"You have really gone off the reservation," she said, still not giving up. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Then I'll try to speak more clearly," I said, now warming up to the task. "The whole story you gave me about the Colombian cartel coming up here for alternative delivery spots is so much smoke and mirrors. I know this area. You don't. And the law enforcement types and others I've talked to all said the same thing. All the local drug activity is small-scale. There's no point in having a cartel rep up here in the area. It'd be as stupid as sending General Eisenhower and his staff in on the first wave at Omaha Beach. No sense at all. But what does make sense is the shipyard connection. And thinking that you and your high-powered friends would come here because of drugs connected to the shipyard is slim indeed. But thinking that the folks down in D.C. would send you up here because someone's trying to sell several hundred pounds of uranium-now, that makes sense."
She spoke slowly. "If I had my service weapon here right now, Lewis Cole, I'd shoot you dead."
"True, and there would be an awful stain on this floor for the next tenant to worry about. So you work for the Department of Energy. Based in Nevada, right? That explains the healthy suntanned glow you all have."
"I don't have to tell you a damn thing," she snapped. "All you have to do is do your job, what we agreed. That you find Whizzer. Nothing else."
I folded my arms. "But it's not that simple anymore. I made that agreement to help out with Laura Reeves of the Drug Enforcement Agency. I didn't make it with Laura Reeves of the Department of Energy. Assuming, too, that Laura Reeves is your real name."
"That is my real name, you idiot, and I don't care what you think; you're working for me. Don't worry what the department is. Now, tell me, who the hell is Whizzer?"
I shook my head. "Sorry. I'm on strike."
Her face was now reddened. "Then get ready to lose this house, your bank account, and quite possibly your freedom, Mr. Cole."
I shrugged. "Then get ready to lose your privacy, your anonymity, and the cover story that you're working for the DEA. I've made arrangements with a couple of members of the local media. They have the whole story, written up and sealed in envelopes, about you and your folks. About NEST and the Porter Naval Shipyard and the uranium off the U-234. Oh, you probably have low opinions of our local reporters --- just as you have low opinions about the rest of us --- but they can be smart and they can be sly. And all it will take is a phone call from them to a Boston television station or the Concord bureau of the Associated Press, and by this time tomorrow there’ll be camera crews staked out in front of the Lafayette House.
“You’re bluffing,” she said.
"Try me," I said.
While her voice was remaining calm, her face showed the struggle that was no doubt occurring inside of her. She said, "You have no idea what we're up against, what we're trying to do here. Please, trust me on this, will you? Can't I appeal to your better nature? Your patriotism?"
I unfolded my arms, leaned forward in the chair. "Once before, you might have. Before rolling in here like you owned this place and had no time to talk to the locals. Before you threatened me with bankruptcy and threatened to take away my house. So no, appeals won't work this time. The truth will. NEST. Confirm what I just said, and then we start anew. Don't think we're all stupid up here because our area code is six-oh-three, and not two=oh-two."
She seemed to mull that for a moment. "Then you'll tell me what you know about Whizzer?"
"Absolutely. "
"The non-disclosure form you signed, it still holds, Lewis. You repeat anything from what I'm about to tell you, and you'll disappear into a federal penitentiary, and I don't care what rat -ass local newspapers do or say. Understood?"
"Clearly."
"Shit," she murmured. "All right then, here it is. You're right, you bastard, about the enriched uranium. One of the many little secrets from the end of the Old War and the start of the Cold War. You know how much weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and other fissionable material have disappeared over the years since we first split the atom? I'll give you a guess. It's not in the pounds, it's not in the tens of pounds... try hundreds of pounds. More than fifty years' worth. Some of the early record keeping was so sloppy, it would make you cry. Missing plutonium or uranium would be put down to accounting problems. Dissipation. Adhering to draining equipment or testing equipment. Unbelievable. And our job is to clean up these little messes, to make sure they don’t end up in the wrong hands.”
