Perilous Panacea (28 page)

“What trades? I never gave you anything. Anyway, you screwed up this time. I’m down here because of you letting Hughson in on your information. My superiors figured I gave it to him. So I’m no longer a leader of the investigation. Was that in the e-mail, too? Does the e-mail say I was kicked off the case and sent to Siberia?”

“It was there along with the information that you were coming to Oak Ridge, but I won’t put that in tomorrow’s story. That last e-mail said I’d be getting some really hot information later tonight that I can use for tomorrow’s story. It wasn’t there the last time I checked my e-mail. I’ll let you know what it is as soon as I get it”

Saul twisted around to scan the entrance and bar area. He wondered who was tailing her, and what they would do when they saw her and him together. He knew damn good and well what they’d think. Dowel would say he knew it all the time.

“I hear you also forwarded information to Hughson.”

“I did not. He got e-mails from the same Yahoo address that I did. I assume he hasn’t forwarded them to you like I did.”

“You know you’ve been used by Austin…or whoever sent the e-mails.”

“What was I supposed to do: sit on the information? It would have gotten out. Besides, I turned all of it over to you and let your people bug my phones and e-mails. I haven’t even complained about them following me.”

Saul remembered Spanner’s theory that she was working with the bomb makers. Could it be that when they heard he was in Knoxville they knew he was getting close, so they sent her to keep an eye on him?

“Are you working with the bomb makers?” he asked.

She sniffed a laugh. “Why would I do that? I guess you’re referring to some of my anti-government writings years ago. That was another time, another me. On this story, I just took the information I got and went with it. You’ve got to look out for your career, right?”

“Everybody needs a career development plan,” he said. He would like to pursue the Austin link, but he knew it would go nowhere. He drained his drink and realized the three Jack Daniels were having an effect.

She looked around for the waitress, and didn’t see one. “Hey, if the action isn’t in here, let’s find our own. Like Dylan says: ‘All I want to do, is baby be friends with you.’ I’ve got two bottles of wine in my car, along with a couple of Zimmerman CDs. I’ll check my e-mail to see if that hot information is there. I might also produce some controlled substance. That is, if you can forget who you are for awhile.”

“I’ll pass on the controlled substance. That was another time, another me, as someone said recently.” He glanced back at the door, but the guy in coat and tie with the woman in the blue dress had been at their table for some time.

“Are you looking for my tail?” she asked. “They’re not here. I’d say my tail is chasing his own tail up in Washington. Stupid bastards.”

“Are you staying at this hotel?”

“I am now.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Hunched behind the keyboard and monitor in the machine room, Curt waited for Simmons to chuck up the tapered steel cylinder in the lathe, getting ready for final machining of a non-radioactive bomb part. His shoulders ached from long work days that now extended into long nights. “Why are we working so late, Perk?”

“We’re finishing up,” Simmons said, without looking up from the lathe. “You’ll be home in a day or so.”

Dead in a day or so, Curt thought. He figured they were finished when Maxwell and Markum showed up dressed in khaki work clothes, griping about having to load a truck. Besides that, Lormes, his whirlpool mouth quiet, appeared an hour ago and now roamed the building.

“Have you and Applenu finished machining the plutonium?” Curt asked. Applenu had taken over the computer for that job.

“Applenu’s at the hot cell finishing the last piece right now. Once that’s finished we’re out of here. And that won’t be a minute too soon for me.”

Finished, Curt thought as he glanced at the twenty-four-inch crescent wrench on the work bench next to the teletype. One swing and Simmons’s head would be a bloody mush. But he couldn’t get by Beecher in the hall. Twenty-four inches of stainless steel was no match for a forty-five.

“You worried about being mixed up in murder?” Curt asked Simmons.

Simmons spun a wheel to align the cylinder in the lathe. “Nobody’s going to get murdered.”

“Not if you help me escape.”

Simmons ignored Curt and tightened the wheel.

Curt stood, stretched, and walked to the machine-room door. Just up the hall to his right, Beecher watched as Markum and Maxwell passed with a loaded forklift truck.

What was in the crate? Machined plutonium? A few weeks earlier they had loaded another truck with the uranium they’d machined. According to Surling, that made Curt an accomplice. He’d soon be a dead accomplice, just like Surling.

Curt glanced left at the emergency exit. What was the probability he could make it through that door before Simmons or Beecher noticed?

Beecher turned and saw him in the window. He gently touched the back of his head, the spot that Surling hit with the catsup bottle. Then he tapped the left side of his light-blue sports jacket, the place he kept his gun, daring Curt to try it.

Back at the lathe, Simmons had the roughed-out blank in place. “This one’s ready to finish.”

Finish in sight, Curt thought, finish to a nightmare. He typed a command, and the lathe began to turn.

- - - - -

Shortly after ten o’clock, Lori drove into the wide deserted street between the two rows of long industrial buildings. The plan was to enter the General Nuclear American Company building to determine if Curt was there. She intended to enter at night when there should not be many people inside, maybe only someone guarding Curt.

