P Deutermann - The Moonpool

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Ari said, “but it would have to be the moonpool. He doesn’t usually work the reactor side, although technically he’s licensed to do so. If he showed up over there in the middle of the night, everyone in the control center would wonder why.”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen to the moonpool?”

“Empty the pool,” he said promptly. “Remember, it’s mostly aboveground. Empty the pool, and the spent fuel stack could catch fire from the heat of decay.”

“Would that be contained?”

“To start with,” he said, “but if we got significant hydrogen generation and no remedial action was taken, you could get a gas explosion. Blow the containment building apart, and the Three Mile Island incident would look like an amusing Halloween prank.”

“But there would be remedial action, right? You have automatic systems to deal with loss of the water?”

“Certainly, but you said you thought Trask had inside help. If it’s Thomason, or someone with Thomason’s qualifications, he could disable all of those systems, and he could probably do so in a way that would keep the control room from knowing it until it was too late. Hell, I could do that.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “What’s your opinion of Thomason?”

“He’s a good engineer. Ex-Navy nuke, like a lot of them are. Personality-free zone. Gets along with Petrowska, which takes some doing. Doesn’t socialize much within the plant. Don’t know his politics.”

“Could he have some hidden agenda?”

Ari rubbed his cheeks with both hands while he considered that question. “I suppose he could,” he said, “but I’ve never heard him ranting and raving, not, for instance, like Carl Trask.”

“I still think you should alert your security people,” I said.

He sighed and nodded. “And what, specifically, do I tell them?”

I had a momentary vision of Trask turning a couple of cobras loose in the control room. My arm twinged. “You have stages of threat alert over there, don’t you? Like the airports? Raise the alert level immediately. You don’t have to explain why. Lock the fucking place down for a few days until we can pull the string on Thomason and actually apprehend Trask.”

“We’ve already got the FBI and the NRC crawling up our asses,” he said. “I guess we could throw some more shit in the game.”

“Ari, look: Your plant may be under attack. Two unexplained radiological releases. A dead body in the moonpool. Your physical security director is missing and presumed whacko. I get ambushed in the container port by a guy who has pre-staged facilities-in the junkyard. My partner is a gorp upstairs, courtesy of the same guy who turned a python loose on me. Pretend you’re sitting in front of a congressional committee afterward while a senator recites all that and then asks why nothing was done.”

He put his shiny bald head in his hands and thought about it. “Coming offline unscheduled is a really big deal,” he said between his fingers. “I can lock the place down, as you put it, but if they’re after the moonpool, that wouldn’t affect the reactor side.”

“Suppose the moonpool is a diversion?” I said. “Is the NRC looking at the reactor side? The Bureau? Anybody? Or is everybody focused on the moonpool?”

He looked at me from between splayed fingers. “Fu-u-u-u-ck,” he said.

Then he got out his cell phone. Ignoring all the signs about using cell phones in the hospital, he placed a call. He identified himself, but didn’t give his phone number, and then made them call him back. Then he asked for the supervisory engineer in the primary control room.

“Hal, this is Ari Quartermain. This is an emergency communication. I have made an official determination that the reactor system is temporarily unsafe. I direct that you inform the grid operator that Helios is going offline. Once the generator hall comes off the grid, then I direct that you execute a deliberate reactor scram. I am ready to give you the authentication code word.”

He listened for a moment, looking over at me with a grave expression.

“That’s right. Make the appropriate log entries.” A pause. “Yes, of course I will take full responsibility, but do it now. There is an inside security threat to the RCS.”

He listened some more. “No, do not wait. Tell the grid operations center they have five minutes to adjust the load. If they protest, tell them you’re going to scram in six minutes. They can handle it. They won’t want to, but they can. Let me know when you’re ready for the code word.”

He listened, then put his hand over the phone. “He has to get a safe open,” he told me. “Two-man rule and all that.”

“Can he object, or go over your head?” I asked.

Ari shook his head. “He’s a nuke. This is a certified emergency procedure. My phone has a unique caller ID symbol that confirms it’s me. There are two code words, actually, one for duress, and one which means he has to do what I say.” He turned back to the phone.

“I am ready to proceed,” he said. He waited, and then said, “No,” and then spoke a single word. He waited. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll inform the director.”

He hung up and looked over at me. “Now the real fun begins,” he said. “And this time, Mr. Private Investigator, you’re going to get to play.”

A weary-looking nurse in blue scrubs came into the waiting area, frowned at Ari’s cell phone, and then called my name. Her name tag had an ICU logo.

“Your friend, Mr. Bell, is semiconscious,” she said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s no one home.”

I digested that announcement for a moment. “Will he recover?” I asked.

“We don’t know, Mr. Richter. When I say he’s semiconscious, I mean he’s responsive to stimuli. His hand flinches if we probe a finger with a needle. We hope that Mr. Bell is still down there somewhere. For now, I’d suggest you go home until we contact you. Make sure Admitting has your contact numbers. Is Mr. Bell married?”

“Yes, to a trial attorney, up in Triboro.”

“Terrific,” she said. “Give that information to Admitting as well, please. She should come down here.”

I did as she had asked, and called Alicia, Pardee’s wife, myself, to tell her what had happened. She said she’d be down first thing in the morning after she’d set up care for the kids.

I stopped by the pharmacy to fill some scrips of my own. “I need a shower and some sleep,” I told Ari. “People in there were keeping their distance.”

“Yeah, you’re a bit funky this evening.”

“You should smell the snake,” I said.

“I believe I do.”

“But we’re not done yet, are we.”

“Nope. We have to go see the Man.”

“We.”

“Don’t make me say it.”

We drove in separate vehicles directly to the admin building. I left the mutts in the Suburban and followed Ari into the building. The plant director and two other worried-looking managers were waiting for Ari. Behind the admin building, the huge green buildings of Helios looked just the same. The only thing missing was the subdued roar of the condenser cooling-water tailrace. Since the generators weren’t running, they weren’t pulling lebenty thousand gallons of cooling water a minute in from the river anymore. Otherwise you couldn’t tell.

I’d been doing a slow burn ever since leaving the hospital. I made a mental note to stop worrying about gathering evidence of whatever outrages Trask and his henchman were contemplating. If I found him before the Bureau did, there wasn’t going to be any need for evidence. I’d rousted Tony to tell him what had happened, and he’d immediately said he’d be back in the morning. Mindful of the oblique hint Trask had given me, I asked him to stay in Triboro and to pull the string hard on Allie Gardner’s family background. I wanted him to get to her personnel file from the sheriff’s office. He thought he could con someone into helping him out.