Lethal Exposure (22 page)

CHAPTER 36

Friday, 11:57 A.M.

Fermilab

Craig stood on the blackened grass, angry and disheveled. Bretti had escaped from right under their noses. And the grad student now had an extraordinarily valuable—and dangerous—cache of antimatter. The sheer rarity of antiprotons made the sample Bretti carried in his crystal-lattice trap worth thousands of times more than any precious metal or gem.

But where would he sell it?

And, if Dumenco’s comments were correct, the crystal-lattice trap was also disastrously unstable. Bretti could have a bomb large enough to take out a few city blocks. Did he even know?

Behind him, fire trucks from the towns of Batavia and Aurora formed a semicircle to contain the grass fire. Crews dressed in metallic-silver suits with full-facemask respirators dangling at their sides pushed aside a firebreak and wetted down the brown prairie as a last line of defense against the spreading flames. Other crews sprayed streams of water high in the air back and forth across the grassfire.

Jackson trudged up, his dark face smudged with smoke and his suit jacket flapping open in the wind. Holding up his cell phone, he wiped his arm across his sweaty brow. “We’re lucky this still works. Dr. Piter is getting us Bretti’s home address from the head office—our own info on Bretti is back at the temporary command post. I’d like to be the one to catch that little bastard.”

Craig took a deep breath, then straightened his sunglasses. “Get the Chicago office to set up roadblocks while we check out Bretti’s place. See if Schultz will send us some backup. And get a search warrant.”

“Got it.” A cloud of smoke from the fire swirled around them as Jackson immediately starting punching in numbers. The lean FBI agent held the cell phone to his ear. With the prairie fire raging behind him, he looked like a lone survivor from a bombing raid.

Jackson pulled the rental car up to the empty curb in front of a line of duplex ranch houses. Beside him, Craig squinted through his sunglasses at the mailbox numbers out by the road. “Number 122 should be right around the corner, on the right.”

“You don’t think he could have found an
older
part of town to live in, do you?” Jackson said as he punched in numbers in his cell phone, checking on their backup. “What a bunch of dumps.”

“He’s a grad student, remember?” Craig said. He remembered his own days of starvation wages, when even a professor’s salary seemed like a huge amount of money. A duplex like this was a
nice
place to live, compared with some of the student dives he had seen.

At Stanford, while working part time for the private investigator Elliot Lang, Craig had spent many hours studying for classes, thinking through term papers, fighting boredom outside rows of apartments in San Francisco, keeping a tail on a cheating husband or a supposedly injured worker milking an insurance claim. Back then he only had to wait and watch, maybe take a few pictures.

Now they were walking into a literally explosive situation.

Jackson put down the cell phone. “Schultz says the backup won’t be here from downtown for fifteen minutes.”

Craig thought quickly. They had already obtained a verbal okay for the search warrant from a local magistrate who had worked with Agent Schultz in the past. “I don’t think Bretti’s coming back here—not after what just happened out at Fermilab. But he may have left something inside that we need to know.” He recalled the vital information he had found in the abandoned home of the leader of the Eagle’s Claw militia near the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. “And if Bretti’s on the run with an unstable container of antimatter, he can go a long way in fifteen minutes.”

Jackson nodded. “Okay, let’s take a look.” He sounded anxious to get to the renegade grad student. Almost
too
anxious, to avenge Ben Goldfarb’s shooting.

Craig shrugged on his suit jacket, glancing up and down at the other low-rent houses to see if they had been spotted. He straightened his tie, trying to keep from telegraphing his nervousness.

Together, moving like two professionals, they started toward Bretti’s duplex, the left-hand side of the building. Weeds and crabgrass covered the small yard. A crumbling concrete driveway dotted with fresh oil spots ran from the street to a one-car garage. A chainlink fence split the yards in two.

They stepped back, out of sight from the front window. Craig pressed his lips together, looked around one last time, and drew in a breath. “We’ve got to move.” He rang the doorbell, ready with one hand on his Sig-Sauer, one hand near his badge and ID wallet.

Jackson’s nostrils flared, and Craig looked at him firmly. “Remember the Rules of Engagement, Randall—this isn’t Ruby Ridge. The best way to help Goldfarb is to bring this dirtball in alive.”

