Lethal Exposure

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Wednesday, 4:33 p.m.

Bangalore, India

Nicholas Bretti did not loosen his grip on his airline seat until the small plane had landed safely at the Bangalore airport. He wondered if he ever relax again, ever sleep without nightmares, would ever stop jumping and twitching at every little unexpected sound.

It wasn’t likely to happen any time soon.

Exactly two hours after leaving Mr. Ambalal and the Liberty for All party in New Delhi-fifteen hours after taking off from O’Hare in Chicago, and less than a day after shooting an FBI agent-Bretti was sober and ready to meet the people who had paid his bills over the past year. He had to make this good, or else they would never help him out of this mess. What other choice did he have?

He worried that his reception in Bangalore would be no different from what he had experienced in New Delhi. Despite the $25,000 he had already pocketed, he was beginning to wonder if Chandrawalia would make good on his promise to come through with the rest of the money.

Twenty-five grand-a year’s salary. Was that enough for the hell he had gotten himself into? Shit, no. Now it was up to the Indian government to salvage the situation, but he had no idea if they would be sympathetic.

Exiting the jet ramp into the terminal, Bretti was mobbed by a dozen children. They swarmed around him, plunging their hands into his pockets, searching for coins and jabbering the only English phrases they knew, “Please give, sir! Please give!”

Scents of incense and curry mixed with the pungent odor of unwashed bodies. Unprotected by the buffer of a customs area this time, Bretti fought his way through an ever-shifting mob toward the airport exit.

The terminal building bustled with people, some wearing sarongs, others, like the children around him, in shorts and dirty white T-shirts. He saw men, women, boys… but there were no little girls in sight. Maybe the families kept them locked up somewhere.

A cackling chicken flew into the air as a family tried to stuff it back into a cage at the check-in counter. A dark-robed old woman with a small gold stud through her nose and a red mark on her forehead, clutched a baby goat to her breast.

Fifty feet away by the outside door, a man wearing a black-and-yellow splotched shirt held up a sign, Bretti. Bretti made eye contact with the man, who waved for him to follow. “Here, sir!”

Bretti pushed through a forest of chattering, begging children. They all tried to touch him, all pleaded for his help. Bretti felt one hand slip into his back pocket. Grabbing a slender wrist, Bretti whirled the young pickpocket around, keyed up and angry from his long tension.

With wild black hair and a dirty face, the boy could not have been older than ten. He laughed as Bretti held him up by his arm; the boy dangled in front of the other children and tried to swipe at Bretti with his free hand.

Before Bretti could admonish the pickpocket, another hand clawed at the back of his pants. Bretti threw the boy backward, bowling over two other children behind him. He knocked the prying hands away. “Get out of here, you little bastards!” He shouted, and the kids howled with laughter.

Bretti pushed his way through the crowd, paying no attention to who he ran into or pushed out of the way.

He kept a free hand on his wallet. The crowd parted as he shoved through.

The man with the sign waved out the door. He smiled beneath a scrawny mustache. “This way, please, sir.” He disappeared from sight.

Bretti pushed out of the crowded building toward a dark blue sedan with tinted windows. A driver wearing a black British polo cap stood beside the long car. When he saw Bretti, he opened the car door.

The humid air still stank outside the terminal, but at least there were fewer people. Bretti strode toward the car, his skin crawling from the overpowering crowds. The driver opened the door, and Bretti dove into the luxury of the air-conditioned interior. As he relaxed back into the seat, someone pounded at the tinted window. It was the first boy who had tried to lift his wallet. The boy and two of his friends pressed their faces against the tinted window, trying to look in. They hammered with their fists, then pressed their tongues against the window, leaving long, slimy wet spots.

The man with the sign slipped into the car’s front seat, and the driver pulled out immediately, oblivious to the children, the crowds, or any other obstacle. The first man turned and grinned. “Welcome to India, Dr. Bretti. How was your flight?‘’

“Mr. Bretti,” he said sourly. The car moved slowly through road construction as they left the airport. “I have an important package in a diplomatic pouch-”

“We have made arrangements for it to be delivered, sir. Only the very best for your visit. The Sikander Lodi Research Center is only a short drive from here. You are to meet with the scientific staff before going to the Regency Hotel. Very nice accommodations-four-star.”

“Great,” muttered Bretti. “Four-star.” He dreaded finding out what the Indians meant by that.

