Craig Kreident #1: Virtual Destruction (40 page)

“What about our demonstration?” Walter Shing added.
 
“We’ve worked so hard.”

Lesserec slumped back in his chair, pouting.
 
Spots of red appeared on his skin, showing how much anger he was holding inside.
 
“Screw the fucking demonstration!” Lesserec said.
 
“
This
was the demonstration.”

Everyone turned expressions of confusion or amazement at him.
 
Lesserec looked as if he wanted to spit.

“Yeah, Kreident saw an enhanced version of the explosion.
 
He couldn’t tell the difference between a pile of high explosives and a nuclear device going off underground.
 
That was my
point
—and if I didn’t show it now, we’d make total fools of ourselves with the President and the foreign nationals.
 
Better we have a postponement than an international embarrassment in a couple of weeks.”

“Gary, what are you talking about?” Walter Shing said.
 
“We’ve worked day and night on this.”

“And I was trying to get us all some benefit from it. National Security!
 
Shit, Michaelson had his head up his butt all along, as usual.
 
Virtual Inspectors.
 
International Verification Initiative.
 
What a crock!

“Michaelson just bulldozes ahead when he gets an idea in his mind and he loses his ability to perform rational thought.
 
Did he stop to think what good one of these Virtual Inspectors is?
 
If anyone with a little know-how like me can doctor the results and make an observer see anything I want, what good would the verification be then?”

As Paige and Goldfarb looked at him, perplexed, Lesserec made a noise of disgust.
 
“The first thing foreign nationals will do is figure out how to bypass the system, show a nice filmloop to our long-distance inspectors.
 
They’ll fool us into happily observing some peaceful washing-machine assembly line.
 
But it’ll all be an illusion.
 
They’ll really be building warheads—and we won’t even know it.

“On the other hand, you can bet the United States is gonna hire me first thing,” he gestured with his hand, “or any one of you, to bypass the system we’ve created ourselves.
 
Virtual Inspectors won’t work.”

Goldfarb moved toward him, fists clenched, but Lesserec stood firmly on his soapbox now.

“But what we’re missing,” he continued, “is the
real
application for VR technology.
 
It could be worth tens of billions of dollars to the American entertainment industry.
 
Think of it.
 
The Nintendo Corporation and Sony, all the Japanese conglomerates will vanish like a puff of smoke because we’re decades ahead of them in virtual technology.
 
Think of amusement parks, movies that you can experience as well as watch!”

He took a deep breath.
 
“And there’s medical possibilities, too.
 
Physical therapy, treatments for handicapped people, letting them go places they’ve never dreamed of!
 
You should have seen the tour group we had here last week, very sick kids who had never been to Yosemite, never even been swimming.
 
I’ve got one test case, a little boy with cerebral palsy, who was practically in Heaven because I took him to the top of Half Dome.
 
His father provided me with the kid’s entire medical history—think of how this virtual technology could help people like him!

“Yet, because we developed the techniques here at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, people like Michaelson can only think about the defense applications.
 
They want to use this incredible technology I developed in order to be better
spies
?
 
How ridiculous!”

Craig croaked from across the room.
 
“So you killed Michaelson because that would let you run T Program down the toilet, and secretly sell the applications to toy companies.”

“What?” Lesserec said, flushing a deeper red and starting to stand up.
 
“Give me a break!”
 
But Goldfarb pushed on his shoulder, shoving him back down in the chair.

“Yes,” Paige said.
 
“You got hydrofluoric acid from the Plutonium Facility during one of your sensor installations and sprayed it on Michaelson when he came in to try out your new simulation.”

Lesserec rolled his muddy green eyes.
 
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!
 
Of course I didn’t kill him.
 
I never
heard
of hydrofluoric acid before Michaelson got killed.
 
Yes, I ran one of my enhanced simulations for him on the night he died.
 
Tested the new beta chips.
 
It was a prehistoric landscape, nothing harmful in the least.
 
I wanted to show him just what I could do, and how far behind he had fallen in his own game.

“I’m the one who came up with all this stuff, you know—and Michaelson always took the credit for it.
 
I needed to let him know who the real brains was.
 
I hoped we could work out some kind of deal to let me sell spinoffs on the side.”

“Cute,” Goldfarb said.

“Well, why the hell not?” Lesserec bellowed, twisting around in his chair.
 
“This is supposedly Secret National Security Information—and here we are bringing in a team of high-level observers from every country in the world, even our enemies.
 
We’re handing it to them on a silver platter.”

He snorted.
 
“Sure, we can do that—but the moment we try to sell it to an
American
company, the moment we try to exploit it for the good of
this
country instead of someone else’s, then everybody has a fit.
 
Then it’s espionage.
 
Then it’s illegal.
 
We have one set of grossly screwed up priorities if you ask me.”

“Oh, we’ll be asking you,” Goldfarb said.
 
“We’ll be asking you a lot of things.”
 
His voice changed, became flatter, harder.
 
“By the authority vested in me by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, I’m placing you under arrest.”

“But I didn’t kill Michaelson,” Lesserec protested.
 
“I didn’t do it!”

“You’ve done enough,” Goldfarb said.
 
