by Jan Coffey
Jan Coffey Thriller Box Set
Three Complete Novels
Blind Eye
Silent Waters
The Janus Effect
Table of Contents
Blind Eye
Silent Waters
Janus Effect
Blind Eye
by
Jan Coffey
Copyright © 2009 by Nikoo K. and James A. McGoldrick
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher: May McGoldrick Books, PO Box 665, Watertown, CT 06795.
First Published by Mira books, 2009
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER 1
St. Vincent’s Hospital
Santa Fe, New Mexico
“You’re awake.”
Lying on his side, Fred Adrian first became aware of the sensation of movement before knowing where he was. The starched white pillowcase was cool against his cheek. The smell of plastic registered in his brain.
The gentle roll of the bed along a smooth floor, the blink of the lights overhead, the words on the intercom that he couldn’t exactly make sense of, they all made him want to go to sleep.
“You were a trooper during the procedure,” the same woman’s voice said cheerfully.
Then he began to remember. The hospital. He was in for the procedure. He was lying on a hospital gurney. Fred’s mind was slow to catch up, but things were starting to make sense. He was in to have a routine colonoscopy.
“I’m nervous about it.”
“No reason to be nervous. It’s over.”
“When do you start?” he asked.
She chuckled. “It’s all over. You’re done.”
He wasn’t hearing her right. He wanted to go to sleep. “What time is it?”
“It’s ten past eleven,” the same voice, pushing the gurney along the corridor, told him.
Eleven. Last time he’d checked the clock it was a few minutes past eight. He couldn’t remember anything after that. He lifted his wrist to check the watch. He wasn’t wearing it. Fred held his hand up against the passing lights on the ceiling. They were so bright.
“Easy now. You’re still hooked up.”
He squinted at the IV hanging from a shiny chrome hook near his head. The tube snaking down from it disappeared and then reappeared just before terminating under some tape on the back of his hand. His first time under anesthesia. He’d put off having the colonoscopy for a very long time.
“I made it. It’s over,” he said to the voice, as if that should be news to her.
“You made it through with flying colors,” the woman said in an entertained tone.
She slowed down to negotiate a turn.
“I’ll be fifty-nine next week,” Fred said to her.
“Happy birthday.”
The bed bumped its way through a door. Fred didn’t mind. The residual mellowness from the anesthesia was taking the edge off of every sensation. His hand flopped onto the pillow and he slipped it under his head. He looked up at the ceiling. He couldn’t quite focus yet.
“I’m the first one of us to reach the age of fifty-nine,” he told her.
“The first one?” she asked.
They made it through the door, and the nurse parked him. He wanted to talk, to tell her how special this was. His mind was slow to keep up, though. He didn’t know if she’d asked the question now or at eight o’clock this morning. He decided to say it, anyway. He had to share the news.
“I’m the first male in my family…” he chuckled, remembering how nervous he’d been before today. He was sure this would be it. Today he’d die. “I’m first one to reach age of fifty-nine. My father…he was forty-two when he died. Brother…fifty. Now maybe I live to be sixty. My daughter is getting married next year…and I’ll be sixty.”
There were two other patients in the room. Fred looked over. Another bed was rolled in after him. Or maybe he was there before him. He was an old man, sound asleep. Fred was tired. Maybe he should sleep, too.
“You’re just starting to wake up, but there is no hurry,” she told him. “Do you have someone waiting for you in the reception area?”
For the first time he saw his nurse. She was moving the IV from a hook on the gurney to some stand next to it. She was young, not too pretty. She could be, he thought.
“I need a date for my daughter’s wedding,” he told her.
“Do you have someone in the waiting area, Mr. Adrian?” she asked again. She wasn’t smiling now.
“Yeah…she should be out there.”
“She?” the nurse picked up a chart and read something on it before putting it back down. “Why don’t you rest, and I’ll go and get Mrs. Adrian? But don’t try to get up or move until I come back to take out the IV, okay?”
“Rest…” he whispered under his breath. His throat was dry. He wanted something to drink. He stared at the table with rolling wheels beside his bed. There was a cup sitting on top. He wondered if there was something in it to drink. The nurse had said not to move.
The guy next to him was snoring. Fred wondered if he’d been snoring while under anesthesia. He’d made it. Made it.
Five minutes later…or three hours. He didn’t know. Fred opened his eyes and saw her coming into the room.
“I made it,” he said, yawning and closing his eyes.
“You did,” the woman said in a low voice. “Your nurse said as soon as you’re awake, they’ll bring you some coffee and a piece of toast.”
“I’m thirsty. Hand me that cup of water.” His hand hung in the air.
