“If he knows the urgency of the situation,” said Jordan, puzzled, “why did he stall and cut out?”
Sandecker looked at him, then looked at the organization chart on the backlit screen where Kern had written in “Tea Stutz.”
“You badly underestimated Dirk,” he said almost sadly. “You don’t know, you couldn’t know, he’s probably brewing up scheme to reinforce your operation this minute.”
22
PITT DID NOT GO directly to the old aircraft hangar on the edge of Washington’s International Airport that he called home. He gave Giordino a set of instructions and sent him off in a cab.
He walked up Constitution Avenue until he came to a Japanese restaurant. He asked for a quiet booth in the corner, sat down, and ordered. Between the clear clam soup and a medley of sashimi raw fish, he left the table and walked to a pay phone outside the rest rooms.
He took a small address book from his wallet and flipped through the phone numbers until he found the one he was looking for, Dr. Percival Nash (Payload Percy), Chevy Chase, Maryland. Nash was Pitt’s uncle on his mother’s side. The family character, Nash often bragged how he used to spike Dirk’s baby formula with sherry. Pitt inserted the change and dialed the number under the name.
He waited patiently through six rings, hoping Nash was in. He was, answering half a second before Pitt was about to hang up.
“Dr. Nash here,” came a youthful resonant voice (he was crowding eighty-two).
“Uncle Percy, this is Dirk.”
“Oh, my goodness, Dirk. About time I heard your voice. You haven’t called your old uncle in five months.”
“Four,” Pitt corrected him. “I’ve been on an overseas project.”
“How’s my beautiful sister and that dirty old politician she married? They never call me either.”
“I haven’t been over to the house yet, but judging from their letters, Mom and the senator are as testy as ever.”
“What about you, nephew? Are you in good health?”
“Fit and ready to race you around Marinda Park.”
“You remember that, do you? You couldn’t have been much older than six at the time.”
“How could I forget? Every time I’d try and pass, you’d throw me in the bushes.”
Nash laughed like the jolly man that he was. “Never try to better your elders. We like to think we’re smarter than you kids.”
“That’s why I need your help, and was wondering if you could meet me at the NUMA Building. I need to pick your brain.”
“On what subject?”
“Nuclear reactors for race cars.”
Nash knew instantly Pitt was dodging the real issue over the telephone. “When?” he asked without hesitation.
“As soon as convenient.”
“An hour okay?”
“An hour will be fine,” said Pitt.
“Where are you now?”
“Eating Japanese sashimi.”
Nash groaned. “Ghastly stuff. God only knows what pollutants and chemicals fish swim through.”
“Tastes good, though.”
“I’m going to speak to your mother. She didn’t raise y right.”
“See you in an hour, Percy.”
Pitt hung up and went back to his table. Hungry as he was, he barely touched the sashimi. He idly wondered if one of the smuggled bombs might be buried under the floor of the restaurant.
Pitt took a cab to the ten-story NUMA Building. He paid the driver and gazed briefly up at the emerald-green solar glass that covered the walls and ended in a curving pyramidal spire at the top. No lover of the classical look of the capital’s government buildings, Admiral Sandecker wanted a sleek contemporary look, and he got it. The lobby was an atrium surrounded by waterfalls and aquariums filled with exotic sea life. A huge globe rose from off the center of the sea-green marble floor, contoured with the geological furrows and ridges of every sea, large lake, and primary river on the earth.
Pitt entered an empty elevator and pressed the button marked 10. He skipped his fourth-floor office and rode up to the communications and information network on the top level. Here was the brain center of NUMA, a storehouse of every scrap of information ever recorded on the oceans—scientific, historical, fiction, or nonfiction. It was in this vast room of computers and memory cores where Sandecker spent a goodly percentage of NUMA’s budget, a constant source of criticism from a small company of his enemies in Congress. Yet this great electronic library had saved enormous sums of money on hundreds of projects, led the way to numerous important discoveries, and helped avert several national disasters that were never reported in the news media.
