“Actually,” Ari said, “I’d like you to stay. Remember my telling you that we might be able to trace marker isotopes when Ms. Gardner was killed?”
I nodded, although that hadn’t worked out with Allie’s postmortem.
“We have been able to recover the isotopic markers from our spill team’s monitors.”
“And?”
“The markers aren’t unequivocal,” he said grimly, indicating the moonpool with a sideways nod of his head, “but one could make the case that they point right here.”
“Who knows that?” I asked, wanting suddenly to get out of this foreboding building.
“At this moment, nobody but me and my lab people. They’d just brought me the report when I called you. But I will have to notify the company and, more importantly, the NRC. And then we’re probably going to experience some more interesting times, in the Chinese sense.”
I remembered Creeps saying they’d shut the plant down if they could prove the water came from the moonpool. “You’re saying you now think somebody did take radioactive water or materials, or both, out of this facility?”
“Seems impossible, doesn’t it,” he said. “You’ve seen the security. And, of course, it could have come from another BWR plant. But we’re the closest. Plus, you can’t and you wouldn’t get near an operating power reactor, so…”
I looked around as I digested this bit of news. The pool was contained in a sealed concrete building, swarming with radiation-monitoring instruments, accessible only through three layers of security checks, one manned, two electronic, and under constant television surveillance from a control room. So it wasn’t likely that someone just wandered up here with a rope and a bucket.
“Who’s the guy in charge of this area?” I asked.
“Not a guy,” he said. “Her name is Anna P. Martin. Doctor Anna Petrowska Martin, to be specific.”
“Judas Priest!” I said. “You’ve got a damned Russian on your management team?”
“Now, now, don’t rush to judgment. We also have Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and, yes, one Russian, and even some native-born Americans.”
“You do?”
“Consider the state of public education in this country these days, Mr. Richter. You think America’s producing bumper crops of nuclear engineers? If it weren’t for technically educated foreigners, there’d be no nuclear power or any other high-tech industry in this country. What we can’t rape and pillage from the Navy’s nuclear power program, we make up with foreigners. All of whom are fully vetted American citizens, by the way, as is Dr. Martin.”
I shook my head. I had strong views on Russians even being in this country, having dealt with my share of them in the Manceford County major crimes office. The Russian gangs made the Mafia look like pasta-bellied pussies. They were vicious beyond belief, and I firmly believed we should deport every damned one of them back to their beloved rodina tomorrow.
I was about to expand on these sentiments when I realized that one of the white-suited techs was standing behind me. He took off his headgear. Her headgear. I’d formed a mental image of a fullback-shouldered Madame Khrushchev when Ari had told me about Comrade Dr. Martin, but this was most definitely not the case.
“Did I hear my homeland being mentioned?” she said, shaking out a wave of platinum-blond hair. She was one of those chiseled Slavic beauties, with pronounced cheekbones, bright ice-blue eyes, and a challenging mouth. I could hear the Eastern European accent, but she’d obviously been in the States for some time. I’d paid no attention to the “guys” in the baggy white suits, or I would have noticed that one suit wouldn’t necessarily be called baggy.
Ari introduced us, explaining that I was a professional investigator, and that I’d been contracted to help him with an internal problem. She gave him a quizzical look, and me a condescending smile. Then recognition dawned in those polar eyes.
“Ah, yes, the policeman with the Alsatian dogs,” she said, extending a gloved hand.
We shook hands clumsily through all the protective gear. Her grip was firm, and, based on the mildly amused look on her face, she’d overheard my sentiments regarding the presence of a Russian on the staff in the vital area of the plant. I mumbled something polite, which she ignored. She turned back to Ari to ask what more he had heard about the incident last night. He demurred and said he hadn’t any further data at the moment. She smoothed her hair one more time and then looked back at me.
“Are you a technical person, Mr. Richter?” she asked. “An engineer, perhaps?”
“Afraid not,” I said. “Just run-of-the-mill police.”
“Oh,” she said with a distinctly dismissive smile. “And you don’t care much for Russians, do you?”
“That’s right,” I said. “I think they belong in Russia.”
“But America is the land of opportunity, yes?”
“As a policeman, all the Russians I’ve ever met were savages, whose idea of opportunity in America was to rape, maim, steal, and kill. Seeing as you’re a Ph. D. and working here, I guess I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Well, my goodness,” she exclaimed, stepping back away from me. “You are beginning to remind me of the police back in my birth country. I thought your job as a policeman was to protect and defend.”
“To protect and defend Americans,” I said.
“I’m an American citizen, you ignorant oaf!”
“Anna,” Ari said.
She glared at me again, relayed some technical information in nuke-speak to Ari, and then stomped off to rejoin her team. Or tried to-it’s hard to stomp in paper boots.
Ari was grinning at me. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “She has a temper, and you did step on her toes just a wee bit.”
“Do I look sad?” I asked.
“You look like every other normal male who meets her for the first time,” he said, still smiling. “She’s hardcore about her job and her science, though. She just fired one of her senior techs for breaking protocol on an emergency procedure exercise. When it comes to the moonpool, she’s serious as a heart attack.”
“Then how did some of this evil shit get loose?” I asked, pointing with my chin at the glowing pool.
“Good question, Mr. Investigator,” he replied evenly.
In other words, There’s your mission impossible, Mr. Phelps, should you choose to accept it. I told him about my guys’ reservations after last night’s circus on the pier, and that I’d told them they could back out if they wanted to. He actually thought that might simplify things. One stranger wandering around the complex ought to attract less attention than three.
“I’ll need their badges back,” he reminded me.
“Does Comrade Martin know that the stuff on the truck might have come from here?” I asked.
“She will as soon as I file the NRC report,” he said. “She will feature prominently in the resulting internal investigation.”
“Is that control room over there manned 24/7?”
“No,” he said. “Just when they’re running tests or some other evolution. Otherwise, there’s no one up here.”
I hesitated before asking the next question, but there was no way around it. “If the NRC is going to investigate this from the outside, and the company’s going to be turning over rocks from the inside, and the Bureau is going to be watching both, tell me again what you want me to do?”
He glanced around the steel deck once more. Dr. Martin and her techs had disappeared, and we were alone with the moonpool and its unearthly glow. It looked like some Northern Lights had drowned down there.
“Do you know what a Red Team is?” he asked.
I did not.
“It’s a government expression, normally used in war gaming. When the government conducts a war game, it postulates a hypothetical crisis scenario, and then pits a group of actual government officials against the crisis. These are real officials, but they’re role-playing. Someone from the White House staff will play the president. Another person, say from the Defense Department, will play the role of secretary of defense.”