Free Cam - 03 - The Moonpool by P. T. Deutermann

very distinctive signature, and the ports—airports, seaports—are pretty much wired for that. Nuclear waste products, by definition, come in radiation-tight containers. No signature.”
    “And Wilmington has a big container port,” Pardee said.
    “Big enough. Not as big as Long Beach or L.A., but big enough, and about to double in size. A radioactive DOA in Wilmington set off all sorts of alarms. They’re going through the motions at Helios, but officially no one really believes that’s where this stuff came from. It would, simply stated, be much too hard.”
    “But not impossible?” I asked.
    He stood with his back to the sink and shrugged. “Actually, as an engineer, I’d think it would be very difficult, but, no, not impossible. And as the security officer it’s my job to exercise a little paranoia here.”
    “You have somebody in mind?” I asked.
    “It’s not so much one individual,” he said. “Look—technical security depends on three things in our industry: rigid adherence to approved engineering practices, a personnel reliability program, and the power industry’s version of what the military calls the two-man rule.”
    “I believe,” I said, and he smiled.
    “Okay. Briefly, here’s the idea. The two-man rule means no one individual is ever left in a situation where he could put the atomic reaction process at risk. Personnel reliability, or what we call fitness to serve, means that a guy who gets a DUI or gropes an undercover cop in a public men’s room gets looked at to see if he should keep his ticket as a plant or reactor operator. And procedure means just that: line-by-line read-back procedures for everything that happens in the control room or in the plant itself. One guy reads the operatingprocedure, say, for lining up the steam system, and a second guy reads it back to him before actually doing it.”
    “That must be really slow.”
    “It’s tedious, but reliable. It also requires a certain degree of technical openness. Nothing happens behind closed doors.”
    “So?”
    “So, if somebody tapped a source of radioactive water in the Helios plant, he would have to have violated all three wedges of technical security.”
    I thought about the appearance of a tail on Quartermain’s visit out here today. “Would he need some help from the physical security department?”
    He nodded. “Yes, I’d think so, and that’s the one division at Helios which is comparatively opaque. There’s a cast of dozens involved in bringing a reactor online and feeding the grid. But most of the time, nobody knows what the hell Trask’s people are doing.”
    “Except following you around and breaking into my hotel room, presumably just because you and I met.”
    “Well, there is that.”
    “But I thought Trask worked for you—why not just fire his ass?”
    “Truth?”
    “Please.”
    “My theory is that he’s got something on the director, because every time I’ve voiced my ‘concerns’ up the line, I get shut down. Can’t prove that, of course, but that’s what I’m beginning to think.”
    “So you want us to take a look at them? Trask, his people, and any possible ties to the director?”
    “Yeah.”
    Before Quartermain could elaborate, Tony Martinelli came back into the kitchen from outside. He looked pleased with himself, which worried me a little bit. He saw the expression on my face and waved me off.
    “It’s cool,” he said. “But not what I expected.”
    “Ree-port.”
    He looked at Quartermain and raised his eyebrows, as if to ask,
Okay for him to hear this?
I motioned for him to continue.
    “Okay, so I go around the block, walk towards downtown for five minutes, turn around, and come back towards the house on the beachfront street. Just another tourist, out for some fresh salt air and a cigarette. And one block away, parked on the beach side of the street, I come upon a Bureau ride, complete with two specials sitting in the front seat trying to look inconspicuous.”
    “In