The man behind this formidable data supermarket was Hiram Yaeger.
“Brilliant” was the compliment most often paid to Yaeger’s mind, while “rumpled” distinguished his appearance. With his graying blond hair tied in a long ponytail, a braided beard, granny spectacles, and frayed, patched Levi’s, Yaeger exuded the aura of a hippie relic. Strangely, he had never been one. He was a decorated, three-tour Vietnam veteran who served as a Navy SEAL. If he had remained in computer design in California and launched his own company, he might have eventually headed a booming corporation and become a very wealthy man. But Yaeger cared nothing for being an entrepreneur. He was a class-act paradox, and one of Pitt’s favorite people.
When Admiral Sandecker offered him the job of command over NUMA’s vast computer data complex with nearly unlimited funding, Yaeger took it, moved his family to a small farm in Sharpsburg, Maryland, and set up shop all within eight days. He put in long hours, running the data systems twenty-four hours a clay, using three shifts of technicians to accumulate and disperse ocean data to and from ongoing American and foreign expeditions around the earth.
Pitt found Yaeger at his desk, which sat on a raised stage and revolved in the center of the vast room. Yaeger had it specially constructed so he could keep an all-seeing eye on his billion dollar domain. He was eating a pizza and drinking a nonalcoholic beer when he spied Pitt and jerked to his feet with a broad smile.
“Dirk, you’re back.”
Pitt climbed the stairs to Yaeger’s altar, as his staff called it behind his back, and they shook hands warmly. “Hello, Hiram.”
“Sorry to hear about Soggy Acres,” Yaeger said seriously, what I’m real happy to see you’re still among the living. God, you look like a felon just out of solitary. Sit down and rest yourself.”
Pitt gazed longingly at the pizza. “You couldn’t spare a slice, could you?”
“You bet. Help yourself. I’ll send out for another. Like a fake beer to wash it down? Sorry I can’t give you the real stuff, but you know the rules.”
Pitt sat and put away a large pizza plus two slices from Yaeger’s, and three beers without alcohol the computer genius kept in a small refrigerator built into his desk. Between bites, Pitt filled Yaeger in on the events leading up to his rescue, stopping short of his flight to Hawaii.
Yaeger listened with interest and then smiled like a skeptical judge on a divorce trial. “Made a quick trip home, I see.”
“Something’s come up.”
Yaeger laughed. “Here we go. You didn’t rush back to eat my pizza. What’s swirling in that evil mind of yours?”
“I’m expecting a relative of mine, Dr. Percy Nash, to arrive in a few minutes. Percy was one of the scientists on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bomb. A former director on the Atomic Energy Commission, now retired. Together with your supercomputer intelligence and Percy’s knowledge of nuclear weaponry, I want to create a scenario.”
“A conceptualization.”
“A rose, et cetera.”
“Involving what?”
“A smuggling operation.”
“What are we smuggling?”
“I’d rather spell it out after Percy gets here.”
“A tangible, a solid object, maybe like a nuclear warhead?” Yaeger asked smugly.
Pitt looked at him. “That’s one possib
ility.”
Yaeger lazily rose to his feet and started down the stairs. “While we’re waiting for your uncle, I’ll warm up my CAD/CAM.”
He was gone and away on the computer floor before Pitt thought to ask him what he was talking about.
23
A GREAT WHITE BEARD flowed down Payload Percy’s face and covered half his paisley necktie. He had a knuckle for a nose and the set brows and squinting eyes of a wagon master intent on getting the settlers through Indian country. He beamed at the world from a face that belonged in a TV beer commercial, and seemed far younger than his eighty-two years.
He dressed natty for Washington. No regimented gray pinstripe or blue suit with red tie for Percy. He entered NUMA’s computer complex in a lavender sport coat with matching pocket kerchief and tie, gray slacks, and lizard-skin cowboy boots. Sought and intimately entertained by half the attractive widows within a hundred miles, Percy had somehow managed to remain a bachelor. A wit who was in demand as a party guest and speaker, he was a gourmand who owned a wine cellar that was the envy of every society party thrower in town.
