Perilous Panacea (4 page)

Chapter Five

When Bill Lormes said the job was his, Curt Reedan smiled and reached for his wine glass. He sipped merlot, savoring the flavor of his private toast to success, a toast to the completion of another stage of his career plan. “I’m looking forward to the job,” he said as Brian Applenu refilled his wine glass, although it was still three-quarters full.

Sold at last, Curt thought. Now they could get down to the details of the job. Selling, there was always too much selling, although he felt himself getting better at it.

Curt shoved his chair back from the dining table, unfolded his long legs, and heard the familiar pop in the left knee. He glanced at the plush surroundings: a fourteenth floor Miami Beach hotel suite overlooking the Atlantic, the dining area set back in a corner away from the living-room area. He looked at Bill Lormes, who sat to his left, then glanced at Brian Applenu at the other end of the dining table from Lormes.

He spoke to Lormes, who had introduced himself as the president of Margine Nuclear Technology. “From what you’ve told me, I shouldn’t have any trouble computerizing the machining operations. But we haven’t really talked about what your company does. What’s your product line?”

Lormes studied Curt’s face. Curt had sensed Lormes’s eyes on him throughout the meal, gray, penetrating eyes, watching him like a suspicious boss. “Our product line, as you put it, is atomic bombs,” Lormes said, his voice, a heavily accented rumble suddenly stripped of its businessman-to-businessman joviality of their earlier conversation.

Words started to form, then froze on Curt’s parted lips. He pumped out a too-loud laugh. “Oh, you’re joking,” he said, emitting more of his salesman’s laughter.

Lormes’s steel-gray eyes flashed above the white napkin he used to wipe at the wrinkles around his mouth. “It’s no joke.”

“What are you, government? I think my security clearance is still active.”

“We’re not government.”

Curt sucked a deep breath to counter the alarm that pressured his chest and squeezed air from his lungs, leaving him partially winded. His head snapped from Lormes to Applenu, then back to Lormes. Who was this guy? Lormes’s craggy face labeled him in his sixties, but his slick brown hair and the tailor-fitted gray pinstripe draped across his bulky shoulders probably knocked off ten years. Up ‘till now, they hadn’t discussed specifics of the job, but that wasn’t unusual.

Margine Nuclear Technology was a legitimate firm. It had to be. When he received the e-mail inviting him to lunch, Curt looked at their website that described nuclear-related work they did at their plant in Blacksburg, Virginia. He figured they were located there to be near AREVA, the French nuclear company. Also, Lormes said they had talked to two of Curt’s clients, and said he came highly recommended. They wouldn’t do that if they were not for real. Both Lormes and Applenu called him last week to get him to visit their Blacksburg plant as soon as possible. When they found out he couldn’t visit for two weeks and that he was giving a talk at the ASME meeting in Miami Beach, they made plans to meet him here.

“I don’t understand,” Curt said. “Atomic bombs?”

“It’s simple enough,” Applenu said, his words precise, delivered with a British accent that seemed more pronounced than when they talked on the phone. “We’re going to build some atomic bombs, and we need you to help us computerize some remote-machining operations.”

Lormes had introduced Brian Applenu as the brains of Margine Nuclear Technology. Slim, a dark complexion, about Lormes’s height, five-ten or so, and Curt’s age, around thirty, his face was mostly black hair. Thick black curls on his head tumbled from his forehead to his eyebrows. A black mustache dribbled down the sides of his mouth into a short black beard that covered his chin and jaw like chocolate pudding around a messy kid’s mouth.

“We’re going to be machining uranium and plutonium,” Applenu said. “Since you worked at the Y-12 weapons plant in Oak Ridge for three years, you’re used to machining those metals. We’ll also be machining non-radioactive components to extremely close tolerances. We need the computer techniques you described in your talk today.”

“I haven’t worked with uranium or plutonium for over two years.”

Applenu cocked his head like a curious animal, studying Curt as if he didn’t believe what he heard. “According to what you just told us and what you said in your talk today, you’ve made metal fabrication a science. You can develop a computer program to machine anything. If that’s so, you won’t have any more trouble with plutonium and uranium than you would with carbon steel.”

