“My insulin is fine, thank you very much, and don’t look at me like that. You made the cake.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to eat it all.” June hit his belly. “You’re getting fat.”
Instead of being angry, George just laughed. “You need me to pick up anything while I’m out, June?”
“I can’t believe you’re really going out for pie.”
“Yes, I am really going out for pie.”
“Then pick me up a piece of anything sugarless.” Again she patted his stomach. “Some of us have self-control. Others just succumb.” She shook her head and disappeared from view.
George was still smiling. “I take it you want to drive?”
“Absolutely.”
They were three blocks away from George’s house when he spoke. “What is it?”
Ben pulled over to the curb and liberated the ten images he’d found through Google from his backpack. “Do you know any of these people?”
George shuffled the faces. “Who are they?”
“They might be associated with the labs.”
He continued to study the images. “Vicksburg, just what did you hack into?”
“I didn’t hack into anything.” George gave him a sour look. Ben said, “Honest. You can check the hard drive of my computer.”
“Hard drives come and hard drives go. How’d you get these names?”
“That’s a complicated question.”
The old man rubbed his eyes and returned half the stack. “I don’t know these.” He had handed Ben back images of four scientists and Jason Fillmore, the security analyst. “They may be associated with the labs, but I’ve never had any dealings with them.”
“And the others?”
“I’ve worked with Percy Sellers, Robert Yin, Kim Dok Park, and Stu Greenberg. I’ve known Yin and Greenberg for years. They’re plasma physicists. Yin is from Fermi, Stu is from Lawrence Livermore.”
Ben sat up. “What do you know about Stu Greenberg?”
“He’s around sixty. A senior scientist and a brilliant, brilliant guy. June and I had dinner with his wife and him about a year ago when we were in the Bay Area. They’re lovely people.” He laughed. “I guarantee he isn’t who you’re looking for.”
“You never know what’s inside a person’s head.”
“Stu’s head is stuffed with remarkable and ingenious ideas. There’s no room for anything else. He also has osteoarthritis and has had several surgeries. I believe he walks with a cane.”
Rule him out. Ben said, “What about the others?”
“Dr. Park is a biochemist, Sellers’s specialty is medical radiology.” He pointed to Kevin Barnes. “This guy. He’s not a scientist, he’s a lawyer.”
“I know that.” Ben’s heart took off and he forced himself to speak slowly. “What kind of a lawyer is he?”
“Immigration. I’ve dealt with him a few times because he needed character references from some of the scientists in the labs for visa extensions or permanent residence.” George handed him back the remaining stack. “How’d you get these names, Ben?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I know you did something illegal. It’s going to come back to bite you on the butt. Get rid of your hard drive.”
“I didn’t do anything illegal, but I can switch drives if you think I should.”
“Do it. Now tell me what’s going on. Why are you narrowing down your searches to the faces you showed me?”
Ben was prepared for the question and for his answer. “I got these names by looking at scientists who go to a lot of conventions.”
“All scientists travel a lot. We present our research. We’re always exchanging information with one another. There are hundreds of scientists. How did you narrow it down to these men? And why the lawyer? And stop bullshitting me. It’s pissing me off.”
Ben cleared his throat. “These particular men have traveled more than once to Los Alamos and over extended periods of time. They’ve also traveled between the other labs.”
“How’d you find that out? I know you don’t have the skills to hack into a national laboratory. So you did it in some other way. Are you hacking into the airlines?”
That would have been a good idea, Ben thought. He said, “I can’t tell you, George.”
“Ben, you have to stop what you’re doing right now! I know you didn’t get this information from a Google search.”
“That is true. But that doesn’t mean the feds are coming after me.”
George sized him up. “Why the lawyer?”
“He’s been to Los Alamos at least six times in the last four years.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“But you didn’t do anything illegal.” A pause. “Did you pay someone to do something illegal?”
“No, I did not.”
George shook his head. “Let’s go get some pie.”
Ben restarted the motor and put the car into gear. “Tell me about the immigration lawyer, Kevin Barnes. There’s not much on him in the search engines. He doesn’t have a Facebook or LinkedIn page. He’s kind of a cipher.”
“Not all of us waste our time being social on the Internet.”
“You’d think he’d want some kind of professional page just for business.”
“Maybe he has enough clients without going digital.”
“Is he a government employee?”
“He works for the labs, but I don’t know if he’s on the government payroll or he’s someone Uncle Sam has outsourced.”
“If he works for the government, it would make sense that he wouldn’t advertise anything.” George didn’t comment. “Do you know him?”
“I mind my own business, Ben. I focus on my own work and that’s why the lab keeps old guys like me around.”
“What are you? Like fifty?”
“None of your damn business.” George thought a moment. “Barnes must be doing a good job. He’s been around for a while.”
“How old is he?”
“In his forties.”
“Any personal impressions of the guy?”
George was silent, but he was thinking about the question. “He’s weird.”
Ben opened and closed his mouth. “He’s weird?”
“Scientists are not the most social people in the world. We like what we do and what we do requires solitude. I’m always thinking in numbers. So is June. But you don’t expect odd behavior from a lawyer. Most of the other lawyers I’ve met are slick.”
“I see you’ve never met my dad or grandpa.” George laughed and then Ben said, “What kind of weird are we talking about?”
“Let me backtrack. If Barnes was a mathematician, I wouldn’t have used the adjective ‘weird.’ It’s just you think of a lawyer as being aggressive or forward. From the very few dealings I’ve had with him, he didn’t seem like a lawyerly type. He certainly didn’t dress like a lawyer, but that could be because he works around scientists so much he’s adopted the dress.”
Ben was silent.
George said, “Like I said, he must be competent, otherwise he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
“You’re defending him.”
“I can see you’re jumping to conclusions and it’s my fault. I stoked the fires. Do me a favor and I won’t rat you out to Shanks.”
Ben was stunned. If he hadn’t been driving, he would have gotten out of the car and slammed the door. “You’re thinking of ratting me out?”
“It’s my only weapon to get you to stop doing stupid things.”