“It’s cold!” he said.
“Not cold,” Paige said, “just unheated. There’s a difference.”
Craig shivered and stroked across the pool, generating body heat before his skin could grow numb. “I’d sure like to know the difference before my brain freezes over.”
“You’re a wimp,” Paige said. She swam briskly toward the other side of the pool.
He followed her, feeling his body adjust to the temperature as he kept moving. Under the warm noon sunshine he found after a few moments that it wasn’t so unpleasant after all. Craig didn’t need to admit that fact, though.
“Is this torture part of your training for the Security Department?” Craig said, coming alongside her and looking her in the eyes. She had tied back her sandy hair with a rubber band, and the wetness had streaked it a darker brown. She continued to swim, an easy gliding motion across the water.
“Security?” Paige answered, raising her eyebrows. “I don’t work for them.”
Craig looked puzzled. “I thought you were my security escort.”
She shook her head, splashing water. “Not me! I work for the Protocol Office. I’m Lab liaison. I spent four years here as a technical editor, then moved to the Visitor’s Center, got into Public Relations. Over the course of my assignments I picked up all kinds of background on how Lawrence Livermore works — so I’m in charge of escorting VIPs around the site.”
“VIPs like me, you mean?”
“Fishing for a compliment?”
Craig stroked to keep up with her. “Actually I was swimming for one.”
“Well, if you want to earn points with me,” Paige said, “you can at least close your mouth when you stare at my swimsuit, kay-O? Don’t you have a girlfriend or something, since you’re a big impressive FBI agent and all?”
Her bluntness took Craig aback, and he let her swim to the tile wall before he stroked to catch up with her. “Sorry, Paige, it’s just that… ” Then he raised his right hand out of the water. “Oh forget it, no excuses. Guilty as charged.
“And to answer your question: No, I don’t have a girlfriend. Had one for a couple of years. She was named Trish, went to Stanford medical school. I thought everything was just fine between us, but then she got her degree, got an offer out at Johns Hopkins, and suddenly went through a pre-midlife crisis.” He rattled off the facts like Jack Webb summarizing a Dragnet case. “Changed her name to Patrice and moved to the East Coast where I hear she’s now bringing in about a hundred thousand a year.” He sighed. “Which comes out to about two dollars an hour, judging from the amount of time she spends at the hospital.”
At the shallow end of the pool a swimming lesson had started. A group of young children splashed and squealed, while their instructor seemed in love with his high-pitched whistle.
Hanging onto the smooth wall of the pool, Craig caught himself and swallowed. “I generally make it a policy not to talk about old girlfriends, especially not with another lady present.”
Paige eyed him, and her deep blue eyes seemed like polished sapphires in contrast to the color of the swimming pool. “Is that an FBI rule, part of your training?”
Craig shook his head. “No, just common sense.”
The line of conversation made him uncomfortable, though, and he tried to steer toward a safer subject. “So… I’ve been thinking about the case.” His clumsy diversion was so blatant that Paige blinked at him in disbelief.
“I went to see Aragon at his home again last night,” Craig pushed on. “He’s still on a lot of pain killers, but he made the connection right away in his mind when I told him that Michaelson had died from a fatal dose of HF — the same acid that had been spilled all over his own hands.
“You should have seen how defensive he became. I get the impression Aragon is usually a mellow sort of guy, always wants to be friends with everyone, disregards problems and conflicts… but as soon as he put together in his mind that he might be a murder suspect, he started pointing those bandaged fingers as hard as he could.”
Paige frowned. Together they slowly swam toward the shallow end of the pool. “Who did he blame?”
“Well, Aragon says Gary Lesserec should be our prime suspect. Michaelson died in the VR chamber after all, and Lesserec’s the one who spends most of his time there.”
Paige reached shallow enough water to stand up. She waded over to the steps. “Not too convincing,” she said.
Craig followed her. “Well, he pointed out something I didn’t know before, though. Apparently Michaelson stole a bunch of Lesserec’s ideas, took them as his own when he pitched his International Verification Initiative. Lesserec claims he just wants to work on the project, that Michaelson could have the glory and the controversy. But Aragon doesn’t think Lesserec was satisfied with that after all.”
“And there’s that memo in Michaelson’s desk, posting Lesserec’s position,” Paige reminded him. “I wonder if Lesserec even knew about it?”
She climbed out of the pool and stood glistening and dripping in the sunshine. Craig stared at how the droplets played on the ripples of her back. Paige turned and furrowed her brow. “Makes sense to consider him a suspect.”
“I have to agree,” Craig said. “But then, I can’t stand Gary Lesserec, and I would take a greater pleasure in finding him guilty than somebody else.”
“Not a very professional attitude,” Paige said.
“Tell me about it. So, Lesserec had access to the VR chamber, and we know Aragon was somehow in contact with hydrofluoric acid — but Lesserec was also doing prep work in the Plutonium Facility. And someone named Diana is leaving threatening messages on Michaelson’s answering machine.”
“The plot thickens,” Paige said.
“And time grows short,” Craig answered. “I want to check out those places around the site Michaelson visited before he died. Can I get in to them today?”
Craig stood beside her, shivering, as Paige handed him a towel. In the other corner of the shallow end, the group of kids held their noses and practiced putting their faces in the water. The instructor blew his whistle again for the mere effect.
“I don’t know. Let’s discuss it over lunch.” She turned and smiled at him. “Got an FBI expense account?”
CHAPTER 30
“Very stylish,” Craig said as Paige emerged from the women’s dressing room in the Plutonium Facility. “Good to see you in your Sunday best, since you’re working overtime.”
She wore a bright orange lab coat identical to the one he himself had plucked out of the visitor’s bin inside the men’s change room. They both had snugged plastic booties over their street shoes, elastic bands tight against their ankles.
Paige rubbed her knuckles over the worn cotton fabric of the lab smock and smiled at him. “Yeah, I feel like I’m in that old rock group Devo. It’s quite the rage.”
Craig still wore his tie, but he’d left his suit jacket hanging in one of the empty lockers. He smoothed the orange lab coat, self-conscious about his appearance.
“Okay, let’s get you badged in,” Paige said, leading him to the fortress-like portal that allowed access into the Radioactive Materials Area, or RMA.
The place reminded Craig of the old Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall. A PSO waited near a metal detector, another sat inside a bullet-proof glassed-in cage. A radiation counter stood on the other side to make sure no one smuggled fissionable materials out, although Craig couldn’t imagine anyone stupid enough to stick a lump of raw plutonium in a back pocket.
“We’ve got to give you a special dosimeter for this building, a Nuclear Accident Dosimeter,” Paige said as the guard by the metal detector drew two black plastic rectangles from a box.