Jackson bent over to pick it up. Seeing that the lead had broken off, he reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a silver-plated mechanical pencil. “Here, you can have this,” he said. The physicist nodded in gratitude.
“Have you found anything in your experimental data that might help us?” Craig asked. “Any ideas?”
Dumenco didn’t mind talking about his work. “Only that something is very wrong with my experiment. The p-bar production rate is nine orders of magnitude lower than I had calculated.” He coughed. “Nine orders! This makes no sense. I must talk to Bretti, but he is away on vacation. He hasn’t even called.”
“Then we should find him on vacation,” Jackson said. “Maybe he can give us some leads.”
Dumenco shook his head disparagingly. “My grad student works well, but has no initiative. After seven years, he is no closer to completing his doctorate than when he started. I wouldn’t expect him to come to any conclusions on his own.” He sighed. “Perhaps I can talk to Nels Piter…”
Then Dumenco looked up, suddenly alert. “I understand Agent Goldfarb was shot yesterday. Another ‘accident,’ I suppose, or do they believe me now?”
Craig nodded. “Oh, they believe you,” he said. “I’ve managed to get this classified as a major case with the Bureau. Things will happen faster, with more resources.”
Now that he himself was the agent in charge, the case had grown more extensive, with tangents and connections sprawling ever wider. Agent Schultz was continuing his focused study of the crater explosion, but kept running into dead-ends. No known explosive could have caused the damage pattern exhibited, and no chemical residue had been found. Craig and Jackson would investigate from the other end, trying to determine how Dumenco was the focal point of these events.
Jackson stepped forward, all business. “As part of this investigation, we’d like to go into your apartment, sir. Agent Kreident has already been to the accelerator site, the beam-sampling substation, and your offices, but we need more background. Perhaps something in your personal life might open another door for us. We’ll start by having a team of agents check on Bretti.”
The Ukrainian toyed with the mechanical pencil Jackson had given him. “By all means, you may search my apartment-but I rarely spend time at home. I have some work there, some files, but nothing important. In fact, if you see anything you like, just let me know. I haven’t quite had the time to make out a will.” With a wistful look back at his data, he glanced over at Craig. “You’ll have to get my keys from Dr. LeCroix. She confiscated them last time I went to my office at Fermilab.”
He frowned, then looked up again as a thought occurred to him. “You may have to watch out for news reporters. They came to the hospital yesterday, but dear Dr. LeCroix got rid of them. It seems she is at odds with her partners at the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research. They want to use me as a martyr to gain attention for their cause.” His laugh turned into a phlegmy cough. “I wouldn’t want to cross Dr. LeCroix. She’s a dynamo when she gets angry.”
“You’re telling me,” Craig muttered. Jackson looked sidelong at him.
Dumenco blinked his red, gummy eyes, trying to focus. “I fear that media reports could put me in… extreme danger. When your enemy is aware that your death is fast approaching, he has many things to fear. Someone may still try to kill me before I can reveal anything that should remain a secret.”
“And what would that be?” Craig asked. “And who is your enemy?‘’
Dumenco feigned a smile. “Come now, Agent Kreident, that would be tempting fate. Others may suffer retribution for my indiscretions. Innocents. I would rather die without having to atone for that guilt.”
Craig drew a breath, frustrated. Was the man hiding something, and who was he protecting? “Do you want us to solve this case, Dr. Dumenco?”
“Indeed, I do. But I also want to understand why my final experiment seems critically flawed. And I don’t wish for anyone else to get hurt. Perhaps these goals are mutually incompatible.”
He turned back to his papers, finished with the agents. “I am finding it difficult to think straight. What if the Nobel committee hears about the flaws in these results? It calls into question my previous work.”
In frustration he pounded his fist against his forehead and left an astonishingly clear bruise. He seemed to be battling a growing terror and helplessness as moments slipped away from him. “I need every minute remaining, Agent Kreident. Just make sure no one steals any more hours from me. The person who did this may be too impatient to let me die on my own time… though I am doing it as fast as I can.”
