Tuesday, April 1 (April Fools Day), 2003
They sat and Yampolsky went out and then brought Dr. Emine Albaz to them. Finally. Dawit found himself leaning toward her.
It wasn’t her soft voice. He could hear her well enough. But her warmth—the warmth that radiated from her body in the air-conditioned room—drew him. He braced his hands on the table, pushed to make himself sit straight, back against the padded executive chair.
“It’s routine,” he assured her. “But you understand, a foreign national seeking access to two restricted sites.”
“One restricted site,” she said. “My work for Lawrence Livermore was theoretical and done from here.”
No, he thought. You would have access in cyberspace. And he realized there was something about her, so graceful it was easy to overlook the strength that reminded him of Gladys.
“And anyway,” she said, “I’m not equipped, intellectually, to do it without Dr. Tang.”
Chen had already had the technicians hack into Dr. Tang’s hard drive. Tang had a visionary—or crazy—idea for nuclear waste disposal: blast it right into the center of the sun. “It’s his project,” she said. “I don’t know how practical it would be.”
“An expensive proposition,” Dawit said.
“Though, who knows?” she said. “Whatever the cost, we might not have a choice in the end. Think of it,” she said. “The waste keeps accumulating. Always a danger, while in the sun it might be incinerated harmlessly.” Tang, she explained, needed to model the sort of extreme conditions and temperature that don’t exist on earth, “equal to what’s going on inside a nuclear blast or a star.”
“So,” he said, “that was your interest in the National Ignition Facility.”
“Yes, though it’s still under construction at Lawrence Livermore, we were already in contact. Their goal is to keep the stockpile of nuclear weapons safe. We saw other uses. I was assisting Dr. Tang in designing a platform for the investigation of radiation hydrodynamics.”
As though we’d let foreign nationals design such a program, Dawit thought. “Extraordinary conceptual work,” he said. He meant it.
“Given the restrictions, he’s given up on it. We both have.”
He liked her, or at least that was the impression he was supposed to give, building rapport. We are just two people having an interesting conversation. This is what Chen had told him to think when conducting an interview. Even terrorists like to talk about themselves. Stroke their egos. Let them brag. Show interest in their expertise. Don’t let on the real reason for the interview: the money wired to India; her travels; her husband’s travels; emails to her office and home computers from Peshawar.
“I understand your sister-in-law is Iranian,” said Chen. “And you rather pointedly contradicted the DOE findings.”
“The Western Shoshone Reservation?” she said. “I didn’t contradict. I just wanted to do an independent assessment.”
“You know the bunker busters are intended to protect the world against Iran’s nuclear program.”
“Nasreen, by the way, is in exile,” she said. “I was protecting Americans. The ground there in Nevada is contaminated from old nuclear tests. People on the reservation worry any new blasts will release massive amounts of radioactivity.”
“The DOE—” said Chen.
“Yes, tried to warn me off. They told me the assessment was already done. No risk through the water table to people. But they wouldn’t share the data and I won’t know there’s no risk till I’ve done the work.”
“You’ve received radioactive materials,” Dawit said.
“Do you mean the mushrooms?” she said.
“The radioactive mushrooms.”
“We got an inquiry,” she said, “from a woman who couldn’t afford to hire us but she more or less decided we would do the work anyway. It’s true that mushrooms can draw heavy metals from contaminated soil but then what do you do with the toxic mushrooms? She wanted us to create and send her genetically modified bacteria designed to break down the radioactive waste.”
Exactly the sort of work he himself should have been doing. Though in his hands it would have been entirely benign. In others? Some people would use a bioweapon if they also had the antidote.
“But we didn’t do it,” she said. “I passed her letter on to Maria—Dr. Castillo. She did a post-doc in microbiology before she came to DHI. But we agreed, the woman didn’t seem stable. We decided not to get involved.”
“She shipped you the materials.”
“That’s what I mean. We said no. But one day, the container was delivered. All properly packaged as biohazard. And it turns out the mushrooms she sent weren’t even radioactive.” Emine looked down at her hands, closed her eyes, looked up again at Dawit and away.
“I think you have something else to tell me,” he said.
“I—we—we’re all still in shock. About the attack.”
“And?”
“We could use your help,” she said. “You mentioned Livermore. I can’t seem to get through—”
“You’re not going to get clearance.”
“That’s not it. I can’t get anyone to listen. Dr. Castillo and I are both concerned about the Biowatch program. We don’t see how the sampler kits they’re using can detect lethal pathogens. They’re almost designed to show false positives.”
“But sometimes they’ll detect—”
“When you have one false alarm after another and the assays are so unreliable, it’s only natural for people to stop paying attention.”
“Why are you so concerned with national security policy?” he asked.
“I live here. I have friends here. And even if I didn’t, terrorism threatens everyone,” she said. “And contamination. The other place I’ve been blocked. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory.”
“I grew up not far from there.”
