Lethal Exposure (18 page)

CHAPTER 28

Thursday, 6:10 PM

Fox River Medical Center

Leaning against the door frame of Dumenco’s room, Trish looked up at Craig as he returned from his phone call. Her sepia eyes were surrounded by a corona of red. “I haven’t felt this hopeless since Chernobyl.”

“Is he going to make it through the night?” Craig asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. Human endurance is not a predictable quantity. It’s just everything else on top of that—two assassination attempts, the attack on you and Jackson, your friend Goldfarb shot.” She shook her head. “I know I’m the one who asked you to look into this suspicious accident, but sometimes I wonder if I should have left things well enough alone, let Georg die peacefully rather than introducing all this chaos.”

“But doesn’t your PR-Cubed want to use him as a poignant example, a poster boy against the hazards of radiation?” Craig couldn’t keep the edge of sarcasm out of his voice. Trish had a penchant for chasing windmills, and he knew that she had certainly found her birds of a feather in the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research.

She adjusted her glasses. “Sure, they want to talk
about
him, but nobody else has bothered to come in and talk
to
him. The PR-Cubed is more interested in their ideals than in the real people—I see a lot of that now.”

Craig folded his arms while she spoke. She
did
look worn out. It reminded him very much of the way she had looked right before she packed all her belongings and drove cross-country to Johns Hopkins. Devastated from working the summer near Chernobyl, Trish had decided to specialize in treating radiation injuries. And she couldn’t do it in California.

That was when she had left him, calling herself Patrice instead of Trish . . . though Craig never could remember to call her by the right name. She didn’t seem to notice much.

Craig reached out to squeeze her shoulder. Trish sighed again, exhausted. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he said.

“How can you stand to live this way, Craig? Is this how things are for you now? Always unresolved, always another clue to chase?”

Craig shrugged. “Pretty much. You get used to it.”

Trish walked away toward a doctor’s lounge where she could rest.

As soon as she rounded a corner, Craig slipped through Dumenco’s door. He heard a cough and saw a feeble hand wave him inside.

The Ukrainian lay on his side, his back to the door. A light in the corner burned low, and outside the window a gibbous moon dominated the night sky. His technical papers lay in a disheveled stack, within reach. Near the photos of his family. Two intravenous lines ran into Dumenco’s arm. His eyes were hollow, his limbs pale and looking like they could snap in two if he tried to lift any weight. He appeared to have aged greatly in only the last hour.

“Agent Kreident,” Dumenco said, with a forced smile that showed bleeding gums. “I would offer you another game of chess . . . but there isn’t enough time.” His face suddenly looked even more stricken. “I’m not going to have enough time, am I?”

Craig pulled up a chair and scooted close to the bed. “You have enough time to help me solve this case.”

Dumenco breathed in shallow gasps, as if he had great difficulty merely forcing air into his lungs. He didn’t answer.

“I need to know what you’ve been holding back. What you tell me will stay with me. I promise.”

“There . . . is nothing more.”

Craig waited. Moments passed, and Dumenco’s eyes flicked away, unable to hold his gaze. Craig didn’t move, didn’t say a word.

“There is no reason for you to stay,” Dumenco whispered.

Still, Craig remained silent. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, determined to wait the man out. Finally, he said, “I know about your family. I know what they mean to you, and I know the terms of your defection. I can find them for you. Bring them here.”

Dumenco closed his eyes. “My poor, sweet Luba. I cannot forgive myself for putting her through all this. But if I had left her and the children in the Ukraine . . .” his voice trailed off as he slowly shook his head. Tears welled in his hemorrhaged eyes as he opened them. “You do not know what it is like, to be so close to your family, yet be allowed to see them only once a year. The girls . . . they need a father, someone to tell them how beautiful they have become. And my son—” he paused.

“I understand why you had to do this, Dr. Dumenco.”

Dumenco struggled to an elbow. His expression, vacant only moments before, now held a new life. He reached out a bony hand to grasp Craig’s suit jacket. “Promise to let me see them one more time. Now that my pursuer is dead, you must bring my family here. Let me see Luba and my children.”

“I am already trying,” said Craig. “I’ll get your family here.” In fact, he expected a response from June Atwood any time now.

Dumenco searched Craig’s eyes for any hint of betrayal; seemingly satisfied, he relaxed back on his pillow. His cracked lips moved in a wistful smile as though he were reminiscing about a time special to him. “For years I worked at Armazas 16. . . .” he paused, as if unsure if he should go on.

Craig nodded, encouraging him. “The Soviet Union did not even acknowledge the existence of that facility until a few years ago.”

