Virtual Destruction

CHAPTER 20

Off Vasco Road the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory spread out before him, a square mile of office buildings, laboratories, trailer complexes, and gigantic experimental facilities, enclosed within a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire.

Although he had been an FBI agent for the past six years, Craig Kreident still felt a tension at the bottom of his stomach.

He switched off the cassette player in his car as he drove up to the triangular white building that housed the Lab’s badge office, just outside the guard kiosk and the fence. He felt as if he stood on the fringe of a different world. Here, people would look at Craig’s FBI badge with respect, seeing a colleague doing his job.

The FBI had always been aware of COMSEC, communications security, and the all-too-real possibility of espionage. But these “Livermorons” routinely dealt with classified material. Even after the Cold War, Third World countries still drooled over U.S. national security information, since they had none of the large budgets, computer capabilities, or sophisticated manufacturing techniques to create the latest weapons of war.

Inside the badge office, Craig waited at the long white counter behind two suited consultants and a woman in a Navy uniform. Up front a man and a twentysomething businesswoman argued loudly with a stoic white-haired woman behind the counter; three others, obviously part of the same group, stood like guard dogs beside an assortment of gleaming cameras, folded silver tripods, leather cases bearing the call letters of a local TV station, and videotapes in black plastic boxes.

Sliding into an air of practiced patience, Craig took his place in line. Out of habit he straightened his tie and brushed the front of his dark suit, then folded his hands behind his back. He kept his smile well hidden behind a blank FBI expression as he caught snippets of the heated battle between the reporters and the woman at the counter.

Before Craig could hear details about the squabble, he felt a touch at his elbow. “Excuse me, are you Mr. Kreident?” a woman’s voice asked.

FBI training kicked in as he turned and saw the deepest blue eyes he’d ever seen. The young lady was tall, at least five ten, with hair the color of a sun-washed beach. She had a cheery but no-nonsense smile, someone who considered herself a colleague and equal until proven otherwise. He tried to guess her age — twenty-five? He made the assessment in an instant, before she held out a hand.

“I’m Paige Mitchell from the Protocol Office. I’ll be your security escort and run interference if you hit any bureaucratic snafu.”

Craig blinked and held out his hand to shake hers briskly. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Mitchell.” Then he pulled a dark brown wallet from his coat pocket, flipped it open, and handed it to her.

She held the wallet between her fingers and took the time to inspect the ID. Unlike most people Craig had met, Paige seemed serious about studying the laminated card. “Good enough,” she said, handing it back to him.

He recalled June Atwood promising to find him a cute liaison. His boss had certainly outdone herself this time! He let loose only a fraction of the smile his lips wanted to make. “I hope I don’t cause you too many problems.”

She turned, distracted as the man at the counter thrust his hands up in the air and stomped over to the video equipment. The twentysomething woman next to him continued to argue in a frostbitten voice as the badge office employee listened patiently but without any real interest.

Paige nodded to a room off to the side. “It’s been a zoo here ever since news of Dr. Michaelson’s death was leaked. Every TV crew wants to crawl inside to get shots of the virtual reality chamber, but we don’t allow news cameras on site. It’s going to get worse over the next few hours.”

She sighed, tossed her hair back, and then smiled at him. “But at least we’ve got your paperwork all set. Follow me, Mr. Kreident. Once you get badged, I’ll take you out to T Program, show you around, answer whatever questions I can.”

Paige nodded to a small reception room off to the side. “Step over here. We need to set you up with a temporary photo badge and a dosimeter.”

“A dosimeter? Do I need to worry about radiation?” Craig said, trying not to sound alarmed.

“We all wear one.” Paige tapped her own green photo badge to indicate a small plastic case behind it. I doubt you’ll be going into any laboratory areas where radioactive materials are actually present.”

“I was just curious, ma’am,” Craig said briskly.

Paige looked at him for nearly a full second. “Mr. Kreident, we’re pretty informal around here. We’ll get along a lot better right from the start if you don’t call me ma’am and if you don’t call me Miz. How about calling me Paige?”