Looking through the saliva-streaked window, he spotted a gleaming, arrow-straight building that rose a hundred feet into the air, as modern as anything he would find in Chicago… but it was surrounded by dilapidated shacks that swarmed with pigs, chickens, and scrawny dogs. Barefoot men sat on their haunches smoking cigarettes while men in expensive suits hurried past them into the skyscraper. It was a comedy of extremes, an excess of dissonance. Two young men urinated openly against another ultra-modern building.

The limousine eased into a traffic circle behind a cart pulled by a camel. White Brahma bulls munched on grass in the center of the circle. A pair of monkeys scampered across the windshield, then dashed off onto the hood of another vehicle. Bicyclists, sandal-footed pedestrians, women in sarongs paraded in front of him. A dark raj wearing a British pith helmet, red jacket, and white gloves nonchalantly directed traffic at the end of the traffic circle.

Bretti shrank back in his seat, overwhelmed by the people, the chaos. “This is like wandering through the movie set of Jumanji.”

His guide twisted in his seat. “Yes, much to see here, sir.” He hesitated, as if worried he might offend Bretti. “If I may make a small suggestion, I noticed that sir was having difficulty with our street urchins. They mean no harm. But if sir would be kind enough to keep his wallet in his front pocket, then he will not have to worry.”

Bretti grunted and transferred his wallet to his front pocket, dreading how much he would have to get used to in this crazy, mixed-up place. His stomach felt like lead. What if he had to remain here in exile for the rest of his life? Maybe even prison in the U.S. would be better than that.

The limo turned right and stopped at a gate in a high brick fence that shielded a large, enclosed compound from view. The driver flashed an ID, and the guard waved them through.

Once inside, Bretti felt as if he had been transported to another world. Yellow, red, and blue flowers provided startling color in immaculately groomed gardens arranged in curving lines that drew the eye toward a central white building, four stories tall. Neatly trimmed trees with white lines painted around their bases were widely spaced in radial lines emanating from the main building.

Bretti noticed several cottages and a dormitory beside the central building, with a volleyball net and swing sets in the rear. Three satellite dishes, each thirty feet in diameter, pointed at different azimuths. Aside from the guard that had waved them in, he saw no people or animals. Only blessed peace and quiet.

They drove along a curving path to the front of the building. A big-boned man with a potbelly and a blue turban stepped out from under an awning as the car glided to a stop. He made no attempt to open the passenger door, so Bretti opened it himself and stepped out.

“Dr. Bretti? I am Dr. Punjab, director of the Sikander Lodi Research Institute. Mr. Chandrawalia has told us much about you.”

Bretti pressed his lips together. He was too weary and too frazzled to keep correcting these towelheads. How was he ever going to live here, settle down, adjust to this backward, noisy, crowded culture? “I’m glad to be here, finally. I’ve been told my equipment will be arriving here after me.”

Dr. Punjab led him inside the main building. “Actually, your equipment arrived several minutes ago. We had a special courier meet your plane. Would you care to inspect your device in our high bay area?”

“Sure.” Bretti followed Punjab inside the air-conditioned building, annoyed that his Penning trap was getting better treatment than he was. But he had gotten himself into this. Chandrawalia had made no promises, other than payment for the delivery of antiprotons stolen from the accelerator.

In the wide lobby, display cases showed scale models of huge capacitor banks, satellites, launch vehicles, and computer-generated images. Explanation cards beneath the models were written in nine different languages, English at the bottom.

A greeting line of eleven scientists and engineers, all but one wearing a turban, bowed and shook his hand. Everyone smiled. Bretti found most of their names impossible to pronounce, and his eyes glazed over.

Before they entered the high bay experimental area, one skinny man stepped up and said, “I am most anxious to learn about how you enhance your beam to increase p-bar production. It is a miraculous breakthrough.”

“Uh, thanks.” Bretti wondered if they would be very upset when they learned that the enhancement process had all been Dumenco’s wild theory, not his own. And that he had brought the antimatter in one of the old, simple magnetic bottles instead of a crystal-lattice trap. But all they really wanted was the antimatter, for their high-tech medical applications and cancer treatment possibilities. They’d get the rest of the p-bars later; that was the important thing.

Dr. Punjab steered him up a long flight of metal stairs to a balcony that overlooked a cavernous high bay. Punjab ’s staff followed at a polite distance.

