Free Impact by Douglas Preston

never to come again.”
    “Why do you want to know the location of the mine?”
    “That gets us to the stick. Where do you think these honeys are ending up, Mr. Prum? On ladies’ necks.”
    “So?”
    “One of the biggest honeys ended up on one of the biggest ladies’ necks, the wife of a very important United States senator. She was the admiration of all of Georgetown until she lost her hair and got weeping sores on her breasts from radiation poisoning. We traced those stones to you .”
    A silence, and then Prum exhaled. “ Mhn sruel kluen tee! ”
    Ford recognized the vulgar Khmer expression. “This is some serious shit, as we say in English.”
    Prum wiped his face with a handkerchief. “I never knew this. I never even imagined. I am a businessman.”
    “You know they’re radioactive.”
    Silence.
    “The stick is the senator is told you’re the one who did this to his wife. What do you think will happen to you then?”
    “If I tell you about the mine, they’ll kill me.”
    “The CIA’ll kill you if you don’t.”
    “Please, don’t do this to me.”
    “Look, the mine owners won’t know you told us. That’s why we came at night through the back door.”
    Prum shook his head vigorously. The gun, all but forgotten, rested in his limp hand. “I need time to think.”
    “Sorry. Decision time, Mr. Prum.”
    He mopped his face again. “This mine, it’s my livelihood.”
    “You’ve had a good run.”
    “In addition to Harvard for my son, I want money.”
    “You’re really pushing it.”
    “A hundred thousand dollars.”
    Ford glanced at Khon. The Cambodian love of bargaining never ceased to amaze him. He rose, swiped up the visa and letter. “The CIA will take care of you.” He turned to go.
    “Wait! Fifty thousand.”
    Ford didn’t even pause as he headed for the door.
    “Ten thousand.”
    Ford was almost out the door.
    “Five thousand.”
    Ford paused, turned. “You get the money if and when the mine is successfully located.” He came back in. “Now give me back my gun.”
    Prum handed it over. He rose shakily to his feet, went to a wooden chest in the corner, unlocked it, and took out a map. He unrolled it on a table, placing the oil lamp on it. “This,” he said, “is a map of Cambodia. We are here, and the mine is . . . here .” A tiny finger fell with a thump on a wild, mountainous area in the far northwest. The Cambodian turned his liquid eyes on Ford. “But I tell you this for your own good: if you go there, you’ll never come back alive.”

16

    Mark Corso felt a presence in the doorway of his cubicle, and as he straightened up from his work he surreptitiously used his elbow to shove some papers over the gamma ray plots he’d been working on. “Hello, Dr. Derkweiler,” he said, forcing his features into a semblance of respect.
    Derkweiler entered. “Just checking up on that SHARAD image processing.”
    “Almost done.”
    The supervisor leaned over his shoulder, humming, and peering at the papers and printouts neatly squared off on his desk. “Where is it?”
    “Right here.” Corso wasn’t exactly sure where it was, somewhere in the stack of printouts, but he didn’t dare sort through them for fear of exposing the gamma ray plots. “I’ll have it on your desk by the end of the day.”
    Derkweiler reached out with one of his trotters, pushed a few papers around. “Desk nice and neat. Not like the rest of us slobs around here. Good for you.” His breath smelled of orange Tic Tacs.
    Another push of the papers. “What’s this?” He reached down, slid a computer printout clear from the stack—a gamma ray plot. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were still working on that gamma ray data. You promised the SHARAD images to me yesterday.”
    “I’m still working on them. They’ll be on your desk before five. Dr. Derkweiler, for the record, my assignment here is to analyze all the E.M. data and that includes gamma rays.”
    More sucking on the Tic Tac.