At all costs

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Nick Thomas had every right to be at his desk, even if it was after one in the morning, just as he had every right to be grazing through the computer files on his screen. He’d written the damn things, in fact.

Why, then, did he feel like such a criminal?

This was crazy, he told himself as he pulled up the documents he needed, and printed them out. Topo maps, prevailing wind patterns, daily work logs-everything that had anything to do with the EPA’s cleanup of the Newark site. The more he thought about this Sinclair character’s explanation of Jake and Carolyn’s theory, the more ridiculous it sounded. Talk about overkill. All of that destruction just to hide a corpse, which could have been hidden, anyway? It was absurd.

There was a certain logic, he supposed, that a blade of grass is best hidden in a bale of hay, but could the same hold true of bodies? If you stacked bodies high enough and violently enough, could you possibly hope to slip one through a crack somewhere?

Every twenty minutes or so, he fought a new urge to call the police and bring this all to a stop. To his knowledge, Nick had never before broken a law-unless you counted the occasional speeding violation. Even there, he allowed himself ten percent over the speed limit, no more. Now he couldn’t begin to imagine the number of laws he was preparing to break.

If he ultimately found himself explaining his actions to authorities, he’d cast Harry Sinclair in the role of villain, threatening his own family with a horrible fate. Given the telephone ruse, he thought it would get him past a lie detector. Without such an excuse, people might figure out the real reason he was going along with this foolishness. And when they did, they’d know something that he’d only just figured out for himself.

The reality of it all smacked him in the head around ten o’clock-long after Sinclair had dropped him back at the headquarters building. The ninety-minute drive was over, and his assignment was clear. As Nick pieced together the plan in his head, he realized that for the first time in years, he felt truly alive. He’d stepped outside of his up-at-five, homeby-seven routine, and the presence of a little danger felt inexplicably invigorating. He felt guilty as hell for thinking such juvenile thoughts, and then he realized that even the guilt felt good. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt true emotion like this, unburdened by second thoughts about what he should be feeling or what he ought to be doing.

For at least these few brief moments, he was working for himself. The only deadline he faced was the one he imposed upon himself by accepting this assignment, and deep in his heart of hearts, he knew that he was doing a job for which he was uniquely qualified. No one else in this massive sea of bureaucrats could dig up the details of Newark so efficiently-not his boss; not the fresh meat from college. He alone knew what to look for in these files, because he alone knew what he put there.

Knowing the layout of the storage magazine was crucial-too crucial to be left to memory. He and the Donovans had to know how to get in, and how to get out if something went wrong. Then there were the security concerns. He dove into the project with a zeal he hadn’t enjoyed in years.

Reflecting further on it, Nick figured that at the end of the day, this was about friendship and about settling scores. About facing the image in the mirror every morning. He’d allowed himself to be railroaded into silence back in 1983, surrendering to the political forces who wanted the Newark Incident to just disappear. In his haste to cover his own ass, he’d sat quietly and allowed the EPA and the FBI to construct an ironclad case against his friends, never once speaking up to declare that the authorities were full of shit. It was too easy to remain silent. Even now he couldn’t point to a single action he could have taken or a single speech he could have made that would have changed anything. But fact was, he didn’t even try-and not only Jake and Carolyn but he himself had paid the price.

Then there were the bodies: the worst sacrilege of all. To this day, the entry team remained where they had fallen, denied the simple dignity of burial, all because the people in charge had placed their careers above human decency.

Well, Nick could fix that now. He could fix a lot of things, in fact.

It was one-thirty by the time he’d printed everything he needed, and then it was time to go. He placed the two-inch stack of papers into his briefcase and clicked it closed. He’d told his family he was headed to Arkansas for business, but left a note for his boss that he needed a few days off to attend to a sick relative in Oregon. With an overnight bag in one hand and his briefcase in the other, Nick walked briskly toward the door. He’d still have a short wait for his ride, once he reached the lobby, but that was okay. He knew the guard on duty that night, and for weeks the guy had wanted Nick to see pictures of his new baby.

As he headed for the elevator, Nick marveled at the value of this gift he’d been given. How often, he wondered, did a person get to travel back into his own past to set the future straight?