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Before she could finish her sentence, Monique was surprised to feel his hand clamp over her mouth. “No,” he said softly. “Stop right now. I mean it.” He looked into her eyes with intensity. He waited a moment, until she nodded, before removing his hand. “Listen,” he said, lowering his voice even further. “You have to be Katrina all the time. Our lives depend on it.” He put both hands on her shoulders and squeezed, just short of painfully. “Seriously. You don’t need to talk to anyone, do any tricks, nothing but the job—but you absolutely have to stay in character or we are dead.”
“But, damn it, Riley—”
“No. No more Riley. I’m Carlo. I mean it, Katrina.” She bit her lip and turned her head to the side. He put a finger to her chin and turned her face back toward his. “Don’t forget again. Capisce?”
She blinked at him for a moment, not sure if she should laugh or cry. Then she took a deep breath and nodded. “Ich verstehe,” she said.
He held her shoulders a moment longer, before giving a final squeeze and stepping back. “Bene,” he said. And he bent to unpacking their equipment.
Shit, Monique—no, damn it, Katrina! she thought as she watched him work. What the fuck have we got ourselves into? she thought for the nine thousandth time.
But she knew the answer to that. They had gotten themselves into the deepest possible shit, and they were swimming against a very powerful tide trying to get out. Odds were, they wouldn’t make it. So much stacked against them, and on their side—what? This ridiculous scheme that depended on her impersonating a German technical restoration expert? She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. There was no way she could maintain any fictional character for what, two weeks? Three? Let alone a character as unlikely as this one. A factory representative of a German chemical company? Just plain stupid! She didn’t look like it, she didn’t feel like it, and she had no idea how to act like it. Someone would find her out—it was a near certainty. And then—the whole flimsy scheme would collapse, Riley would be killed—she would probably be killed, too, just for good measure. It was hopeless, idiotic, a truly stupid idea for coping with something beyond hope, and she was going to die trying to do something she knew couldn’t be done.
But she also knew she had to try. It truly was her only chance to survive. And she could not do the job if she was whining and moaning and picturing her own gooey death. That would ensure that her fears would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
So she shook her head and took a deep breath. Gemütlich es ist alles gut, she thought to herself, and bent to her work.
* * *
—
You are absolutely certain, Doctor?” Captain Koelliker asked. “There can be no possible doubt?”
“There is always doubt, Capitano,” the doctor said with a shrug. “But see for yourself—look here—” He pulled back the sheet, revealing the buttocks area of the body on his autopsy table. “This is it, right here.” He put a fingertip, secure in its latex glove, next to something invisible on the buttock.
“I see nothing,” Koelliker said.
The doctor nodded. “Exactly the point. And even I would have seen nothing, except that you asked for a microscopic examination.” The doctor slapped the exposed butt cheek playfully. “Your exact words, Capitano. ‘Microscopic examination.’”
Koelliker found himself growing annoyed and bit down on an impulse to say something rude. “Show me, please, Doctor?”
The doctor opened his mouth, then closed it, and turned away from the table. “A moment,” he said. He took a step to his right, to an adjacent table, and pulled open a drawer. From inside, he withdrew a magnifying glass and handed it to Koelliker. “Here,” he said. “Look again, with this.”
Koelliker held the glass over the corpse’s butt and bent over.
“Here. Right here,” the doctor said, indicating a spot.
Koelliker moved the glass over it and stared. For a moment, he saw nothing but pale and flabby flesh. But then—“A pimple?” he asked.
“No, not a pimple, not at all,” the doctor said. “A puncture wound. Because it occurred right before the heart stopped, there is no bruising. And it’s a very small puncture, almost certainly from a thirty-gauge needle.” Koelliker looked up at him. “That’s very small,” the doctor added.
Koelliker bent back down again. He could see a little more clearly now—it was definitely a puncture wound. “What would such a needle be used for, typically?” he asked.
“Injection, of course,” the doctor said.
“Of?”
“Something liquid enough to flow easily through such a small hole,” the doctor said.
Koelliker looked again, to see if the doctor was being funny, something Koelliker disliked immensely. “Such as?” he asked. “Particularly in the present case?”
The doctor shrugged. “In this case, I would guess a solution of potassium.”
Koelliker straightened and put down the magnifying glass. “Potassium is not lethal,” he said.
“Ordinarily, no,” the doctor said. “But a large enough shot of it, that is very fatal. And”—he raised a finger—“it causes a heart attack.”
“You found a large amount of potassium in Berzetti’s blood?”
