The Midas Code

Forcet raised the trailer’s door, revealing his night’s efforts. Nearest to them was the black metal box that Orr had called the thermal-insulation container. He noted with satisfaction that the lid was secure. Behind the box was a cylindrical lime-green object that Forcet had taken apart to get at the capsule. The cylinder was about four feet tall, with Cyrillic characters on the base, and it was designed with projections around the exterior that acted as cooling fins. Metal fixtures, fittings, and tools littered the floor. The sides of the crate that the item came in lay against the trailer wall.

Crenshaw held up an electronic device and waved what looked like a microphone in front of the open door.

“What’s that?” Forcet asked.

“A, uh, temperature gauge,” Crenshaw said. “We need to make sure it’s not overheating.”

“And? Did I do it right?” Forcet never did like having the quality of his work questioned.

After a few more passes, the device beeped and Crenshaw nodded. “We’re below safe limits.”

“We’ll need some help getting all this into the van,” Orr said.

“Hey, I’ll throw that in for free,” Forcet said.

The three of them heaved the thermal-insulation container into the van first.

As he strained at the effort, Forcet said, “What’s this thing made of anyway, lead?”

Orr laughed, not because it was a funny joke, but because Forcet was absolutely right. The box had walls of lead three inches thick.

The finned cylinder was next.

Once they got it secured in the van, Forcet wiped his forehead again.

“Sure is hot,” he said. “What the hell is that thing? Some kind of engine?”

Forcet didn’t normally ask questions, but then again this was the first time he’d seen the contents of a crate he’d delivered to Orr. It couldn’t hurt to tell him now.

“It’s a radioisotope thermoelectric generator,” Orr said.

“That’s a mouthful. What’s it used for?”

“For powering remote lighthouses. Totally automated. Can run for twenty years without maintenance.” Orr patted the cylindrical RTG where a yellowed and torn piece of paper was the only remnant of the radiation symbol that should have been there. “This one is from a peninsula on the Arctic Ocean. Took me months to find.” Although not as long as he thought it would. The diminishing summer pack ice along Russia’s northern coast made getting at these legacies of the Soviet Union much easier.

“Looks ancient.”

“Probably thirty years old.”

Forcet laughed. “I don’t know what you’d do with the battery from a thirty-year-old generator, and I don’t want to know.” He put a hand on his stomach. “I’ll need some Pepto-Bismol or something when I get home.”

He turned to climb back into the trailer. Orr drew a pistol from his jacket and shot him twice in the back, causing Crenshaw to jump back and squawk in surprise. Forcet crumpled to the ground. He gurgled blood for a few seconds and then stopped breathing.

“Jesus!” Crenshaw yelled. “You could have warned me!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Orr said. “If I warned you, I’d warn him.”

Orr put the gun away and took a vial of crack cocaine from his pocket and put it in Forcet’s overalls. It would look like a drug-smuggling deal gone bad.

“I’ve just never seen anyone get shot before,” Crenshaw said, backing away from the fresh corpse.

“Now you have. Congratulations.”

The only heavy items left were the pieces of depleted uran ium shielding Forcet had pried away from the RTG, but Orr and Crenshaw could lift them easily. In ten minutes they had the rest of the trailer’s contents in the van, leaving nothing to link them to Forcet.

Before they got back into the van, Crenshaw used the Geiger counter again.

“What’s it reading now?” Orr asked. He wasn’t crazy about getting into a vehicle full of radioactive material.

“About two millirads per hour,” Crenshaw said. “On the drive back to the warehouse, it’ll be less than you’d get from an X-ray.”

They got in. Orr looked at the lead container. The strontium-90 pellets inside would be cooking along at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. “What do you think the reading would be if we opened the lid?”

“In the range of two thousand rads per hour.”

“Perfect.”

As he put the van into gear, Orr glanced at Forcet’s body lying next to the truck, but he felt no guilt. Radiation poisoning was a nasty way to go. The sweating and nausea were just the first signs. Vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, and uncontrolled bleeding would have followed.

To his way of thinking, Orr had done his longtime smuggler a favor. After spending more than two hours in close proximity to the exposed capsules, Forcet would have been dead within a week anyway.

SEVENTEEN