The Delphi Agenda by Rob Swigart Read Free Book Online

turn his back on technology. After all, the computer showed you things film might miss.
    But sometimes his intuition directed him to do things the old-fashioned way. Film could also reveal things the computer missed.
    With his finger he traced a line down the esophagus to a mass in the stomach. It looked like a very skinny snake uncoiling. “You, my friend, will have to come out into the open, eh?”
    He looked back at the body on the table. He had already recorded his preliminary notes: subject male, early eighties, cochlear implant left side, heart monitor RFID chip under skin of left pectoral. No visible scars, no unusual marks or tattoos. Shot twice. Estimate nine millimeter. First shot struck the throat on a downward angle from the right side, striking the larynx. The bullet then struck the wall behind the victim next to the window. The trauma left the trachea, larynx, lower pharynx and esophagus exposed. There was heavy bleeding, though no major veins or arteries were severed. A wild shot, probably the second, glanced off an ornamental cupid on the victim’s desk and struck bulletproof glass of the window facing Rue du Dragon. A third shot, precisely placed, penetrated the frontal bone at the glabella and fragmented inside the cortex. He judged this wound would probably have been instantly fatal, pending final dissection.
    He was glad to get the preliminaries out of the way. This strange ribbon on the X ray, this was unique and piqued Dr. Viètes’ professional curiosity. “What could it be?” he murmured absently.
    The pathologist working at the next table looked up. “What’s that?” he rumbled. The staff referred to him as the Giant.
    Viètes grinned. “Just wondering about this thread down the alimentary canal.”
    “Oh.” The Giant started an electric saw and began slicing down the sternum of the drowning victim before him, showing no further interest.
    “Ah, well.” Viètes decided to see if the ribbon or tape would come out without cutting. It would be safer.
    He took a pair of forceps and grasped the end showing in the esophagus. It resisted. He pulled a bit harder. It gave slightly and stuck again.
    With a regretful sigh he set aside the forceps and took out his own saw, and for some time the whine of blades cutting bone and flesh echoed in the room.
    When he had opened the thoracic cavity and sliced vertically down the esophagus, thus exposing the metallic tape, he took up the forceps again. “
Eh, bien
,” he murmured. This time the ribbon came out easily, though it was coated in fluids. Soon he had it laid out on the table alongside the body. “Take a look at this, Etienne,” he said.
    The Giant came over. “Metallic ribbon of some kind. What do you think? Recording tape?” He grunted and started to turn away. He turned back. “Wait a minute. This guy
swallowed
it?”
    Viètes nodded. “I suspect he knew the autopsy procedure and prepared for it. He wanted this to show up in the X ray. It must be important.”
    “Is that writing?” the Giant asked, pointing out part of a letter. “Looks like an L.”
    Viètes carefully swabbed the tape with cotton and plain water. Soon he had uncovered a long series of block letters printed in a neat vertical line down the tape. “It is an L,” he said, feeding the tape through his fingers and reading off the letters. “L C E A A T R F Y M H O U T…. Does this mean anything to you?”
    The Giant, forgetting his own autopsy, stared over Viètes’ shoulder. “Isn’t ‘O-U-T’ an English word? Could it be a code of some kind, unless he was raving. Fear? Perhaps he thought he was writing something intelligible but the strain was too much.”
    Viètes shook his head. “He had great presence of mind. He drew something in a book with his own blood before he died.”
    “Drew something?”
    “A symbol.” Viètes sketched the circle-triangle-line on a pad.
    “Never saw that before, either,” the Giant said. “But if this is a message, and it’s