“Moira Maxwell is the resident campus Bolshevik,” she said. “The UNC system is a liberal, left-leaning establishment, to say the least, but Moira Maxwell is a one-off. She makes even the professional liberals squirm. Wa-ay out there.”
“All talk, or is she capable of being a doer?”
Mary Ellen had to think about that. “She’s a modern revolutionary, which means she lurks on the Web instead of in dingy Parisian garrets.”
“A virtual Bolshie.”
“Well, by that I mean she doesn’t burn underwear down in the campus Union, or picket the dean’s office and chant the “Internationale.” Please God you’re not mixed up with that nutcase?”
“Better that you don’t know,” I said. “Not romantic, if that’s what you’re asking.”
She laughed. “Got that right, Mr. Investigator. Reportedly, Mad Moira doesn’t keep boy friends.”
She did in that detention center, I wanted to say, but held my peace. “It’s possible she’s involved in the same matter I’m looking into,” I said. “I guess what I really wanted to know is whether she has the courage of her convictions, or if the Red Square stuff is all about getting attention.”
“She’s called Mad Moira by the faculty people who know her,” Mary Ellen said.
“Mad as in nuts, or mad as in angry?”
“Both,” she said. She hesitated. “These are the calls that scare me, Cam.”
“I understand,” I said. “Stick with your plan, lovely lady. I’m probably not going to change.”
“Nor should you,” she said. “Doing this stuff, well, that’s just you.”
But not you, I thought sadly. “I’m still going to miss you, even when you’re Mrs. Professor.”
“Yes,” she said. “Me, too. Good-bye, Cam. Please, keep safe.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I mean, what could possibly go wrong?”
I thought I heard a small laugh, but then she was gone.
Creeps and Missed-it Mary came through the deli’s doors like Batman and Robin, stopping most of the subdued conversations among the locals, who had been discussing last night’s atomic panic. They were both dressed up in metallic-looking Bureau suits, and they appeared very official indeed. They saw me and walked over to my table, while the locals adjusted their places as if they anticipated gunplay or some other drama. I’d stuffed two, count ’em, two apricot Danish down my gullet, along with enough coffee to restore both stereo vision and sequential sentences. I told them the Danish were terrific, and suggested they get themselves some coffee and then we could talk.
“Your Bureau is incredibly busy this morning, Mr. Richter,” Creeps said, slipping off his sunglasses. He looked a little ragged around the edges. Missed-it nodded emphatically. Very busy, yes, sir, you’re certainly right about that.
“You have breakfast yet, Special Agents?”
Mary looked over at Creeps. He said no, and then Mary said no.
“The earth will no doubt continue to rotate if you do, so: I say again-why don’t you guys go get some coffee and Danish, come back to the table, and we’ll talk like civilized people often do.”
They stared at me for a moment and then, amazingly, did what I suggested.
Once they were seated, I asked them if everything was reasonably secure out at Helios. Creeps said yes; they’d isolated the moonpool, and the engineers had taken the reactors into local control and shut them both down before there were any further excursions.
“Excursions?” I asked.
“Nuke-speak,” Creeps said. “When the power levels in the reactor rise or fall out of ordered limits.”
“Or, in other words, when the engineers no longer have control of the reactors.”
“Just so.” He looked around nervously to see if the civilians were listening. They were, raptly.
“And that actually happened?”
“I believe so, yes. Fortunately, the, um, individual who penetrated the control network did not know what she was doing. The danger was that she had the network, and the engineers in the control room did not.”
“Did radioactive water get into the county water system?”
Creeps was lifting his coffee cup to his mouth when I asked that question. He stopped. I admired his self-control in not looking down into the cup. Then he went ahead and took a sip. Missed-it was looking at her cup as if she had seen a roach operating at periscope depth, but when Creeps took a sip, she dutifully did, too. They’re big on loyalty in our Bureau.
“It got out of the plant and all the way to the first water tower, about two miles away. The system is engineered to recognize back-pressure in the lines, and the primary supply valves shut themselves. When the back-pressure continued to build up, relief valves lifted and the water was diverted out onto the grounds of the water tower.”
“Lovely,” I said. “They’ll never have to cut that grass again.”
“Well, that’s preferable to decontaminating the entire county and possibly the municipal water system,” he said. “Dr. Quartermain was able to tell the response team how to shut down the moonpool’s internal pumps. Now then: Would you care to recite your evening’s activities?”
I did. They just listened, not taking notes, which told me I’d be asked to go through this all again downtown with some office scribes. When I was finished, I became suddenly aware that the entire cafe had gone silent. Apparently, everyone, including the cooks and the waitstaff, had been listening to my tale of horrors from the night before. Creeps looked around the room as if realizing for the first time that the great unwashed public was now privy to Bureau secrets. He cleared his throat and suggested that we reconvene in the Wilmington office.
“Can do,” I said, “but first I need to check on Tony Martinelli and Pardee Bell. Can you guys spare me a couple of hours, and then I’ll come over?”
That seemed to work for them, and they left. Missed-it had her notebook out as she went through the door, writing furiously as Creeps dictated something to her.
“That was you, called in the warning last night?” an older man sitting nearby asked. The pair of pagers on his belt and a small radio on the table suggested he was an EMT. He had the look of a man who needed more sleep.
“Yep, that was me,” I said. “I’m sorry for all the uproar that must have caused, but I figured better safe than sorry. Did that big siren mean what I thought it did?”
Several heads were nodding. “Everybody goes inside and stays inside,” another man recited. “Close all the windows. Bring in the pets. Turn on the weather radios and wait for instructions. Don’t go outside until that siren stops.”
“Don’t forget the last part,” someone said.
“Oh, yeah,” the older guy said. “If the siren goes steady, then go into an interior room, sit down on the floor, put your head between your knees, and-”
“Kiss your ass good-bye!” the rest of the crowd shouted in unison.
“Well, y’all dodged a bullet last night,” I said. “The first thing that happened was a diversion. The real attack was on the reactor control systems. But they got some warning, too.”
It was clear I could have told my tale several times over, but I decided it was time to go. When I tried to pay my bill, however, the pastry guy said it was on the house. I thanked him and went outside. Out of habit, I was still looking around for the mutts, but now there was just some local traffic out on Main pushing along under another clear, cool November day on the Carolina coast. I looked for my Suburban and then realized it was still parked over in the woods next to the outlet canal. I guess I knew that; I was more worn out than I’d known. I started walking.
When I got back to the house, I found Sergeant McMichaels sitting on the front porch, watching a dozen seagulls harass some beachcombers across the street. His police cruiser was parked out front. He might have been asleep when I started up the walkway; he looked like he could use it, too. There was a plastic bottle of drinking water sitting on the porch table next to him, and my Suburban was parked in front of his cruiser.