Perilous Panacea (9 page)

A PPI—Preliminary Personal Investigation—was a low profile secret investigation into a person’s financial standing to determine where their money came from, where it went, whether there was a lack of it, and whether there had been any large deposits other than the paycheck. PPIs on the thirty-one individuals were completed in four days. Unreal: not a suspicious character among them—at least the live ones.

Saul ran a check on Steven Allen Austin, deceased. Accessing Austin’s security-clearance records, he found that Austin obtained the clearance when he worked for Congressman John Tilton, Democrat from California. With his top-secret clearance in place and Tilton as reference, getting a job with DOE was a snap.

Austin was cleared by Agent David Zachary of the Security Investigation Division of the Office of Personnel Management. Because Zachary’s name was not in the SID OPM Directory, Saul called a SID agent he knew to get Zachary’s present station.

“Dave Zachary? He retired five or six years ago.”

“Are you sure? He hasn’t cleared anyone in the last three years?”

“Positive. I spoke at his retirement party.”

Chapter Eleven

Hunched behind the computer monitor, Curt Reedan typed:

X, Y, Z: 12, 120, 72

The computer responded:

NOT ADMISSIBLE: UNDEFINED COORDINATES.

Curt typed a new set of coordinates for a program to machine a precision part on one of Applenu’s many CAD/CAM drawings.

For over two weeks now, they isolated him in the sparsely furnished twelve-foot-square computer room studying numbers and diagrams on the monitor. When in touch with a computer, Curt escaped to a state of oblivion as far as the world around him was concerned. Alone, his mind attuned to the computer, he temporarily escaped the doom generated by Surling’s warnings.

The silence of the room was shattered when Surling and Drafton entered to announce lunch. Drafton strolled around Curt and stood behind him, studying the monitor, his right hand resting lightly on Curt’s shoulder. Curt sat facing the door, where Surling watched them.

Of their captors, Drafton was the friendly one; he treated them as scientific colleagues. At times, Curt felt Applenu also tried to treat him as a scientific colleague. Drafton and Surling spent most of their work time together. To Curt, Surling seemed overly friendly with Drafton.

Drafton began extolling the virtues of the high-powered computer that consisted of a High-Performance Cluster system that took up half of the room, while Surling drifted to the table next to the monitor, opened a binder and studied the top drawing of bomb parts Curt was working on. He turned to Drafton. “How are you getting these bombs out of the country, Eric?”

“That’s Applenu’s department now that Derek is no longer with us. He’s connected to the client country, although about the only thing left to ship is the nuclear material. Everything else was built earlier and shipped. Derek handled that through a contract in upstate New York.”

“Are you saying Applenu designed and built those devices, and then they went out and stole the nuclear material they needed?”

“Applenu didn’t, Derek did.”

Surling shook his head in disbelief. “What about the trigger mechanism?”

“Triggers are electronics, and Derek was an electronics genius.”

Surling turned to Curt. “The principle behind an atom bomb is simple enough,” he said, assuming his dry professorial tone. “You just squeeze a sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium into a critical mass—a supercritical mass, really—or else you force two hemispheres of plutonium or enriched uranium into a supercritical mass. Once that supercritical mass is assembled, an uncontrolled chain reaction starts, causing a rapid buildup of energy that’s released in a gigantic explosion. On the Manhattan Project, we had a hell of a time compressing the metallic sphere into a perfect spherical configuration. Any shape aberration lowers the yield or gives you a dud. We put conventional explosives around the outside of the sphere. On detonation, the conventional explosives compressed the sphere to a supercritical mass. To get a perfect spherical shape, we built a complicated system of lenses that properly concentrated the shock waves from the explosives.”

“That’s the implosion technique,” Drafton said, stroking his brown beard. “Derek’s designs use that in some of the bombs. He even tested instrumented charges to verify the trigger design. Worked like a charm. You’ve got to remember that back in the forties you didn’t have computers.”

