LIKE THE LAST TIME when I’d seen him in his office, Gilbert Odin put his telephone inside the credenza behind him, along with a boom box playing heavy metal turned up full volume. He closed the credenza door, muffling the screaming of guitars and the hammering of drums.
Gilbert folded his hands on his desk and gave me a genial smile. “It’s safe to talk now.”
“Couldn’t there be any more bugs? In that, for example?” I pointed to the lamp on his desk.
“Oh no. I know exactly what listening devices Security has. I’m on their budget-approval committee. A Seven-Sigma telephone eavesdropping microphone is all they’re authorized to use on me.”
I suppose the logic made sense to a professional bureaucrat, but it gave me a headache. I pinched the bridge of my nose to ease the pressure.
“How’s the investigation going, Felix?”
The investigation. That word alone worsened the headache. When I handed Wong’s diary over to Gilbert, I wanted him to kiss me in gratitude, then write a check and send me on my way.
“Well, Gilbert, for starters, Dr. Wong is dead.”
“We all know that.” Gilbert tapped the newspaper on his desk. Page one of the Metro Section showed a picture of the doctor under the headline ROCKY FLATS NUCLEAR SCIENTIST MURDERED. Gilbert added, “The police say it was a botched robbery.”
The cabbage smell swirled from him, not as strong as before but enough to make me think he needed to vary his diet.
“It was no robbery,” I said. “I know who killed him.”
“Who? Terrorists?”
“No. Enemies of mine.”
Gilbert held a hand up. “Whoa. Back up. What enemies?”
I couldn’t tell him the truth, that they were vampire hunters. “Enemies with a vendetta from a previous assignment. Wong got shot by mistake.”
“A vendetta?” Gilbert asked. “The Mafia’s after you?”
“No,” I answered. “I have enough enemies, thank you.”
Enemies savvy enough to ambush me. I had the mysterious gunman and the vânätori after me, a lethal double threat. Suddenly I realized that Wong had been shot only moments after I arrived at his condo. How did the vampire-hunter marksman set up his rifle so soon? Unless he had the place staked out. Which meant he, and his companions, knew I was going to see Dr. Wong. But only I knew about the visit. A chill ran up my spine and out to my hands. My fingertips tingled as my vampire senses went on alert.
“Hey. Hey,” Gilbert snapped his fingers. “You okay?”
I rubbed my hands together to calm the tingling. I wished I didn’t have to hide my eyes behind contacts-I needed the reassuring ability to read auras, even my friend Gilbert’s.
“I’m all right,” I answered.
“I thought you were having a seizure.” He gestured to my face. “Something related to that Gulf War Syndrome of yours.”
“I appreciate the concern. The question now is, what should I tell the investigators?”
“About what?”
“What I know about Wong’s murder.”
“Let the police worry about it. You said it wasn’t terrorists, so there’s no threat to Rocky Flats.”
“Only a threat to me,” I replied.
“And you can’t handle it?” His question was a dare. “You said that it was enemies from a previous case. Should I be concerned?”
“No. It’s my problem.” I didn’t want the cops to find the vânätori until after the nidus had torn the vampire hunters to pieces. “You don’t want anyone to know that I’ve been talking to Dr. Wong, correct?”
Gilbert nodded. “That’s right. Keep this between you and me.”
“You’re saying this investigation into the nymphomania is more important than Wong’s murder?”
Gilbert focused his gaze into my eyes. “Yes. Even more important than Wong’s murder.”
Or mine for that matter. What kind of a conspiracy was this? “Why?”
Gilbert shook his head. “Because if you go blabbing that you were with Dr. Wong when he got killed, then you’re likely to be locked up as a person of interest and forgotten. The wall of security around the conspiracy will only grow more formidable and I’ll be SOL forever.”
People with guns had already tried to stop me, so I appreciated Gilbert’s well-grounded concerns.
I pulled out a Ziploc bag containing Wong’s diary. “The doctor didn’t have the chance to tell me much. He did mention”-I paused to gauge Gilbert’s reaction-“red mercury.”
Gilbert narrowed his eyes. “Red mercury?”
I laid the Ziploc bag on his desk. “It’s all right here. Dr. Wong kept a diary.”
Gilbert’s face reddened. “A diary? With classified information?”
“According to him.”
Gilbert sighed. “What the hell did he do that for?”
“Wong was convinced that safeguarding the secrets behind the outbreak would serve as insurance.”
“For what?”
“His safety.”
“Bullshit. This was about Dr. Wong and his inflated opinion of his own work.” Gilbert used a mechanical pencil to slide the diary out of the bag and flip it open. The damp, filthy pages clumped together and exuded a disgusting smell. Gilbert stifled a gag reflex. “Where did this come from? A toilet?”
“I hid in a Dumpster to escape.”
“I suppose that is better than a toilet.” Gilbert adjusted his spectacles as he studied Wong’s notes. “Red mercury, huh? Anything else?”
“EBEs.”
Gilbert shrugged. “Got me there. I’ve never heard of that.”
I homed in on Gilbert’s expression as I asked, “Project Redlight?”
Gilbert rocked back into his seat. “Sorry, Felix, I’m drawing a blank on that one.” His expression matched the flat tone of his statement.
“Area 51?” I asked.
“Nevada?” Gilbert set his hands on the armrests of his chair and sat up straight. “That I can answer. Here at the Flats we generated waste streams of classified material. Dr. Wong was our liaison with the U.S. Air Force in Area 51 to make sure that we didn’t inadvertently release sensitive information about these materials during our clean up. Secret? Yes. Mysterious? No.”