Dumenco threw him a glance, then his eyes softened. “Yes, you of all people would know. Armazas 16 was our premier nuclear weapons design laboratory. It was an exciting place, and an exciting time. We were lavishly funded, held in high esteem. Without its massive nuclear arsenal, the Soviet Union would have been no different from any other Third World country. Only bigger, and poorer.”

Craig thought fleetingly of General Ursov and his pride in the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces.

“Back then, Mr. Kreident, weapons physicists like myself were the sorcerers—court magicians who transformed a collection of diverse and backward republics into one of the strongest nations on Earth.”

“So you designed nuclear weapons? How does that relate to your antimatter work at Fermilab?”

Dumenco shook his head, rustling the pillow. “Not nuclear warheads, Mr. Kreident.
Directed-energy weapons
, particle beams, and lasers—but these required massive but compact amounts of energy. We studied the use of nuclear detonations as power sources, which would of course destroy a weapon each time it was used. The United States itself advocated fielding a nuclear-powered x-ray laser in space. But I set my sights on another, more elegant solution.

“Matter-antimatter reactions could power the directed energy weapons my nation desperately needed to counter President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called
Star Wars
program. It was the only way the Soviet Union could stay in this new arms race. Of course, then the key question was how to produce sufficient amounts of antimatter to make such a scheme practical.”

His brow creased with concern. “If the Soviet Union had had access to the powerful particle accelerators here or at CERN, we could have gone forward with my antimatter enhancement technique. We would have been successful. We would have been able counter your SDI, and we would have had true directed-energy weapons.” He opened his eyes as he whispered, “But perhaps it is the best for all of us in this world that we did not succeed.”

Craig put down his small notebook as everything fell in place. “So you pioneered antimatter work in the Soviet Union and brought it with you when you defected. That’s why the U.S. wanted you so badly.”

Dumenco nodded. “At Aramazas 16 I discovered the mechanism for increasing the production of antimatter, for enhancing the p-bar beam, which I am ‘rediscovering’ here. And it was at Aramazas 16 that I also built the first crystal-lattice storage device,
years
before the esteemed Dr. Nels Piter. But because my work was classified, I could tell no one about it.”

Craig drew a quick breath. “Does Piter know this?” The Belgian scientist was banking on his CERN development to win him a Nobel Prize. But if Dumenco had already done the work years before. . . .

“Dr. Piter knows very little, if the truth is told. He is a talker, not a researcher. I gave up my efforts with the crystal-lattice trap—I suspect that with the present level of technology, it is too unreliable. Unstable. Unfortunately, we have not had sufficient antimatter available to test the upper limits of crystal-lattice containment. Until now. My own concepts for dramatically increasing p-bar production in the accelerator beam should have changed all this.”

With a gesture more vehement than Craig expected, Dumenco struck the papers on his bedside table. “But it doesn’t work! The Tevatron
should
be creating orders of magnitude more antiprotons, but they just aren’t showing up! I have checked and rechecked the experiment. It works, I know it does—but the results aren’t there!”

Craig placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder, struck to be in the presence of someone so pivotal in the course of political changes, all behind the scenes. The actions of individual people at critical times determined the flow of world events.

“I’ll let you get back to your work,” he said, cowed. Someday, perhaps, Dumenco’s discoveries would be recognized for their importance. Someday.

Craig just hoped the Ukrainian was still alive when the Nobel committee announced their choice. Georg Dumenco had earned the prize, whether or not anybody knew it.

CHAPTER 29

Thursday, 8:49 P.M.

Fox River Medical Center

After he received the fax from the Oakland Bureau office, Craig knew the next part was a job for Paige Mitchell and no one else. He found her in the hospital halls. She had been looking for him.

“Paige, you’re the people person, the Protocol Officer,” he said, gripping the curling fax in his hand. “You talk well to strangers. You know how to make people feel at ease even in difficult situations.”

She smiled and crossed her arms over her cream cable-knit sweater. The loose sweater hung long over her hips, complimenting dark-brown slacks. “Keep on like that, Craig, and you’re going to make my head swell.”

Craig didn’t joke with her as he held out the list of names and addresses. “I need you to do some calling for me. Time to break some bad news and bring in the cavalry, for what it’s worth.”

Paige squinted down at the names, then looked up at him with her blue eyes. “What is this?”

“Georg Dumenco’s family. Their names were changed, everything kept classified. He wants to see them one last time.”

Paige studied the addresses. “They’re right here in the Midwest,” she said. “And Dumenco kept them secret?”

Craig shook his head. “The
U.S. Marshall
kept them secret. Dumenco didn’t know where they lived—he’s only seen them once a year since he fled to this country. Dumenco wanted it that way, for their own protection.”

