Perilous Panacea (13 page)

Orman plugged the projector cord into his laptop, and soon more PowerPoint slides appeared on the screen. One showed the Shipment Agreement and Verification Evaluation form followed by one of the Detailed Security Platform for the shipment followed by a slide of the approval by Strategic Planning and Authorization Committee. Finally, slides of EDs approving the SAVE and DSP sent to Oak Ridge, Savannah River, and Kirtland Air Force Base flashed on the screen.

“In other words,” Orman said, “the paperwork was in place approving the doomed shipment. Trouble is, they were all fakes put together by Dr. Austin.”

“How do you know they were fakes?” Saul asked.

“As you recall,” Logson said, “you found that nobody at Oak Ridge, Savannah River, or Kirtland remembered seeing these documents on a three-truck shipment, and Kraft and I didn’t remember approving the SPAC.”

With a laser-pointer red dot bobbing about the screen, Orman explained how Austin let the original request by Savannah River for three shipments go through the approval process, after which he forged the SAVE, DSP and ED documents that changed shipping plans for three individual shipments in SSTs with individual guard vans into a convoy of three SSTs and two guard vehicles. Then Orman turned to the hijacking itself.

Orman paced and flashed slides of e-mails that Austin had sent human resources personnel that hired the SST drivers and escort guards. “It appears Austin was able to affect the hiring of six men by forging more documents. All six were hired after Austin came to NNSA, and they all supposedly had security clearances when they applied for the job. Furthermore, all six were on the ill-fated convoy, and all six disappeared with the nuclear material. The three dead men and the one wounded driver, who obviously was also supposed to be dead, were not part of the Austin hiring intervention. It’s unclear how Austin managed to forge documents for the six. Our best guess is that he got into the SID computer as Agent Saul previously surmised and gave them new identities and forged security clearances. That makes sense, since Agent Saul verified that he did just that to get his own clearance.”

“He not only got those men resumes with security clearances so they could get the truck-driving and guard jobs,” Orman said, “he went in later and erased all information on those men, including their badge pictures.”

“That’s why you couldn’t find anything on those people when you asked for their files,” Logson said to Saul.

“Did Austin do all that and engineer the cyber attack?” Saul asked.

“He recruited help,” Orman said as he flashed a slide of a world map and blinked his laser pointer on Russia, Poland, Italy, and Canada. “The outage was engineered by simultaneous attacks from those four countries starting at 18:57 hours on June 6. We assume that when the outage caused Kirtland to lose contact with the convoy, Austin contacted the convoy via computer messaging and posing as Kirtland, he ordered them onto the deserted road where the hijacking occurred. He could do that from our NNSA computer here at headquarters, since he made sure it was not shut down by the cyber attack.”

“Why was Kirtland shut down? Their security should be as good as or better than yours.”

“We always thought they were better…at least that’s what Austin told us,” Orman said. “Kirtland is still trying to determine what happened.”

Saul shook his head. “It looks like Austin was one of the few bureaucrats in Washington who knew how to use the computer for something besides generating useless paper.” When Sukiomo was the only one who laughed, Saul turned to him and said, “With Austin dead, the bomb makers are without their computer expert. What do they need a computer expert for at this point?”

“Many things,” Sukiomo said, “They need to use computerized machining methods on sorid uranium and the prutonium after they convert the prutonium hexafruoride solutions to metal.”

“Chemistry of plutonium,” Ebert said. “You found out that was another subject Austin got classified documents on. That and A-bomb design.”

“Which means they might be out an expert on nuclear chemistry, assuming Austin was going to handle that task,” Logson said.

“Ergo, no chance at a bomb,” Ebert said.

“Unless they recruit some new experts,” Saul said.

“You don’t just put an ad in the newspaper or a professional journal for experts to make atomic bombs,” Ebert said.

“But they might recruit them directly,” Saul said. “Find out who the expert is and buy him, like they bought Austin. We found out he paid about eighty-thousand cash for the Porsche he was driving. If they can’t buy the experts, they can go out and kidnap them.”

Saul rested his elbows on the table, leaned his head into his hands, and rubbed his eyes. Last night’s relaxed feeling had evaporated as the frustrations of the past days and weeks reestablished their grip on his brain. “You know how many computer experts there are in this country? How many chemists there are? Where the hell do you start to look?”

