There is a link between Bonaire and England's famous London Bridge over the Thames River, and it involves everything needed for a thriller of a novel.  Espionage, escape from a country known for its tyranny, murder, secret agents sneaking into a foreign country, the use of mysterious toxic material.

There was a Bulgarian diplomat by the name of Georgie Markoff, who escaped the harsh conditions in his home country under communism and sought asylum in the free world.  England gave him asylum and he promptly went to work for BBC and began writing scathing articles about life under Bulgarian rule.  His ungrateful ex-countrymen caught up with him when a Bulgarian agent sneaked into England and studied his daily habits well enough to plan his murder.  The agent caught up with Markoff on London Bridge as he was waiting for a taxi. 

Markoff became violently ill and died painfully a few days later, under mysterious circumstances.  The autopsy was inconclusive, but after another Bulgarian emigres later died under very similar conditions, this time in Paris, France, forensic technicians studied these two cases with diligence.  It was discovered that both men had a small raised welt on one leg.  Examination revealed the small spot to contain a tiny hollow sphere with almost microscopic pores all over the surface.  These tiny spheres had been injected into their victims with the hollowed out tip of an umbrella and the toxin contained within was non other than ricin.  This occurred in 1978.

After the USSR collapsed in 1991, a very cooperative KGB agent revealed that Russia had been using the toxin ricin since the late 50's and had a secret "death lab"off of a downtown street in Moscow, from which chemists and government agents had been working to perfect the "perfect"poison.  They discovered the lethal dose by using prisoners who were experimented on and were watched through one-way glass windows to witness the degree of pain associated with death.  It was reported that "hundreds"of prisoners were sacrificed during almost 50 years of experimentation.  They knew that in its pure form, one drop of ricin is enough to kill 250 people.  It was discovered also that the best way to administer the toxin to cause an unsuspicious death was when the body was allowed to absorb the toxin over a period of time, thus the hollow sphere injected into the muscle of the two victims.

How does this all relate to Bonaire, you ask?  Well, ricin is derived, after a highly complex chemical process, from a plant. The plant we know as castor bean, and the bean has a dangerously high concentration of the chemical.  On Bonaire there is a dive site called Karpata. Karpata, in papiamentu means "tick", referring to the small parasitic arachnid that one finds in the ears or on other parts of the body of their pet dog or cat.  The "tick" referred to looks almost identical to the seeds of the Karpata plant.

Karpata plantation was known to have grown large amounts of the plant that was shipped to Europe and the US for distillation of a very pure type of lubricating oil.  The oil was highly valued for use in airplane engines when frigid temperatures were encountered because the oil from this plant did not become congealed but remained viscous.

The plant can still be found throughout the island growing along the road where living conditions are harsh enough that this hardy plant has little competition.  It can grow into a tall, large -leaved plant and is quite striking when noticed, especially when one knows of the many uses that the plant can be utilized, sinister, as well as benevolent.