Perilous Panacea (27 page)

“Many things are happening, so we are moving fast.” Simmons pointed to the monitor. “One holdup is the program you’re working on.”

“That’s all?”

“I wish that was all. We have to machine two more pieces of plutonium. That means we will have to cast more plutonium ingots in that contaminated furnace room.”

“That worries you, huh?”

Simmons jerked a handkerchief from his rear pocket. “Have you ever seen plutonium metal when it’s exposed to warm air?”

“No. But I know it oxidizes rapidly.”

Simmons looked for a clean part of the handkerchief. “It turns yellow with plutonium oxide almost instantly. If you’re not careful and the oxide gets out of the atmosphere chamber, it gets all over the room. Soon, the air’s full of the yellow shit, and you’re breathing it.” He roared into the handkerchief and then examined the effluent looking for yellow powder.

“And if you breathe it, you’re finished. Like Drafton,” Curt said.

“That’s right.” His voice quaked. “We worked too fast and got careless. I just hope those masks we’re using work.”

“Can’t plutonium ignite and burn spontaneously when it’s exposed to air?”

“You mean, is it pyrophoric? It is under certain conditions. According to Applenu, finely ground plutonium powder is pyrophoric, and certain plutonium alloys are. Actually, there were some pyrophoric alloys in one of the hijacked shipments. We don’t intend to use them. They’re those barrels in the chemical-processing room, boxed up and marked with all kinds of warnings.” Simmons tapped the monitor. “Is the new machining program finished?”

“Just about.”

“We’ve got to finish machining those pieces, so we can get out of here.”

“I’ll finish the program later today. Then you do me a favor. When my computer program is finished, turn your back, maybe distract my guard a minute, and let me slip out the back door.”

Simmons stared up at Curt, his eyes filled with alarm. “I can’t, man. Hey, I’m sorry about Surling. That wasn’t in the plan.”

“You don’t believe that anymore than I do. What about you? You have seen all the people involved with this work. Maybe they won’t trust you either when the work is done.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Saul knew better than plan anything for the morning. A meeting notice may as well have appeared in the Post next to Mosely’s story. Dowel waited for them at the end of his conference table, and Saul again wound up sitting to Dowel’s right and across from Spanner.

“So what the fuck’s going on?” Dowel drawled, even before Saul sat. “First Mosely gets the information that we think Austin’s alive, which we were keeping quiet, then we find out the Iranians might be involved, which has all kinds of ramifications, and Hughson gets that information at the same time. You, Mr. Saul, found out that Applenu could be an Iranian the day-before yesterday, and Hughson finds out about it the same day. And your wife just happens to work for Hughson.”

“I didn’t say a word to anyone.”

“I’d like to think you aren’t that fucking dumb, Mr. Saul, but it doesn’t look good, does it?”

“If you don’t believe me, give me a polygraph test.”

“Give him a fucking lie detector test,” Dowel mumbled as he turned to Spanner. “They want his ass off the case, George. Fact is some people are not too happy with you either. And no polygraph test is going to change that.”

“I believe him,” Spanner said. “Somebody’s pulling our chain. Somebody was leaking information to Mosely, and now they are also leaking to Hughson. They’re trying to rattle us and make us and the Administration look bad.”

“If that’s their objective, they are succeeding.”

“What is the White House doing with the Iranian connection we turned up and essentially verified?” Spanner asked.

“According to the State Department, such ‘vaporous rumors’ can not be used to conclude Iran is involved,” Dowel huffed. “They spawned another fucking committee of White House and State Department types to deliberate on the correct action to take on the vaporous rumors. But that’s not what we are here for,” Dowel said and turned to Saul. “The Iranian leak was just the latest leak. Hughson also mysteriously showed up in Chicago the night of the bombing.”

“The Hughson leak makes it look as if they’re trying to make Rick look bad,” Spanner said. “It’s too blatant. That’s why I believe him. In the media, we all look bad, but here, it’s Rick who takes the heat. Besides that, it keeps us looking for the source in our midst, and while we are doing that, they are safe in their rat hole.”

