Chapter Four
Nomad
Lynx walked to the door and held it wide. “Hey there.” She brushed a welcoming hand through the air, inviting the newcomer to find a place at the table. “I have someone on speaker phone. You’re associate three.”
“Okay,” the guy grinned as he walked in. Nomad assumed this was Dawson from Tidal Force; he had the gait of a special-operations guy, and he did the initial sweep of the room before he walked all the way in.
Lynx shut the door and called out. “Okay, we can keep going. You said there were cases of this in WWI and WWII. Have you heard of this in modern times?”
“I like the history side of these crazy medical issues I don’t do anything modern. Sorry about that.”
“It’s fascinating, sir, I’d never heard of such a thing,” Nomad said.
Lynx looked at Dawson. “We’re talking about phossy jaw.”
Dawson nodded to let her know he understood what she meant.
“Stan, thank you so much for this information. If I have more questions, is it okay if I give you a call today?”
“I’m heading into the station. How ‘bout you call me with them tomorrow?”
“Perfect, thanks, Stan. Love you.”
Lynx tapped the phone to end the conversation. “Phossy jaw. The subject of many a nightmare when I was a child.”
“I imagine so,” Nomad said as he stuck out a hand toward the new guy. “Nomad. No affiliation.”
“Interesting. I’m Dawson, Tidal force.” He returned the handshake and then lifted his hand toward White. “So shit must be hitting the fan somewhere. Good to see you, White.”
“We were just learning about why our subject might possibly be glowing in the dark and smelling of garlic.”
“Vampire hunter?” Dawson asked.
“My initial thought as well,” Nomad said, feeling less like he’d lost his mind out there on the Moroccan roadway.
“I have a theory that the subject was looking in or around the caves in Germany and was exposed to white phosphorus. I’ll come back to your vampire quip in a moment because it’s possible that you two might not be far off the mark.”
“Excellent.” Dawson rubbed his hands together. “I love when you do this kind of shit, Lynx.”
Lynx pulled her brows together. “My job?”
“Exactly.”
“I’m going to take you back to a conversation we had in the cafeteria last summer,” Lynx swept her skirt under her as she took her chair again.
“You had just come back from your vacation in Germany along the Baltic Sea. You told me a story about some fellow tourists who were beachcombing and picking up what they thought was amber.”
“Yeah,” Dawson said, pulling his ankle up to rest on his thigh, leaning back comfortably, settling into the conversation. “Little kids, that could have gone really badly.”
White lifted her chin, and Dawson caught her eye.
“They were lumps of white phosphorus that had washed up on the shore. When they dry out, they can cause severe burns or ignite. So you can imagine a young family driving home to the city, and their bags in the back of the car catch on fire. It’s a hot burn that could potentially catch the fuel tank. ”
“Not amber, then,” White said. “Why was there white phosphorus in the sea?”
“White phosphorus was used for different munitions in WWII. After the land war, this material posed an enormous danger. Someone in the Allied framework decided that the safest and best thing to do was to dump it into the North and Baltic Seas.
“Or maybe leave it in caves?” Lynx asked.
“Salt caves specifically, yeah, sure. Do you want the why? Is that helpful to your puzzle?”
“Potentially. So yes, why salt caves?” Lynx asked.
“Well, I can see White got excited when I said that. So let’s explore.
Salt caves are uniquely safe places to store munitions.
Start with impermeability. Salt caves are often impermeable, so if your container fails, it would serve as a safety net for hazardous chemicals.
Salt mines have stable temperatures and low humidity.
If you’re talking about white phosphorus munitions, that low humidity will prolong the time it takes for the casings to rust and decompose, possibly exposing the chemicals to air and catching on fire.
The Germans weren’t thinking about that so much as they were thinking about safety from bomb raids. ”
“But you’ve studied this, right?” Lynx asked. “Chemistry degree and a fondness for military history?”
“That’s right,” Dawson said. “But you were talking about phossy jaw in the present tense? It happened during the Great Wars, sure. Someone’s walking around like that now?”
“Speculation,” Lynx said. “Could be a rabbit hole. But I see cogs whirring. And I bet it has something to do with the vampire comment.”
“Bats, anyway. Guano is acidic. And bats like salt caves because the temperature is a good constant for them. If they’re using a cave and dropping guano on the eighty-plus-year-old weapons casings, it could eat through and expose the white phosphorus.”
