An explosive sound from behind the counter, then a series of secondary clatters, snapped everyone’s attention to Lois, who stood there. The agents dipped their hands under their jackets. Lois disappeared behind the counter.
“All right.” Alex’s father raised his hands as if giving a benediction. “Everybody stay cool.”
“It’s just Freddy,” Lois said from her crouching position behind the counter. Her laugh sounded nervous. Her head popped into view, then disappeared again. She stood with the youngster in her arms. “He’s found the pots and pans.”
Frederick, wearing pajamas and with his hair sleep-tousled, held a small cooking pot. He waved it furiously, as if trying to recreate the pandemonium. “Ax,” he shouted. Grinning at Alex, he rattled off a string of unintelligible words.
Alex’s father pointed toward the handcuffs the agent still held. “Before you do that, let’s get a reading from Washington.”
The other agents looked to the one who had done most of their talking. He seemed dubious.
“Nobody’s going anywhere.” The colonel’s voice oozed reassurance. “A phone call can’t hurt, can it?”
The call flowered into a conference hookup with Colonel Bryson’s Pentagon contact and an FBI official in Washington. The colonel seemed to be on a first-name basis with people at both places—a legacy of his years in Army Intelligence, Alex figured. Or maybe it was a function of what he’d been doing since retirement.
“Even if you recover the items my boy has,” the colonel said, using the speakerphone so everyone could follow the conversation, “that’s only half the missing lot. He can lead you to the rest.” When a telephone voice questioned how that might be done, the colonel raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Alex.
“The thieves are amateurs,” he said. “One of them used his own car. I can tell you where to find the vehicle. I have their driver’s licenses, their home addresses.”
The colonel’s even-tempered intercession gained them a face-to-face audience with the FBI agents’ supervisor. The meeting would be in the FBI’s Denver office the following day. Alex agreed to give a deposition explaining how he came into possession of the chips and to turn over the driver’s licenses he had taken from the sellers. His refusal to immediately surrender the chips gained him an overnight stay in a Denver lockup.
* * *
Two people awaited Alex and his father when an escort ushered them into the FBI’s Denver Office the next morning: a business-suited agent midway between their ages and an Army intelligence officer who had flown in from Washington on an Air Force jet. Alex soon realized that his father and the intelligence officer, a woman about ten years younger, were friends. Their greeting, while formally correct, exuded warmth. After everyone else had settled onto couches with a coffee table between, the FBI agent sat on a corner of his desk.
“What you’ve stumbled over, Alex,” the intelligence officer said, “is guidance circuitry. Those little bits of silicon are hard-wired programming for shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons.”
The FBI agent studied one of Lois’s photo enlargements. Lois had juxtaposed the chip with a postage stamp as a guide to relative dimensions. “That doesn’t seem possible,” the agent said. “They’re smaller than the stamp. Not that much thicker.”
“They’re the brain,” the intelligence officer said. “The muscle is a twenty-pound missile launched from a tube light enough to be carried cross-country on an infantryman’s back. A three-man team packing the tube and ammo can protect a whole infantry company from helicopter gunships.”
“They’re heat-seekers?” This came from Alex’s father.
“Basically.”
“That technology’s as old as the Sidewinder,” Alex said. “Dates from Vietnam.”
“But it’s evolved.” The intelligence officer centered her attention on Alex. “You know about the surface-to-air missiles from that era? A pilot could dodge them with violent maneuvers and could fool them with decoys.” She tapped one of the magnified photographs. “This little fellow’s too smart for that.”
“Magnesium flares,” Alex said, remembering the tactics he’d studied in the Army. “A gunship launches them as a countermeasure. The burning magnesium is hotter than the ship’s exhaust, so the heat-seeker takes out a flare instead.”
“That’s where the chip comes in.” The intelligence officer pointed to the photo. “It knows the heat-generating characteristics of every helicopter model. The operator just clicks on the craft’s nomenclature—a handbook gives the silhouettes of most makes—and the chip refuses to be lured away by anything appreciably hotter or cooler.”
“What if the grunt doesn’t have a handbook? Maybe he doesn’t have time to scope-out the attacking gunship.”
“Then it’s point-and-fire. The default setting is broad-spectrum. It hunts anything within the temperature range of all the helicopters included in its program. The program also matches heat with the metallic content of a helicopter’s engine and fuselage. Even if a decoy approximates the craft’s exhaust temperature, the missile will ignore it in favor of an alternate heat source closer to the metallic bulk.”
“Impressive.” Too antsy to remain still, Alex stood and picked up one of the photos. From his father’s briefing on their way from Denver, he was pretty sure he already knew the answer to his next question. “Why would a bunch of backcountry rebels need something like this?”
“The Peruvian Army bought a slew of Cobra gunships a few years back, and they’ve learned to use them. If Shining Path can’t find a way to counter the Cobras, they’ll be stuck with their old hit-and-run, pinprick tactics.”
