White Collar, Green Flame - A Technothriller

by Shain Carter

  Meredith noticed it as well. “What’s up with the locals?” she asked Dawson in a low voice.

  Dawson shrugged. “I guess they’re just as frightened of us as we are of them.”

  Once out of town they partially retraced they route they had taken into Anjawan on their arrival in Turkey. They crossed the dilapidated bridge on the far side of town, then drove through the hills for several miles. The road dead-ended into a second road. They turned left at the intersection, to the south. This was now new territory for Dawson and Meredith - when they had first come to Anjawan it was from the north, on the other section of road.

  Dawson and Meredith settled back in their seats, trying to get comfortable. Alec had warned Meredith that it was a long trip and that the road was very bumpy.

  After a few minutes Meredith turned to Dawson. “I wanted to tell you, I thought George was very rude to you yesterday. That guy can be a real ass sometimes.”

  Meredith was referring to the group meeting they had had the previous afternoon. Dawson had decided to go ahead with his plan of delivering a formal presentation at this meeting. He was particularly keen to show them an unexpected pattern in his data and the new theory he had developed to explain it. Since none of the others had a strong chemistry background, Dawson spent the better part of two days developing charts that would clearly introduce his theory at their level.

  All his efforts were for naught, however. Barely into the second chart, George abruptly cut him off. “I’m sure your theory would be quite interesting to the chemistry community,” he said, “but this is a little too academic for us.” With a curt wave he dismissed Dawson and asked Alec for an update on the inter-stage connection assembly, then proceeded to grill him for over an hour on what seemed like trivial details.

  A few months earlier, Dawson would have been outraged to have his efforts dismissed like that. It was bad enough that Tilden was always jerking him around at SCU, but to have someone else pull those stunts on him would have been too much. But the quiet weeks at Anjawan had relaxed Dawson, and he just shrugged at Meredith’s mention of the incident. “I’ll save the charts for my Nobel acceptance speech,” he joked.

  Meredith looked at him seriously. “You know, if we succeed there’s likely to be a Nobel Prize in this for you.”

  The sincerity of her words struck him. Dawson had never before considered the green flame fuel work to be Nobel quality, but Meredith’s words gave him pause to reconsider. The fuel’s essential role in making contact with the messenger probe would certainly be noticed by the prize committee. Leon Woolf would definitely support him, too. Woolf had always felt badly about the way things had turned out for Dawson with the semiconductor work that he had first developed. Strong lobbying by previous prize winners was often a deciding factor with the prize committee. Also, once proven out, Dawson was sure that organoboranes would quickly become the fuel of choice for other space shots. Utility was, Dawson knew, another strong consideration for the judges.

  These thoughts raced through Dawson’s mind in an instant. To Meredith he merely replied, “I was just joking. Besides, your contribution is just as important as mine. Maybe you’ll get a Nobel Prize.”

  Meredith laughed. “They don’t give them out in engineering. Besides, my work is hardly cutting edge. About the only real difference between my reactor and the garden variety is that mine will run at a temperature above the melting point of plutonium - very close to its boiling point. That will maximize the thrust from the hydrogen propellant. But it means that we’ll have to be careful to avoid plutonium vaporization, instead of the usual problem of avoiding plutonium meltdown.”

  Meredith sighed. “I suppose it’s something new, but I designed it just by using the standard methods and equations. Pretty routine stuff, really. Under different circumstances I might have farmed the project out to my graduate students as an exercise and just double checked their results when they were done.”

  They stared out of the windows quietly, then began talking about life at Anjawan. Meredith mentioned that Dawson was the only one among them that didn’t seem fazed by the long, hot walks between the dormitory and Building 12.

  “You’re quite the walker,” she observed. “You must be in great shape.”

  Dawson shrugged, feeling a little self-conscience at Meredith’s observation.

  “I’m not in great shape in general,” he told her. “But I do walk a lot back home, to just about everywhere. In fact, I haven’t driven a car in over a decade.”