Craig swallowed an uncomfortable expression and, though it went against his personality to do so, he felt obligated to make the same offer. “Then I suppose you’d better call me Craig. Just to keep things even.”

“Kay-O.” Paige shuffled through green and yellow forms in a folder tucked against her right elbow. She pulled out several for him to sign before handing him a green laminated badge that bore his full name, the block letters FBI, and a date exactly 30 days in the future displayed prominently on the front.

Then she steered him to one of three bulky devices that looked like government-designed bathroom scales with a digital console and black foam-wrapped handles that extended to the floor.

“Go ahead and get on,” said Paige. “When it asks, punch in a four-digit personal identification number. Whatever you want. That’ll be your secret code.” She smiled in a way that made him wonder how serious she was. He had the faint impression she was pulling his leg, but he maintained his professional cool.”

Craig slid the laminated badge into the reader; the words WELCOME TO LAWRENCE LIVERMORE winked across the tiny screen in sharp LCD letters.

After he had entered his PIN, Paige said, “You’ll need to remember that number to get inside our Restricted Areas and Exclusion Areas. You’ll enter through a CAIN booth that has a scale embedded in the floor. If your weight is five percent different from what you’ve just been weighed at, the computer will deny your access. So don’t go on a binge with all the fine Livermore cuisine during your assignment here.” She laughed at his mystified expression. “Just a joke — we’re not known for our overabundance of good restaurants in this town.”

“Ah.” He forced a smile. “Does CAIN stand for something?”

“Controlled Access by Individual Numbers. It’s like a TV/badge-reading booth.”

“Sounds like GET SMART,” Craig said.

“That’s the impression the general public has of ‘top secret government research labs.’ I think you’ll find we’re a lot like any other business park or campus.” She handed him a copy of his forms, which he filed in his briefcase.

Craig kept focused on the matter at hand. “Won’t there be any guards at these booths?” he asked.

“Normally they’re just at the main gate and patrolling the site. Budget cutbacks. It’s cheaper to have an automatic system than it is to keep guards in every building. Oh, and you should know that we don’t call them guards — they’re Protective Service Officers. PSOs.”

Craig looked into her blue, blue eyes. “PSOs. I’ll remember that… Paige.”

“Very good!” She smiled. “And we don’t have secretaries, either. They’re all Administrative Assistants.”

He rolled his eyes, just barely. “I see. I suppose you don’t have janitors either?”

“Custodians.”

“Gardeners?”

“Botanical resource specialists.”

His eyes widened, but she laughed. “Just kidding. Come on, now that you’re badged I can take you over to T Program.”

Craig slid a small notebook out of his suit pocket and clicked a pen. “Could you tell me what the ‘T’ stands for?”

Paige shook her head. “Not in a million years. A lot of our programs and divisions have letters, but nobody alive knows what they mean.” She put a finger to her lips, and her face softened into a mischievous expression. “I think if you arrange all the letters into an anagram, you can spell the words to the Mr. Ed theme song.”

“What?” Craig asked, completely baffled.

Paige sighed. “You don’t have a sense of humor, do you, Mr. Kreident?”

“Not on duty, ma’am,” he said.

They both chuckled lightly. “All right, that’s a start,” Paige said. “Let’s go. I have a government van.”

They passed the defeated-looking news crew on their way out; the group sat sullenly in the corner while the lead reporter spoke into a public phone.

Stepping outdoors, Craig fumbled in his shirt pocket to put on sunglasses. The glare wasn’t too bad today with a high, thin overcast, but he knew he’d have a headache within minutes if he didn’t cut the light.

Paige led him to an old-model Chevy van with the number 2 painted on the hood. “Climb on in. The T Program complex is halfway across the lab.”

As soon as Craig buckled his seat belt, Paige pulled out of the small badge office parking lot and headed for the guard shack at the main gate.

“Ready for the standard visitor briefing?” Paige kept her hands on the wheel as they waited for several bicyclists to go by. “LLNL was originally an old Naval Air Station. After Los Alamos built the first atomic bomb, Edward Teller — one of the scientists who developed the H bomb — wanted to establish a sister lab to compete in designing nuclear weapons, to serve as a ‘peer review,’ like in a normal university, only at the secret level, of course.”

