was swelling and turning blue. I had torn a fingernail snatching the revolver.
     
     
Finally Max grinned at me and said, 'mow I understand a little bit more about some of the things I found out about you. Now they make more sense. But it was still stupid."
     
     
Meyer made an odd sound. He looked up from the print he was holding. He looked questioningly at Max and said, "Markov?"
     
     
'~Yes. And you better tell me how you know about that!"
     
     
94 t
     
     
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Meyer looked at Max, his expression puzzled. "But why wouldn't I know about it? It had a lot of pubs licity."
     
     
"But how would you make the connection from these photographs?"
     
     
Still puzzled, Meyer said, "The details made an impression on me." He looked toward the ceiling, frowned, closed his eyes, and said, "A sphere of platinum and iridium I forget the percentages of each in the alloy. One fifteenth of an inch in diameter, with two tiny holes dolled into it at right angles to each other, with traces of an unknown substance in the holes."
     
     
"But you glanced at these photos and made the connection."
     
     
Meyer straightened and glared at him. "If you are pretending to be professional, act like a profes- sional. If I had any trace of guilty knowledge, would I have revealed it? The people who do have guilty knowledge are certainly too professional to reveal it."
     
     
I interrupted, saying, "Let me explain something. Meyer has a fantastic memory. I don't know what the hell either of you are talking about. What Eve got here is a picture of what looks like a lumpy silver bowling ball with the holes drilled badly."
     
     
"The scale, Travis," Meyer said. "Look at the scale."
     
     
Yes, it was very small. Maybe not quite as small as the head of a pin, but almost.
     
     
'.That item," said Max, "is a twin to the one removed from the right thigh of a Bulgarian defector in London named Georgi Markov after he died with the symptoms of high fever, sharp drop in blood pressure, and renal failure. That was quite some time ago."
     
     
"Somebody jabbed him with an umbrella," Meyer said.
     
     
"Yes. That one. This is a photograph of an identical object removed from the right side of the baclc of the neck of Mrs. Howard. The traces of the poison found inside those holes are being analyzed. They did not get a complete analysis of the poison
     
     
The Green Ripper in the Markov case, or in the Kostov attempt which happened a month before Markov was killed. The pellet hit Kostov in the back in a Paris subway. We can assume a better delivery system was devised to take care of Markov. Kostov recovered."
     
     
I sat heavily and stared at the picture of the dull silver ball. Somebody had stuck that thing into the back of the neck of my woman and lulled her. I had been trying not to accept the fact that such a thing could happen, and had happened.
     
     
"I'm burning up. I feel terrible, Trav. Terrible."
     
     
Her face had become gaunt so quickly. Fever had eaten her up, eaten the quickness and happiness, eaten the brightness.
     
     
The reason for doing that to her seemed beyond any comprehension. But somebody did it. And from this moment on, the only satisfying purpose in life would be to find out exactly, precisely, specifically who.
     
     
I came back from a long way off and heard the last part of Meyer's question. " many more since the Markov case?"
     
     
"Classified information."
     
     
"Who does such a thing?" I demanded.
     
     
Jake took the answer to that one. '~We could say that we have reason to believe the poison itself, a complex chemical structure, was developed by Kamera, a section of Department V of the KGB. We have reason to believe they have been working for many years on poisons which, after injection, break down into substances normally found in the human body. They killed Vladimir Tkachenko back in 1967 in London when, we think, he tried to defect. Method of delivery unknown. Poison unknown."
     
     
"It's like