Lethal Exposure Read online

  “Antiprotons,” Piter said with a dismissive wave. “The antimatter analog to protons.”

  “Like the antimatter in Star Trek,” said Goldfarb.

  Piter said coldly, “Yes, I suppose so.” He turned back to Craig. “For years, Dumenco’s been publishing highly theoretical papers on how to pump up antimatter production by using a gamma-ray laser to excite certain resonances in the target nuclei. His results-which have not been verified-indicate that this should greatly increase the production of p-bars. Since obtaining a gamma-ray laser from Los Alamos, he has been involved in quite a number of experiments to verify the increase.”

  “Any luck?” said Craig.

  Piter shook his head. “This is frontier physics, pushing the envelope. After Fermilab discovered the top quark, some of the teams wanted to concentrate on the Higgs boson-although at these energy levels, I’d be surprised if they were successful. My own work in p-bar phenomena followed a much more traditional, and less risky, path. It’s the right way to go.”

  “Well, I guess we can let the Nobel Committee decide,” Paige Mitchell said in her best peacemaker voice, then brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Nels is being seriously considered for the Physics Prize this year, as is Dr. Dumenco. We’re very fortunate to have so many world-class scientists working at Fermilab.”

  Craig’s interest clicked as Piter nodded. Was there more than professional jealousy between Dumenco and Piter?

  Piter placed his hands on the railing in front of him, a ruler looking out over his kingdom. He came up to Craig’s chin, and his blond hair looked wild from the quick walk down the tunnel. Unconsciously, he combed it with his fingers.

  “You never told us exactly what you worked on at CERN, Dr. Piter,” Craig said.

  “Storage of p-bars, Mr. Kreident. Not just tens of thousands of antiparticles at a time, but a new way to hold them in a portable container. Until recently, people have been able to store only minuscule amounts of antimatter in magnetic bottles-Penning traps, they call them. The antimatter is cooled and injected into a long cylinder with specially designed magnets on either end. The particles bounce back and forth between the magnets, but they tend to leak out.”

  Paige interrupted. “At CERN Dr. Piter demonstrated a more efficient storage device, the Howe crystal-lattice trap. Unfortunately, we’ve never had access to large enough amounts of antimatter to test the actual limits of his device.”

  Piter’s face twisted, as though annoyed Paige had interrupted. “Yes, my design was based on an idea first suggested by a Los Alamos scientist, Larry Campbell. It was then popularized by another Los Alamos scientist, Steve Howe, who thought it might be possible to trap antimatter particles inside the molecular lattices of crystals-simple salt crystals.” He drew himself up. “But it was I who took the idea beyond theory, and actually made it work.

  “Years ago, the initial experimental team that detected the first particles of antimatter won the Nobel Prize in Physics. My work is just as significant. My crystal-lattice trap stores its p-bars at crystal lattice sites, reinforced through resonances in crossed laser beams. In theory, enormous amounts of p-bars may be stored this way.”

  “How much is an ‘enormous amount’?” Goldfarb asked with a faint mischievous grin. “Or would it be too technical for me?”

  “The million million p-bars in a Penning trap amounts to mere picograms-my crystal-lattice trap could hold up to tens of milligrams, more than has ever been produced in the world.”

  “Enough to power the Starship Enterprise.”

  Piter ignored Goldfarb’s observation.

  Craig looked out at Dumenco’s experimental area. Several small ladders gave access to the main beam pipe above the floor. Three carts of diagnostic equipment were spaced along the tunnel, each loaded with bundles of wire connected to laptop computers.

  Craig watched Piter carefully as he mused, “I don’t suppose you and Dr. Dumenco had any rivalry going? A race for the Nobel Prize.”

  Piter blinked in astonishment, as if Craig had somehow blasphemed the prestigious award. “One doesn’t compete for the Nobel, Mr. Kreident. The Prize goes to those who are worthy. It is an arduous process, and the Nobel committee ensures the best person is chosen for the best work. It is certainly not a race.” He hesitated, then stared coolly at Craig. “Surely you’re not implying that I would somehow engineer Dr. Dumenco’s accident for a physics award? I’ve won enough prizes to be beyond that.”