Curt remembered his salesman’s motto: show the client confidence; talk a good game, even if clouds of doubt threaten peace of mind. Maybe it worked too well this time. Lormes’s earlier announcement completed his career package for the next step: an MIT professorship coupled with long-term consulting jobs with companies like Y-12 at Oak Ridge and Margine Nuclear Technology put him right where he wanted to be. Success. Right?

A private company building atomic bombs? It was like the college junior designing an atom bomb for a class project that you read about. Just talk, anti-science talk. It had to be a joke. Curt had read articles about how easy it was to build an atomic bomb, but it had to be more complicated than that. “If you’re not government, why are you building atomic bombs?”

“Let’s not worry about why we’re building bombs,” Applenu said. “We told you up front, so you wouldn’t be surprised later on. We need your expertise, and we will pay for it. Say two-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars for about a month’s work.”

“A quarter-of-a-million dollars?” That kind of money would accelerate his career plan by several years. “Are you kidding?” Are these guys al-Qaeda terrorists? Applenu, with the dark complexion: Is he Middle Eastern?

Applenu shook his head, smiling. “A quarter-of-a-million dollars, cash…tax free. Of course, we’re also buying your silence. We know all about you. We found out that one of the reasons you’re going to MIT is because you’re into developing robots and you want to start a company. That money will go a long way toward getting you started. Patent lawyers are expensive.”

Now he knew what was going on. It couldn’t be. “What are these bombs going to be used for? What kind of organization are you running?”

“The less you know,” Lormes growled, “the less you’ll have to keep quiet about.” Like rays from a bright light, the lines in Lormes’s face emanated from his mouth.

With the quarter-of-a-million dollar figure still rattling around his brain, Curt decided he didn’t want to know anything more about the job. He glanced around the room, trying to comprehend. A few minutes earlier the luxury of his surroundings had him thinking he had arrived at last, his reward for hard work at the ripe old age of thirty-one.

Even before this, Lori kept telling him everything was moving too fast. On the plane down, he tried to reflect on the future: the move to MIT, his consulting business, Lori’s MBA degree and a possible job, and now, thrown in on top of it all, a new baby. Until he faced it on the plane, he hadn’t taken time to consider the baby beyond the hope that Lori would still have her period, though the probability of that was about nil. The idea of a son had appealed to him, but not now.

Lori pestered him to sit down and talk about their life and make plans for their life. He knew where his career was headed, and they never got around to discussing plans. And he didn’t waste any time on it on the plane. By the time the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign went off, his mind had wandered to the Vickers contract, and he reached into his briefcase for his laptop. Finish up Vickers and get back to the robot program. Vickers and Margine Nuclear Technology were tickets to the robot program, which was where he wanted to invest his attention, Now, Margine Technology needed to be deleted from that plan—immediately.

Lormes and Applenu stared at him as if expecting a momentous announcement.

Curt picked up his water glass, drained it, and stood. “Thanks for lunch, but I’m not your man. I’ve got to be in Cincinnati tomorrow, so…”

“You’re not leaving,” Lormes said, his accent heavier now and sounding Russian. In his haste to stand and throw his body in front of Curt, Lormes’s wine glass toppled, sending a crimson shower to the gray carpet, the globules glistening like drops of blood.

Curt started to squeeze by, but Lormes shifted his mass, standing immovable like a bolder, his bulky shoulders balanced on a thick waist.

His path blocked on the right by the dining table and on the left by a wall of balcony windows looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, Curt started to turn just as Applenu eased in behind him.

Getting mugged in a hotel room because you wouldn’t take a quarter-of-a-million dollars, Curt thought. Only one thing to do: go straight ahead, over or through Lormes, and drag Applenu with him if need be. “Listen, Mr. Lormes…”

Lormes yelled over his shoulder, “Beecher, Markum, get in here.”

Across the room, the bedroom door crashed open, and a Mutt-and-Jeff pair in business suits hustled into the room.

Curt froze. Although he might bull his way past Lormes and Applenu, he could not get by all four of them.

The tall one cradled a laptop computer in his arm like a football. After he cleared dishes to the side, he set the computer down along with a wireless mouse. The short, stocky one took Lormes’s place, staring up at Curt, smiling.

