Ground Zero (The X-Files) (17 page)
along with a note Mulder had written expressing his suspicions as to the identity of the substance. Lu Kwok scanned the words. “Interesting,” she said. “We can check out Agent Mulder’s speculations fairly quickly—but if it doesn’t match, we could be weeks identifying the substance.”
“Do what you can,” Scully said. “And thanks. Meanwhile, I’ve got two autopsies to perform.”
“Lucky you,” the Asian woman said, scrutinizing the powdery sample. Still muttering to herself about the stench in her lab, she turned and walked back toward her equipment. It was a messy and exhausting afternoon. Scully completed the autopsy on Nancy Scheck, as well as the old rancher, Oscar McCarron, who had been packaged and shipped to her lab—following proper procedures, she hoped—thanks to the helpful people at the White Sands Missile Range. Scully suspected they simply wanted to wash their hands of the matter and let her deal with the questions. But now that she had studied three victims who had apparently died by the same impossible method, she still had no guess as to what the lethal weapon could have been. It was easy enough to list the cause of death as “sudden and violent exposure to extreme levels of heat and radiation,”
but that still didn’t explain the source of the exposure. Was it a new kind of death beam, or a pint-sized nuclear warhead?
From her own undergrad classes, Scully knew the physics of nuclear explosions well enough to understand that a warhead could not fit inside, say, a small package bomb or a hand grenade. Critical mass and initiators and shielding required a certain
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amount of bulk—and such things left debris, none of which had been found at any of the three death scenes. The only piece of trace evidence she had in her possession was the vial of strange black ash Mulder had fished out of Nancy Scheck’s swimming pool.
Letting other FBI staffers clean up the autopsy arena and take care of the two burned bodies, Scully moved to her smaller lab, analyzing another portion of the ash. In a sterile metal tray she carefully used a long, narrow-bladed scalpel to spread the greasy, powdery residue flat so she could inspect it. Using a magnifying glass, Scully studied the substance, probing delicately to inspect its material properties. She took out her tape recorder, inserted a new microcassette, and pushed the RECORD button, letting the voice-activated microphone deal with the long pauses in her narration. She stated the case number, the evidence sample number, and then began her off-the-cuff report.
“The black substance found in the Scheck swimming pool appears to be fine and flaky, partially granular, composed of two distinct components. The bulk of the material is soft, ashen, and appears to be composed of some sort of organic residue. The powder is mostly dry now, although I believe it may have been contaminated by chlorine and other chemicals from the pool. We may have to compensate for those impurities in our final analysis.
“The second component in the mixture is grainy and…”
She isolated a couple of the grains with the point of her scalpel and pressed down on one, hearing it pop and skitter to the side of the metal pan. “And it’s hard and crystalline, like some sort of rock or…sand. Yes, it reminds me of dark sand.”
Scully scooped a small amount of the black substance onto her scalpel blade, spread it on a clean 150
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microscope slide, and then slid it under her stereomicroscope. She hunched over the eyepieces and adjusted the focusing knob, studying the substance under low and then higher powers of magnification, using a polarizing filter, prodding with the tip of her scalpel to distribute the tiny pieces more evenly.
“Yes, it does seem to be sand,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, hoping the microcassette recorder would pick up her words. She frowned. “One possibility could be that the ash was scraped up from a beach somewhere, and the sand was inadvertently combined with the primary material. This is strictly conjecture, however.” She would have to await the results of Berlina Lu Kwok’s chemical tests on both components.
