Deadly Politics

by LynDee Walker

My mouth went drier than Death Valley and forgot how to work.

  “Thank you so much for coming, Leigh,” Adams was saying, waving me inside.

  I nodded, not taking my eyes off his companion.

  Adams noticed, turning and putting both hands out. “Have you two met? I thought it might be helpful to have someone here who could let us know what the governor would like covered in the article.”

  My eyes stayed locked on Wyatt’s. She who blinks first shows fear. And politicians feed on fear like well-groomed, toothpaste-commercial-smile-sporting succubi.

  He blinked. Smiled.

  I stuck my hand out. “Of course. I don’t think we’ve met, but thanks so much for letting me interrupt your Sunday in the interest of my deadline. I’m Leigh Mays.”

  He shook my hand, his warm and almost sticky. “Wyatt Bledsoe.”

  I kept my smile in place, my posture easy.

  I wore not a speck of makeup. My hair was stuffed under a ball cap, my jeans and sweater hiding my figure and my low wedge shoes making me shorter than I usually looked.

  I wasn’t Nichelle from the Telegraph, current commonwealth political enemy number one. I was Leigh. A freckle-faced, practically petite do-gooder environmental reporter.

  The fundamental political truth that perception is reality was suddenly in my corner. All I needed was for them to believe I was Leigh, and I was. One person’s truth, colored by their own experience and expectation, wasn’t necessarily the next person’s.

  It was a basic tenet of human psychology my friend Emily always said I needed to understand better in my job. Standing there, I promised myself I’d consider it later if I could use it to get myself out of this building sans handcuffs now.

  “No problem.” Wyatt’s lips tipped up in a tight smile, his eyebrows flashing skyward to match. “My job doesn’t exactly keep regular hours.”

  “I do understand that,” I said.

  “Why don’t we head up to my office?” Adams asked. “I think we’ll be comfortable chatting there.”

  I nodded, swinging one arm wide in a lead-the-way gesture.

  “Ladies first,” Wyatt said with a nod. I fell into step beside Adams, high walls of gleaming tinted glass, steel, and stark white rising around us through an atrium so modern it looked like a set for an eighties sci-fi movie version of the twenty-first century.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I was to get your call,” he said. “We’ve been so anxious to share some of our advances with your audience, and I appreciate you taking the interest.” He looked over his shoulder. “And of course we appreciate the governor’s confidence.”

  Wyatt nodded. “He’s been impressed with your research.” He had? Lucky break, since I’d big fat made up the name drop to make the interview sound important.

  “Of course, he’s a little busy today.” Shit. Did Wyatt’s eyes flick my way when he said that? I focused on my breathing, keeping my shoulders relaxed. Kyle always said they were my nervous tell, pulling so tight they crept toward my ears. Wyatt kept right on talking. “So I didn’t have a chance to ask him for specifics, but I’m sure your editor shared that with you, right?”

  I glanced back, nodding. “I think I have a good handle on what I’m here to get.”

  We stopped in front of a bank of elevators—glass, of course. Adams pressed the button, holding it for two blinks too long to be normal. “Up, please.”

  Like he could read my thoughts, he slid his eyes to me and smiled. “Fingerprint and voice ID. Our security is top notch.”

  I smiled, nodding as I stepped through the doors when they opened. “I’m sure folks around here will rest easier knowing that.”

  We shot skyward at a stomach-unsettling speed, my hand closing around the rail when the elevator took off.

  “Takes a bit of getting used to,” Adams said. “I don’t notice it anymore.”

  I wondered if the elevators were turbo-charged in case of accidental gamma ray leak or something, but didn’t ask. Better off not knowing, since my closet was fresh out of lead-lined outfits.

  I kept my eyes on the gleaming steel floor. They couldn’t be producing actual nuclear energy in here. The neighbors would’ve raised a ruckus I’d have heard about if that were the case. Right? Right.

