Perilous Panacea (5 page)

“Sit down,” Lormes ordered. “Beecher there didn’t go through all the trouble of getting those pictures of your wife’s beautiful ass and tits so you could walk out of here.”

Curt struggled to keep the alarm in his gut from exploding into panic. He clamped his arms tightly to his side, afraid his fear-charged body would propel them flailing in all directions. He glanced left, hesitated, and sat.

The photographer caught her from the waist up, just as she removed her bra. He knew she sun bathed without a bra, but in the privacy of their backyard.

Click. A blowup.

“She’s a sharp-looking broad,” Lormes said, his eyes on the screen. “And it’s up to you to keep her that way.”

“How did you get those pictures?”

“That’s not important. What’s important is that we need your help, and you’re going to give it to us.”

“I don’t know anything about making atomic bombs.”

“We don’t need you for that,” Applenu said with that deliberate British accent. He had been sitting back, taking it all in, seeming almost embarrassed, hesitant to join in. “You and I are scientists. We know where to go for technical information, it’s all there if you do a little digging, and we’ve done all the work. We’ve got designs. Now all we need is some insurance on the manufacturing.” He glanced at Lormes and back to Curt. “You’re our insurance policy, mate.”

Lormes fished a cell phone from his breast pocket and punched numbers.

Curt glanced around the room and decided this was no time for his usual approach to a problem, which included a detailed scientific analysis that considered everything from trajectory curves to velocity equations. Lately, as he got deeper into artificial intelligence, he had even taken to analyzing his own decision-making procedures.

He jumped up, spun around, his elbow bumping Lormes, the cell phone spinning from his hand onto the floor. Curt picked up the chair and shoved it into the tall one’s midsection, causing him to stumble backward. In Curt’s haste to turn and face the short character, his quick movement momentarily shifted weight onto his bum left leg and almost caused him to topple sideways. He regained his balance and shoulder-blocked the short redheaded guy backward against the wall. He headed for the door.

Behind him, the tall one called Beecher tossed the chair aside and moved around the table in the opposite direction to block Curt’s way.

With his eyes, head, and body, Curt faked a quick move to his right.

Beecher reacted by doing the same.

A quick step and Curt headed left. But his left knee buckled. By the time he recovered, Beecher stood in front of him.

The stocky redhead moved in from behind, shoving something into Curt’s ribs.

Curt turned, stepped back, and stared at a gun—a gun held by the sawed-off, freckled redhead—aimed right at his heart. Curt’s head spun, and he wondered if he had drunk too much. No way. He had maintained his salesman’s rule: one drink per hour maximum; one drink and hold.

Lormes retrieved the cell phone and ordered the short stocky one, Markum, to get Curt back to the table.

Curt limped slightly when Markum shoved him forward. Since he kissed his college basketball career goodbye, being quick on his feet wasn’t a requirement for success. He still had the instinctive moves, he thought, just like in his basketball days. With a simple head and shoulder move, he’d faked the big guy right out of his jock strap. Then, after all these years, his bum knee bit him again. He had trained himself to walk without a limp, and the gimpy knee rarely crossed his mind. But remnants of the injury hid in the knee like a dormant disease and climbed all over him every time he tried a quick move.

Curt sat. On the computer monitor in front of him, Lori’s breasts loomed in his face like two reproachful eyes.

“Hello, Max,” Lormes said into the miniature phone. “Put her on. Mrs. Reedan? Yeah, he’s okay… What? Hold on a minute.”

Curt reached for the phone, ready to call their bluff. They couldn’t have gotten somebody to Tennessee this soon. “Let me talk to her.”

Lormes jerked the phone back and pressed his hand to the mouthpiece. “By now, you’ve got the picture. Okay? You tell her you’re fine, but you’ll be on a job for a few weeks. You tell her she will do what we tell her to do. It’s for her own good. Okay?”

Curt hesitated, his breath rapid from the exertion. Was this for real?

“Okay?”

Hand trembling as he reached for the phone, Curt nodded. “Hello, Lori?”

“Curt! What’s happening? This man came to the door and forced his way in. He said you wanted to talk to me. Are you okay?”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No, I’m okay.”

He fought to keep the trembling in his chest out of his voice. “I’m okay, too.” He took a deep breath, and his mind flashed through their concerns of the past few weeks: whether they should move to Colorado or Boston, whether she would have her period, and if not, whether they wanted another child. Whether he wanted another child. Simple problems with easy solutions. Just sit down and talk them out. With the phone to his ear, he realized they did most of their talking on the phone, him talking to her from some city or other, in the middle of some business trip or other. And here they were again.

“Lori, I’m going to be on a consulting job for a few weeks.”

