Lethal Exposure (13 page)

CHAPTER 18

Thursday, 4:39 A.M.

O’Hare International Airport

The Concord eased down from Mach 2, approaching the continental U.S. from the north at seven hundred miles an hour, faster than any other airliner in the world. Half asleep, groggy and stiff from time changes, jet lag, and cramped quarters, Nicholas Bretti could have calculated the needle-nosed plane’s altitude and temperature from the Mach number displayed on the front bulkhead; but his mind was focused elsewhere, seething.

Even when they had sent him packing, the damned Indians couldn’t resist pushing him around. Where did they get off? He was the one risking his neck, he had gotten the opportunity for them. So what if he had managed to bring only a portion of the antimatter he had promised? He was still early, and he had the means to get the rest.

However, upon returning to the U.S., he just might find himself the target of an FBI manhunt. Bretti would have to be very careful. He needed to slip in, grab the hidden crystal-lattice trap from the substation, and arrange to drop it off—but not before Chandrawalia made some further guarantees. Bretti couldn’t wait to have words with the smug, whip-thin man from the Embassy. After all, if Bretti got caught, he was damned well going to bring the rest of them down with him and expose all their embarrassing commercial plans.

Too bad he wouldn’t have time to pay his respects to old Dumenco. He wondered if the Ukrainian slave master had kicked off yet. In his imagination, Bretti pictured the physicist writhing in a hospital bed with his skin sloughing off, his hair falling out, his gums bleeding. Dangerous stuff, that radiation. The most amazing part, though, was that Dumenco had been exposed while doing his own work for a change, rather than bossing around his pet grad student.

Still a graduate student. After six years of research, chasing down elusive leads to prove a new theory, spending all-nighters analyzing someone else’s data and trying to contribute to the next experiment on the massive accelerator, he was ABD—All But Dissertation.

Anyone else would have received a doctorate by now, donning the long, black robe, the maroon-and-blue head ornament of the PhD. Each year Bretti watched the graduation ceremonies at the University of Chicago, but never as a participant; instead, he stood back and let the others have their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. He watched as new lawyers were awarded their JDs after only three years of law school; watching new doctors awarded MDs after only four years of med school.

And these people called themselves
professionals
! All they had to do was memorize esoteric law cases or obtuse medical language and they “earned” their degrees. These people didn’t know about spending
years
in research with a perfectionist, domineering advisor who was never satisfied with what had been done before.

Bretti wanted his name
first
on a research paper, not just as one of the coauthors. Everyone in the technical community knew that the real work was done by the first author. After six years of kissing up to Dumenco, jumping every time the old scientist snapped his fingers, Bretti deserved a little credit of his own.

And some extra cash. He was tired of living in poverty, eking by on a graduate assistantship’s salary. Chandrawalia had given him an opportunity to rise above all that—but now it looked as if he would fall on his face.

At the University of Chicago, Bretti had sought out Georg Dumenco, a respected researcher from the Ukraine, fresh off the boat with mind-boggling ideas of using gamma-ray lasers to induce cascades of antimatter in normal particle reactions. Dumenco had obtained an appointment at Fermilab and needed a grad student . . . just as Bretti was finishing his PhD coursework.

It was the dream of a lifetime. And Bretti had worked like a dog for the following six years, doing
Dumenco’s
work instead of his own. He’d had no chance even to think for himself, much less make his own breakthroughs. Six wasted years.

Now, stepping nervously from the narrow air-conditioned Concord into the Chicago airport, Bretti felt as if he had entered another world. The sleek supersonic jet had been a vision of the future, a flying metal island kept immaculately clean and incredibly well-maintained; Chicago’s O’Hare airport was a nightmare that couldn’t heave itself out of the past.

Bretti bristled at the flood of memories the airport gave him. Even so early in the morning, people jostled his elbows, running past without excusing themselves; lingering scents from the previous day—stale beer, burnt bratwurst, airport pizza, and popcorn—rolled over him,. Coffee vendors began to open their awnings, preparing for a new day.

