“Forgive the intrusion,” he said. “I’m Aristotle Quartermain. May I have a word, please? This concerns the recent misfortune of Ms. Allison Gardner.”
He proffered his hand, and I automatically shook it. He was in his late fifties, and his skin was not just black but blue -black. He had a glistening, oversized bald head and intense owl-like eyes. He was built like a fire hydrant under that six-hundred-dollar suit, not tall as much as broad, and his hand felt like a silk-covered vise. He sat down carefully opposite me and put his notebook on the table.
“You have the advantage of me, Mr. Quartermain,” I said. “A drink?”
“That would be very nice, Mr. Richter. I believe I have one coming.”
“That sure of yourself?”
“It’s a fault, Mr. Richter. I’m the chief of technical security at the Helios nuclear power station. I’m afraid it’s gone to my head.”
The same waiter brought Quartermain his drink and gave me a conspiratorial look over my guest’s shoulder. The Darkside was everywhere tonight. Then I realized what Quartermain had just announced.
“Ah,” I said.
“Yes,” Quartermain replied, sampling his Scotch. He unzipped the fine-grained leather binder, extracted a neck chain containing his credentials, and slid it across the table. I examined the three plastic badges, each with his picture and the logo of the power company, PrimEnergy, which apparently owned and operated the Helios atomic power station.
“I’m technical security. Another gentleman is physical security. I’m in charge of keeping the nuclear process safe. The other guy is watching for bad guys coming over the moat. Technically, he works for me.”
“Why?”
“Because if our side of the security equation goes south, physical security becomes moot. Nobody will be trying to get in to the power plant under those circumstances, if you get my drift.”
“Got it,” I said. I studied the badges and handed them back. “Those look good, for the moment, anyway.”
“I’ve been at the bar,” he said, retrieving the badges. His fingers were large and impeccably manicured. “I did not want to intrude until the FBI people left. Special Agent Caswell is a sight to behold, is he not.”
“True enough,” I said. I’d decided to let him lead. He knew who I was and why I was in Wilmington, and he knew the Bureau people by name. The pleasant, isn’t-this-a-nice-evening expression melted off his face, and suddenly I was looking at a no-shit security officer. The transformation was dramatic.
“Your associate,” he said, lowering his voice, “was killed by ingesting about a pint of highly radioactive water.”
“How high is high?” I asked.
“High enough to permanently expose twenty-seven plates of X-ray film.” He paused, looking around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Twenty-seven plates that were stored fifty feet away from the main analysis room in that lab. She might as well have crawled into an industrial-sized microwave oven, set it on high, and spent the night in there.”
“All this from one bottle of water?”
He leaned back in his chair and it creaked. “We don’t know that, of course. What the container was, I mean. We’re assuming that she drank it thinking it was just water, since there were no indications of coercion. Right now the situation up at the state forensic lab is somewhat-chaotic.”
“I can just imagine,” I said. “And they know this stuff came from the power plant?”
“No, no, they don’t know that. The NRC-that’s the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-is involved, as is, of course, the Bureau. Needless to say, they’re both looking hard at Helios as a possible source.”
“And let me guess, the plant and the company are circling the wagons at warp speed just now.”
He smiled and shook his head. “The company understands their concerns, of course, but the NRC technical people, at least, know that there’s no way radioactive water can come out of that plant and into the community absent a major, and I mean major, accident. Even then, it would appear in the form of water vapor. Not something you could drink. No. Technically, this isn’t possible.”
“And yet…”
“Yes. And yet. The isotopic fingerprints would normally tell the tale, except for the fact that any credible analysis of residual isotopes is going to be obscured by their having gone through human tissue.”
I just looked at him. Isotopic fingerprints? He saw my confusion. “When I was in nuke school,” he said, “the professor would sometimes say something in Greek and we’d all get blank expressions on our faces. Every classroom had a whiteboard or six. In the corner of one of the whiteboards there was always a rectangle with a circle drawn inside it. Inside the circle were the words ‘I believe.’ That was the I-believe button. If the instructor realized that he’d just baffled the entire class, he’d invite us to press the I-believe button and then he’d proceed with the rest of the lecture. Sometimes the problem cleared up, sometimes it didn’t. So: Say, ‘I believe.’ ”
I did. He grinned.
“What’s funny?”
“I was thinking about Special Agent Caswell’s reaction to isotopic fingerprinting. He tried to pretend he knew what it was. So I asked if the Bureau’s laboratory could do some for us. Special Agent Myers made a note to call them. That will be an amusing, if short, discussion.”
“Back to the problem at hand, Mr. Quartermain,” I said. “My associate, as you called her, is in an autopsy drawer. The technical impossibilities aside, I want to know how this happened and why.”
“I apologize,” he said at once. “I didn’t mean to trivialize what’s happened. In fact, that’s why I’ve come to see you. I’m here to offer you a job of work.”
“Me?”
“You and your company. That’s what you people do, correct? Investigations?”
I shifted in my chair. This was going just a bit too fast. “Mr. Quartermain,” I began.
“Please, call me Ari,” he said. His voice was genial enough, but those zero-parallax eyes never left mine.
“Okay, Ari. You saw me talking to the FBI people. If you know anything about the Bureau, you’ll know that the last thing they will either want or permit is my involvement in this mess. Double-oh-jay is the term of art they prefer when civilians get in their way.”
It was his turn to blink. “Double-oh-jay,” I repeated. “Obstruction of Justice, with a capital J in their case. Say: ‘I believe.’ ”
He laughed then, a great big gut-trouncing bellow of a laugh that had people in the lounge looking over at us.
“I believe,” he said, still chuckling. Then his face sobered up again. “Look,” he continued. “The feds are cranking up a circus and a half over this incident. A joint NRC-FBI team is going to be arriving at the plant first thing tomorrow morning. We, and by ‘we’ I mean reps from the company, the plant operators, various contractors, and nuclear safety engineers, are going to demonstrate that there’s no way hot water got out of that plant in a form that could be consumed. It’ll take a day or so, maybe longer, but then they’re going to go away and look for some other explanation.”
“So what is it you would want me and my people to do?”
“You want to find out what happened to Ms. Gardner?” he asked. “As opposed to, say, finding grounds for some kind of lawsuit?”
That pissed me off. It must have shown in my face because he sat back in his chair and raised his hand defensively.
“Okay,” he said. “That was out of line.” He hesitated. “Look, I came to you because of some things the FBI people said about you. That you were known to them and that you played by your own rules. That you were an outsider, and the fact that Allison Gardner was from your organization was ringing bells for them.” Another pause. “I think I need someone like you, but not until the feds back out.”
“Because there is a way that hot water could escape from your plant? Is that it?”
He took a deep breath. He looked like a man who was about to take a significant risk. “Possibly,” he said, “but not from the reactors, per se. The energy side, I mean. And it would require some inside help.”