  The words came out without thinking, and Dawson immediately regretted the last comment - it was a subject he did not want to talk about, especially with Meredith, and he mentally kicked himself for bringing it up.

  "That’s very unusual,” Meredith reflected. “Why haven’t you?"

  "It's a long story,” Dawson replied hesitantly. "My driving privileges were permanently revoked about fifteen years ago. I could, in theory at least, go to jail for driving, even out here."

  The expression that flashed across Meredith's face was a mixture of surprise and curiosity. She looked at him expectantly.

  "It's a long story,” he repeated, hoping the issue would drop. But Meredith pursued it.

  “We have a long trip. Let’s hear it.”

  Jones continued reluctantly. “I told you on the plane about all the trouble I had with the green flame program after coming to SCU. Research was going very slowly. The people at NASA, the people I thought would be interested, weren’t really cooperating. I got discouraged and depressed, and I guess I wasn't much fun to be around. At least that's what Ivy, my wife, said, and I can’t blame her. I had certainly taken a lot of my frustrations out on her and our relationship.

  "We had only been married for a few years, but I had changed a lot. We started having arguments. Just little quarrels at first, but they escalated into some real fights. Ivy decided she wanted out. We were in the process of getting a divorce, and we were trying hard to keep it from getting ugly.

  "One night we went out to dinner to try to work out a few of the terms. It wasn't a very pleasant dinner, neither of us really said much and we didn't make any progress. We had been drinking some red wine with dinner. At that point in time I was… well, let’s just say that by then drinking had become a habit for me. At any rate, we left together in our old car. I was going to drop her off at the house, then go back to my apartment. I stopped to a red light. When it turned green I pulled out.

  "I never saw the pickup that hit us. The cops figured it was doing eighty when it went through the red light and hit the passenger's side of our car. We were pushed along sideways nearly a hundred feet. The kid that was driving the truck was thrown through the windshield and ended up another two hundred feet down the road. He died on the spot. He had been on his way back to the dorms from a fraternity party and had three times the legal limit of alcohol in him.

  "I looked over at Ivy and told here we were lucky we didn't get hurt badly. She didn't say anything back. Then I saw how badly her side of the car had been damaged. It had just crumpled right around on her. She was unconscious, but still alive, when the paramedics pulled her out. She died later that night, though."

  Dawson paused. His mouth was dry and it was difficult to talk, and he wasn’t sure how Meredith was taking the story. He was certain it wasn’t the sort of story she had been expecting when she prodded him into telling it. It wasn’t a fun story to tell, nor a fun story to hear. He glanced up at her, and she returned a look of understanding and reassurance. He swallowed hard and continued.

  "They tested my blood alcohol at the scene, and I was a bit over the limit. The state legislature had just passed a new 'get tough' law against drunk driving. Some laws are too complicated to be useful; this one was the opposite - it was too simple. The law read that drunk drivers involved in a fatal car crash were to be given a minimum of twenty years in prison. It simply said ‘involved in a fatal crash’; it didn't say anything about whether drinking was a contributing factor, or who was at
fault. We had a young district attorney new to town, looking to make a name for himself, and he decided to interpret the law as saying that fault didn't matter.

  “The University provided me with a lawyer. One of the few fringe benefits of working there, I suppose. But looking back on it, it was a huge mistake for me to use their lawyer rather than hiring one of my own. Even though this lawyer was counseling me, his obligations lay with his employer - the University - and he made sure that he served their interests before mine. And the University’s interests were to settle the issue as quickly and quietly as possible. The chancellor could just imagine the headlines if we went to trial - ‘University Professor Kills Student while Drunk Driving; Refuses to Accept Responsibility’. I have to admit, that would scare the hell out of me if I was in his shoes.