Her smile was instant. “Then maybe you will help.”
She told him what he already knew, about the former nuclear-energy and rocket-testing facility where, in 1959, a nuclear reactor had a partial meltdown that only recently came to public notice. On top of that, perchlorate was simply dumped out on the ground or burned as waste. “The site is surrounded by residential communities. People who built there, moved there, had no idea.” Now they were recording high rates of cancer. They were worried about drinking water. “It really should be a Superfund site,” she said.
Of course he knew the Bush administration was determined to keep the EPA away. National security.
“Community members came to me but I can’t seem to gain traction. Does the FBI have any influence on this?” she asked. “Isn’t it a crime?” She touched his arm. “No study. No remediation.”
She didn’t seem to realize she was under investigation. Unless she was doing what Gladys once told him she’d learned to do: when faced with a man in what felt like a threatening situation, she would put on a trusting face and ask for his help, trying to push that button that switched off the male impulse to violence and turned on the impulse to protect.
“The seeps, the ponds. There’s experimentation going on at other sites using algae—Closterium moniliferum, to sequester radioactive materials. That’s just one approach.”
She couldn’t possibly be oblivious to their suspicions, but she kept talking. “From what I can gather without actually being there,” Emine said, “the site is built on sedimentary rock that was deposited 65-85 million years ago. There’s shale, with low porosity. The sandstone acts more like a sponge, soaking up chemicals, holding onto the contaminants. I want to drill and extract some continuous core samples, find where the fractures are. To understand contaminant transport and fate, I suggest using temperature profiling, gamma probes and pulses of energy. TV probes outfitted with magnetometers to figure out which fractures in the rock are moving water. How much, and in what direction.”
And she told Dawit about Pamukkale. “In my country.” The World Heritage Site now with contaminants spreading through the karst aquifer. Thermal springs disappearing. Drying up.
“I became a hydrogeologist because I wanted to help preserve it.”
So she, too, was trying to build rapport.
“Why are the most beautiful places the most endangered?” she asked. “Have you been there?”
“Pamukkale?”
“No. The Field Station. You said you grew up near there. I couldn’t enter the site, but Mr. Tesfaye, all around, there are the sandstone cliffs. Wildflowers and oaks and willows. So much beauty.”
She began to draft a sketch. Vats and vessels. A prefilter to remove sediment. Then a series of vessels. “Here, first,” she said, “aluminum silicate and dissolved oxygen. You have to precipitate and filter out any metals in the water so they don’t clog up the works. But there’s others—iron, manganese, and zinc—here we have tiny plastic beads with a reactive surface.” She kept drawing. What was there about her that was so familiar? The word “assiduous” came to mind. She seemed entirely caught up in what she was doing but her voice betrayed no enthusiasm, her hand moved steadily, there was a serenity about her. He thought of a cat, conscientious in the litter box. “The water moves through trays and we turn some of the contaminants to vapor. The water and contaminated air then pass through activated carbon. The clean air is released, but the water is treated with peroxide to start the breakdown of larger contaminants. UV light agitates them more until they break up into safe compounds. You could drink it now,” she said. “Why not go ahead and do this?”
“Pure enough to drink,” he said.
“Actually, too pure,” she said.
He wondered if she were too pure. Open without being forward. And her calm. Talking to her interrogator as she would to anyone. It was either simplicity or painstakingly developed control.
“The water that goes back into the environment? We’d add calcium and other minerals. Elements that the wildlife in the canyon will need to survive.”
“Do you think it’s possible for a person to be too pure?” he asked. “The purity of the fanatic.”
She laughed. “Fanatics aren’t pure,” she said. “I think they shout very loud so they won’t hear the inner voice.”
And she, who spoke so softly. Was she trying to mislead?
Chen interrupted. “Do you know many fanatics?”
“They are out there, many of them, don’t you think?” she said.
She spoke so softly.
He hesitated. Should he show his hand?
“Peshawar,” said Chen and the word hit her like a spark.
“My husband was there,” she said. The serenity was gone. She was trembling. “He’s not an American citizen so I understand he is not your concern. But please. I have not heard from him in months. I’ve made inquiries and...nothing.” She closed her eyes a moment. It wasn’t clear to Chen whether this was out of emotion or whether she was deciding how much to tell him. “I know something is going on. The last time I flew, I was stopped at LAX, held in a little room for hours.”
That would have been DHS, not us, thought Chen. They knew we were looking for her and they didn’t call us.
“No one told me why,” said Emine. “My visa is good. I’ve done nothing wrong but they held me. It must mean something. It must mean we were being watched, so surely someone knows where my husband is now.” Her cool fingers touched the back of Chen’s hand. “Now I no longer know where to turn. So I will take this chance to ask you. Mr. Tesfaye, Mr. Chen. My husband has disappeared in a very dangerous place.” And if she did speak faster than before, her voice was still musical and low. “Please. Can you help me?”