“Wherever it is, you better get there fast,” Logson said, smiling. “Because your little Miz Mosely has us all standing around naked waiting to get our balls sliced off.”

- - - - -

Back in his cubby-hole office, Saul found a stack of phone messages and a ringing phone, all welcoming him to media land. Myron Shorahm of CBS News wanted to verify the AP story. “Let’s meet for lunch and talk about it.”

Saul told him to call the Bureau’s Public Information Office. For certain, PIO had a story, but not one Shorahm wanted. Saul figured PR flacks in the Bureau PIO and PIOs in government offices all over Washington must be brainstorming like crazy. Since the director constantly solicited “publicity to adequately and fairly portray our organization,” maybe he could make this a PR windfall—unless they did not immediately recover the bomb material. Shorahm persisted, but Saul ducked all his questions until the newsman gave up.

He barely dropped the phone before it rang again. “Rick, Senator Hughson here. Tell me about this lost uranium.”

“I’ll tell you what I told Mosely and what I told Mary: there’s nothing to tell.”

“You’re not talking to some bitch reporter, Rick. You and I are a team. Meet me for lunch in the Senate Dining Room about one.”

Who said there was no free lunch? Saul thought as he looked up to see George Spanner materialize in front of his desk. “I can’t make it, Senator.”

“Listen, Rick, I’ve made my share of points coming down on government ineptitude. I smell another chance here. One o’clock.”

Is this arrogant bastard who we need for president? “Senator, I don’t have anything.”

“I hope you remember who got you out of Spokane as a favor to your Uncle.”

Saul wondered how Hughson pulled that off. Did he know somebody in the personnel department? Or was it somebody higher up in Bureau management?

Hughson went on. “Nate and I have talked big things for you. You’re like a son to him. If I have anything to do with it, Nate will be governor soon and, say six-to-eight years from now, you can be in congress. After that, who knows? And Mary’s got a great future, a most intelligent young woman.”

He remembered Hughson’s “bitch reporter” remark and wondered how the great man really saw Mary: his bitch press secretary? The senator’s supposed reputation with women was another reason he wanted Mary out of that office. Fortunately, he had not yet mentioned that to her, although the temptation to do so nipped at him every time they argued. Last month he saw the Senator on TV in a press conference with Mary standing behind him, smiling, once leaning over to whisper in his ear.

Saul glanced up at Spanner, who had backed away from the desk and was watching Saul. Thank God Spanner could not hear what Hughson was saying. “I know what you’re saying, Senator, but I don’t have anything.”

“It’s your future, Rick. I know you want a lot for yourself and Mary, and so do I.”

Saul wondered if he ever did get into politics if the Senator’s getting him out of Spokane could be construed as using undue influence. Before that, Uncle Nathan greased the skids to get him into Yale Law School. Then to show that he didn’t need his help, Saul rejected Yale and got a scholarship to Notre Dame to be one of their representative Jews. Why? “He wants to be a smarkasth. Why else?” Maybe so.

A long silence on Hughson’s end, then, “Get back to me when you’ve got something. It’s for your own good.”

“Who was that?” Spanner asked when Saul put down the phone.

“Senator Stanley Hughson of Pennsylvania.”

“You’ve hit the big time. You’re new to Washington, Rick, so let me warn you. You’ll soon discover that every time your name is associated with a case, you’ll hear from all kinds of politicians and media people. My advice is to keep your ass clear of politics and the media. Especially politics.”

“I didn’t…”

The phone interrupted, and before he could answer it, Spanner motioned Saul to follow him to his private office. When they were on their sides of the new desk, Saul reported on his DOE meeting and how they could go about looking for missing chemists and computer experts.

“Let’s get to the subject everybody wanted to talk to me about,” Spanner said. “Did you tell that Mosely broad anything she’s holding back?”

“I didn’t say anything beyond telling her I had nothing to say. I asked her how she got my name. She said she got an anonymous phone call.”