  “It doesn't take a constitutional lawyer to realize that the DA’s interpretation of the new law wouldn't hold up. Even if I was convicted, I was sure the verdict would be reversed on appeals, so I told the lawyer I wanted to go to trial. He convinced me that it wasn’t worth the jail risk if we lost. But the DA began to have second thoughts, too - he figured his ‘get tough’ stance would be hurt if he didn’t get a conviction, or if he got one but it was later overturned. So the two of them worked out a plea bargain where I pled guilty to DUI and simple manslaughter. I avoided jail, the University avoided the specter of a big trial and the DA got his conviction. I was given three years in the state pen, suspended on the condition I never again drive, drunk or otherwise, and in addition was sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. I tutored junior high school science students for a summer and haven’t been behind the wheel of a car since.

  “Two months later a similar case went to trial downstate. Ultimately the law was thrown out by the State Supreme Court, just as I thought it would be, but that was too late to change my case.”

  Meredith gave Dawson a sympathetic look, but before she could say anything the car skidded to an abrupt stop. A group of young men wearing faded army fatigues had suddenly emerged from behind some large rocks a hundred yards ahead and blocked the road. Two of them leveled rifles at the car. Abdu climbed out of the front seat to talk with the men. After a few tense moments Abdu climbed back in to the car and the men let them pass.

  No more was said between Dawson and Meredith about his story. They traveled on in silence for the next hour, staring out the windows. The road wound down a long, narrow valley, crossing a river several times as it passed from one side of the valley to the other. The scenery was pleasant, but the bumps and curves made for a tiring ride. At last the road made one final crossing over the river, this time on a long, modern metal structure that spanned a deep cut in the valley floor. Once on the other side, they began a slow climb up and out of the valley. A few minutes later they reached the peak of the surrounding hill. Below them lay a wide, nearly treeless plain, much like the area around Anjawan. The road stretched out straight ahead, ending in a tight cluster of buildings a mile or so away.

  Heat ripples over the pavement almost totally obscured the complex. But as they approached, Dawson could begin to resolve the cluster into individual buildings. George had once told them that the machine shop was located at a small army post, and this was now quite apparent. The most prominent structures were four guard towers, a few hundred yards from one another, at the corners of the complex. The towers rose high above the other buildings and consisted of open platforms with low railings and sheet metal roofs. A tall wood and wire fence ran between the towers, and inside their perimeter were about half a dozen buildings, all one story, with most arranged around a central parade ground.

  The road entered the complex midway between the near pair of towers. A tall gate, made of the same materials as the rest of the fence, blocked the road. To one side was a small wooden shack. A soldier milled about outside it, waiting. He had clearly been following the car’s progress for the past few minutes as it descended the hill and crossed the open plain. The car slowed to a stop and the soldier stepped to the driver’s door. He was very young - Jones guessed barely a teenager - and had an absurdly large rifle strapped across his chest. Abdu rolled down the window and thrust some papers into the boy’s hand. He studied them for a minute, then motioned back to Meredith and Dawson and began speaking animatedly to Abdu. Jones couldn’t understand anything, but it was clear the soldier wanted more information before allowing the car to pass. Abdu impatiently pointed back to the papers and before long the two were shouting at one another. Finally Abdu got out of the car and called towards the guardhouse.

  The young soldier immediately stopped talking and began studying the papers. An older man in a neat army uniform emerged from the guardhouse and shuffled to the car. He took the papers from the soldier, glanced at then, then rotated them in his hands.

  “Did you see that?” Meredith asked Dawson.

  Dawson chuckled. “What, that the guard was holding the papers upside down? I guess literacy isn’t a requirement for the Turkish army.”

  “No, not that,” replied Meredith in a whisper. “Look around the boy’s neck.”

  Dawson craned his neck and peered across Meredith. He could see that the young soldier wore a picture on a chain around his neck. With some effort he could see that it was a man with a dark beard and an olive hat, but the picture was too far away for Dawson to distinguish any facial details.