  We slowed to a seamless stop that reminded me of one of Jenna’s new kitchen drawers when you shoved it closed, and a soft bing was followed by a sultry robot voice that said, “Ninth floor, Mr. Adams,” before the doors opened.

  Fancypants.

  I followed Adams off the elevator and into an office every inch straight out of 2010: A Space Odyssey, all bright white ten-foot walls and clean-lined white or clear-and-chrome furniture. He even had the egg-shaped chair behind his wide glass-topped desk.

  The only art in the room hung opposite the desk, a wall of photos I didn’t notice until I turned to get a bead on my friend from the governor’s office.

  I squinted at the prints, walking closer.

  Jesus. My breath sucked in sharply, and not on purpose.

  Stacy Adams spent his days staring at death. Disaster.

  Names of places made famous by tragedy landed behind me.

  “Chernobyl. Three Mile Island. Fukushima,” Adams said.

  I ripped my eyes away from the anguished faces of the people affected by the dark side of nuclear energy, turning back to the two men and shaking my head.

  “Those are . . . jarring,” I said.

  “They’re supposed to be.” Adams waved one hand toward two clear plastic chairs on either side of a white oval table, taking the one at the head for himself. “Do you know what radiation sickness does to people? Constant vomiting, insurmountable fatigue—and those are the best symptoms. Folks lose their hair. Their skin, too.” He pointed to a photo of a tiny boy with huge raw blotches on his chest. “Nothing in this office commands your attention except the images of the reason we do what we do. Working for a better future, a cleaner planet, where we don’t have to fear meltdowns and waste disposal.”

  Damn. I didn’t know a thing about any of this, but he had my attention. The guy was a good salesman, at the very least.

  Wyatt nodded, leaning back in his chair and crossing his left ankle over his right knee.

  “So tell me how you’re going about that, exactly?” I pulled a pen and notebook from my bag.

  He glanced at Wyatt, then back at me. “Did the governor’s office fill you in on our thorium research?”

  I nodded, scribbling thorium and clearing my throat. Not the first damned clue what he was talking about. “But the specific scope of the project, the hypothesis for outcomes, timeline—that’s what I need to get straight from you.” I blurted words as fast as they came into my head, glad I had to sit through the news rundown with the business and technology editors five times a week. I was well and truly out of my element talking to these guys, and letting them figure that out could set off a meltdown disaster of my own.

  Adams nodded. “Of course.” He pulled a tiny remote from his pocket and clicked it once. The lights went off. The surface of the table lit up with an image of a field dotted with buttercups.

  “It’s actually not terribly expensive to build a small test MSR unit,” he said. “And we have a site that was donated last year, the requisite twenty miles from any home or school.” He gestured to the table.

  I kept my head down, my hand flying over the paper, not missing a word. I circled the acronym, not daring to ask what it was, but not really grasping what he meant, either. I had my homework cut out for me. But I also had the feeling this might actually get me somewhere.

  “We’re looking at a total cost of just under one billion to get up and running, with the potential of cleaner, safer energy that could serve the whole state—in a few years, the whole mid-Atlantic—with zero carbon emissions.”

  I kept my hand moving, my eyebrows going up. “That sounds . . .” I let it trail, raising my head as he clicked another button, bringing a line graph up on the table.

  “
Too good to be true?” He smiled. “You know the crazy part of this is, the government has known about this for almost a hundred years now.”

  I forgot to move my pen. “You’re kidding.”

  He shook his head. “Back me up, Bledsoe.”

  Wyatt was so quiet I’d almost forgotten he was there. “I would’ve expected an environmental journalist to know that,” he said, sitting forward slightly. “But it’s true. Since right after World War II.”

  I nodded, “Oh, no, of course” tripping out of my mouth as I reached into cobwebby areas of my brain, hunting a history class, any history class that covered the war years, as I pretended to jot notes.

  “The Manhattan Project,” I blurted.

