by Tom Clancy
“You stay for dinnah! This time you stay. We celebrate Peter scholarship.”
“Can’t say no to that one, doc,” Clark observed.
“Okay.” Ryan carried Jacqueline Theresa Zimmer into the house. Neither he nor Clark noticed that the van parked fifty yards away pulled off a few minutes later.
It was the most delicate part of the process. The plutonium was set into cerium sulfide ceramic crucibles. The crucibles were carried to the electric furnace. Fromm closed and locked the door. A vacuum pump evacuated the enclosure and replaced argon.
“Air has oxygen,” Fromm explained. “Argon is an inert gas. We take no chances. Plutonium is highly reactive and pyrophoric. The ceramic crucibles are also inert and nonreactive. We use more than one crucible to avoid the possibility of forming a critical mass and starting a premature atomic reaction.”
“The phase-transformations?” Ghosn asked.
“Correct.”
“How long?” This question from Qati.
“Two hours. We take our time in this part. On removal from the furnace, the crucibles will be covered, of course, and we make the pour in an inert-gas enclosure. Now you know why we needed this sort of furnace.”
“No danger when you make the pour?”
Fromm shook his head. “None at all, so long as we are careful. The configuration of the mold absolutely prevents forming a critical mass. I’ve done this many times in simulation. There have been accidents, but those invariably involved larger masses of fissile material and took place before all the hazards of handling plutonium were fully understood. No, we will move slowly and carefully. Pretend it is gold,” Fromm concluded.
“The machining process?”
“Three weeks, and two more of assembly and testing of the components.”
“The tritium extraction?” Ghosn asked.
Fromm bent down to look into the furnace. “I’ll do that right before completion, and that will conclude the exercise.”
“See any resemblance?” the investigator asked.
“Hard to tell,” Wellington thought. “In any case, he sure seems to like the little tyke. Cute enough. I watched them build the,swing set last weekend. The little one—name’s Jackie, by the way, Jacqueline Theresa—”
“Oh? That’s interesting.” Wellington made a note.
“Anyway, the little one loves the damned thing.”
“Seems right fond of Mr. Ryan, also.”
“You suppose he really is the father?”
“Possible,” Wellington said, watching the videotape and comparing the picture there with the still shots. “Light wasn’t very good.”
“I can have the back-room boys enhance it. Take a few days for the tape, though. They have to do it frame by frame.”
“I think that’s a good idea. We want this to be solid.”
“It will be. So what’s going to happen to him?”
“He’ll be encouraged to leave government service, I suppose.”
“You know, if we were private citizens, you might call this blackmail, invasion of privacy....”
“But we’re not, and it isn’t. This guy holds a security clearance, and it appears that his personal life isn’t what it should be.”
“I suppose that’s not our fault, is it?”
“Exactly.”
22
REPERCUSSIONS
“Damn it, Ryan, you can’t do that!”
“Do what?” Jack responded.
“You went over my head to the Hill.”
“What do you mean? All I did was suggest to Trent and Fellows that there might be a problem. I’m supposed to do that.”
“It’s not confirmed,” the Director insisted.
“So, what ever is fully confirmed?”
“Look at this.” Cabot handed over a new file.
“This is SPINNAKER. Why haven’t I seen it yet?”
“Just read it!” Cabot snapped back.
“Confirms the leak ...” It was a short one, and Jack raced through it.
“Except he thinks it’s a leak in the Moscow Embassy. Like a code clerk, maybe.”
“Pure speculation on his part—all he really says is that he wants his reports transported by hand now. That’s the only definite thing this tells us.”
Cabot dodged. “I know we’ve done that before.”
“Yes, we have,” Ryan admitted. It would even be easier now with the direct air service from New York to Moscow.
“What’s the rat line look like now?”
