Lethal Exposure

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?”