“What? You can’t…”

Lormes grabbed the phone out of Curt’s hand. “Mrs. Reedan, we need your husband’s expertise for a very important project. A very secret project. Now you might get worried if he doesn’t show up for a few weeks. Don’t.”

Lormes paused to glare at Curt; he tilted the phone away from his ear so Curt could hear when she replied. “Above all, Mrs. Reedan, don’t go to the police. Because if you do, your husband will die.”

“Die?”

“That’s right. And we’ll know if you go to the police, because Mr. Maxwell, the man who’s with you now, or somebody else will be watching you at all times. Do you understand?”

Lormes waited, his lips pursed—an eroded volcano.

Curt sucked for air. He felt a giant hand squeezing his guts, trying to force out the nightmare scream trapped just below his throat. Vomit seeped into his mouth, a taste of rotten cheese and wine.

The eroded volcano of Lormes’s mouth erupted. “Is that clear, Mrs. Reedan?”

“Yes. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“Good.” Lormes reached for the mouse and looked at Curt, his steel-gray eyes blazing like synchronized laser drills. “It comes down to this, Reedan,” he said clicking the mouse.

A half-naked Lori was replaced by a laughing little dark-haired girl in a yellow one-piece bathing suit splashing in a wading pool.

“Beth.”

“The kid’s five, right? You’d like to see her turn six, right?”

Curt stared at Lormes.

“I think you’ve got the picture, Reedan. You refused the money, so we’re making you an offer you cannot refuse. We’re offering you what’s on the screen. You do the job we’ve got, or your wife and kid die. In fact, we will let you see them die just before we kill you.”

Chapter Six

At first glance, Curt Reedan figured it could just as well be another of the forty-some business meetings he’d attended during the past year. Five men clustered around a circular stained-oak table in the center of a large room. Instead of arriving for this conference on another forgettable 757 flight, however, he felt as if he had materialized through a space warp: from Miami South Beach luxury to solitary confinement in one day. His cell was today’s conference room, two folding cots along the back wall, facing the door. For two nights and now almost two days, he’d been locked away alone in the room.

Bill Lormes ran the meeting. “We’re going to build the first atomic bombs ever built by private enterprise. This afternoon we’ll get acquainted and tour the facilities. Then tomorrow we’ll get down to the job.”

Lormes beamed a smile to Applenu on his right. “Brian Applenu is the technical manager of the project. He’s got a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT.” Lormes turned from the black-bearded Applenu to the thin, brown-bearded young man on his left. “Eric Drafton’s got a PhD in chemical engineering, also from MIT. He’ll be in charge of the chemical processing.”

As best Curt could tell through the beards, both men were his age, but he didn’t recognize either of them from his own days at MIT. Neither of them wore a Brass Rat on his finger like he did.

“We designed and built the chemical-processing facilities we’ll use,” Drafton said, a twitching smile poking through the scraggly beard, his youth hidden in the facial hair like a dark bird in a thick bush, only visible by a momentary sparkle in his sad brown eyes.

Lormes nodded across the table at the baldheaded man with rimless glasses at Curt’s right. “Professor Robert Surling’s got a PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago. He’s an expert in the chemistry of plutonium and uranium. He’ll be helping Dr. Drafton with the processing.”

To Curt, Surling looked old, maybe seventy, about six-foot tall with a lean frame. Surling stared at Lormes with tranquil blue eyes, his tanned face with high cheek bones a blank, the only life an occasional flicker of light in his glasses.

“And what if I don’t cooperate,” Surling asked.

Lormes’s steel-gray eyes flashed. “You’ll cooperate. Or else your wife, daughters, and grandchildren will see some mighty interesting pictures and video of your latest business trip.”

Curt realized he wasn’t alone. Surling was the man for the other cot.

Lormes nodded at Curt. “Curt Reedan’s an expert at metal fabrication with a PhD in metallurgy from MIT. It seems we only recruited from the best schools: three from MIT, and one from Chicago.” Lormes coughed a laugh. “Everybody’s a doctor but your old boss here, the President of Margine Nuclear Technology.”

From instinct, Curt nodded, but caught himself before he automatically released his businessman’s smile. How did this compare with being in Cincinnati, where he was supposed to be? Lormes made him call Carl Vickers from Miami and tell him he couldn’t make his visit.

During the past two days, he’d had lots of time to think; he’d worked hard at shunting the fear generated in Miami to a remote corner of his mind, where it clung like a dull headache he tried to ignore. He decided the only way to hack it was to treat it like just another job.

“So how long will this job take?” Curt asked. He stretched his left leg to exercise his bum knee, still stiff from the exertion in Miami.