Bretti searched the area for a representative from the Indian consulate, someone who would expedite him through customs. But no one waited for him. Typical. He was on his own, and he would have to handle everything himself.

Bretti snorted and fell into line, waiting with the other passengers as they trudged through customs. “Anything to declare?” He moved slowly up the line, wondering if surly Dr. Punjab had already yelled at Chandrawalia for sending him without the promised amount of antimatter.

He saw airport security, saw TV cameras, wondering if the FBI was already mounting its forces to rush him. What if they had a warrant for his arrest? What if they had seen him step off the Concord? But why would they suspect he had gone to India in the first place? As far as anyone knew, Nicholas Bretti was still down in West Virginia on a fishing trip.

As he stood in line, he flipped through a newspaper he had bought, searching for a notice about the FBI agent he had shot. Maybe it was old news already. Finally, he discovered a small article about Dumenco and his condition, with a mention of the FBI investigator who had been wounded during the investigation and remained in critical condition.

Alive! The man was alive! Bretti swallowed hard. At least he wouldn’t be wanted for murder then, and the FBI agent just might recover. Bretti couldn’t decide it that was better for him, or worse.

By the time he cleared customs—thankfully without incident—he was fuming at the ineptness of all civil servants, but more miffed at India for not taking care of him.
They just flew me around the friggin’ world in three days—you’d think they’d pay a little attention to getting me back here
.

If he’d had better sense, he would have gone right to the Pakistani consulate and offered
them
the new batch of p-bars. That would show the smug Indians, rub their faces in it, just as they had rubbed his face in the fact that he didn’t have his PhD. He allowed himself a slim grin at the thought of offering hot new medical technology right to India’s biggest enemy. Serve them right!

“Hey, open your eyes!” A large woman, all three hundred pounds of her, glared through thick glasses at him, lumbering out of his way. Not that he could have missed her, with hips the size of Greater Chicago.

Bretti clenched his teeth. He’d had it with people—the crowds, the rudeness, the self-centeredness. “Put on a
Wide Load
sign, lady. You’re taking up half the concourse.”

“That’s tough titty, you little wimp.”

Bretti gawked at her huge breasts, each the size of a watermelon. “And I bet they are.”

The woman glared at him, but he pushed past her to the escalator before she could react. He had meant to catch a taxi to the Indian consulate downtown where he could pick up his red Saturn, but he was too focused now on accomplishing unfinished business, business he should have taken care of
years
ago.

He didn’t have much time . . . the crystal-lattice trap could wait another few hours. At the end of the week he could ditch the rental car, fly out with the stash of p-bars, and finally start his life all over again.

If the Indians paid him.

CHAPTER 19

Thursday, 6:12 AM

Fox River Medical Center

Silence. He stopped, just outside the hospital room.

The hallway was deserted. No visitors, no sounds. Nearly six in the morning, too early for the nurses to be making their rounds, yet late enough that the floor nurse would be dozing. He had checked only seconds before. All clear.

The hall lights were dimmed, half the medical center’s fluorescent banks shut down. The only sounds from the other rooms were faint snoring, a cough down the hall, and the constant
ping
of an assisted breathing device. Hospitals never entirely shut down, but they certainly became quiet.

Every movement required stealth, every misstep might cause a disaster. Murder was a tricky business, if you didn’t want to get caught.

He stepped up to a dark, unguarded room. No plaque gave the patient’s name, but this had to be it—a private room, an updated checklist for the radiation-health specialist . . . a small Ukrainian flag taped over the nameplate. The bastard had never officially renounced his citizenship. The gall!

He glanced down the hallway as someone walked past the cross corridor whistling an old Top 40 tune that echoed through the sleeping building. His first instinct was to flee, to dive into the shadows and hide—but he kept moving, untroubled, unnoticed. That was the key. The night worker paid no attention to him.

Perfect disguise, chameleon, blend into even this odd environment. He wore stolen green surgery garb, and the mask and cap gave him anonymity; a stolen ID badge gave him an appropriate name, if such was required.

