The Moonpool cr-3

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Beats the shit out of me,” he said, glancing a bit nervously at Moira. “Ain’t like there’s a booming market for highly toxic fission by-products.” Even as he said that, I think he realized that there might, in fact, be just such a market. “Oh, shit,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, shit, squared,” I replied. “The whole world of Homeland Security is on watch for terrorists trying to smuggle a dirty bomb of some kind into the U.S. But what if the bad guys have figured out that there’s no need to smuggle it in, if what they need is already here?”

  “Then what the hell was that over at the container port a week ago?”

  “A diversion?” Tony said. “Something to keep all the watchdogs focused on the port, where they actually expect to find something?”

  “I’ve got another question,” I said. “Trask. My guys would not have gotten anywhere in finding me without his intervention. Why’d he do that?”

  “Why’d he meet with you at that bar?” Ari countered. “After which you got boxed and wrapped?”

  “You guys are starting to frighten me,” Moira piped up. “I was locked up in that place for a year plus because I poked my computers’ noses into one government program. You people playing with nuclear weapons?”

  I shook my head, and explained who Quartermain was and a little bit about how we’d become involved at the power plant. As Ari got up to check on the coffee, the phone rang. He glanced at his watch and picked up.

  “Hey, there, Sam,” he said. “You’re up early.” Then he listened for a minute or so. Then he looked over at me. “Uh, Sam? I’m just getting out of bed, okay? What’s going on?”

  He listened some more, then nodded to himself. He fished out a pen, wrote something down, and hung up.

  “It seems that one Special Agent Myers called the duty officer at the plant asking for my home number. Our policy is that all such calls go to Samantha-one of the perks of her job-and then she gets in touch with me if she thinks it’s a no-shitter.”

  “Lemme guess,” I said. “Missed-it Mary is looking for one Cam Richter?”

  Ari sat back down. “The Bureau wanted to know if you’d checked in with us,” he said. “You heard me-I didn’t exactly answer her question.”

  “Where was it I was supposed to be checking in from?”

  The percolator behind him began making worrisome noises. “Sam had told me you’d gone exploring at the container port. That your guys had taken the shepherds and gone back to Triboro, and that you and Trask were working together on something, or so Colonel Trask had told her.”

  “You didn’t bother to verify that with Trask?” I asked.

  “Trask doesn’t respond well to beepers,” Ari said. “He appears when he’s needed. Likes to say he’ll find you, not the other way around.”

  “And, of course, you had no reason to doubt what Samantha was telling you.”

  “Exactly. I was actually encouraged that you and Trask were working together. When I finally did run into him, he told me it was all news to him. Then your guys arrived, and here we are.”

  I exhaled a long breath. The whole thing just sounded so damned pat. Trask supposedly tells Samantha. Samantha tells Ari. Trask reappears as Helpful Harry, then steers my guys in just the right direction. If it looks too good to be true…

  Moira asked to use a bathroom, and were there any women’s clothes in the house? Ari said she could probably wear some of his wife’s stuff; she was on a business trip to New York for the week. He took her upstairs.

  I looked at Tony and could see that he, too, was perplexed. Pardee had his poker face on, which meant the same thing. I hadn’t been able to tell what was going through Ari’s mind, but there seemed to be an awful lot of irons in this fire just now. It wasn’t exactly a finger-pointing drill, but it was close. Ari came back downstairs, and then the damned phone rang again.

  “Seems everybody’s up early this morning,” Ari said with a sigh. He looked at the caller ID, frowned, picked up, and then frowned harder. “Special Agent Caswell. How can I help you at this hour of the morning?”

  He listened for a few seconds this time, pointed a finger gun at me, and then started writing something urgently on the yellow pad next to the phone. Tony got up to see what it said.

  “That’s very interesting. Look, that remote gate control system isn’t working right now. Let me get some clothes on, and I’ll be right down. Just a few minutes, okay? Thank you.” He hung up before letting Creeps reply and raised his eyebrows at our merry little band.

