Operation Sea Ghost (34 page)

“But how could you know what’s in it?” Batman asked him. “I mean, even the Agency doesn’t know that—or at least their field agents don’t. So it wasn’t like you picked it up sniping their communications.”

“I know because we did something those guys should have done a long time ago,” Murphy replied strongly. “I sent two of my best operatives into the worst part of Bangkok. And not ten blocks away from the CIA station there, we found the guy who dreamed this whole thing up back in 1968.

“He’s an old, old guy now, and he’s got a very bad opium addiction
and
a huge drinking problem, afflictions that are the direct result of him coming up with the original Z-box design and what it was built to do. He was so ashamed of himself that he couldn’t go back to the U.S. after the war was over. He had to keep the secret inside, especially after the Goddamn box got lost. But, let’s just say, when he met my two guys, they persuaded him to educate us.”

Murphy pulled out a small DVD player from his coat pocket and activated its screen. Then he revealed two unmarked DVDs.

“I just got these,” he said. “And they’re both bombshells.”

He pushed one into the DVD player and hit play. The screen filled with static, but then slowly, a grainy video materialized. It showed a hotel room smaller and grungier than the one they were in now. Two men in ski masks and black clothes were talking to a third man, who happened to be tied to a chair.

This third man was elderly and looked sick, both mentally and physically. He had long scraggly gray hair and a beard to match. He was wearing a traditional Thai silk shirt and yoga pants, but they were stained and ripped and filthy.

The men in masks were injecting him with something: narcotics, truth serum, a little of both? It was impossible to tell. But after a few editing dissolves, the old man started talking

“The box was designed to be the ultimate booby trap,” he began in a raspy voice, with captions appearing at the bottom of the screen. “The idea was to turn the North Vietnamese Army’s worst weapon on themselves. So many of our guys had been killed and maimed by their booby traps. We wanted to give them a taste of their own medicine—but just do it in spades.

“The packing case was exactly the same kind used by U.S. troops to transport classified material, documents, even secret weapons in and around Vietnam. These boxes were built of the same material as an airplane’s black box, and they all had a small ‘artificial atmosphere’ inside to preserve the contents over long periods of time.

“Several had been captured by the communists during the Tet Offensive, and a bunch of our secrets were compromised. We learned Hanoi had ordered its troops in the field that should they find one of these boxes, they were not to open it, but rather get it and if possible, the key, back to Hanoi as quickly as possible.”

The old man started mumbling, so one of his interrogators gave him another shot in the arm.

“Remember the neutron bomb?” he started up again. “It kills people, but leaves the buildings standing? That’s approximately what we dreamed up. Again, that box was the ultimate booby trap. An atomic booby trap. But of course, it was also against the Geneva Convention.”

That’s where the first DVD ended. Murphy put in the second one. It was a black and white film converted to video.

“He had this with him,” Murphy told the others. “It’s a Z-box test from many years ago.”

The footage showed a flat, snowy, frozen setting, perhaps in the arctic. There were hundreds of steel cages arranged in a huge circle within camera range. They contained everything from dogs and cats, to birds, rats, and larger mammals like a bear, and many,
many
chimpanzees.

The Z-box was placed on the back of a jeep by men in hazmat suits. The jeep was then driven into the center of the animal cages and parked. The driver got out and quickly walked away.

An undetermined amount of time went by, and then a timer appeared in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It began ticking down from thirty seconds. On reaching zero, there was a tremendous flash of light, so much so it blinded the camera lens for at least a minute.

When the image could be seen again, it showed some fire, some smoke, but mostly just a thirty-foot-deep crater where the jeep had been. Also many of the hundreds of animal cages around the crater had been destroyed, their occupants incinerated. But just a few hundred feet farther out from the center of the blast, many of the cages were still intact and their occupants alive but in a very high state of agitation.

Someone pushed a button somewhere and all the animals that survived were released from their cages. But on getting out, all of them began flopping about, stumbling or moving in a highly disoriented manner.