Paige’s eyes widened. “You mean they’ve all been here within a day’s drive of Fermilab, and they never saw him, never got in touch?”

“Only once a year, under U.S. Marshall supervision, on carefully prearranged visits.”

“But putting the family all so close to him and yet blocked away,
they
must have known everything he was doing. Dumenco was in the paper often enough, at least in the technical journals. His wife could have tracked him down without much trouble.”

“Unless she was afraid. Unless he had told them not to.”

Paige shook her head. “I can’t decide if that was a kindness or a cruelty on Dumenco’s part.”

Craig sighed. “I won’t debate the matter with you, but it’s time for one last kindness. I’ve insisted on it.” He nudged the paper in Paige’s hand. “I want you to get in touch with them and bring them here. Now. Tonight. The FBI will provide the transportation, Code Red.” He looked down the long halls of hospital rooms. “Time for a final family reunion.”

At the nurse’s station several women and one man looked at computer screens, drank coffee, and gossiped with each other. Overhead, Craig saw one of the fluorescent light bulbs flickering, trying to throw out just a few more photons before it finally gave up the ghost . . . like Dumenco would, sometime soon.

Craig watched Paige’s expression grow serious. She swallowed hard and then nodded. Her eyes were misty. “Of course, Craig, I’ll do it. It’s the least I can do.”

She went immediately over to a pay phone by the waiting room, picked up the receiver, and began dialing.

CHAPTER 30

Friday, 4:47 AM

Fermilab

Nicholas Bretti knew that this early in the morning, the Fermilab grad students would be groggy, fueling themselves with stale coffee and paying no attention to anything but the largest disaster, such as the accelerator going down. It was too late for faculty or staff members to be around, and too early for the cleaning crew.

But it was the perfect time to slip in, move around without being hindered. He could retrieve his crystal-lattice trap and head back to O’Hare.

After Dumenco’s clumsy accident had wrecked his previous stash of antimatter, and after the emergency repairs to get the Tevatron up and running again, the accelerator had provided a good beam almost continuously for days. By now, the sophisticated antimatter trap would be filled nearly to capacity with p-bars.

It was more than enough to set him up for the rest of his life, if that bastard Chandrawalia remained true to his word. Bretti didn’t know if he trusted the towelhead after the threats Chandrawalia had made, and after having been deceived all along regarding the intended use for the anti-protons. Why should Bretti keep working with a cretin like that man?

But then what other choice did he have?

Outside, in the pre-dawn darkness, prairie grasses whispered quietly, and the electrical wires hummed overhead. Bright lights shone over the Fermilab site, but few employees or vehicles moved around. The only people here would be Director Nels Piter’s paid slaves, working away on someone else’s experiment. Bretti thought it was just a bunch of wasted time, as Dr. Piter was good at meetings, good at presentations, good at politicking . . . only his
science
was old hat, not cutting edge anymore.

Signs on fenceposts announced the coming weekend’s “Prairie Harvest” community activity, when Fermilab volunteers and their families would go across the grasslands, plucking seeds from weeds so they could scatter them again the next spring in an effort to restore the long-lost primordial tallgrass prairie. After the weekend’s activities, the fire marshal would direct controlled burns to raze some of the grass. For now, the captive herd of domesticated buffalo stood around placidly, dim shadows in the night.

Bretti still had a small crystal-lattice trap rigged in the beam-sampling substation where he had shot the FBI agent, but the main treasure was the larger trap down in the experimental target area. He hoped he could retrieve both, to increase his reward. Now that he knew the Indians planned to use the p-bars for weapons work, maybe Bretti could get them to up the price.

He scowled. Fat chance! For all he knew, they would take the antimatter and throw him to the wolves. He had to make sure he was paid up front, before he finally delivered the merchandise.

Snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray, Bretti pulled his dark blue rental car in the shadows next to the concrete building, glad he had turned down Chandrawalia’s offer to get his own car back. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. He could slip in and out, and be gone forever. Bretti shivered and pulled his jacket around him.

To the south, in the broad, cleared area of mangled earth, the construction machinery for the Main Injector sat like silent behemoths, ready for another day of hard work. Big plans, big new projects—Bretti thought of the weapons work the Indians were conducting with their huge capacitor banks and physics machinery at Bangalore. They would never be able to compete with Fermilab.

He used his key to gain access through the side entrance into the experimental target areas, where a quick walk brought him to a series of doors and chain-link gates. After opening two other locks with slightly different combinations, he was down the hall from the main accelerator control. Warning lights glowed red, cautioning that the Tevatron beam was up and running, but nobody would be down here in the target areas. Dumenco’s accident would have done a good job of spooking all of them.

