Perilous Panacea (3 page)

After the man left, Austin turned to Applenu. “He’s head of computer security—system administrator—for all mainframe computers on Capitol Hill. I keep in touch with him and other system administrators around town. Did you hear about the cyber attack, as the media termed it? Computers crashed all over Washington.” He chuckled. “Ours didn’t. I had a call this afternoon from the system administrator over at FBI headquarters. He thanked me for the help I gave him on security programs for his system. It didn’t crash either. But then that was the plan.”

“You were responsible for the cyber attack?”

He laughed. “I made the plan, and Sherbani provided funds to subcontract the job to some people I know, some very smart people. Between us we figured out how to shut systems down all over the world. Last week we confined ourselves to Washington.”

“Hackers? What’s this got to do with stealing the material?”

“Only everything.” Another laugh. “It all goes down next week.”

- - - - -

Five days after the celebration, Applenu was at the bomb factory when he got a text message from Hearn telling him to check CNN shortly after 7:00 pm. He turned on the TV a few minutes before seven. At seven, “The Blitzer Report” began with a gray-bearded chap interviewing a senator about an energy bill being debated in the Senate. Three minutes later, Blitzer was interrupted by a graphic announcing breaking news, and a blonde bit of fluff, eyes wide, appeared on screen, speaking in an excited tone.

“We’ve just been informed there’s been a massive internet interruption that is affecting computers and communications over a wide area of the United States. The first indication something was wrong appeared about ten minutes ago.” She paused, evidently listening to someone talking in her earphone. She resumed, “I’ve just been informed that some of CNN’s computers in our Washington, New York, and Atlanta studios have been affected, and…”

Fascinated, Applenu watched for the next hour as Blitzer spoke with reporters in Washington, New York, and Atlanta about what was happening at their locations.

The Washington reporter: “We just learned that communications in Europe are also affected. As I said earlier, we are having difficulty communicating with our reporters, but we were able to get to our Pentagon correspondent by telephone, and she reports that many government computers were hit. Although not yet confirmed, a Pentagon employee, who wished to remain anonymous, said several of the government’s super-security computers were hit.” Blitzer came back on: “I have on the phone Professor Dudley Anderson, a computer-security expert from Georgetown University. Professor Anderson has been…”

It was clear to Applenu that this part of Hearn’s elaborate plan worked to perfection. The objective was to disrupt communications between NNSA’s Transportation Control Center in Albuquerque and the trucks carrying the nuclear materials. Everything needed to proceed in a precise fashion. Two minutes before communications were knocked out, the command car leading the truck convoy would receive a “Change in Route” notification originating from Hearn. A Change in Route notification requires the convoy commander to confirm the order, but before that could be done, communications would be interrupted. In addition to a loss of voice and computer communication, Albuquerque would also lose the GPS signals.

The original plan was to have the convoy commander be one of Lormes’s recruits. However, since Austin was unable to make that happen, it would be necessary for Lormes’s men to subdue the men not in on the hijacking. The commander’s assistant riding in the truck with him was one of Lormes’s men. Once they took over, the trucks would be taken off on a side road, where the nuclear material would be transferred to other trucks, eventually winding up at Applenu’s factory. All GPS units on the trucks would be disabled, so Albuquerque would not be able to locate them when communications were restored.

It was after ten when Hearn called Applenu’s cell phone. “We did it, Brian! I just talked to Lormes. Phase two, the acquisition, went as planned, like clockwork.”

“It’s over?”

“It’s just beginning, old chap. Lormes and friends plan to have the product to you tomorrow. You got everything ready to begin manufacturing?”

Applenu hesitated; he had hoped it would never come to this, hoped that Austin would not be able to pull it off, thus getting him out of this quandary. “The facilities are ready,” he said.

“For phase three,” Hearn said, “you are the man, old chap. You’re in charge of getting the stuff processed, machined, and shipped to the customer.”

- - - - -

Three days after Lormes delivered the material to the factory, Applenu, on Hearn’s orders, was at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami’s South Beach for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Meeting when Hearn called Applenu’s cell phone. “Did you see our man?” Hearn asked.