The serious side of his character was his tremendous knowledge of the deadly art of nuclear weaponry. Percy was in on the beginning at Los Alamos and stayed in harness at the Atomic Energy Commission and its succeeding agency for almost fifty years. Many a third-world leader would have given his entire treasury for Percy’s talents. He was one of a very small band of experts who could assemble a working nuclear bomb in his garage for the price of a power lawn mower.
“Dirk my boy!” he boomed. “How good to see you.”
“You look fit,” Pitt said as they hugged.
Percy shrugged sadly. “Damned Motor Vehicle Department took away my motorcycle license, but I can still drive my old Jaguar XK-One-twenty.”
“I appreciate your taking the time to help me.”
“Not at all. Always prime for a challenge.”
Pitt introduced Percy to Hiram Yaeger. The old man gave Yaeger a shoe to headband examination. His expression was one of benign amusement.
“Can you buy faded and prewashed clothes like that off the rack?” he asked conversationally.
“Actually my wife soaks them in a solution of camel urine, liverwort, and pineapple juice,” Yaeger came right back with a straight face. “Softens and gives them that special air of savoir-faire.”
Percy laughed. “Yes, the aroma made me wonder about the secret ingredients. A pleasure to meet you, Hiram.”
“The same.” Hiram nodded. “I think.”
“Shall we begin?” said Pitt.
Yaeger pulled up two extra chairs beside a computer screen that was three times the size of most desk models. He waited until Pitt and Percy were seated and then held out both hands as if beholding a vision.
“The latest state-of-the-art,” he instructed. “Goes by the name CAD/CAM, an acronym for Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Manufacturing. Basically a computer graphics system, but also a supersophisticated visual machine that enables draftsmen and engineers to make beautifully detailed drawings of every mechanical object imaginable. No dividers, compasses, or T-squares. You can program the tolerances and then simply sketch a rough outline with an electronic pen on the screen. Then the computer will render them in precise and elaborate solid forms, or in three dimensions.”
“Quite astounding,” Percy murmured. “Can you separate different sections of your drawings and enlarge details?”
“Yes, and I can also apply colors, alter shapes, simulate stress conditions, and edit the changes, then store the results in its memory to be recalled like a word processor. The applications from design to finished manufactured product are mind staggering.”
Pitt straddled his chair and rested his chin on the backrest. “Let’s see if it can lead us to the jackpot.”
Yaeger peered at him over his granny glasses. “We in the trade refer to it as conceptualization.
“If it’ll make you happy.”
“So what are we looking for?” asked Percy.
“A nuclear bomb,” Pitt answered.
“Where?”
“In an automobile.”
“Expecting one to be smuggled across the border?” inquired Percy intuitively.
“Something like that.”
“By land or by sea?”
“Sea.”
“This have anything to do with the explosion in the Pacific couple of days ago?”
“I can’t say.”
“My boy, I’m unbeatable at Trivial Pursuit. I also keep up on nuclear affairs. And you know, of course, that, except for the President, I’ve carried the highest security clearance they’ve got.
“You’re trying to tell me something, uncle?”
“Would you believe I was the first one Ray Jordan consulted after the Pacific detonation?”
Pitt smiled in defeat. “Then you know more than I do.”
“That Japan is hiding nuclear weapons around the country in automobiles, yes, I know that much. But Jordan didn’t see fit to enlist an old man for his operation, so he merely picked my brains and sent me packing.”
“Consider yourself hired. You’ve just become a dues-paying member of Team Stutz. You too, Hiram.”
“You’ll catch hell when Jordan finds out you’ve taken on reinforcements.”
“If we’re successful, he’ll get over it.”
“What’s this about Japanese bombs in cars?” asked an incredulous Yaeger.
Percy put a hand on his shoulder. “What we’re about to attempt here, Hiram, must be held in strict security.”