“I know. These days, you can model everything and anything with a computer. Guys like Curt are putting old experimentalists like me out of business.”

Drafton nodded and smiled at Curt. “Derek modeled the lens system as well as the initiator. He designed and modeled bombs using the gun-barrel method, where you explosively propel part of a critical mass down a tube and mate it with material at the other end to get a supercritical configuration. Derek used the computer to check out all designs,” Drafton said, walking around to the back of Curt and resting his hand on the chair so it touched Curt’s shoulder.

Curt twisted around so he could get Drafton’s hand off his shoulder. “If you people could do all that, why did you need Bob and me?”

Drafton looked down at Curt and quickly jerked his hand back, as if Curt’s shoulder were red hot. “You two have the expertise we needed on processing and machining nuclear material. I know Derek could have handled it, but he wanted a sure thing. He didn’t leave anything to chance.”

“So where is this genius Derek?” Curt asked.

Drafton’s eyes clouded. “He got killed in a car wreck.”

“But why would bright young guys like you and him get involved in something like this?” Surling asked.

“Derek and I…hell, the work’s challenging, and the money’s good. With the money we were getting for the job, Derek and I figured to be set for life. We had plans.”

“It’s not worth it,” Curt said. “With a PhD, you’d have found a good job.”

“Terrorists have wanted nuclear weapons for the last twenty years,” Surling said, “and now you guys are giving them one.”

“They aren’t going to terrorists. Derek cleared that up with the customer before he started.”

In their discussions, Curt and Surling agreed these guys might do some real damage, but they could never successfully build a working atom bomb. Now, it was like seeing your basketball team, a twenty-point favorite, lead the whole game only to lose that lead with a second left.

Curt saw Surling glance his way, and he knew what Surling was thinking: they had to be stopped, and it was up to them to do it.

Chapter Twelve

Brian Applenu watched smoking metal chips spiral from the steel rod in the spinning lathe and plunge into the oil bath, like downed jetfighter planes into a black sea. He glanced sideways at Reedan, who sat behind a computer monitor and keyboard and gazed around the large machine room: two lathes, a milling machine, a grinder, and a drill press, all new. The lathe they worked at stood in the far right corner as you came into the room from the hall.

Cued by the computer in the next room, the lathe ground to a halt. On the lathe, calipers automatically moved across the work piece, a dummy part being machined to check Reedan’s computer program. Tomorrow they machined the real thing, a complicated part from non-radioactive material required to complete the firing mechanism for the plutonium bombs. Measurements complete, the lathe began to turn.

Applenu watched their machinist adjust his goggles and approach the lathe for a closer look. A graying, dark-complected man in his early fifties, Perk Simmons arrived four days ago. In addition to being an excellent machinist, he would help Drafton with the chemical processing. In his e-mail saying Simmons was coming, Sherbani wrote, “Simmons is one of us.” Based on his appearance and his relatively good English skills, Applenu fingered him as an Iranian who had been in the U.S. for some time. He wondered if Simmons was there under circumstances similar to his own.

That e-mail was the first communication Applenu had with Sherbani since he got the phone call telling him Austin/Hearn was dead. What a hard kick to the gut. Although Applenu had no particular love for Austin since he had been as responsible as Sherbani for getting him involved in this process, Austin had hinted in their New York conversation that they might be able to affect the effectiveness of the bombs if and when they were made. To Applenu, it appeared that Austin was as worried as he was concerning how they might be used. In addition to that, he would have been useful as an intermediary if and when he had to challenge Sherbani on getting his family out of Iran. To that end, Applenu replied to Sherbani’s e-mail asking when his family would be brought out of Iran. Sherbani had not replied.

Applenu turned to Reedan and wondered how he could connect with him, since they were in the same fix, neither wanting to be here. “It is a bloody nice program, Doctor Reedan. All the machinist has to do is apply lubricant and change the tool.”

