Gideon's Corpse

14

They had spent hours at the FBI field office in Albuquerque, filling out endless paperwork for a pool vehicle and expense account. Now they were finally on the road, driving to Santa Fe, the great arc of the Sandia Mountains rising on their right, the Rio Grande to their left.

Even here, they met a steady stream of overloaded cars heading the opposite direction. “What are they running from?” Fordyce asked.

“Everyone around here knows that if nuclear war breaks out, Los Alamos is a primary target.”

“Yeah, but who’s talking about nuclear war?”

“If the terrorist nuke goes off in DC, God only knows what might happen next. All bets are off. And what if we find evidence the terrorists got the nuke from a place like Pakistan or North Korea? You think we wouldn’t retaliate? I can think of plenty of scenarios where we might see a sweet little mushroom cloud rising over that hill. Which, by the way, is only twenty miles from Santa Fe—and upwind of it.”

Fordyce shook his head. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself, Gideon.”

“These people don’t think so.”

“Jesus,” said Fordyce. “We must’ve spent four hours with those damn people. And only nine days until N-Day.” He used the insider term for the presumed day of the nuke detonation.

They drove for a moment in silence.

“I hate that bureaucratic shit,” Fordyce finally said. “I’ve got to clear my head.” He fumbled in his briefcase, pulled out an iPod, stuck it into the car dock, and dialed in a song.

“Lawrence Welk, here we come,” muttered Gideon.

Instead, “Epistrophy” came blasting out of the speakers.

“Whoa,” said Gideon, amazed. “An FBI agent who listens to Monk? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What did you think I listened to—motivational lectures? You a Monk fan?”

“Greatest jazz pianist of all time.”

“What about Art Tatum?”

“Too many notes, not enough music, if you know what I mean.”

Fordyce had a heavy foot. As the speedometer crept up to a hundred miles an hour, the agent took the portable flasher out of the glove compartment and slapped it onto the roof, turning on the grille flashers as he did so. The rush of air and humming of the tires sounded an ostinato to Monk’s crashing chords and rippling arpeggios.

They listened to the music in silence for a while, then Fordyce spoke. “You knew Chalker. Tell me about him. What made the guy tick?”

Gideon felt a swell of irritation at the implication that somehow he and Chalker were buddies. “I don’t know what made the guy ‘tick.’”

“What did you two do up at Los Alamos, anyway?”

Gideon sat back, trying to relax. The car approached a line of slower vehicles and a semi; Fordyce swung out into the fast lane at the last moment, the wind buffeting them as they blew past.

“Well,” said Gideon, “like I said, we both worked in the Stockpile Stewardship program.”

“What exactly is that?”

“It’s classified. Nukes get old like everything else. The problem is, we can’t test-fire a nuke these days because of the moratorium. So our job is to make for damn sure they’re in working order.”

“Nice. So what did Chalker do, in particular?”

“He used the lab’s supercomputer to model nuclear explosions, identify how the radioactive decay of various nuke components would affect yield.”

“Also classified work?”

“Extremely.”

Fordyce rubbed his chin. “Where’d he grow up?”

“California, I think. He didn’t talk about his past much.”

“What about him as a person? Job, marriage?”

“He started at Los Alamos about six years ago. Had a doctorate from Chicago. Recently married, brought his young wife with him. She became a problem. She was sort of an ex-hippie, New Age type, from the South, hated Los Alamos.”

“Meaning?”

“She didn’t hide the fact that she was against nuclear weapons—she didn’t approve of her husband’s work. She was a drinker. I remember one office party where she got drunk and started shouting about the military-industrial complex and calling people murderers and throwing things. She totaled their car and racked up a couple of DUIs before they took away her license. I heard that Chalker did everything he could to keep the marriage going, but eventually she left, went to Taos with some other guy. Joined a New Age commune.”

“What sort of commune?”

“Radical, anti-government, I heard. Self-sufficient, off the grid, grow their own tomatoes and pot. Left wing, but the weird kind. You know, the ones who carry guns and read Ayn Rand.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Out west—out here—there is. There were rumors she’d taken his credit cards, emptied their bank account, and was running through the money to support the commune. About two or three years ago Chalker lost his house, declared bankruptcy. That was a real problem with his work, because of the high-level security clearance. You’re supposed to keep your financial affairs in order. He started getting warnings, and his clearance was downgraded. They moved him into another position with less responsibility.”

“How’d he take it?”

“Badly. He was kind of a lost soul. Not a strong sense of self, a dependent personality type, going through the motions of life without knowing what he really wanted. He started to cling to me, in a way. Wanted to be my friend. I tried to keep him at a distance, but it was difficult. We had lunch together a couple of times, and on occasion he joined me after work for a drink with co-workers.”

Fordyce was now at one twenty. The car rocked back and forth, the sound of the engine and the rush of air almost drowning out the music. “Hobbies? Interests?”

“He talked a lot about wanting to be a writer. Nothing else that I can think of.”

“Ever write anything?”

“Not that I know of.”

“His religious views? I mean, prior to his conversion.”

“I never knew of any.”

“How did he convert?”

“He told me about it once. He rented a powerboat and went out on Abiquiu Lake, north of Los Alamos. I sort of got the impression he was depressed and considering suicide. Anyway, he somehow fell out or jumped out of the boat and found himself drifting away, his heavy clothes dragging him down. He went under a few times. But then, just as he was about to go under for the last time, he says he felt strong arms pulling him out. And he heard a voice in his head. In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, I think those were the words.”

“I believe that’s the first line of the Qur’an.”

“He managed to climb back into the boat, which he said had suddenly drifted back toward him as if blown by an unseen wind. It was, in his view, a miracle. As he was driving home, he passed the Al-Dahab Mosque, which is a few miles from Abiquiu Lake. It was a Friday and services were being held. He stopped on a whim, got out, and went into the mosque, where he was welcomed very warmly by the Muslims. He experienced a powerful conversion right on the spot.”

“That’s quite a story.”

Gideon nodded. “He gave away his stuff and started living a very ascetic life. He would pray five times a day. But he did it quietly, he was never in your face about it.”

“Gave away what stuff?”

“Fancy clothes, books, liquor, stereo equipment, CDs and DVDs.”

“Did he evince any other changes?”

“The conversion seemed to do him a world of good. He became a much more adjusted person. Better at work, more focused, no longer depressed. It was a relief to me—he stopped clinging. He really seemed to have found some sort of meaning in his life.”

“Did he ever try to convert you, proselytize?”

“Never.”

“Any problems with his security clearance after he became a Muslim?”

“No. Your religion isn’t supposed to have anything to do with your security clearance. He continued on as before. He’d already lost his top clearance, anyway.”

“Any signs of radicalism?”

“The guy was apolitical, as far as I could tell. No talk of oppression, no tirades against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He shied away from controversy.”

“That’s typical. Don’t draw attention to your views.”

Gideon shrugged. “If you say so.”

“What about the disappearance?”

“Very sudden. He just vanished. Nobody knew where he’d gone.”

“Any changes just before that point?”

“None that I could see.”

“He really fits the pattern,” murmured Fordyce, shaking his head. “It’s almost textbook.”

They came over the rise of La Bajada and Santa Fe lay spread out before them, nestled at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

“So that’s it?” said Fordyce, squinting. “I thought it would be bigger.”

“It’s too big already,” said Gideon. “So what’s the next step?”

“A triple espresso. Piping hot.”

Gideon shuddered. He was an inveterate coffee drinker himself, but Fordyce was something else. “You keep guzzling that stuff, you’re going to need a catheter and urine bag.”

“Nah, I’ll just piss on your leg,” Fordyce replied.