Lethal Exposure (6 page)

“It’s Patrice.” The room temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees.

Craig interrupted. “This is Paige Mitchell, from Fermilab on Dr. Dumenco’s request. It was the only way he would agree to go back to his hospital room.” He looked intently at Trish’s sepia eyes behind her delicate eyeglasses. “Let him have the papers,” he said, lowering his voice. “Those experimental results mean more to Dumenco than anything right now. Maybe he loses a little sleep, but he’ll die a lot happier.”

Trish’s eyes flashed, but she backed away, gesturing Paige inside.

Dumenco sat up in his hospital bed with an expression of such extreme delight that Craig knew he had made the right decision. The scientist swept the chessboard away from the small table, knocking magnetic pieces in all directions. “Bring them here—thank you, thank you. You’re very kind.”

“It’s the least I could do,” she said. “Dr. Piter also asked me to pass along that he is at your disposal if you require anything else.”

Dumenco rolled his eyes. “That man has been a thorn in my side for years, just because some of my work contradicts his old CERN papers. I’m glad he is at least pretending to have a change of heart.”

As the scientist pawed through the papers, Craig knew he would have to look elsewhere for clues. Georg Dumenco was otherwise occupied.

Maybe Goldfarb had found something.

CHAPTER 8

Tuesday, 2:37 P.M.

Fermilab

Beam-Sampling Substation

Breathing hard, Nicholas Bretti paused to take a closer look at the man he had just shot, even as he tried to scramble out of the isolated blockhouse.

Everything had happened so fast, so unexpectedly. He hadn’t meant to do it. But, shit—
the FBI
! You take one quick little step down that slippery slope, and it sucks you down to hell like grease-covered glare ice!

The federal agent looked like a dark-suited Pillsbury doughboy on the floor. He didn’t move, didn’t appear to breathe. Dark liquid oozed from the wounds in his chest.

Bretti looked to the heavy door, the harsh glare of sunlight outside. No one ran into the blockhouse to see what was the matter, no one raced to investigate the gunshots. Should he call for help? Get an ambulance?

Or was there a chance he might be able to get away? Nobody knew he was here—he was supposed to be gone, days’ deep into his annual fishing trip in the wilds of West Virginia.

Bretti slapped his hands together, stepped toward the shot FBI agent, then turned toward the door. He must look like an idiot, confused, panicked.

Keep cool
, he reminded himself. Get the apparatus. Pack it in the car, and drive to the embassy. Just like the plan. They had gotten him into this, and they could help him out. No problem, no sweat, no heartburn . . . no fucking way!

Bretti had never hurt anyone before, certainly never killed anyone—hell, he’d never broken the law, never cheated on a college exam . . . though if he had, maybe it wouldn’t have taken him seven years as a grad student and still no hope of seeing a PhD anytime soon. This should have been his ticket to a better life. Antimatter. A simple, invisible embezzlement of atomic particles, bled off from the main beam.

No one should have noticed, except maybe that damned Dumenco. But then, nothing in his life had ever turned out the way it should. Though it sure seemed possible when that Indian, Chandrawalia, had first approached him, showed up at his apartment. No wonder he had tracked Bretti down—the world’s oldest grad student.

He swallowed hard, close to hyperventilating, took a half step toward the man on the floor, then ignored him entirely. No turning back now. He had to deliver the old Penning trap with whatever load it had managed to store in two days. Maybe that would be enough. It would
have
to be enough, since the main p-bar supply had been annihilated.

The FBI man’s handgun burned a hole in his pocket. He wanted to get rid of it, but he couldn’t leave it here. Fingerprints, evidence . . . he didn’t know what sort of magic the crime lab could do these days.

How could things go so wrong so fast? First the emergency beam dump on Sunday, which caused a power outage, blowing the hell out of his demo stash. And now some FBI suit came snooping around when he was transferring the last day’s run of p-bars.

Why couldn’t the bastard have waited another ten minutes? Bretti would have completed his task, and no one would have suspected. Nobody was supposed to see him at Fermilab. During his week of vacation, he should have had plenty of time to slip off to India, make his delivery, take his payment, and get back to Illinois to pretend that nothing had happened. Nobody would have noticed, or cared, except maybe Dumenco and his unexpected results.

Well, after the curmudgeonly Ukrainian’s radiation exposure, Dumenco wouldn’t be chasing lost antiprotons for long. He certainly hadn’t spent much time being a good advisor, helping Bretti make it through the academic hoops, taking the grad student under his wing, using a bit of professional pull to get him through the hard parts.