Applenu answered. “About six weeks. Then we’ll pay you and turn you loose.”

“Where did you get the fissionable material?” Surling asked, as he smoothed the few gray hairs that clung to his shiny bald head like isolated blades of grass on a rocky hillside. “What are you going to do with the bombs?”

“That’s none of your business,” Lormes said, his green eyes flashing and his accent heavier. “Don’t worry. They won’t be used in this country. We’re not a bunch of cheap-ass terrorists.”

“So you’re going to sell them to some small country who’ll wind up starting World War Three,” Surling said. He spoke slowly, his voice flat, the kind of professorial tone Curt hoped to avoid when he began teaching.

Lormes ignored the statement. He pushed back his chair and stood. “We’re ready for the tour.” He stared down at Reedan and Surling. “You two know what’s involved. We’re not here to debate. You play along and promise to keep quiet, we’ll turn you loose a quarter-of-a-million dollars richer.” His eyes searched for Curt’s, then turned to Surling. “If you don’t cooperate…well…I don’t think we need to discuss that.”

- - - - -

Robert Surling watched the door slam. A key rattled in the lock outside. Their tour over, they wound up where they started. Surling stared at the two cots along the back wall and noted that someone brought his luggage while they were on tour. He glanced at Reedan, his cellmate in an asylum where the crazies held the key. Actually, up to now the only difference in the crazies here and the crazies running the university was that here they carried guns and locked you up. At least they didn’t expect you to serve on committees and socialize with them.

He ignored Reedan and flopped on the scratched-and-frayed green-vinyl couch that stood along the wall to the right as you entered. Above it was a boarded up window, the only one. He rested his head on the back of the couch and stared at the three rows of fluorescent lights that ran three-quarters the length of the ceiling. Light reflected from the dirty aqua walls and ceiling and filled the room with the dull-green glow of a rainy day at the seashore.

Reedan, looking dazed, dragged a chair from under the oak table in the center of the room and sat facing Surling.

Keeping his face to the ceiling, Surling eyed his cellmate. Probably one of the contemporary replacements for the Whores of Babylon, he thought. They were everywhere. Today’s whores arrived complete with a PhD in science or engineering and called themselves research scientists, professors, and consultants. Unlike the old days when he started his career, they no longer searched for nature’s truths—science’s ultimate goal. Instead, they gladly sold their ass to the bureaucrats of the university, government, and business for whatever they could get in the way of grants. For many, their highest objective was to be a manager, to become one of the bean-counting bureaucrats that squeezed the balls of those doing the work. Then they sat around and tried to figure out why the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, among others, were beating the shit out of us in technology.

On the tour of the facilities, Reedan played the role of the curious scientist, full of questions about the equipment, especially the computer. With his earnest face, he could pass for a first-year grad student, overwhelmed by the fantastic work ahead. Even if Reedan wasn’t one of today’s science whores, there were definitely two of them on the job, selling their services for all they could get. There was a difference, though. As opposed to most of the whores, who just talked and excreted paper, these assholes had assembled a hell of a factory and were out to make the world’s most dangerous product.

Surling straightened up. “It’s you and me against them, huh, son?” He flipped off his glasses, set them on the arm of the couch, and massaged his naked face. “I’d say they’re Mafia. Russian Mafia, judging by the accent.”

“Mafia?” Reedan asked.

Surling studied him: A typical drudge, never thinking beyond what’s on his computer screen.

“That guy Lormes. Did you think he was one of your run-of-the-mill entrepreneurs? Did you think this was a government technology transfer of intellectual property project?”

Technology transfer and intellectual property: four of today’s favorite buzzwords of the technology bureaucrats, a new way to siphon government money into their bureaucracies.

“Who else but Mafia could steal all that nuclear material? It’s probably a new business venture for them. After drugs, what? Hire yourself a scientist with a British accent and go into the bomb-making business.”

Surling dug a cigarette package out of his shirt pocket, probed inside, and crumpled it. He tossed it across the room at the beat-up green wastebasket between the white stove and matching refrigerator on the far wall. It landed far to the right, in front of the scratched white sink. We’ve got all the comforts of home, including a microwave, he thought. “Got a cigarette?”

“I don’t smoke.”

Surling sniffed a laugh. “I’ve wanted to quit.”

“How about the facilities we saw?” Reedan asked. “That’s a powerful computer.”

“They were something, alright.” Naturally, the kid would be impressed with the computer, although the tour encompassed five rooms, each containing the latest equipment needed to process any kind of nuclear material. And they had nuclear material, most of it still in the shipping containers. How the hell did they get it?