  Pardee was already gathering up the unused cups and the doughnut box from the table. I yelled to Moira that we had to run, gathered the shepherds, and headed for the back door. Tony was ahead of me, but he stopped suddenly. Through the back-door window we could see a large, official-looking patrol boat of some kind nosing in to the pier where our boat was tied up.

  We backed away from the window and returned to the kitchen. I told Ari that there was probably no point in any more running.

  “Why don’t you go down there to that gate,” I said. “See what they have to say. But look: Don’t lie, and don’t be confrontational. If they ask you directly, yes, we are here.”

  Moira came back into the room, looking surprisingly good in her borrowed clothes. I had an idea.

  “Ari-you have a computer she can use?” I asked as he put a jacket on.

  Ari said yes and took her to his study. I went with them and told Moira what I wanted her to do. Bright girl that she was, she sat right down, brought up a Word screen, and began typing.

  Ari dutifully trudged down the front drive, which curved out of sight behind some tall evergreens. Tony kept a watch on the patrol boat down by the dock, but it had backed away from the pier and was now just sitting there, bristling with whip antennas, its running lights unusually bright in the morning twilight. I’d known they’d figure out the boat angle, but I’d been hoping the fog on the river would delay pursuit until we could land somewhere safe. I’d forgotten the old cop adage: You can outrun the cop’s car, but you can’t outrun his radio.

  “What now, boss-man?” Pardee asked quietly, using Tony’s standard line.

  I explained what Moira was doing in Ari’s study, and what I hoped that would accomplish if Ari came back with Creeps and some of his helpers.

  “You think you guys really burned that place down?” Tony asked. Tony was thinking like an accessory to arson, among other things.

  “It sounded like they were evacuating the building, not fighting the fire,” I said. “On the other hand, I won’t admit to starting said fire. It just sort of happened, you know, coincidentally with our efforts to get out of the basement.”

  “That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, right?”

  “Yup.”

  “Which story won’t stand up for one minute once a competent forensics tech gets into it,” announced Special Agent Creeps Caswell, materializing in the kitchen doorway along with two large and extremely fit-looking special agents. They were all decked out in their spiffy blue FBI windbreakers, although I thought I spotted some black smudges on Creeps’s hands. We hadn’t heard them come in, and nor, apparently, had either of my two wonderful watchdogs, who had instead set the watch on the box of doughnuts. Ari Quartermain, looking somewhat sheepish, brought up the rear.

  “Mr. Richter,” Creeps intoned formally.

  “Special Agent,” I replied. No one was brandishing firearms yet, so I had high hopes for a civilized conversation around the kitchen table. We might even get some more coffee.

  “Where is Ms. Maxwell?” Creeps asked.

  “Otherwise engaged,” I said. “Here in the house, however, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  One of the helpers took a quick walkabout, came back, and nodded to Creeps.

  “Oh, good,” he said. “Your Bureau was getting tired of driving around in all that fog.”

  “So what happens now, Special Agent?” I asked. Tony and Pardee looked on with definite interest. Creeps’s helpers loo
ked back at them with equal interest. Ari was trying to make himself look inconspicuous. The shepherds, sensing tension, walked over and sat down next to me.

  “What happens next is that your Bureau will restore the status quo ante, as that term applies to you and Ms. Maxwell,” he said. He glanced at my two accomplices. “And these two gentlemen may have to join your ranks, as it were.”

  “On what charge, Special Agent?”

  “You? Or them?”

  “Me, for starters. As I recall, I never did hear a charge the first time around.”

  “You must have more faith in your Bureau, Mr. Richter. I’m just so sure there was a charge, perhaps many, and even some evidence. It may be a little hard to find in the ashes of your erstwhile detention facility, but you know us-we’ll think of something. And then, of course, there’s the little matter of your escape and all the excitement leading up to it. There are some Marines who would like to have a word with you.”

