The Chalk River meltdown was a first-order crisis. It was neither an economic loss nor a political setback; it was an ultimate threat to Ezra's great post-war grand design. He had promised the world clean, practically unlimited atomic energy, and the first volume of the promise ended as radioactive horror story.
He went into immediate crisis-management mode, operating with a speed and authority that left the official government agencies struggling to keep up. He used his direct line to President Eisenhower's chief of staff to control the flow of information, ensuring the government's public statements were calm and reassuring, minimizing the sensationalist headlines and containing the public panic. He framed the incident not as a catastrophe, but as an "industrial accident" from which valuable lessons would be learned.
Simultaneously, he dispatched his own top scientific and engineering teams to the Canadian site. Not just to advise, but to take charge. His men, led by a brilliant nuclear physicist he had personally recruited from Los Alamos, led the dangerous, hands-on work of containing the damaged reactor. They were heroes, their actions a powerful demonstration of Prentice Applied Science's "responsibility" and unparalleled expertise. He masterfully navigated the political and public relations fallout, turning a potential disaster into a showcase of his organization's competence. But the incident left a permanent scar. The utopian promise of the "peaceful atom" was now forever tinged with fear, and Ezra's path forward would be far more difficult.
It was at this point of deepest professional difficulty that Sullivan came to him with the new report. It was the one problem he could not solve with money, power, or technological expertise. It was the ghost that would not disappear.
The valet's daughter, Sarah Prentice, never gave up.
Following the methodical ruin of her investigator's life, she had been left forlorn and solitary. But her quiet, obstinate will had never faltered. For months, she herself had pursued the chilly trail, working with her librarian's skills to sift through back hospital records, police reports, and city files. And she had discovered something. A needle in a haystack.
The report Sullivan left on Ezra's desk included an affidavit sworn and notarized. It came from an elderly night-shift nurse who worked the night Thomas Riley, the valet, died. The old woman now lived in one of the church-run nursing homes, but she had been tormented by the memory for years. Her testimony was succinct and crushing. She testified on oath that the old man, delirious as he was at the end, had never mentioned being mugged. He whispered and whispered again about being "interrogated." About "men in suits." And being asked questions concerning "Mr. Prentice's change."
The tale was becoming something more than the grief-stricken fantasy of an overwrought daughter. It now included an admirable, impartial eye. It included testimony outside the grave.
The next page of the report was even worse. Sarah Prentice, armed with this new, explosive evidence, had not gone back to the police or to a tabloid. She had learned from her mistakes. She had scheduled a meeting with a young, ambitious, and fiercely respected investigative reporter at the New York Times. The reporter was a man named Harrison Lee, a rising star who had recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his tenacious, in-depth series on organized crime's infiltration of the city's labor unions. Lee was known for his integrity, his meticulous research, and his utter fearlessness in the face of power.
According to Sullivan's source inside the Times, the reporter was deeply interested. He had agreed to begin his own, far more powerful and dangerous investigation into the matter.
Ezra sat and stared at the report, an icy wave of fear sweeping over him. He was trapped. A public scandal of this nature, an inquiry by the Times into an unofficial killing with his name supposedly involved, would be catastrophic. It would be ruinous on a personal level and ruinous on an empire level as well. The Defense Department contracts, the atomic secrets, all those political connections—everything would be endangered and subject to the harsh, merciless light of public scrutiny.
He brought in Baron von Hauser at midnight for an urgent conference in his safe study. He spread out the new report, the affidavit, the Times reporter's involvement.
The Baron read the documents, his expression a mask of cold, professional analysis. He showed no surprise, no alarm. He looked at Ezra, his eyes devoid of any emotion save a faint, chilling pity.
"The time for finesse, the time for the clever, bloodless solution, is over, Mr. Prentice," he stated, his voice a low, definitive judgment. "Your little experiment at being more... human has backfired. This is no loose thread now. This is a cancer. And if it isn't removed, it will spread and kill the entire organism."
He stood up, his voice lowered to a growl. "The reporter, Lee. The woman, Sarah Prentice. The old nurse. They are the three foundations of the threat. They need to go. Absolutely and irreparably. A bad car accident for the reporter. A fatal, accidental blaze at the facility. A vanishing act for the daughter, a woman with no immediate family who will just... disappear. It's the only way. It's the only way to be sure, to insulate the greater good that you created here."
The Baron's arguments were an ideal, terrible sword. It was the harsh, pragmatic math of a man conditioned to work for a state which took human lives as line items on an account ledger. Three lives. Against an empire for the planet, against the tenuous peace of the atomic age, against the future of the nation. The math was simple. The choice was clear.
Ezra looked at the Baron, at the man who was the living embodiment of the ruthless logic he himself had embraced for so long. He had the power to do it. A single, coded order to Sullivan, and it would be done. The problem would be solved. The ghost would be exorcised, this time for good.
He went to the big window of his study and stood looking out over the dark, slumbering grounds of Kykuit. He reflected upon the world he was creating, one of clean energy, of space exploration, of computational wonders. A better, safer, richer world, all upon a foundation of his own clandestine efforts. He reflected upon the greater good.
But he remembered the calm, resolute face of Sarah Prentice in a hotel corridor. He remembered the terror in the eyes of the puppet Sheikh. He remembered the look of horror on Oppenheimer's face after Trinity. He remembered his wife, sleeping by herself back home, a wife who had married one man and was now married to another.
He was the Father of the Future. He had witnessed it, conceived it, and constructed it. But could he, at ultimate accounting, construct that future from the foundation of cold-blooded killing? What was the purpose of constructing a better planet if, by doing so, you became the very beast you had hoped to vanquish?
He turned back from the window. He was at the absolute edge of his entire, impossible life. The Baron and his chilly, perfect, inhuman rationality stood on one side. The remnant frayed edge of his own humanity stood opposite, the ghost of Jason Underwood, the man who once hoped for greatness but never for damnation.
His eyes landed on two phones on a side table. A secure, direct line to Sullivan, the vehicle by which he could issue the death order and save his world. A standard, ordinary telephone, of the type he could use to summon his personal attorney, to initiate the process of experiencing the consequences, of admitting to a reality that would collapse his entire world.
He stood there for a long, silent moment, caught between the two devices, between two possible futures. His choice would define not just the fate of his empire, but the final, unalterable truth of his own soul.