Dumenco spat into a hospital cup. “Let me know what you find in my apartment,” he said, “but please, I have to think. So little time… so little time.”
Batavia was one of numerous suburbs that spread out from Chicago like ripples in a pond. The sprawling suburbs exhibited the Midwestern elbow room so different from the crackerbox California houses with their micro-yards. Even the low-rent districts had grassy yards and long driveways.
With his Fermilab salary, Dumenco could easily have afforded one of the spacious ranch homes complete with a lush green lawn and a brick pedestal around the mailbox out by the road-but for some reason the physicist had chosen to live near the center of town in an apartment building four stories high, faced with red brick.
Perhaps, Craig thought, the older structure reminded Dumenco of community barracks housing he had lived in back in Kiev under Soviet rule.
“Repeat after me,” Craig said. “No comment. No comment. No comment. Good, now we’re ready for any reporters.”
“None standing outside at least,” Jackson said as they climbed out of the gold rental Taurus. Jackson had driven, pushing the seat back as far as it would go. Goldfarb, much shorter, had been the previous driver.
“By now they must have realized nobody’s home,” Craig said. “Dumenco lived alone-who would be there to talk to? He was a workaholic, so the neighbors wouldn’t know him well.” Craig withdrew the key from his pocket. “Third floor,” he said. “ Apartment 316.”
They hadn’t been able to find Trish again that morning, but Craig supposed she needed to sleep occasionally, too, especially after her long vigil with Dumenco. He had retrieved the keys himself from the hospital’s personal possessions lockers.
They climbed the stairs rather than taking the elevator and emerged onto the landing, looking down a carpeted hall of closed identical doors. As they walked along, Craig heard the reverberations of televisions behind some doors, children crying or playing, mothers yelling.
When they reached 316, Craig was relieved to find no reporters there either, although the business card of someone from the Chicago Sun Times lay on the floor as if it had been stuck between the crack but then fallen loose.
Jackson bent down to scrutinize the lock in the door. “Have a look at this,” he said, keeping his voice low. Small wiry scratches made a faint starburst around the keyhole. “Looks like not everyone uses a key to get in.”
Craig frowned. “That might not be fresh, but watch it.” He slid the key into the lock, and the door swung easily inward to a large apartment suite. Craig stepped inside, feeling dust motes stir around him. He could always tell when a place had been sealed and abandoned, as if time had stopped.
Soft sunlight drifted through drawn ivory blinds onto dark green carpeting. Shelves full of knick-knacks, painted Russian eggs, and gilt-edged religious icon paintings adorned the walls next to framed photos of onion-domed Ukrainian cathedrals. A gilded cross stood atop a small old-model color TV set. The extended rabbit-ear antennas were canted at an odd angle.
He drew in a breath and called out, “FBI-don’t move.” Silence answered him. Nothing stirred inside. Maybe he was being overly cautious.
Craig smelled an odd, exotic, cinnamony smell, cuisine he’d never before tasted. But deeper and sharper, overlying the spices he smelled an acrid tang… smoke, smoldering plastic. He looked around, curious and quiet
. The dim apartment seemed to be holding its breath.
They walked carefully across the spacious living room, sniffing, searching for the source of the odor. Moving in tandem, they turned right, following the acrid smell down a short hallway, past a bathroom and a musty guest room, then to Dumenco’s small bedroom.
His computer had suffered a violent internal meltdown. The plastic slumped in on itself. Curls of brown-orange smoke oozed from the interior. His entire box of diskettes had likewise been slagged. Blackened and bubbly, melted polymers oozed across the desk, steaming on the surface.
Craig ran forward, waving his hands to clear the pungent smell from the air. “That’s acid. I remember that stink from chemistry class,” he said, covering his nose. It was already too late to prevent further damage. “Whoever sabotaged this wasn’t taking any chances.” The FBI had ways to find ghost phrasings from even the most carefully erased disk drives; but to Craig, it looked beyond hope.
