With a great effort, Dumenco sat up in the bed, leaving stains on the crisp sheets. “You do not understand, Nels-I have already done these experiments at Aramazas 16. That was the work that brought me to the attention of the United States government. I already know the correct results…” He flopped back against the pillow.

Piter looked at him in stunned horror and dismay as Dumenco continued in a weak whisper. “I could not tell anyone about it, so I had to reproduce all the experiments here, from first principles.”

Piter took a step away from the bed, stricken. Paige looked from one scientist to the other, then at Craig. Craig tried to remain unobtrusive, attentively watching as the discussion unfolded, hoping some crucial clue would slip out.

“But how?” stuttered Piter. “The Soviets never had an accelerator large enough to act as a seed for your experiments.” Then he stopped himself. “Unless your enhancement technique worked from the start!”

“My work was to produce antiprotons to-” He hesitated, as if unwilling to fully explain to Piter. He struggled up in his bed. “I already knew what I was doing when I came here to Fermilab. I had good results at first, but when I went into full-scale production with the gamma-ray laser increasing the cross-section, a large fraction of my new p-bars… disappeared somewhere.”

Piter was intent now, his face flushed. His thin lips formed a concerned line, as if his whole world was falling apart. “But why haven’t I ever heard of your early work? Why didn’t you publish your results?”

“Those experiments were highly classified… for other purposes. My work ultimately came to naught because we did not have a way to store the additional p-bars efficiently. We did not have a mature enough technology to overcome a saturation instability.”

Dumenco paused, then laying back on the bed, whispered, “And neither do you. Your crystal-lattice trap comes close-but it is still unstable. Dangerously unstable. Your solid-state lasers are an improvement over our old cross-feeding laser system, but you need to have them phased together better. Otherwise, your trap easily saturates and becomes unstable. We learned this long before you invented your design.”

Piter reeled. Craig knew that Dumenco had struck the Belgian scientist to the core-the crystal-lattice trap for holding large quantities of antimatter was the breakthrough on which Piter had staked his reputation, the basis for his Nobel nomination. But the world had- supposedly-never produced enough antimatter to test it fully.

And Dumenco had just claimed Piter’s precious device would fail.

Craig drew a quick breath. “Dr. Dumenco, if you said your new technique was producing a lot of antimatter, but the data didn’t show it-is it possible the antimatter was diverted somehow, taken away before it could interact with the data-collection diagnostics?” Both Piter and Dumenco looked at him skeptically. He continued, “Could it have been collected in one of your crystal-lattice traps, skimmed out of the accelerator beam downstream somehow? And if the crystal-lattice trap is so unstable, could that have caused the explosion in the beam-sampling substation?‘’

“Preposterous!” Piter sniffed.

“Yes, it is possible,” Dumenco said slowly. He looked over at Craig, raising a finger as he stated his theory, letting the thoughts roll off as fast as they came to him. “If someone is indeed diverting antiprotons from the particle accelerator into a crystal-lattice trap, the best place to store them would be in one of the beam-sampling substations, or in one of the beam-shunt passages. But the trap is unstable. If the lasers ever became misaligned, or experienced a rapid current flux…”

Piter swallowed hard, looking defeated. “You mean, like in an emergency beam dump?”

Dumenco nodded vigorously. “Yes! Even a microgram of antimatter would have caused such a devastating explosion. It would leave a glassy crater, and the electromagnetic pulse it generated would knock out electrical power systems for kilometers around.”

“Just like we saw,” Craig said, growing excited. “And Ben Goldfarb got shot in one of those substations.”

Dumenco looked over at Piter again. “If your results suddenly showed a dramatic increase in p-bar production this morning, that means another… diversion trap has been removed. The beam fluctuations you observed early yesterday morning could have been due to the crystal-lattice trap saturating.”

“But why would somebody want to steal p-bars?” Paige asked.

Piter looked down at her, and his voice had a sort of condescension, a withering disappointment because she didn’t intuitively know the answer to her own question. “It’s antimatter, Paige. Extremely rare, extremely difficult to create. It has thousands of high-technology uses.”

“I sent Jackson over there earlier to look around,” Craig said in alarm. “If somebody is trying to leave with an antimatter trap, we can catch him, see what he intends to do. I need to call for backup.”

Craig snatched the sunglasses out of his pocket and pointed to Piter. “Let’s go out there, Dr. Piter, now that we know what to look for. Maybe that’s what Goldfarb stumbled onto.”

Flustered, Nels Piter turned and followed him out of the room.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Friday, 9:53 a.m.

Experimental Target Area,

Fermilab Accelerator

Craig and Piter reached Fermilab some time before the backup agents from the FBI’s Chicago office. Using his own keys, Nels Piter took him through the access doors and beyond Restricted Area fences down into the underground experimental target channel.

They ran down concrete stairs into the thick-walled underground tunnels. Before them sprawled low ceilings, naked pipes, and garish lights that vanished to a point in the distance, which made the high-energy facility seem to go on forever. The walls were smooth and painted a thick yellowish-white.

Piter nodded to the left. “We haven’t used that beam-dump facility since Dumenco’s accident. No need to worry about residual radioactivity, though. It dies down quickly… well, fairly quickly anyway.”

“You really know how to inspire confidence,” Craig answered dryly.

In the opposite direction was the main entrance to the underground passages and the Tevatron control rooms. Technicians, graduate students, and contractors for scientific teams set up equipment for international experiments, making the underground corridors bustle like a subway station. In the midmorning rush of activity, they took advantage of the beam’s down time. People in lab coats or dark coveralls moved about in the main target areas and diagnostics alcoves, intent on their own work, trying not to get in each other’s way.

An announcement came over the scratchy, echoing intercom that everyone was supposed to remain where they were and to offer whatever assistance the Federal agents requested. But Craig didn’t think he would find anything in the crowded areas-the Tevatron accelerator was four miles in circumference, and the experimental target tunnel was nearly a mile long.

They briskly set off away from the main entrance. They had a lot of empty area to cover, many places to hide, many places to set a trap. What disturbed Craig most, though, was that he couldn’t get in touch with Jackson. The tall agent did not answer his cellular phone.

Piter brushed aside his concern. “Don’t worry. With all the copper shielding, high-energy equipment, and thick walls, cell phone transmissions are difficult under the best of circumstances. It’s like being in a Faraday cage.”

Still, it just didn’t feel right to Craig.

Piter hurried along the tunnel at a brisk pace, puffing; sweat glistened at his blond temples. “We should first check the other beam-dump alcoves,” Piter said, out of breath. “They’re rarely inhabited and would be an ideal place to hide suspicious equipment, such as this alleged antimatter trap. Few workers ever have reason to go inside. Dr. Dumenco shouldn’t have been there either-as he’s learned too clearly.”