THE WAVE: A John Decker Thriller

by J. G. Sandom

  The waiter turned, and freed himself, and laid the plate beside him on a nearby table. “What busboy?”

  “The one who cleared my booth.”

  “Ahmed?”

  “No, not Ahmed. I know Ahmed. Some other Arab kid. I think he went into the kitchen.”

  The waiter scanned the rear of the diner. He shook his head. “There is no other busboy. Just Ahmed, Mr. Gallagher.” He inched away. “Do you want me to get him?”

  It was no use. The boy had vanished. “No, it’s okay. Never mind,” he said.

  Gallagher squeezed back to his booth, tossed a few dollars on the table, and started for the door. His heart still pounded in his chest. This is starting out as an interesting day, he thought. He had planned to run a follow-up on his Gentry Hall story, the senior citizens’ center where a seventy-seven year old great-grandmother had been sexually molested a few weeks earlier. But now, out of the sky, out of the heavens, someone had dropped this bomb into his lap. Literally. He opened the door and stepped outside. He reached into his camel hair jacket and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. He lit one up. The sidewalk buzzed with pedestrians. Cabs and vans and cars and trucks choked the streets and avenues. Gallagher looked up at the WKXY-TV studios across the way, at the offices, the stores. At the apartment buildings. Somewhere on the soil of our enemies. He tossed his cigarette into the street. It tasted of death. Perhaps he was getting a cold.

  In the end, the story folded together with the beauty and precision of an origami bird. First, he called Jim Talon who covered the United Nations for the network. Talon had made some good contacts prior to the Second Gulf War when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been at the center of the search for WMDs in Iraq. Recently, IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed El Shouhadi had called upon the United States and the other Coalition Partners to allow IAEA experts to return to Iraq in order to address what he described as a “possible radiological emergency” but, of course, the U.S. was being reticent. The Coalition didn’t want to see the IAEA, nor the UN back in control. And the U.S. Administration was still smarting from the fact that no Weapons of Mass Destruction had been found. Talon promised El Shouhadi that he would play the story up, put more pressure on the Administration if he would confirm a rumor he had heard about a shipment of HEU that had allegedly been hijacked in Kazakhstan early yesterday morning. El Shouhadi was surprised. He asked Talon how he’d learned about the hijacking but Talon wouldn’t answer. A confidential source, he said. Eventually, El Shouhadi confirmed the theft, but he also played it down and pointed out that the eight kilograms of HEU fell under the minimum thresholds specified by the IAEA. That’s why they hadn’t made it public. The amount simply wasn’t large enough to cause a fuss. More than that went missing from Russian plants each month, but it generally turned up sooner or later – misplaced, mislabeled, mis-something-or-other. Thefts in excess of the thresholds were rare. Talon thanked the Director General and passed the information onto Gallagher.

  Next, Gallagher called a buddy of his from journalism school named Don Abernathy who happened to work at the National Resource Defense Council. Abernathy told him the NRDC was just about to come out with a scathing attack on the IAEA and the agency’s handling of its inspections in Iraq. When Gallagher pressed on, he also told him that part of the report claimed the standard minimum thresholds posted by the IAEA were ridiculously low. They were all based on dated research, ancient analyses. Modern techniques enabled the construction of WMDs from much smaller quantities of plutonium or uranium. Eight kilograms of HEU was more than enough to make a significant nuclear device, capable of generating a one-kiloton blast, or more. Gallagher thanked Abernathy, hung up and jumped online.

  He combed the IAEA and NRDC sites for more data. The NRDC posted a number of articles on nuclear stockpiles located throughout the world. Gallagher cut and pasted his research, folding the story, panel by panel. Then he Googled a variety of subjects, from fission bombs to fallout. Within twenty minutes, he had gathered enough material for his piece. It was terrifying stuff, especially when you put it in a local context. He called Amanda in the animation lab. Yeah, she told him. She had time. Another fold. He emailed her the stats and started on the script.

