Eagle Squad. James C. Glass
Читать онлайн книгу.
giving him true meaning and sense of purpose in what he otherwise considered to be a drab life. There it was before him, growing, and glowing in the morning sun.
He looked forward to the day: a little work in the office, lunch with two representatives from the National Science Foundation who were looking at his plans for an institutional grant, and then the trip south for the football game and what he hoped would be another big victory for the Cougars. Why was it, he wondered, that universities were so often measured by the greatness of their football teams? A sad fact, but one he accepted and made use of in his talks to business groups. Football made money.
The campus was quiet, the sound of his footsteps coming back to him from granite walls. At a distance, he saw someone mount a bicycle in front of the physics building and ride away. Lights were on in the chemistry complex; it seemed the chemists were always there, cooking a new brew. Lundeman was happy with them. Chemistry made money, lots of it.
He walked past beds of flowers surrounding the cylindrical hub of campus which was his office building, known among various faculty factions as the galactic core, the seat of power, the phallus of academe, or simply the palace. His office was on the first floor, and he used a key to let himself in, made a pot of coffee in the little kitchen that had once been a closet, and settled himself at his desk. He inserted a disk of Mozart’s Requiem in a player, turned the volume down low and began to work as the aroma of brewing coffee filled the office air. The work flowed smoothly, the coffee was hot and tasty, and the music lulled him into a state of peaceful detachment. Such a fragile state, so easily shattered by the sound of a ringing telephone.
The telephone rang three times before he answered it. He listened for a moment, then leaned back in his chair, putting one hand to his forehead to dab at beads of sweat that had suddenly formed there.
“When did you find him?” he asked, then listened.
“Didn’t the guard know anything at all?”
Pause to listen.
“Keep him under wraps, Max. I don’t want him talking to anyone until I’ve cleared it, do you understand? Good. No, you did well, Max. I’ll remember that. Hold tight, and I’ll be over with someone. No, not the police. We can’t allow them in a restricted area. Don’t let anyone in until I get there. Tell them there’s contamination. Right. You’ve got it, Max. I knew I could count on you.”
Lundeman hung up the phone quickly and stared at a wood-paneled wall, drumming the fingers of his left hand on a polished desk. He picked up the phone, punched four numbers, continued drumming until there was an answer. His voice was low, sharp and accusing.
“So you’re in already,” he said quickly. “Let’s see if this is news to you; I just got a call from the hill. They found Jacob Bauer dead in lab four an hour ago. I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that? You know exactly what I mean; don’t give me that shit. You answer to me, don’t forget it. If I find out you’re bypassing me I’ll have your ass. Understand? All right. All right! Is your car here? Go home right now. I don’t want you seen around here. I’ll see you Monday, but I’ve got to call the Langley people now and get a crew out here. Yes. Goodbye.”
He hung up the phone gently this time, breathing deeply as self-control returned, then from memory punched a long sequence of numbers and waited again before speaking carefully and succinctly.
“Curtis Lundeman for room five-two-four. Curtis Lundeman. That’s C-U-R-T-I-S.”
There was a moment of waiting for voiceprint identification before he spoke again.
“We have a red contamination problem in four. I need a crew out here stat. Medical treatment is not necessary.”
When he put down the phone, his forehead was dry again. Moving slowly, he returned two files to a cabinet, locked his desk, rinsed out a cup and unplugged the coffee-maker before leaving his office. He tried the front door of the building after locking it, walked casually across campus and up the hill to the entrance of Gordon Science Center. The walk took only five minutes, but a white Dodge van with U.S. GOVERNMENT stenciled in blue on the front doors was waiting for him when he arrived. No football game for me tonight, he thought.
The revolving glass doors at the entrance yielded to his touch. Three men, one of whom he recognized, looked at him from the reception desk. Max Schuler, head of security, was obviously relieved to see him, smiling as his reinforcements arrived. Unlike Max, who was in slacks and a flannel shirt, the other two men were gloved, dressed in white, each carrying a transparent helmet under one arm. The men, both blond and in their late twenties or early thirties, turned to examine Lundeman with exceptionally blue eyes. One extended a gloved hand, and the university president held it lightly in his for only an instant.
“I’m Sanderson, and this is Harris,” said the man, nodding towards the other who stood beside him silently and without expression. “You called in a problem?”
“We’ll take the elevator up,” said Lundeman. “Max, you wait here, and keep everyone out. Tell them we’ve had a bad chemical spill.”
“Yes, sir,” said Max, looking relieved.
When the elevator doors closed behind them, Sanderson and Harris began stripping off their white decontamination clothing.
“No use sweating any more than we have to,” said Sanderson, smiling. Beneath the clumsy suit he wore grey slacks and a white body shirt stretched tightly over a heavily muscled frame. Harris was dressed the same, but he was a slender man who moved slowly with the fluid-like grace of a dancer. His eyes were those of a shark: cold, without expression.
“I want a quick word with the guard,” said Harris. “You go on to the lab, but I want to see it before you disturb anything.”
When the doors opened, the guard, face red and puffy, rose from his desk to meet them. He looked first at Lundeman, and said nothing. Harris took him firmly by one arm and led him back to his desk as Sanderson followed Lundeman down the hall. The lab was cold when they entered, and the animals were quiet in their cages. There was an open door on the far side of the room, and the body of a man was sprawled there on his back, eyes staring upwards, mouth open.
“He looks surprised,” said Sanderson.
“Poor old Bauer,” said Lundeman. “He wasn’t much of a teacher, but he did some good research, and the students liked him.”
Sanderson looked into the fume hood. “He was working in here. Broken glass all over the place, but otherwise nothing. Does this mean anything to you, Doctor Lundeman?”
“No. Maybe he broke something poisonous. I’ll have to look up his contract to recall what he was working on.”
“He was working with SB4,” said Harris, who had entered the lab with stealth and was padding around the room behind them. He leaned over to look at the body, pulled down the dead man’s collar, peered closely at something and straightened up. “For your information, Doctor Lundeman, that’s a nerve gas.”
“Ah yes, now I recall it,” said Lundeman.
“The gas is stored in ampoules, like the one broken in this fume hood. There’s no other equipment or chemicals in there, no animal cages, nothing. Just a broken ampoule. Now, if the exhaust fan were on and the fume hood window pulled down even two-thirds closed, the gas from that broken ampoule should not have reached the room, yet it appears it did.”
“Bauer was killed by SB4, then. An accident due to poor technique.” A simple explanation would be best and most easily accepted by grant officers, hoped Lundeman.
“I don’t think so,” said Harris quickly, “and I don’t think it could be suicide either. There are bruises on the back of his neck, and pieces of glass on the floor by his head. He was forced into the hood, and the ampoule broken by his face. See the cuts near his right eye?”
Lundeman forced himself to look closely at Bauer’s staring face. The cuts were there, a tiny piece of glass glistening in one of them. “Are you suggesting murder?”
“I