“He gave an interesting talk on computerized machining, and he’s giving another paper tomorrow morning entitled, ‘Micro/Meso Mechanical Applications for Improved Precision Machining at the Microscale Level.’”

“Is he our man?”

“The chap’s quite sharp, but he won’t work for us when we tell him what we’re doing. I can take care of the machining, and you can take care of the computer part of it, so we really don’t need him.”

“We need him and Surling for insurance. Maybe you can take care of the machining, but we’ve got to be sure. Reedan and Surling are experts. So it’s up to you and Lormes to recruit him.” He laughed. “Lormes can be persuasive.”

“There are a bloody lot of things that could go wrong, and this is one of them.”

“There were a bloody lot of things that could have gone wrong up to now, but they didn’t. And they won’t in the future. By the way, I sent our last product design off to our boss. It’s the best design yet.”

Hearn was referring to Sherbani, who showed all bomb designs to “his scientists at home,” as he called them. Although Hearn referred to Sherbani as the boss, Applenu knew Hearn considered himself the boss. Applenu marveled at the pride Hearn expressed in his designs. Everything he did was done with excellence.

Hearn said, “I don’t know if and when I’ll be able to come down to the factory. I need to stay here to keep suspicion off me. Actually, I don’t ever need to be down there, do I? You are the man at the factory. It’s in your hands now. That’s the way I planned it.”

“What’s happening with the investigation of the other guy?” Applenu asked Hearn, referring to Austin.

“DOE in-house security and DOD security is investigating. They somehow kept the FBI out of it up to now, but I know they are discussing when to bring them in.”

“Have any investigators been to see the other guy?”

“They are concentrating the investigation in Tennessee and New Mexico, but two of them came to see him. They wanted to know how the computerized system works. One of them asked what happened to our super-secure system. I told them DOE computers were just one of many throughout the world that were hit. Although the computer that controls the transportation system in New Mexico failed, ours here at Washington didn’t. I said we are looking into why the New Mexico computer failed. Of course, I didn’t tell them I designed the entire system.”

“So what happens if they zero in on you?”

“I’ve got plans for that. I’ve got explanations for everything. Eventually, when the time is right, I’ll resign, saying I’m partly to blame because my computerized system failed. Oh, I’ve got plans. Don’t worry about me.”

“We succeeded with the hardest part of this project,” Applenu said. “Maybe we should just end it here and walk away, just disappear.”

“No way. Besides, you know you can’t do that. You’ve got family involved. Buck up, old chap. Hey, I wish you were here, because I’m going out and celebrate. If you were here, you could call Patty and get laid.” He laughed. “You miss getting laid regularly, now that you know what it’s all about? We’ve got a lot to celebrate. And much bigger things are coming.”

- - - - -

The morning after Hearn’s celebration, Sherbani made one of his rare phone calls to Applenu in his hotel room in Miami. “Our colleague, Doctor Hearn is dead,” he said solemnly.

“Dead? I talked to him last night.”

“It was an automobile accident in his new Porsche. He was going too fast and lost control. The car exploded. His body was burned beyond recognition.”

Applenu dropped into the chair behind the table he was standing at, his mind assessing the meaning of the news and it’s effect on the project. Maybe this was the break he needed. He said, “We’ve got to cancel the project. We can’t do it without him.”

“We carry on just as before. Doctor Hearn served us well. He gave us some magnificent designs in phase one, engineered phase two, most ingeniously, and now phase three, the manufacture of the product, is up to you.”

“He was our computer expert,” Applenu protested. “We needed him to write programs for precision machining the product. He also made himself the chemistry expert on processing the fluoride solution to a solid.”

“Why did Doctor Hearn send you and Lormes to Miami?” Sherbani asked and then answered his own question. “To recruit backup for the computerized machining, correct?”

“Yes, but…”

“And Doctor Hearn gave Mr. Lormes instructions on recruiting a backup chemist, correct? Doctor Hearn planned for all contingencies. He prepared documents on the chemistry and machining and gave them to you and Dr. Drafton. His plan all along was to have you run phase three without significant input from him. So we are right on schedule.”