She was surprised by the blackness of the street, with the only light being that beamed into small areas from widely spaced streetlights. The black Town Car rested in the shadow of their building with no indication of the green Toyota, which wasn’t at the Garden Apartments either. Something new: a large yellow truck with Ryder on the side was backed up to the loading dock. Did they exchange a rental car for a rental truck? Why was it here tonight? Why was the Town Car here? Were they getting ready to leave? If so she would have to act before they took Curt away, assuming he was in there. Trouble was, if they were getting ready to leave and none of their vehicles were at the Garden Apartments, they would all be in there, not just the one or two she had counted on.

After a u-turn at the end of the street, she pulled in behind a pickup truck parked in front of the Environmental Disposal and Testing Company, EDAT, the building on the opposite side of the street. Grabbing her binoculars and shoulder bag, she stepped from the air-conditioned cool into a hot and muggy night.

Dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeve dark-blue shirt and concealed in the shadows of the EDAT truck, she scanned their building. By now, she knew every detail of that long structure, from the GENERAL NUCLEAR AMERICAN COMPANY sign next to the office door with a small porch and banister, at the far end of the building, to the boarded-up windows on the near end. In the middle, a large sliding door opened onto the dock.

Seeing the office windows dark, she decided everyone was in the back or in the room with the boarded-up windows. Did that make circumstances favorable for her plan hatched during target practice? If so, all she had to do was slip through one of those doors and catch them by surprise with her gun. She and Curt could then lock them up and escape.

Before she could move a sliver of light burst from the side of the building. Gradually, the loading-dock door eased open and illuminated the dock and the back of the truck.

Lori melted into the shadows. Maxwell. Her heart accelerated as he shuffled onto the dock and over to the truck, where he swung open the back doors. This time he wore khaki work clothes, not that awful red-and-white tee shirt.

With the binoculars trained on his face, she could almost smell his alcohol-and-tobacco breath and feel his sweaty hands on her body. He wore something white across his face, like the day she passed them in the green car. It looked like a bandage.

A forklift with a large box on the front emerged from the building, drove onto the dock, and eased into the truck. She recognized the driver as the one she saw driving the green car on her first visit out here.

Beecher ambled onto the dock and looked around, his swagger as cocky as his attitude that day. Curt had to be there.

Her body trembled as if racked by chills, and she jerked the binoculars away from her eyes and steadied herself against the truck. Her plan, which held such promise when every one of her forty-five slugs slammed into that defenseless cardboard box, no longer seemed like a sure thing. When she decided to come out here, she expected only one or two of them to be there guarding Curt. She thought about the FBI men. Mr. Saul came all the way from Washington. She recognized Saul’s name from the newspaper articles; they were working on the bomb case and knew Curt was involved. Several times during their questioning, she ached to spill everything and was on the verge of telling them. Each time she hesitated, and then they were gone.

As soon as the three men were back inside the building and Maxwell closed the door, she made her decision. With sweaty hands, she rummaged through her shoulder bag and found Special Agent Saul’s card with his cell-phone number.

- - - - -

Mosely was on top this time, working her body up and down on Saul. From his vantage point, he decided she had a hell of a nice body at fifty-one, although he didn’t have too many samples to compare. How long since he’d done it twice in one night?

She guided his hand to her vagina to a spot she wanted massaged. She speeded up the rhythmic up-and-down, setting up an accompanying beat of the headboard banging the wall. Excitement etched her face, eyes now closed. She swooped down to kiss him, her tongue tangling with his, her hot face damp.

Her body quivered, the convulsions transferred to his. “Keep it up,” she squealed, her voice too loud for the thin walls to contain.

Saul’s body resisted for several beats before the tsunami hit, a chill coursing through his spine like an electrical shock pushing upward into his skull.

She collapsed onto him and lay there with him still inside her; his hand pinned between their bodies. She sighed and rolled off, breathing heavily. “That was good,” she said.

He nodded, smiled, and wondered what he was doing. Was it the three drinks in the bar and then the wine? His knowledge of ubiquitous one-night stands came from movies and TV. Was it really like that? He lay there quiet, just wanting to sleep. “Why don’t you check your e-mail again,” he said.

His body jumped when his cell phone chirped inside his pants draped over the chair across the room. He listened to it, remembering that he was going to call Mary. Mentally, he kicked himself in his naked ass. What the hell was he thinking when he brought her to his room?

The phone stopped ringing, and he mentally played the leave-a-message voice now being listened to by the caller. Would Mary leave a message?

He debated whether to get up and listen to it. Maybe they tailed Mosely after all. They probably called Spanner for instructions, and now they were calling to ask him what he was up to. What could he say? He could say he was interrogating Mosely. That would bring a horse laugh. Maybe the hot information she was supposed to receive would save him.

Why didn’t he call Spanner as soon as she showed up? He could have asked where her tail was and gotten them on the defensive. Now they had him. Even with the buzz from the alcohol, the evening didn’t compare with the evenings of the Diane Fosbury summer. Nothing lived up to expectations anymore. Had it ever? He should have called Mary.