He pushed open the door to Georg Gregorivich Dumenco’s room. The hinges were quiet, the lights out. A dim trickle of dawn gleamed through the slitted blinds, dappling the waxed floor. The old scientist lay on his side snoring gently, a sheet pulled up nearly to his head and the blanket twisted around his feet. An IV line hung from a bottle and snaked into the old man’s arm. No one sat vigil with him, waiting to hear deathbed confessions—no family, no friends, no graduate students. Even here, even now, the physicist had isolated himself from his family.

The legendary Ukrainian scientist, all alone. Helpless.

Reaching into a long pocket beneath the baggy surgery pants, he withdrew a tightly folded sterile green cloth. He quickly unwrapped the cloth to expose a thin surgical knife, carbon steel, razor sharp. The blade caught a flicker of light in a crazy pattern dancing against the wall.

Dumenco didn’t stir. It would be like slicing the throat of a sleeping bull, a powerful enough animal when awake, but now unprotected and powerless.
How many times had Dumenco been this close, so helpless
? The timing was never right, the circumstances never so crucial. Only recently had things changed enough to demand action.

Dumenco just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Padding silently across the room, he stood beside the dying man’s bed. Clear target. He did not want to risk reaching over the old scientist, whose arm could block the slicing motion across the throat. The cut would have to be a quick slash at arm’s length to avoid the blood from jetting onto his stolen hospital garb. That would draw attention during his exit. No clues could be left, no path of the Ukrainian’s blood. He would wipe the blade on the bedsheet and disappear into the night.

Keeping a firm grip on the delicate surgical knife, he crouched down and slipped the blade under Dumenco’s chin—

“Hey, what are you doing in here?” A woman’s voice shattered the silence. “This is my patient.”

He jerked away, nearly tripping as he stumbled back. The half blinds on the window slapped as he backed into them. Dumenco stirred but didn’t wake up.

The room lights blinked on, filling the white-walled suite with a harsh, overpowering glare. A woman in a white lab coat carried a cup of coffee in a cafeteria cup, held a sheaf of papers in the other hand. A stethoscope hung around her neck; delicate glasses highlighted her face. Dr. Patrice LeCroix. He had seen her before, keeping herself busy, one of the more outspoken members of the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research.

Now she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she had spoiled everything.

Her mouth hung open, halfway between astonishment and horror. Coffee sloshed on the floor. He twirled, keeping the masked face and eyes away from her. Cursing, he brought down his head and launched himself toward the door. Before she could sound an alarm. Before she could recognize him.

The woman raised her voice, terrified as well as indignant. “What the hell are you doing here?” Her sheaf of papers fell to the floor as he charged past her. She brought up her hand as if to scream, but no sound came out, only a faint gurgling. Her attention was torn between stopping him and checking on her patient.

He briefly considered killing both her and Dumenco, but precious time had already been lost, attention already directed toward the sleepy room. In a moment, the night nurse would run to investigate, police would be called, an intensive search would be initiated.

Dumenco struggled up in bed now, awake but befuddled.

During his flight, he shoved Dr. LeCroix aside. She fell against the visitor’s chair by the door. Coffee spilled over her and on his stolen hospital garb. He felt the hot liquid soaking through, burning.
Not blood, but coffee stains on the surgical garb
. He would be easily spotted, identified.

Slamming the door behind him to gain an extra few seconds, he sprinted away as Dr. LeCroix shouted for help. His shoes squeaked as he ran down the hallway, leaving smudges on the freshly waxed floor.

Within minutes in the parking lot, in his car, on the streets, he could elude any pursuit. Dumenco remained alive, still dangerous—and now he would be even more concerned.

All the more reason to do it right the next time.

CHAPTER 20

Thursday, 7:04 A.M.

Fox River Medical Center

After the early morning attempt on Dumenco’s life, Craig rushed in from a restless night’s sleep. The Ukrainian was only a day or two away from death anyway—but Craig wouldn’t stand by while someone tried to hurry him along. He had heard on the radio on the way in that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had been announced, and Craig felt a tightening in his gut. The countdown was ticking—if the Nobel could not be awarded to a dead man, had an unconfident Nels Piter tried to increase his own odds?