  “Just asking, Dr. Piter. I have to probe all possibilities.” Craig was uncomfortable, though, at how the Belgian scientist’s gaze had lighted on Paige when he mentioned his prizes. “I think we’ve seen enough here. Ben, if you’re willing to check out one of the intact beam-sampling substations, I’d like to stop by Dr. Dumenco’s office now.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tuesday, 1:47 p.m.

  Fermilab,

  Beam-Sampling Substation

  Working alone now, fully charged with a fresh cup of coffee from the Fermilab cafeteria, Ben Goldfarb went searching for scraps of evidence. He preferred being a field agent, investigating the scene of the crime, trying to uncover something the evidence technicians had missed. Maybe even something Craig Kreident hadn’t noticed.

  Since Fermilab was a nonsecured facility, unlike Lawrence Livermore or the Nevada Test Site, Goldfarb could walk around by himself. Having another person looking over his shoulder as he snooped put a crimp in his style. He went around the service road by the huge Tevatron, glancing at the other small concrete substations identical to the one that had been vaporized.

  Special Agent Schultz, in charge of investigating the crater, told Goldfarb he was welcome to take a second look, but Schultz assured him that they had already been through each one of the substations with bomb-sniffing dogs and nitrogen detectors. They had found no evidence of explosives, no sabotage-only incomprehensible diagnostics and technical equipment. The blockhouses didn’t look as if they were used too often, and they had little strategic importance, as far as Schultz could see.

  All that was well and good, Goldfarb thought, but he wanted to make up his own mind. The glassy crater itself offered no evidence for him, no leads, but he made his way to one of the other beam-sampling substations to see if there might be an overlooked connection with Dr. Dumenco’s accident. Schultz wasn’t even thinking about the deadly radiation exposure.

  The unobtrusive concrete structures stood at regular intervals around the raised dirt berm above the Main Particle Accelerator Ring. Tall brown grass filled the middle of the giant circle, dotted by occasional ponds and the dark forms of distant buffalo grazing within the high-tech enclosure.

  Goldfarb trudged along the service road, pushing his hands into his jacket pocket; despite the watery sun poking through the clouds, the air retained the chill of late fall. He supposed the substations would be locked, since they contained delicate diagnostics and complex sampling systems. Later, he could always arrange to get a key from Paige Mitchell. For now, he just wanted the look and feel of one of the places, to get into the mindset of someone working inside… or hiding inside, plotting some sort of sabotage.

  Since Fermilab paid little attention to security or accountability, they had no records of employee whereabouts during the times of interest. No one had been scheduled in that substation at the time of the blast, but since the energy burst had vaporized everything, they wouldn’t find even a bone fragment if a saboteur had been inside. But no personnel had been reported missing, either.

  Too bad the explosion of an empty blockhouse gained all the attention instead of a man dying at the hospital. Perhaps that was for the best, though-the media would go all weak-kneed at the story of Dumenco’s lethal radiation overdose. Even Trish LeCroix’s hardliner group, Physicians Against Radiation, or whatever it was called, would make a circus out of the tragedy. But at least Craig’s former girlfriend was keeping the situation quiet, and he respected her for that.

  As he approached the nearest substation, Goldfarb mad
e a mental note to stop in at the gift shop to pick up souvenirs for his two daughters. The only way they forgave him for being gone on FBI business so often was that he brought them tiny keepsakes. The one time he’d forgotten, Megan and Gwendolyn had heaped him with massive guilt unsurpassed even by the efforts of his own Jewish mother. Goldfarb had vowed never to forget again.

  Since it was Chicago, he thought he might get something nice for Julene, too. His wife always worried about him when he was on a case, paranoid that he’d get hurt in the line of duty. Last year, during an investigation of a Nevada militia group, he’d been caught in an explosion and suffered a broken pinkie-but Julene had fretted so much that it seemed as if he had become a lifetime paraplegic. Goldfarb worried about getting hurt more for her sake than for his own.

  Standing outside a locked and nondescript concrete building didn’t seem terribly hazardous. The squarish pillbox appearance of the beam-sampling substation made it look like a bunker for decommissioned military ordnance. Conduits ran from the substation at strategic points to sample the energetic flow, diagnostic probes dipping into the uniformity of the currents. The sampling stations were simple enough, just data-recording devices in austere equipment racks, with pipes that ran across to the huge ring of the accelerator buried under the flat Illinois prairie.