“Hiram carries a Beta-Q clearance,” said Pitt.
“Then we’re ready to begin the hunt.”
“I’d appreciate a little background,” said Yaeger, looking at Percy steadily.
The old atomic expert met his eyes. “In the nineteen-thirties, Japan went to war to build a self-reliant economic empire. Now, fifty years later, they’re willing to fight again, only this time to protect it. With utmost secrecy they built their nuclear weapons arsenal long before anyone thought of verifying its existence. The weapons-grade plutonium and uranium were spirited from civilian nuclear facilities. The fact they had the bomb was also overlooked because they didn’t have a delivery system such as long-range missiles, cruise systems, bombers, or missile-carrying submarines.”
“I thought the Japanese were committed to nuclear nonproliferation,” said Yaeger.
“True, the government and the majority of the people are totally against atomic weapons. But forces deep beneath the mainstream of their bureaucracy clandestinely constructed a nuclear force. The arsenal was built more for defense against economic threat than as a military deterrent. Their concept was the bombs could be used as extortion in the event of an all-out trade war and a ban on their export goods into the United States and Europe. Or if worse came to worse, a naval blockade on the home islands.”
Yaeger was disturbed. Pitt could see it.
“You’re telling me we may be sitting on a nuclear bomb?”
“Probably within a few blocks of one,” said Pitt.
“It’s unthinkable,” Yaeger muttered angrily. “How many have they smuggled into the country?”
“We don’t know yet,” Pitt replied. “It could be as many as a hundred. Also, we’re not the only country. They’re spread all over the world.”
“It gets worse,” said Percy. “If the bombs have indeed been smuggled into major international cities, the Japanese possess total assured destruction. It’s an efficient setup. Once the bombs are in place, the chance of accidental or unauthorized launch of a missile is voided. There is no defense against them, no time to react, no star wars system to stop incoming warheads, no alert, no second strike. When they push the button, the strike is instantaneous.”
“Good God, what can we do?”
“Find them,” said Pitt. “The idea is the bombs are brought in by auto ship carriers. I’m guessing hidden inside the imported cars. With your computer smarts, we�
��re going to try and figure out how.”
“If they’re coming in by ship,” Yaeger said decisively, “customs inspectors searching for drugs would pick them out.”
Pitt shook his head. “This is a sophisticated operation, run by high-tech professionals. They know their business. They’ll design the bomb to be an integral part of the car to throw off an elaborate search. Customs inspectors are wary of tires, gas tanks, upholstery, anyplace where there’s an air space. So it has to be secreted in such a way that even the wiliest inspector would miss it.”
“Totally foolproof to known discovery techniques,” Yaeger agreed.
Percy thoughtfully stared at the floor. “All right, now let’s talk about size.”
“That’s your department.” Pitt smiled.
“Give me a break, nephew. I at least have to know the model of the car, and I’m not a follower of Japanese machinery.”
“If it’s a Murmoto, it’s probably a sport sedan.”
The jovial look on Percy’s face went dead serious. “To sum up, we’re looking at a compact nuclear device in the neighborhood of ten kilograms that’s undetectable inside a medium-sized sedan.”
“That can be primed and detonated from a great distance,” Pitt added.
“Unless the driver is suicidal, that goes without saying.”
“What size bomb are we thinking about?” asked Yaeger innocently.
“They can vary in shape and size from an oil barrel to a baseball,” answered Percy.
“A baseball,” Yaeger murmured incredulously. “But can one that small cause substantial destruction?”
Percy stared up at the ceiling as if seeing the devastation. “If the warhead was high yield, say around three kilotons, it could probably level the heart of Denver, Colorado, with huge conflagrations ignited by the explosion spreading far out into the suburbs.”
“The ultimate in car bombings,” said Yaeger. “Not a pretty thought.”
“A sickening possibility, but one that has to be faced as more third-world nations possess atomic weapons.” Percy gestured toward the empty display screen. “What do we use as a model to dissect?”
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