Kevin Anderson - Lethal Exposure

A candystriper walked by with a cart bearing plastic-wrapped gifts, flowers, chocolates, and stuffed animals. The intercom broke in repeatedly, calling the names of doctors or stating nonsensical phrases; to Craig, it sounded like a conversation during the old CB radio craze in the 1970s.

He continued to wait, but June remained quiet on the other end of the line. He had experienced her cold, silent treatment before when she didn’t have a counterargument for him but still didn’t want to surrender the issue. Apparently, she thought that if she remained quiet long enough, the bothersome agent would give up.

But not this time. Craig could dish out the silent treatment as well as June could. In fact, many of his relationship problems with Trish LeCroix had stemmed from his not talking to her often enough. In this circumstance, he could use that character flaw to his advantage.

“All right, dammit,” June finally said. “You win. Give me the hospital’s fax number. I’ll transmit the list to you as soon as I get it. I can’t just look them up in a Rolodex, you know. I’m going to have to call in a lot of favors.”

“They’ll be favors well spent, June,” he assured her. After giving her the med center’s fax number, he hung up.

But as he turned away from the phones, another thought occurred to him. If Dumenco had walked a real razor’s edge, doing work but trying not to reveal too much, the secret police would have watched him-but they would never have tried to kill him in the first place. And certainly not in a slow, lingering death like radiation exposure. It gave him too much chance to talk.

The assassin Jackson had shot couldn’t be the one who had engineered the fatal accident. As Dumenco had pointed out, the Fermilab incident was caused by someone extremely knowledgeable about the inner workings of the accelerator, how to cause a fluctuation in the Tevatron, which would lead to an emergency beam dump.

Craig let out a quiet groan. He was exactly back where he had started in the first place.

Thursday, 6:10 p.m.

Fox RiverMedicalCenter

Leaning against the door frame of Dumenco’s room, Trish looked up at Craig as he returned from his phone call. Her sepia eyes were surrounded by a corona of red. “I haven’t felt this hopeless since Chernobyl.”

“Is he going to make it through the night?” Craig asked.

“Maybe, maybe not. Human endurance is not a predictable quantity. It’s just everything else on top of that-two assassination attempts, the attack on you and Jackson, your friend Goldfarb shot.” She shook her head. “I know I’m the one who asked you to look into this suspicious accident, but sometimes I wonder if I should have left things well enough alone, let Georg die peacefully rather than introducing all this chaos.”

“But doesn’t your PR-Cubed want to use him as a poignant example, a poster boy against the hazards of radiation?” Craig couldn’t keep the edge of sarcasm out of his voice. Trish had a penchant for tilting at windmills, and he knew that she had certainly found her birds of a feather in the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research.

She adjusted her glasses. “Sure, they want to talk about him, but nobody else has bothered to come in and talk to him. The PR-Cubed is more interested in their ideals than in the real people-I see a lot of that now.”

Craig folded his arms while she spoke. She did look worn out. It reminded him very much of the way she had looked right before she packed all her belongings and drove cross-country to Johns Hopkins. Devastated from working the summer near Chernobyl, Trish had decided to specialize in treating radiation injuries. And she couldn’t do it in California.

That was when she had left him, calling herself Patrice instead of Trish… though Craig never could remember to call her by the right name. She didn’t seem to notice much.

Craig reached out to squeeze her shoulder. Trish sighed again, exhausted. “Why don’t you get some rest?” he said.

“How can you stand to live this way, Craig? Is this how things are for you now? Always unresolved, always another clue to chase?”

Craig shrugged. “Pretty much. You get used to it.”

Trish walked away toward a doctor’s lounge where she could rest.

As soon as she rounded a corner, Craig slipped through Dumenco’s door. He heard a cough and saw a feeble hand wave him inside.

The Ukrainian lay on his side, his back to the door. A light in the corner burned low, and outside the window a gibbous moon dominated the night sky. His technical papers lay in a disheveled stack, within reach, near the photos of his family. Two intravenous lines ran into Dumenco’s arm. His eyes were hollow, his limbs pale and looking like they could snap in two if he tried to lift any weight. He appeared to have aged greatly in only the last hour.

“Agent Kreident,” Dumenco said, with a forced smile that showed bleeding gums. “I would offer you another game of chess… but there isn’t enough time.” His face suddenly looked even more stricken. “I’m not going to have enough time, am I?”

Craig pulled up a chair and scooted close to the bed. “You have enough time to help me solve this case.”

Dumenco breathed in shallow gasps, as if he had great difficulty merely forcing air into his lungs. He didn’t answer.

“I need to know what you’ve been holding back. What you tell me will stay with me. I promise.”

“There… is nothing more.”

Craig waited. Moments passed, and Dumenco’s eyes flicked away, unable to hold his gaze. Craig didn’t move, didn’t say a word.

“There is no reason for you to stay,” Dumenco whispered.

Still, Craig remained silent. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, determined to wait the man out. Finally, he said, “I know about your family. I know what they mean to you, and I know the terms of your defection. I can find them for you. Bring them here.”

Dumenco closed his eyes. “My poor, sweet Luba. I cannot forgive myself for putting her through all this. But if I had left her and the children in the Ukraine…” His voice trailed off as he slowly shook his head. Tears welled in his hemorrhaged eyes as he opened them. “You do not know what it is like, to be so close to your family, yet be allowed to see them only once a year. The girls… they need a father, someone to tell them how beautiful they have become. And my son-” He paused.

“I understand why you had to do this, Dr. Dumenco.”

Dumenco struggled to an elbow. His expression, vacant only moments before, now held a new life. He reached out a bony hand to grasp Craig’s suit jacket. “Promise to let me see them one more time. Now that my pursuer is dead, you must bring my family here. Let me see Luba and my children.”

“I am already trying,” said Craig. “I’ll get your family here.” In fact, he expected a response from June Atwood any time now.

Dumenco searched Craig’s eyes for any hint of betrayal; seemingly satisfied, he relaxed back on his pillow. His cracked lips moved in a wistful smile as though he were reminiscing about a time special to him. “For years I worked at Armazas 16…” he paused, as if unsure if he should go on.

Craig nodded, encouraging him. “The Soviet Union did not even acknowledge the existence of that facility until a few years ago.”

Dumenco threw him a glance, then his eyes softened. “Yes, you of all people would know. Armazas 16 was our premier nuclear weapons design laboratory. It was an exciting place, and an exciting time. We were lavishly funded, held in high esteem. Without its massive nuclear arsenal, the Soviet Union would have been no different from any other Third World country. Only bigger, and poorer.”