  Within forty minutes, he had pecked out a first draft on his PC and called Amanda to see how she was doing. Come on down, she told him. Take a look for yourself. He took the elevator to the third floor and watched the animation. It was crude – not all the planes were linked together yet – but still effective. Gallagher told her to add concentric circles around the map of New York City so that the viewers could see the different bands of pressure about the blast zone – from twelve pounds per square inch near the hypocenter, to five, then two, then one. No problemo, she said. He got up to leave and ran right into Ira Minsky, his producer.

  “I hear you’ve got a hot one,” Minsky said.

  “Oh, hi, Ira. Just wanted to tighten it up a bit, add a few more graphics before I came to see you.”

  Minsky was a short fat man in his late forties, with thin receding hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He was perpetually out of breath, as if each time you saw him, he’d just finished sprinting. It was actually a mild case of asthma. Probably psychological, thought Gallagher. Minsky carried an inhaler with him everywhere he went and he squeezed it now, and took another breath, and said, “Sure you were, Seamus. What’s the angle?”

  Gallagher told him and Minsky took it like a body blow. “You realize this will mean another call from Homeland Security.” Only two months earlier, a story Gallagher had done on the nuclear facility at Indian Point had raised the agency’s ire. Gallagher had contended the plant was still vulnerable to terrorist attack, despite recent changes in security.

  “Yeah, so what?”

  Minsky pushed his glasses up his nose. He took another breath through his inhaler. He was sweating furiously and Gallagher took this as a good sign. “Our ratings jumped almost two points after that story,” the producer said. “Mazel-tov.” Then he turned and waddled off.

  A few hours later, with Minsky watching from the wings, the story aired.

  First there was the hijacking, confirmed by the IAEA Director General himself, Dr. Mohamed El Shouhadi. Then the contention by the NRDC that the minimum thresholds were too low, backed up by various technical experts. Then the background on Gulzhan Baqrah and El Aqrab, and the Brotherhood of the Crimson Scimitar. Some file footage of suicide attacks in Iraq and Israel. That photo of El Aqrab and Baqrah in Kuwait during the First Gulf War, with that smoking oil well in the background. And then the “closer,” the colorful animation of a one-kiloton bomb exploding in Manhattan, just to give it that local angle. Amanda had really worked her magic this time. Gallagher reminded himself to take her out to dinner. No . . . lunch.

  It began with an illustration of a gun-triggered fission bomb, the simplest to build. Then the explosion itself, animated on Amanda’s CGI in colorful detail. The bomb winked, blanched and bellowed, sending a shockwave like an invisible smoke ring around the island of Manhattan. The skyline collapsed. Buildings melted in a wave of flames. A great gray cloud of smoke rose up, billowing higher and higher into the sky, into that hauntingly familiar mushroom shape. Then the cloud cleared, revealing a crater at the center of Manhattan. Gallagher’s VO swept in: “According to the report ‘The Effects of Nuclear War’ authored by the Congressional Office Of Technology Assessment, the blast generated by a one kiloton bomb would fashion a crater more than two hundred feet deep and one thousand feet in diameter, encircled by a ring of radioactive soil and debris. Nothing recognizable would remain within a half mile of the crater.

  “Imagine you’re a survivor, walking from the hypocenter of the blast, trying to get away from the carnage. Niney-eight percent of the people around you are dead, incinerated in the inferno. You’re one of the lucky ones.

  “By the time you reach one point seven miles from ground zero, only the strongest buildings made out of reinforced, poured concrete stand – burnt-
out skeletal remains. The rest have disappeared, vaporized by a force equivalent to twelve pounds of pressure per square inch, or PSI.”

  Minsky beamed from behind the camera as the concentric circles gleamed.

  “Virtually everything between the twelve and five PSI rings has been destroyed. The walls of all multi-story buildings – including apartment blocks – have been shredded, blown away. As you get closer to the five PSI ring, more large structures remain. But all the single-family homes have been obliterated. Only the odd foundation still reveals itself through the rubble – a ghost, an echo of some family now gone. Fifty percent of the people around you have been killed, forty percent are horribly injured. At two PSI, any single-family home not completely destroyed by the blast is heavily damaged. The windows of all the office buildings have been blown away. The contents of the upper floors – including the people who worked there – are scattered along the streets before you, like so many autumn leaves. Debris lies everywhere. Five percent of the people between the five and number two PSI rings are dead, forty-five percent seriously injured.