I tapped the inside cover of the diary. “Look. It gives the dates. From two years ago to last week. Wong started making entries long before the outbreak.” Carefully, I turned to the middle of the diary. The damp pages tore. “The writing’s smudged but you can make out his comment about twenty-three kilograms of Hg-209, red mercury, moved from Building 707. That’s the curious thing. There’s no mention of red mercury in the historical discharge reports.”
“Of course not. The only mercury we’ve used was quicksilver in instruments. And perhaps some mercuric-oxide, in minuscule amounts, for laboratory analysis. That’s all.”
“That’s what I’m getting at. Existence of the red mercury was so secret that it was even kept out of the Classified Safety Analysis Files.”
Gilbert shook his head the way a professor might at a confused student. “Red mercury is a sham. Supposedly the Russians used it as a catalyst for fusion weapons. It is mildly radioactive and very toxic. And useless. Quantities pop up on the European black market every now and then. Some sucker pays a few thousand bucks for crap he thinks is weapons-grade material.”
“So why did Wong mention red mercury?”
“Maybe our good doctor wasn’t so good. Maybe he had something cooking on the side.”
“But twenty-three kilograms? That’s more than a minuscule amount.”
“True. It’s quite a lot. And if he had any, it wasn’t produced here.”
“But he mentioned it specifically when I asked him about the outbreak. That and the EBEs.”
“Let me tell you something about Dr. Wong. He was a fossil, a relic of the Cold War. When DOE consolidated its weapons operations in Los Alamos, Wong was left here. Out to pasture. I’m sure he was upset because of his treatment by DOE. Maybe that’s why he concocted this chimera about red mercury and EBEs…whatever those are.”
I pushed the diary toward Gilbert. The damp pages left a slimy trail on his desk blotter. “You asked me to find the cause of the nymphomania. Here it is.”
Gilbert got up from behind his desk and opened the blinds of his window. A hundred meters away, on the barren ground inside the concertina wire of the Protected Area, waited a long white semi-trailer. A tent covered the rear of the trailer. Security guards in camouflage and carrying submachine guns patrolled the vicinity.
“Dr. Wong’s death spooked a lot of important people,” Gilbert said. “I spent my breakfast hour on a conference call with Germantown and D.C. Because of what happened to Wong, the shipment of the material I’m concerned about has been accelerated.” Gilbert rapped the window for emphasis. “The material will be loaded into that trailer, which will leave for the WIPP facility in New Mexico within days, not weeks.”
“You have Wong’s diary. It’s enough for you to demand to personally inspect the trailer.”
Gilbert pulled a folder from his in-box. “That ain’t how it works.” Gilbert opened the folder and produced a sheaf of forms. “As the Assistant Manager for Environmental Restoration, my signature verifies the accuracy of these shipping documents for the trailer. If I don’t sign them, I’d better have an excellent reason. It’s called playing the DOE game.”
“And if you refuse?”
Gilbert closed the folder. “Then I get reassigned. Some political hack will take my place behind this desk and whatever’s in the trailer will get buried deep in Carlsbad Caverns. After which, the cause of the outbreak will remain a mystery forever…until the next wave of nymphomania, or worse. Meanwhile, I take water samples in Idaho for the rest of my career.”
“You hired me to find the cause and I told you.”
“Felix, give me something I can work with and I’ll get a warrant. I’ll have a team of federal marshals knocking down that fence and cutting that trailer open.”
Gilbert slid the folder back into his in-box. “But red mercury? Why not magic dust or dilithium crystals while we’re at it? Wong yanked your chain real good.”
The book shriveled under the glare of Gilbert’s desk lamp. The pages wrinkled and tore. My ego felt the same way. I was at another dead end.
Frustration turned into suspicion. Maybe Gilbert wasn’t so clean himself. I tipped my head and reached to remove my contacts so that I could hypnotize him. I stopped. Gilbert had asked me as a friend to help him, so why would he keep secrets from me? I felt guilty for suspecting him and lowered my hand.
“Felix, the key word in this investigation is ‘deception.’ The only way I can get at the truth is to call their bluff.”
“Whose bluff?”
“The ones who know what caused the nymphomania. What are they hiding? And why?” Gilbert leaned against the window frame and rubbed his temples. “I need proof to show that the inventory reports about those shipments are a lie. I know it seems like an impossible task, but that’s why I asked for your help. If that trailer leaves Rocky Flats without answering that question, I’ll have failed. You’ll have failed. Don’t let that happen.”
The anguish of defeat pressed upon me. I loosened my collar. Sweat tickled my brow but I couldn’t wipe it or I’d smear my makeup.
This was my job. Sure, I could quit and can the hassle. Then what? Go somewhere else and quit that, too? Maybe this failure was the result of the gradual loss of my vampire powers because I wouldn’t drink human blood.
No, that couldn’t be it. I’d prove Bob Carcano wrong. A pulse of determination surged through me. My fangs extended. Gilbert had his back to me so he didn’t notice. I held my lips closed until the sharp incisors retracted and then I touched the tips to make sure they didn’t protrude.
Gilbert turned from the window. He glanced at me. “You got dental problems?”
“Something like that. If I find out what’s in the trailer, that will solve the conspiracy?”
“Yes.”
“That simple?”
“If you call breaking into the Protected Area and getting shot simple.”
“Consider it done.”
Gilbert’s forehead wrinkled in doubt. “How?”
“I don’t know yet. Let me surprise you.”