"Did Janet come back with you?" I then asked.

"She's finishing up in Charlottesville."

"Finishing up?"

"We know who's been breaking into CP amp;L's computer," she said. "A woman graduate assistant in nuclear physics. Surprise, surprise."

"What's her name?"

"Loren something." She rubbed her face with her hands.

God, I should never have sat down. You know cyberspace really can make you dizzy if you stay in it too long. Lately, it's almost been making me sick. U.- She snapped her fingers several times. "McComb. Loren McComb."

"And she's how old'?" I asked as I remembered Cleta saying that the name of Eddings' girlfriend was Loren.

"Late twenties."

"Where is she from?"

"England. But she's actually South African. She's black."

"Thus explaining her poor character, according to Mrs. Eddings."

"Huh?" Lucy looked bizarrely at me.

"What about a connection with the New Zionists?" I asked.

"Apparently she got associated with them over the net.

She's very militant and antigovernment. My theory is she got brainwashed by them the longer they communicated."

"Lucy," I said, "I think she was Eddings' girlfriend and source, and in the end, she may have helped the New Zionists kill him, probably by way of Captain Green."

"Why would she help him and then do that?"

"She may have believed she had no choice. If she had assisted him with information that could have hurt Hand's cause, she may have been convinced to help them or they may have threatened her."

I thought of the Crystal Champagne in Eddings' refrigerator, and wondered if he had planned to spend New Year's Eve with his girlfriend.

"How would they have wanted her to help them?" Lucy was asking.

"She probably knew his burglar alarm code, maybe even the combination to his safe." My final thought was the worst. "She may have been with him in the boat the night he died. For that matter, we don't know that she wasn't the one who poisoned him. After all, she's a scientist."

"Damn."

"I'm assuming you've interviewed her," I said.

"Janet has. McComb claims she was on the Internet about eighteen months ago when she came across a note posted on a bulletin board. Allegedly, some producer was working on a movie that had to do with terrorists taking over a nuclear power plant so they could re-create a North Korea situation and get weapons-grade plutonium, et cetera, et cetera. This alleged producer needed technical help, for which he was willing to pay."

"Did she have a name for whoever this was?" I asked.

"He just always called himsel. "Alias,' as if to imply he might be famous. She bit big time and the relationship began. She started sending him information from graduate papers she had access to because of her graduate assistantship. She gave this Alias asshole every recipe you might think of for essentially taking over Old Point and shipping fuel assemblies to the Arabs."

"What about making casks?"

"Right. Steal tons of the depleted uranium from Oak Ridge. Have it sent to Iraq, Algeria, wherever, to be made into the hundred-twenty-five-ton casks. Then ship them back here where they're stored until the big day. And she went into the whole bit about when uranium turns into plutonium inside a reactor." Lucy stopped and glanced over at me. "She claims it never occurred to her that what she was doing might be real."

"And was it real to her when she began breaking into CP amp;L's computer?"

"That's one she can't explain, nor will she supply a motive."

"I expect motive is easy," I said. "Eddings was interested in any phone calls to Arab nations that certain people might have been making. And he got his list via the gateway in Pittsburgh."

"You don't think she would have realized that the New Zionists wouldn't appreciate her helping her boyfriend, who happened to be a reporter?"

"I don't think she cared," I angrily said. "I suspect she enjoyed the drama of playing both sides. If nothing else, it had to make her feel very important when she probably had not felt that way before in her quiet academic world. I doubt reality hit until Eddings started poking around NAVSEA, Captain Green's office or who knows where, and then the New Zionists were tipped that their source, Ms. McComb, was threatening the entire operation."

"If Eddings had figured it out," Lucy said, "they never could have pulled it off."

"Exactly," I said. "If any of us had figured it out in time, this wouldn't be happening." I watched a woman in a lab coat maneuver Toto's arms to lift a box. "Tell me," I said, "what was Loren McComb's demeanor when Janet interviewed her?"

"Detached. Absolutely no emotion."

"Hand's people are very powerful. "I guess so if you can help your boyfriend one minute and they can get you to murder him the next." Lucy was watching her robot, too, and didn't seem pleased by what she was seeing.

"Well, wherever the Bureau is detaining Ms. McComb, I hope it's where the New Zionists can't find her."

"She's secluded," Lucy said as Toto suddenly stopped in his tracks and the box thudded heavily to the floor.

"What have you got the shoulder joint's rpm set at?" she called out.

"Eight."

"Let's lower it to five. Damn." She rubbed her face again. "That's all we need."

"Well, I'm going to leave you and go on back to Jefferson," I said as I got up.

She got a strange look in her eyes. "You staying on the security floor, as usual?" she asked.

"Yes." I

"I guess it doesn't matter, but that's where Loren McComb is," she said.

In fact, my suite was next to hers, but unlike me, she was confined. As I sat up in bed for a while trying to read, I could hear her TV through the wall. I listened to her switch channels, and then recognized "Star Trek" sounds as she watched an old episode rerun.

For hours we were only several feet apart and she did not know it, I imagined her calmly mixing hydrochloric acid and cyanide in a bottle, and directing gas into the compressor's intake valve. Instantly, the long black hose would have violently jerked in the water, and then only the river's sluggish current would have moved it anymore.

"See that in your sleep," I said to her, though she could not hear me. "in your sleep for the rest of your life. Every single goddamn night." I angrily snapped off my lamp.

Chapter 13

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, FOG WAS DENSE BEYOND my windows, and Quantico was quieter than usual.

I did not hear a single gunshot on any range, and it seemed the Marines were sleeping in. As I walked out of double glass doors leading to the area where the elevators were, I heard security locks click free next door to my room.

I punched the down button and glanced around as two female agents in conservative suits walked on either side of a light-skinned black woman who was staring straight at my face as if we had met before. Loren McComb had defiant dark eyes, and pride ran deep within her, as if it were the spring that fed her survival and made all that she did flourish.

"Good morning," I said with no feeling.

"Dr. Scarpetta," one of the agents somberly greeted me as the four of us boarded the elevator together.

We were silent to the first floor, and I could smell the sour staleness of this woman who had taught Joel Hand how to build a bomb. She was wearing tight faded jeans, sneakers and a long, full white blouse that could not hide an impressive build that must have contributed to Eddings' fatal error. I stood behind her and her wardens and watched the sliver of her face that I could see. She licked her lips often, staring straight ahead at doors which did not open soon enough for me.

Silence was thick like the fog outdoors, and then we were released on the first floor. I took my time getting off, and I watched the two agents lead McComb away without laying a finger on her. They did not have to, because they could, were it needed, just like that. They escorted Loren McComb down a corridor, then turned into one of the myriads of enclosed walkways called gerbil tubes, and I was surprised when she paused to look back at me again. She met my unfriendly stare and moved on, one step closer to what I hoped would be a long pilgrimage in the penitentiary.