Jackson gripped his pistol. “I understand.” No one answered the door, and Jackson knocked, pounding hard against the door.

Craig gestured around. “I doubt he’s here. You take the back door. Don’t wait for me to yell if anything goes down.”

“Right. By the book.” Jackson briskly jogged around the corner, put a hand on the low chain-link fence and easily vaulted into the back yard.

Craig tried the front door. Locked. He stepped back to kick it in, when he heard a sound just inside the front door. He placed a sweaty hand on his pancake holster, prepared to draw—

Jackson yanked open the door, out of breath. “Back patio door was off its track.” He held his pistol with two hands, the barrel pointing up in the air.

“Lucky for us.” Craig dropped his hand from his pancake holster.

Jackson shrugged. “I did have to help it a bit.”

Craig glanced around the threadbare room as he entered, seventies tract-home vintage. Starving student furniture, plywood-and-cinderblock bookshelves, orange crates covered with sheets for end tables. Empty.

“I didn’t go through the house,” said Jackson. “but it looks like only two rooms off the main passageway.”

They quickly secured the duplex, but Craig knew in his gut that Bretti wasn’t home. It didn’t look like he had been here for some time.

The single bed was unmade; stacks of computer paper, journal articles and textbooks were pushed up against the wall. A large cardboard box in one corner held copies of
Physics Today
and
Physical Review Letters
. Three empty cans of Pringle potato chips and a sixpack of Diet Pepsi sat by the nightstand. Dirty underwear was piled in a corner, but too many empty hangers dangled in the closet, some scattered on the floor. Bretti had just cleaned out his clothes.

Craig straightened. “I bet he’s not coming back.”

Inside the tiny kitchen, Jackson stood over a folding card table, scanning a sheaf of papers. Craig checked the date on the milk in the refrigerator; its freshness had expired a week earlier.

Under the table was what looked like a case of booze. Craig knelt to take a closer look. “Grand Marnier—a couple hundred dollars worth there. He’s got an expensive taste for a grad student.”

“Or was it a splurge?” Jackson asked. “Maybe he just got a nice payoff.”

“Look at this.” Jackson handed Craig a preprinted in-flight menu. On the front was printed
WELCOME TO THE CONCORD
. “What the heck is a grad student doing with a first-class menu from the Concord? Doesn’t that thing fly into New York?”

Craig stared at the list of Indian food, written in fancy script: Chicken vindaloo, curry vegetables, Kingfisher beer. “Goldfarb wanted me to go see it in O’Hare when I landed early Tuesday. British Airways was having a special this month, direct from Chicago to New Delhi, India.”

“A guy who lives in a dump like this on a grad student’s salary doesn’t have any business riding first class on the Concord,” Jackson said. “Or drinking a case of Grand Marnier. But what’s the connection with India?”

Craig said slowly, tentatively, “Well . . . India’s a threshold high-tech country. Maybe Bretti got involved with somebody there.”

Jackson scrounged through the papers on the table, looking for a bank statement. “I’ll bet if we pull Bretti’s finances, we’ll find he’s made several large deposits. He doesn’t seem the type to know how to cover his tracks too well. He’s an amateur at this stuff.”

“All the more dangerous,” Craig cautioned, thinking of Ben Goldfarb. “Dr. Piter said this was only one of two places in the world that could produce p-bars—CERN and Fermilab. And with Dumenco’s new method to increase the production of antimatter, Fermilab is the only place that could make enough antimatter for profit.”

“Are you saying there’s a black-market for antimatter?” Jackson was incredulous.

“Yes, and Bretti has a large batch to sell.” His mind’s eye saw a flash of Dumenco, lying on his deathbed, confessing to being involved in a Soviet black program to power exotic weaponry. “Think about it. He just left Fermilab and he’s on the run. Right now he’s got nothing to lose. He’ll want to get out of the country.”

Craig stuffed the Concord menu in his jacket pocket and turned for the door. “Let’s get to O’Hare. Whatever Bretti is doing doesn’t matter as much as what could happen if that satchel of antimatter goes unstable. He could take out the entire airport in an instant.”

