by Tom Clancy
“And you murdered him.”
“Yes, along with two hundred thousand others.”
“Tell me,” Jack said, “isn’t there a line in the Koran that
goes something like, ‘If a man shall enter your tent and eat your salt, even though he be an infidel, you will protect him’?”
“You quote poorly—and what do you care of the Koran?”
“You might be surprised.”
44
THE BREEZE OF EVENING
Ryan’s next call was to Arnie van Damm. He explained what he had learned.
“My God! They were willing to—”
“Yeah, and it almost worked,” Ryan said huskily. “Clever, weren’t they?”
“I’ll tell him.”
“I have to report this, Arnie. I have to tell the Vice President.”
“I understand.”
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
The request he made was approved largely because no one had a better idea. After the two terrorists had had their hands treated, they were bedded down separately in FBI holding cells.
“What do you think, Dan?”
“It’s—Christ, Jack, where are the words for something like this?”
“The man’s got cancer,” Clark said. “He figures that if he has to die—why not a bunch of others? Dedicated son of a bitch, isn’t he?”
“What are you going to do?” Murray asked.
“We don’t have a federal death-penalty statute, do we?”
“No, neither does Colorado, as a matter of fact.” Murray took a moment to understand where Ryan was heading. “Oh.”
Golovko had considerable trouble tracking Ryan down with his phone call. The report on his desk from Dr. Moiseyev, sitting there amid all the other things, had dumbfounded him, but on learning Jack’s plans, it was easy to set the rendezvous.
Perhaps the only good news of the week was the rescue. The Admiral Lunin pulled into Kodiak harbor at dawn. Alongside the pier, she off-loaded her guests. Of the Maine’s crew of one hundred fifty-seven, perhaps a hundred had gotten off before the submarine was claimed by the sea. Dubinin and his crew had rescued eighty-one of them, and recovered eleven bodies, one of which was Captain Harry Ricks. Professionals regarded it as an incredible feat of seamanship, though the news media failed to cover the story until the Soviet submarine had put back to sea. Among the first to call home was Ensign Ken Shaw.
Joining them on the trip out of Andrews was Dr. Woodrow Lowell of the Lawrence-Livermore Laboratory, a bearded, bearish man, known to his friends as Red because of his hair. He’d spent six hours in Denver reviewing the damage patterns.
“I have a question,” Jack said to him. “How was it the yield estimates were so far off? That almost made us think the Russians did it.”
“It was a parking lot,” Lowell replied. “It was made of macadam, a mixture of gravel and asphalt. The energy from the bomb liberated various complex hydrocarbons from the upper layer of the pavement and ignited it—like a great big fuel-air explosive bomb. The water vapor there—from the snow that flashed away—caused another reaction that released more energy. What resulted was a flame-front double the diameter of the nuclear fireball. Add to that the fact that snow cover reflected a lot of the energy, and you got a huge augmentation of the apparent energy released. It would have fooled anybody. Then afterwards, the pavement had another effect. It radiated residual heat very rapidly. The short version is, the energy signature was much larger than the actual yield justified. Now, you want the real bad news?” Lowell asked.
“Okay.”
“The bomb was a fizzle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it should have been much larger, and we don’t know why. The bomb residue was lousy with tritium. The design yield was at least ten times what it actually delivered.”
“You mean?”
“Yeah, if this thing had worked ...”
“We were lucky, weren’t we?”
“If you want to call that luck, yeah.”
Somehow Jack slept for most of the flight.
The aircraft landed the next morning at Beersheba. Israeli military personnel met the aircraft and convoyed everyone to Jerusalem. The press had found out some of what was happening, but not enough to be a bother, not on a secure Israeli Air Force base. That would come later. Prince Ali bin Sheik was waiting outside the VIP building.
“Your Highness.” Jack nodded to him. “Thank you for coming.”
“How could I not?” Ali handed over a newspaper.
Jack scanned the headline. “I didn’t think that would stay secret very long.”
“It’s true, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you stopped it?”
“Stopped it?” Ryan shrugged. “I just wouldn’t—it was a lie, Ali. I was lucky I guessed—no, that’s not true. I didn’t know that until later. It’s just that I couldn’t put my name to it, that’s all. Your Highness, that’s not important now. There are some things I have to do. Sir, will you help us?”
“With anything, my friend.”
“Ivan Emmettovich!” Golovko called. And to Ali, “Your Royal Highness.”
“Sergey Nikolay’ch. Avi.” The Russian walked up with Avi Ben Jakob at his side.
“Jack,” John Clark said. “You guys want to get to a better spot? One mortar round sure would waste a lot of top spooks, y’know?”
“Come with me,” Avi said, then led them inside. Golovko briefed them on what he had.
“The man is still alive?” Ben Jakob asked.
“Suffering all the pains of hell, but yes, for another few days.”
“I cannot go to Damascus,” Avi said.
“You never told us you lost a nuke,” Ryan said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. The press doesn’t have that yet, but they will in another day or two. Avi, you never told us there was something lost out there! Do you know what that might have meant to us?” Ryan asked.
