Pardee, on the other hand, was in trouble. Center stage, ICU trouble. Whatever Trask had gassed him with was still in control. The docs said that he smelled like ether, and that in the hands of a non-anesthesiologist, ether could be highly toxic and there was a chance of brain damage, or worse, if he didn’t come out of it in the next few days.
I’d put a call in to Bernie Price and asked him if he could bird-dog Pardee’s police report for us. I preferred to have someone who knew both of us working with the admissions staff, who had all sorts of interesting questions about how Pardee came to inhale ether.
“You’re sure this was Trask’s doing?” Ari asked.
“Once again, I never saw him, but it sure sounded like him, and we had prior indication that he was doing stuff over there in the container port.”
“Stuff.”
“You don’t actually want to know,” I told him, “but he was allegedly working with the government, so it’s not a criminal enterprise. How’s Helios?”
“You don’t actually want to know,” he parroted back to me with a wry grin. “The DNA comparison didn’t work, probably because of all the radiation exposure. The coroner’s office is freaking out because the body is not decomposing. Remember all that news about irradiating meat to prevent spoilage? Apparently it works.”
“Lovely,” I said. “Look: Whatever Trask is planning, he has inside help, and it may be as soon as tonight.”
He looked at his watch. “Tonight is over,” he said wearily. “It’s tomorrow already. Who’s the inside help, and what is the it?”
“I like the Russian’s deputy, that Dr. Thomason, but I don’t have any firm evidence. Is he competent to create some kind of incident?”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” Ari said, “but it would have to be the moonpool. He doesn’t usually work the reactor side, although technically he’s licensed to do so. If he showed up over there in the middle of the night, everyone in the control center would wonder why.”
“What’s the worst thing that could happen to the moonpool?”
“Empty the pool,” he said promptly. “Remember, it’s mostly aboveground. Empty the pool, and the spent fuel stack could catch fire from the heat of decay.”
“Would that be contained?”
“To start with,” he said, “but if we got significant hydrogen generation and no remedial action was taken, you could get a gas explosion. Blow the containment building apart, and the Three Mile Island incident would look like an amusing Halloween prank.”
“But there would be remedial action, right? You have automatic systems to deal with loss of the water?”
“Certainly, but you said you thought Trask had inside help. If it’s Thomason, or someone with Thomason’s qualifications, he could disable all of those systems, and he could probably do so in a way that would keep the control room from knowing it until it was too late. Hell, I could do that.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “What’s your opinion of Thomason?”
“He’s a good engineer. Ex-Navy nuke, like a lot of them are. Personality-free zone. Gets along with Petrowska, which takes some doing. Doesn’t socialize much within the plant. Don’t know his politics.”
“Could he have some hidden agenda?”
Ari rubbed his cheeks with both hands while he considered that question. “I suppose he could,” he said, “but I’ve never heard him ranting and raving, not, for instance, like Carl Trask.”
“I still think you should alert your security people,” I said.
He sighed and nodded. “And what, specifically, do I tell them?”
I had a momentary vision of Trask turning a couple of cobras loose in the control room. My arm twinged. “You have stages of threat alert over there, don’t you? Like the airports? Raise the alert level immediately. You don’t have to explain why. Lock the fucking place down for a few days until we can pull the string on Thomason and actually apprehend Trask.”
“We’ve already got the FBI and the NRC crawling up our asses,” he said. “I guess we could throw some more shit in the game.”
“Ari, look: Your plant may be under attack. Two unexplained radiological releases. A dead body in the moonpool. Your physical security director is missing and presumed whacko. I get ambushed in the container port by a guy who has pre-staged facilities-in the junkyard. My partner is a gorp upstairs, courtesy of the same guy who turned a python loose on me. Pretend you’re sitting in front of a congressional committee afterward while a senator recites all that and then asks why nothing was done.”
He put his shiny bald head in his hands and thought about it. “Coming offline unscheduled is a really big deal,” he said between his fingers. “I can lock the place down, as you put it, but if they’re after the moonpool, that wouldn’t affect the reactor side.”
“Suppose the moonpool is a diversion?” I said. “Is the NRC looking at the reactor side? The Bureau? Anybody? Or is everybody focused on the moonpool?”
He looked at me from between splayed fingers. “Fu-u-u-u-ck,” he said.
Then he got out his cell phone. Ignoring all the signs about using cell phones in the hospital, he placed a call. He identified himself, but didn’t give his phone number, and then made them call him back. Then he asked for the supervisory engineer in the primary control room.
“Hal, this is Ari Quartermain. This is an emergency communication. I have made an official determination that the reactor system is temporarily unsafe. I direct that you inform the grid operator that Helios is going offline. Once the generator hall comes off the grid, then I direct that you execute a deliberate reactor scram. I am ready to give you the authentication code word.”
He listened for a moment, looking over at me with a grave expression.
“That’s right. Make the appropriate log entries.” A pause. “Yes, of course I will take full responsibility, but do it now. There is an inside security threat to the RCS.”
He listened some more. “No, do not wait. Tell the grid operations center they have five minutes to adjust the load. If they protest, tell them you’re going to scram in six minutes. They can handle it. They won’t want to, but they can. Let me know when you’re ready for the code word.”
He listened, then put his hand over the phone. “He has to get a safe open,” he told me. “Two-man rule and all that.”
“Can he object, or go over your head?” I asked.
Ari shook his head. “He’s a nuke. This is a certified emergency procedure. My phone has a unique caller ID symbol that confirms it’s me. There are two code words, actually, one for duress, and one which means he has to do what I say.” He turned back to the phone.
“I am ready to proceed,” he said. He waited, and then said, “No,” and then spoke a single word. He waited. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll inform the director.”
He hung up and looked over at me. “Now the real fun begins,” he said. “And this time, Mr. Private Investigator, you’re going to get to play.”
A weary-looking nurse in blue scrubs came into the waiting area, frowned at Ari’s cell phone, and then called my name. Her name tag had an ICU logo.
“Your friend, Mr. Bell, is semiconscious,” she said. “That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s no one home.”
I digested that announcement for a moment. “Will he recover?” I asked.
“We don’t know, Mr. Richter. When I say he’s semiconscious, I mean he’s responsive to stimuli. His hand flinches if we probe a finger with a needle. We hope that Mr. Bell is still down there somewhere. For now, I’d suggest you go home until we contact you. Make sure Admitting has your contact numbers. Is Mr. Bell married?”