Gideon's Corpse

He hung the print above the bed in his new room in Stockport, Ohio, and his mother never noticed it, never remarked on it.

He was sure the print was almost worthless. A few months later, browsing through various auction catalogs, he discovered it had a value of six to seven thousand dollars. At the time his mother was in desperate need of rent, and he considered selling it. But he couldn’t imagine parting with it.

But by that time he needed another thrill. Another fix.

So he began to haunt the nearby Muskingum Historical Site, where they had a small collection of etchings, engravings, and watercolors. He picked out one of his favorites, a lithograph by John Steuart Curry called The Plainsman, and stole it.

Piece of cake.

It came from an edition of two hundred fifty, and so was untraceable and thus easy to sell on the legitimate market. The World Wide Web was just coming into being, which made it all so much easier and anonymous. He got eight hundred dollars for the print—and his career as a small-time historical society and art museum thief was launched. His mother never had to worry about rent again. Gideon made up vague stories about odd jobs and helping after school, and she was too addled and desperate to question where the money was really coming from.

He stole for money. He stole because he loved certain specific pictures. But most of all, he stole for the thrill. It created a high like nothing else, a feeling of self-worth, of floating above the hidebound, mindless, and blinkered masses.

He knew these were not worthy feelings, but the world was a messed-up place, so why not step outside the rules? He hurt nobody. He was like Robin Hood, lifting unappreciated works of art and putting them in the hands of people who truly loved them. He went on to college, soon dropped out, moved to California, and ultimately devoted himself full-time to visiting small museums, libraries, and historical societies, selling what he had to and keeping the rest.

And then he got the call. His mother was dying in a DC hospital. He went to her side. And on her deathbed she told him the story: of how his father hadn’t been responsible for the cryptological security breakdown, after all. Just the opposite: he had pointed out the flaws and been ignored. And then, when it went bad, they’d made him the fall guy, framed by the general in charge of the project—the same general who ordered that he be shot in the act of surrendering.

His father had been scapegoated. And then murdered.

When he learned this, Gideon’s life was transformed. For the first time he had a real goal, a worthwhile goal. He cleaned up his act, went back to college, got a doctorate in physics, and went to work at Los Alamos. But all the time, in the background, like the drone note of a bagpipe, he’d carried on a search: a search for the evidence he needed to clear his father’s name and wreak vengeance on the general who had murdered him.

It had taken years, but in the end he’d found what he’d needed—and he had taken his revenge. The general was now dead, his own father vindicated.

Yet it was no good: revenge didn’t bring people back to life, or retrieve ruined and wasted years. Still, he had his life ahead of him, and was determined to make the most of it.

Then, shortly afterward—little more than a month back—the supreme catastrophe had occurred. Gideon had been told he had a condition known by the picturesque name of a vein of Galen aneurysmal malformation. It was an abnormal tangle of arteries and veins deep in the brain. It was inoperable, there was no treatment, and it would kill him within a year.

Or at least, that’s what he’d been told. By Eli Glinn—the man who had given him his first assignment as an operative.

He allegedly had one year to live. And now, as Garza and he crawled through New York gridlock toward the Effective Engineering Solutions headquarters, Gideon had no doubt that Glinn, once again, wanted to take a chunk of that year away from him: convince him to take on another operation for EES. He wasn’t sure how Glinn would do it, but he was pretty sure it was connected to what had just happened with Chalker.

As the car turned onto Little West 12th Street, Gideon steeled himself for the confrontation. He would be cool, but firm. He would keep his dignity. He would not engage. And if all that failed, he’d simply tell Glinn to go fuck himself and walk out.

10

It was midnight as they entered EES headquarters. The hushed confines seemed to swallow Gideon in cool white spaces. Even at the late hour, technicians moved about among the strange models, layouts, and tables covered with shrouded and mysterious equipment. He followed Garza to the elevator, which delivered them at a glacial pace to the top floor. A moment later he was standing in the same Zen-like conference room, Glinn seated in his wheelchair at the head of the vast bubinga wood table. The window he had stood by earlier that day now had its blinds drawn.

Gideon felt exhausted, gutted and cleaned like a fish. He was surprised and a little irritated to find Glinn uncharacteristically animated.

“Coffee?” Glinn asked. His good eye was fairly sparkling.

“Yes.” Gideon collapsed into a chair.

Garza left with a frown, and returned with a mug. Gideon dumped in cream and sugar and drank it down like a glass of water.

“I have good news and bad news,” said Glinn.

Gideon waited.

“The good news is that your exposure to radiation was exceedingly minor. According to the tables, it will increase your chances of dying from cancer by less than one percent over the next twenty years.”

Gideon had to laugh at the irony of this. His voice echoed in the empty room. No one else joined in.

“The bad news is that we suddenly face a national emergency of the highest order. Reed Chalker was irradiated in what seems to have been a criticality event involving a mass of fissile material. He was affected by a combination of alpha particles and gamma rays from a source that appears to be highly enriched, bomb-grade U- 235. The dose was in the range of eighty grays, or eight thousand rads. A massive, massive dose.”

Gideon sat up. That was astonishing.

“Yes. The amount of fissile material capable of causing such an event would be at least ten kilograms. Which just happens to be more than enough uranium for a substantial nuclear weapon.”

Gideon took this in. It was worse than he had imagined.

Glinn paused, then went on. “It seems clear that Chalker was involved in preparing a terrorist attack with a nuclear device. During these preparations, something went wrong and the uranium went critical. Chalker was irradiated. It also appears likely to our experts that the remaining terrorists spirited off the bomb, leaving Chalker to die. But he didn’t die right away—radiation poisoning doesn’t work like that. He went insane and in his confusion took hostages. And here we are.”

“Have you found where he was preparing the bomb?”

“That’s the highest priority now. It can’t be too far from his apartment in Sunnyside, because it seems he returned there on foot. We’re flying radiation monitors over the city and any moment we’ll have a hit, since a criticality event like this would leave a minor plume of radiation—with a characteristic signature.”

Glinn almost rubbed his hands together. “We’re in on the ground floor, Gideon. You were there. You knew Chalker—”

“No,” said Gideon. Now it was time to get up. He rose.

“Hear me out. You’re the man for this job, no doubt about it. This isn’t undercover. You’ll go in as yourself —”

“I said no.”

“You’ll partner with Fordyce. It is an unavoidable requirement of the assignment, imposed by the National Nuclear Security Administration. But you’ll be given a broad investigative mandate.”