“This was very recent,” Jackson said quietly. He suddenly stood up straight, listening. With his other hand he flapped his fingers together in a gesture for Craig to continue talking.
The tall dark agent crept out of the room, following the noise he had heard. Feigning nonchalance, Craig spoke out loud as if Jackson were still beside him, “I’ll check out the dresser. Dumenco could have hidden secret notes in the underwear drawer. Here, you take those over there.”
Pulling out his weapon, Jackson remained outside the door, poised and ready to spring.
Craig opened the drawers, ruffling around in the clothes to provide a diversion for Jackson. Someone with very unorthodox methods had been here in the past hour, and they might not have finished their job.
Jackson inched down the hall, past the small bath and guest room. Still buying time for his partner, Craig opened another drawer and looked down into it. Under a spare set of bed sheets he found a framed photograph.
Curious, Craig pulled out a small, old snapshot of a young woman in her late twenties and two young children, both girls. Another photo showed a young man with the aquiline nose and facial features of Dumenco himself but subtly different-a son, perhaps?
Craig pocketed the photos, sure they might give him some lead to Dumenco’s mysterious past. Jackson inched further down the hall. Craig slammed another dresser drawer. “Nothing in that one.” Without another word, he trailed after Jackson.
Now he also heard a stealthy movement from the kitchen. Reaching into his pancake holster, Craig withdrew his handgun, wishing he still had his smaller caliber Beretta for these close quarters. They moved forward together in silence.
Sliding around the corner, he bumped one of the low pictures of an onion-domed cathedral. The frame smashed to the floor with a loud noise.
Knowing they had blown their ploy, he and Jackson sprinted for the kitchen. “FBI!” he shouted. “Remain where you are.”
Instead, they heard a loud splashing noise, something dumped into a bucket of water, then breaking glass in the kitchen window.
Both agents burst into the room, handguns drawn and looking for targets. “Don’t move!” Jackson shouted.
Craig saw a figure duck through the smashed open window and land with a loud clang on the fire escape. “There he goes!” Craig said.
But before he could turn, they encountered a thick, billowing wall of greenish-yellow smoke gushing into the small room. Noxious fumes belched from a bucket on the kitchen floor like deadly exhaust.
Without thinking, Craig gasped a deep breath and inhaled the gas. It felt as if someone had exploded firecrackers in his lungs. His eyes were on fire; his nostrils burned. He choked, staggering back. “ Jackson, get-” He coughed and spluttered.
Enveloped by the greenish-yellow smoke, Jackson fell to his knees. Craig knew it was homemade chlorine gas, the kind used against American troops in World War I. Any first-year chemistry student knew how to make such a weapon from household chemicals. In the confined kitchen area, the gas was strong enough to overwhelm both men instantly.
Unable to breathe, Craig dropped to the floor himself, seeking cleaner air. Jackson collapsed beside him, wheezing. Like a distant hallucination he heard footsteps clanging down the fire escape and running away.
Desperately, Craig dragged himself toward the broken window and fresh air. He gulped in gasps that still reeked of chlorine but at least caused no further damage to his seared lungs.
The gas clouds clustered at the ceiling, making the paint blister.
Jackson wasn’t moving, though, and so Craig turned back, grabbing his partner’s collar, dragging him by the arms toward the air. Reaching out with one spasming hand, Craig fumbled with the back door, trying to turn the deadbolt. Finally, he succeeded in cracking open the porch door, which led out onto the wrought-iron balcony.
Craig and Jackson huddled by the door, trying to draw in deep breaths, but each gasp burned. Craig’s lungs were ablaze, as if he had breathed in the acid that had been used to destroy Dumenco’s computer. Jackson retched and coughed beside him, incapacitated. Craig raised his head to the window, took another huge gulp of fresh air.
On the other side of the building, he heard a car start, then drive off. Their attacker had escaped, but Craig couldn’t continue the pursuit. He slumped back, struggling just to remain conscious.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wednesday, 4:33 p.m.