“It was a difficult program to write,” Reedan said, appearing uninterested in the process. He glanced back at the door.

Applenu looked back, and through the window in the door, he saw Beecher patrolling the hall. Whenever Reedan and Surling were in the hall guarded by one of Lormes’s men, you could read their eyes, always glancing furtively at the exits. If he had his own way, Applenu thought, he’d go out the door with them. They were obstinate blokes, he thought, remembering their first meeting where Surling pressured Lormes into defending himself as not being a terrorist.

Applenu glanced at Beecher again, noting the video camera strapped around his neck. He had been in earlier to photograph the machining setup. Sherbani wanted pictures and videos of all operations that showed how the bombs were manufactured. He wouldn’t say why. Was there to be a written report on the project? Politics back home?

Regardless of his dilemma, Applenu knew that technically everything was working better than they had any right to expect, especially considering where they came from and all they had been through in the last six months. With that sinking feeling in his gut that a bomb was now inevitable and he knew of no way to stop it, he turned to Reedan. “I believe we are going to pull it off.” From the startled look in Reedan’s eyes, it appeared he was becoming a believer, too.

Across the room at the lathe, Simmons changed the tool while Applenu strolled up behind Reedan to study the dimensions on the monitor. It can’t be, he thought. He moved quickly across the room and grabbed the machine drawing on the bench next to the lathe. Those numbers had to be wrong. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Reedan, his tall frame hunched over his monitor. The bloke knew what was happening. He was about to speak to Reedan as Beecher ambled into the room.

Beecher surveyed the scene and seemed to understand. “What did Reedan do?”

Applenu hesitated, not sure what Beecher might do to Reedan. “Reedan seems to have screwed up the machining program.”

“Is that right, Reedan?” Beecher asked, setting the video camera on the table next to the monitor. “I would have thought you knew better than to pull shit like that.”

- - - - -

Curt was ready for the challenge, “What are you talking about,” he asked, first looking at Applenu, then staring up at Beecher, the tall bull from South Beach. Curt turned to the monitor to study the numbers that summarized the damage.

“Something wrong, Reedan?” Beecher asked.

Slow and easy, Curt told himself. Playing games with management came with the territory of being a self-employed consultant. “I was just going to check the drawing,” he said. He stood and started toward the workbench, but Beecher stepped in front of him, his face inches from Curt’s face.

Applenu ordered Simmons to measure the work piece.

“I just did. It’s out of tolerance, ruined,” Simmons said, his dark-brown eyes wide open and filled with fear, as if he might be blamed for the error.

“Surprised, Doctor Reedan?” Beecher asked. “I suppose you accidentally put the wrong numbers into the computer. Or was it a computer error?”

Curt realized it wasn’t playing out as planned, a delaying action to slow them down until he and Surling could escape. “Well…uh…most new computer programs got bugs. I’ll fix it, but…”

“You’re damned right you’ll fix it,” Beecher said. Before Curt could think up a reply, Beecher’s sledge-hammer fist smashed into his stomach. He doubled up, fighting to pull enough air into his lungs to eject the pain exploding up into his chest. Slowly, as if sinking into quicksand, he settled to his knees, tears blurring his vision, a cough erupting from his gut as he attempted to exhale the fire igniting in his lungs.

Beecher reached down and grabbed a handful of the front of Curt’s khaki shirt and jerked upward. Curt stared up into Beecher’s tanned face, his lightbrown eyes glowing with pleasure. Beecher cocked his right fist.

Curt raised his arms to cover his face.

“That’s enough,” Applenu said, touching Beecher’s raised arm.

Beecher tossed Curt aside like a crumpled piece of paper.

Applenu stepped over to Curt and yelled down at him. “That’s a lot of balls about bugs in the program. A bloody college freshman knows any machining program worth a crap is going to have limits so something like this doesn’t happen.”