“We’d like to show you some slides of our operation,” Lormes said, pulling his chair from the head of the table next to Curt’s chair, sitting down and sliding the computer around in front of him. Behind him, Applenu pulled his chair to the other side of Curt’s chair. Before Curt could move, the tall, broad-shouldered bull glided into the position vacated by Applenu.

Curt stared down at Lormes. “I’m not interested in the job. I’ve already got more business than I can handle.”

Lormes reached for the mouse and clicked. A PowerPoint slide with a photo flashed onto the monitor, a green sign with white letters:

Welcome to the City of

OAK RIDGE

The Vision Lives On

“Margine Nuclear Technology’s got a plant in Oak Ridge? I never heard…”

Lormes smiled up at Curt, and the lines around his mouth twisted into a whirlpool. The whirlpool sucked air. “Sit down.”

Halfway to his chair, Curt hesitated, a nerve touched by the tone of Lormes’s voice. Get out now, he thought. No excuses just run. Trouble was, the big guy was anchored off his right shoulder, arms dangling like a gorilla. Curt figured the goon to be his own height, six-foot-four, but this guy was properly fleshed out, probably forty-five pounds of muscle beyond Curt’s spindly one-seventy-five. Without his thick bush of dark-brown hair, it would have been impossible to tell where his neck ended and his head began. Instinct that urged him to run when Lormes blocked his way, now cautioned him to sit. Either sit or be sat down—and sat on.

Curt crumpled onto the chair as the monitor revealed another familiar green-and-white sign:

WILDEN LANE

“That’s my street!” A chill coursed down his back as somewhere inside him a dam broke and panic flooded his guts.

The mouse clicked.

Curt jumped up. “That’s my house! What’s going on here?”

Two hands grabbed his shoulders and jammed him back into his seat; two large hands gripped his head like a vise and twisted it toward the monitor, where he saw the front of his brick house, the trees thick and green with summer foliage, a recent picture.

Click. The back of the house, taken from the woods.

Click. The back of the house, a woman on the patio.

“Lori,” Curt shouted, turning to Lormes, who stared at the screen. She appeared anything but pregnant in the Kelly-green almost-string bikini that barely covered half of her bottom with the soft material he enjoyed rubbing his hand across—about the extent of his sex life lately. She never wore it in public; at least she wouldn’t if he had anything to say about it.

Click. A close-up. She stared in the direction of the camera, a book in one hand, the other hand poking at coal-black hair that tumbled onto her tanned shoulders. She wore that faraway gaze he’d almost forgotten. Before he started dating her, that gaze turned him and his friends on back in Dref. Bedroom eyes, they called it, among other things.

Click. The lens zoomed in to catch her from waist up, hands behind her, breasts pushed forward and barely covered by the green halter.

Lori studied on the patio, while Beth played in her wading pool, both of them tanning for their Myrtle Beach vacation once Lori’s classes ended. He kept telling her he didn’t have time for a vacation.

Click.

Curt jumped up and shoved the chair backwards. It thumped onto the carpeted floor. Before Curt could move, the hulk glided in closer, his breath moist on Curt’s neck.

“That is a nice set of tits,” the short character said from behind Lormes, a voice with an accent similar to Lormes’s. “Almost as brown as the rest of her.” Another Russian accent?

Curt glanced at the screen. Just the opposite of him with her black hair and dark-brown eyes, she tanned easily. With his blue eyes and light-brown hair—Lori called it auburn—he quickly reddened as his hair bleached to a dirty-straw blond. He kept telling her sun tans were unhealthy, as if she didn’t know. She recalled energetic summers during high school and college, driving a tractor on her dad’s farm from dawn into dark, her tan deepening into a luscious dark brown. Back then, he enjoyed the glow that accompanied the color, but it’s unhealthy now.

The tall one cackled. “She’s got a hell-of-a nice ass and knows how to move it. Tall and sleek, too, like a model. Long, slim legs. What is she, five-nine?”

Another Russian accent, Curt thought. “Huh?” He mumbled, his body pressured by an expanding anger and a ballooning fear. He’d been had—an amateur hustled by pros.

“Her height?” the tall one behind him said, as he picked up the chair. “Five-nine?”

Curt turned to the big guy, who stared at the screen, a leering smile on his face. “Five-eight and three quarters.” Her height bothered her when they first met. With him at six-four, he figured it helped him get her, although she denied it.