Four stories high and half a football field deep, the high bay experimental area sprawled in front of him. A yellow twenty-ton crane hung from the ceiling; white-painted concrete blocks each a yard long and two feet thick were stacked in a maze, creating small storage alcoves against the wall.

At the center of the high bay a tall cylinder stood twenty feet across with six blue rectangular arms, each as big as a boxcar, spread out radially like a six-sided star. Bretti saw the diplomatic pouch container holding the Penning trap near the central cylinder.

Dr. Punjab grasped the railing and spoke, pride evident in his voice. “This is Experiment three hundred twenty two, our one hundred megajoule capacitor bank. It is capable of discharging hundreds of megamperes of current in less than five microseconds to a center load- we can produce over thirty trillion watts of power here. It is the largest fast capacitor bank in the world.” He pointed at a long, thin tube on the side of the bay near where Bretti’s still-crated Penning trap sat. “Our antimatter injector will dump your p-bars directly to the center of the load.”

Bretti looked out over the experimental area and sniffed. “This looks like a high-current physics experiment. What does this have to do with medical applications? How are you going to treat patients if the machine is half the size of a hospital?”

“Medical applications? Oh, yes.” Punjab smiled tightly. “This is a proof-of-principle experiment, Dr. Bretti. We have much larger plans for your antimatter.”

Bretti glanced around the bay area. “Well, use it sparingly. I’m not sure when you’ll be getting the rest.”

Punjab scowled at him. “You are not in a position to dictate terms, Dr. Bretti. Come. You must show us how to extract the antimatter.”

Bretti followed the chief scientist back down the metal stairs to the high bay floor. Whining sounds of a machine shop came from a door at the base of the stairs. He smelled hot metal, lubricants, capacitor oils-refreshing after the nauseating smells of sardine-packed humanity. Technicians dressed in blue lab coats and orange or green pants milled around diagnostic units set in cement-block cubbyholes. Weirdly out of place, two guards with rifles sauntered along a catwalk, high above the floor.

Bretti peered at one of the capacitor boxes for Experiment 322, reading the manufacturer’s mark on the side. “Maxwell capacitors? This all seems pretty standard for a high-capacitor lab.” He glanced at the guards patrolling overhead. “Mr. Chandrawalia emphasized the need for secrecy. Why?”

Dr. Punjab studied Bretti for a moment. While the rest of his staff remained in the background, he brushed back his beard and spoke in slow, carefully measured tones.

“Mr. Chandrawalia explained to you the, ah, commercial applications of what we intend to do here? Manufacture artificial medical isotopes to sell on the world market?”

“Of course,” said Bretti. “It would take years to get permission to do that at Fermilab-if they ever allowed it in the first place. The accelerator is a research tool, and if some congressman ever found out that we were pouring millions of dollars into underwriting India ’s latest commercial activity, he’d have a fit. But we’re in India right now, and it seems a little cloak-and-daggerish to keep all this so secret.”

“We have our own reasons for operating the way we do, Dr. Bretti. There are other countries, notably Pakistan, who would do anything to ruin things for us. There is intense competition for a niche in this, ah… market.”

Bretti shrugged. India ’s preoccupation with Pakistan was similar to the U.S. and the ex-Soviet Union during the Cold War. But, whatever motivated a country wasn’t his business. As long as he got his money, he didn’t care. If they wanted guards around, they could keep them.

Punjab nodded toward Bretti’s Penning trap, still in its shipping container. “Please, we are anxious to begin our experiments. Tell us about your increase in p-bar production, how you enhance your beam. This is accomplished by a resonance change in the cross-section, is it not? Where did you get the gamma ray laser to do this? And you need to show us how to extract the antimatter from the salt trap, as well.”

Bretti quickly stifled his uneasiness. He had brought only a simple Penning trap, a normal, low-density magnetic bottle. Why did they keep harping on the crystal-lattice trap? It was a fairly standard design, one pioneered by stuffy old Nels Piter-but, boy, did Piter crow about his accomplishment again and again, until the Nobel committee had noticed him this year. But then, Bretti knew people like Piter rarely produced more than one important discovery in their lives… if that.

Of course, if Bretti himself had to stay on the run all his life, lying low, he wouldn’t have an opportunity to do much better.

He quickly ran a hand through his dark goatee. “First off, I’ll need a 110-volt line to take over from the batteries.” Bretti opened the lid of the shipping container and rummaged through the packing material to expose the cylindrical device. A blue-turbaned man brought over an extension cord, and Bretti connected the trap. Dr. Punjab’s staff stood in a semicircle around him, some quietly scribbling in black lab notebooks.