On a hunch, but already dreading the answer, Scully went to an equipment cabinet and retrieved a rarely used device she had requested for the autopsies that afternoon—a small alpha counter, a delicate radiation meter that could pick up residual radioactivity beyond the usual background counts. Scully pointed the sensitive end of the alpha counter, playing the silvery rectangular foil cells over the smear of black ash and sand she had placed in the metal tray. With the detector’s output linked to her own computer and running obscure alpha-counting software, she was able to trace a nuclear spectrum. Considering the circumstances of the overall case, she was not surprised to find residual radioactivity in the sample. Fortunately, the specimen was small enough that the dose could not harm her. Its spectrum was slanted to the high end, enough that it was obviously something of unusual origin, something resulting from a high-energy burst. The software did most of the work for her, 151
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comparing the nuclear spectrum with thousands of others it kept in its database, searching for a match it could offset. Scully heard a knock on the door, and Berlina Lu Kwok came in, holding a folder full of papers. “Here are your results—special delivery for you, Agent Scully.”
“Already?” Scully said, surprised.
“What, you wanted me to pack it in dry ice and send it UPS?” Lu Kwok laughed. “I just wanted to get a breath of fresh air from my lab.” Scully gratefully took the folder, but before she could say anything else, the Asian woman spun about and marched back down the hall.
Scully looked at the folder, then sat down next to her computer to wait for results from the radiation scan. To her surprise she discovered that during the brief interruption, the computer had already found a match. Before she opened up Berlina Lu Kwok’s Biological Analysis report, Scully studied the nuclear spectrum results.
The error bars were large, but due to the unique half-life properties and the unusual nuclear cross section of the sample, its best guess was that this black residue had been exposed to high levels of ionizing radiation between forty and fifty years earlier.
Scully swallowed, deeply troubled. Reluctantly, she flipped open the Biological Analysis folder, already suspecting the answer. The only way Lu Kwok could have identified the substance so quickly was if Mulder’s lead had indeed proven accurate.
She scanned through the analysis summary, paging to the end, interested only in the final result for now. Her stomach sank.
The black powdery sample was indeed
human ash
, almost completely incinerated—exposed to high
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radiation something like forty years ago, mixed with a black grainy sand.
Radioactive human ash four decades old, found at the death site of a victim who had been obliterated by a similar atomic flash.
Sand.
Ash.
Radiation.
Scully sat back in her seat and tapped her fingernails on the folder. Then she picked up the phone. She couldn’t put it off any longer.
Mulder was going to love this.
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Kamida Imports
Tuesday, 12:03 P.M.
When Miriel Bremen went into the upper floors of the Honolulu high-rise business complex, she felt intimidated. Outside, traffic streamed by in the sunshine, flowing along the seaside, while Diamond Head reared its blocky spire like a sentinel over the waves and the sunbathers. Inside the Kamida Imports office building, Miriel felt as if she had stepped into another world.
She had no interest in the balmy climate, the lovely ocean, the beaches crowded with fishbelly-white American vacationers or swarms of Japanese tourists who stayed up shopping all hours of the night. Her message to Kamida was far too grim to worry about vacation trivialities. Miriel waited for the receptionist to announce her arrival. She paced in the waiting room, too distracted to read any of the colorful but banal magazines spread out on the low tables.
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Miriel had known Ryan Kamida for a year now. She had met him immediately after the personal epiphany that had turned her against nuclear weapons work and transformed her into a vehement protester. The extravagant funding Kamida donated anonymously from the coffers of his successful imports business had kept Stop Nuclear Madness! free of financial worries during its one-year existence. From their first meeting, Miriel realized that she and the scarred blind man had so many things in common that it was almost eerie. Even so, his very presence sent a thrill of fear through her. She found it hard to understand Kamida’s offhanded acceptance of his tragic fate, but he swept such thoughts away with his strange charisma. As a respected researcher at the Teller Nuclear Research Facility, Miriel Bremen used to feel comfortable meeting many important people, holding her own in any conversation. After she had learned of Ryan Kamida’s power and his generosity—and his personal drive—Miriel had promised herself that she would not return to ask more of her benefactor except in the direst emergency. Circumstances now warranted such a visit. For months, Kamida claimed to have been making preparations, forming contingency plans, and speaking of desperate measures, as if he could see the future. She did not relish the thought of taking him at his word again. Now she had no choice.