Crap, the old fart only cared about his own theories and the damned Nobel Prize. Now, maybe Bretti would have to accept it for his dear-departed mentor.

Nicholas Bretti took a deep breath. The fading rush of adrenaline had left him with a case of the shakes. He had to move fast before anyone found the man he’d shot. He had to take his equipment and get out of here.

Over at his work station, Bretti carefully disconnected the transfer mechanism from the Penning trap. Working quickly, he attached the much smaller, but much more efficient crystal lattice trap and accelerometer to a port upstream from the main detector, where the substation tapped into the Tevatron flow. The crystal trap was the real key, a treasure chest for storing antimatter—but it needed nearly a week to collect enough p-bars to make it worthwhile.

Similar to the hundreds of other diagnostics attached to the beam channel, his small device had never drawn attention. Many teams of technicians had their own equipment in these substations, and nobody ever messed with someone else’s diagnostics. It just wasn’t done.

Instead of passively imaging the intense, rotating beam of p-bars, Bretti’s lattice trap would bleed off antimatter particles after they had been laser cooled and slowed by the accelerometer.

Glancing at an oval clock that one of the grad students had wired to run counterclockwise, Bretti saw that it hadn’t been more than three minutes since he had fired the shots. Still, much too long. He had to get out of here.

Grunting, Bretti lifted the disconnected Penning trap. Its case was lined with high-efficiency lithium-ion batteries, making up the majority of the weight. Two insulating Dewars, one inside the other, held the Penning trap itself—three strips of room-temperature superconducting magnets that created a precise magnetic field shaped like a bottle, bouncing the p-bars back and forth along the axis. Over time, the bottle would leak, but the lithium ion batteries would keep the magnetic field alive long enough for him to get to India, while he filled the more efficient crystal-lattice trap that could literally hold nine orders of magnitude more antimatter.

He walked carefully away from the isolated substation as if carrying a suitcase full of bricks. He locked the door to the blockhouse—with any luck, and with many of the temporary hires on break, the agent’s body wouldn’t be found until Bretti was safely out of the country.

Making his way to his car, Bretti realized he didn’t even have time to drive back to his apartment and pick up his bags. He had a plane to catch.

This early on Tuesday afternoon, Bretti didn’t have to worry about rush hour traffic heading into downtown Chicago. Still, with his battered nerves, he didn’t want to push his luck finding a parking spot for his small red Saturn—leased, but still a good bargain on his grad-student salary. He couldn’t walk for blocks lugging the bulky Penning trap. Every bag lady and cab driver would spot him and wonder. He tossed a cigarette out the window and started for the embassy.

But first he pulled off to the side, stopping by jetty on the shore of huge gray Lake Michigan. The old concrete jetty was just remote enough that no one questioned people who stopped to gawk. Gold and red leaves from a cluster of trees hid him from others along the shoreline. A place for early-morning joggers; not much in the mid-afternoon.

The traffic was sparse, and he waited scant seconds before he fumbled in his pocket for the stolen FBI handgun. The gun was slick and still seemed hot—hot from firing the bullets that had torn into the agent’s flesh. Bretti thought he could still feel the heat on the barrel, the unexpected
kick
from the recoil as he reacted without thinking.

Standing on the jetty, he tossed the handgun underhand into the chilly depths where waves churned with the brisk October breeze. The heavy gun made a soft splash like a gulp, and was swallowed up by the gray surface.

Much farther down the shore, a kid threw stones into the water, then ducked back as a wave splashed against the rocks. He waved at Bretti, who was too terrified not to wave back. Bretti was back in his car and jockeying into the fast lane in less than a minute.

“Not enough time as it is,” he muttered while clutching the steering wheel.
And I’ve just shot a man over a difference of ten minutes
. The embassy can damned well treat me like a VIP for once.
And the man was FBI yet! They’ll be crawling all over my ass.

Racing down embassy row near Lakeshore Drive, Bretti passed stately buildings hidden behind ten-foot wrought-iron and brick fences. Immaculate guard shacks nestled by every gate partially obscured by thick shrubbery. Some embassies were protected with bullet-proof glass windows; others were more inviting, giving an impression of openness—friendly nations, proud and colorful flags. The whole area oozed high society—the kind of life Bretti deserved, not some apartment hole in the burbs.

Bretti pulled up to the guard gate of the Indian embassy. Inside the shack, a guard took notice and motioned for him to stop. He hadn’t thought what he would say, but he rolled down his window anyway.

The faint smell of flowers and spice drifted into the car. A curving cobblestoned driveway wound around immaculately kept gardens. Not much like the boring homes around Batavia and Aurora—he would sure as hell be glad to get away from that. But first he had to get through the gate.