Spanner constantly amazed Saul on how he stood up to superiors with contrary opinions, and he usually prevailed, although it didn’t look like he would this time.

Dowel leaned back in his chair and spoke to the ceiling. “You two convinced me the first leaks were the result of that trap door and Trojan horse. You concluded that meant Austin was still alive. But you closed that computer leak, so maybe Austin isn’t alive after all and somebody else is doing it. So based on the timing of the leaks relative to when we learned the information, it all comes back to one or both of you being the source.”

“Austin is alive, I know it,” Saul said. “Slaughter and his people tracked an intruder in our computer system after they discovered the trap door. They just couldn’t trace it.”

“But they closed the trap door before the latest leaks,” Dowel growled.

“I think I see it now,” Saul said forcing himself to smile at Dowel. “Maybe he put more than one Trojan horse and trap door on the computer, and when we shut down one it activated another.”

“Our people would have found them,” Dowel said.

“Probably not,” Saul said, “since they wouldn’t be expecting that scenario.”

“Get Slaughter to check it out,” Spanner said turning to Saul.

“I’d like to believe you two,” Dowel said, “but a lot of our so-called friends at the White House want Saul off the case. They want him off now. After Saul turned up evidence that Applenu was an Iranian, the State Department and the White House panicked and formed their committee. Like I told you last week, State’s been doing the Neville Chamberlain waltz with the Iranians during the last few months. In those private talks, State concluded that the Iranians are taking a more reasonable stance concerning their nuclear ambitions. So the White House keeps waltzing with the bastards, trying to find any excuse they can to keep from having to come down on them. Besides that, it galls the shit out of me to have the White House and State accuse us of leaking, considering that information flows through those two places like shit through a tin horn.

“Then we have your friend Senator Hughson. No Neville Chamberlain waltz for him. He accuses the Iranians right off, and this morning Teheran Radio does one of their old ‘U.S.-is-the-great-Satan routines’. It sounded like the great Ayatollah himself had risen from the grave. We are accused of being behind a Zionist plot to discredit Muslim people throughout the world. It’s the same old Islamic-fascist bullshit we’ve been hearing since their revolution in 1979. Of course, that pisses off the White House and State, who probably adopted the go-slow dance strategy because they’re incapable of thinking up a real one.”

Saul knew he was off the case without appeal. His big chance, his career-enhancement case was gone. What career? He should have opted for computers after college, he thought, as a Dylan lyric flitted into his mind:

I was so much older then,

I’m younger than that now.

Spanner said, “I’ve been thinking about Mosely. We know her father and brothers were connected to the IRA. Her father was killed by a bomb, probably one he was trying to set, but the IRA blamed it on the Protestants. One brother spent three years in a British jail and he and two older brothers are still in Belfast. We also know that she was a radical in her youth.”

“So?” Dowel said. “Besides, the IRA-British thing has been settled, and there has been little violence for years.”

“That’s right, but there are rumors of dissident IRA elements that still want to stir up trouble. What’s to say that some IRA faction isn’t mixed up in this, and they’re using her to feed disinformation to us? Her information on Saint Louis and Indianapolis sidetracked us and the same with Chicago, where we learned a hell of a lot about McCormick Place, but not much else.”

“Are you saying the IRA is in cahoots with Iran?” Dowel asked. “Don’t let anybody at the White House or State hear you say that. They’ll think you’re crazier than Hughson.”

“Stranger things have happened. There have always been rumors about the IRA getting weapons from Libya and other elements in the Middle East. If you read between the lines on this latest Hughson episode and the one in Chicago, you see that Mosely and Hughson are always acting in concert. She gets his wisdom for her column before he has his news conference. She could be feeding him information just to put pressure on Saul, figuring that would shake up our investigative team here at headquarters. Then again, if we assume Austin is leaking to Mosely, it could be him who is leaking to Hughson. While we’re accusing each other, we’re not finding those bombs.”

“So bug her fucking phones,” Dowel said. “Tail her.”

“That’s the other thing about her: she cooperates with us. She let us bug her phones, and an agent is following her. She forwards information she gets by e-mail. Trouble is, it comes from [email protected]. When you trace it back, it is sent from a public computer at a library or some such place or routed through some computer in Romania or wherever.”