  “And seven point four miles from the blast, at one PSI, if you make it that far before dying, you’ll notice that while most of the buildings are only moderately damaged, one quarter of the population is lying in bloody heaps at your feet, the victims of flying glass and stone and concrete. Others are screaming in agony, burnt and blackened by the thermal radiation generated by the blast.

  “And this, all of this, is only the beginning – just the pressure damage. Another effect will be the radioactive fallout. Immediately following the detonation, hundreds of tons of earth and debris, made radioactive by the blast, will be carried high into the atmosphere within the mushroom cloud. The material will drift downwind, and eventually fall back to earth, contaminating thousands of square miles.”

  The map expanded to encompass the entire eastern seaboard.

  “Assuming a fifteen mile-per-hour westerly wind over a seven-day period, everyone who either lives or works within thirty miles of ground zero will be bombarded with three thousand rem. You’ll be dead within a few hours. And it will be years, perhaps a decade before the levels of radioactivity in Manhattan drop low enough for the city to be considered safe for human habitation.

  “If you’re within ninety miles, at nine hundred rem, you’ll die within two to fourteen days. At one hundred and sixty miles, or three hundred rem, you’ll still suffer extensive internal injuries, including damage to nerve cells and the cells that line your digestive tract. Your white blood cell count will plummet, and your hair will fall out.

  “Even if you live two hundred and fifty miles away, as far away as Boston, Massachusetts – where my mother lives – you’ll still suffer a decrease in white blood cells and increase your chances of acquiring cancer. It will be two to three years before the northeastern seaboard is considered safe again by U.S. peacetime standards.”

  Gallagher took a deep breath. The map behind him was replaced with the photo of Baqrah and El Aqrab once more. Baqrah’s smile took on a new and far more ominous intent. El Aqrab’s distant stare became bone-chillingly sinister. It was as if he were looking off into the distance, through his mind’s eye, at the shattered smoking shell of New York City.

  Gallagher remained silent for a few more seconds. He had added that bit about his mother extemporaneously, and he felt flushed with pride. It had been a stroke of genius. Anyone looking at this rather ugly, red-haired leprechaun of a reporter would be shocked to learn that even he – as strident and gnomish as he was – had a mother. What bathos! All were vulnerable to fallout. All, no matter how beautiful or ugly, no matter how rich or poor, smart or dumb, would die.

  “Of course, it would be irresponsible for me to say that New York is definitely the target. The message this reporter received indicates the bomb’s destination is ‘somewhere on the soil of our enemies.’ But the fact that it was delivered to me, a New York-based reporter, makes you wonder. Are we next . . . again? And can we afford to think that we are not? Seamus Gallagher reporting for WKXY-TV, New York. Back to you, Sue.”

  Chapter 16

  Saturday, January 29 – 2:56 PM

  New York City

  Decker walked around The Cloisters, nestled high above the Hudson River, on a rocky promontory at the north end of Manhattan. Originally funded by John D. Rockefeller, The Cloisters had been constructed in a neo-medieval style, specifically designed to house the Metropolitan’s collection of artwork from the Middle Ages. Decker’s footsteps echoed through the portico. As he circled the Cuxa Cloister, with its herb and flower garden deep in winter sleep, he came upon another hall whose stone walls were festooned with tapestries.

  Although he’d never seen them in person before, Decker recognized them instantly – the Unicorn Tapestries, woven in the Netherlands during the early sixteenth century, so named because they depicted the hunt for a snow-white unicorn against a backdrop of wildflowers. How strange that these wall hangings – or were they bed clothes? – had gradually mutated, over the centuries, into totems of another age. They were medieval icons now, the Mona Lisas of the 1500s. And yet, according to the plaque, the weavers were unknown. So were the owners and the reason for their use. Only a set of mysterious initials – an A and E – at the bottom of each tapestry remained to baffle scholars. He looked down at his watch. It was 3:00 PM. Time for his rendezvous.