  “It’s ready,” called Moira from the study.

  “What’s ready, Mr. Richter?” Creeps asked, frowning.

  “Why don’t we all just go see,” I said.

  We trooped into Ari’s study, and I invited Creeps to read what she’d written in her letter to the editor of the New York Times. She’d purposefully done it in a large font, and she’d done a really good job describing her imprisonment and the facility.

  Creeps read the letter carefully. I could almost see his lips moving. I watched his breathing change, and then he cleared his throat.

  “You understand, Ms. Maxwell,” he said, “that we have the resources to rebut everything you’ve said there. Furthermore, even if you transmit that, you will not be available for further comment or elaboration, which tends to diminish its chances for publication. So why don’t you just move that cursor to the delete button and stop all this foolishness.”

  Moira looked up at him. The Mad Moira light was clearly visible in those green eyes. Red hair and green eyes-Creeps should have known better.

  “So you guys don’t give a shit if I send this, then?” she asked. “Is that what I’m hearing?”

  “As I explained-” Creeps began.

  “Well, screw it, then,” Moira said brightly, reaching for the mouse and bringing up the e-mail program that had been lurking behind the Word screen. “Sounds to me like there’s no harm in trying, is there? I mean, you may be right-they may not print it, but inquiring minds will want to know more, don’t you think?”

  She zipped the cursor to the SEND button, which was when I realized she’d already attached the document to an e-mail and was ready to spread the gospel according to Moira to lots more people than just the New York Times. Mad Moira showing her teeth.

  “Wait!” Creeps said, his voice rising for the first time in our entire discussion. Moira’s hand remained firmly on the mouse, and the pointer remained firmly on the SEND button. The list of addressees on the e-mail seemed to glitter on the screen. It was an impressive list.

  On one hand, I almost wished she’d fired it off. On the other, I breathed a silent sigh of relief. We had him. For the moment, anyway.

  Then two phones went off simultaneously-Creeps’s cell phone and Ari’s house phone. Creeps glared at Moira and stepped away from the computer to answer his cell. His two assistants moved into position to menace us, and then my two helpers moved in front of me to menace them. Teeth were showing everywhere. Ari, moving carefully, picked up the desk phone.

  Creeps had his back turned to the rest of us, but I saw his shoulders stiffen at about the same time Ari exclaimed a startled “What?” and then said he’d be right in.

  “Problem at the plant?” I asked.

  “You could say that,” he replied grimly. “There’s a body in the moonpool.”

  The plant admin building was in a definite state of uproar when I got there. There was a new secretarial face at Samantha’s desk-no surprise there, as her true identity had been revealed-who asked me to wait in Ari’s conference room for further instructions. I had left the dogs in the Suburban because I wasn’t sure what, if anything, Ari would want me to do. I was sort of hoping to be sent back home.

  Ari came back into his office suite fifteen minutes later, looking like his day was fulfilling his every dismal expectation. He beckoned me into his private office and asked me to close the door.

  “We’re going to have to get the divers in,” he said.

  “Divers? In that?”

  “Yeah, there’s a firm of divers who specialize in going down into containment vessels and moonpools. Lemme show you something.”

  He turned on a television in his office and switched to what looked like an internal video surveillance channel. I wasn’t sure what we were looking at until he did something with the remote, and then I realized we were looking down into the moonpool itself. There, way down in that cerulean glow, was the silhouette of a human body, arms and legs spread wide as if crucified on an X-beam. It was lying on top of the spent uranium fuel assemblies forty feet down. I couldn’t tell if it was face up or down, but it was definitely a human form.

  “How radioactive is that part of the pool?” I asked.

  “Very,” Ari said simply, staring at the shimmering image.

  “And no idea of who it is?”

  He shook his head. “And if that body stays down there long enough, any identification is going to be… difficult.”

  I had a vision of the body melting down in all that radiation. Eyes like poached eggs. Lovely images like that.

