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you saw with Chalker—mental confusion, raving, headache, vomiting, and an unbearable pain in the gut.”
    “That puts a whole new spin on things,” said Hammersmith.
    “The real question,” said Gideon, “is the form that craziness took. Why would he claim they were beaming rays into his head? Experimenting on him?”
    “I’m afraid that’s a classic symptom of schizophrenia,” said Hammersmith.
    “Yes, but he didn’t have schizophrenia. And why would he say his landlord and landlady were government agents?”
    Fordyce raised his head and looked at Gideon. “You don’t think that poor fuck of a landlord was a government agent—do you?”
    “No. But I wonder why he kept talking about experiments, why he denied having lived in the apartment. It doesn’t make sense.”
    Fordyce shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s starting to make sense to me. A lot of sense.”
    “How so?” Gideon asked.
    “Put it together yourself. The guy works at Los Alamos. Has a top-secret security clearance. Designs nuclear bombs. Converts to Islam. Disappears for two months. Next thing, he shows up irradiated in New York City.”
    “So?”
    “So the son of a bitch joined a jihad! With his help, they got their hands on a nuclear core. They mishandled it just like that Demon Core you mentioned, and Chalker got his ass irradiated.”
    “Chalker wasn’t a radical,” Gideon said. “He was quiet. He kept his religion to himself.”
    Fordyce laughed bitterly. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
    There was a silence in the entire van. Everyone was listening intently now. Gideon felt a growing sense of horror: what Fordyce said had the ring of truth. The more he thought about it, the more he realized the man was probably right. Chalker had the personality for it; he was exactly the kind of insecure, confused person who would find his calling in jihad. And there was no other way to explain the intense dose of gamma rays he must have been exposed to, to make him so very hot.
    “We’d better face it,” said Fordyce as the van slowed. “The ultimate nightmare has come true. Islamic terrorists have got themselves a nuke.”

8
     
    T HE VAN DOORS opened into an underground, garage-like space, where they were herded through a tunnel of plastic. To Gideon, who knew their radiation exposure was probably secondary and fairly minor, it seemed like overkill, more designed to follow some bureaucratic protocol than anything else.
    They were shunted into a high-tech waiting area, all chrome and porcelain and stainless steel, with monitors and computer displays winking softly from all angles. Everything was new and had obviously never been used before. They were separated by sex, stripped, given three sets of showers, examined thoroughly, asked to undergo blood work, given shots, provided with clean clothes, tested again, and then finally allowed to emerge into a second waiting area.
    It was an amazing subterranean facility, brand new and state of the art, clearly built after 9/11 to handle a radiological terrorist attack in the city. Gideon recognized various kinds of radiation testing and decontamination equipment, far more advanced than even what they had at Los Alamos. As extraordinary as the place was, he was not surprised: New York City would certainly need a major decontamination center like this.
    A scientist entered the waiting room, smiling and wearing a normal white lab coat. He was the first person they’d had contact with who was not in a radiation or hazmat suit. He was accompanied by a small, gloomy man in a dark suit whose size belied an air of command. Gideon recognized him immediately: Myron Dart, who had been deputy director of Los Alamos when Gideon first arrived at the lab. Dart had been appointed from Los Alamos to government service of some kind. Gideon hadn’t known him well, but Dart had always seemed competent and fair. Gideon wondered how he’d handle this emergency.
    The cheerful scientist spoke first. “I’m Dr.