Sitting on the cold concrete, Curt poked gently at his aching stomach and chest, wondering about broken ribs. He tried a deep breath, but stopped short when pain ripped at the inside of his chest. “I was going to…”

“Shut up,” Beecher yelled.

“That’s right,” Applenu said, glancing at Beecher. “We’ll be machining dummies on everything so you don’t muck up valuable nuclear material.”

“Any more obvious screw-ups like this,” Beecher said, “and what you just got will seem mild. Next time, I won’t just stomp your ass.” He laughed. “What I’ll be doing is handling your old lady’s ass. I might even be gentle with her.”

Chapter Thirteen

Rick Saul fled Bart Kraft’s office without anything new on Steve Austin. All Kraft wanted to talk about was Sheena Mosely. That was all Spanner talked about before Saul left the Bureau, because that was all his superiors wanted to talk about. Mosely appeared, and instantly everyone forgot somebody stole enough nuclear material to level Washington, half of Chicago, and a minor city or two in between, like Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Maybe Uncle Herbert was right: A scientific career was the only option available for anyone who wished to live by logic. Logic gave way to chaotic chance when you dealt with people—especially government people and politics. In science, even chance operated by precise mathematical rules.

Somehow, Sheena Mosely, an AP reporter from Atlanta, appeared to have stumbled on a “rumor” that a truckload of bomb-grade nuclear material had been hijacked. No one knew how or where she got the information, but in her mad dash to confirm it, she was ringing phones all over Washington and asking for comments on or off the record. At present, she pursued the story alone, probably hoping for an exclusive that would earn her a Pulitzer.

Now, some manpower assigned to SWISILREC would be pulled off to find the leak and shut him or her down. He recalled Logson implying that if a leak occurred, it would be from Spanner or him.

Saul realized that Mosely provided a plausible reason to tell Mary and Senator Hughson, since once Mosely published, the Senator, Uncle Nathan, and Mary would come down on him, wanting to know why the Senator was not informed immediately. Politics: a team game where team members played only for themselves. Chaos within chaos, an exciting game, but one Saul was not ready to play.

His present game involved the elusive Steve Austin. First, nobody in Congressman Tilton’s office knew the name or recognized him from his DOE badge picture. Second, Austin’s remains still lay unclaimed at the morgue. A problem surfaced when they went to examine the body. There was no body, just a box full of charred bones and ashes, because Austin’s Porsche with him inside left the road in rural Virginia, turned over, and burst into flames, leaving no fingerprints to be run through the Bureau computer.

Since Saul had finally been authorized to talk to someone at DOE besides Kraft, his next stop was the office of Ralph Ebert, Deputy Associate Administrator for NNSA’s Defense Nuclear Security.

“Austin was Bart Kraft’s boy all the way,” Ebert said from behind a cluttered desk that looked more like Saul’s than Kraft’s. “He hired Austin, and within a year, he was heading the Computer Operations Section. Kraft never consulted anyone about his hiring.”

“Does Kraft hire all personnel for the department?”

“Yes, but usually the top people in the division interview a candidate and give Bart their evaluation. In the case of Austin, Kraft came in one day and introduced him as our new computer specialist. He touted Austin as a computer genius the department couldn’t pass up. From my contacts with Austin, I’d say Bart was right on that score.”

Ebert, a thin, gray, bespectacled man, had spent twenty-nine years at DOE. His engineering career began with a mediocre position at Westinghouse, which he shucked early on for DOE, where he aged into a moderately high position. He verified Saul’s assumption that Austin had access to all classified files as soon as he was hired because he already had a top-secret Q clearance. He was quickly promoted to section head, a logical choice, according to Ebert. Once promoted, he revamped everything, from a more efficient computer-controlled security and transportation system, beginning with the Cray supercomputer in New Mexico and then extending it to the entire NNSA computer system. He also completely revamped, automated, and integrated the special nuclear materials storage, inventory, and transportation format for NNSA complete with a new and improved security format.