Their tour guides, Applenu and Drafton, led them first to a chemical-processing room filled with work benches and shelves lined with chemicals and reaction vessels. He should have such equipment in his university lab. Equipment included a brand-new dry box—an atmosphere chamber used to safely handle toxic materials. And plutonium is toxic. One whiff of plutonium oxide, and you’re living on borrowed time. They visited four other rooms: a furnace room with another dry box, a hot cell, a computer room, and a machine room, all crammed with high-tech equipment that Applenu and Drafton explained to them.

“If we had equipment like that on the Manhattan Project, we’d have finished the bomb a year-or-two sooner,” Surling said. The kid didn’t respond, and Surling wondered if he knew what the Manhattan Project was. He laughed. “I’ll make history twice: I was in on the first bomb in the forties of last century, and now I’ll be on the team that makes the first free-enterprise bomb in this century.” Surling shook his head. “Nuclear science, my life’s work, it’s a perilous panacea.”

“We always knew that,” Reedan said, “the bomb versus the reactor. But with nuclear reactors, we’ve got a chance to get free of Middle Eastern oil. With nuclear energy, we’ve got a chance to beat the greenhouse effect and global warming.”

“Only if we can get people to believe in the panacea. The environmental crazies refuse to believe, and their propaganda and lies make it hard for everyone else to believe, so we scientists are not only to blame for the perils, but we don’t get credit for the benefits.”

“We’re not to blame.”

If he was like most scientists these days, Surling thought, he never considered it; he didn’t think about anything beyond what his computer-generated thoughts registered. “You don’t believe scientists are to blame, huh, son? Scientists go around opening up one Pandora’s Box after another, looking for the panaceas, the magic cure-alls for the mess we’ve made of the world. As soon as a box is open, they’re off trying to wedge open a new box to get the jump on their colleagues. And while they’re off somewhere else, some asshole, who also calls himself a scientist, is turning their panaceas into the Love Canal. Or that town Bhopal in India, that got rained on by cyanide when Union Carbide’s technological panacea went haywire. And in the fifties, before you were born, those poor bastards out in Utah got showered by atomic fallout. Later, the Ukrainians got a similar dose from Chernobyl. A whole lot of panaceas have morphed into deadly perils.”

Without his glasses, he couldn’t read the expression on young Reedan’s face, although it probably didn’t have much to say. “I’ll grant you that most times those assholes are bureaucrats, but they are scientist-type bureaucrats. Now the panacea turned peril we’ve got here is the most dangerous of all: dime store nuclear weapons for two-bit dictators.”

“I don’t see how all scientists can be blamed.”

He doesn’t see, Surling thought. He shrugged. “So another country gets an atom bomb and starts World War Three. We knew it could happen.”

Reedan appeared ready to protest, but instead said, “What about us, you and me? Like, where are we, for instance?”

Surling slipped on his wire-rimmed glasses and studied Reedan. The kid didn’t seem to know how to take the grouchy professor. “Where are we? That’s a good question for the world in general. Where are we mentally? Where are we historically? I’d say we’re pretty fucked up.” He faked a smile. “Where are you and I geographically? I’d say we’re east of the Mississippi River.”

Reedan told about his capture and the flight from Miami in an eight-passenger plane, all windows shuttered. They landed at a small airport with no traffic that he could hear, and they blindfolded him and drove here, a fifteen-to-twenty-minute drive.

Surling thought about his own “capture” in Philadelphia. An eighty-four-year-old professor should know better. Young blonde shows up at the hotel, says she’s a lawyer who works for Margine Nuclear Technology, says she’s there for Lormes, who couldn’t make it for dinner and would see him at the plant in the morning. She pays for drinks and a great dinner at Bookbinders. Then more drinks at some dark bar she knew down the street. Next thing he knew, her hands were between his legs, his zipper open, hands inside his shorts massaging his cock. Then, at her apartment, her face was between his legs. An hour later, he was fucked in more ways than one. That’s when he was introduced to Lormes and a tall monster with cameras and a gun. Screwed good by a Philadelphia lawyer.

No way would he give an account to this young twerp about how that whore did him in. He hadn’t explained it to himself yet, especially after he turned over a new leaf when he met June. She was to be his one and only, another one and only. How many new leafs had to be turned over by a dirty-old man?

He told Reedan about Philadelphia, a gun, and a threat. He told how they made him call his wife and say he’d be on a consulting job for six-to-eight weeks. After that, the trip here, probably three hours on the same plane. “We’re not in the northeast. It was hotter than Philadelphia when I got off the plane.”

“We’re probably not in the deep south, either. It wasn’t as humid as Miami.” Like a hiker lost in a forest on a cloudy night, Reedan, the scientist working without his computer, finally deduced that they were in one of the south-central states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, or Kentucky.