“We assumed that it had broken up. We tried to search for it, but—”
“Geology,” Dr. Lowell said. “The Golan Heights are volcanic, lots of basaltic rock, makes for a high background count, and that means it’s hard to track in on a hot spot—but you still should have told us. We have some tricks at Livermore we might have used, stuff not too many people know about.”
“I am sorry, but it is done,” General Ben Jakob said. “You fly to Damascus, then?”
They used Prince Ali’s plane for that, a personal Boeing 727 whose flight crew, Jack learned, was exclusively composed of former drivers from the President’s Wing. It was nice to travel first class. The mission was covert, and the Syrians cooperated. Representatives from the U.S., Soviet, and Saudi embassies attended a brief meeting at the Syrian Foreign Ministry, and then they went off to the hospital.
He’d been a powerful man, Jack could see, but he was wasting away like dead, rotting meat. Despite the oxygen line under his nose, his skin was almost blue. All his visitors had to wear protective gear, and Ryan was careful to keep back. Ali handled the interrogation.
“You know why I am here?”
The man nodded.
“As you hope to see Allah, you will tell me what you know.”
The armored column of the 10th Armored Cavalry Regiment ran from the Negev to the border of Lebanon. Overhead was a full squadron of F-16s, and another of Tomcats from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The Syrian Army was also deployed in force, though its air force was staying out of the way. The Middle East had taken its lesson on American air power. The display of force was massive and unequivocal. The word was out: nobody would get in the way. The vehicles drove deep into the small, abused country, finally onto a valley road. The spot had been marked on the map by a dying man anxious to save what remained of his soul, and only an hour’s work was needed to determine the exact location. Army engineers found the entrance and checked for booby-traps, then waved t
he others in.
“God Almighty,” Dr. Lowell said, swinging a powerful light around the darkened room. More engineers swept the room, checking for wires on the machines, and carefully checking every drawer of every table and desk before the rest were allowed farther than the door. Then Lowell went to work. There was a set of plans that he took outside to read in the light.
“You know,” he said after fifteen minutes of total silence, “I never really appreciated how easy this was. We’ve had this illusion that you really needed to—” He stopped. “Illusion, that’s the right word.”
“What are you telling me?”
“It was supposed to be a five-hundred-kiloton device.”
“If it had gone off right, we would have known it had to be the Russians,” Jack said. “No one could have stopped it. We wouldn’t be here now.”
“Yeah, I think we have to adjust our threat estimate some.”
“Doc, we think we found something,” an Army officer said. Dr. Lowell went inside, then returned to don protective clothing.
“So large as that?” Golovko asked, staring at the plans.
“Clever people. Do you know how hard it was for me to persuade the President that—excuse me. I didn’t, did I? If this had been a big one, I would have believed the report.”
“And what report is that?” Golovko asked.
“Can we conduct a little business?”
“If you wish.”
“You’re holding someone we want,” Jack said.
“Lyalin?”
“Yes.”
“He betrayed his country. He will suffer for it.”
“Sergey, first, he gave us nothing that we could use against you. That was his deal. We only got the take from THISTLE, his Japanese network. Second, except for him and what he gave us, we might not be here now. Turn him loose.”
“In return for what?”
“We have an agent who told us that Narmonov was being blackmailed by your military, and that your military was using some missing tactical nuclear weapons to make it stick. That’s why we suspected that the weapon might have been yours.”
“But that’s a lie!”
“He was very convincing,” Ryan replied. “I almost believed it myself. The President and Dr. Elliot did believe it, and that’s why things got so bad on us. I’ll gladly hang this bastard out to dry, but it’s betraying a confidence ... remember our conversation in my office, Sergey? If you want that name, you have to pay.”
“That man we will shoot,” Golovko promised.
“No, you can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve cut him off, and all I said was that he lied to us. If he gave us stuff that wasn’t true, even in your country it does not constitute espionage, does it? Better not to kill him. You’ll understand, if we can make this deal.”
The First Deputy Chairman considered that for a moment. “You can have Lyalin—three days. You have my word, Jack.”
“Our man has the codename of SPINNAKER. Oleg Kirilovich—”
“Kadishev? Kadishev!”
“You think you’re disappointed? You ought to see it from my side.”
“This is the truth—no games now, Ryan?”
“On that, sir, you have my word of honor. I wouldn’t mind seeing him shot, but he’s a politician, and in this case he really didn’t commit espionage, did he? Do something creative with him. Make him dogcatcher somewhere,” Jack suggested.
Golovko nodded. “It will be done.”
“A pleasure doing business with you, Sergey. A shame about Lyalin.”
“What do you mean?” Golovko asked.
“The stuff he was giving us—both of us—it’s really too valuable to lose....”
“We do not do business to that degree, Ryan, but I admire your sense of humor.”
Dr. Lowell emerged from the structure just then, carrying a lead bucket.
“What’s in there?”
