by Larry Bond
While the warehouses and the small administrative building called 24-442 behind them looked like typical industrial architecture, they were anything but. Beneath the outer metal were thick concrete bunkers extending deep into the ground. Each held several floors of disk arrays organized according to an arcane system that even Ciello, an experienced Agency analyst, only partly understood.
Ciello had not been told why he was to report to Building 24-442. He hoped, however, that it had something to do with a memo he had sent to the director three weeks before. The memo detailed his findings on an unofficial research project he had been conducting practically since his first day in the Company’s employ: Ciello believed he had found definitive proof in the CIA records that extraterrestrial explorers had visited the earth.
Thomas knew, of course, that the CIA had purposely promulgated UFO reports over the years as part of a disinformation campaign to draw attention from various “black” programs ranging from overflights of the Soviet Union in the 1950s to the development of stealth aircraft and UAVs in the Nevada desert during the 1970s and’80s. But he had meticulously separated chaff from fact, lie from radar contact. His memo had been distilled from a six-hundred-page, single-spaced report; he planned on forwarding the entire report as soon as his memo was officially acknowledged. At that point, he reasoned, the hierarchy would establish a “committee” to investigate, along the lines of the British Ministry of Defense’s UFO Team.
Oddly, this had not yet occurred, and in fact he had started to believe the e-mail had somehow been misdirected before the request to appear at Building 24-442 arrived.
He showed his creds at the gate and drove quickly to the assigned parking slot behind the thick berm separating the buildings from the roadway. His pulse started to rise as soon as he locked his car, and by the time he cleared through the elaborate security at the entrance to 24-442, his hands were trembling uncontrollably.
A half hour later, Jack Corrigan entered the room Ciello had been sequestered in on the second subbasement level. Thomas was sweating so profusely that his white shirt was stained front and back. He nodded as Corrigan introduced himself, and unwisely agreed to the offer of coffee.
Corrigan pulled a small radio from his pocket—he used the short-distance device while in the building—and called for an assistant to bring some. Realizing Thomas was nervous, he tried to put him at ease by smiling and making some small talk about baseball. To Corrigan, Thomas’s jitters were a good sign; he’d be eager to please, at least at first. While this would have been a horrible trait in a case officer or someone out in the field, for a research dweeb it was just the thing.
“So, I guess you’re wondering exactly what the job is,” said Corrigan.
“Oh yes,” said Thomas, taking a sip of his coffee. The liquid promptly dribbled down his chin.
“We’re in great need of someone of your abilities,” said Corrigan. “Someone who works for us, but can interface with, you know, the other side.”
“Oh yes,” said Thomas. “My UFO theory.”
Corrigan had not heard of the UFO theory; by “other side” he meant the Directorate of Intelligence, the analytical side of the Agency. He in fact knew little of Thomas except that he was one of only a handful of people with the proper background available to do the work he needed. Thomas had worked with DO as well as DI; he’d been on the Collections Requirements and Evaluation Staff and done some work for the associate director of Central Intelligence for Military Support, who’d been briefly Corrigan’s boss. His folder was thick with commendations, and while the occasional supervisor remarked that he could be “eccentric,” this was hardly a disqualifier. Filtering information called for a certain amount of creativity, which noncreative supervisor types—Corrigan admitted freely he was one himself—naturally interpreted as eccentricity.
Besides, the other person available had filed a sexual harassment suit against her last two bosses.
“This is a unique job, a unique opportunity,” said Corrigan, deciding to sell the slot. “You’ll run your own show, providing real-time intelligence for people in the field. Important stuff.”
Corrigan described the duties of the position, which functioned like the military support division and could draw on resources from MS as well as DI as needed. They were supposed to have two other staff assistants available to help out soon, but in the meantime Corrigan would lend his own aides as needed. The person handling the position needed a wide range of clearances, which Thomas already had.
“I need someone who can really burrow in and put a picture together from disparate details,” added Corrigan. “Our missions are high-profile; everything very, very critical. This is the big leagues. We had someone running the mission support, but then she got pregnant, and you know how that goes.”
Thomas nodded, though he hadn’t considered pregnancy as a job hazard before.
“We’ve had nothing but problems ever since. My boss is on my ass about it,” said Corrigan. He didn’t want to diss the agency’s research departments, just the red tape, but it was impossible not to imply at least a small bit of criticism. “What I’m looking for is someone who can interface, who talks their language and can get into the nitty-gritty if they have to. You have that kind of reputation. You know, ferret out information.”
“Ferret?”
“Figure things out. I don’t mean gather it yourself. Well, if you do gather it, I mean, that’s all right. As long as you’re feeding us what we need.” Corrigan sensed the interview had taken a bad turn. He tried to remember Thomas’s résumé. “You were trained as an historian, right?”
Thomas nodded. He was in fact an historian; his Ph.D. dissertation, completed on the day before he officially started work at the Agency, was on the East German Secret Police. He was, for all intents and purposes, the Western world’s expert on the East German police. Unfortunately, the day he went to work was the day the Berlin Wall was taken down and the East German police ceased to exist.