Applenu sighed with resignation as Sherbani continued in a soft voice. “When you make a long journey, your vehicle can break down. That does not mean you abandon your journey. There are other vehicles, some not as good as the one you started with and some better. Regardless, you continue the journey. You are now our vehicle, a better vehicle. I know you will not fail us.”

Chapter Four

Lori Reedan smiled as she threw open her front door, expecting to find Linda Bell. Instead, a squat, gray-haired man with a white walrus mustache squinted at her through purple-tinted glasses.

“Mrs. Reedan, I’ve got a message about your husband,” he said in accented English, as he shoved his light-blue shirt into rumpled navy pants, his enormous stomach protruding over his belt.

“Curt isn’t here. He’s on a business trip.” Nothing new there, she thought. Either away on business or isolated in his office, parked behind his computer. “I handle his business when he’s gone.” Curt’s SOP to her: he made her vice-president of their company.

“I’ve got a message about him, not for him,” he growled as he flipped off his glasses revealing watery blue eyes perched above purple pouches as wrinkled as his shirt. He scanned her bare legs.

Suddenly conscious of her brief shorts, she pushed the door forward and shuffled the lower half of her body behind it. “What do you mean, about him? Is something wrong?”

“Is Daddy home?” Beth suddenly squealed from behind Lori. In her pajamas, she danced merrily on tiptoes at the top of the steps that led down into the foyer.

“Beth, please get back to bed,” Lori said, thinking again how good it would be to get her into kindergarten in the fall. Every day it got harder to get her to take a nap.

When Lori turned back to the man, he had the screen door open. She grabbed the door to slam it in his face, but she couldn’t budge his massive bulk. “You can’t come in here!”

He shoved her backward with the door, the soles of her leather sandals sliding on the slate floor.

“Mommy? What’s the man doing?”

“Just take it easy, lady, and everything will be okay.”

Head down, she leaned her weight against the door, her gaze falling on the chain lock Curt kept after her to use. She remembered the paper last week, where some guy on the other side of town came to this woman’s door, forced his way into her house, and raped her. But that was three-thirty in the morning, not in the middle of the day.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

His steel-gray head now protruded into the house, his puffed cheeks and thick gray mustache less than a foot away from her face. Sweat beaded his forehead.

She strained against the door, but her feet glided backward. When she skipped forward to keep from falling, his momentum caught her mid-stride and shoved her farther back, the door now open wide enough for him to squeeze in. He grabbed her arms with damp hands, twisted her right hand from the doorknob and kicked the door shut. He jerked her toward him, his unbuttoned shirt flapping open to reveal a thick mat of gray chest hair, the air between them now filled with the odor of sweat—no deodorant. Up close, his body heat enveloped her as though she had just stepped outside; his breath reeked of liquor and onions.

Lori started to scream and remembered Beth, who stood at the top of the stairs, eyes wide open. Can’t scare Beth, she thought, got to protect her from this madman. She flung herself backwards, but her arms were pinned as if in a strait jacket. She remembered the gun Dad wanted to give her ever since she left home.

Standing next to him, she realized he was short, about her height. His bulk dominated. She skipped forward and aimed a knee at his groin. “Get out of here, or I’ll call the police.”

With a twitch of his huge waist, he bowed slightly, causing her knee to barely graze his thigh. Reestablishing his grip, he held her at arm’s length, a leering smile on his lips.

“No police, lady.” He grabbed her shoulders and spun her around so she faced Beth at the top of the steps. Beth stared down, mouth open.

“Just get the hell up them steps, lady.”

Lori twisted and squirmed in his grip, then threw her body to the floor, wrenching her shoulders free. She jumped up, but before she could turn and face him, he had both hands on her buttocks, his fingers probing as he boosted her toward the steps.

Lori screamed. She scampered up two steps toward Beth, whose eyes were mostly white.

“Mommy! Stop him, Mommy!”

Lori turned to face him.

“Lady, it’s all up to you. You can calm down and not give me any trouble and you and the kid won’t get hurt. And neither will your husband.”