  “Can’t you grapple it?”

  He shook his head again. “From what we can see, the body is draped across and is in physical contact with the fuel bundles. Much too hot. We’ll get a diver to go partway down there, then drop a minicam, see if we can make an ID. After that, we’ll have to figure out how to bring him most of the way up to the rod transfer platform, where I hope we can encase the remains. Problem’s gonna be diver stay-time, as always. But it has to be done fast.”

  “Why?”

  “You don’t want to know,” he said.

  “Who’s working the problem?” I asked.

  “Anna P. is in charge. I haven’t located Trask yet to deal with the physical security side. We’ve notified upper management and the NRC, and the company’s calling for the divers as we speak. We hope to have somebody on deck by third shift tonight. In the meantime…” He puffed out a breath.

  “This doesn’t affect the plant’s operation, does it?”

  “Nope. This is the moonpool. What we’ve got down there right now is a radionuclide Crock-Pot.”

  “Damn,” I said. “Is it likely that somebody just fell in? I mean, if you did fall in, wouldn’t you just get the hell out of the water as fast as possible?”

  “Yes, you would, and if you stayed at the surface, you wouldn’t be too much the worse for wear. Remember, exposure to radiation is measured in terms of intensity and time. Intensity is a function of proximity.”

  “On the other hand,” I said, “only a drowned body sinks like that. Lungs full of water. Maybe he hit his head on the way in. Are there ladders-some way for someone to get out, assuming he could swim?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, still staring at the screen. “And railings. And surveillance cameras.” He shook his head. “This shouldn’t be possible. I need Trask here.”

  Just like the radioactive water inside Allie Gardner shouldn’t have been possible, I thought. Or the hot water on that truck over at the container port. Everyone could argue that there were other, non-Helios-related explanations for those incidents, but there was no arguing with this.

  “You heard from the Bureau?” I asked.

  “Only that they will take over the investigation once we exhume the body from the moonpool.”

  “Exhume. That sounds like Creeps Caswell. Okay, what do you want from me?”

  “You find people, right? Find Colonel Trask. Whoever that is down there should not have been able to get there by himself. Especially without a protective suit.
”

  “There’s nothing on the cameras?”

  “Nada. The Bureau will have to tell us if somebody messed with them. But I really need Trask, and, as fucking usual, his people can’t raise him.”

  His beeper went off, so he motioned for me to get going. I went outside to piddle the mutts and then decided to bring Frick back into the building with me. We went down the hallway to the physical security office, where some of Trask’s shaved-head torpedoes were congregating in the shift supervisor’s office.

  They confirmed they didn’t know where the colonel was. They seemed more concerned about all the heat they were getting from the plant’s director about not being able to contact him than they were about Trask’s health and welfare. One of them came forward to make friends with Frick, who obligingly lifted a lip at him, prompting a chorus of whoas from the other guys.

  “The colonel does his own thing,” one of them said. “Shows up at the plant at all hours, tests the perimeter patrols, the cameras, vital area doors, and that kinda shit. Doesn’t exactly keep regular hours. Says schedules weaken security.”

  “How do you normally reach him?”

  “We don’t,” the supervisor said. “He listens in to all our comms. If he thinks he needs to get into something, he just shows up.”

  “So you expect that he knows about this body?”

  “Be surprised if he didn’t, all the commotion.”

  “Sees all, hears all?”

  The supervisor shrugged. If his boss wanted to play mysterious, he was cool with it.

  “They check his home?” I asked.

  One of the younger ones, who’d been oiling an M4, smiled. “Home? Dude lives on a boat, man. Good luck with that.”

  I called a buddy at the state department of natural resources and asked if he could tie Trask’s name to a specific boat license. He was back in five minutes.

  “Big boat,” he said. “Twenty-one-year-old, forty-five-foot cabin cruiser, officially listed for Carolina Beach. License is current; insured for one twenty large. Called Keeper. That help?”