  Decker walked back to the Cuxa. Professor Hassan was sitting at the south end of the cloister, on a long black wooden bench. Decker ambled over and sat down beside him. There was no one else in the cloister, save for a guard at the far end of the portico. Although it was Saturday, the museum was practically deserted.

  “I got your message,” Decker said. He stared at the fallow garden at the center of the cloister, hemmed in by pilasters and walls of glass.

  “Obviously. Did you bring the wallpapers?”

  Decker studied Hassan. He was wearing a long black cashmere overcoat over a double-breasted midnight blue suit. His royal blue and golden tie was perfectly knotted at the neck. A pair of gold cufflinks – set with some kind of light blue stone, aquamarine or emerald – glimmered at his wrists. With a nod, Decker reached into his coat and removed the drawings. He placed them on the bench between them.

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand me,” the Professor said. He was clearly uncomfortable. He fidgeted and said, “I’m obviously no friend of this administration, nor do I condone what the President has done in the name of Homeland Security. If there were any other way . . . ” His voice trailed off. He turned and looked at Decker. His large brown eyes were red and moist, as if he had been up all night. “But after seeing that special report on WKXY-TV this morning, I really have no choice, do I? No matter what my feelings.”

  Decker didn’t reply. Time and silence were his friends. They were all that was required to turn Hassan around. The Professor leaned over and removed a pair of books from a black briefcase at his feet. One was obviously the Qur’an. “I assume you got my message yesterday,” he said.

  “I did, yes. Thank you,” Decker said. “Although, I must admit, I haven’t had much luck in interpreting the quotation. I’m no Qur’anic scholar.”

  “Don’t overdo it, Agent Decker. You’ll only make this whole thing more distasteful for me.” He opened the Muslim holy text. He lay the volume gently inbetween them. “Here, in Sura eighty-one of Al Takwir.” The professor began to read. “‘When the sun is veiled, and the stars are dimmed, and the mountains are made to move, and ten-months pregnant she-camels are discarded as a means of transportation and the wild ones are gathered together, and the rivers are diverted, and people are brought together, and when the female infant buried alive is questioned about: For what crime was she killed? And when books are spread abroad, and when heaven is laid bare, and when hell is stoked up, and when the Garden is brought nigh, then everyone will know that which He has wrought.’”

  “I can read what it says, Professor. What does it mean?”

/>   “It’s a prophecy. Some believe it refers to the present age. Today, the sun is veiled, and pollution and city lights dim the stars. Mountains are made to move, through monumental mining practices, although some scholars think this refers to the toppling of kings – like Saddam Hussein. Real trains and other high-speed means of transportation have supplanted camel trains. I’ve no idea who the wild ones are. Gangs, perhaps. Terrorist groups. Your guess is as good as mine. Rivers are constantly diverted, and some believe the reference to people being ‘brought together’ speaks to the Internet. As far as the ‘infant buried alive’ is concerned, clerics speculate it refers to the practice of abortion. Even Christians are asking, ‘For what crime was she killed?’”

  “And books have been spread abroad,” said Decker, catching on. “Through Amazon and modern digital printing presses. Heaven’s been laid bare through the Hubble and other telescopes, revealing the limits of the visible universe. What about hell being stoked up?”

  “Could be volcanoes, like Mount Saint Helens and Etna. But many well-respected clerics believe it refers to nuclear power and the bomb. And the Garden has been brought nigh. A few years ago, several scientists determined – leveraging the Legend of Gilgamesh, ancient place names, and the historic location of rivers and mountains – that the legend of Eden was based on a real valley in western Iran.”

  “I don’t know, Professor. One could read almost anything into these quotes. What are they meant to prophesy?”

  “The end of the world,” said Hassan. “Armageddon.”

  Decker felt an electric chill run up his spine. He pointed at the illustrations of the wallpapers on the bench between them. “Tell me about calligraphy, about this type of arabesque design?”