He pushed open the door to Georg Gregorivich Dumenco’s room. The hinges were quiet, the lights out. A dim trickle of dawn gleamed through the slitted blinds, dappling the waxed floor. The old scientist lay on his side snoring gently, a sheet pulled up nearly to his head and the blanket twisted around his feet. An IV line hung from a bottle and snaked into the old man’s arm. No one sat vigil with him, waiting to hear deathbed confessions-no family, no friends, no graduate students. Even here, even now, the physicist had isolated himself from his family.
The legendary Ukrainian scientist, all alone. Helpless.
Reaching into a long pocket beneath the baggy surgery pants, he withdrew a tightly folded sterile green cloth. He quickly unwrapped the cloth to expose a thin surgical knife, carbon steel, razor sharp. The blade caught a flicker of light in a crazy pattern dancing against the wall.
Dumenco didn’t stir. It would be like slicing the throat of a sleeping bull, a powerful enough animal when awake, but now unprotected and powerless. How many times had Dumenco been this close, so helpless? The timing was never right, the circumstances never so crucial. Only recently had things changed enough to demand action.
Dumenco just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Padding silently across the room, he stood beside the dying man’s bed. Clear target. He did not want to risk reaching over the old scientist, whose arm could block the slicing motion across the throat. The cut would have to be a quick slash at arm’s length to prevent the blood from jetting onto his stolen hospital garb. That would draw attention during his exit. No clues could be left, no path of the Ukrainian’s blood. He would wipe the blade on the bedsheet and disappear into the night.
Keeping a firm grip on the delicate surgical knife, he crouched down and slipped the blade under Dumenco“s chin-
“Hey, what are you doing in here?” A woman’s voice shattered the silence. “This is my patient.”
He jerked away, nearly tripping as he stumbled back. The half blinds on the window slapped as he backed into them. Dumenco stirred but didn’t wake up.
The room lights blinked on, filling the white-walled suite with a harsh, overpowering glare. A woman in a white lab coat carried a cup of coffee in a cafeteria cup, held a sheaf of papers in the other hand. A stethoscope hung around her neck; delicate glasses highlighted her face. Dr. Patrice LeCroix. He had talked to her before, one of the more outspoken members of the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research.
Now she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she had spoiled everything.
Her mouth hung open, halfway between astonishment and horror. Coffee sloshed on the floor. He twirled, keeping the masked face and eyes away from her. Cursing, he brought down his head and launched himself toward the door. Before she could sound an alarm. Before she could recognize him.
The woman raised her voice, terrified as well as indignant. “What the hell are you doing here?‘’ Her sheaf of papers fell to the floor as he charged past her. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but no sound came out, only a faint gurgling. Her attention was torn between stopping him and checking on her patient.
He briefly considered killing both her and Dumenco, but precious time had already been lost, attention already directed toward the sleepy room. In a moment, the night nurse would run to investigate, police would be called, an intensive search would be initiated.
Dumenco struggled up in bed now, awake but befuddled.
During his flight, he shoved Dr. LeCroix aside. She fell against the visitor’s chair by the door. Coffee spilled over her and on his stolen hospital garb. He felt the hot liquid soaking through, burning. Not blood, but coffee stains on the surgical garb. He would be easily spotted, identified.
Slamming the door behind him to gain an extra few seconds, he sprinted away as Dr. LeCroix shouted for help. His shoes squeaked as he ran down the hallway, leaving smudges on the freshly waxed floor.
Within minutes in the parking lot, in his car, on the streets, he could elude any pursuit. Dumenco remained alive, still dangerous-and now he would be even more concerned.
All the more reason to do it right the next time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thursday, 7:04 a.m.
Fox RiverMedicalCenter
After the early morning attempt on Dumenco’s life, Craig rushed in from a restless night’s sleep. The Ukrainian was only a day or two away from death anyway-but Craig wouldn’t stand by while someone tried to hurry him along. He had heard on the radio on the way in that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry had been announced, and Craig felt a tightening in his gut. The countdown was ticking-if the Nobel could not be awarded to a dead man, had an unconfident Nels Piter tried to increase his own odds?
Hospital security had already swarmed around the site, to no effect. Craig had called the Chicago Bureau office, roused Agent Schultz, and asked for him to assign a protection detail to the medical center. The other agent preferred to be in the thick of things himself, rather than snooping around the site of a days-old blast. The attack on both Goldfarb and Dumenco had finally lent a sense of legitimacy to Craig’s own investigation. This entire case went far beyond a mysterious explosion at an uninhabited blockhouse.
Craig also started the Chicago office on setting up a news blackout for Dumenco’s protection, keeping all reporters off the hospital floor. It infuriated him that the media had also begun pestering Goldfarb’s wife about her husband’s shooting and his involvement in the case.
Trish LeCroix stood outside the door to Dumenco’s room, bustling in and around the guards, trying to get her duties done. Before she noticed Craig approaching, he took a mental snapshot of her demeanor, assessing her state of mind. Trish’s skin was grayish, her expression tight with confusion and self-doubt. He put it down to her being flustered at being caught in the eye of an unexpected storm; she had always hated it when things didn’t go her way, according to a rigid plan. She had enough stress tending the dying scientist, but thwarting a would-be killer wasn’t her job. Craig was the one who chased after the bad guys.
When Trish saw him, she strode forward quickly, gave him a hug. He squeezed back, but she broke the embrace quickly.
“Is Dumenco all right?” Craig asked. “Are you all right?” He coughed to the side; at least his own gas poisoning symptoms were nearly gone.
“We were very lucky,” she said. “But Georg is already in a fragile state. He’s entering the final stages of systemic collapse from the radiation exposure. He’s quite distraught at the moment.”
“Well, I would be too if someone had tried to kill me,” Craig said. “But maybe Dumenco managed to recognize something about the killer that could give us the breakthrough we need, if it’s shaken him enough to get him to talk. I still think Dumenco’s been hiding too much from us.”
“Yes, but he was asleep at the time. Besides, I expect to see mental effects from central nervous system damage very soon now. I wouldn’t consider him to be completely reliable.” She glanced down at her clipboard, avoiding his gaze. “Uh, a delusional state is also likely.”
Craig reached into his pocket and withdrew the family photos he’d picked up from Dumenco’s apartment. “Maybe this will jog his memory.”
They placed sterile masks over their faces, then entered the room. It was a useless gesture to protect the scientist from infection in that way. The radiation had critically damaged his immune system, so his injured body couldn’t resist infection. And it had destroyed the lining of his intestines, letting the trillions of innocuous bacteria that normally lived there gain easy access to his bloodstream. It was those microbes, deep inside him and now made deadly, that would soon make him go into shock-and die.