Words to a Dylan song tumbled around his mind:

Sweet Melinda, the goddess of gloom,

She invites you to her room,

Takes your voice, and leaves you howling at the moon.

The phone began another chirping session.

Mosely slipped out of bed, seemingly unaware of her nakedness. “Are you going to answer that or not?”

Saul watched her ass as she padded to his pants, rummaged in the pocket, sending her tits into a jiggle. She tossed him the chirping phone. Then she picked up her wine glass and padded toward the wine bottle on the table. Why did she wear the full skirts? She had a good body, might even say a great body.

He studied the phone, willing it to quit chirping. Finally, he snapped open the small phone and was relieved to hear Lori Reedan say “Hello” and identify herself.

“Did you hear from your husband, Mrs. Reedan?”

“No, but I know where they are.”

He pictured the demure Mrs. Reedan at home with her daughter. Home and kids. Mary. “You say you know where your husband is? Where is he?”

“I know where the people are who are making the bombs.”

She wasn’t making sense. “What bombs?”

At the word bombs, Mosely hesitated pouring the white wine.

“I know where they’re making the atomic bombs…at least I think I do. You know, the people in the paper and on TV…the ones that have Curt.”

Saul pushed himself into a sitting position as Mosely headed toward him with the wine bottle, her ears tuned to the conversation. He pulled the sheet to his waist. “Are you sure, Mrs. Reedan?”

“Well…I’m pretty sure.” Her voice sounded higher on the phone. Excited? Scared? “They made me promise I wouldn’t go to the police. That’s why I didn’t say anything this afternoon. They came to our house…they threatened to hurt Curt and Beth. They did things to me…assaulted me…the bruise on my cheek you asked me about. They did that.”

While Mosely poured the remainder of the wine into his glass on the night stand, her damp and matted pubic region hovered in front of his face like a black butterfly.

“Are you sure you know where these people are?” He glanced up at Mosely, who smiled, bent down and reached under the sheet and tugged gently at his semi-hard penis, her breasts swaying in front of his face.

“Yes, I’m sure. I followed them there. I think I saw the one the papers had a sketch of, the one with the beard.”

“Applenu?”

Mosely watched him, listening. She bent down and kissed his cheek.

“Yes, him. He went there with the ones that…that raped me.”

“Raped you?” She had to be making this up, probably fantasizing that Reedan was kidnapped, all because they had marital troubles. People everywhere had been turning in wild-ass tips ever since the government went public with the case.

“Yes…they said they had to teach Curt a lesson, teach him to cooperate.”

Mosely ambled back to the table, and Saul’s gaze locked on her ass. She tapped a key on her laptop, and the monitor lit up. Although a hard-on attempted to generate itself under the sheet, he knew he had to get out of this room and away from her.

“I’ll be right there, Mrs. Reedan.” It was worth looking into, if for no other reason than to get rid of Mosely. He’d call Mary on the way.

After he arranged the meeting place with Lori Reedan, he got out of bed and grabbed his shorts from the pile of clothes on the floor. “I’ve got to go out.”

“I heard,” she said, heading toward her clothes. “I’m going with you.”

Her accent, which was sexy earlier, now grated. “No way can I take you along.”

She glared at him. “You think I fucked you because I love you, because you’re irresistible? Don’t flatter yourself, love. We’re together, you and me.” She stepped into her black panties and pulled them up. “Unless you’d like me to call Mr. Spanner and fill him in on his fucking number one agent, I am going with you.”

He got his briefcase and came out with the handcuffs he had never used. “You are not going along. You can stay peacefully, or I’ll cuff you to that bed frame.”

“How about a deal,” she said. “I’ll call you if I get that e-mail I was promised, and you call me if you get a break on the case.”

“It’s a deal.”

As he left the room he saw her pull her cell phone from her purse.

- - - - -

Saul pulled into the Outback Steak House parking lot feeling cramped in the small Ford Focus. He found Lori Reedan’s Honda, beeped his horn, and motioned her into his car.

“Where is Mr. Fortner and the other agents,” she asked when she was seated next to him. “There are at least five people in that building.”

“Just take it easy, Mrs. Reedan. We’re not sure they’re the people we want. From what you told me, they may be legitimate business people. So first, we’ll check it out. If it’s them, I’ll call all the agents we’ll need. How did you find out about these people?”

“You don’t believe me, do you,” she said. “They’re there, and they’re loading a truck, probably getting ready to leave. You need help to make sure they don’t get away.”

“Show them to me. If it’s them, I’ll get plenty of help.”

- - - - -

Curt typed the command to begin the machining process one more time. While the machine did its job, his mind brewed the turmoil mixed by the past weeks. Images flashed into his mind like needle pricks on his skin: Lori, Drafton, Beecher, Maxwell, Drafton, Surling, Lori, Drafton, each image punching fresh wounds into his brain, pushing pain and nausea through his entire body.