Kevin Anderson - Lethal Exposure

“Craig?” She recovered much more quickly than he had expected. “As in Special Agent Craig Kreident of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“That’s me,” he said.

She finally laughed. “What do you mean, do I want company? Are you here in Chicago? Did you come to investigate the explosion? We’ve had your FBI Evidence Response Teams crawling all over here since Monday morning, not to mention our own people from the Department of Energy.”

“It’s a… a related case. Maybe. One of your scientists received a lethal radiation exposure Sunday night. Ben Goldfarb and I are heading out to Fermilab right now, from Aurora. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Dr. Dumenco? But that was just an accident. The DOE made that call right away, otherwise the whole lab would have been shut down.” Her voice became stern. “That’s not just a PR line, Craig. As far as I know, it’s the total truth.”

“I’d rather not talk about it on an unsecured channel,” Craig said. “Just give me directions on how to find you, and we’ll discuss it at the site.”

Before she hung up, Paige said, “It’ll be good to see you again, Craig.”

“Same here,” he answered, then ended the call. He smiled to himself. Glancing over, he saw Goldfarb staring at him with a broad grin on his face.

Craig snapped, “What are you looking at?”

The main entrance to the giant accelerator laboratory lay on Kirk Road and Pine Street, where the landscape opened up to a broad, flat expanse of grasses more than waist-high, dead and brown with the snap of autumn. A few surrealistic, modern-architecture buildings seemed to spring up out of the prairie.

The Fermilab site looked more like a college campus than a government research facility. It reminded him of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, where he had first met Paige-but without the ever-present security.

As Goldfarb drove to the main entrance, they passed under a bizarre metal sculpture, a three-span arch that straddled the road. Craig stared out the window, noting how the blue-painted arches looked extremely off-balance but perfectly symmetrical when viewed from directly beneath.

“Modern art,” muttered Goldfarb.

“It was ‘modern’ in the sixties,” Craig answered. “Now I think you’re supposed to call it ‘high-tech nostalgic’.”

Passing the white-lettered blue sign-UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, FERMILAB, OPERATED BY UNIVERSITIES RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, INC.-Goldfarb headed toward the main sixteen-story administrative building, Wilson Hall, which stood like a monolith on the flat terrain.

“At least we won’t have to go through security procedures to reach the scene of the crime,” Goldfarb observed as he approached the single tall building. A ring of colorful flags fluttered from poles, as if they had been transplanted from the United Nations building.

“We haven’t proven it’s a crime,” Craig replied. “And technically, we don’t even have a murder. ”

“Yet,” said Goldfarb.

In front of the cathedral-inspired architecture of Wilson Hall, a stainless-steel obelisk rose thirty feet out of a reflecting pond, sleek and streamlined with mathematical precision, like the gnomon of a gigantic sundial. The admin building itself was composed of two gently sloping concrete towers that curved toward each other as if they were snuggling up. The center gap was framed in glass.

“Looks like we’ve stepped onto a movie set built a few decades ago,” Goldfarb said, craning his head to look through the windshield.

Craig looked around and saw that all of Fermilab’s buildings, experimental structures, and lab complexes carried a militantly modern feel of someone too-consciously trying to make the place look futuristic: all concrete and metal and precise curves.

Goldfarb pulled up in the guest parking area, and they both stepped out of the Taurus. Craig adjusted his sunglasses, straightened his jacket, and combed his hair. He gave Goldfarb a quick warning look before the curly-haired agent could tease him about being meticulous. His attention to personal detail had nothing whatsoever to do with seeing Paige again.

“Her office is on the first floor,” he said, “on the west side.” They trotted upstairs to a concrete courtyard, then through glass doors. The Office of Public Affairs was just off the lobby.

Before they could head to her office, Paige hurried down the corridor toward them. “Hi, Craig!”

In a single, intent glance Craig took in the details of her appearance like a dry sponge doused with water. She wore a tight-fitting raspberry chenille pullover, a trim black skirt, and dark panty hose. Her blond hair had been done up in a French braid.

He waved to her, and she stepped forward to shake hands with Goldfarb before she also greeted Craig formally. Her smile was warm, and her eyes flashed in the bright lights of the lobby as she gently took Craig’s hand. She lingered, and Craig didn’t want her to let go.

Goldfarb cleared his throat; releasing Craig’s hand, Paige became all business again. “In light of your investigation, I made a quick phone call and set up a meeting with Dr. Nels Piter. He’s the Director for High-Energy Physics-the same department Georg Dumenco worked for. He can answer questions about the scientist’s work and show us where the radiation exposure occurred. In the meantime I’ll take you on a quick tour over to the Tevatron.”

“Can we see where the explosion happened, too?” Craig asked. “I really should check in with the agent in charge.”

“Right on the way,” she agreed. She snagged the keys for a government car and led them out to the rear parking lot. A fountain splashed around a rotating, welded metal sculpture of a Moebius strip, flashing the cloud-dimmed sunlight. Small, curved buildings stood spaced symmetrically behind the towering admin building, like giant stereo speakers. Signs on the structures labeled them as Antimatter Storage Rings.

Paige pointed to the sweeping, grass-strewn prairie. Craig saw power lines, trees and farm buildings in the distance, and the thin line of the highway. “From here, you can see a few Fermilab structures around the four-mile ring-the Collider Detector, the Dee-Zero detector, the Feynman Computing Center, as well as some of the concrete blockhouses and beam-sampling substations.” She climbed into the car and adjusted the seat and mirrors as she continued her canned speech.

Nearby, connected to the main underground ring, a large construction site was like a scab on the prairie, earth cleared, big machinery rolling about in the dirt, excavating, moving huge concrete tubes. Craig had read about the adjacent accelerator under construction, the Main Injector, a new loop that would increase the energy of particle collisions. Seeing all the heavy machinery and earth-moving trucks, Craig wondered how such a huge and disruptive project could be compatible with delicate diagnostics and subatomic particle tracings.

“Seems weird to have such a high-tech island in the middle of farm country,” Goldfarb said.

“For the most part, the accelerator is low-impact, environmentally. We’re very conscious around here about taking care of nature. In fact, on our Web Page, the article about Fermilab’s buffalo herd and the tallgrass prairie restoration is longer than any piece about high-energy physics.”

“ Buffalo?” Goldfarb said, buckling his seat belt as she pulled out of the parking lot. “You mean so they can stampede and help some of those particle collisions take place?”

“That’s a lame joke, even for you, Ben,” Craig said.

“The buffalo live in fenced areas on Fermilab property. Recently, some of them have been left to graze in the middle of the circle, right over the accelerator ring- and they don’t even know the difference,” Paige said. She pointed to plastic-wrapped photocopied signs tacked up on temporary wooden stakes. Prairie Harvest - next Saturday !