Spanner fished a sheet of paper from his cluttered desk and waved it at Saul. “MEDIASCAN didn’t even have her in the files when her name surfaced, but they remedied that. Our Miz Sheena Mosely is fifty-one years old, your basic left winger, probably with reason. She was born Bernadette Sheena Feeney, March 22, 1959, in Belfast, Ireland, to an IRA radical. Her mother was a Scot, and when her husband died—killed in a shootout with the British army—she moved back to Glasgow with her two youngest children. Our girl was ten at the time. Two years later, her mother married a chief petty officer in our navy who was based at the Holy Loch submarine base. A year later they moved to Norfolk.”

As Saul listened, he shuffled through the phone messages he brought along. He was popular with TV correspondents and newspaper reporters: NBC, New York Times, Newsweek, and U. S. News and World Report were among those represented there. Where was Time?

Spanner continued to read from the MEDIASCAN report. “While in high school and then in college at William and Mary, she wrote anti-war articles for the school newspapers, and she got arrested for drug possession with some of her friends. She got probation, but her stepfather cut off her education funds. Two years later she was busted for dealing coke, and she spent eleven months at the Virginia State Prison for Women. Our investigators haven’t found out what she did immediately after she got out, but eventually she wound up working for a newspaper in Petersburg, Virginia. From there she worked up to bigger papers in Virginia, eventually working her way into this job with AP. Sometime in there she married George Mosely and divorced him two years later. Mosely owned the Petersburg newspaper.

“MEDIASCAN`s run down a couple of anti-U.S. diatribes she published in some small magazines in 2005 to 2008 during the Iraq war, along with a couple on the imperialist U.S. policy in the Middle East and Latin America. She normally works out of AP’s Atlanta office, but since she turned up this story, they turned her loose on it.”

Saul waved his stack of messages. “AP is not the only organization that’s got people on it. You said she was born in Northern Ireland. You think the IRA is involved?”

“The IRA,” Spanner said shaking his head. “It seems like I’ve heard about one hundred other organizations mentioned the last few days.” He went on to complain about the daily meetings he’d been attending, where he came in contact with representatives from DOD, DOE, CIA, and the White House. “Do you realize how many damn guys in this town are advisors of some sort or other to someone or other? Everywhere you turn you find college professors, industrial executives, retired generals, and private consultants of one kind or another. At the White House alone, you got guys acting as your congressional advisor, science advisor, national security advisor, advisors for domestic affairs, foreign affairs, military affairs…you name it they’ve got one or more advisors. Anyway, it seems like one of each type from the White House, Pentagon, CIA, and DOE show up at these meetings. They’ve all got a theory on what happened and who did it. Once congress finds out, we’ll have three times as many people involved and six times as many theories. That will come soon enough.

“Our experts’ favorite scenario is that Al-Qaeda is behind it to pull the ultimate terrorist act, but then it could be Hamas, Hezbollah, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and on and on. Instead of taking out an embassy or two, they figure somebody’s ripe to take out a city or two. They’ll blow it away and then notify some TV or newspaper guy—say Mosely—in some other city, of course, who did it and give some perverted reason why they did it.”

Saul nodded. “First, bomb a few embassies, the USS Cole in Yemen, the airliners in Scotland and Toronto, and the big one, the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now nuclear bombs in New York and Washington: the inevitable progression.”

“That’s the favorite theory. I’ve heard theories on the North Koreans, Chinese, Iranians, disgruntled Russians, Libyans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Albanians, Venezuelans, Japanese…”

“Japanese?”

“A state department type figures Japan has everything but nuclear weapons. Maybe one of the heads of their large industrial concerns wants to regain some of the military glory they had before World War Two. According to her, they might not have much military glory these days, but they got excess dollars. So this Japanese patriot takes some of his company’s surplus funds and buys them some atomic bombs. Hell, I don’t know what the dumb shit was going on about. I also found out that the Russians know we lost the material.”

“How could they know?”

“We’ve got CIA agents everywhere making discreet inquiries, trying to figure out if maybe somebody actually got the stuff out of the country. You’ve got to figure what the CIA knows, the Russians soon find out. Then again, you know how open the Russians are supposed to be with us these days. So then we’re open with them. For all I know, the Administration might have gone right out and consulted with them, as well as the European Community, the Japanese, the Chinese…”