Lethal Exposure

Friday, 12:17 p.m.

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 third of Chicago, then the whole world would see mat 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.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Friday, 12:38 P.M.

O’Hare InternationalAirport

Craig gripped the armrest of the rental car as Jackson took the exit to the airport at high speed. A white- haired man in a Jaguar honked and extended his middle finger as Jackson whipped into the far right lane, cutting him off.

Craig pulled his cell phone away from his ear as he struggled to maintain his balance in the car. “Hey, Randall, we need to get there alive if we’re going to stop Bretti.”

Jackson unblinkingly kept his hands on the steering wheel, precisely at the 10:00 and 2:00 position as proscribed in the Bureau’s evasive driving course. “You’re starting to sound like Goldfarb, man.” Instead, he accelerated.

Craig didn’t argue with the lean agent. This was personal for him, deeply personal-and he only hoped Jackson could maintain his professionalism.

Agent Schultz at the Chicago Bureau office spoke over the cell phone, and Craig pictured the man still bandaged up, stuck at his desk and wishing he could be in the middle of the action. “We’ve diverted the team of agents from Bretti’s house, and our SWAT teams have scrambled. We’ve informed airport security. Did you want any uniformed police officers as backup?”

Craig lurched into the side of the door as Jackson weaved around traffic. “No, keep them away. The last thing we want to do is to spook Bretti. He’s got enough explosive power in his briefcase to turn O’Hare into a smoking crater-and I don’t think he even knows it. Keep this a federal operation, and let me run it from inside. Special Agent backups only.”

“What about equipment?” Schultz pressed. “Do you need any NEST or FEMA support?” The FBI worked closely with the Department of Defense’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency; but this was totally out of the box. The destructive potential Bretti carried in his briefcase was as great as a small fission bomb, but unlike radioactive material, the antimatter was undetectable.

“There’s no nuclear signature to help find his antimatter trap. And if it goes unstable, you’ll need the Red Cross more than anyone else. Just have additional agents stake out the International terminal, especially the Concord gate. We’ll be running surveillance around it. Remember, we don’t know Bretti’s plans, and were not even sure he’s here.” He swallowed hard, not wanting to consider the possibility that they might be so far off base.