“I think it’s some plutonium. Want to take a closer look? You could end up like our friend in Damascus.” Lowell handed the bucket to a soldier, and to the engineer commander he said, “Move everything out, box it, ship it. I want to examine everything. Make sure you move everything out.”
“Yes, sir,” the Colonel said. “And the sample?”
Four hours later they were in Dimona, the Israeli nuclear “research” facility, where there was another gamma-ray spectrometer. While technicians ran the test, Lowell went over the plans again, shaking his head. To Ryan the drawings looked like the diagram of a computer chip or something similarly incomprehensible.
“It’s big, clunky. Ours are less than a quarter this size ... but you know how long it took us to build something of this size and yield?” Lowell looked up. “Ten years. They did it in a cave in five months. How’s that for progress, Dr. Ryan?”
“I didn’t know. We always figured a terrorist’s device—but what went wrong?”
“Probably something with the tritium. We had two fizzles back in the fifties, helium contamination. Not too many people know about that. That’s my best guess. The design needs some further looking at—we’ll computer-model it—but on gross examination, it looks like a fairly competent—oh, thank you.” Lowell took the spectrometry printout from the Israeli technician. He shook his head and spoke very softly:
“Savannah River, K Reactor, 1968—it was a very good year.”
“This is the one? You’re sure?”
“Yeah, this is the one. The Israelis told me the type of weapon they lost, the mass of plutonium—except for the scraps, it’s all here.” Lowell tapped the design sheets. “That’s it, that’s all of it,” he said.
“Until the next time,” Lowell added.
Always a student of the law and its administration, Deputy Assistant Director Daniel E. Murray observed the proceedings with interest. Rather odd that they used priests instead of lawyers, of course, but damn if it didn’t work. The trial took just a day. It was scrupulously fair and admirably swift. The sentence didn’t bother Murray, either.
They flew to Riyadh aboard Prince Ali’s aircraft, leaving the USAF transport at Beersheba. There would be no indecent haste in the administration of sentence. There had to be time for prayer and reconciliation, and no one wanted to treat this any differently from a more pedestrian case. It also gave time for people to sit and reflect, and in Ryan’s case to meet with another surprise. Prince Ali brought him in to Ryan’s accommodations.
“I am Mahmoud Haji Daryaei,” the man said unnecessarily. Jack knew his face well enough from the CIA file. He also knew that the last time Daryaei had spoken with an American, the ruler of Iran had been Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
“What can I do for you?” Ryan asked. Ali handled the translation for both of them.
“Is it true? What I have been told, I wish to know that it is true.”
“Yes, sir, it is true.”
“Why should I believe you?” The man was approaching seventy years of age, with a deeply lined face and black, angry eyes.
“Then why did you ask the question?”
“Insolence does not please me.”
“Attacks against American citizens do not please me,” Ryan answered.
“I had nothing to do with this, you know that.”
“I do now, yes. Will you answer a question? If they had asked for your help, would you have given it?”
“No,” Daryaei said.
“Why should I believe that?”
“To slaughter so many people, even unbelievers, is a crime before God.”
“Besides,” Ryan added, “you know how we would react to such a thing.”
“You accuse me of the ability to do such a thing?”
“You accuse us of such things regularly. But in this case you were mistaken.”
“You hate me.”
“I have no love for you,” Jack admitted readily. “You are the enemy of my country. You have supported those who kill my fellow citizens. You have taken pleasure in the deaths
of people whom you have never met.”
“And yet you refused to allow your President to kill me.”
“That is incorrect. I refused to allow my President to destroy the city.”
“Why?”
“If you truly think yourself a man of God, how can you ask such a question?”
“You are an unbeliever!”
“Wrong. I believe, just as you do, but in a different way. Are we so different? Prince Ali doesn’t think so. Does peace between us frighten you so much as that? Or do you fear gratitude more than hate? In any case, you asked why, and I will answer. I was asked to assist in the deaths of innocent people. I could not live with that on my conscience. It was as simple as that. Even the deaths of those I should perhaps consider unbelievers. Is that so hard for you to understand?”
Prince Ali said something that he didn’t bother to translate, perhaps a quote from the Koran. It sounded stylized and poetic. Whatever it was, Daryaei nodded and spoke one last time to Ryan.
“I will consider this. Goodbye.”
Durling settled into the chair for the first time. Arnold van Damm sat across the room.
“You handled matters well.”
“Was there anything else we could have done?”
“I suppose not. It’s today, then?”
“Right.”
“Ryan’s handling it?” Durling asked, looking through the summary sheets.
“Yes, it seemed the best thing to do.”
“I want to see him when he gets back.”
“Didn’t you know? He resigned. As of today, he’s out,” van Damm said.
“The hell you say!”
“He’s out,” Arnie reiterated.
Durling shook his finger at the man. “Before you leave, you tell him that I want him in my office.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The executions were at noon on Saturday, six days after the bomb exploded. The people gathered, Ghosn and Qati were led out into the market square. They were given time to pray. It was a first for Jack, being a spectator at something like this. Murray just stood, his face set. Clark and Chavez, along with a gaggle of security personnel, were mainly watching the crowd.