He heard a soft plastic-sounding snap near his head. She was standing too close to the bed. Fred could smell her perfume. He opened his eyes and saw her take something out of the tube going into his arm.
“What was that?” he asked.
Her hand moved to his forehead and she closed his eyes. “Why don’t you get some rest until it’s time to take you home?”
The other patient was still snoring. He didn’t want to sleep. Fred felt his limbs getting heavy.
“Take me home…I can sleep there.”
“Shh…soon.”
His heartbeat started drumming in his ears. Suddenly, he wasn’t feeling right. There was something different. The right side of his face was feeling numb, like he’d been slapped.
“Is he ready for some coffee?’ Fred heard the familiar voice of the nurse coming back into the room.
Coffee…yes. He wanted to wake up. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to answer for himself. His tongue felt swollen in his mouth. His eyelids were too heavy to lift. He opened his mouth but he could push no sound out.
Something wasn’t right. She’d put something in the tube in his arm.
Then, in a moment of clarity, he thought of Cynthia. He thought of the box he’d shipped his daughter.
“I think he’s fallen back to sleep. Should we give him some time?”
“That’s fine. Come and get me when he’s awake.”
No, he wanted to wake up now. He wanted to liv
e. He’d be fifty-nine next week. He needed to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Fred lifted his hand off the bed to tell the nurse to stop, but cold fingers took hold of his and pressed them down into the sheet.
The kick of his foot at the table was a feeble effort, at best. Like a last gasp for air before drowning.
“Is he okay?” he heard the nurse’s voice from far away.
“Yes, he’s fine. I’m the klutz. I just leaned against the table.”
Vaguely, he heard the sound of footsteps moving away. Hope slipped away like a lifeline through his fingers and was gone.
CHAPTER 2
New Mexico Nuclear Fusion Test Facility
More than halfway home.
Even at forty-eight days into the project, Marion Kagan didn’t mind working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. She didn’t have time to think about sun and clouds and trees. The Weather Channel was not of much interest down here. Sometimes, lying in her bunk, she did have to shake from her mind how much she missed the sting of the wind on her face as she whipped along on her scooter back and forth from her apartment to the UC Davis campus. Down here, there was no sunrise, no sunset. But no commuter traffic, either.
Buried in the underground research facility with eight other scientists, Marion only considered the passage of day and night when she’d make her journal entry at the end of a shift. The rising and setting of the sun had no relevance down here. The group worked in shifts around the clock. Eating and sleeping happened between shifts, and everyone reported for duty when it was time.
She was fine with all of this. They were over the hump. Only forty-two days left. And any time she got too restless, she simply reminded herself what a boost it was in her curriculum vitae to be the only graduate assistant chosen for this highly selective project. A project that was already producing ground-breaking results. In the scientific world, the eight academics in her group were already stars; this project would make them superstars. As for Marion, after this she didn’t believe she’d have any difficulty finding a job once she had her PhD.
Everything was great except for one thing. She just couldn’t get used to the ongoing surveillance. The cameras were everywhere, mounted in the hallways, the laboratories, the control room. Marion couldn’t see them in the bunkroom or the bathroom she shared with Eileen Arrington, the only other female researcher on the team, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t there.
Truth be told, the cameras made her self-conscious. They recorded everything. Of course, the only camera with a live feed to the world above was by the elevator. Connected to the security station on the ground floor, that hookup provided a quick way to communicate with the outside world in case of emergency.
The rest of the cameras were for documentation, she’d been told. It eliminated a lot of the paperwork that otherwise Marion would have to be doing. That thought helped to make the surveillance bearable, at least, because it took only a couple of hours on the first day of the project for her to realize that as the only member of the team lacking a doctoral degree, she was expected to be servant, gopher, slave, chief cook, dishwasher, and of course lab assistant for the other eight making up the team.
Marion made a face at the camera in the hallway before punching in the security code on a pad to get into the control room. Hearing the click of the lock, she pulled open the door.
Five of the researchers were already in there, gathered around a rectangular conference table in the center of the room for the morning update. Dozens of computer screens and accompanying electronic apparatus were scattered around the spacious room. This was the place where most of them spent the day. They worked in overlapping shifts, but each had their own workstation. At any given time, six researchers were on duty and three were off. Glancing around the room, she realized she never ceased to be amazed at the way the personal peculiarities of each individual were so clearly demonstrated by the condition of the personal work space.
Robert Eaton, the project manager, stopped what he was saying and looked up at Marion.
She nodded. “The nine containers are in the test fixtures and set to go,” she told him, going around the table and taking her customary seat.
Marion was part of the team, but she wasn’t one of them. The hierarchy was clear. The rest sat in their personal faux-leather rolling office chairs with the comfortable cushions. She sat on the single folding metal chair placed at the corner of the conference table. That was her chair and God forbid she should sit in anyone else’s.
