Ridley Pearson - Killer View

“I signed one of those,” Hillabrand said, indicating the document. “I can’t go any further unless you join the club.”

“I’m not a big one for clubs,” Walt said. “The last thing I joined was Costco.”

“Just the same.”

“Why would I ever agree to sign this?” Walt asked. “I have ninety-nine percent of this in the bag. I don’t need this.”

“To know the truth. Your precious truth.” Hillabrand shifted in front of the fire. “And so I can tell you everything I know about your missing friend.”

Walt felt his face flush. “But signing this prevents me from acting upon it.”

“No, I don’t think that will be the case. I can almost promise you’ll be able to use that information. But one thing ties to the next, and… there you have it.”

“I don’t have anything.”

“But you will. Some will be prosecutable, some won’t.”

“Let me guess which part won’t,” Walt said.

“I understand how it’s in your nature to be suspicious. Rightly so. I’m not asking you to be someone you can’t be. And I’m not even asking you to trust me because I believe at this stage that’s beyond your instincts. Am I right?”

“You think I wouldn’t sign this even if it would mean saving Mark Aker?” Walt asked rhetorically. “You think I’m too…suspicious… proud… whatever?”

“ Distrustful is the word, I think.”

“I’m certainly that.”

“It’s not that I can help you with Aker. Not really. But I believe it might help you to know what wasn’t done, who isn’t behind it, because sometimes that can lead one in the right direction. As an investigator, you must understand that better than most.”

“Yes, we call that mis information,” Walt said sarcastically.

“But it’s not, you see? Once you sign that NDA, I won’t have to lie to you any longer.”

It was difficult for Walt to see Hillabrand as the victim of the government the way Hillabrand wanted him to. The portrayal seemed unlikely and insincere. He wanted to believe he could find the truth on his own-that he already had most of it-but the truth could take time, and Mark Aker had all but run out of it.

He pulled a pen out of his pocket and signed the document.

“Hand it to me, please,” Hillabrand said, taking no chances Walt might try to destroy it, burn it in the fireplace, once he had the truth.

Hillabrand carefully folded the document and slipped it into his suit coat’s inside pocket. He then stared at Walt and Walt stared back.

“It wasn’t a spill,” he said. “And it wasn’t my company’s money.”

“You paid off the ranchers to cover their losses, the same way Danny Cutter was made a similar offer.”

“My company made those arrangements, but the money comes from the taxpayers.”

“If not a spill, what, leakage? Seepage? Or what?”

“You’re still so determined to see me in a particular light you can’t quite wrap your mind around it, can you? What if I’m considered innocent until proven guilty? That would be a novelty.”

He was right: Walt had seen Semper, and Hillabrand in particular, as the perpetrators. He’d had little choice but to do so. The INL director’s rebuffs had been the icing on the cake. But now the existence of the NDA made itself felt: perhaps no one had agreed to meet with him because they’d been bound by the same contract.

“Sabotage,” Walt mumbled, stunned by the way the events suddenly looked so different when considered in this light.

“A domestic terrorist attack,” Hillabrand said, his voice low, his words carefully chosen. “Not a bunch of crazy Muslims. A bunch of crazy rednecks.”

Walt felt a sickening dread in his belly. “The Samakinn.” Walt recalled the alert that had been sent.

“You’ve heard of them?”

“Only recently.”

“They targeted a well-secured facility with the remnants of forty-two reactors spread over an area the size of Manhattan,” Hillabrand said. “They attacked an outlying building and caused a rupture. Thankfully, small, but it’s still radioactive material. We think it was accomplished by four people, maybe less. This comes at a time when this administration is in back-channel negotiations with Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran on their nuclear policies. We’re trying to dictate policy in order to control world safety. The last thing this administration needs is to be seen as a government that can’t secure its own fissionable material. When the breach was discovered, the administration informed us this would not go public. Any blowback would be covered by them. Thankfully, it happened in a mostly uninhabited area. The substrata contamination flowed north into the Pahsimeroi. It wasn’t until the livestock became ill that we even understood the degree of the sabotage. We’ve been working around the clock to repair the damage ever since. Thankfully, the few ranchers affected are patriots. They signed the same NDA that you did, took some money for their troubles, and kept their mouths shut. Two things we didn’t see coming.”

“Mark Aker and Trilogy water,” Walt said.

“We should have known about Trilogy. That was a horrible oversight on our part. We didn’t even know that bottling facility existed. Very stupid of us.”

“The ranchers had contacted the vets before you got to them.”

“Aker saw how sick the livestock was. He was in the midst of trying to help when we had to ask the ranchers to turn him away. They made excuses that they’d switched to a local vet. And that might have stuck if the local vet had been made to play along. But Aker must have run into him, or followed up with him, and the lie was exposed. And Aker came looking.”

“But then Randy Aker was your doing,” Walt said.

“My people say no. Perhaps to protect me, but they say it wasn’t us. Our best guess is that it has something to do with the Samakinn. They left a note, long since in the hands of the FBI, a rambling manifesto about the wrongs of the country. They want their message heard. You know the drill.”

“And by covering up any news of the leak… the sabotage,” he corrected, “you’ve pissed them off.”

“A dozen miscreants don’t dictate how this country is run. They called some newspapers to make their claim. We fielded some calls as a result. We denied any mishap, as did the administration. No harm, no foul. Another group of wackos making unsubstantiated claims. No damaging articles ever ran. The Samakinn blogged about the spill on the Internet, but without any kind of proof…”

“Which is where I come in,” Walt said. “Why should I believe any of this? An NDA isn’t proof of anything.”

“No, it’s not.” He paused. “I thought you might go there.” He walked over to the office door and opened it, murmuring to someone on the other side. A young woman entered, and glanced at Walt as she crossed behind the senator’s desk. She spoke on the phone for several minutes while working the senator’s computer. Walt and Hillabrand waited in silence.

When the aide spoke, Walt thought it was to him. But it was, in fact, to the computer.

“Are we ready?” she said.

“We’re good on this end,” a voice returned.

Hillabrand moved to the door and waited for the aide, who motioned for Walt to take the chair.

She said, “You don’t have to do anything. Just sit.”

Walt moved around the desk to see the face of a twentysomething man on the screen.

“Sheriff Fleming?”

“Yes,” Walt said, sliding into the comfortable chair.

“Stand by for Vice President Shaler.”

The man vacated the screen. Walt saw only a set of drapes and some framed photographs. The ski mountain in the nearest photo was all too familiar to him.