Bretti stepped back. Dr. Punjab leaned forward to inspect the device and frowned. “This is not a crystal-lattice trap!” He looked up, scowling. “Do you take me for a fool? This magnetic bottle cannot hold nearly enough antimatter for what we need!”

Baffled, Bretti shrugged. “What difference does it make? I’ve got some p-bars, and that’s what you want. Enough for you to get started. This trap holds about ten to the fifth particles-”

Dr. Punjab bellowed, “We need trillions of times more than that! This is a joke! You bring us a picogram when we need milligrams. What are you trying to do, Dr. Bretti? Where is the rest of the antimatter you promised?” He breathed heavily through his flared nostrils. Punjab ’s staff murmured angrily behind him.

“Calm down, would you?” Bretti glanced around, and the men seemed to step closer to him, closing in, threatening. The armed guards on the catwalk above paused and stared down at him. “Look, we had an explosion. An accident happened at the Tevatron. The beam fluctuated and my full crystal-lattice trap dumped its entire load of p-bars. This magnetic bottle holds the most antimatter I could divert from an unenhanced beam in a single day. I had to get out of there, fast!”

“We paid you in advance, Dr. Bretti. We expect you to meet your obligations.”

Bretti nervously wet his lips. “You gave me a down payment, and I’m giving you a down payment. I have until next month to deliver the p-bars, per our agreement. I had to come to India… early. Things happened back at Chicago, and since I had these particles in storage, I thought I could get a jump on things and deliver some of them now, allow you to start your experiments with a little amount, just as you wanted.”

“We have no time for this nonsense.” Punjab angrily dismissed him with a wave. “Go home, Dr. Bretti. I will ask Mr. Chandrawalia to use another source to get our antimatter, and you can forfeit the rest of your payment.”

Bretti’s heart pounded with panic. So much for remaining here, for requesting asylum, for going to ground in Bangalore. If he even mentioned his crime, about being on the run, Punjab would probably truss him up and deliver him directly to the authorities.

“No, wait! I can do it. Really, I can. I already have another working crystal-lattice trap installed in one of the substations. The Tevatron is running almost nonstop now, and with Dumenco’s beam enhancements I can get you a milligram of p-bars in a few days.” He looked wildly from side to side, seeking support from anyone on Dr. Punjab’s staff. They all looked at him skeptically.

He continued to jabber. “Look, I’ve gone through a dry-run this time. The production cross section has increased and I’ve diverted antimatter from the enhanced beam. I proved I can safely transport p-bars in a diplomatic pouch. It’ll be easy to bring you the rest of them. I can be back next week. Two at the most.”

Dr. Punjab stared at him, tight-lipped, considering. Bretti knew they had him over a barrel. A squat technician stepped over to Punjab and whispered rapidly in a foreign language. Surprised, Punjab asked a question in the same language. The squat man strode to a telephone by the wall, dialed a number, and waited for a moment before speaking.

Bretti shifted his weight from foot to foot during the exchange, antsy, but he forced himself to keep quiet. Inside, he felt furious with Dumenco. The old scientist was responsible for getting Bretti into this whole mess by botching his work, somehow causing the beam-dump accident that resulted in the power shutdown, and causing the failure of the antimatter-loaded crystal-lattice trap.

Finally, the technician got off the telephone and reported back. Dr. Punjab nodded stiffly, then turned to Bretti. He seemed to force the words, as if having great difficulty keeping his temper in check.

“It is… unfortunate that you did not tell us from the beginning that you did not bring all the antimatter. But you are right: You have shown that it is possible to divert the p-bars and transport them here. Now, you will return to Chicago immediately and bring us back what you have promised.”

He motioned with his head and two younger staff members stepped forward. “My colleagues will escort you back to the airport. The Concord leaves New Delhi in six hours.” He pressed his lips together and stared at Bretti for a moment. “Do not fail us again. Mr. Chandrawalia will go to great lengths to ensure that the money he has already paid you is not wasted. He will meet with you again to make sure you understand.”

Bretti swallowed, knowing that he had just been, reluctantly, given a second chance. He tried to look grateful. “I’ll be back in a week. I promise.”

But as he turned to go, he didn’t know what he dreaded more-returning to Chicago and the manhunt arrayed for him, or coming back and being stuck here for the rest of his life.