Jackson nodded down the stairwell. “Secure it-I kicked it away.”

Furtively, Jackson glanced over at the bullet holes in the metal door only inches from where his chest and head had been. His skin took on a pasty appearance, tinting the rich brown of his face with a grayish cast.

One of the doctors on duty rushed up and knelt over the assassin. It only took a moment to check the man over and determine that nothing could be done to save him. The doctor stepped away.

After retrieving the dead man’s weapon, Craig felt cold. He had known there was no other option, but still he shook his head. “Is that our killer?” he asked. “You think that’s the guy who triggered the accident at Fermilab?”

Jackson panted, then sank to his knees. “He sure didn’t want Dumenco to live through the day.”

Then the other implications struck home for Craig. “Just what we needed, a Board of Inquiry in the midst of this. We’re already short on time.” Jackson seemed too wrung out to do more than just stand motionless. Craig squeezed his shoulder. “I’ll back you up all the way, Randall.”

He went down the stairs to search the body. His fingers sticky with blood, he patted down the man’s clothes, pawing in his pockets.

Naturally, he discovered no identification. With the disguised appearance it would be difficult to tell who this man was, unless the FBI fingerprint database could help out. In the shirt pocket beneath his white orderly coat, however, Craig found two pieces of paper, one bearing a list of names with corresponding cities, and another a small business card. Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research, with a stylized logo that showed PR-Cubed. Craig’s stomach twisted in knots.

What did Trish have to do with this?

Back in Dumenco’s room doctors scrambled to put everything back in order. Schultz and the injured guard had been taken off to be treated, but they weren’t in any danger.

In his bed the Ukrainian lay devastated. His already horrifying condition had grown noticeably worse, as if he had been through some mangling industrial machine. His face was ravaged, his eyes wild and scarlet.

Trish tended him, trying to soothe him. Her face was flushed, her expression pinched with concern. She’d succeeded in replacing the IV drip tubes and reattaching the electrodes to his medical monitoring equipment. Trish looked up at Craig with concern and questions in her sepia eyes.

He took a deep breath and clasped his hands, still sticky and stained with blood from the dead assassin, behind his back. Other Chicago Bureau agents, local law-enforcement, and the remainder of the hospital security staff, had converged on where the body had fallen in the stairwell.

Soon it would be time for all the paperwork, all the reports. Craig nodded at Trish. “You don’t have to worry about that man anymore. Whoever he was. He doesn’t have any identification.”

Trish looked relieved.

Craig narrowed his eyes and spoke sharply. “So do you want to save us a lot of time and trouble and tell me who he is?”

Trish blinked, apparently baffled. Craig held up the business card, and it seemed to burn in his fingers. “He had this in his pocket. PR-Cubed, Trish. Your organization! I thought you were hiding something from me this morning, not telling me everything you thought. Now who is he?”

“He could have gotten that card anywhere-our convention was in town last weekend, and-”

Craig raised his voice, but was still under control. “Who is he, Trish?”

She paled and rested against the metal support bar of Dumenco’s bed. “I… I thought he might have looked familiar. Someone from the PR-Cubed who was-who said he was tracking down Chernobyl information. He wanted to know where I could find Georg’s family members, since I’d had some contact with them in the Ukraine. But I didn’t know anything. He asked me several times, and he was very insistent-but I didn’t know!” Her voice became thin and watery with her own anxiety.

“Then why didn’t you tell me this morning, dammit?”

“Because I wasn’t sure. He was wearing a surgical mask, it was dark. I thought I was imagining things.”

Dumenco spoke weakly from his bed. “Not… imagining things.”

Craig marched toward Dumenco, holding out the list, unfolding the sheet of paper. “Dr. Dumenco, I need you to look at these names. Do you recognize them? The man who attacked you carried them.”

The dying scientist seemed to have trouble focusing on the names. Craig pushed the list closer, and Dumenco stared at the words. Then tears gushed out of his hemorrhaged eyes. He trembled on the bed, glancing at the names, then over at the framed snapshots Craig had taken from the dresser drawer in his apartment.

“One name, then a city written down. Who are they, Dr. Dumenco?” he said. Trish looked over his shoulder, wide-eyed.

“My… my family,” the scientist said. “My family’s new names… all of them.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “They have been in hiding. They were supposed to be-” He shook his head. “They were supposed to be safe, safe from people like him.”

He slumped into the bedsheets and continued weeping. “My family.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Thursday, 5:01 p.m.

Fox RiverMedicalCenter

In the aftermath of the shooting in the hospital, the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility swarmed to the Fox River Medical Center, armed with interview questions and forms to be filled out.

Though he hated to have cameras shoved in front of his face, Craig had made the appropriate statements to the reporters, explaining about the ongoing investigation into the soon-to-be-fatal radiation exposure of Nobel Prize contender, Georg Dumenco. An as-yet-unidentified assailant had twice attempted to kill the physicist in the hospital before being killed himself. The assailant was now the prime suspect for having caused the original radiation accident, as well as the devastating substation explosion, and the shooting of Agent Ben Goldfarb.

With forced patience, Craig spoke to the reporters because he wanted to protect Jackson. He took the hard way out with the toughest questions, just answering “no comment,” knowing that the press would speculate like crazy-but even if he had wanted to answer in full, Craig still didn’t know how the pieces fit together, what the assassin had been after, why the man had carried the aliases of Dumenco’s family hidden by the State Department.

Craig went to see Goldfarb again, trying to escape from the insanity, but the curly-haired agent just lay motionless. Julene had fallen asleep in a chair at his bed-side, while the two little girls kept themselves quietly occupied with a game of Trouble they had found in the hospital’s game cabinet.

While Jackson met with representatives from the Office of Professional Responsibility, giving his detailed statement, Craig paced the halls. Should he go back to Fermilab? Did Paige have anything else for him, any new statement from Nels Piter?

He passed by a waiting-room lounge, pausing long enough to watch a few seconds of Headline News. The Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm had announced their selection for the Prize in Literature, an Eskimo whose poetry had described the plight of the vanishing harp seal. The newscaster speculated on when the few remaining Prizes would be announced; Craig hoped Dumenco lived long enough to learn of their decision.

After the second assassination attempt, Trish remained terribly shaken and refused to leave Dumenco’s side. Surrounded by guards and doctors, the physicist seemed distressed and claustrophobic. Craig wondered if the PR-Cubed people had any greater involvement, if Trish still knew more information she kept hidden from him.