Ryan frowned at that. Cabot liked to use Agency jargon, though the term “rat line,” meaning the chain of people and methods that transported a document from agent to case officer, had actually gone out of favor. “It’s a fairly simple one. Kadishev leaves his messages in a coat pocket. The checkroom attendant at their Congress retrieves the messages and gets them off to one of our people by brush-pass. Simple and direct. Also rather fast. I’ve never been comfortable with it, but it works.”
“So now we have two top agents who’re unhappy with our communications systems, and I have to fly all the way to Japan—personally—to meet with one.”
“It’s not all that unusual for an agent to want to meet a high Agency official, Director. These people get twitchy, and knowing that some higher-up cares about them is what they need.”
“It’ll waste a whole week of my time!” Cabot objected.
“You have to go to Korea in late January anyway,” Ryan pointed out. “Catch our friend on the way back. He’s not demanding to see you immediately, just soon.” Ryan returned to the SPINNAKER report, wondering why Cabot allowed himself to be sidetracked by irrelevancies. The reason, of course, was that the man was a dilettante, and a lazy one, who disliked losing arguments.
The new report said that Narmonov was very worried indeed that the West would find out just how desperate his situation with the Soviet military and KGB was. There was no further information on missing nuclear weapons, but plenty on new changes in parliamentary loyalties. The report gave Ryan the impression of having been slapped together. He decided to have Mary Pat look at it. Of all the people in the Agency, she was the only one who really understood the guy.
“I presume you’re taking it to the President.”
“Yes, I think I have to.”
“If I may make a suggestion, remember to tell him that we have not really confirmed anything Kadishev has said.”
Cabot looked up. “So?”
“So it’s true, Director. When you single-source something, especially something that’s apparently highly important, you tell people that.”
“I believe this guy.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“The Russian department buys it,” Cabot noted.
“True, they’ve signed off on it, but I’d feel a hell of a lot better if we had independent confirmation,” Jack said.
“Do you have any firm basis to doubt this information?”
“Nothing I can show to you, no. It’s just that we ought to have been able to confirm something by now.”
“So you expect me to go all the way down to the White House, present this, and then admit that it might be wrong?” Cabot stamped out his cigar, much to Jack’s relief.
“Yes, sir.”
“I won’t do that!”
“You have to do that, sir. You have to do that because it happens to be true. It’s the rule.”
“Jack, it can get slightly tedious when you tell me what the rules of this place are. I am the Director, you know.”
“Look, Marcus,” Ryan said, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice, “what we have with this guy is some really hot information, something which, if true, could affect the way we deal with the Soviets. But it is not confirmed. It just comes from one person, okay? What if he’s wrong? What if he misunderstands something? What if he’s lying, even?”
“Do we have any reason to believe that?”
“None at all, Director, but on something this important--is it prudent o
r reasonable to affect our government’s policy on the basis of a short letter from a single person?” That was always the best way to get to Marcus Cabot, prudence and reason.
“I hear what you’re saying, Jack. Okay. My car is waiting. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
Cabot grabbed his coat and walked out to the executive elevator. His Agency car was waiting. As Director of Central Intelligence he got a pair of bodyguards, one driving and the other in the front-passenger seat. Otherwise he had to deal with traffic the same as everyone else. Ryan, he thought on the drive down the George Washington Parkway, was becoming a pain in the ass. Okay, so he himself was new here. Okay, so he was inexperienced. Okay, so he liked to leave day-to-day stuff to his subordinates. He was the Director, after all, and didn’t need to deal with every little damned thing. He was getting tired of having the rules of conduct explained to him once or twice a week, tired of having Ryan go over his head, tired of having analysis explained to him every time something really juicy came in. By the time he entered the White House, Cabot was quite annoyed.
“Morning, Marcus,” Liz Elliot said in her office.
“Good morning. We have another SPINNAKER report. President needs to go over it.”
“So, what’s Kadishev up to?”
“Who told you his name?” the DCI growled.
“Ryan—didn’t you know?”
