Bretti allowed a smile to form at the edges of his mouth. No one had discovered that he was bleeding off p-bars, and old Dumenco wasn’t in any condition to point the finger at him.
He debated leaving another collector in place, perhaps coming back in several months-by which time he might even have a gram of antimatter available! But that would be far too risky-he shouldn’t be loitering here even now. No, the Indians didn’t deserve any more, and he wanted to be long gone. Cut his losses, eliminate further risks.
Gaining entrance, he quickly typed in a command sequence. He raced past the menu of options and posted warnings that scrolled up on the screen, then waited until the computer confirmed that the crystal-lattice trap had been pulled from the beam.
Now, with nothing to capture the surplus antimatter, the Fermilab researchers would suddenly find a dramatic increase in “events.” He expected they would find it quite baffling, and no doubt work to concoct a harebrained theory of physics to explain it all.
Bretti glanced at the clock set above the row of computer screens. It was just after 5 a.m. Time to grab the device and get moving. He had a plane to catch that afternoon.
A few moments later he pushed a lab stool under the joint in the main beam channel that ran to the experimental target area. The thick pipe that made up the channel ran down the upper part of the concrete tunnel. Diagnostic wires, vacuum piping, and metal struts extended from the conduit, accompanied by a faint chugging of the pumps that maintained vacuum. Dim light, thrown out from bulbs screwed into protective cans, illuminated the tunnel with yellow light.
Bretti grunted as he reached up to disengage the antimatter trap from the experimental canister, which had been designed for quick and easy access by the researchers. Hundreds of such canisters hung in the main beam path, and so Bretti’s addition had drawn no special attention.
He carefully pulled the crystal-lattice trap away from the interlocking mechanism and held the device by two bulky protrusions, the base for the solid-state diode lasers that trapped the p-bars in potential wells between the sodium and chloride atoms.
The crystal-lattice trap was much more efficient than the crude Penning trap he had transported to India earlier in the week. He was aware of the danger of carrying such a large quantity of antimatter-the glassy crater from the substation explosion provided clear proof of that-but the diode lasers seemed stable.
He stepped down from the stool while holding the trap, careful not to bump it against anything. The device was designed to be rugged, but he couldn’t afford to be sloppy. If he knocked the lasers out of alignment, this cache of antimatter would be enough to wipe out several city blocks.
Bretti eased the small, cube-like container onto its side, then stepped back up on the stool to close the experimental container above. The whole apparatus weighed no more than a few pounds. Electrical wires ran from the container down to the antimatter trap. He would attach the battery and clean up the area.
In less than ten hours he’d be out of the country. And a million dollars richer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Friday, 6:17 a.m.
Aurora, Illinois
Jackson snatched up his cellular phone on the car seat after the first shrill ring. The traffic in small, residential Batavia was almost nonexistent at this hour. It beat the hell out of putting up with the idiots driving in downtown Chicago, and for an assignment away from the Oakland area, it wasn’t bad-except for the fact that Ben Goldfarb was lying in Intensive Care.
“ Jackson here,” he said, keeping one hand on the steering wheel as he drove toward the medical center. Time was running out, not only for Goldfarb, but for Dumenco as well.
“This is Craig. Where are you right now?”
“Ten minutes from the hospital. I volunteered to watch Dumenco this morning, since the Board will still be investigating yesterday’s shooting. Agent Schultz is banged up and won’t be back on duty for a while, so I offered to help out the troops from the main Chicago office.”
“I’ll take that duty,” Craig said. “I’m trying to make some… arrangements for Dumenco in downtown Chicago, and then I have to go to a gift shop Paige told me about.”
“A gift shop?” Jackson said.
“Don’t ask,” Craig said. “It’s important. But I was planning to go through the experimental area early this morning, without Dr. Piter present, to get a fresh view on Dumenco’s accident. Can you cover that for me instead? You might see something I missed the first time.”
“That’ll be the day! Okay, I’ll grab Frank Chang, the grad student who showed me around Bretti’s cubicle.” Jackson signaled with his right blinker as Craig spoke, looking for a place to turn around. “Anything special I should be looking for?”
“Get him to take you along Dr. Dumenco’s path the day he received his lethal exposure. See if you can figure out what it would take for someone to disengage the safety interlocks. Could our hospital assassin have done it, or did it have to be an inside job, as Dumenco insists? I’m still not convinced that just anybody could work the beam controls.”
Jackson pulled onto the shoulder and slowed to a stop, preparing to turn toward the Fermilab site. A single cow stood by a barbed-wire fence, watching Jackson ’s car. “Craig,” he said, “just check up on Ben for me this morning, would you?”
“Mr. Chang, I want to go over the safety interlocks in addition to seeing the experimental target area where Dumenco’s accident occurred.”
Chang tossed his long hair over his shoulder, grinning with self-importance to be the FBI agent’s chosen escort. “You’re in luck, since we just brought the accelerator down. P-bar production suddenly shot off the scale at about five this morning, which is pretty incredible. The increase is exactly what Dr. Dumenco predicted. Something screwy is happening in the accelerator, and until the theorists come up with a good explanation, we’ll play it safe.”
Chang gestured for Jackson to follow him, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Dr. Piter’s going to have a fit when he finds out the accelerator is down again, especially because of increased p-bar production. Sometimes it seems he doesn’t want to see anything that would verify Dumenco’s work. Piter’s a… sore loser, I guess you’d say. He’s got his heart set on that Nobel.”
“What about all the construction work on this extension ring-the Main Injector. Doesn’t that interfere with your work? Lots of shutdowns?‘’
Chang shrugged. “Some of their heavy machinery screws up our delicate beam balance, but we just have to deal with it.”
Jackson followed the young man down the tunnels. He smelled ozone, lubricants, cool concrete, metal shavings. “So what’s it like working for a person up for the Nobel Prize?‘’ he asked in a forced conversational tone. ”Must be exciting.“
Chang squinted up at him. “You mean Dr. Piter? I don’t really work directly for him, he just holds the purse strings. But the man’s a slave driver, a real nano-manager, looking at administrative details down to the billionth part.” The grad student shook his head, flashing his goofy grin again. “He’s lucky to keep any grad students around.”
“So why don’t you leave, go somewhere else?” Jackson towered over the young graduate student.
Chang looked appalled. “Hey, I’ve got a chance to be in on the discovery of the century. If this p-bar enhancement really works, then we’ll be in an energy range close enough to go for the Higgs boson.” He looked at Jackson as if he expected the lean agent to share the excitement, but Jackson didn’t even know what he was talking about. “When the Main Injector comes on line next year, the whole accelerator will work in this new energy range, and we just might have a chance to detect it. Wouldn’t that be something?” Jackson blinked, but Chang’s enthusiasm was infectious.