“But didn’t you say it would catch fire?” White shuffled around in her chair, finally wrapping her hands around the end of the leather arms and squeezing.
“If moisture got into an oxygen-deprived area of the cave that contained leaking white phosphorus munitions, the chemicals would create a highly toxic micro-climate, if you will, that would be saturated with phosphorus vapors—phosphine gas. Yes, if the cave were damp, you’d have the vapors without the fire. ”
“Bats,” Nomad said, wondering if, at the time of the cave tours with his parents, that was what he’d heard, that they couldn’t go in because of toxins, and that he remembered that they were also talking about bat hibernation.
“The caves catch on fire?” Lynx asked.
“Yes, or they can emit a chemical glow. You can’t go in. You’d die almost immediately. When I say toxic, I mean lethally,” Dawson said.
“If you were deep in the cave or near that product, that’s true, right?” White asked. “But if you were in the front part of the cave, you might have natural ventilation that dissipated it?”
“Let’s see, phosphoric acid mist would be caustic. You’d potentially have the warning of mucosal irritation—eyes, skin, lungs. It might cause chemical pneumonia.”
“Do you know anything about phossy jaw?” Lynx asked.
“Not a lot,” Dawson said. “Like, I can tell you what it is if I see a photo once the disease has progressed to being visible. But by then, it’s pretty distinct. And I know it happened because of exposure to white phosphorus. That’s about it.”
“Dawson, you’ve been a great help.” Lynx stood, offering up a sweet smile. Totally genuine. Completely kind. And obviously, she was one hell of a secret weapon.
This was an insane string of information.
Dawson extended his hand to shake around, looking a bit disappointed not to know the why of his being called in and that he obviously wasn’t in a line of ‘need to know.’ Nomad could imagine the guy would be tumbling this around in his head for a while, deliberating as to why Lynx was interested.
“Good luck to you all,” Dawson raised a hand as a goodbye and strode from the room with a shake of his head.
“The ring was last seen in a salt cave. The salt caves they were searching could well have held munitions. Bat guano acidity plus eighty years released too little gas to kill the team and too much for safety,” White said. “Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“I’d say we have a working theory,” Lynx said. “These are some places I’d check. From the information you sent me, a number of their team was sniped in Germany, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” White nodded.
“I’d see if I couldn’t get hold of their autopsies and check if there is any mention of bone deterioration or other symptoms of white phosphate toxicity.
Next, it seems that modern instances of phossy jaw are almost unheard of.
Shattering someone’s jaw with a human blow is very odd.
Then, the intense scent of garlic; any doctor who came into contact with that wouldn’t know how to go about their reparations.
And I’d imagine if a doctor came across such a case, they’d be on the Internet looking for answers and help from the medical community, who might know about what they were seeing. ”
“Agreed,” White pulled her phone out and typed into her notes app. “They’d be on forums. I can put that through a search.”
“If Deep were here,” Lynx spun to look at the computer desk, then turned back, “he’d be able to pull that for you. He’s taken a personal day.”
“I’ve got it,” White said.
“Since we’re throwing theories around,” Lynx scooted to the edge of the chair, leaning toward White, “these men seem European to me—their clothes, their haircuts, their body movements. If I were in a foreign land and my jaw was smashed, and I wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, I wouldn’t go to a Moroccan hospital.
In particular, I’d avoid it lest the police be looking for people captured on tourist videos after the market murders took place. ”
“I’d head north and take the ferry across to Gibraltar, then into Spain,” Nomad said.
Lynx turned toward him. “That’s what I’d do. But when I got there, with glow-in-the-dark garlic breath and neon orange hair along with that shattered jaw, I’d think they’d quarantine the guy.”
Nomad leaned forward, propping his elbows on his thighs, and said, “Do some peer consultations, get the phossy jaw case out the door as fast as I could before he contaminated their hospital.”
“Figure out his deal,” Lynx continued, “then send him to the European hospital that could best deal with his situation. So those would be two additional places to look for a name. If you know his name or can get any personal information from him—because someone has to pay those bills—it could lead you to the other three. Perhaps they flew together? Stayed in the same hotel?”
“Would they even know what it is? The phossy jaw, I mean,” White asked. “Supposing this were all true.” She turned from Nomad to Lynx.