by Tom Clancy
“Well?” Ghosn asked as a man ran off to the newly deepened crater.
“Ten percent off,” Fromm said, looking up. Then he smiled. “Ten percent too much.”
“What does that mean?” Qati demanded, suddenly worried that they’d done something wrong.
“It means that my young student has learned his lessons well.” Fifteen minutes later, they were sure. It took two men to find it, and half an hour to remove the tungsten casing from the core. What had been a nearly solid steel mass as big around as a man’s fist was now a distorted cylinder no wider than a cigar. Had it been plutonium, a nuclear reaction would have taken place. Of that the German was sure. Fromm hefted it in his hand and presented it to Ibrahim.
“Herr Ghosn,” he said formally. “You have a gift with explosives. You are a fine engineer. In the DDR it took us three attempts to get it right. You have done it in one.”
“How many more?”
Fromm nodded. “Very good. We shall do another tomorrow. We will test all the stainless-steel blanks, of course.”
“That is why we made them,” Ghosn agreed.
On the way back, Bock ran over his own calculations. According to Fromm, the force of the final explosion would be more than four hundred fifty thousand tons of TNT. He therefore based his estimates on a mere four hundred thousand. Bock was always conservative on casualty estimates. The stadium and all in it would be vaporized. No, he corrected himself. That wasn’t really true. There was nothing magical about this weapon. It was merely a large explosive device. The stadium and all in it would be totally destroyed, but there would be a great deal of rubble flung ballistically hundreds, perhaps thousands of meters. The ground nearest the device would be pulverized down to pieces of molecular size. Dust particles would then be sucked up into the fireball. Bits of the bomb-assembly residue would affix themselves to the rising, boiling dust. That’s what fallout was, he’d learned, dirt with bomb residue attached. The nature of the blast—being set off at ground level—would maximize the fallout, which would be borne downwind. The majority would fall within thirty kilometers of the blast site. The remainder would be a plaything of the winds, to fall over Chicago or St. Louis or maybe even Washington. How many would die from that?
Good question. He estimated roughly two hundred thousand from the blast itself, certainly no more than that. Another fifty to one hundred thousand from secondary effects, that number including long-term deaths from cancers which would take years to manifest themselves. As Qati had noted earlier, the actual death count was somewhat disappointing. It was so easy to think of nuclear bombs as magical engines of destruction, but they were not. They were merely highly powerful bombs with some interesting secondary effects. It also made for the finest terrorist weapon yet conceived.
Terrorist? Bock asked himself. Is that what I am?
It was, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Bock had long since decided his measure of respect for the judgment of others. This event would be the best expression of it.
“John, I need an idea,” Ryan said.
“What’s that?” Clark asked.
“I’ve drawn a blank. The Japanese Prime Minister is going to be in Mexico in February, then he’s flying up here to see the President. We want to know what he’s going to be saying on his airplane.”
“I don’t have the legs to dress up as a stew, doc. Besides, I’ve never learned to do the tea ceremony, either.” The field officer turned SPO paused and turned serious. “Bug an airplane ... ? That sounds like a real technical challenge.”
“What do you know about this?”
John examined his coffee. “I’ve placed intelligence-gathering devices before, but always on the ground. With an aircraft you have lots of ambient noise to worry about. You also have to sweat where your subject intends to sit. Finally, with a presidential aircraft you need to worry about security. The technical side is probably the hardest,” he decided. “The greatest personal threat to the guy is probably at home—unless he’s going to stopover at Detroit, right? Mexico City. Okay, people speak Spanish there, and my Spanish is pretty good. I’d take Ding down with me, of course.... What sort of aircraft will he be using?”
“I checked. He’ll be flying a JAL 747. The upper deck behind the cockpit is laid out as his conference room. They put in beds, too. That’s where he’ll be. Their PM likes to kibbitz with the drivers. He’s pretty smart about traveling, sleeps as much as he can to handle the jet lag.”
Clark nodded. “People have to wipe the windows. Not like he’s got an air force base to handle all the ground-service requirements like we do it. If JAL flies into there regularly, they’ll have Mexican ground crews. I’ll check out data on the 747.... Like I said, that’s the easy part. I can probably talk my way there. Might even get Ding to head down with a good set of papers and get a job. That would make it easier. I presume this has executive approval?”
“The President said ‘find a way.’ He’ll have to approve the final op-plan.”
“I need to talk to the S&T guys.” Clark referred to the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology. “The real problem is noise.... How fast, doc?”
“Fast, John.”
“Okay.” Clark rose. “Gee, I get to be a field-spook again. I’ll be over in the new building. It may take me a few days to figure if it’s possible or not. This mean I can’t go on the U.K. trip?”
“Bother you?” Jack asked.
“Nope. Just as soon stay home.”
“Fair enough. I get to do some Christmas shopping at Hamleys.”
“You know how lucky you are to have ’em little? All my girls want now is clothes, and I can’t pick girl clothes worth a damn.” Clark lived in horror of buying women’s clothing.
“Sally has her doubts now, but little Jack still believes.”
Clark shook his head. “After you stop believing in Santa Claus, the whole world just goes downhill.”
