much that it seemed as if he had become a lifetime paraplegic. Goldfarb worried about getting hurt more for
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
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.