Hospital security had already swarmed around the site, to no effect. Craig had called the Chicago Bureau office, roused Agent Schultz, and asked for him to assign a protection detail to the medical center. The other agent preferred to be in the thick of things himself, rather than snooping around the site of a days-old blast. The attack on both Goldfarb and Dumenco had finally lent a sense of legitimacy to Craig’s own investigation. This entire case went far beyond a mysterious explosion at an uninhabited blockhouse.

Craig also started the Chicago office on setting up a news blackout for Dumenco’s protection, keeping all reporters off the hospital floor. It infuriated him that the media had also begun pestering Goldfarb’s wife about her husband’s shooting and his involvement in the case.

Trish LeCroix stood outside the door to Dumenco’s room, bustling in and around the guards, trying to get her duties done. Before she noticed Craig approaching, he took a mental snapshot of her demeanor, assessing her state of mind. Trish’s skin was grayish, her expression tight with confusion and self-doubt. He put it down to her being flustered at being caught in the eye of an unexpected storm; she had always hated it when things didn’t go her way, according to a rigid plan. She had enough stress tending the dying scientist, but thwarting a would-be killer wasn’t her job. Craig was the one who chased after the bad guys.

When Trish saw him, she strode forward quickly, gave him a hug. He squeezed back, but she broke the embrace quickly.

“Is Dumenco all right?” Craig asked. “Are
you
all right?” He coughed to the side; at least his own gas poisoning symptoms were nearly gone.

“We were very lucky,” she said. “But Georg is already in a fragile state. He’s entering the final stages of systemic collapse from the radiation exposure. He’s quite distraught at the moment.”

“Well, I would be too if someone had tried to kill me,” Craig said. “But maybe Dumenco managed to recognize something about the killer—that could give us the breakthrough we need, if it’s shaken him enough to get him to talk. I still think Dumenco’s been hiding too much from us.”

“Yes, but he was asleep at the time. Besides, I expect to see mental effects from central nervous system damage very soon now. I wouldn’t consider him to be completely reliable.” She glanced down at her clipboard, avoiding his gaze. “Uh, a delusional state is also likely.”

Craig reached into his pocket and withdrew the family photos he’d picked up from Dumenco’s apartment. “Maybe this will jog his memory.”

They placed sterile masks over their faces, then entered the room. It was a useless gesture to protect the scientist from infection in that way. The radiation had critically damaged his immune system, so his injured body couldn’t resist infection. And it had destroyed the lining of his intestines, letting the trillions of innocuous bacteria that normally lived there gain easy access to his bloodstream. It was
those
microbes, deep inside him and now made deadly, that would soon make him go into shock—and die.

Dumenco sat up wild eyed. “Go away—away from me!” he croaked, as if afraid Craig intended to kill him as well.

Craig stood back in shock, his stomach knotting in revulsion to see how much the physicist’s condition had degenerated overnight. His skin was scarlet, and his joints were so swollen he could barely move. His eyes were crimson, covered with a thin film of blood from hemorrhaging vessels.

“Georg, it’s us,” Trish said in an attempt to be soothing, but her voice came out dry and strained. “Dr. LeCroix and Agent Kreident. You’re safe. We have extra guards at your room.

The scientist sagged, and recognition seeped into his face. Craig came closer. “We need to talk to you, Dr. Dumenco. Please, who did this? What did you see?”

Overnight, more medical instruments had been hooked up to his disintegrating body, replacing fluids, deadening the spreading pain, suppressing nausea and raising his dwindling blood pressure. Oxygen tanks had been wheeled in beside his bed, with a respirator mask that he had removed; Craig could still see the marks the mask had pressed into the damaged skin of his face. Only apparatus kept his lungs breathing, his heart beating.

Dumenco squirmed away as Craig spoke firmly. “Dr. Dumenco, you must have some idea who this man was. Why did he try to kill you?”

“No!” he said, moaning as he turned from side to side. Part of the skin on his shoulder split open, oozing blood-tinged fluid, like sap from a sliced-open tree. “I have put us all in danger. I brought this upon myself, and I won’t make it worse. Better just to let it die, let
me
die!”