Paige pulled up to the badge checkpoint, and the guard — Protective Service Officer, Craig corrected himself — reached through the window to touch their badges and wave them on.

Driving off, Paige said, “The PSOs are required to touch each badge, supposedly to make sure they actually notice you. You won’t find a real heavy security presence here, though — visible, but not obtrusive.”

“Reminds me of Quantico,” said Craig. “The Marines were always running around, training for one thing or another.”

Paige threw him a sideways glace. “Quantico? You don’t look like a Marine.”

“The Bureau also has a training facility there,” he said. He stared out the window. The Lawrence Livermore Lab looked like a typical university campus — plenty of green space, people oblivious to everything around them as they walked in deep discussion, bicyclists riding by on battered red bicycles issued by the government.

“I’ve never been out here before, but I was expecting this place to look like a ghost town. The newspapers have been talking about the Lab losing so much nuclear weapons work with the test ban moratorium and the end of the Cold War. It looks like a busy farmer’s market in a small town.”

Paige slowed at a traffic circle before answering. “Designing nuclear weapons used to be our flagship, but we saw the writing on the wall years ago. We’ve still got some of the best research facilities in the world — and that’s no exaggeration.

“We’ve spent a lot of effort turning them to dual-use technologies, letting our researchers apply for patents, setting up CRADAs with industry — that is…” She paused a moment to remember the acronym. “Cooperative Research And Development Agreements for marketing our aerogels and multilayered materials and other breakthroughs. We’ve had big programs in biomedical research, computer code development, fusion power.

“One of our biggest investments some years back was the Laser Implosion Fusion Facility, which should have been the cornerstone for cheap and clean energy. A billion-dollar program, overall, but thanks to the usual nearsightedness of annual budgets, the last sliver of funding was cut before the scientists could even turn on the machine.” She sighed. “A lot of people here are bitter about that. It was Dr. Michaelson’s pet project before he went to work on the disarmament team in the former Soviet Union, and then came back to set up T Program here.”

As Paige talked, they drove to another badge checkpoint, a gate leading deeper into the Lab. “We were just out in the Limited Area, where no classified work is done. A lot of our programs don’t require security clearances, and those employees wear red badges. Now we’re going into the Restricted Area, where you need a security clearance to enter. Everybody who works here has a green badge.

“Inside the T Program central computer complex, our Plutonium Facility, and a few other heavily secure places, there’s one more level of security, another CAIN booth that allows access only to those people with a programmatic justification to enter. Those places are called Exclusion Areas.”

“I see,” Craig said. “And Dr. Michaelson was found in an Exclusion Area?”

Paige nodded, and Craig thought of the highly unusual acid burns on Michaelson’s face and hands and wondered how they could have gotten there. If Michaelson was indeed murdered, he supposed the Exclusion Area limited the number of suspects.

After the PSO at the second checkpoint touched their badges through the open van window, Paige drove into the Restricted Area, beyond another perimeter of chain-link fence. They passed modernistic buildings with smoked-glass windows, but most of the facilities were low modular structures, inexpensive trailers hooked together into complexes. She pulled into a narrow parking lot filled with other government cars, trucks, and small white Cushman carts.

“Sorry I went into rah-rah mode about the Lab,” Paige said as she parked the van. “It’s just my canned speech. This is T Program here.”

Craig climbed out and looked at a cluster of white modular buildings. Paige came around to meet him, then she led him down a bike path toward the T Program trailers.

A new sign with fresh blue paint stood in a flower bed outside the front trailer. T PROGRAM: VIRTUAL REALITY CENTER. A wide band of yellow plastic tape lay draped across the main door to the complex, printed with the repeating words DO NOT ENTER: CONSTRUCTION SITE.

Paige stepped over the fluttering tape and opened the door to the lobby. “It’s the best we could do,” she said. “We didn’t have any Police Line tape.”

“I don’t see any security guards to keep people out.” Craig looked around in dismay, thinking of all the damage that could already have been done.

“With the CAIN access, we don’t need them, remember? Nobody but T Program people can get in here.”