“That brings us to the guidance chips?”
“Exactly. And here’s where the wicket gets sticky. Are you familiar with rare-earth minerals?”
“In a general way. Hard to find, essential for modern technology.”
The intelligence agent nodded. “China is the major source for some of them. If they cut off exports, it would make an oil embargo look like child’s play.”
“I know Peru is a promising alternative, and I understand that the minerals are in rebel-infested territory. Since Shining Path and China are buddies, we’d be in deep shit if they gain control.”
“Do you also know that a mining consortium friendly to the Chinese has made an offer for the rare earth site?”
Alex nodded and glanced at his father, thankful for yesterday’s tutorial. “But they need government approval.”
“So far, the government has said no. But their coalition has a razor-edge majority in the legislature. If Shining Path can show enough muscle to pose a major threat, even without a big victory it might be able to sway the coalition’s minority partner. That would be a game-changer.”
“What’s to keep American interests from making a counter-offer for the mineral rights, outbidding the Chinese?”
This brought a pained smile to the intelligence officer’s face. “The Chinese firm is government owned, and China’s foreign currency reserves are more than twenty times as large as ours. Their dollar reserves—essentially, money we’ve borrowed from them—are worth about twenty percent of everything America produced last year.”
A prolonged silence, broken finally by Alex’s father. “If my boy gives you the chips, what’s to keep Koenig, or Faust, or whoever, from starting over? Won’t they just cut a deal with another renegade manufacturer?”
The intelligence officer sighed. “We order background checks on all defense contractors. Not a lot more we can do.”
Alex tossed the photograph onto the coffee table. “If we can’t control the sellers, why not take out the prospective buyers?”
“Times have changed.” The intelligence officer shook her head. “We don’t do assassinations anymore.”
“You could let Shining Path do it for you.”
“You’ve got an idea?” Alex’s father asked.
Alex pointed to the photo. “I imagine making the chips is a difficult process? Close tolerances and all that?”
“That’s why they cost so much,” the intelligence officer said.
“Lots of rejects? Faulty chips that have to be melted down, or whatever they do with them?”
Understanding registered in Colonel Bryson’s eyes. “It might work,” he said. “By god, it will work!”
“What?” The FBI agent, still sitting on the edge of his desk, was clearly floundering. “What do you have in mind?”
“A switch,” Alex said. “I’ll trade you the chips for an equal number of flawed ones. They’ll need to be perfect on the outside but with bungled circuitry. I’ll offer those in exchange for Pia’s freedom. Let’s see how Shining Path reacts to receiving defective goods.”
The intelligence officer pursed her lips for several seconds. “Good idea. The rebels have got to be suspicious, given Koenig’s long association with the Peruvian government.”
“It will definitely work,” the colonel said. “They’ll assume he’s double-crossed them.”
“Probably,” the intelligence officer said. “But this exchange—what if the bad guys decide to keep both the chips and the woman?”
Silence in the room for a long moment. Then Alex shrugged. “They can do that only if they take me out first.”
Chapter 29
Alex arrived in Lima shortly before midnight the next day, after a bumpy, crowded flight. He registered at the Hyatt Regency under an assumed name, paid in cash for five nights, and crashed on the bed.
Early the next morning, he met with the U.S. Military Attaché and learned that the Pentagon had sent an encrypted message instructing the Attaché to provide logistical support but to get advance clearance before any operational assistance. An Army liaison officer dressed in civilian clothes, a major who Alex guessed was an intelligence agent, suggested that because they didn’t know who might be on Koenig’s payroll they should not involve the Peruvian government. The major stressed that no infringement of Peruvian law could be officially endorsed. Alex interpreted that to mean he was on his own if things fell apart.
His requests were two-fold: enough C-4 explosive to destroy the contents of the aluminum case, a radio-controlled, two-stage toggle switch to ignite it, and two snipers with night-vision scopes. The C-4 and the marksmen would be his life insurance during the switch.
The liaison officer assured him that the snipers and their equipment would be flown in but cautioned that they would fire only if Alex’s life was in clear and imminent danger, if no noncombatants were present, and if there was only minimal probability of return fire. “I understand you want to get the chips into the hands of the bad guys, not destroy them. So, why the C-4?”
“They’ve got to believe I’ll burn the attaché case if they try to take it from me. That’s why I need a two-stage trigger—a dead-man switch. And a light that glows when it’s armed.”
“If it’s just a bluff, why not fake the C-4? Work a little machine oil into a roll of off-white Play-Doh, you’d need lab analysis to tell the difference.”
Alex shook his head. “After the exchange, they’ll salvage the explosive and try using it. If it isn’t the real thing, they’ll wonder about the chips as well. Besides, if something goes wrong during the trade, the exploding case will give me a fighting chance.”
