I told him it was, and he levered himself out of the creaking wicker chair. He stared down at the floor for a moment, as if making sure it was going to hold him. Then he looked back at me. “We’re operating under different rules these days, Mr. Richter. The war against terror has seen federal law enforcement crossing some lines which we used to hold fairly sacred.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, these days, if you interfere, you can disappear.”
Then he left us.
I breathed a sigh of relief after letting him out the front door.
“Now that’s a weird m-f,” Tony said. “Does he always speak in code like that?”
I went back into the kitchen and sat down. “That wasn’t code, guys. There’s something seriously amiss down here, and this time, I think we’re going to have to play by their rules. If it weren’t for Allie’s involvement, I’d back us out of this right now.”
“Allie’s beyond caring, boss,” Pardee pointed out, “and we don’t know squat about a nuclear power plant. What exactly is it this guy wants us to do?”
I still wasn’t quite sure myself, so I went sideways. “Why don’t you bring up the site and see if we’ve got mail?”
He did and we did. One message from Ari. He told us to report to the Helios administration building to begin processing for vehicle passes and ID cards.
We took two vehicles. The shepherds and I went in my Suburban; Tony and Pardee went in Pardee’s black Crown Vic. My Suburban was a plain vanilla 2500 series with the rear seats flattened to accommodate the mutts. Pardee’s ride was every inch the cop car-tinted windows, souped-up mill, several antennas, and those all-rubber semi-slick tires engineered for extreme road-handling. I think he missed being in Major Crimes. Also he liked to speed, and that getup plus a few other secret signs and totems pretty much guaranteed a pass from the state police.
We took Highway 133 up to the plant’s main entrance and turned in. It was a beautifully landscaped entrance that gave onto a four-lane, undivided parkway. As we turned in we heard a low siren wail in the distance. It sounded like the shift-change whistle at a manufacturing plant. The road made a broad S-turn once we got past the main entrance, and then a second one lined us up with the main gates. Somewhat to our surprise, we found a squad of armed and flak-jacketed men arrayed across the gate area as we approached. I slowed the Suburban and lowered my driver’s side window. Tony pulled in right behind me. One of the guards stepped forward, while the others spread out their line, keeping what looked like Colt M4s at a loose port arms.
“Yes, sir, can we help you?” the guard asked, eyeing the two big dogs behind me. He was courteous, but warily so. I realized then that the siren had gone off when some invisible sensor detected unauthorized vehicles approaching the main gates. I explained that we were guests of Dr. Quartermain and that we were supposed to meet him at the pass office. The guard nodded and told us that this was the plant entrance and that the admin office was another half mile down the road. We’d apparently driven right by it. He showed us where we could U-turn and wished us a nice day. The line of armed guards had relaxed fractionally, but they were still in position to shoot the two vehicles to pieces if that need were to arise.
The admin building looked like every other admin building I’d been in. I told the guys to leave their weapons in their vehicle. I unstrapped my own. 45 and jammed it down between the seat and the center console. I set Frick up in a harness and leash rig and took her into the building with me. I lowered the windows and instructed Frack to guard the Suburban with his life. He promptly lay down for a nap.
Once inside, we were taken to Quartermain’s office, where we were met by a thirty-something brunette hottie who’d obviously been told to expect us. If she was impressed by the sight of two large and one medium-sized, very fit men, one of them being attached to an equally fit German shepherd, she gave no sign of it. She eyed Frick and said that the dog might present a problem. I told her that the dog was a service dog and that federal law required admission of such dogs if they were harnessed, leashed, and suitably trained.
She bent forward to address Frick. “Are you suitably trained?” she asked. Tony made a small noise in his throat when she bent forward, but Frick merely looked at her for a second and then just barely wrinkled her lip.
“Why yes you are,” the young woman said, straightening up. “We won’t mess with your dog.”
I had to admit that it had been fun watching her straighten up, and she also was no dummy. “The dog is just part of the act,” I said. “But: There is another one out front.”
“Then we’ll need two dog passes, won’t we,” she said and went to get the paperwork. Watching her walk away continued to be fun. I asked her where Mr. Quartermain was. “In a meeting,” she called over her shoulder. I asked if Mr. Trask was in the building.
“You mean Colonel Trask?” she asked, just to make sure we knew how to address His Lordship.
“Older guy, reddish gray hair, face like a hatchet? Really pleased with himself?”
She turned her face away for a moment, trying to control a smile. The nameplate on her desk read SAMANTHA YOUNG, ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT. Tony was still standing in the doorway, the veritable picture of a man fallen deeply in lust. Tony did that often.
“Did you really want to see the colonel?” she asked.
“Actually? No. You see one colonel, you’ve kind of seen them all.”
She nodded. “I asked,” she said, “because he’s supposed to sign your security passes. Is that possibly going to be a problem?”
“Why don’t you get Dr. Quartermain to handle that,” I suggested. “Probably save everybody a lot of time.”
At that moment, Aristotle Quartermain came into the office through a second door. “Handle what, Sam?” he asked. She explained the problem, and he waved it off. “I’ll sign these passes,” he said. “Give all your info to Sam here, and then let’s talk. I need them to have vehicle passes and smart-tags, too, Sam, okay?”
We did the paper drill, took mug shots and thumbprints, and then sat down with Quartermain in his inner office while young Samantha went down the hall to emboss and laminate our ID cards. I parked Frick over in one corner, where she decided to stare at our host. He thought that was pretty cool. Pardee had to snatch Tony by the collar to keep him from following Samantha. Quartermain had noticed.
“Ain’t she something?” he said admiringly. “Hired her about a year ago when my original assistant up and moved to Florida for some strange reason. She goes for her noonday run in this little gold spandex outfit? Now half the guys at the station are out exercising. And she can shoot, too. That’s a great dog you got there. He’ll need a pass, too, though.”
“It’s a she, and Samantha is getting the passes.”
Tony had closed his eyes, probably trying to visualize the spandex outfit. Tony’s idea of exercise was to stow two cases of beer in his fridge, not just one, but that might change. Pardee helpfully told him to stop drooling.
I told Quartermain about Special Agent Caswell’s visit, noting that that was the second time we’d had an “exchange of views,” and that between Trask and the FBI, the hospitality angle for H amp;S Investigations was disappointing.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m not too surprised. Let me bring you up to speed.”
He told us that the first attempt to retrieve radioactive particles from Allie’s body had been a bust, which corroborated what Creeps had told us. The docs were pretty sure that whatever it was, water had been the medium and alpha particles the radiation vector. Then he took us all over to the visitors’ center, which had been closed to the public in the wake of the 9/11 disaster. There he showed us a diorama of the power station, a mockup of the control room, and some animated flowcharts that showed how the reactor system worked.