Craig took off his sunglasses and made a noncommittal sound. “But this a potential crime scene. What if the T Program people are the ones we need to worry about?”

Paige looked at him long and hard, appraising him. “Do you really think there’s a possibility this wasn’t an accidental death?”

Craig shrugged. “It’s hard to imagine how somebody could have gotten acid all over himself and not sounded the alarm.”

The T Program lobby was no larger than an oversized closet with a chair, telephone, and an LLNL phone book. Set into one wall was a reflective glass door like an airlock. The words CAIN ACCESS had been stenciled on the front. The other walls held a safety bulletin board, an equal opportunity flyer, and a large green EXCLUSION AREA sign.

Paige opened the heavy CAIN booth door on the far wall and unclipped the badge from her blue blouse. “We do this one at a time, just like you did at the badge office. Stick your badge in the reader, key in your PIN, and the other door will open. You’ll hear the click. Just watch me.”

Paige’s expression became stern as she stood with the door half open. “I should warn you that if you make a mistake with your PIN, the booth will flood with colorless but deadly nerve gas. Can’t trust those old bomb designers, you know.” She slipped in and closed the door.

Craig stood appalled, then realized she was joking. Paige Mitchell seemed to enjoy testing how stuffy he could be. He could see only her hazy outline inside the booth, but he heard a succession of beeps as she keyed in her PIN. After an unlocking clunk he lost sight of her outline as the door on the other side of the booth opened.

He pulled at the door and stepped into the booth as the heavy door shut, sealing him in. Behind a glass panel, two TV cameras peered at him. A silvery LCD display above the magnetic strip reader blinked PLEASE INSERT YOUR BADGE. Craig punched in his PIN and the inner door clicked, allowing him to join Paige.

He found himself in an open trailer space broken by islands of low office cubicles and offices with doors on the far wall. Randomly arranged tables served as holding platforms for computer workstations, bundles of wires, circuit boards, bound preprints of scientific papers, users manuals, and stacks of floppy disks. He could smell burned insulation, solder, and cleaning chemicals.

Down one carpeted hall in the back of the trailer, a large room stood partially open like a bank vault. He recognized instinctively the centerpiece of the laboratory area — the VR chamber — but he also saw the yellow CONSTRUCTION AREA tape that had once been stretched across the door opening to seal the crime scene — now, though, it lay discarded on the floor.

Craig stepped toward the chamber, anger sharpening inside him just as a man in his mid-twenties sauntered through the open vault door. The young man stepped on the yellow tape as if on purpose and moved toward one of the office cubicles, shuffling papers. Craig burned the image of the man into his mind: pale skin, red hair, and the beginnings of a paunch. He wore jeans and an ash-gray t-shirt with a garish drawing of Nexus, apparently some comic-book superhero.

The man looked up, noticed Craig and Paige, and altered his course to come over to them. “Oh. You the FBI guy? I can always tell visitors around here because they’re the only ones who wear monkey suits.”

Craig stiffened within his dark suit. “Yes, I’m from the FBI. And you are…?”

The red-headed man held the sheaf of papers like a shield and did not offer his hand. “Gary Lesserec, the one who’s trying to hold this program together in the middle of a shitstorm. I’m the only one who knows what’s going on, now that Michaelson bit the big one.”

“Excuse me, but was that the VR chamber I saw you exit?” Craig narrowed his eyes, feeling a growing uneasiness.

Lesserec said flippantly, “That’s where we work, you know.”

Craig nailed him with his gaze. “So you blatantly crossed a crime scene line. I see. Are you aware of the penalties you could now face, Mr. Lesserec?”

Craig didn’t wait for the red-headed man to answer, turning to Paige. “The guards should have sealed this building the moment Dr. Michaelson’s body was found, and it doesn’t look like they did a very good job. If a felony was committed here, no one should have been given the chance to tamper with the crime scene. It’s been hours since Michaelson was discovered — how much has been changed?”

“Wait just a minute!” Lesserec tossed the papers down on an equipment-strewn table, where they lay on top of the clutter. “This is my lab, Mr. FBI, and our whole team has an impossible challenge to meet, thanks to Michaelson. The President of the United States and the whole world is counting on us, and we can’t just go on vacation because somebody wants to make a Federal case over a heart attack.”

