Craig Kreident #2 Fallout (8 page)

“You can see where we tested different designs for bomb shelters,” PK Dirks said.
 
“For a while it was a status symbol in this country to have your very own bomb shelter.
 
My parents built one when I was a kid.”

“In former Soviet Union,
everyone
had bomb shelter,” Bisovka said, blowing away a cloud of smoke.
 
“But our shelters were also called subway tunnels.”
 
The other Russian team members chuckled.

Ranks and ranks of low structures protruded from the sands — reinforced-concrete domes and rectangular bunkers covered with dirt.
 
Many had collapsed like eggshells, while others remained unscathed decades later.
 

Ursov nodded, his interest finally piqued.
 
“I am curious to see if your successful designs look similar to ours.”

Dirks laughed.
 
“Come on — we can look inside the intact ones.”

Paige’s cellular phone rang again, and she stepped back toward the van, trying to conceal her expression as the rest of the group continued into the abandoned ghost town.
 
A pair of fighter jets roared overhead, streaking low then pulling up in a high-G climb, performing aerial maneuvers that caught the Russians’ attention.
 
They stood outside the rows of crumbling bomb shelter domes, pointing at the criss-crossed contrails of the jets.
 

On her phone, Paige listened to the filtered voice of Madeleine Jenkins, an Undersecretary at the Department of Energy who did not mince words.
 
“It was already an international incident when Nevsky was found dead, but now the State Department is reeling.
 
We’ve got a summit in a couple of days to celebrate the successful completion of this work, to show off our bilateral cooperation.
 
The President is scheduled to meet the team on Friday — what’s he going to say?”
 
She sighed.
 
“If this was a premeditated assassination, is it your belief that the other members of the team may be in danger as well?”

“I’m not sure that’s the case, Madam Undersecretary,” Paige said.
 
“Nevsky was alone in the DAF, and someone may have seen an opportunity.
 
If we keep the other Russians together, there should be no cause for alarm.”

“Nevertheless,” Jenkins said, her rich voice clipped, her words spoken quickly.
 
She carried out her conversation at a Beltway speed, rather than a casual Nevada drawl.
 
“We have spoken directly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
 
Their agent will be working separately from the Secret Service advance team — they’ll keep to the airport, since the President won’t be on the ground more than an hour.”

“The FBI?” Paige said.
 
“I suppose that’s standard procedure.”

“It turns out one of their best investigators is in your area right now.
  
He’s a specialist in high-tech investigations, and I believe you worked with him before on a murder case out at Lawrence Livermore.”

“Craig?” she said, surprised.
 
“I mean, Special Agent Craig Kreident?”

“Let me stress, Ms. Mitchell, that the DOE and the State Department have an extraordinary interest in solving this incident quickly.
 
It would be a matter of great embarrassment both to our own president and to the Russian president if this ruins our scheduled disarmament talks.
 
Do I make myself clear?”

“I understand, Madam Undersecretary, but I’m not a murder investigator —”

Jenkins interrupted, “You are an
expediter
— a people person, a protocol officer.
 
Smooth the way for Agent Kreident.
 
Get him anything he needs and do what you can to keep the Russians happy.
 
And don’t tell anyone we suspect foul play — not yet.”

Paige swallowed, watching as Ursov ducked inside the old bomb shelters.

“I’ll call you again when we have arranged all the details,” Jenkins said.
 
“Go brief the investigator yourself, so we can keep the number of people involved to a minimum.”
 

Overhead the fighter jets streaked northward toward the Nellis Air Force Base.
 
Probably to see the UFOs Doog and his friends believed in
, she thought sourly.
 
She drew another deep, deep breath of the dry desert air.
 
What a day this was turning out to be.

The sleek aircraft vanished into the haze at the horizon.

CHAPTER 8

Tuesday, October 21

4:07 P.M.

Hoover Dam

In the bright afternoon, Craig Kreident stood at the observation towers atop the Hoover Dam, peering down the vast expanse of concrete like the world’s most terrifying ski slope.
 
Traffic rolled steadily behind him; tourists walked from the Visitor’s Center to the observation towers to the gift shop.
 

The area had returned to normal, despite the bustling wrap-up conducted by teams of FBI experts in one of the dam’s administrative meeting rooms, which had been converted into a temporary operations center.

Craig leaned against the railing, still exhausted from his adrenaline hangover.
 
He tapped his fingers on the rail, shuffling from one spot to another, though the spectacular view did not change.
 
He watched investigators moving about far below, combing the buildings for other evidence of sabotage.

It felt good to relax, but a sour feeling lingered in his stomach.
 
In his mind Craig could still see the wild eyes of the bomber as he stepped backward, “I can go to Heaven.”
 
It was never good to have someone killed during a bust.
 
It demonstrated the volatility of his work, the uncertainty that accompanied every law-enforcement situation.
 
Given a simple twist of fate, he himself could be dead instead.

What could he have done differently, what precautions should he have taken?
 
He’d seen that guilt ruin competent investigators, blunt their edges as they worried too much about consequences to make rapid decisions in the line of fire.
 
He had to work on developing internal calluses.

The law classes he’d taken at Stanford had dealt with such issues in esoteric ways — there, the world was black and white, right or wrong, making purely academic sense.
 
Those self-confident professors didn’t have to deal with the gritty world Craig saw; he had realized the difference even when he had worked for a private investigator while putting himself through school.

The last time Craig had let down his guard, during a bust for white-collar crime, the president of a small computer-chip manufacturing firm had committed suicide.
 
