The Watchers by Mark Andrew Olsen Page B

parathion, the world’s most lethal and agonizing neurotoxin, had required a trip to Caracas, to South America’s vilest back-alley Mercado de veneno or poison market. The blackest heart of one of those third-world bazaars that most tourists require a laminated street map to find their way out of.
    On its outer peripheries lay a labyrinth where every sort of exotic or conventional animal could be purchased in any state of life or death. The kind of rancid slum uninitiated Westerners would only breach with surgical masks pulled tightly over their mouths, or a ready barf bag swiped from the flight over. And then, only with a trusted guide.
    But farther within, there lay a hardened sector the tourists would never approach. A criminal sector which attracted a steady stream of the world’s slimiest and most cruel assassins.
    It had taken nearly five thousand dollars in bribes, two tense body searches, and a nauseating blindfolded journey through several dozen hard spins and jogs along dirt paths. It all culminated with a brutal blow—from the stock end of an AK–47, he would later learn—on the back of his head, which knocked him to the ground. He had expected it. Although with his old Delta Force training he could have killed them all in seconds, he also conceded that abuse was part of the bargain. A ritual greeting, an initiation of sorts.
    He had regained his senses in a pool of shadow, lying on the hard floor of a small, dimly lit hut. He jerked upright and froze at the sight of an old Indian man aiming an antique Colt pistol at his gut with a gnarled right hand.
    â€œVeneno?” came the feathery old voice.
    Actually, Dylan had come in search of a curare derivative he had heard about years before in Israel. Although the Caracas mercado had evolved into a source of every poison known to man, it had first gained notoriety as the world’s definitive source for the Amazon’s most lethal and exotic compounds. And curare, favorite of Indian arrow tips, was definitely a product of the Amazon.
    But the old man was fresh out, a young female translator said from a corner. Worse yet, it was the rainy season, she explained as he interpreted with a dismissive wave of the old man’s hand. Travel up the Orinoco was disrupted.
    Instead he smiled, exposing a mouthful of large, greenish teeth, and waved a vial filled with amber liquid. The young woman had whispered that he had just taken the substance in trade from a Russian hit man. Veneno muy potente . Very potent stuff.
    She read the details from a wrinkled sheet of paper. “Parathion. Chemical first cousin of Sarin, the nerve gas of Tokyo subway fame. Diethyl nitrophenyl thiophosphate. A powerful insecticide one hundred percent fatal upon skin contact at present concentrations. Predeath symptoms including initial paralysis, headache, spasms, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, involuntary twitching, diarrhea, convulsions, nosebleeds, nausea, loss of sphincter control, heart block, respiratory distress, and pulmonary edema.”
    Death within thirty minutes of respiratory failure—a slow asphyxiation consistent with neurological damage from a stroke.
    He had paid a bargain price and considered himself lucky. Curare would have been quick and difficult to detect, not to mention natural, but this poison would give the man what he deserved. And it would be simple to administer. A simple drop or two rubbed into the skin, assuming the proper precautions against accidental inhalation.
    Perfect for use by the UN wing’s newest backup massage therapist.
    And just right for the ill-timed demise of one of Europe’s most hated men—Dylan’s latest assignment, commissioned by a one-time UN commander in Serbia who was wrongfully blamed for failing to stop one of the Balkans’ worst massacres. The disgraced functionary had promptly resigned and “gone native”—which in this case meant vanishing whole into the former