“So what the fuck do we do besides taking Saul off the case?”

That’s it, Saul thought. He’d have to go with Uncle Nate now, whether he wanted to or not. What if Nate doesn’t win?

“What we do,” Spanner said, “is take Rick out of his high-visibility role for the time being. Okay, Rick?”

Saul nodded. What else could he say? “I was thinking somebody should go to Tennessee to investigate the Reedan lead. He may be the computer expert they needed.”

“Good idea.” Spanner looked at Dowel for approval.

Dowel turned his chair toward Saul. “Okay, but if anything else goes wrong, you’re finished. And you won’t be saved by any would-be president of the United States.”

- - - - -

Back in his office, Saul found a message to call Mary. On the phone, she sounded angry and just asked him to pick her up for lunch.

Mary’s desk occupied a corner of a large room crowded with three other desks. She stood bent over some papers on her desk, head-to-head with Ross Lectner, Hughson’s chief of staff. They began to laugh, and as Lectner straightened up, he rested his hand on her shoulder. He saw Saul approaching, and his hand bounced from her shoulder as if it were a rubber ball.

Saul followed her into the corridor of the Senate Office Building, trying to keep himself calm after seeing her short red skirt. Once they were isolated from others in the corridor, he let loose. “Is that all you have to do up here: play grab ass with the guys in the office?”

“Just can it, Rick, until we get out of here,” she said quietly, not looking at him.

Once outside, she exploded, “You bastard!”

“Me, a bastard? You’re the one with somebody’s hands all over you.”

“Is that all you think about: me and some guy? One of these days…if you keep this up, maybe then…what I’m talking about now is the story in the paper this morning. You asked me to find out how the Senator got it, remember?”

“I remember. And that’s how you do it, by letting Lectner feel you up?”

She ignored the jab. “I expected this, since you obviously didn’t want me to find out the truth. Or else you wanted me to find out, because you feel you’re getting at me somehow.”

He unlocked and opened the car door for her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She made no move to get in. “I found out that you got Hughson that information on the Iranian connection. And on what was happening in Chicago, too. Jesus, Rick, why couldn’t you give it to me first? I know you don’t want me on this job, but as long as I’m here, you could at least help me.”

“I gave it to him? Who told you that?”

“Ross. He said Senator Hughson got an e-mail with the information. Ross said the senator was vague on who the e-mail was from, but he thought you set it up with Mosely. You gave her the information with the understanding that she’d give it to Hughson, so she could be the first in the media with it, and he could be the first one in congress to run with it. You were doing just what Uncle Nate wanted you to, only this way you figured you wouldn’t be directly involved.”

“That’s bullshit. I gave Mosely nothing.”

“Ross said either you gave it to Mosely to e-mail the senator, or you e-mailed the Senator directly. Jesus, Rick, all I’m saying is you could have given me that information. It wouldn’t have looked anymore like you gave the information to Hughson than it does now. In fact, I could have made it look better. But you’d do anything to get me away from this job.”

“You’re serious. I didn’t give Mosely or Hughson or anybody else that information.”

“You can’t lie your way out of it this time. You said you had a funny call from Uncle Nate. I called him, and he verified it. Hughson told him what you’d set up.”

Maybe Spanner had it figured right. “Somebody’s doing me in. I’m off the Washington part of the case and on my way to Tennessee because of that story.”

“Somebody’s doing you in, just like somebody’s always screwing me,” she said. She turned and headed back toward the Senate Office Building. “It’s all in your head, Rick.”

He turned and followed her. “So how did Mosely or I get Hughson the information?”

“It came by e-mail from [email protected].”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Standing tall in knee-high grass, her legs spread slightly for balance, Lori held the Taurus forty-five with both hands at arm’s length and listened for Dad’s words from ten years earlier: “Relax, concentrate on the target, take a deep breath, and squeeze it off. Steady. Squeeeeze.”