Bangalore, India
Nicholas Bretti did not loosen his grip on his airline seat until the small plane had landed safely at the Bangalore airport. He wondered if he ever relax again, ever sleep without nightmares, would ever stop jumping and twitching at every little unexpected sound.
It wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.
Exactly two hours after leaving Mr. Ambalal and the Liberty for All party in New Delhi-fifteen hours after taking off from O’Hare in Chicago, and less than a day after shooting an FBI agent-Bretti was sober and ready to meet the people who had paid his bills over the past year. He had to make this good, or else they would never help him out of this mess. What other choice did he have?
He worried that his reception in Bangalore would be no different from what he had experienced in New Delhi. Despite the $25,000 he had already pocketed, he was beginning to wonder if Chandrawalia would make good on his promise to come through with the rest of the money.
Twenty-five grand-a year’s salary. Was that enough for the hell he had gotten himself into? Shit, no. Now it was up to the Indian government to salvage the situation, but he had no idea if they would be sympathetic.
Exiting the jet ramp into the terminal, Bretti was mobbed by a dozen children. They swarmed around him, plunging their hands into his pockets, searching for coins and jabbering the only English phrases they knew, “Please give, sir! Please give!”
Scents of incense and curry mixed with the pungent odor of unwashed bodies. Unprotected by the buffer of a customs area this time, Bretti fought his way through an ever-shifting mob toward the airport exit.
The terminal building bustled with people, some wearing sarongs, others, like the children around him, in shorts and dirty white T-shirts. He saw men, women, boys… but there were no little girls in sight. Maybe the families kept them locked up somewhere.
A cackling chicken flew into the air as a family tried to stuff it back into a cage at the check-in counter. A dark-robed old woman with a small gold stud through her nose and a red mark on her forehead, clutched a baby goat to her breast.
Fifty feet away by the outside door, a man wearing a black-and-yellow splotched shirt held up a sign, Bretti. Bretti made eye contact with the man, who waved for him to follow. “Here, sir!”
Bretti pushed through a forest of chattering, begging children. They all tried to touch him, all pleaded for his help. Bretti felt one hand slip into his back pocket. Grabbing a slender wrist, Bretti whirled the young pickpocket around, keyed up and angry from his long tension.
With wild black hair and a dirty face, the boy could not have been older than ten. He l
aughed as Bretti held him up by his arm; the boy dangled in front of the other children and tried to swipe at Bretti with his free hand.
Before Bretti could admonish the pickpocket, another hand clawed at the back of his pants. Bretti threw the boy backward, bowling over two other children behind him. He knocked the prying hands away. “Get out of here, you little bastards!” He shouted, and the kids howled with laughter.
Bretti pushed his way through the crowd, paying no attention to who he ran into or pushed out of the way.
He kept a free hand on his wallet. The crowd parted as he shoved through.
The man with the sign waved out the door. He smiled beneath a scrawny mustache. “This way, please, sir.” He disappeared from sight.
Bretti pushed out of the crowded building toward a dark blue sedan with tinted windows. A driver wearing a black British polo cap stood beside the long car. When he saw Bretti, he opened the car door.
The humid air still stank outside the terminal, but at least there were fewer people. Bretti strode toward the car, his skin crawling from the overpowering crowds. The driver opened the door, and Bretti dove into the luxury of the air-conditioned interior. As he relaxed back into the seat, someone pounded at the tinted window. It was the first boy who had tried to lift his wallet. The boy and two of his friends pressed their faces against the tinted window, trying to look in. They hammered with their fists, then pressed their tongues against the window, leaving long, slimy wet spots.
The man with the sign slipped into the car’s front seat, and the driver pulled out immediately, oblivious to the children, the crowds, or any other obstacle. The first man turned and grinned. “Welcome to India, Dr. Bretti. How was your flight?‘’
“Mr. Bretti,” he said sourly. The car moved slowly through road construction as they left the airport. “I have an important package in a diplomatic pouch-”
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