“I thought NEST responded to more direct threats, like someone sending a note to the President, saying ‘Come up with ten million dollars in a week or we destroy some city's downtown.'"
A firm nod. "We do. It seems like every few months or so, some idiot sixteen-year-old decides to make a million dollars by making a threat about putting a nuclear device in Omaha or San Diego or Washington. Our job is to analyze the threat, respond to it, and make sure that little snot-nosed sixteen-year-old gets in a world of so much hurt that he'll never go near a computer again. Our job is also to respond to the threats that come from some adults --- to go into cities with detecting devices and search out where a bomb may be hidden. Thank God that particular scenario hasn't come up recently. It's not often that we get to respond to a real deal."
"The guy in the parking lot, shot through the head," I said. "Are the Colombians looking to get the bomb? Is that the real deal you're working on?"
"No." She looked around my office. "I can't believe I'm telling you this. No, he wasn't from the cartel. He was from Tripoli. Care to guess what his area code is?"
It felt like a draft in the room, for there was a cold tingle at the back of my neck. "Libya."
"The same. It's like a cycle over there. Every couple of years or so, while he's in a tent out in a desert, their supreme leader gets a vision that it's time for North Africa to get their own bomb. Usually it's the CIA or somebody else who nips that little beauty in the bud. A nuclear physicist goes missing. A ship transporting uranium-enrichment equipment founders during a storm. A truck with centrifuges gets blown up. The usual stuff. But then our friends with the big ears at Fort Meade --- "
"The National Security Agency," I said. "Look, once upon a time I had clearance for this stuff, so don't get all fretful. Go on."
"Okay. The NSA, our great information vacuum cleaner, listening in to everything from fax machines to cell phones, got the message about the U-234 uranium. Yon know how the NSA works, right?"
“Sure,” I said. “When it comes to message intercepts, they don’t have the manpower to listen or to read anything. What they do look for key words or phrases. Like anthrax. Or Hezbollah. I guess that U-234 and uranium were a key phrase, right?”
"Correct," she said, and I got a sense that she was eager to talk. "We've known for decades that this particular shipment been among the missing. But so far, the cover story has held, that this stuff eventually got shipped to Los Alamos and was used in one of the early atomic weapons, if not one of' the bombs we dropped on Japan."
"And what's the story behind the cover story?"
"It arrived in Porter aboard the U-boat, just like the paper accounts and books described," she said. "'Then it was taken off in the yard. Next paper record shows everything else being examined at the Navy Yard in Norfolk, but the uranium either never left Porter, or disappeared on its way to Virginia."
"The optics, the weapons, the German jet fighter? That all got to Norfolk in one piece?"
She shook her head. "Yeah, all that stuff. Man, you are up to speed."
"I try. Okay, so the NSA got the news about the missing uranium. What next?"
"What next is that they started doing real-time listening to find out why this missing shipment was being discussed. That's when we found out about Libya, and their contact in New Hampshire. All we knew about his contact was the name, Whizzer, and that he was associated with the shipyard. That’s when the great fight started. Some of our other intelligence agency boys, they wanted
to snap up this Libyan intelligence agency contact the minute he got into the States. But since it involved potential weapons-grade uranium on our soil, it became our responsibility. We didn't care so much about spooks and spies and their agenda. It's the uranium we wanted. So it became our job. To track the Libyan and keep him under surveillance, and intercept the handover when he tried to purchase the uranium.”
“And what happened?”
“The meet was on for a certain time, but he left early,” she said. “Plus, he had swept the car before arriving at the state park and found our tracking device. We didn't think he would be so suspicious, but there you go. All we knew is that he'd be meeting in a park somewhere on your seacoast. Do you know how many goddamn parks you have in this stretch of coastline?"
"Enough, I'm sure. Look, you folks have any idea why the meet went bad?"