Ebert explained how, when setting up the system, Austin visited field offices and even went along in an escort vehicle for a plutonium shipment from Los Alamos to Pantex near Amarillo.

“You can’t get anymore direct knowledge than that, but I never saw anything to make me suspicious that he was doing something illegal.”

“Did Kraft consult you on his promotion?”

“Sort of, but he did it after the fact. Austin was Bart’s man all the way. They worked together, probably because ever since Kraft became division head, he pushed to upgrade computer operations. Kraft and Austin usually ate lunch together, long lunches.” Ebert coughed a dry laugh. “I might have thought they had something queer going on if I hadn’t seen Austin at a bar in Gaithersburg with Marge Alsop from the DOE library. She must be twenty-five years older than Austin.”

“Are you saying Kraft is homosexual?”

Ebert’s eyes widened; then he laughed. “That was a joke.” More forced laughter. “Kraft’s married with two boys. I just meant he and Austin spent a lot of time together. From what I saw of Austin and Marge Alsop, they had more than a mother-son thing.”

Back in his car, Saul consulted his laptop to determine that Marge Alsop was the Chief Librarian of the DOE Technical Library. She was a forty-nine-year-old divorcee, mother of two with three grandchildren, and she had a Q clearance.

In person, Saul found a tall honey blonde with an aging face and a figure rounding into middle age. Facing her across her desk, he knew Austin was after something besides companionship. “How long did you know Steve Austin?”

“About nine months. What a loss. I kept telling him not to drive so fast. He was always in a hurry.”

Saul hesitated, but knew he could ask. “Were you two lovers?”

She blushed and nodded hesitantly. When he asked why they broke up, she described an argument after Austin introduced her to a young man he said was his roommate. She got the feeling there was more between them, and she asked Austin about it. “Steve got mad and stormed out of the house.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“Do you think Steve was homosexual?”

She smiled through the tears. “He never gave me any reason to think so before that. I wonder if he staged the scene just to break us up.” She reached into a drawer for a tissue. “I was a little older than him.”

“What was the other guy’s name?”

“Eric. I don’t remember his last name.”

“Did Austin use the library?”

She blew her nose and recounted how they met when he asked for help in researching a book on the history of the atom bomb. His interest was in old reports on building one.

“Classified reports?” Saul asked

“Yes, but they were from the forties and fifties. Nothing was relevant for today.”

“Since he had a Q clearance, why did he need your help to get classified material?”

“Well…you know, he didn’t have a need-to-know.”

“So he slept with you in return for the reports.”

Her eyes flashed. “You make it sound dirty.”

“Did you let him make copies?”

She nodded rapidly, her face reddening. “I had one of my girls scan the reports for him. But it was old stuff, and he was a history buff.”

- - - - -

Once his feet hit the sidewalk outside the Hoover Building, Saul shrugged off his coat and loosened his tie. At nine-thirty, even the tourists had deserted Pennsylvania Avenue. For Saul, it was another long day of slogging through endless fields of paperwork, of frantically trying to cover all possibilities that would bring SWISILREC to its swift and silent conclusion. Every day the amount of e-mail from the field doubled, as more agents reported their progress. Today, there was little progress to report.

A task force was examining records of past non-nuclear hijackings to determine if anyone implicated in those cases could have been involved in this nuclear caper. That effort involved agents manning computers in Washington, while others tracked down convicted and suspected hijackers and got the word out to snitches that the FBI was interested in such information. Today an e-mail report arrived from the Boston office about an informant who heard about two men implicated in two past hijacking cases being out of town for several weeks at the end of May and early June. Agents had not yet tracked them down.

Saul headed up Tenth Street toward the Ford Theater and his car. A click-click of high heels on the pavement behind him sliced through his thoughts a moment before he heard his name called by a female voice with a British accent. He turned.

“Mr. Saul, I am Sheena Mosely from the Associated Press. I’d like to buy you a drink and give you a chance to verify some extraordinary information I’ve come across.”