Foster nodded as he looked down at the floor. Then he said he needed to make some calls, stepped over into Keenan’s office, and shut the door.
There was a grim silence in the conference room, and then Farnsworth greeted Janet, asked how she felt, and asked her to come into his office.
He closed the door behind her and asked if she wanted some coffee. Her
brain did, but her stomach vetoed the idea. She was now beginning to think that leaving the hospital had not been her brightest idea. She sat down gingerly in one of the chairs while the RA poured what looked like used motor oil from a pitcher on his desk into a mug. The smell of the stale coffee confirmed her stomach’s opinion. He poured in a paper packet of sugar, which literally floated on top of the noxious-looking brew. He sat down heavily.
“Five years here as RA, never lost an agent,” he said quietly.
“Until today. Even if he wasn’t technically one of ours, this really sucks. Ken Whittaker was a good man. You know his wife, Katie?”
She shook her head.
“She’s devastated, of course. Kept saying, “So close, he was so close.”
Meaning close to retirement. This really sucks. And now Ransom. I liked him, too. Shit.”
“Plus the two security kids,” she said.
“I feel responsible. If I hadn’t gone out—” “No, no, that’s all wrong, Janet. You had every right to go out there, although I fault you for going alone. But there obviously was something going on at that place.”
“I guess so. But still… How’s Kreiss’s daughter?”
“She’s alive but in and out of a borderline coma. Took a head shot from flying debris. Damn wall nearly crushed her. She was saved by the fact that she was up by the front door. Hasn’t said anything beyond those few words when they pulled her out of that nitro building: Washington and hydrogen bomb. Intriguing combination, huh?”
She nodded distractedly.
“So, where do we stand?” she asked.
“What’s aTF found out?”
Farnsworth shook his head, then ran his fingers through his graying hair.
“Their people on the scene called out one of their own national response teams, after the nuke guys backed out. Even though the casualty count wasn’t that big, it was one hell of an explosion. The NRT is still there.”
“I’m not familiar with that,” she said. Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten for a long time.
“It’s an aTF special team. An NRT has chemists, forensic experts like you, arson and bomb dogs, post blast and fire-origin experts, intel people, special vehicles and mobile labs, all that good shit.”
“The NEST people find anything radioactive?”
“Nope, just radon. I still can’t figure out what that was all about.
But nothing to indicate it was nuclear, although the bang sure seemed big enough.”
“And?” she prompted. She realized she probably sounded impertinent, but Farnsworth was too tired to notice.
“And they haven’t called it yet. Blast origin point in the power plant.
Eureka. But type of explosive? They can’t find it. Some nonstructural physical evidence scattered around the site, but almost every piece of it can be traced back to equipment that was probably installed inside the power plant. Boiler tubes, plant machinery, turbine parts. Otherwise, stone-cold mystery right now. They haven’t found even a trace of the security kid who went down there to unlock the place.”
Janet shifted in her chair and exhaled, causing Farnsworth to look more closely at her.
“You all right? How about a glass of water?”
She nodded and said she thought she needed something in her stomach.
He went out and came back with a cup of water from the jug cooler and a stale-looking doughnut.
“We sent some people in chem-suits down into that tunnel system and found a couple of things, the most interesting of which was evidence of somebody shooting a large-caliber weapon down there. That ring any bells?”
She shook her head, but not too hard. The doughnut helped, and she sipped the cold water.
“The fumes in the tunnels tested to residue of nitric acid. One of the tanks out behind the power plant appeared to be the source of that, although it was, like all the others, flattened.”
“No cars?”
“No cars,” he said with a fleeting smile.
“But the divers reported that the whole thing appears to dump to an even larger underground cavern system. They pulled a guy in there from the Army who used to be what they called a ‘plant rep’ when the civilian company operated the place. He confirmed that the tunnel was called the Ditch. It was used when something went wrong with a chemical batch and they had to dump it quick to prevent an explosion. Said where it went after going into the Ditch was something no one ever knew, or at least he didn’t know.”
“Wonderful,” she murmured.
“And what about Kreiss?”
“Well,” Farnsworth said, trying to get the sugar to dissolve in his coffee, “that’s getting interesting. Foster and Bellhouser may have something there. First of all, no one can locate Kreiss—at least we
can’t and the local law can’t. I don’t know if Foster and company have asked for more help from the Agency. That may be hard after losing Ransom.”
“Might he have been there—when that place blew up?”
“Willson’s troops talked to some of Kreiss’s neighbors, of sorts. Bunch of hillbillies living down the road from Kreiss’s cabin. They weren’t exactly forthcoming, but indications are they’d seen Kreiss alive and well late this past afternoon, which was after the blast. But that’s all they would say.”
“And Kreiss is a suspect in the jared McGarand homicide?”
“Yes and no. You’ll remember what Ransom told you about putting bugs on Kreiss’s vehicle? How he got all but one off, and then Ransom finds that one at that McGarand guy’s trailer, where McGarand got dead?”
She nodded. The doughnut felt like it might be changing sides. She drank some more water and tried to ignore the queasy feeling in her stomach. It was hurting to breathe again.
“Local law hasn’t been told anything about that, or Kreiss. I sent a couple of our people to the scene after seeing Ransom’s report. Told the cops that it might, emphasis on might, relate to a case we’re working on telephone company fraud. Our guys weren’t fully briefed on the Kreiss angle, either. I simply told them to go see what the local cops came up with on this possible homicide and report back.”
“And—?”
“And the locals are definitely calling it homicide, but the physical evidence points all over the map. Jared McGarand’s wallet and keys seem to be missing, and there was evidence that someone had been into his phones, although he himself was a phone repairman, so that might not mean anything. There’s some unknown substance they recovered from the front steps that they were really interested in, because there was some more of it on the body, which for some unknown reason seemed to have been hosed down. But that’s not as important as what we think we’ve found out.”
“Foster still trying to tie this bomb-cell conspiracy theory to Kreiss?”
Farnsworth nodded and leaned forward.
“This is close-hold, for now anyway. I’m telling you because you and Kreiss know each other, at least superficially. We’ve tied Kreiss to the arsenal and to Jared McGarand.
Believe it or not, Foster apparently has a line of some sort into the aTF’s national response team. The NRT people found evidence of
vehicles being parked near the rail line entrance to the arsenal, and that the gates at the rail line were not in fact locked, which they should have been. They also found an electric-eye counter mounted on the interior rail gate. So Foster directed us to ask the local cops to see if there was any evidence that jared McGarand’s truck had been to the arsenal, and damned if they didn’t get a match in samples of mud off jared’s pickup truck. From that parking area outside the rail gates.”