  Goldfarb pondered the whirlwind of high-energy particles, trillions of electron volts sweeping clockwise underneath the bucolic landscape. When the counter-rotating beams collided, physicists like Georg Dumenco and Nels Piter studied the shrapnel of subatomic particles.

  But one of the blockhouses had vanished in a flash of light on the very night Dumenco had received his lethal exposure. There must be some connection. He just had to figure out what it was.

  Goldfarb walked around the concrete blockhouse, crunching across the uneven gravel, but he found nothing interesting, only signs announcing no trespassing and DANGER-HIGH VOLTAGE.

  When he rounded the last corner of the blockhouse, he saw that the heavy metal blast door hung ajar, its padlock dangling on the hasp. Goldfarb stopped, cocking his eyebrows. This substation should have been sealed, like the others. Perhaps Schultz and his bomb-sniffing dogs had been careless. Maybe a technician or a custodian had opened up the place for routine maintenance. He was in luck. This way he’d have a chance to look inside.

  He held the badge and ID wallet in his left hand as he pulled the door wide enough for him to enter. It was heavy and squeaked on its hinges, an iron plate that might have come from an old battleship hull. He grunted with the effort.

  Inside, he saw two naked bulbs burning inside wire cages. The unfinished ceiling was strung with pipes, wires, and cable-trays leading down to a bank of old computer monitors, oscilloscopes, and strip-chart recorders. He smelled tobacco smoke, as if someone had just snuffed out a cigarette. As he stepped into the shadows, the sudden difference in light was enough to blind him. He blinked, holding up his badge wallet.

  “This is the FBI,” he called. “Identify yourself.”

  He heard a rapid movement, a sucked intake of breath, and a gasped “Oh, shit!” A metal swivel chair slid aside, rattling its casters.

  Goldfarb instantly became alert. “Wait a minute,” he said. His eyesight was still too murky for him to make out many details, but he did see a figure, a man with dark hair and a goatee wearing a lab technician’s smock. The figure staggered backward from some kind of apparatus hooked up below the oscilloscopes and computer monitors.

  “Federal agent,” Goldfarb said, “I just want to ask you a few questions about-”

  But the other man wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He lunged toward Goldfarb, brandishing something heavy and metal in his hand. He uttered no outcry, no roar of challenge: he simply attacked.

  “Whoa, wait a minute!” Goldfarb shouted, but the man hurled the object-a wrench he had been using on the diagnostics. The wrench flew with the precision of a circus knife thrower and struck Goldfarb high on the chest near his right shoulder. His arm instantly felt an explosion of pain, then went numb. He heard a crack of his collar bone, then the ball joint in his shoulder erupted in white internal fire from his nerve endings.

  Goldfarb ducked aside while reaching behind him with his left hand. He dropped his badge wallet and ID, fumbling awkwardly for his weapon in the pancake holster beneath his belt. His right hand was useless, so he’d have to do the best he could, shoot left-handed.

  The suspect’s eyes carried a feral glint of terror and desperation, like a cornered rat. The man wasn’t thinking about his actions, merely acting on keyed-up instinct. Goldfarb had stumbled upon something-and this man didn’t seem ready to surrender; he wasn’t even cowed by the presence of the FBI.

  The man charged forward, head down. Goldfarb got his hand on the butt of his pistol and started to tug it free, though that sent another wave of pain through his broken shoulder. He clenched his teeth, working his finger around the trigger guard.

  “Stop!” he commanded.

  With a fleeting thought, a tiny scolding voice in his head told him how remarkable it was that he always managed to get himself into these situations.

  The man rammed into Goldfarb like a linebacker smashing into an opposing quarterback. Goldfarb slammed backward into the computers and oscilloscopes, fighting for balance. Papers and desk paraphernalia scattered on the floor. The wind whooshed out of him.

  He managed to wrench his pistol around, pointing it at his opponent. But the man did not hesitate to grab Goldfarb’s wrist and jerk the pistol away from the aim point. The first, instinctive gunshot went wild, ricocheting off the concrete wall and embedding itself in the ceiling of the substation.

