“What other explanation could there be?” I’m dismayed by another flare of impatient indignation.
“If it were an allergic response to something like tannins.” He patiently offers a remote possibility. “Anaphylaxis, in other words.”
“Hypothetically yes. But not in my case.”
I explain that a severe allergic reaction to tannins or anything else would have closed my airway, requiring epinephrine. Not naloxone, and I have the unsettling sensation that we’ve been through this before.
“Had you tried an EpiPen, it wouldn’t have worked,” I add. “I knew I was reacting to a powerfully intoxicating drug that was depressing my breathing, causing me to lose consciousness.”
“You don’t remember saying all this last night when I put you to bed, do you?” he replies.
“Some things are coming back slowly,” I answer with an edge, and I hate that I can’t control myself better. “A lot is lost. I have big empty gaps and disconnections. Hopefully it’s temporary. But I don’t know. I’m sorry, Benton. So terribly sorry for bringing the wine home, for opening it, for being in a foul mood, for everything.”
“There’s nothing for you to apologize about, so please stop,” he says. “The good news is you may have saved Gabriella Honoré’s life. Probably the lives of those closest to her too.”
“For which I’m very thankful, couldn’t be more thankful.” All the same, I was as careless as I’ve ever been.
“You can imagine the intense investigation already mounted,” Benton says, informing me that he talked to the secretary general earlier this morning.
The Bordeaux was a gift from a police chief in Belgium whom she knows well and trusts. As I recall from my visits over the years, it’s not unusual for distinguished guests to arrive with fine wines, liquors, cheeses, tins of caviar. It’s France after all, I remember the secretary general saying while I was with her late fall.
“Amusez-vous, Kay. Bonne santé” were her exact words when she handed me the bottle wrapped in brown paper, still inside its elegant gift bag from a shop with a Brussels address.
We were having lunch inside her corner office with its sweeping views of red terra-cotta roofs, and the Pont Winston Churchill spanning the river Rh?ne. The autumn foliage blazed against a deep blue sky, Interpol’s headquarters of metal and glass glittering like a space station across from Parc de la Tête d’Or.
“De l’espace à la terre à six pieds sous.” From space to ground to six feet under, Gabriella Honoré said during our discussion of emerging technologies and the risks they pose to humanity.
There was no lack of worst-case scenarios for us to offer and ponder. It’s not hard to imagine what happens when psychopaths get hold of nuclear weapons. Just as dangerous is what doesn’t necessarily meet the eye in the invisible world of poisons, viruses and cyberattacks on anything one can think of including orbiting satellites and habitats.
“Life and death, good deeds and bad will go where people go whether on Earth or above,” the secretary general said dramatically, speaking on and off in English while opening a bottle of Chablis. “The moon, Mars and beyond, there’s no limit to les actes monstrueux people are capable of.”
Then she shifted her attention to the grand cru she was pouring. After all, one must remember what’s important, she said with her charming smile, serving the wine in simple bistro tumblers. Crisp and clean with hints of citrus, it was in perfect harmony with an entrée of raw oysters.
Followed by the quenelle de brochet with prawns that Lyon is famous for, and we had quite the scientific discussion about the complexities of white Burgundies.
“But I admit being partial to a full-bodied red Bordeaux, a blend like a Pauillac or a Margaux,” she let me know. “And I think you, Benton and Lucy will find that nineteen ninety-six was une très bonne année.”
She made no pretense about the provenance, that the bottle she’d given me may be a very good year but it was a regift. The head of the most powerful police organization in the world, and she wanted me to consider it a token of her friendship and appreciation. Solicitous about my niece and her recent losses, Gabriella hoped that all of us would drink the fine French wine to our good health.
Such an irony, and I wouldn’t want to be in the secretary general’s shoes right now. She must feel even worse than I do about almost sending death to my door. The wine could have killed my entire family, and the biggest question is when the bottle was tampered with.