Craig seized on the words and leaned forward. “So you do have an idea! Who is it? We have to stop him.”

Dumenco shook his head. “If they knew enough about my work at Fermilab, if they were worried about what I would reproduce, if they could get inside and cause my accident . . . they can find
anyone
.”

Trish backed away, sickened and deeply concerned. Her professional demeanor dissolved into that of someone emotionally attached to the patient. “They’ve been looking for a long time, haven’t they, Georg?”

Craig turned to her, struck by her reaction. “Do
you
know something? Trish, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing,” Trish stammered. “I . . . I’m still shaken by the killer.”

Dumenco slumped back in his bed. “Perhaps it is best if you ignore the case, Agent Kreident. Call it an accident, and everything will be neatly explained. I never should have brought you here.”

Craig crunched his jaws together in an effort to remain calm. Trying a different tack, he removed the photographs from his jacket pocket. “Dr. Dumenco, take a look at these photos, please. Who are these people, and why did you have their photographs hidden in your drawer?”

The dying physicist blinked and stared, trying to focus his eyes—and then he recoiled in shock. Tears began to stream down the old scientist’s face. As his body wracked with sobs, a line of blood trickled out of his mouth. But he refused to answer.

Trish saw the pictures and gasped in surprise. Craig glared at her, and she answered immediately. “His family,” she said. “I met them on my Chernobyl trip. But I haven’t seen them since he defected from the Ukraine. I know he didn’t bring them to Chicago.”

“Leave the pictures here, so they can be by my side,” Dumenco said.

Trish removed the photos from Craig’s hands and stared down at the snapshots for a long moment. A strange expression crossed her face before she lovingly stood them up in their small frames on his bedside table.

“Good thing you took them from my apartment,” Dumenco said, his voice rattling. “Otherwise he would have gotten them.”

“
Who
, Georg?” Trish asked. “Who would have gotten them? The man who tried to kill you?”

Craig took out his notebook. The family members added a new twist. Was Dumenco protecting them? Were they hostages somewhere? Had they already been killed by the assassin?

“Why are you protecting someone who just tried to kill you?” He took a gamble. “Is it something to do with your physics work in the Soviet Union? What research did you do before you came to this country, and why was the U.S. so anxious to get you here?”

“No records,” Dumenco said. “Doesn’t matter.”

“If it has something to do with who’s trying to kill you, it does matter! Why were all your papers and results covered up? They’re not in your files.”

Dumenco sat up in the bed with a Herculean effort, completely lucid now. Now he seemed almost paternal. “You don’t understand, Agent Kreident. There are some vows I made, some promises I intend to keep. And I’m not going to change my mind. Not because I’m so close to death I can put my arms around my own tombstone.”

Craig shook his head in disgust, and he tossed a last glance at the photos of Dumenco’s wife and children. The frames stood on the data printouts from his Fermilab antimatter experiment. Craig couldn’t imagine the scientist doing any deep mental calculations in this state of mind.

“If you have anything to tell me, Dr. Dumenco, we’ll have other agents standing by. They can get in touch with me,” he said with a bitter voice. “Meanwhile, I have a case to solve, with or without your help.”

As he turned to leave, Trish followed him out. He faced her. “And what do you have to tell me? I can see that you’re hiding something. Did you see something this morning?”

“No, Craig,” she said, her face flushing. “I didn’t.”

He frowned at her. “I know you too well for that, Trish.” But she just met his gaze with stony silence. He had seen the same sort of doggedness when she had moved away from California, leaving everything they had and going on her own to Johns Hopkins.

He shook his head in disgust. “Everyone around here is a marvel of cooperation.” As he passed the hospital security officers and the FBI man outside the door, he snapped, “I want this guard to be airtight!”

Craig looked at his watch, then back at Trish, giving her the brush-off. “Paige is picking me up to go to Fermilab. I have another meeting with Dr. Piter.” At least
Paige
was interested in solving the case.

He glanced back at the closed door to the Ukrainian’s room. “Dead men tell no tales,” he said to himself, shaking his head. “But dying men aren’t much help either.