She shook her head. "No. Maybe they had a fight over money. Maybe they had a fight over religion. Who knows? But all I know is that we're going to stay here until we find this Whizzer and get that uranium back. My gut tells me that this Whizzer character might be trying to contact somebody else as equally charming as Libya. I'm sure you can think of a few countries who'd like this uranium. We sure as hell don't want to open up a weapons bazaar here. We've got to wrap it up, and quick."
I leaned back in my chair, feeling something creak, either my back or the chair. "So why didn't you tell me all this at the beginning?"
"Need to know; sorry," she said.
I said, "It would have saved a lot of time and effort on my part."
She shrugged, smiled. "So we lied, sue us. Now. I've done all the talking. It's my turn. Who's Whizzer?"
I looked at her with a steady gaze. "I have no idea."
Her face whitened. "You told me earlier that you knew who he was."
I smiled, shrugged. "So I lied. Sue me."
Chapter Twelve
I think she thought about leaping out of her chair and coming over to strangle me. Her face reddened and her bag dropped to the floor as she said, "You son of a bitch, what kind of fucking joke is this?"
"No joke, Laura," I said. "I wanted to talk to you, and I wanted you over here, alone. I didn't want to be on your turf anymore, with your muscle boys and all the trappings of your job. I needed to get your attention, and I used the best way I could."
"You lied!" she said, her voice rising. "You lied about---"
"Ever hear the word ironic?" I put a hand on my desk, picked up my well-worn Merriam-Webster's dictionary. "Here. You can look it up. One of the most popular definitions is that of a government official, who's been lying from the get-go, complaining that the person she's been lying to has just returned the favor. Care to look it up?"
"Right now I'd care to see you choke on it," she said.
"Probably won't fit, no matter how hard you try," I said. "Look. I’ve done some preliminary work on this Whizzer character already. That’s a given. Now that I’m to speed on what you clowns are doing, I’ll be even more serious in my efforts.”
“What the hell do you mean by that little remark?”
"Look, having me snoop around for a druggie, well, how much effort above and beyond do you think I'd expend? Now that I'm looking for someone who claims to hold enriched uranium and is willing to sell it to the Libyans... well, you've got my attention. Earlier you appealed to my patriotism. That wasn't going to work, coming from you. But it will work, coming from me. I don't like the idea of uranium ending up where it doesn't belong."
"So you're saying that me telling you all is a good thing?"
I nodded. "Best damn thing that probably happened to you today."
I was surprised to see a smile appear. "You're probably right." She suddenly rubbed at her face with both hands, and when she took her hands away she looked ten years younger and about a half foot smaller. "People just don't know," she said, her voice just above a whisper. "They don't care anymore. We no longer have those idiots over in Red Square and those big May Day parades and submarines lurking off the East and West Coast to worry about, and people no longer care. Our fellow citizens think they can earn their money and fatten their portfolios, and that nobody hates us anymore. To most of them, foreigners are just people who care about getting better Internet access. There's no threat out there, no threat at all."
Another rub of her face. "Last year I saw some public affairs show about the lack of interest people have in current events. They talked to some surfer guy out in California, with earrings through his eyebrows. He said all he cared about was getting a buzz on and worrying about a nice killer wave. That's it. That's the kind of people I'm defending, day in and day out. Killer waves. I'd like to educate him about killer waves, like gamma rays from a nuclear burst. Gamma rays that can punch through almost everything and give you a death sentence from miles away. I'll bet there's some people in Baghdad and Tripoli and Pyongyang who know all sorts of things about killer waves, and would like to show them to that surfer dude and his friends.”
“I’m sure,” I said.
She looked at me. “I’m venting, aren’t I? One of my many faults. Pops up every now and then on my performance appraisals. I get fired up about something and I start venting. Blathering on and on, especially when I'm tired. And especially when I'm hungry. Which reminds me, I'm starved."
"Really?" I asked.
"Really," she said. "I think now I'd like to take you up on your offer."