The embassy itself stood behind a fortress of aesthetically pleasing protective buffers—beige flower planters each the size of a small car, thick stone columns, ornate wrought-iron fencing. Unseen among the splendor, Bretti knew sophisticated microwave sensors stood watch over the compound.

A dark man wearing a white coat and turban, maroon pants, and a long ceremonial sword emerged from the guard shack. The man smiled through a black beard and mustache, but his eyes never lingered on Bretti. Instead, they swept back and forth along the red car for unforeseen threats.

Bretti recognized him. This was the same guard who had been present the two previous times he had visited the Indian Embassy.

Placing his hand on the silver hilt of a ceremonial curved sword, the guard smiled tightly. “Welcome to the Indian Embassy, sir. What may I do for you here today?”

“I’m Nicholas Bretti,” he snapped, irritated that the man didn’t recognize him. “I have an appointment with Mr. Chandrawalia.”

“Very good, sir.” The guard reached into the shack, pulling out a clipboard. He ran his white gloved fingers down a list. “Ah, yes, Mr. Bretti. You are somewhat late. Would you please park your car outside and enter through this gate?”

“I have an important . . .
delivery
for Mr. Chandrawalia. It’s in the trunk.”

The guard lifted an eyebrow. “You may unload the item here if you please while you park your car outside.”

“It’s quite bulky and—look,” said Bretti in exasperation, “this is extremely important, and Mr. Chandrawalia is expecting this right away. I’m late as it is, and I’m sure you don’t want to upset anyone else.”
Especially me
. He felt sweat prickling along his clothes.

He wondered if the FBI agent’s body had been found yet. His stomach lurched with nausea. My God, he had killed a man, shot him—how many times? Bretti didn’t even know.

“Why don’t you pick up the
phone
and
call
Mr. Chandrawalia. I’m sure he’ll authorize you to let me in with my car.”

“I will do what I can, but we usually do not go to such lengths to accommodate a guest.” Turning briskly, the guard’s white coat flapped in the air. His eyes continued to scan the street as he spoke to Bretti, as if a horde of terrorists might suddenly appear to storm the embassy. And in Chicago, for God’s sake. Can you believe the security?

Rapidly tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, Bretti felt confined. What if someone had seen him leaving Fermilab? He had to get to cover somehow, and the Indians were his only hope.

A bearded face thrust into the car window. “Mr. Bretti? You are quite correct. Mr. Chandrawalia is indeed anxious to see you. A driver will be out shortly to bring your car to the front. Please walk into the complex to meet him” The guard opened the car door and waited for Bretti to get out.

Cursing under his breath, Bretti scooted out from the seat and left the keys dangling in the ignition. He nervously ran a hand through his black hair, then popped the trunk. The guard towered over him, emotionless as he carefully closed Bretti’s car door. Turning a key in a control box, the guard swung open the gate. “We will take good care of your car, sir.”

Bretti walked around to the trunk and lifted the unwieldy suitcase out of car. No fuckin’ way he was going to let these towelheads get hold of his Penning trap. It was only Phase One of the down payment he owed the Indians, but he wasn’t going to let this get out of his sight. Swinging the bulky case by his side, he made for the embassy house.

Inside the fence a short man in a white tunic ran from the main building, taking no notice of him. Bretti passed bumblebees drifting lazily around the garden. The flowers made the air thick, sweet, and nauseating. He entered the embassy, glad to be behind the protective walls. . . .

Bretti had never been able to figure out Chandrawalia’s exact title and position in the Embassy. But it had to be high up in the food chain, judging from everything he had promised Bretti. The man smiled graciously as he sat behind a polished wooden desk, gesturing him into the private office.

Paintings of Hindi women dressed in colorful garb were positioned across the wall next to photographs of elaborate Mughal-era temples, photos of vast cities taken from the air, and the standard picture of the Taj Mahal. Green marble elephants stood two feet tall on either side of the desk.

“Welcome, Dr. Bretti. I am honored to listen, though my time is somewhat at a premium this afternoon.” Chandrawalia’s dark face contrasted with his impossibly white teeth. He had deep wrinkles, and a white beard shot with strands of iron gray.

“This is important enough to be worth your time.”

“Very well, Dr. Bretti. Would you care for some tea?”

Tea? How could Bretti think of tea at a time like this? His whole life, his future had just disintegrated around him—like an antimatter explosion. He wondered if he should confess to Chandrawalia, explain about the FBI agent, his flight, all because the Indian government wanted a secret stash of p-bars. Would Chandrawalia help him out of this mess?