Craig kept his cool with an effort. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Lesserec, but I’ve got a job to do. I am declaring the VR chamber off limits to everyone as of this moment. Paige, I want you to see that a permanent, uh, PSO is stationed right outside the door. Mr. Lesserec and his team members are not — I repeat, not—allowed to set foot inside until I have declared the area clear.”

Paige bristled, but she glared more at Lesserec than at Craig. “I understand, Mr. Kreident. Let me make a call to Protective Services.”

“Hey, you can’t do that,” Lesserec said with fading bluster. “I’ve got a simulation running, and I need to download some files. At least let me go in and get—”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Lesserec. And if you doubt whether I have the authority to do this, perhaps you should speak to your Director. In the meantime, I’d like to set up an interview with yourself and each of your team members.” Craig maintained a placid expression. It took Lesserec only about five seconds to glance away.

Craig spoke more quietly. “The sooner we can dismiss Dr. Michaelson’s death as an accident, the faster your people can get back to work.”

Lesserec ran a hand through his spiky red hair, stumped for a moment. Then, lifting his nose, he regained his composure. “Whatever you need to do, Mr. FBI, get on with it. We have only a few weeks to get a full-blown demonstration ready. Can’t afford to lose a single day.”

Craig worked his jaw to keep his temper under control. Who did this clown think he was? “Can you show me where you found the body, Mr. Lesserec?”

The question seemed to throw Lesserec. He shrugged. “Sure — follow me.”

Craig and Paige followed him around a table of equipment toward the vault in the corner of the trailer complex. Without waiting for them to catch up, Lesserec stepped over the torn yellow tape again. “Don’t touch anything — the guards nearly ruined Michaelson’s experiment.”

Craig entered the darkened room. The ceiling was ten feet high, but the chamber seemed small because of its odd shape. The walls were filled with arrays of lenses, and two rows of movie-theater seats stood in the middle hooked to complex and unsightly hydraulics. A chalk outline of the body showed where Michaelson had crumpled to the floor. Craig walked carefully to the chalk and squatted down to squint at the rough carpet. He would have to get a forensic team in here to test for blood, saliva, fingerprints, chemicals — anything. He expected to find traces of the acid to which Michaelson had been exposed.

Lesserec stood by the doorway, skinny arms folded. “After they hauled the body away, I held a meeting with my people, and they’re at their workstations crunching code. Some of our mech techs need to get into the chamber to make modifications, but I’m keeping them busy at the Plutonium Building on another part of the demo. You’d better get what you need as soon as possible. Life goes on, you know?”

Craig clenched his teeth. “It seems we have different priorities, Mr. Lesserec. Until we rule out foul play in Dr. Michaelson’s death, practically everyone with access to this building is suspect.”

Lesserec gave a snorting, bitter laugh. “Oh, don’t limit yourself. Michaelson made enemies out of a lot more than just T Program people.”

Craig refused to be distracted. “That makes my job even more difficult. And if you don’t cooperate, I can have you held in jail for obstruction of justice — then where would your deadline be?”

Lesserec seemed frozen in place, breathing deeply and glaring at Craig. “All right, I understand, tough guy.” He walked out of the chamber, leaving Paige and Craig alone. The click and thud of the CAIN booth door signaled Lesserec’s exit from the Exclusion Area.

“Well, that was a good job of intimidation,” Paige said disapprovingly.

Craig stood back to survey the chalk outline. Michaelson had been a large man, and had fallen face down, spread out on the floor. “I’m not going to let some smart-alec scientist walk all over my investigation.”

He looked at Paige. “I’ll get a more detailed coroner’s report later today. Until then, I’m calling in a full FBI forsenics team. That should have been done this morning. Maybe we can trace where the acid came from.”

“Kay-O. What do you propose to do in the meantime?” Paige sounded curt, strictly business.

“Got to do a damage assessment, conduct an inventory of Michaelson’s papers — first order of business. If you can show me his classified document repository, we need to see if something’s missing.”