Eaton motioned to the man sitting to his right. “Arin, why don’t you start the countdown?”
Arin Bose had an aversion to walking, due in part to his three hundred plus pounds. Holding his omnipresent Cal Tech coffee mug steady on his belly, he wheeled his chair backward to his station and began tapping on one of his keypads to start the sequencing.
Marion looked up at the three-dimensional fracture mechanics analysis on the projector screen. They’d been looking at a rotating image of a pressurized nuclear reactor container ring. The smallest commercially mass produced reactors were between 10 feet and 15 feet in diameter and were used on smaller naval ships. In these experiments, however, size was a major factor. The difference with this ring was that it had about the same diameter as a one-gallon paint can.
“Here are the characteristics of the nine identical test samples,” Eaton continued, reading the file, journal number, date, and time for the sake of cameras before motioning to Marvin Sheehan, the metallurgist at the other end of the table.
Sheehan’s thin frame straightened in the chair, looking like a runner ready to sprint. The man adjusted his spectacles, his excitement shining through the thick lenses.
“The objective is to test to the point of failure,” he told them. “For the record, the material used for the container is Alpha 300-series stainless steel with a threaded lid closure equipped with the specialized HEPA filter vent. The vent allows for the controlled release of explosive gases…including hydrogen.”
Dr. Bose had already started his countdown for the sample, but no one seemed to be paying particular attention to the test start-up times, which were imminent. Marion knew the computers monitored and documented those events more closely than any of them could. Besides, this had all become part of their daily routine.
Daily routine or not, there was nothing humdrum about the successes they had already achieved. Their work was part of a series of experiments aimed at the construction of a ‘fast,’ transportable reactor.
Power plants already in existence were presently burning only 3% of the fuel, the other 97% being rejected as ‘spent’ and fit only for disposal. In the ambitious project Marion was a part of, the ultimate goal was to create the process that would achieve an efficiency burn rate of 99.9 % of the fuel. Once this level was achieved, only one tenth of one percent of the plutonium and the other ‘ium’ products would need long term storage. At that efficiency level, most of the waste was simply the residue of the fission process, and that nuclear waste had a half-life, not of ten thousand years, but only 300 years.
Already, the project had surpassed the 50% efficiency rate—far better than anything presently available for military or commercial use.
In short, their work would change energy production forever.
In only one offshoot of the overall project, the metallurgists in the group had identified a unique alloy of stainless steel for plutonium storage. The revolutionary process would required revolutionary housings to go along with it, so the find was itself a huge accomplishment. That success alone could lead to the development of containers for very small nuclear reactors. With this, progress in energy sources could be as rapid as anything that the electronics industry had been going through in the past two decades. In the same way that computers that were the size of a room were now palm-sized and smaller, nuclear energy production would become transportable. And with reduction in nuclear waste and the corresponding decrease in the need for long-term storage, it was clear w
here energy technology would be heading.
Marion had been told by Robert Eaton that they had already surpassed every expectation for this stage of the project. Now they were all in it to see how far they could push the envelope. She could imagine more than a few of them had started jotting down notes for their Nobel Prize acceptance speech. She had a feeling Eaton may have already started rehearsing his.
“Each sample container is packed with plutonium-bearing solid material,” Dr. Sheehan added before reading the specifications of the material in each container.
Marion preferred not to think too much about the specifics—and the lethal qualities—of the radioactive material she handled in this facility. They were conducting their testing in an underground facility to minimize the contamination of the geological medium…in case of any accidents. Of course, she kept telling herself, there were going to be no accidents. Choosing this location was only a matter of convenience and security. As a team, they were following safety guidelines that were stricter than those used across any military or commercial nuclear laboratory in the country. There would be no contamination. Dr. Eugene Lee, Marion’s advisor at UC Davis, had promised her when recruiting her for this project that, at twenty-five years old, she had a better chance of getting run down by a garbage truck then dying of radiation poisoning.
She looked up at her advisor as Dr. Lee started articulating his contribution to the testing.
“Two containers will undergo crash analysis in a drop test to an unyielding target. Two others will undergo collision tests. The leak test is the most critical feature of the NRC requirement, so we are dedicating five containers to that testing. The pressurized environment is temperature-controlled to plus/minus one degree Fahrenheit.”
Dr. Lee summarized what Marion already had on her clipboard as far as raw numbers. She was well-read on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s requirements. There were minimum standards that they had to adhere to. Unfortunately, she knew that some of the standards were forty years old and pretty much obsolete. But their device would be a first. A major outcome of this research project was to create specifications for future manufacturers of the assembly.