“Ain’t it the truth?”
23
OPINIONS
“Jack, you look bloody awful,” Sir Basil Charleston observed.
“If one more person tells me that, I’m going to waste him.”
“Bad flight?”
“Bumpy as hell all the way across. Didn’t sleep much.” As the even-darker-than-usual circles under his eyes proclaimed.
“Well, we’ll see if lunch helps.”
“It is a pretty day,” Ryan noted as they walked up Westminster Bridge Road toward Parliament. It was a rare early-winter English day with a blue, cloudless sky. A brisk wind swept down the Thames, but Ryan didn’t mind. He had a heavy coat and a scarf around his neck, and the frigid blast on his face woke him up. “Trouble at the office, Bas?”
“Found a bug, a bloody bug, two floors down from my office! The whole building’s being swept.”
“Things are tough all over. KGB?”
“Not sure,” Charleston said as they crossed the bridge. “Trouble with the façade, you see, bloody thing began crumbling—same as happened to Scotland Yard a few years ago. The workers replacing it found an unexplained wire and followed it.... Our Russian friends have not cut back on their activities, and there are other services as well. See anything like that in your shop?”
“No. It helps that we’re more isolated than Century House.” Jack meant that the British Secret Intelligence Service was in so densely populated an area—there was a nearby apartment block, for example—that a very low-power bug could get data out. That was less likely at the Agency’s Langley headquarters, which sat alone on a large wooded campus. In addition to that, the newer construction had allowed installation of elaborate protections against internal radio sources. “You should do what we’ve done and install wave guides.”
“That would cost a bloody fortune, which we do not have at the moment.”
“What the hell, it gives us a chance to take a walk. If anyone can bug us out here, we’ve already lost.”
“It never ends, does it? We win the Cold War, but it never ever ends.�
��
“Which Greek was it? The one whose personal hell was rolling a big rock up a hill, and every time he got it there the son of a bitch rolled down the other side.”
“Sisyphus ... ? Tantalus, perhaps? Long time since I bade farewell to Oxford, Sir John. In either case, you’re right. Get to the top of one hill and all you see is another damned hill.” They continued walking down the embankment, away from Parliament, but toward lunch. Meetings like this one had rules. You couldn’t get down to business until after the small talk and a pregnant pause. In this case, there were some off-season American tourists snapping pictures. Charleston and Ryan walked around to avoid them.
“We have a problem, Bas.”
“What’s that?” Charleston said without turning. Behind them were three security officers. Two more preceded them.
Jack didn’t turn either. “We have a guy inside the Kremlin. Spends some time with Narmonov. Says Andrey Il’ych is worried about a military/KGB coup. Says that they might renege on the strategic-arms treaty. Also says that some tactical nuclear devices may be missing from their inventories in Germany.”
“Indeed? That’s cheery news. How good is your source?”
“Extremely good.”
“Well, I can only say it’s news to me, Dr. Ryan.”
“How good is your guy?” Jack asked.
“Quite good.”
“Nothing like this?”
“Some rumbles, of course. I mean, Narmonov does have a full plate, doesn’t he? Ever since that dreadful affair with the Baits, and the Georgians, and his Muslims. What is it you Yanks say, ‘one-armed paperhanger’? He’s that busy and more. He’s had to make a deal with his security forces, but a coup d’etat?” Charleston shood his head. “No. The tea leaves don’t appear that way to us.”
“That’s precisely what our agent is telling us. What about the nuclear thing?”
“I’m afraid our chap isn’t well-placed for that sort of information. More the civilian side, you see.” And that, Jack knew, was as far as Basil would go. “How seriously are you taking this?”
“Very seriously. I have to. This agent has been giving us good stuff for a lot of years.”
“One of Mrs. Foley’s recruits?” Charleston asked with a chuckle. “What a marvelous young lady. I understand she recently delivered another child?”
“Little girl, Emily Sarah, looks just like her mom.” Jack thought he’d dodged the first question rather adroitly. “Mary Pat will be back at work right after New Year.”
“Ah, yes, you do have that fortress nursery on your grounds, don’t you?”
“One of the smartest investments we ever made. Wish I’d thought of it.”
“You Americans!” Sir Basil laughed. “Missing nuclear weapons. Yes, I suppose one must take that very seriously indeed. Possible collusion between the Army and KGB and a tactical-nuclear trump. Quite frightening, I must say, but we have not heard a whisper. Rather a difficult secret to keep, wouldn’t you say? I mean, blackmail doesn’t work terribly well unless people know they’re being blackmailed.”
“We’ve also caught a rumble that KGB is running some nuclear-oriented operation in Germany. That’s all, just a rumble.”
“Yes, we’ve heard that too,” Charleston said as they turned to walk down the brow to the Tattersall Castle, an old paddle steamer long since converted to a restaurant.
“And?”
“And we’ve run our own op. It seems that Erich Honecker had his own little Manhattan Project under way. Fortunately it died in the womb. Ivan was quite upset to learn of it. The DDR returned a goodly supply of plutonium to their former socialist colleagues just before the change. I speculate that KGB is investigating the same thing.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Jesus, Bas, Jack thought. You guys just don’t forget, do you?