The gun barked. Her arms jerked back and thrust the gun toward her face. She flinched at the deafening explosion, but the foot-square side of the cardboard box on the ground twenty feet in front of her stood untouched. She couldn’t even hit a box. Three more shots, and three more misses.

She sucked a breath of hot, humid air, suddenly aware of the hushed meadow surrounded by woods, the chirping birds silenced momentarily by the reverberations of the ear-splitting blasts. Sweating with gnats flitting about her face and diving for her eyes, she wiped her forehead with a sleeve of her plaid shirt and brushed her hand across her head to check her tied-back hair. “Concentrate. No flinching. Relax. Squeeze it off. Steady. Squeeeeze.”

The gun barked, and the box jumped.

Three shots followed, and each one found the target, sending the box into an erratic journey through the grass. She ejected the magazine and dropped it onto the ground next to the loaded one that she picked up and rammed into the handle of the pistol. She jerked back the slide to chamber a round.

Since she had followed Beecher to the industrial park two mornings ago, she made three more trips. Each time she eased the car into the street and fought the overwhelming urge to mash down on the accelerator and speed past their building. Instead, with every nerve in her body primed to explode, she slowed to look it over. Outwardly, it appeared no different from the five other long buildings on the street: two doors, a loading dock, and a sign that identified it as General Nuclear American Company.

It was different: Beecher and Maxwell went into the building. The other guy she saw the first morning could be the one in the sketch in the newspaper, the one the FBI wanted—Applenu.

During the day, she could only drive by and hold her breath, hoping no one would come out and recognize her. Once the black Town Car was there, twice the green car, a Toyota with Tennessee license plates, was there. Tonight she would determine what was in the building. Somehow, she’d find out if they had Curt in there.

Now, she glanced around the field surrounded by woods on the government reservation outside of Oak Ridge, well away from the road and houses. She picked up the other box she brought, about the same size as the first one. She took it to a large cedar tree and stuck it into the branches, about the height of Beecher’s heart. This time she backed up twenty-five feet, concentrated on the box until she saw Beecher strutting toward her. She raised the gun and fired. Missed. “Clear your mind and concentrate on the target. Squeeeeze.”

The box jerked. Another shot shoved the box deeper into the cedar tree. She paused, took a deep breath, and fired again, and again, and again.

- - - - -

Beth saw the car in the driveway first. “Mommy, they’re back. Those bad men are back!”

Lori’s heart jumped and jolted her thoughts back to the present. A black car? No, dark-blue, smaller. She sighed. It still meant trouble: Fortner and a curly-headed younger man stood by the car. “It’s okay, Beth, it’s not them.”

- - - - -

Saul sat at a two-person table next to the darkened dance floor that was jammed with clutching bodies. On stage, a big round blonde sang about making it through the night. Your typical night in Babe’s Lounge at the Knoxville, Tennessee, Howard Johnson, he thought. The only good thing about the hot day and night in Tennessee was that it wasn’t a hot day in D.C., a day filled with telephones, meetings, and paper work, and nights arguing with Mary.

Before he left Washington, he debated on whether to call Uncle Nathan and tell him he’d be ready to join his campaign when it got going. Why not? His Bureau career was totaled. He wouldn’t even get a chance to return to the statistics detail. Instead, he’d be dispatched to some backwater—like Knoxville, perhaps, Fortner’s beat—that would make Spokane look metropolitan, back to the boondocks with an indelible mark on his record. Either get out or turn bitter, like a lot of the guys he knew that had been around too long, biding their time to qualify for their pension. Not him.

Although he shouldn’t have, he called Mary before he left D.C. She told him to go to Tennessee and stay there, and by the way, he could go fuck himself.

Saul drained his Jack Daniels and water and ordered another. He turned and glanced at the wall behind the bar, where fifteen silent TV screens flashed a kaleidoscope of noiseless multi-color images into the noisy room. Half the sets showed a Chicago Cubs game, with all but one of the rest energized by a frenetic long-haired, big-mouthed singer seeming to be getting ready to eat a microphone. On the remaining set in the upper right corner, Anderson Cooper interviewed a fast-talking, long-haired man, his head shaking and eyes blinking in time with the turbulent animation of his mouth. Were they talking about atomic bombs, like every other talking head on TV seemed to be?