“Goddamn it!” Cabot swore. “He didn’t tell me that.”
“Sit down, Marcus. We have a few minutes. How happy are you with Ryan?”
“Sometimes he forgets who’s the Director and who’s the Deputy.”
“He is a little on the arrogant side, isn’t he?”
“Slightly,” Cabot agreed frostily.
“He’s good at what he does—within limitations—but personally I’m getting a little tired of his attitude.”
“I know what you mean. He likes telling me what I have to do—with this, for example.”
“Oh, he doesn’t trust your judgment?” the National Security Advisor asked, selecting her needle with care.
Cabot looked up. “Yeah, that’s the attitude he conveys.”
“Well, we weren’t able to change everything from the previous administration. Of course, he is a pro at this....” Her voice trailed off.
“And I’m not?” Cabot demanded.
“Of course you are, Marcus, you know I never meant it that way!”
“Sorry, Liz. You’re right. Sometimes he rubs me the wrong way. That’s all.”
“Let’s go see the Boss.”
“How solid is this?” President Fowler asked five minutes later.
“As you’ve already heard, this agent has been working for us over five years, and his information has invariably been accurate.”
“Have you confirmed it?”
“Not completely,” Cabot replied. “It’s unlikely that we can, but our Russian department believes it, and so do I.”
“Ryan had his doubts.”
Cabot was getting a little tired of hearing about Ryan. “I do not, Mr. President. I think Ryan is trying to impress us with his new views on the Soviet government, trying to show us that he’s not a cold-warrior anymore.” Again Cabot had dwelt on irrelevancies, Elliot thought to herself.
Fowler’s eyes shifted. “Elizabeth?”
“It’s certainly plausible that the Soviet security apparatus is trying to stake out an improved position,” her voice purred at its most reasonable timbre. “They’re unhappy with the liberalization, they’re unhappy with their loss of power, and they’re unhappy with what they think is a failure of leadership on Narmonov’s part. This information, therefore, is consistent with a lot of other facts we have. I think we should believe it.”
“If this is true, then we have to ease off on our support for Narmonov. We cannot be party to a reversion to more centralized rule, particularly if it results from elements who so clearly dislike us.”
“Agreed,” Liz said. “Better to lose Narmonov. If he can’t break their military to his will, then someone else will have to. Of course, we have to give him a fair chance ... how we do that is rather tricky. We don’t want to dump the country into the hands of their military, do we?”
“Are you kidding?” Fowler observed.
They stood on a catwalk inside the massive boat-shed where the Trident submarines were prepared for sea, watching the crew of USS Georgia load up for their next cruise.
“Talked his way out of it, Bart?” Jones asked.
“His explanation made a lot of sense, Ron.”
“When’s the last time you caught me wrong?”
“For all things there is a first time.”
“Not this one, skipper,” Dr. Jones said quietly. “I got a feeling.”
“Okay, I want you to spend some more time on the simulator with his sonar troops.”
“Fair enough.” Jones was quiet for a few seconds. “You know, it might be fun to go out, just one more time....”
Mancuso turned. “You volunteering?”
“No. Kim might not understand my being away for three months. Two weeks is long enough. Too long, as a matter of fact. I’m getting very domesticated, Bart, getting old and respectable. Not young and bright-eyed like those kids.”
“What do you think of them?”
“The sonar guys? They’re good. So’s the tracking party. The guy Ricks replaced was Jim Rosselli, right?”
“That’s right.”
“He trained them well. Can we go off the record?”
“Sure.”
“Ricks is not a good skipper. He’s too tough on the troops, demands too much, too hard to satisfy. Not like you were at all, Bart.”
Mancuso dodged the compliment. “We all have different styles.”
“I know that, but I wouldn’t want to sail with him. One of his chiefs asked for a transfer off. So did half a dozen petty officers.”
“They all had family problems.” Mancuso had approved all the transfers, including the young chief torpedoman.