“What’s the matter with them?” Twitch asked. “Are they irradiated?”

Murphy just shook his head slowly.

“Worse,” he said. “They’re blind.
Permanently
blind … from the flash.”

Batman and Twitch were shocked.

Batman said, “We had no idea this is what the box contained. Whatever it is.”

“It’s a nuclear weapon, is what it is,” Murphy told him strongly. “But not a typical one. Even Nixon knew if he started lighting off tactical nukes in Vietnam, the Russians or the Chi-Coms would probably supply small nukes to the NVA and then we would have had nuclear-armed guerillas running all around southeast Asia. But somehow the Agency talked Nixon into this weapon disguised in a Z-box.

“Technically, it’s called an ‘extremely low-yield gamma-neutron TNW,’ for tactical nuclear weapon. It was built to do three things: First was to explode in such a way that it would be very hard to prove if it was even nuclear. You can see it had a relatively small blast area, maybe a quarter mile or so. We had some conventional blockbuster bombs in Vietnam that could do at least that much damage and probably more.

“Second, this bomb would also send out vast quantities of neutrons that would kill many people while leaving structures relatively unaffected. But third, and the worst of all, it was built to release huge amounts of gamma rays as well. Anyone within twenty miles of the explosion, who looked at the flash even for a second, would be rendered permanently blind.

“The CIA figured the Z-box would be opened somewhere in Hanoi, a tightly packed city of 1.5 million people at the time. There would be an explosion, which again wouldn’t be very big, but the flash would be tremendous. The Agency figured, while only a hundred or so would be killed in the actual blast—more than seven hundred thousand attracted by the noise of the blast would be blinded forever by the flash.

“Can you imagine the crisis that would cause? Three quarters of a million people suddenly and permanently without sight? All in one city? The effect would have been so paralyzing that the North Vietnamese government would have collapsed. No matter how much aid Russia and China poured in, this thing would have ruined them.

“And it probably would have won the war for the U.S., too—but we would have been morally bankrupt in the eyes of the world, or even more so than we are today.”

He pointed to the DVD, still showing the hundreds of blind animals in confused agony, stumbling about. Then he said: “Gentlemen,
that’s
what’s in the Z-box.…”

A stunned silence descended on the room. It lasted for a long minute.

“But how did they expect it to get into the hands of the NVA?” Batman finally asked.

“Like I said,” Murphy replied. “The CIA knew if it were found by NVA or Viet Cong troops, it would eventually get to Hanoi, where they would try to open it. But the Agency didn’t want to be obvious about it, like leaving it behind on a battlefield or in the backseat of a car.

“So they tried to fake an airplane crash with the Z-box on board, along with four already-dead bodies dressed up like the crew, hoping the box and the key would be found and immediately taken to Hanoi as ordered. But the plane was shot down long before it got where the Agency wanted it to go and it wound up being lost in this rice paddy that was covered over with water and mud for years afterward.”

“Man, the Agency was goofy even back then,” Twitch said. “I mean did they just expect it to work, just like that?”

“Yes, they did,” Murphy nodded. “Because they kept it simple. You open the box with the key, and the first few layers contain what look to be classified documents. But once you get down to the bottom layer, like a VC spinning mine, it starts ticking down and it’s impossible to stop. Unless, you turn the key again, and shut it off. And you have exactly one minute to do that. After those sixty seconds, the bomb goes off fifteen seconds later.”

Another silence came over the room.

Then Murphy said, “Now, can you imagine such a weapon being detonated in a large American city? With
millions
of people in the affected area? It would make 9/11 seem like a tea party.”

The hostel shook again with the loud noise coming from the harbor.

Murphy continued to pull on his tie nervously; at times he seemed like an intensely shy man. “I guess I always hoped this thing was just a box of feathers,” he went on. “Or LBJ’s stained pajamas or something. Because then, it really
would
have been a game, getting it back, trying to block everyone else out, just to save the Agency some bad press.

“But now that I know what it is, it’s frightening that I thought so cavalierly about it.”