Someone somewhere was making atomic bombs that could blow away a city or two, and Doctor Curt Reedan of Oak Ridge was involved. Unfortunately, their visit with Lori didn’t move them any closer to Reedan or the people making the bombs.

Saul reflected on his and Fortner’s meeting with Lori Reedan. Tall and slim, she was a beautiful woman with long, coal-black hair. She was undoubtedly lovelier when she wasn’t a nervous wreck, her hair wasn’t drawn back, purple didn’t ring her eyes like smudged mascara, and a purplish-yellow bruise didn’t blotch her left cheek.

After she got her car into the garage, she led Saul and Fortner to the couch in her living room, a neat room with everything in its place. She wore blue jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt, as if she were a farmer just in from working the fields. Before she joined them in the living room, she took her daughter downstairs to watch TV. Her daughter fought desperately to stay, crying and hanging on to her mother.

Saul felt at ease in the room: a comfortable home, your wife taking care of the children instead of out trying to run the government. That wasn’t the way your twenty-first century American man was supposed to feel, but sometimes it just seemed like the right way. Call him a chauvinist, but it worked for his mother, and it probably worked for Lori Reedan’s mother and for Lori Reedan herself.

When she finally sat on the chair across the room from them, Saul let Fortner question her.

“We know your husband travels a lot and that he went to Miami on June tenth. He was scheduled to leave Miami for Cincinnati the next day. On the following week, he was scheduled to go to Raleigh. He had two more trips scheduled the week following that, and one the week after that. He was also completing a job for Y-12 right here in Oak Ridge.”

She nodded, confused, looking to Saul, then to Fortner. “That’s why he’s accepting the professorship at the Colorado School of Mines,” she said. “So he doesn’t have to travel so much.”

“We know he was scheduled to take all those trips, but he didn’t take any of them. He didn’t get in touch with Y-12 on their job either. As far as we can tell, he never left Miami.”

“You’re mistaken.” Even with the long-sleeve shirt, she suddenly got cold and pulled her arms around herself. “He took those trips. Now he’s in Pennsylvania. He’s been away longer than usual. Like I told you the other day, he’ll probably be back this weekend.”

“Where is he in Pennsylvania?”

“I don’t know exactly; somewhere outside of Pittsburgh. He’ll call tonight or tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”

“Why did he go to Miami?”

“To give a talk at the A-S-M-E meeting.”

“A-S-M-E?”

“The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.”

“Why didn’t he take the plane back from Miami? Why didn’t he use those other reservations?”

“He used them. You’ll see.”

“Airline computers don’t lie, Mrs. Reedan.”

Her dark-haired daughter ran into the room and whispered into her mother’s ear about something to eat, occasionally casting nervous glances at Saul and Fortner. Lori Reedan told her she could have cookies.

The kid would grow up to be as pretty as her mother, Saul thought. He wondered again why he couldn’t talk Mary into a kid. It was time. His mother had his sister when she was twenty-one.

“Maybe Curt made alternate arrangements,” Lori Reedan said, watching her daughter go into the kitchen.

“We checked all the airlines.”

“Why do you want Curt? He hasn’t done anything.”

“We don’t think he’s done anything wrong,” Saul said, as the daughter came out of the kitchen with cookies, hesitated at the top of the steps to look at her mother, and then went downstairs. “We want to question him about what he’s been working on recently.”

“I told you, when he calls, I’ll let you know where he is.”

Saul stood. “By the way, what happened to your cheek?”

Her hand jumped to her face and gently probed the bruise. She tried to laugh. “A stupid accident: I bumped into a door…in the dark.”

Outside, he and Fortner agreed that she had run into somebody’s hand—or maybe a fist. Was it Reedan’s during a domestic quarrel like Fortner thought, or did it have something to do with the case? Perhaps they fought over him taking the bomb job.

After they left the Reedan house, Saul and Fortner split up and talked to neighbors, the few that were home. Most of them recognized the Reedan name, but little else, although one neighbor two houses down didn’t even know their name. She said they moved into the neighborhood only a little over two years ago and hadn’t gotten around to meeting the neighbors.