“Nothing to tell, Jack.” Charleston nodded at the headwaiter, who took them to a table well aft. The security officers situated themselves between their charges and the rest of luncheoning humanity. “Our German friends have been very forthcoming. The project, they say, has been quashed, completely and for all time. We’ve had our technical people over everything, and they confirmed everything our German colleagues told us.”
“When was this?”
“Several months ago. Ever eat here, Jack?” Charleston asked as the waiter appeared.
“Not this one, a few of the other ferryboats.” Basil ordered a pint of bitter. Jack decided on a lager. They watched the waiter withdraw. “The KGB op is more recent.”
“Interesting. Could be the same thing, you know, could be that they had the same interests we had and were just a little slower to move.”
“On nukes?” Ryan shook his head. “Our Russian friends are pretty smart, Bas, and they pay much closer attention to nuclear issues than we do. It’s one of the things I admire about them.”
“Yes, they did learn their lesson from China, didn’t they?” Charleston set his menu down and waved for the waiter to bring the drinks. “You think this is a serious matter, then?”
“Sure do.”
“Your judgment is generally rather good, Jack. Thank you,” Basil told the waiter. Both men made their orders. “You think we should poke about?”
“I think that might be a good idea.”
“Very well. What else can you tell me?”
“I’m afraid that’s it, Bas.”
“Your source must be very good indeed.” Sir Basil sipped at his beer. “I think you have reservations.”
“I do, but ... hell, Basil, when do we not have reservations?”
“Any contrary data?”
“None, just that we’ve been totally unable to confirm. Our source is good enough that we may not be able to confirm elsewhere. That’s why I came over. Your guy must be pretty good, too, judging by what you’ve sent us. Whoever he is, he might be the best chance to back our guy up.”
“And if we can’t confirm?”
“Then probably we’ll go with it anyway.” Ryan didn’t like that.
“And your reservations?”
“Probably don’t matter. Two reasons. Number one, I’m not sure myself whether to sign off on this or not. Number two, not everyone cares what I think.”
“And that’s why you’ve not received credit for your work on the treaty?”
Ryan grinned rather tiredly, having not had much sleep in the preceding thirty-six hours. “I refuse to be surprised by that, and I won’t ask how you pulled that one out of the hat.”
“But?”
“But I wish somebody would leak it to the press or something!” Ryan allowed himself a laugh.
“I’m afraid we don’t do that here. I’ve only leaked it to one person.”
“PM?”
“His Royal Highness. You’re having dinner with him tonight, correct? I reckoned he might like to know.”
Jack thought about that. The Prince of Wales wouldn’t let it go any further. Ryan could never have told him ... but ... “Thanks, pal.”
“We all crave recognition in one way or another. You and I are both denied it as a matter of course. Not really fair, but there you are. In this case I broke one of my own rules, and if you ask why, I’ll tell you: what you did was bloody marvelous, Jack. If there were justice in the world, Her Majesty would enter you in the Order of Merit.”
“You can’t tell her, Basil. She just might do it all on her own.”
“She might indeed, and that would let out the little secret, mightn’t it?” Dinner arrived, and they had to wait again.
“It wasn’t just me. You know that Charlie Alden did a lot of good work. So did Talbot, Bunker, Scott Adler, a bunch of others.”
“Your modesty is as comprehensive as ever, Dr. Ryan.”
“Does that mean ‘stupid,’ Bas?” Ryan got a smile instead of an answer. The Brits were good at that.
Fromm would never have believed it. They’d made five stainless-steel blanks to duplicate the size and configuration of the plutonium. Ghosn had
made all the necessary explosive blocks. They’d tested the explosives on all five blanks, and in every case the explosives had done their job. This was one very talented young man. Of course he’d had exact plans to follow, and Fromm had generated them with the help of a fine computer, but even so, getting something so difficult right the first time was hardly the norm in engineering.
The plutonium was now through the first part of the machining process. It actually looked rather good, like a high-quality steel forging machined to be part of an automotive engine. That was a good beginning. The robot arm of the milling machine removed the plutonium from its spindle and set it in an enclosed box. The box was, of course, filled with argon gas. The arm sealed it and moved it to a door, then Fromm removed it from the machine enclosure and walked over to the air-bearing lathe. The process was reverse-duplicated. He slid the box into the enclosure. Vacuum pumps were activated and while the air was sucked out the top of the enclosure, argon gas was added at the bottom. When the internal atmosphere was totally inert, the robot arm of this tool opened the box and extracted the plutonium. The next programmed set of movements set it precisely on a new spindle. The degree of precision was hugely important. Under Fromm’s supervision, the spindle was activated, building its speed up slowly to fifteen thousand RPM.
“It would appear that—no!” Fromm swore. He’d thought he’d gotten it perfect. The spindle slowed back down, and a tiny adjustment was made. Fromm took his time checking the balance, then powered it up again. This time it was perfect. He took the RPMs all the way to twenty-five thousand and there was no jitter at all.
“You men did the first machining very nicely,” Fromm said over his shoulder.
“How much mass did we lose?” Ghosn asked.