The floors were tiled with an orange and blue checkerboard of linoleum, worn but still garish; the ceilings hung with a suspended acoustic ceiling, water stained in places from leaky plumbing. The piping on the walls was painted a deep blue.

Years ago, the halls would have been filled around the clock with students and staff alike, everyone eagerly anticipating the latest results of an accelerator run. Grad students would pull large photographic plates that had been exposed in a bubble chamber, and then they would painstakingly measure each swirl, each line and corkscrew of high-energy charged particles, shrapnel from nuclear collisions spiraling in magnetic fields.

The tracks on the film corresponded to fundamental types of matter, most of them known and well-characterized from years of research. But everyone searched for an unknown track, spirals with the wrong curvature, the wrong direction—a new elementary particle.

But that task was now automated. Every second, millions of collisions took place in the counter-rotating beams, and the tracks were scanned, catalogued, and scrutinized by an immense farm of Cray supercomputers in the Feynman Supercomputing Center. Individuals no longer played such a pivotal role in the big science of accelerator physics, replaced by the cold efficiency of automated machinery.

All of which allowed Bretti to move with confidence through the deserted complex, knowing that no one would be around to confront him. He couldn’t afford another disastrous situation like when he had unexpectedly encountered the FBI agent.

Bretti opened one more locked door to where a bank of computer terminals showed displays of each of the experimental target areas. Here, he’d have access to the main lattice trap he’d planted.

A thick bundle of fiberoptic cables ran into the room, taped to the floor before running up to banks of diagnostic equipment. Thick concrete walls enclosed the room, shielded by fine wire mesh to prevent electromagnetic interference.

Bretti checked the status of the main ring and the Tevatron. Dumenco’s gamma-ray laser had been up and running, operating in the small-signal regime, exciting the nuclear resonances so that an elevated, steady supply of p-bars would be injected into the main racetrack.

Bretti allowed a smile to form at the edges of his mouth. No one had discovered that he was bleeding off p-bars, and old Dumenco wasn’t in any condition to point the finger at him.

He debated leaving another collector in place, perhaps coming back in several months—by which time he might even have a
gram
of antimatter available! But that would be far too risky—he shouldn’t be loitering here even now. No, the Indians didn’t deserve any more, and he wanted to be long gone. Cut his losses, eliminate further risks.

Gaining entrance, he quickly typed in a command sequence. He raced past the menu of options and posted warnings that scrolled up on the screen, then waited until the computer confirmed that the crystal-lattice trap had been pulled from the beam.

Now, with nothing to capture the surplus antimatter, the Fermilab researchers would suddenly find a dramatic increase in “events.” He expected they would find it quite baffling, and no doubt work to concoct a hare-brained theory of physics to explain it all.

Bretti glanced at the clock set above the row of computer screens. It was just after 5 A.M. Time to grab the device and get moving. He had a plane to catch that afternoon.

A few moments later he pushed a lab stool under the joint in the main beam channel that ran to the experimental target area. The thick pipe that made up the channel ran down the upper part of the concrete tunnel. Diagnostic wires, vacuum piping, and metal struts extended from the conduit, accompanied by a faint chugging of the pumps that maintained vacuum. Dim light, thrown out from bulbs screwed into protective cans, illuminated the tunnel with yellow light.

Bretti grunted as he reached up to disengage the antimatter trap from the experimental canister, which had been designed for quick and easy access by the researchers. Hundreds of such canisters hung in the main beam path, and so Bretti’s addition had drawn no special attention.

He carefully pulled the crystal-lattice trap away from the interlocking mechanism and held the device by two bulky protrusions, the base for the solid-state diode lasers that trapped the p-bars in potential wells between the sodium and chloride atoms.

The crystal-lattice trap was much more efficient than the crude Penning trap he had transported to India earlier in the week. He was aware of the danger of carrying such a large quantity of antimatter—the glassy crater from the substation explosion provided clear proof of that—but the diode lasers seemed stable.

He stepped down from the stool while holding the trap, careful not to bump it against anything. The device was designed to be rugged, but he couldn’t afford to be sloppy. If he knocked the lasers out of alignment, this cache of antimatter would be enough to wipe out several city blocks.

Bretti eased the small, cube-like container onto its side, then stepped back up on the stool to close the experimental container above. The whole apparatus weighed no more than a few pounds. Electrical wires ran from the container down to the antimatter trap. He would attach the battery and clean up the area.

In less than ten hours he’d be out of the country. And a million dollars richer.