Special Agent Schultz, in charge of investigating the crater, told Goldfarb he was welcome to take a second look, but Schultz assured him that they had already been through each one of the substations with bomb-sniffing dogs and nitrogen detectors. They had found no evidence of explosives, no sabotage-only incomprehensible diagnostics and technical equipment. The blockhouses didn’t look as if they were used too often, and they had little strategic importance, as far as Schultz could see.
All that was well and good, Goldfarb thought, but he wanted to make up his own mind. The glassy crater itself offered no evidence for him, no leads, but he made his way to one of the other beam-sampling substations to see if there might be an overlooked connection with Dr. Dumenco’s accident. Schultz wasn’t even thinking about the deadly radiation exposure.
The unobtrusive concrete structures stood at regular intervals around the raised dirt berm above the Main Particle Accelerator Ring. Tall brown grass filled the middle of the giant circle, dotted by occasional ponds and the dark forms of distant buffalo grazing within the high-tech enclosure.
Goldfarb trudged along the service road, pushing his hands into his jacket pocket; despite the watery sun poking through the clouds, the air retained the chill of late fall. He supposed the substations would be locked, since they contained delicate diagnostics and complex sampling systems. Later, he could always arrange to get a key from Paige Mitchell. For now, he just wanted the look and feel of one of the places, to get into the mindset of someone working inside… or hiding inside, plotting some sort of sabotage.
Since Fermilab paid little attention to security or accountability, they had no records of employee whereabouts during the times of interest. No one had been scheduled in that substation at the time of the blast, but since the energy burst had vaporized everything, they wouldn’t find even a bone fragment if a saboteur had been inside. But no personnel had been reported missing, either.
Too bad the explosion of an empty blockhouse gained all the attention instead of a man dying at the hospital. Perhaps that was for the best, though-the media would go all weak-kneed at the story of Dumenco’s lethal radiation overdose. Even Trish LeCroix’s hardliner group, Physicians Against Radiation, or whatever it was called, would make a circus out of the tragedy. But at least Craig’s former girlfriend was keeping the situation quiet, and he respected her for that.
As he approached the nearest substation, Goldfarb made a mental note to stop in at the gift shop to pick up souvenirs for his two daughters. The only way they forgave him for being gone on FBI business so often was that he brought them tiny keepsakes. The one time he’d forgotten, Megan and Gwendolyn had heaped him with massive guilt unsurpassed even by the efforts of his own Jewish mother. Goldfarb had vowed never to forget again.
Since it was Chicago, he thought he might get something nice for Julene, too. His wife always worried about him when he was on a case, paranoid that he’d get hurt in the line of duty. Last year, during an investigation of a Nevada militia group, he’d been caught in an explosion and suffered a broken pinkie-but Julene had fretted so much that it seemed as if he had become a lifetime paraplegic. Goldfarb worried about getting hurt more for her sake than for his own.
Standing outside a locked and nondescript concrete building didn’t seem terribly hazardous. The squarish pillbox appearance of the beam-sampling substation made it look like a bunker for decommissioned military ordnance. Conduits ran from the substation at strategic points to sample the energetic flow, diagnostic probes dipping into the uniformity of the currents. The sampling stations were simple enough, just data-recording devices in austere equipment racks, with pipes that ran across to the huge ring of the accelerator buried under the flat Illinois prairie.
Goldfarb pondered the whirlwind of high-energy particles, trillions of electron volts sweeping clockwise underneath the bucolic landscape. When the counter-rotating beams collided, physicists like Georg Dumenco and Nels Piter studied the shrapnel of subatomic particles.
But one of the blockhouses had vanished in a flash of light on the very night Dumenco had received his lethal exposure. There must be some connection. He just had to figure out what it was.
Goldfarb walked around the concrete blockhouse, crunching across the uneven gravel, but he found nothing interesting, only signs announcing no trespassing and DANGER-HIGH VOLTAGE.
When he rounded the last corner of the blockhouse, he saw that the heavy metal blast door hung ajar, its padlock dangling on the hasp. Goldfarb stopped, cocking his eyebrows. This substation should have been sealed, like the others. Perhaps Schultz and his bomb-sniffing dogs had been careless. Maybe a technician or a custodian had opened up the place for routine maintenance. He was in luck. This way he’d have a chance to look inside.
He held the badge and ID wallet in his left hand as he pulled the door wide enough for him to enter. It was heavy and squeaked on its hinges, an iron plate that might have come from an old battleship hull. He grunted with the effort.
Inside, he saw two naked bulbs burning inside wire cages. The unfinished ceiling was strung with pipes, wires, and cable-trays leading down to a bank of old computer monitors, oscilloscopes, and strip-chart recorders. He smelled tobacco smoke, as if someone had just snuffed out a cigarette. As he stepped into the shadows, the sudden difference in light was enough to blind him. He blinked, holding up his badge wallet.
“This is the FBI,” he called. “Identify yourself.”
He heard a rapid movement, a sucked intake of breath, and a gasped “Oh, shit!” A metal swivel chair slid aside, rattling its casters.
Goldfarb instantly became alert. “Wait a minute,” he said. His eyesight was still too murky for him to make out many details, but he did see a figure, a man with dark hair and a goatee wearing a lab technician’s smock. The figure staggered backward from some kind of apparatus hooked up below the oscilloscopes and computer monitors.
“Federal agent,” Goldfarb said, “I just want to ask you a few questions about-”
But the other man wasn’t in the mood for conversation. He lunged toward Goldfarb, brandishing something heavy and metal in his hand. He uttered no outcry, no roar of challenge: he simply attacked.
“Whoa, wait a minute!” Goldfarb shouted, but the man hurled the object-a wrench he had been using on the diagnostics. The wrench flew with the precision of a circus knife thrower and struck Goldfarb high on the chest near his right shoulder. His arm instantly felt an explosion of pain, then went numb. He heard a crack of his collar bone, then the ball joint in his shoulder erupted in white internal fire from his nerve endings.
Goldfarb ducked aside while reaching behind him with his left hand. He dropped his badge wallet and ID, fumbling awkwardly for his weapon in the pancake holster beneath his belt. His right hand was useless, so he’d have to do the best he could, shoot left-handed.
The suspect’s eyes carried a feral glint of terror and desperation, like a cornered rat. The man wasn’t thinking about his actions, merely acting on keyed-up instinct. Goldfarb had stumbled upon something-and this man didn’t seem ready to surrender; he wasn’t even cowed by the presence of the FBI.
The man charged forward, head down. Goldfarb got his hand on the butt of his pistol and started to tug it free, though that sent another wave of pain through his broken shoulder. He clenched his teeth, working his finger around the trigger guard.
“Stop!” he commanded.
With a fleeting thought, a tiny scolding voice in his head told him how remarkable it was that he always managed to get himself into these situations.