Jackson raced behind him, leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

CHAPTER 37

Friday, 12:17 PM

Fermilab

Back to normal
, thought Nels Piter. Would things
ever
get back to normal? It had to be over soon. If Dumenco would just hurry up and die, the whole mess could be forgotten, cleanly and efficiently. And with the FBI agents rushing off after Nicholas Bretti, they would be satisfied with the conclusion of their case and just let the Fermilab researchers return to their experiments.

With the imminent publication of Piter’s major new paper in
Phys. Rev. Letters
, and the nail-biting wait for the Nobel announcement, and Dumenco’s lethal exposure—or even worse, his insistence that Piter’s own crystal-lattice trap was flawed,
fundamentally flawed
—Piter felt tense to the point of nausea.

But the Ukrainian had always caused problems for Piter—even on his deathbed.

Waiting for the elevator door to open in the cathedral-like Wilson Hall, Piter straightened his impeccable suit jacket, adjusted his tie. He ran a hand across his hair to smooth down the locks that had been blown out of place.

He felt dirty, sooty from the fire—he should have spent a moment in the rest room making himself presentable. He had an image to maintain in his office. He couldn’t stand having things out of place, especially his appearance—because he was very much aware that appearance
was
reality. He tended to avoid public rest rooms, germ-infested places all of them. He would just have to keep his dignity. That would be enough.

The elevator door slid open, and he stepped out onto the third floor, holding his head high as he made for his office, ignoring his administrative assistant Priscilla.

In the front-office hush, it seemed as if the woman’s eyes clicked when he walked past, no doubt astonished at her straight-laced boss’s unkempt appearance. He heard a chair pushed back as Priscilla stammered, “Dr. Piter. Thank goodness you’re back! You’ve received several calls today from—”

“Please hold all my calls, Priscilla,” he said. The last thing he needed was to have reporters pestering him when he really needed to conduct some damage control. A Nobel-nominated scientist dying of radiation exposure; two major substation explosions; FBI agents assaulted, shot, gassed; and a renegade grad student intent on selling antimatter on the black market—and all in less than a week. Piter’s mouth twisted.

Striding into his office, he immediately shrugged off his jacket and hung it on a hook behind the door. He tried to brush off some of the grime, but stopped, disgusted that he only rubbed it deeper into the material. He longed for this terrible day to end.

Within a minute, Priscilla knocked at the door. “Dr. Piter, you’ve received another—”

“I
said
I would accept no calls.”

“But, sir—”

“Priscilla, I ask you to honor my request. I simply have too much work to do, and time is extremely short. Our latest press announcement about the
Physical Review
paper takes precedence over everything at this moment.”

Her reply was curt and sullen. “Very well, Dr. Piter.” But she didn’t turn to leave. “Sir, there is a telegram for you. I’ve left it on your desk. I think you should take a look at it.”

Piter closed his eyes. If his administration staff wouldn’t leave him a minute of peace, how could he ever prepare for the madness bound to erupt when Bretti’s situation hit the press? It
would
make the news, and soon—it was just a matter of time. Worse yet, if the antimatter exploded and annihilated a few city blocks, then the whole world would see that his precious crystal-lattice trap was fundamentally flawed.

And that turned his stomach and left him sick with fear.

Sighing, Piter turned to his private washroom to clean up before he moved on to decide what he would do about that imbecile Bretti.

How would he explain the discrepancy between his pioneering work at CERN and Dumenco’s findings that his crystal-lattice trap was flawed? What had Dumenco said—that his solid-state diode lasers needed to be phase locked? And what would happen when his colleagues discovered that when the p-bar density reached a threshold, the container might become unstable? If it wasn’t for that damned Dumenco, the world would never have seen so many p-bars, and the threshold limit would never have been reached, at least not in his lifetime.

He noticed the pale-yellow Western Union envelope sitting square on his desk, as if Priscilla had lovingly placed it there.

He picked it up and tore it open—

Then froze, stunned.

A whirlwind of emotions ran through him. Conflicting, competing for his logical mind to untangle. He felt as if he had been taken to the highest pinnacle on earth, and flung down into the deepest depths.

He reread the message, not believing what he had just seen—uncomprehending.

Fire and ice, he felt torn.

He clutched the message and dully sat down at his desk.

It was over . . . after all these years, finally, finally over.

And life would never be the same again.