“That’s a start.”

CHAPTER 42

Friday

Building 433—T-Program

Craig struggled to his feet as Goldfarb read Lesserec his Miranda rights.
 
Paige helped him up, and he grasped her shoulder weakly.
 
His arms trembled.

It felt as if someone had reached inside his spine and yanked out his entire network of nerves like a gardener uprooting a persistent weed.
 
His skin still sizzled from the imagined shockwave of the detonation engulfing him.

What had Hal Michaelson experienced that had obliterated him?
 
And where had the hydrofluoric acid come from?

Colored spots swam in front of Craig’s eyes, and he lost his balance, reeling against Paige for support.
 
He felt completely drained.
 
He wouldn’t be surprised if he had sweated five pounds of his body weight in the few minutes he was in the chamber.
 
He swallowed some more water from Tansy’s coffee mug, and then turned dizzily.

“The rest room,” he said.
 
“I . . . I need to wash up, get some life back into me.”

“Craig, I think we should just take you to the hospital.
 
I’ll call the Lab Emergency Response and—”

“No.”
 
Craig cut her off.
 
“Just give me a minute to rest.
 
Let me splash some water on my face, and then we’ll talk about it, okay?”

“Kay-O.”
 
Reluctantly she guided him one tentative step at a time down the corridor to the men’s room.

“Do you need any help?” Paige asked.

Craig forced a wan smile.
 
“If you’re trying to give me a thrill, I’m not really up to it right now.”

She let out an amused sigh.
 
“Haven’t you already seen how much damage an overactive imagination can cause, Craig?”
 
She pushed open the bathroom door for him.

He swayed, then staggered over to the white porcelain sinks.
 
He slapped at the cold water tap until a rushing stream splashed out.
 
He leaned over the basin, smelling the coolness, feeling the prickles of sweat like bee-stings in his burned nerve endings.

Craig dunked his still-shaking hands under the stream of water, and the cold shock jarred him closer to full awareness.
 
Man, oh man
, he thought.
 
Did Lesserec really think people would pay for an experience like that?
 
With a long sigh, he cupped his hands and bent over the sink, splashing the water on his cheeks, removing the salty rivulets of perspiration.

He rubbed at his burning eyes.
 
Then he reached over with his left hand to hit the soap dispenser, pumping the round metal plunger to squirt pink liquid soap into the palm of his hand.
 
He rubbed his hands together and bent over the running water again, splashing the soapy water on his face, scrubbing the weariness away.
 
It made him feel tingly and clean as echoes of the simulated nuclear detonation thundered in his head.

He found it difficult to think.
 
His mind had experienced a sensory overload, and his mental snowplow had not yet cleared the main routes.

Craig stared at his hands, felt his face, and sluggishly turned to look at the soap dispenser again.
 
Something
. . .
something
. . .

He reached over with his left hand slowly and pushed up on the soap dispenser’s metal plunger.
 
The round end pressed down in the center of his palm—a circle squirting liquid soap.

José Aragon had a small circular acid burn directly in the middle of his palm.

Like an automaton, watching his every motion with growing uneasiness, Craig brought his hand over to the running water again, rubbed his hands to lather the soap, and bent to splash his face.

Hal Michaelson’s hands and face had been covered with the deadly HF.

On uncooperative legs Craig wheeled away from the sink, forgetting entirely about the water.
 
The water kept splashing as he staggered out of the bathroom.
 
He yanked the door open and stood with his face and hands still dripping cold water.
 
He startled Paige, who had been waiting for him just outside.

“Craig, let me help you.
 
What’s wrong?”

“Get Aragon on the phone,” he gasped.
 
“I want to ask him one question.
 
I think I’ve figured this out.”

“Don’t move so fast, Craig.
 
You’re going to collapse.
 
I know what you’ve been through.”

“Just get him on the phone!” Craig said, then clapped a wet hand to his forehead.
 
He steadied himself against the wall, and Paige eased him over to a chair.

“All right, I’ll call him.”

Just thinking about the mystery made Craig come to his senses more than the cold water had.
 
His heart raced as the pieces of the puzzle clicked together.

Paige handed him a telephone.
 
“I’ve got Aragon’s wife.
 
She’s bringing him to the phone.”

“Good,” Craig said and took the receiver.
 
“Hello,” he waited but heard nothing until a moment later.

José Aragon’s watery, slightly nasal voice came over the phone.
 
“Yes?
 
Aragon speaking.”

“Craig Kreident, FBI,” he said.
 
“I have one question for you, Mr. Aragon.
 
When you and Dr. Michaelson were in the Plutonium Facility, did you go into the rest room?”

“What?” Aragon asked.

“Did you use the rest room?
 
Did you wash your hands in the Plutonium Facility?”

“Yes, uh, I think so.
 
Dr. Michaelson and I were . . . having a discussion when we went to the rest room.
 
A rather heated discussion,” he added reluctantly.
 
“Hal was tired.
 
He’d flown in from Washington that morning.”

“Did he splash water on his face?
 
Did he use the soap dispenser?
 
Did you use the soap dispenser?”

Aragon seemed baffled.
 
“What is the point of this line of questioning, Mr. Kreident?”