The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (25 page)

“Stay under the shower for fifteen minutes,” I told her. “I’m getting you a lab coat to wear home. Leave your clothes here. They will need to go for analysis to record the exposure to your body.”

Alyssa showed me to a storeroom where I collected a towel and a clean lab coat. When we returned, the girl was still under the shower, and shivering. This time, I was sure her shaking was from the cold water. She looked much calmer now, and understandably embarrassed.

“Who are you?” she asked me.

“I’m Katrina Stone,” I said and watched her for signs of recognition. There were none.

“I’m Jeff Wilson’s wife,” I added, and then she smiled and enthusiastically offered a waterlogged hand.

“Oh!” she said. “I’m so sorry!
You’re
Katrina! I thought you would have Dr. Wilson’s last name!”

“It’s common for a female scientist not to take her husband’s name,” I found myself explaining for the millionth time since my wedding. “When you have already established a publication record under your maiden name, you lose that record by changing your name. People conduct Internet searches by last name to find the work of a scientist. They don’t know when someone gets married.”

And why don’t you already know this?
I wondered.

“Oh, gosh,” she said, blushing. “I didn’t know that. I’m just an intern. I make solutions like the acrylamide I was working with when the earthquake hit.”

No longer surprised at the girl’s naïveté, I sent her on her way home, all the while assuming she would be sprinting to change her career path away from any form of science. Then Alyssa and I conducted a brief check of the lab.

We saw the spilled acrylamide bottle near the fume hood, and I donned two pairs of chemical-resistant gloves to clean up the mess while Alyssa stood by. Unlike our adventures at the Phlaegrean Fields the day before, I was comfortable in this situation. Several other items had fallen, and a few broken bottles were present, but clear labeling indicated that nothing else that had spilled was chemically dangerous. We cleaned up the remnants and then decided to step above ground and get some air.

We entered the tunnel between the lab and the Sansevero chapel, and for a moment neither of us spoke. Then Alyssa brought something to the front of my mind that had been huddling near the back since the moment I myself had been huddling in the doorway.

“That earthquake is why we are in so much danger,” she said. “This whole area is highly unstable geologically, just like Southern California.”

I could feel a chill creep up the back of my neck. “Which means,” I said, “that at any time the ruins of Herculaneum and the Villa dei Papiri could be buried again.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And they might not survive another major geological event like they did the volcanic eruption in 79 CE. They could be completely destroyed. Everyone knows this. It is why the people who want those papyrus scrolls, like the man who shot at you and might have poisoned your scuba tank, are not waiting. They have no patience. They can’t afford it. They are desperate. They know that this entire region is a ticking time bomb.”

As we emerged from the underground tunnel and into the Chapel of Sansevero, I felt what I thought was an aftershock. I stopped moving. “Did you feel that?” I asked Alyssa. Her look was blank. I felt it again. “That, right there,” I said.

Alyssa shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t feel anything,” she said, and I realized that what I had felt was the vibrating of my own purse. I reached into it and retrieved the vibrating iPhone, and it dawned on me that there was probably no reception in the underground lab.

It was my phone, signaling a voicemail. The time signature indicated that the message was several hours old. But it had not come through until now.

I gaped at the message and at the time signature, and I knew that my time had already run out.

That was three days ago.

There is nothing I would rather know than the causes of the river which lie hidden through so many ages and its unknown source.

-Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE)

Hail to thee, O Nile! Who manifests thyself over this land, and comes to give life to Egypt!

-
Hymn to the Nile
, ca. 2100 BCE

Chapter Seventeen

The message was from Larry Shuman. His post-mortem findings had just cemented his conviction that I had killed my husband.

“Dr. Stone”—the message came through—“the cancer in your husband’s body is the likes of which I have never seen in twenty-seven years in this business. I am sure you were aware of his condition.

“The suspicious nature of his disease, combined with the suspicious circumstances of his death, led me to run additional tests beyond the normal toxicology panels.

“What I have found is a molecular substance being metabolized through the liver. This is clearly a man-made substance. It functioned as a powerful carcinogen when I tested it on human cells.

“Dr. Stone, I am certain that as a professional drug discovery biologist you understand the implications. This substance is what caused the aggressive cancer throughout your husband’s body. Your husband was given this cancer deliberately.

“All of these findings will be in the detailed report I am preparing for the San Diego Police Department. Dr. Stone, if you are innocent of this crime, then may the authorities find you so. But I am willing to wager exactly one million dollars that you are not.

“May God forgive you.”

He made it. Rossi made the cancer. He gave it to my husband. He gave it to my daughter. And the easiest way he could have done that would have been through John. Our family physician.

Even as I began to wonder if they could have also somehow inoculated me, I knew I was going to be sick again. With my cell phone still to my ear, I hastily excused myself from Alyssa Iacovani. I dashed out of the Sansevero chapel and around the corner into the alley behind it, where I vomited my two morning cups of coffee.

I rinsed out my mouth using a spigot in the alley. Against my better judgment, I withdrew an empty water bottle from my purse and refilled it from the spigot.

I was rounding the corner to return to Alyssa when she stepped out of the chapel. Her face was clouded with worry.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I have a problem at home I need to deal with.” And as soon as I could, I caught the first bus that would take me away from her.