Only Sarah Eberhard next door seemed to know anything about them. She insisted that Lori always knew where Curt was, almost to the minute, because she took care of plane and hotel reservations and acted as his secretary. She believed the story about running into the door.

Reedan was their man all right.

Saul glanced around the lounge, filled mostly with people in their late thirties, forties and fifties, an intensity etched on their faces as they strained for fun and excitement. At the edge of the dance floor, a skinny guy in a white shirt and jeans with a dried-up face and a thin mat of gray hair sipped a long-necked Budweiser and studied the dance floor. Must be in his sixties, Saul thought. Not the crowd of people out having fun at night you saw on TV.

Saul sipped his drink and considered where they stood. They had someone checking whether Reedan gave his talk in Miami. Reedan was supposed to leave Miami the day before Surling got to Philadelphia. Maybe they were both in Pennsylvania. Were they there voluntarily?

Two tables away, Saul spotted a brunette about his age in a C-skimmer skirt sipping wine at a table filled with older women. Would she dance with him?

His mind wandered back to the atom bombs. Was participation by Reedan and Surling voluntary? Who knows these days? All kinds of military people were being caught selling secrets. Why not bomb makers for sale?

Some guy in a cowboy hat asked the brunette to dance. She refused and glanced Saul’s way.

He remembered Harry Bryson saying that all you had to do to pick up women was say you were FBI. You didn’t even have to show your badge. He decided to finish his drink and call Mary. Dancing with strange brunettes in HOJO lounges wasn’t for him.

“You alone, man? Mind if I sit down?”

Saul surfaced from his thoughts to see a young black-bearded man looking around the room at the full tables. He wore an orange University of Tennessee T-shirt and a white baseball cap with an orange T. Saul motioned him to sit, thinking he looked vaguely familiar.

They exchanged pleasantries, discussed the hot-humid weather, and the upcoming first University of Tennessee football game. The stranger ordered a gin and tonic and bought Saul another Jack Daniels and water.

“I guess I’m not dressed for this place,” the man said, pointing at Saul’s tie. He removed his baseball cap to reveal a shaved head.

“I’m in town on business,” Saul said. “What about you?”

“I’m a computer modeler over in Oak Ridge.” He reached across the table to shake hands. “I’m George Atkinson.”

Saul shook his hand. “Rick Saul. Do you know a Curt Reedan? He’s a computer guy in Oak Ridge.”

“Are you FBI?”

“FBI? Why do you ask that?”

“Because the FBI is looking for Reedan and a chemist named Surling.”

“How do you know that?” They hadn’t released that information and didn’t intend to.

“It’s on a new website, www.info4u.com. I got the website from a story on the AP website by that Sheena Mosely. The info4u.com website has everything that’s happened in the stolen nuclear material case. So Rick, are you with the FBI?”

“Well, I…” He felt someone tap his shoulder and turned to find a smiling woman.

“Hey, love, are you stuck inside Knoxville with the Memphis Blues again?” she said, glancing quickly at Atkinson.

The play on the words of the Dylan song and the British accent: “Miz Mosely, is it?”

“Hey, good detecting. Recognized my voice, huh?”

Short dark hair and a pretty face, not bad for a fifty-something broad, at least in this light. Probably slightly overweight, because both times he’d seen her she wore a full dark skirt and ruffled white blouse—no C-skimmers for her. He remembered Atkinson and the website and turned back to find him gone.

“Where did that guy go? He said there was a new website spewing about the nuclear material case. He said he read about it in your story on the AP website.”

“Right. I got an e-mail from [email protected] about the website. It was signed: ‘An Inquisitive Friend’. I forwarded it to you and to the other FBI address just like all the other messages I got.” She explained the new information on the website—the same information Atkinson had. “Does this confirm your Austin is alive theory?”

Austin, he thought, which meant there was another trap door and Trojan horse. “What brings you down here?”

“You do. We’ve made some good trades on information up until now. Besides, you are one of the leaders of the investigation, so I figure you’ll be where the action is.”