  They both nodded, Wyatt relaxing his pose again. “The aftermath, anyway,” Adams said. “The bombs led to the development of the energy technology. But the thing is, our way was on the table back then. They said it was a function of the slower replication rate for the fission that made them choose uranium. Well, that and the gamma ray production. But even when faced with the facts—that the gamma rays can be eliminated, and the MSR is safer—they went with the uranium.”

  I kept my eyes on my paper. Was I supposed to know this already, too? Because I didn’t, and that was a hell of a claim. But the Why? stuck in my throat for fear of tipping my bluffing hand.

  I kept quiet, scribbling nonsense under a light line when I ran out of notes to make and hoping Adams would keep going.

  Just when I thought I was sunk, I looked up and he smiled. “It’s one of Washington’s dirty little secrets: they wanted their weapons. They chose the more dangerous option based on hokey-at-best science so they could quietly use money designated for energy infrastructure for side research projects on weapons. And so it went, for better than seventy years.”

  Seventy years that included Dr. Drake’s top secret government research?

  Holy Manolos.

  I kept my face blank, nodding. “But you’re looking to change that.”

  He shrugged. “Everyone who gets into this business dreams of changing the world. Very few people get to. But I have a shot. I’m planning to take it, yes. My biggest hurdle is getting Virginians to understand this so we get the support we need in the House of Delegates, which will lead to support in the private financial sector—that’s the key. Which is why I’m so glad to have Governor Baine’s support, and to have you here. So, what questions do you have?”

  Shit.

  I grabbed the first thing I could think of, turning again to the back wall. “At the end of the day, most folks want the same basic things, regardless of their political leanings. Plenty to eat, a warm, safe place to sleep, and to feel like their family is well cared for.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Astute of you.” He laced his fingers behind his head, uncrossing his legs and recrossing them the opposite way. “But try having a candidate say ‘nuclear power’ around here. They get it from all sides: the tree huggers scream Chernobyl, and the EPA haters scream coal. It’s a no-win.”

  “Which is why the governor hasn’t made his support for this public,” I said, trying not to let the end go up in a question.

  “He has not. Which makes me wonder exactly how you found out he does support it?” He didn’t move in the chair, but his voice dropped half an octave at the end, the blank look folding back over his face as he studied me.

  No-win.

  Play dumb.

  I widened my eyes and stretched my face into an innocent smile I’d practiced in front of the mirror a thousand times, because sometimes the best way to get people to talk was to pretend I had a hollow cavern between my ears. But if Baine was on board with this plan and Bledsoe knew it, that meant Grayson knew it—which I’d bet meant the coal executives did, too.

  “My editor is the one who told me that, not the governor himself or anything. You’d have to ask him. I assumed he’d heard it from the governor, but I might be wrong. He didn’t really say, come to think of it.” Widen the smile just a hair at the end. Blink. Don’t break eye contact.

  Wyatt nodded again, slower this time.

  He didn’t trust me—that wasn’t my imagination. He was throwing up obstacles. But so far I was Indiana Jonesing the hell out of his gauntlet. I tried to keep the self-satisfaction to a minimum, turning back to Adams. Were they running some sort of good science nerd/bad political strategist schtick, or did Adams really believe me?

  No way to tell for sure. But if he was faking his ease and excitement, he ought to at least consider moonlighting at the community theatre.

  I picked up my pen, clicking the tip in and out. “So how do you keep it safe? For the planet and the neighbors?” I asked, forgetting for a split second that I wasn’t really writing this piece. His points were fascinating, and when I had time, I’d like to dig into the story deeper.

  Adams’s face widened into a grin, bringing out adorable dimples that cut a straight line with the tip of his nose. “We bury it.” He put the remote on the table, leaning on both hands and casting a squatty shadow over the graphs. “A single midsize reactor will power a city the size of Richmond easily, and we can sink it two hundred feet into the earth and leave it for thirty years. Because there are no waste isotopes to expel or dispose of, once it’s running, it will just work.”

  I jotted every word, underlining the last ones before I looked up at him.