While waiting for the Army to deliver, Alex rented a minivan. He booked a room for four nights at the Hotel Antigua Miraflores, paying in advance with cash. He would stay at the Hyatt and use the Antigua Miraflores as a message drop. From a black-market contact arranged through the liaison officer, he bought a .45-caliber Colt semiautomatic with an extra ammunition clip. The weapon looked like U.S. Army surplus from half a century earlier but seemed in good working condition.
His next stop was the U.S. Embassy. Pretending to be a businessman, he asked for help in contacting Koenig or Faust.
“Every salesman from North America has the same request,” a low-level functionary said. “That’s not the Embassy’s job.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Lima office proved more sympathetic but offered no hope of talking directly with Koenig. They gave Alex a list of officers in Variant Corporation and other Koenig-controlled companies. It was the size of a small-town telephone directory.
Alex decided on a direct frontal approach and had an official-looking routing slip crafted at a graphic-arts shop. The slip’s bold-print heading said, “Urgent—Time Sensitive Information.” In the memorandum space at the bottom, he scrawled, “I’ve got them—let’s talk,” and included his name and the telephone number at the Antigua Miraflores. He bundled the routing slip with a photo of a guidance chip and addressed it to Maximillian Koenig. A local parcel delivery service promised to deliver it to the Variant Corporation building within the hour.
His next-day call for messages at the Antigua Miraflores hit pay dirt. A lawyer from a prominent Lima firm had left a call-back number. To avoid a trace, Alex returned the call on a prepaid cell phone. The lawyer neither confirmed nor denied representing Maximillian Koenig. His client, he said, owned certain items that Alex had found, and the lawyer had been commissioned to retrieve them. He had no personal knowledge of the items and was not at liberty to disclose his client’s name.
“I deal with one of two people,” Alex said. “Maximillian Koenig or Theo Faust. If they want the items in question, tell them to call me. I’m in Lima for another forty-eight hours.”
Late that afternoon, he picked up a second message with a telephone number. He returned the call, and someone pretending to be Faust asked the price of his merchandise.
Faust had a distinctive voice—the speaker was a fraud. “Let’s cut the crap,” Alex said. “I’m not selling, I’m trading. Faust is holding a woman against her will. Koenig gets the chips when I get the woman. A straight swap.”
“I have been instructed to negotiate for a case of merchandise,” said the ersatz Faust. “I need to know your price and terms of delivery.”
“One man shows with the woman. I take her, he takes the chips. You tell them tomorrow is my last day in Lima.” Alex pressed the end call button.
The same voice answered when he returned a call the next morning. “We have what you want,” the man said. “And we have instructions for the transfer.”
Alex’s pulse double-timed, but he forced his voice to remain level and cold. “One man brings the woman. If I see anyone trailing them, the switch is off.”
“You’ll recognize the lady?”
“I know her.”
“On the Plaza de la Concordia, there is a statue of a generalissimo astride a horse. A man will be there with the lady today at noon. Bring the merchandise.”
In a rush-hour crowd, they could plant as many men as they wanted. Alex wouldn’t be able to run, and he was too tall to hide in the crowd. Rules of engagement for his Army-supplied snipers’ would render them powerless to intervene. “You sound like an intelligent man,” he said. “You can’t really believe I’d do something that stupid.”
“You confuse me, Señor.”
“This is their turf. I’m not about to walk into a spot where they’ve had hours to set a trap.”
“My client is a rational man. We will accommodate any reasonable request.”
“Tell him to give his delivery boy a cell phone. I’ll call you back in an hour for the number. Have him circling Plaza de la Concordia at two a.m.”
Alex met with his Military Attaché contact to get approval to use the snipers, who for twelve hours had been cooling their heels in a second-class Lima hotel. His choice of a location for the switch easily gained the liaison officer’s approval: the municipal garbage dump. A massive expanse of rotting garbage and human detritus, the dump teemed with trucks, bulldozers, and scavengers by day but became a deserted wasteland at night. Alex estimated it to be the equivalent of sixteen city blocks. With no buildings or vegetation to obstruct their field of fire, and with their high-powered rifles equipped with night scopes, the marksmen could be stationed far away. They would have radiotelephones equipped with earplug
receivers.
The liaison officer, the same major as before, reminded Alex that the snipers would fire only if they received an unambiguous signal and then only if in their judgment the situation met their rules of engagement. While Alex watched, the major lined the faulty guidance chips’ aluminum case with putty-like C-4 explosive and rigged it with a two-stage, radio-controlled trigger, a cylindrical, cigarette-lighter-sized device. He showed Alex how to trip the safety switch to arm it.
“When the safety’s off, this button will glow,” the major said. He tapped the top of the triggering device. “Depressing the button arms the trigger. Releasing it precipitates the explosion. For the dramatic effect you wanted, I’ve rigged a red light in the case on top of the chips. It will glow when you depress the trigger, so the black-hats won’t doubt you’ve got control.”
“Once I’ve depressed the button, how do I keep it from detonating?”
The Descent From Truth Page 24