  “I can’t quite make it out. Who’s it a picture of?” he asked.

  “I can’t tell for certain, but I’m pretty sure it’s a picture of Avi Mustafi.”

  The name caught Dawson by surprise. “It can’t be,” he told Meredith. “He must just look like Mustafi.”

  Dawson was sure that Avi Mustafi would be well known in this part of Turkey, and equally sure that no one here would revere him. Fear him, yes. Hate him, yes. But as the new dictator of Iraq, Mustafi would most surely not be idolized in southern Turkey.

  Mustafi’s recent rise to power had been widely followed by the U. S. press. Mustafi had spent twenty years in the Iraqi army, much of it in northern Iraq, working his way up the ranks to general. During that time he had gained a reputation for being very smart politically and for having zero tolerance of dissent within his ranks.

  Through a combination of threats and diplomacy, Mustafi garnered the support he needed to lead a military take-over of the existing government. Although the coup was driven from within the ranks of the army, rather than by the populace, and despite the fact that the new government was even more oppressive than the old one, General Mustafi’s dictatorship was initially well received by the Iraqi people. This was entirely because of dissatisfaction with the old government, rather than approval of the new one. The Iraqi people were particularly displeased by the crippling international trade sanctions that had been imposed against Iraq for weapons violations by the old regime. Mustafi’s first act as leader was to promise his people that he would get these sanctions lifted.

  Mustafi’s efforts to repeal the sanctions were soundly rejected by the United Nations. The reason was simple. While Mustafi’s representatives were painting a picture of a new, “kinder and gentler” Iraq, Mustafi himself was making thinly veiled threats against virtually all of Iraq’s neighbors, speaking of “reuniting” regions of Kuwait, western Iran and southeast Turkey with Iraq. The Western press ran story after story describing secret chemical, biological and nuclear weapons facilities that were rumored to be in Iraq. In the aftermath of the U. N. rejection of Mustafi’s diplomatic overtures, there were several small bombings in cities of neighboring countries for which Mustafi and his Ministry of External Affairs were widely believed to be responsible. More recently, the Iraqis had instigated a number of border clashes with Turkey and Iran.

  That a young soldier in southern Turkey would wear a picture of Avi Mustafi was out of the question. Yet Meredith insisted that was the case.

  “Look again,” she urged Dawson. “I’m certain it’s him.”

  But before Dawson could take a closer
look, Abdu climbed back into the front seat and threw the car into gear. The older soldier waved them on as the younger man pushed open the gate. The car quickly pulled up to the first building, one of the smaller ones in the complex. A pair of sentries stood at attention next to the door. Jones had the distinct impression that these men were professional soldiers, rather than conscripts like the young man at the gate. They looked disciplined and serious, and stood straight and expressionless as Abdu climbed out of the car and approached them.

  After a brief discussion with the men, Abdu motioned Meredith and Dawson out of the car. Wordlessly he pointed to the door and gestured for them to go inside. The building consisted of a single large room filled with standalone power tools. The room was quiet and nearly deserted, the only three occupants being a man working a metal lathe and two other men who were studying a blueprint at a table. The two looked up when the group entered. The older of them walked over and spoke briefly with Abdu. Abdu handed him the papers he had brought in, and the old man read them carefully. After a moment he looked up and, in halting English, introduced himself to Dawson as the foreman in charge of manufacturing the interceptor craft. He shook hands with Dawson, but didn’t even acknowledge Meredith’s presence. It didn’t appear to be an intentional slight, but rather just his normal way of treating women.

  By now the younger man had come over. The foreman spoke rapidly to him, then turned to Dawson. In a thick accent, he announced, “He give tour. I talk to lady.”

  For the next thirty minutes Dawson followed the younger man from machine to machine. At each stop the man wordlessly demonstrated what the machine did, leaving out no detail. Dawson, already quite familiar with the tools, watched politely as the man showed each off.