Had he been at fault then as well?
 
The tragedy had resulted in a temporary administrative leave, but ultimately Craig had been cleared.
 
And what about this morning?
 

You’re already in dreamland, man. . .

As he stood gathering his thoughts, Mr. Garcia came up to him, removing his yellow hardhat.
 
He ran his fingers through short gray hair.
 
“Agent Kreident, I want to report that one of my workers is missing.”
 
Craig immediately snapped to attention.
 
“He was here this morning when I called the meeting, but I can’t find him now.
 
With all the mess today, I didn’t notice until now.
 
His name is Bryce Connors.”

“You got a glimpse of the guy who took a swan dive into the water,” Craig said.
 
“Could that have been Connors?”

The supervisor shook his head.
 
“No, that guy was tall and skinny.
 
Connors is short, broad shouldered, square jawed, and with very dark hair, the kind that gave him a five o’clock shadow by lunch time.”

Craig remained skeptical.
 
“You don’t think he just got spooked and ran when he heard about the bomb?”

“Spooked?”
 
Garcia laughed weakly.
 
“No — Bryce Connors is the type to spit at an oncoming truck.
 
Not real bright, mind you, but cowardly is not a word I think of when describing him.”

Craig let the words spin through his mind.
 
His foot tapped faster.
 
Even though all the shift employees were accounted for at the time, one of the legitimate workers could have granted the terrorist access, helped him perform the sabotage.
 
“I want Connors’s address,” he said, “and his employee record.”
 
Flustered, the shift supervisor hurried off.

“Hey, Craig!”
 
Another voice drifted from the far end of the sidewalk.
 
Craig turned and spotted Goldfarb.
 
The curly-haired agent held a cup of coffee from the gift shop snackbar, sloshing a few drops as he waved.
 
“Phone call for you down in the temp CC!
 
It’s June Atwood.
 
Says it’s urgent.”

Craig took a last glance at the water rushing past the rocks below, not anxious to talk to his supervisor back in Oakland.
 
A warm breeze ruffled his hair.
 
Goldfarb strode to the unmarked access door leading to the temporary command center.
 
Craig followed, walking stiffly after such a long day.
 

The inside of the dam smelled of lubricants, oil, and grease for the massive generators.
 
They trotted down three flights of stairs to a room crammed with agents, some at laptop computers, others going over pictures of the bomb the EOD team had dismantled under the turbines.
 
A low throb of equipment and conversation hummed in the background.

“Which line?” Craig asked as he headed for the phone.
 
Feeling a pang of hunger, he realized he hadn’t eaten anything since this morning.

“Over there.
 
We’ve set up a STU-3.”
 
Goldfarb pointed with his coffee cup across the room to where Jackson sat next to a portable set.

Jackson held up the receiver, muffling the phone with his hand.
 
“She’s getting antsy.
 
And we all know what that means.”

Craig dodged a metal table holding computer printouts of MOs and intelligence data on regional terrorists groups.
 
“Why is she calling on a secure phone?
 
Is she worried about the Eagle’s Claw tapping into our line?”

Jackson handed the phone to Craig.
 
“Beats me, boss.
 
I only do what I’m told around here.”

Craig glanced around for a seat and pulled up an old gray swivel chair that looked as if it had been left there by the original dam construction crew in the 1940s.
 
He grabbed the receiver.
 
“Hello, June.”

“Ready to go secure, Craig.”
 
His supervisor back in Oakland sounded no-nonsense, and not interested in conversation.
 
The Motorola STU-3, a version of the military’s secure phone, could transmit classified information as scrambled electronic signals.
 
The Bureau used it only for particularly sensitive cases.
 
“Do you have a STU-3 key?”

Jackson rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a black plastic key with serrated ridges, metal edges, and a magnetic strip.
 
Craig inserted the card into the base of the phone.
 
“Okay, June, I’m ready.”

“Going secure.”
 
The line went dead.

Craig turned the key and waited until a tiny message appeared on the LED display.
 
SECRET: FBI
 
OAKLAND CA FIELD OFFICE.
 
Craig heard a scratchy noise over the receiver.
 
“Craig?
 
Are you there?”

“Ready on this end, June.”
 
He waited, listening to the barely perceptible pause in the words as the signals were encrypted and decrypted.

“Something bigger has come up, Craig,” June said without preamble.
 
“I’m pulling you from the Eagle’s Claw case.”

Craig nearly fell off his chair.
 
“Bigger?
 
What can be bigger than a bunch of terrorists wanting to blow up the Hoover Dam?”
 
The two-second STU delay seemed interminable to him.

“There’s been a murder at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, fifty miles outside of Las Vegas.
 
An ambassador, the senior member of a Russian disarmament team, has been killed, staged to look like an accident.
 
If we don’t handle this quietly, we’ll have an international incident on our hands.
 
The president has scheduled a summit meeting with the Russian president for this coming Saturday, to celebrate the successful completion of this open-doors inspection.
 
Worse, he’s scheduled a short stopover in Las Vegas to personally greet the disarmament team before flying on to the summit.
 
We cannot have an unsolved murder mucking this up.”

Craig leaned back in the creaking chair, his mind whirling.
 
“Are you sure it’s a murder?”
 
He listened to a faint hiss of static.

“The ME’s office says it’s pretty plain.
 
The Russian was dead half an hour before the so-called accident occurred.”

Goldfarb shoved a cup of sour-smelling coffee into Craig’s free hand.
 
“Pretend it’s Jack Daniels,” he whispered, “and imagine how pissed she’d be.”