"And which offer is that?"
"To make me dinner," she said.
I looked over at her, different things conflicting in and out inside of my mind. I felt like someone being urged to pet a grinning rattlesnake. Then I smiled and said, "All right."
Downstairs I opened a bottle of Merlot and got my outdoor grill going. Earlier in the week I had purchased a nice piece of tenderloin steak for tonight, but it was big enough so I was sure that it would feed us both. She sat at the kitchen counter and said, "Anything I can do to help?"
"No," I said. "It's my kitchen and while it may not be much, it does belong to me. Just chat with me to pass the time, why don't you?"
"About what?" she said. "More secret information?"
"No, not at all," I said, washing some lettuce in the kitchen sink and placing the leaves in a salad spinner. "Give me some basic stuff. Like what a nice girl like you is doing in the service of her country, hunting nukes and nuclear material."
She poured both of us a glass of wine. "Quick and dirty story, coming right up. Grew up in Wyoming--"
"The great outdoors out west?"
"You didn't let me finish," she said. "Wyoming, Delaware. Did well in high school, very well in math and physics. Ever hear about women having a fear of math? Well, not this woman. I did great in my SATs and applied to CalTech, and there I went. Majored in nuclear physics, and before I graduated decided that working for the civilian nuclear program was a dead end. No offense but that lovely power plant you have down the coast, but nobody’s building any more nuclear power plants, and probably won’t think of doing it again until both poles melt from global warming and we have to build dikes around Miami and Manhattan. That's not a particular attractive time frame to build one's career around."
I started washing two baking potatoes, and after poking dozens of little holes in them with a knife, popped them into the microwave. "So there you were, in school, big loans coming due, your career options limited. Then somebody showed up from the government and gave you the Great Lie Number One."
She sipped from her wineglass. "How true. 'We're here from the government and we're here to help.' Which actually wasn't too far from the truth. After graduation, went right into the Department of Energy. Paid my dues, did the usual things here and there, and then I applied to NEST. Not to brag, Lewis, but only the best get to apply to NEST, and only the very best get chosen."
I took some more dinner fixings out of the refrigerator.
"What do you think your selection committee would do if they knew that you've just revealed all to a c
ivilian while you were on a mission?"
A defiant shrug. "If I can get that uranium secured and in a safe place, they wouldn't give a shit. Success breeds success, Lewis, and I haven't screwed up on an assignment yet. And this won't be the first one that I screw up on. Not by a long shot."
I got the potatoes out of the microwave and put them in the oven, juggling the hot spuds in my hands. "Care to tell me what other missions you might be on?"
"Sure," she said. "I would care not to. Sorry, you know the ins and outs of this little baby. I'm not about to tell you any more."
"Fair enough," I said. "Excuse me for a second, will you?"
I went past her and opened the sliding doors to the rear deck and went to my new grill to check the temperature. Almost there. I leaned against the railing, looked at the darkening sky. This morning I had been in Boston trying to confirm something I had guessed about, and less than twelve hours later, all had been revealed. Surprise, surprise. I looked through the sliding glass, saw her on the phone. Probably telling her workmates that she won't be home for dinner. How sweet. As I looked at her on the phone, I thought again about who she was and what she did. When I had first met her, she had seemed the very model of a federal bureaucrat. Now, looking at her form and hair and eyes... she still looked like the very model of a federal bureaucrat. But definitely one who did more than the average employee of the IRS.
Temperature check on the grill. Perfect. I went back inside, and Laura was at the counter again, wineglass in her hand. "Oh, the phone rang while you were out there. Some woman named Paula. She didn't leave a message."
Uh-oh, I thought. "Why didn't you come get me?"
"She insisted that I not do that, so I didn't," she said, eyeing me curiously. "Who is she, your girlfriend?"
I went over to the phone. "She's a woman and she's a friend. Let's leave it at that, shall we?"
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