He fumbled with his tie some more. Then he added: “And I swear to you on my life, I thought the gagnant prize
was
the box—and not just a key.”

“Well, you fucked that up, genius,” Twitch roared at him again. “And now that key is out there on the loose, and so is the Z-box.”

Batman raised his hands as a request for calm. Then he said, “Look, we all fucked up here in some way, shape or form. And pointing fingers won’t solve anything. What we’ve got to do now is figure out how these Jihad Brothers are planning to get the key out of Monte Carlo and bring it to wherever the box is.”

“The only people who know that must be the ex-Stazi guys,” Murphy said. “They were the brokers; they’re the ones who handled all this.”

Batman said, “Then I suggest we go back up to that Palace and beat the piss out of everyone we see. One of them has
got
to know where these Stazi guys are.”

Murphy nodded, but then replied, “Normally, I would say that’s not a bad idea. But I really doubt the Stazi guys were ever even here in MC. They’re too smart for that and I doubt we can ever catch them. As for the Palace, they’re just doing what every other European royal family is doing these days: They’re strapped for funds and have a lot of debt and they just made themselves a quarter of a billion dollars for doing nothing more than hosting a card game. For all we know, they were told the players were vying for an antique or a precious art collection. Far worse things have been done inside those four walls, I’m sure.”

“But here’s what’s bothering me,” Twitch said. “If the game was just for the key, then why would those people even play in it? Why would they put up fifty million if
they
don’t even know where the box is?”

“The answer is simple,” Murphy replied. “Everyone in that game
does
know where the box is—
but us
. Don’t you see? You two guys and my beauty queen were the only ones not in on it. We were late arrivals. My proxy was in just under the wire and then you guys walk in uninvited. We were the only
good guys
there. The rest of them were crooks or terrorists or a little bit of both. They all had to know where the box was already and that the key was super-important. We were just left out in the cold.”

“Then let’s face it,” Batman said glumly. “There’s only one guy in MC who definitely knows where the box is—and that’s the guy who just stole the key. Like I said, we got to find him before he slips out of town.”

“I agree,” Murphy said. “But he’s too smart to try to get out by plane. Or bus or train or car because he’ll know, or the person pulling his strings will know, that the Agency or all their PSO guys will have all those places sealed by now. I’m sure your friend Audette is doing that as we speak.

“Now we all know those Jihad Brothers are smart—or at least smart enough and brutal enough to get the one thing a lot of other people in this town wanted. What we have to do immediately is figure out the
real way
they’re going to get out of town.”

The building shook yet again. The noise from the harbor was even louder than before.

That’s when it came to Batman. He suddenly realized he might know how the Jihad Brotherhood was planning to escape.

He signaled Twitch and they both began climbing out of their mismatched tuxes and into their old Versace clothes.

“We’ve got to go right now,” Batman said. “The three of us…”

“Where are we going?” Murphy asked him anxiously.

“To the harbor,” Batman replied. “Of course…”

24

IT ALL CAME down to traffic.

It was now almost 5:00
A.M.
and it was still dark. Yet Monte Carlo’s winding streets were crowded, bumper to bumper. The traffic was made up almost exclusively of taxis and limousines carrying race drivers, race officials and the glitterati. Because it was just a few hours away from the beginning of the Formula One Grand Prix, there was a mad rush to get to the race staging point before the sun came up and the crowds descended on to Avenue Albert I.

Batman, Twitch and Murphy stood on the corner near their apartment building for fifteen minutes trying to hail a cab, but none were available. They finally walked out onto Avenue des Beaux-Arts, their goal being the harborside roadway of JFK Drive. But even though they could see the waterfront, despite the glare of all the headlights, it seemed like a hundred miles way.

Through it all, Murphy was trying to call his people on his cell phone, but with no luck. He seemed legitimately concerned as he went through a litany of numbers, dialing then redialing them all, but not connecting with any of them. He was muttering that he never stayed out of touch this long with his PSO group, and he was clearly worried that his people might have been trying to get in touch with him.