“No, they didn’t,” Jones said. “They needed excuses, and they used them.”
“Ron, look, I’m the squadron commander, okay? I can only evaluate my COs on the basis of performance. Ricks didn’t get here by being a loser.”
“You look from the top down. I look from the bottom up. From my perspective, this man is not a good skipper. I wouldn’t say that to anybody else, but we were shipmates. Okay, I was a peon, just a lowly E-6, but you never treated me that way. You were a good boss. Ricks isn’t. The crew doesn’t like him, does not have confidence in him.”
“Damn it, Ron, I can’t allow stuff like that to affect my judgment.”
“Yeah, I know. Annapolis, old school tie—ring, whatever matters to you Canoe U. grads. You have to approach it a different way. Like I said, I wouldn’t talk this way with anybody else. If I was on that boat, I’d try to transfer off.”
“I sailed with some skippers I didn’t like. It’s mainly a matter of style.”
“You say so, Commodore.” Jones paused. “Just remember one thing, okay? There’s lots of ways to impress a senior officer, but there’s only one way to impress a crew.”
Fromm insisted that they take their time. The mold had long since cooled and was now broken open in the inert atmosphere of the first machine tool. The roughly formed metal mass was set in place. Fromm personally checked the computer codes that told the machine what it had to do and punched the first button. The robotic system activated. The moving arm selected the proper toolhead, secured it on the rotating spindle, and maneuvered itself into place. The enclosed area was flooded with argon gas, and Freon began spraying on the plutonium to keep everything to the proper isothermal heat environment. Fromm touched the computer screen, selecting the initial program. The spindle started turning, reaching over a thousand RPM, and approached the plutonium mass with a motion that was neither human nor mechanistic, but something else entirely, like a caricature of a man’s action. As they watched from behind the Lexan s
hield, the first shavings of the silvery metal thread peeled off the main mass.
“How much are we losing?” Ghosn asked.
“Oh, the total will be less than twenty grams,” Fromm estimated. “It’s nothing to worry about.” Fromm looked at another gauge, the one that measured relative pressures. The machine tool was totally isolated from the rest of the room, with the pressure inside its enclosure marginally less than outside. The fact that argon gas was heavier than air would keep oxygen away from the plutonium. That prevented possible combustion. Combustion would generate plutonium dust, which was every bit as lethal as Fromm had told them. A toxic heavy metal, the additional hazard of radioactivity—mainly low-energy alphas—merely made death more rapid and marginally less pleasant. The machinists moved in to take over supervision of the process. They had worked out extremely well, Fromm thought. The skills they’d brought with them had grown with remarkable speed under his tutelage. They were nearly as good as the men he’d trained in Germany, despite their lack of formal education. There was much to be said for practical instead of theoretical work.
“How long?” Qati asked.
“How many times do I have to tell you? We are precisely on schedule. This phase of the project is the most time-consuming. The product we are now producing must be perfect. Absolutely perfect. If this part of the device fails to function, nothing else will.”
“That’s true of everything we’ve done!” Ghosn pointed out.
“Correct, my young friend, but this is the easiest thing to get wrong. The metal is hard to work, and the metallic phase transformations make it all the more delicate. Now, let’s see those explosive blocks.”
Ghosn was right. Everything had to work. The explosives had been almost entirely his problem after Fromm had set the design specifications. They’d taken normal TNT and added a stiffener, a plastic that made the material quite rigid, but without affecting its chemical properties. Normally explosives are plastic and easily malleable by their nature. That property had to be eliminated, since the shape of the blocks was crucial to the way in which their explosive energy was delivered. Ghosn had shaped six hundred such blocks, each a segment of a full ellipsoid. Seventy of them would nest together exactly, forming an explosive ring with an outside diameter of 35 centimeters. Each block had a squib fired from kryton switches. The wires leading from the power supply to the switches all had to be of exactly the same length. Fromm lifted one of the blocks.