  “It does sound too good to be true,” I said. “Where’s the catch?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve reviewed all the research from as far back as 1942, and done thousands of hours of my own, and I can’t find one. Except . . .” His eyes slid to Wyatt.

  He cleared his throat and sat up. “Washington doesn’t like doing things differently than they’ve always been done, Miss Mays. You’ve heard the phrase moving mountains, but in DC terms, we’re trying to push a whole range. It takes time.”

  And money.

  I nodded. “So, what’s the next step?”

  “If we can get approval from the House of Delegates during this winter’s session, we’ll be able to start construction of the first operational salt reactor on US soil in almost sixty years,” Adams said. “It will take two years to have it up and running.”

  “And then?” I raised my eyebrows.

  “And then we show the world what we can do. Then we go global.”

  I glanced back at Wyatt. “All on Governor Baine’s watch. With his blessing. Two years is good timing for y’all, isn’t it?”

  He leaned forward again, nodding as he said, “The governor is interested in what’s best for Virginians, not what’s best for him and his career.”

  But if this guy was anything like Ted Grayson, he wasn’t interested in either. I smiled. “Can I quote you on that?”

  He tipped his head to one side. Smiled a bare, cold smile. “Of course.”

  I scribbled, looking back at my notes.

  Still couldn’t read him. But the longer I sat there, the more my legs seemed of their own mind to get up and move far away from him.

  He glanced at his Rolex and rose with a polite half smile. “I’m afraid I’m out of time for today,” he said. “I hope you have everything you need, Miss Mays.” He lingered on the last two words, I swear. I ignored it, nodding and extending a hand.

  “Thank you for being here.”

  “Anything for Governor Baine.”

  Adams cleared his throat, standing up straight. “Leigh, could you excuse me for a moment?” He looked at Wyatt and tipped his head toward the door. “I’ll walk you out.”

  Wyatt’s eyes shot to me, then back to Adams. He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug. “Suit yourself.”

  Hunching back over my notebook, I watched them go out and shut the door from the corner of one lash-veiled eye. Counted to thirty as their footsteps receded down the hallway.

  My breath picked up right along with my heart rate as I stood, laying my pen on the notebook and tiptoeing across the tightly woven flat-gray industrial carpet, keeping the backs of my w
edges off the floor and soundless as I moved.

  Creeping behind the desk, I peered through the glass and spotted a laptop in a drawer beneath the glass surface, the screen facing up, displaying the charts that were projected onto the surface of the table.

  Mouthing a thank you at the ceiling, I slid the tray above the drawer out and touched the trackpad on the shiny white keyboard, bringing up Anderson’s directory.

  He had a file for every dollar he needed for his pollution-free reactor.

  Damn.

  I scrolled, no idea what the hell I was looking for.

  Tick-tock. Tick. Tock.

  I could feel time racing past, my ears perked for the bing of the elevator or footfalls in the hallway.

  I spotted a folder labeled MSR.

  It was password protected.

  I stomped a silent toe, biting blood out of the inside of my cheek to keep a frustrated scream in.

  The guy had told me just enough to make me think I knew something. But I still didn’t know anything particularly helpful. I cleared the screen and slid the keyboard back into place, turning to the drawers in the sleek white credenza behind me.

  Why would a man who so clearly loved his technology keep paper files?

  To cover his ass, or to make sure other people kept his secrets. Maybe a little of both.

  I tried the drawer. Locked.

  Examined it. There was no keyhole.

  What the actual hell?

  I ran my fingers around the seams.

  Nothing.

  Wait.

  My eyes went back to the big table across the room.

  His remote was still there, a foot from my notebook.

  I raced back, my calves protesting the tiptoe-running, and snatched it up.

  Six buttons.

  Forward. Back. Lights on/off.

  Open. Close.

  Open. Close.

  I held my breath, pointing the little wand at the credenza and pushing “Open.”

  The top drawer slid out. I scurried back.

  A neat row of white folders full of white paper.

  Except one.

  A single black folder hung in the center, the little label reading u 233 in tiny black type.

  Always go for the standout.