Ryan Kamida emerged from his back offices, led by the receptionist. He maintained only the slightest touch on her shoulder, simply an acknowledgment that he required her to guide him. His eyes were milky, the color of a half-cooked egg; his face was scarred, like the bust of a very proud man done by a poorly trained sculptor.
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could detect Miriel’s presence from the faint perfume in the deodorant soap she had used, or perhaps the sound of her breathing. Miriel wondered if he had more abilities than he let on.
“Mr. Kamida,” she said, standing up. “Ryan, it’s good of you to see me on such short notice.”
He came forward, homing in on the sound of her voice and releasing his grip on the receptionist, who took his dismissal as a matter of course. She returned to her station just as the phone began ringing.
“Miriel Bremen, what a pleasant surprise. It’s kind of you to come all the way to the Islands just to see me. I was about to go to my greenhouse for lunch. Would you join me?”
“Yes, I would,” she said. “We have certain things to discuss.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Or am I pleased?”
“No, you’re sorry,” she said. “Definitely sorry.”
Kamida turned to the receptionist. “Shiela, please have a nice lunch for two brought into the greenhouse. Ms. Bremen and I would like to relax for some private conversation.”
An enormous room on the top floor had been converted into a lush tropical forest. Skylights funneled sunshine through the ceiling, while an entire wall of plate glass allowed daylight to stream in from the side. Mist generators kept the air humid and warm, smelling of damp organic greenery and compost and plant food. Ferns and flowers grew in a wild profusion—not potted or ordered in any way, simply a riot like the dense rainforest one might find on an isolated Pacific island. Several captive birds flitted about in the treetops. Ryan Kamida walked in without guidance, weaving through plant-bordered aisles. He held both hands out in front of him like a preacher giving
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a benediction, going out of his way to brush against the vegetation. He bent over to smell flowers in bloom, inhaling deeply, closing his eyes.
A mist generator spat a rain of spray near him, and he adjusted his hand to touch it, letting the cool droplets form in a glittering sheen on his rough, blistered skin.
“This is my place, Miriel,” he said, “a special place where I can enjoy the sound of growing leaves and inhale the smell of fresh earth and blooming flowers. The experience is quite remarkable, from my humble point of view. I’m almost saddened to think of the profusion of windows that your other senses open for you, so that this full and focused experience is denied you.”
Though blind, Kamida led the way to a small table nestled in the midst of the dense foliage. He pulled out an ornate metal chair and waited for her to sit down, then pushed her closer to the round glass table. Its size was perfect for two people to dine in the seclusion of a jungle paradise.
“I’m afraid the news is bad, Ryan,” she blurted, before he even took his seat.
He felt his way to the opposite chair and sat in it, pulling it snugly up to the table. Before she could continue, though, an employee of Kamida Imports hurried in, bearing two large salads and a plate of fresh pineapple, papaya, and mango slices. She fell silent, looking at him while waiting for the employee to leave.
Ryan Kamida had used his handicap to great advantage, Miriel thought, as if he were watched over by angels. Blessed in business, he had developed his exotic imports company into a wealthy corporation.
Though she had met him accidentally that first time in Nagasaki, Miriel held the uncertain
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suspicion that he had set up the entire encounter himself, and that events were even now playing out exactly the way he wished.
Now she shuddered and hunched her shoulders as she bent over her salad.
When she had turned away from her mentor, Emil Gregory, Miriel had looked to Kamida as a new supporter, someone who shared her vehement beliefs. Ryan Kamida knew an enormous amount about nuclear weapons testing, about the entire military industry. He was someone to whom she could divulge the dire designs concocted by unenlightened weapons scientists, the blueprints passed along to her through a few sympathetic workers who remained at the Teller Nuclear Research Facility.
Miriel had told Kamida everything, without qualms about spilling classified information. She had vowed to devote her life to the cause; she now responded to a higher calling, not one decreed by the military industrial complex (who had, after all, caused so many of the problems in the first place). She knew what she was doing was right.
