“Oh, we’ll be asking you,” Goldfarb said. “We’ll be asking you a lot of things.” His voice changed, became flatter, harder. “By the authority vested in me by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I’m placing you under arrest.”
“But I didn’t kill Michaelson,” Lesserec protested. “I didn’t do it!”
“You’ve done enough,” Goldfarb said. “That’s a start.”
CHAPTER 42
Craig struggled to his feet as Goldfarb read Lesserec his Miranda rights. Paige helped him up, and he grasped her shoulder weakly. His arms trembled.
It felt as if someone had reached inside his spine and yanked out his entire network of nerves like a gardener uprooting a persistent weed. His skin still sizzled from the imagined shockwave of the detonation engulfing him.
What had Hal Michaelson experienced that had obliterated him? And where had the hydrofluoric acid come from?
Colored spots swam in front of Craig’s eyes, and he lost his balance, reeling against Paige for support. He felt completely drained. He wouldn’t be surprised if he had sweated five pounds of his body weight in the few minutes he was in the chamber. He swallowed some more water from Tansy’s coffee mug, and then turned dizzily.
“The rest room,” he said. “I… I need to wash up, get some life back into me.”
“Craig, I think we should just take you to the hospital. I’ll call the Lab Emergency Response and—”
“No.” Craig cut her off. “Just give me a minute to rest. Let me splash some water on my face, and then we’ll talk about it, okay?”
“Kay-O.” Reluctantly she guided him one tentative step at a time down the corridor to the men’s room.
“Do you need any help?” Paige asked.
Craig forced a wan smile. “If you’re trying to give me a thrill, I’m not really up to it right now.”
She let out an amused sigh. “Haven’t you already seen how much damage an overactive imagination can cause, Craig?” She pushed open the bathroom door for him.
He swayed, then staggered over to the white porcelain sinks. He slapped at the cold water tap until a rushing stream splashed out. He leaned over the basin, smelling the coolness, feeling the prickles of sweat like bee-stings in his burned nerve endings.
Craig dunked his still-shaking hands under the stream of water, and the cold shock jarred him closer to full awareness. Man, oh man, he thought. Did Lesserec really think people would pay for an experience like that? With a long sigh, he cupped his hands and bent over the sink, splashing the water on his cheeks, removing the salty rivulets of perspiration.
He rubbed at his burning eyes. Then he reached over with his left hand to hit the soap dispenser, pumping the round metal plunger to squirt pink liquid soap into the palm of his hand. He rubbed his hands together and bent over the running water again, splashing the soapy water on his face, scrubbing the weariness away. It made him feel tingly and clean as echoes of the simulated nuclear detonation thundered in his head.
He found it difficult to think. His mind had experienced a sensory overload, and his mental snowplow had not yet cleared the main routes.
Craig stared at his hands, felt his face, and sluggishly turned to look at the soap dispenser again. Something… something…
He reached over with his left hand slowly and pushed up on the soap dispenser’s metal plunger. The round end pressed down in the center of his palm — a circle squirting liquid soap.
José Aragon had a small circular acid burn directly in the middle of his palm.
Like an automaton, watching his every motion with growing uneasiness, Craig brought his hand over to the running water again, rubbed his hands to lather the soap, and bent to splash his face.
Hal Michaelson’s hands and face had been covered with the deadly HF.
On uncooperative legs Craig wheeled away from the sink, forgetting entirely about the water. The water kept splashing as he staggered out of the bathroom. He yanked the door open and stood with his face and hands still dripping cold water. He startled Paige, who had been waiting for him just outside.
“Craig, let me help you. What’s wrong?”
“Get Aragon on the phone,” he gasped. “I want to ask him one question. I think I’ve figured this out.”
“Don’t move so fast, Craig. You’re going to collapse. I know what you’ve been through.”
“Just get him on the phone!” Craig said, then clapped a wet hand to his forehead. He steadied himself against the wall, and Paige eased him over to a chair.
“All right, I’ll call him.”
Just thinking about the mystery made Craig come to his senses more than the cold water had. His heart raced as the pieces of the puzzle clicked together.
Paige handed him a telephone. “I’ve got Aragon’s wife. She’s bringing him to the phone.”
“Good,” Craig said and took the receiver. “Hello,” he waited but heard nothing until a moment later.
José Aragon’s watery, slightly nasal voice came over the phone. “Yes? Aragon speaking.”
“Craig Kreident, FBI,” he said. “I have one question for you, Mr. Aragon. When you and Dr. Michaelson were in the Plutonium Facility, did you go into the rest room?”
“What?” Aragon asked.
“Did you use the rest room? Did you wash your hands in the Plutonium Facility?”
“Yes, uh, I think so. Dr. Michaelson and I were… having a discussion when we went to the rest room. A rather heated discussion,” he added reluctantly. “Hal was tired. He’d flown in from Washington that morning.”
“Did he splash water on his face? Did he use the soap dispenser? Did you use the soap dispenser?”
Aragon seemed baffled. “What is the point of this line of questioning, Mr. Kreident?”
“I don’t have to explain my reasons to you,” Craig snapped in exasperation. “Just answer me.”
“Yes, we washed up,” Aragon said, sounding miffed. “Hal practically took a shower if I remember right. I just washed my hands quickly, I think. Do you need to know if I went pee too?”
“Which rest room did you use, Mr. Aragon? It’s important.”
“There is only one in the Radioactive Materials Area.”
Craig didn’t bother thanking him as he hung up the phone. It was clear now.
Michaelson, weary from his red-eye flight, arguing with Aragon, had stepped into the rest room, turned the cold water on, soaped up his hands, splashed his face. Aragon, trying to make excuses, trying to calm Michaelson down, distractedly tapping the soap dispenser, daintily rinsing his hands.
But neither of them had realized that the soap dispenser contained hydrofluoric acid… a small amount, but sufficient. Michaelson had unwittingly gotten it all over his hands and face. Aragon had received only a small exposure, but enough to burn a hole in his hands and force him to have the skin excised. The acid penetrated slowly to the nerves, then the bone. The victim wouldn’t even feel it until much later.
But who had placed the acid in the dispenser? Aragon could have planted it, hoping to lure Michaelson… after all, it took only a five-percent bodily exposure for a fatal dose.
But Craig couldn’t believe even Aragon would be so appallingly stupid to get the acid on his own hand if he knew it was there. Lesserec had been in the Plutonium Facility, but how had he known when Michaelson would come through, if ever? It didn’t make sense.
Unless it had been Lesserec, who was overseeing the sensors being installed in the Plutonium Facility for the International Verification Initiative. He would have known when Michaelson was going through the facility.