  “You asshole,” the man said, yanking Goldfarb’s arm. The pain in his broken collar bone made him want to vomit.

  Instead, using the momentum in his turning body, Goldfarb swung one of the desk chairs around. It was heavy and metal like surplus from an old army base. It struck the other man in the hip, knocking him sideways. Then Goldfarb jabbed upward with his knee, hoping to catch the outraged man in the groin-but instead he only brushed the side of his leg.

  Viciously, the man swung a fist down, smashing Goldfarb’s collar bone where the wrench had hit. The pain made a black thunderstorm in his head, and Goldfarb’s knees turned to water.

  Seizing his chance, the man grabbed the agent’s handgun. Goldfarb struggled to remain conscious against the waves of nausea, but the other man twisted the pistol around. Goldfarb lurched away from the computer terminals against which he had been pressed, gave one last burst of strength-but the man countered him, clawing at the pistol.

  Again, the gun went off.

  The shot sounded like a hand grenade exploding, and Goldfarb felt the bullet plow into his ribs with all the force of a pickup truck. The impact threw him into the wall of computers and oscilloscopes again. He heard shattering glass, sparks.

  Unable to stand any longer, he slid down to the concrete floor, barely able to focus his eyesight against the competing avalanches of pain. His enemy wrenched the pistol out of his limp hand and stepped back, aiming the weapon toward Goldfarb. The FBI agent had a last, unsettlingly clear glimpse of a man with dark disheveled hair and a matted goatee, his face tightened into a knot of anger and panic.

  Goldfarb hadn’t even had a chance to cry out.

  Then the man stepped back, pointed the pistol again, and shot Goldfarb once more in the chest for good measure.

  He fell the rest of the way to the hard, cold floor in a rapidly widening pool of his own blood.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tuesday, 2:07 p.m.

  Wilson Hall

  Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

  In the open-air lobby of Wilson Hall, Paige led Craig past a Foucault pendulum on display, dangling from the rafters and sweeping through its delicate arc as the Earth rotated. Late lunch dishes clattered in the cafeteria; most of the tables were empty except for a few groups of scientists engaged in low discussions, seeking an area
free of secretaries and telephones. She pushed the button for the elevator, and they both waited.

  The fourth floor had an open, spacious feel, with cubicle-divided work areas for grad students and temporary hires. As they walked down the carpeted hall, Craig saw homey touches on each cubicle, plastic action figures of monsters and cartoon characters, yellowed comic-strip clippings; one wall was completely covered with outrageous tabloid headlines.

  Paige flicked her blue eyes from name plate to number, trying to find her way. Clearly, she hadn’t had occasion to visit Georg Dumenco before.

  When they reached his office, though, the Ukrainian scientist was there in person, despite his radiation exposure. Dumenco looked up, startled, as he sifted through a whirlwind of papers and printouts on his desk. File drawers were opened and ransacked, and his bloodshot eyes looked wild.

  “Dr. Dumenco, what are you doing here?” Craig asked.

  “This is my office,” Dumenco answered indignantly. He swallowed hard, then held onto the edge of his desk for support.

  “You’re supposed to be in the hospital,” Paige said.

  “I need my work, the results from my last test run. My graduate student Bretti isn’t here. He’s supposed to be on vacation, but I can’t reach him… he’s on a fishing trip somewhere, out of touch-and I don’t know how he files his records.” With an angry gesture, Dumenco slapped a pile of old memos and unopened mail on the floor.

  Craig went forward to grasp his arm. “You drove here by yourself? I need to take you back to Trish-uh, I mean, Dr. LeCroix.” Paige’s eyes widened as she made the connection, but she didn’t say anything.

  Dumenco shook off Craig’s grip and unsteadily drew himself up. “I am dying from radiation exposure, sir. My body is falling apart rapidly, and very soon I won’t be able to stand. I must use every moment of clarity left to me. Once I get back into that hospital bed, I know I’ll never leave.” He drew a thick breath. “This may be the last time I’ll set foot in my office-and I need my papers so I can keep… occupied.”