GR quote

[Michael Bailey]

"without that Purpurstoff you can't deal cocaine honestly.  Forget
honesty, there just wasn't any reality.  Last winter you couldn't find
a cc of permanganate in the whole fucking Reich, Kerl.  *Oh* you
should've seen the burning that was going on.  Friends, understand.
But what friend hasn't wanted to - in terms you can recognize - push a
pie in your face?  eh?"

"Thank you."  Wait a minute.  Is he talking about us?  Is he getting ready to -

"So," having continued, "there crept over Berlin a gigantic Laurel and
Hardy film, silent, silent ... because of the permanganate shortage.
I don't know what other economies may have been affected by the A4.
This was not just pie-throwing, not just anarchy on a market, this was
chemical irresponsibility!  Clay, talcum, cement, even, it got this
perverse, flour!  Powdered milk, diverted from the stomachs of little
sucklings!  Look-alikes that were worth even more than cocaine -- but
the idea was the someone should get a sudden noseful of milk,
hahahahah!" breaking up here for a minute, "and that was *worth the
loss*!  Without the permanganate there was no way to tell anything for
sure.  A little novocain to numb the tongue, something bitter for the
taste, and you could be making enormous profits off of sodium
bicarbonate.  Permanganate is the touchstone.  Under a microscope, you
drop some on the substance in question, which dissolves - then you
watch how it comes out of solution, how it recrystallizes: the cocaine
will appear first, at the edges, then the vegetable cut, the procaine,
the lactose at other well-known positions - a purple target, with the
outer ring worth the most, and the bull's-eye worth nothing. An
anti-target.  Certainly not the A4's idea of one, eh, Rocketman.  That
machinery of yours was not exactly the doper's friend.  What do you
want it for?  Will your country use it against Russia?"