Of course Shuman suspects me.

When my husband died, I inherited the multibillion-dollar drug discovery company that Jeff and I co-owned. I had both the motive and the knowledge to poison Jeff with a compound that would induce a fatal form of cancer. From those two facts, one is easily led to the conclusion that if my husband—an equally if not more competent scientist—discovered this, I would also have reason to shoot him dead.

From the terrace of our bedroom.

With my own gun.

And then hide his body.

Only then did I realize that there were actually
two
links between Jeff and my daughter. The first, of course, was John.

The other was me.

The bus rocked, and I thought about the cancer.

I thought about Alexis.

Alexis is fifteen, and she has now advanced from the generally peaceful PETA organization to the more radical Animal Liberation Front. This organization is known for sabotaging animal research facilities and for freeing the animals inside, with the best of intentions. It is through the Animal Liberation Front that Alexis is finally able to target her worst enemy—her mother. It is with them that she goes after my biosafety level 3 facility, an infectious disease laboratory currently housing a cohort of anthrax-infected monkeys.

As I sat on the rocking bus, I realized that the police would not need to dig very deep to discover a motive for me to harm Alexis, as well as Jeff.

If I could not find the isotope before the police found me, my daughter would lose the opportunity to clear my name.

And I would lose her.

I shook my head in disbelief and swallowed. My throat hurt.

I pulled the water bottle from my purse and tried to take a sip, but the water was appallingly bad. I spat it back into the bottle as discreetly as I could. I looked with disgust at the bottle itself, as if its contents had somehow knowingly offended me, and then sighed and cast my eyes forward. They fell upon two young women on the bus.

For some reason, I found myself staring. The women were seated together, near the driver. I was a few rows behind, on the opposite side of the aisle, and I only had a clear view of one of them. I guessed them to be about Lexi’s age, but that was where the similarity between these young women and my daughter ended.

They seemed so out of place in Naples. Both were dressed in traditional Muslim garments. Their faces showed, but that was all. Black scarves covered their hair and shoulders, blending indistinguishably into the formless robes that flowed all the way to their feet. The woman seated nearest the aisle, the one most fully within my line of sight, had her arms folded demurely in front of her. I could not even see her hands; they were enveloped in her robe. I wondered if that was customary.

The women huddled discreetly, confined within their own private black hole, like two drops of oil adhering together within a pool of water. They spoke almost in whispers, their eyes directed downward. They looked and smiled comfortably at one another, but neither so much as glanced at anyone else. I found myself fascinated by the stark contrast between these young women and my daughter.

The bus stopped, and the women stood to exit. I continued watching as the one nearest the aisle gathered her floor-length robe to step forward. Her black-gloved hand poked out from beneath her sleeve like a turtle’s head. For just a moment, the robe shifted to give her the freedom of movement she needed. For that brief moment, the woman’s sandaled foot was exposed to the ankle.

Open-toed shoes are OK.
Jeff’s smile and his voice flashed back again from my dream.

The woman looked up and saw me staring at her. She glared. I glanced down. My eyes fell again onto the water bottle in my hand, and I suddenly understood the puzzle in the dream.

“The Pompeii baths were heated by slaves.”

Dante’s voice echoed toward me as if taunting.

“Water would flow in from the aqueducts. Then the slaves put wood into a big heater under the floor to heat the water, and pipes carried the hot water to the baths for the Romans up on top.”

The aqueducts. Of course. Water was life. The Romans, above all others, had harnessed it. The Romans had brought the aqueducts to Pompeii. The aqueducts supplied running water to the entire city.

The infrastructural capabilities of the Romans were ahead of their time. The capacity to divert flows of water at will was one of the main advantages of their culture. The Romans could populate any area they chose. Their cities did not have to be built on a river.

And water would not only have been an advantage for city life. Aqueducts enabled agriculture at a distance from any fresh water source. The diversity of plant life available to the Romans would have been far more extensive than that of any culture that relied on immediate proximity to a river. This would have given the Romans access to the largest medicine cabinet in the ancient world.

In Pompeii I had seen, but failed to really notice, the aqueducts. As I had strolled through a lush garden in a dream, my subconscious mind disguised as my husband had been teasing me. He had teased me with the answer that had been right in front of me since my excursion to Pompeii.

It had taken the Muslim dress of two women on a Naples bus clashing so noticeably with their sandaled feet—

Open-toed shoes are OK.

—to bring me the answer to the riddle.

If the aqueducts were introduced to grow a particular plant, say in the enormous garden of the House of the Faun in Pompeii, then that particular plant was clearly not native to the region. It must have been transplanted there.

By whom? And from where?

What to wear them with? Nothing too revealing. Nothing flashy. Nothing tight. You don’t want to call attention to yourself. It’s a different culture.

The answer was in the one woman who held every key. The woman who had literally positioned herself in bed with the Romans and thus had acquired access to the world’s leading agricultural technologies. The woman who was the only member of her dynasty to speak Egyptian—the native language of the slaves who tended her gardens.

She needed the Roman aqueducts to grow nardo because it did not grow naturally in Italy.

The plant is Egyptian, and Egypt is where I will find it.