Nagib decided he deserved a short vacation after successfully defending his thesis at New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces the previous day. Indeed, while all his friends were partying and having fun he had spent the Christmas and New Year break studying day and night for his final exam. He passed it with flying colors despite his fear that the external examiner, an Israeli scientist called Dr. Benny Avivi, who was added to the examination panel, would give him a hard time. To his surprise Dr. Avivi was totally aboveboard and did not try to undermine his theory or question the validity of his experimental results.
Nagib wanted to spend part of his time in Albuquerque interviewing for a job as an analytical chemist and part having fun and skiing in Taos. While in Palestine he had never had a chance to ski, although every two or three years some snow did accumulate in his mountain village near Hebron and like the other kids from the village he liked to take a thick plastic sheet and slide down the snow covered hill on his backside. He learnt to seriously ski in the mountain area of Cloudcroft in New Mexico and became quite proficient with the help of Amanda, his girlfriend who was also a student at NMSU and came from a family of winter sports athletes. He was sorry to leave the sheltered life of a graduate student in Las Cruces and especially saddened that Amanda had ditched him in favor of a local boy who was her childhood neighbor, much to the joy of her conservative parents who did not encourage her relationship with a foreigner, especially a Muslim like Nagib.
Nagib had never lived in a city with more than 200,000 residents and viewed Albuquerque as a major metropolis with its own international airport, large university and its position as the business and cultural center of New Mexico. He knew that job opportunities there were very good for someone with his credentials and the proximity of Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories were an added attraction for his long term plan. After a few interviews he was offered a position as an assistant director and chief scientist in a medical laboratory that carried out bio-chemical tests. He was clever enough to realize that the fancy title was actually a kind of compensation for the meager pay and monotonous routine work and declined the offer saying that he was more interested in real research and development. Through the contacts of his advisor, Professor Chen, he was also interviewed by Geo Consultants Ltd (GCL) a sub-contractor of Kirtland Air Force Base that carried out geological and environmental surveys in and around the base. Kirtland was quite unique as its runways were shared with the civilian ABQ Albuquerque airport making it a combined civil-military airport. Employees of GCL were not required to be US citizens and it was sufficient that they were legal aliens and holders of a Green Card on the way to full citizenship. The pay as a consultant to a sub-contractor was way below what an analytical chemist with a Ph. D. degree would normally receive but Nagib was pleased with the pay that was significantly higher than that of a graduate student and with the position that allowed him access to a military air force base. He reckoned that being close to the world's largest storage facility for nuclear weapons (he read this in Wikipedia) would also potentially help his long term objective, so he gladly signed the employment contract.
Most of his work consisted of following a predetermined route that took him to several points near the large storage facilities in the base and then to its perimeter and finally to other points that were up to 50 miles from the base, mainly in the downwind and downstream direction. At each point Nagib and his driver/technician, Renaldo who was also a Green Card holder originally from Chihuahua in Mexico, would collect samples of soil and vegetation and water from drilled wells (if possible) and carry them to the laboratory. Nagib and Renaldo were also in charge of performing the chemical analyses to determine if there was any environmental contamination that originated from the base. The reports were passed on to their GCL supervisor who then arranged them in tables and graphs, added his own signature and delivered them to the environmental officer of the Kirtland base. Neither the supervisor nor the environmental officer really understood the meaning of the numbers in Nagib's report so that after going through this routine for a couple of years, without seeing any significant variations in the numbers Nagib suggested to Renaldo that they reduce the amount of the tedious analytical procedures and just copy some older values. Renaldo who anyway thought that he was underpaid for his efforts gladly agreed to lessen the work load and agreed. This went on for another year without anyone noticing the fraudulent reports but then Nagib was offered a promotion and pay increase that would permit him to stay in the air conditioned laboratory without having to travel on gravel roads to the remote sampling points. Nagib was allowed to hire Renaldo to help him in his new R&D job.
Nagib travelled back to NMSU to discuss his new appointment with Professor Chen. His advisor was glad to see that his former student was doing well professionally so when Nagib asked for his permission to carry out field tests with the pocket-size device that they had developed jointly Chen immediately agreed. He also added that an application for a patent had already been submitted to the US Patent Office but, as was the custom in his group, future proceeds, if any actually were forthcoming, would be shared between Prof. Chen and NMSU.
Nagib returned to GCL with the news and proposed a special mission for discovery of leaks that involved release of uranium using the new device and suggested that he should be put in charge of the project. Nagib's supervisor told him that he would discuss this idea with his own boss and get back to him. By now Nagib knew that his supervisor would take credit for the proposal, just as he had done with the reports previously, but that did not worry Nagib as long as the idea was approved. He was keen to have the added responsibility as the new mission would give him a good excuse to enter the actual storage facilities under the guise of collecting samples for tracking leakage of uranium from stored weapons.
Nagib was certain his proposal would be approved as he had read (once again in Wikipedia) that Kirtland had suffered a shattering setback in 2010 when it had lost, temporarily one may add, its certification to manage and maintain the nuclear warheads stored on the site. It took several months to be recertified but the lesson had been learnt and now any idea, proposal or suggestion that could enhance safety or security was almost automatically approved. Nagib was also conscious of the jet fuel leakage incident that was discovered only in 1999, probably after decades of leaking. In this case some hazardous chemicals had even reached the aquifer and endangered the city's drinking water reservoir and wells. His supervisor at GCL had so gotten used to Nagib's presence and had forgotten that he was not yet a US citizen so he failed to note that fact when filling the forms that would enable Nagib to gain access to one of the most secure places in the US nuclear facilities. However, a routine check by the officer in charge of base security revealed this fact and the supervisor was removed from his position for gross negligence and was lucky to escape charges of endangering the national security. Nagib who had not even seen the forms filed by the supervisor was put under special surveillance through no fault of his own. Nagib now was faced with a dilemma — if he quit his job with GCL under a cloud of suspicion he may find it difficult to apply for a job with one of the National Laboratories after receiving a US citizenship, but if he stayed on the job he would not be able to gain access to the part of the base that really interested him because everyone would be alerted that he was under right of entry restrictions.