Why was it everyone wanted him to solve this case, but no one would give him all the data he needed? None of it made any sense. Craig pressed his fingers against his temples, rubbing the skin there to make his headache crawl slowly away. He knew he was still missing a key piece of the puzzle.
And then his cell phone rang.
Craig fumbled with the tiny receiver as he flipped it open; one of the nurses glared at him, ready to scold him for using the cell phone inside the hospital, but he moved quickly toward the door to a smokers’ courtyard. “Hello?” There was static on the line.
“Special Agent Kreident? This is General Ursov speaking. How are you today, my friend?”
Craig stood at Dumenco’s bedside, livid with anger. “You’re not being honest with me!” he said, trying to keep his voice down from an outright shout. He shooed the doctors and orderlies out of the way, while the guards stood at the door.
Trish stepped toward Craig. “What are you doing?” He held up a finger and Trish pulled herself upright, flustered at his harshness.
The Ukrainian scientist squirmed in pain on the hospital bed, somewhat delirious. His crimson eyes took a long time to focus on Craig.
“I just learned of your black-program research for the Soviet military,” Craig said. “Why didn’t you tell me about it before?”
General Ursov had been coy, giving few specific details but confirming that Dumenco had indeed been a key physicist developing directed-energy weapons for the Soviet military. But he and his family had defected to the West during the breakup of the USSR. While he himself had retained a relatively high profile, Dumenco’s family had never been seen again.
“Has someone tried to kill you because of your weapons research?” Craig demanded. “The classified work you left behind in the Soviet Union? Is that what they’re after? Is that why someone exposed you to radiation in the Fermilab accelerator?”
“Perhaps,” Dumenco croaked. “Probably not.” His eyes rolled, leaking fluid that might have been tears or just mucous from damaged membranes. “They didn’t want me to talk about the things I had discovered. I had sworn to keep that work secret. But after my accident, they were afraid, afraid I would talk on my deathbed.” He shook his head. “But I had promised not to reveal what I know, and I am a man of my word.”
“And you haven’t revealed anything. But I’m not asking for classified results, Professor. I’m asking for help.”
Dumenco was quiet for a long time. He looked to Craig, but could find no empathy.
Dumenco’s lip trembled. “When I came here I had to… leave my family. Your State Department changed their names to keep them safe. I thought if I remained silent about my research, then the secret police might leave me alone, might leave… them alone.”
Craig held up the folded sheet of paper found in the assassin’s pocket. “Then why do you think he had this list? To mail them Christmas cards? I don’t think so.”
Dumenco looked devastated at the revelation. “Even I didn’t know where they were located. I haven’t seen them in a year. Names changed, they moved to different places, an odd stepchild of your U.S. Marshal witness protection program.”
Craig stiffened as the appalling truth hit him. June Atwood hadn’t told him any of this. Dumenco had kept quiet all these years, and his family had been in hiding, with new lives set up by the Bureau itself!
Trish hurried around to check on Dumenco’s IV drip, monitoring his vital signs with the apparatus, but she just wanted to get closer to the old man, trying to offer comfort by her presence.
“So why did this man try to kill you? How did he get into Fermilab, and how do you think he triggered your radiation exposure? Was he a hired-gun from the former Soviet Union, someone leftover from the KGB?”
“My work at Fermilab was beginning… to reproduce some of my efforts in the Soviet Union. I should have known it would draw their attention.” Dumenco swallowed hard. “But this man could not have operated the Tevatron-it is much too technical for him. He couldn’t have caused the accident.”
Craig stood back crossing his arms over his chest angrily, but knowing that while the scientist was stubborn, he did at least seem sincere. This entire situation in the hospital might be irrelevant, or at least merely tangential to the original radiation accident.
But if that were true, then who had actually triggered the experimental failure that had caused the beam dump in the first place? What was the explanation for the vaporized blockhouse? Did it have something to do with antimatter storage, or the Nobel Prize? Who had shot Goldfarb, and why? And how was that connected with all this?
Trish injected Demerol and sedative into the IV. Dumenco watched her with faint suspicion, glancing around the entire room as if a play of light, a dance of shadow might hide another killer. Trish turned to Craig, anger apparent on her face. “That’s enough, Craig. He needs to rest.”
“No,” Dumenco said, the panic rising on his face. “No rest. I have to understand… these test results.” He clawed over for the well-thumbed data printouts from his p-bar experiment. “They’re wrong, and I don’t know why.” He looked at her with a martyred expression. “If I’m going to die for this, at least I want to be right.”
“You have to sleep, Georg,” Trish soothed. “You can do it in the morning.”
If there’s going to be another morning for him, thought Craig. He looked down at the list of names of Dumenco’s hidden family members. He would leave Dumenco for now. He had other questions to ask-and SSA June Atwood was damned well going to answer them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Thursday, 5:32 p.m.
Fox RiverMedicalCenter
After much practice Craig had learned how to keep his frustration in check when he talked to the Boss Herself, June Atwood. Usually. After the stress of the past few days, though, with time running out for Dumenco, with the chlorine gas attack on himself and Jackson, and with Goldfarb barely clinging to life, Craig had had enough of tact.
He strode swiftly down the hall, already arguing in his mind. If Dumenco had been involved with the State Department for many years, the Bureau must have a file on him a mile long.
So why hadn’t Craig been given a heads up? Of course, he had horned in on this case, coming in through the back door, screwing up the bureaucracy. But that was no excuse.
Craig went to a bank of pay phone booths. The land line would be safer than his cell phone, and he wasn’t supposed to use his cell phone in the medical center anyway.
A lone blond nurse with her hair pulled back in a French braid glanced at Craig as he fidgeted at the phone, waiting for June to answer. A woman with a high-pitched voice squawked at the adjacent booth while an old gentleman dressed in a blue bathrobe waited behind her.
June answered breathlessly. “Craig! I just heard about Jackson and the shooting. Is everything all right-”
“June,” he interrupted, “I need background on Dumenco. All of it.”
Hesitation. “You have his file. I’ve given you-”
“I don’t mean the dossier Fermilab uses for its brochures. I want the real details: where he came from, who he worked for, and why he defected.”
“Craig, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about-‘’
“June, no PR bull! I want it straight. Dumenco himself just confessed that he worked on Soviet black-program research. I know about his family, how they were hidden-”
“Craig!” June’s voice came like a shot over the phone. “Can you get to a STU-3?”
Craig answered slowly. “I can get down to the Chicago office, but that’ll take nearly an hour. I need to know now, June. I’ve got a murder, attempted murder, and sabotage to solve here-not to mention a victim who’s only going to last another day at most. I’m getting more information from the bad guys than from my own office! How do you think that affects my confidence in the FBI?”