“You worked on the Mexico City plot in 2002, right?” prompted Corrigan. A plot to blow up the U.S. embassy had been foiled thanks largely to work by the analysts; it was a major coup.
“I headed the team,” said Thomas.
“The Olympics,” said Corrigan, mentioning another major accomplishment—Thomas had helped identify an Arab group that had tried to poison the drinking water at the 1996 games. The plot itself had been rather lame, but the work sorting through intercepts to identify the perpetrators was not.
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”
Corrigan smiled. Eccentric and humble and brilliant: Thomas would be perfect.
“Good,” said Corrigan, rising. “I’m going to put you right to work. We’re involved in a bit of a ticklish situation—actually, we have two ticklish situations. But I want you to concentrate on Chechnya right now. You’ve done work on dirty bombs.”
“Well of course. But as far—”
“Great,” said Corrigan. His radio beeped—they needed him back downstairs. “Debra will be in with you in a second. She’ll show to your office, make sure all the clearance work is taken care of—you’ll have to take a new lie detector test, but in the meantime we’re going to put you right on this.”
“What about my UFOs?” asked Thomas.
“UFOs?” Corrigan stopped at the door, looking back at the researcher.
“I, uh, had done a memo. It went to the director.”
“Oh, right, right, right,” said Corrigan, who had no clue what he was talking about. “Focus on this right now, OK? Jenny’ll get you all the backups and the files—don’t forget to break for lunch.”
12
CHECHNYA, NORTH OF GROZNYY
In 1996, a group of Chechen rebels—or “freedom fighters” in Daruyev’s phrase—planned to blow up a dirty bomb in central Moscow. The operation was doomed from the start—Russian intelligence had infiltrated the guerrilla network. But the project had proceeded to the point of moving approximately one thousand pounds of mat
erial into the city. The material had a relatively low alpha value—in other words, it wasn’t very radioactive. But no one exposed to the material itself was expected to die immediately; its primary value was as a weapon of terror. And while the bomb itself was never set off, the simple fact that the Chechens were willing to go to such lengths might have played a role in the Russian government’s decision to halt the offensive there and begin negotiations, even though the takeover of a hospital in Kizlyar in the province of Dagestan was generally credited with forcing their hands.
Daruyev had been one of the people responsible for planning the bomb. Before the war, he had been involved in research for food irradiation, and had spent considerable time in America as well as France studying the problem. He told Ferguson and Conners that he had originally argued against using such a weapon, though in the end he was as responsible as anyone for its design, as well as for the theft of some of the material used to construct it.
He had also apparently paid a price beyond his arrest and subsequent fifteen-year sentence—he had lung and thyroid cancer.
“The lung cancer, perhaps because I smoke,” he allowed. “But the thyroid cancer, a large dose of radioactivity, surely.”
“What stage?” asked Ferg.
Daruyev shrugged. “It hasn’t been operated on. I can feel the growth with my fingers,” he started to pull up his hand to show them, forgetting that they were in irons.
“If you can feel it, you’re probably pretty far gone,” said Ferguson. The surgeon had shown him how to palpate—the technical term for feel—his own growth before the operation.
“I guess.”
Other rebels knew of the plot, and of Daruyev. From time to time they contacted him. Kiro’s man was only the latest of a long series. Daruyev claimed that he only listened and never offered true advice.
“A man came to me from Bin Saqr more than a year ago. His questions were dangerous ones,” said Daruyev.
“Why?” asked Conners.
“Because he wanted to know if different types of radiation would cancel each other out, as a practical matter.”
“What do you mean?” asked Ferguson.
“They were wondering if in arranging the material a certain pattern should be laid out. They were more concerned about alpha radiation—you understand, alpha particles, as opposed to gamma?”
“Yup,” said Ferguson.
“They were concerned if there might be a cancellation effect when a bomb was exploded.”
“Is there?” asked Ferguson.
“Bah. It was a question designed to see if I would help them, not to elicit a true answer. An imbecile would know there is no such thing.”
Ferguson started to laugh—he had, in a roundabout way, just been called an imbecile.
“Did you help?” asked Conners.
“No. But if they are asking about alpha waste—that is a much more dangerous prospect than what we planned. Allah’s Fist—they are not against the Russians. They want to destroy all infidels, which means you. I would be wary.”
“So why are they in Chechnya?” asked Conners.
“I don’t know that they are.”
“Someone was to talk to you,” said Ferguson. “And what about Kiro?”
Daruyev made a disparaging noise with his mouth, dismissing Kiro. “Chechnya is a perfect place for the misfits of God,” he said. “The Russians control the cities, but the mountains and hills—they cannot be everywhere at once. Even where they do control, you are proof that their level of efficiency is not very high.”
“You speak like a plant manager, you know that?” said Ferg.
“It was another life.”
Conners stopped the truck in the field near the burned-out buildings they had seen on the sat picture. They took the Chechen out and sat him in the back while they looked over the ruins. The cluster of buildings had been burned several years before; there were not only weeds but thick bushes between the ruins.
“Time to call home,” said Ferg. “Find him a good place to sit, then you can take off the hood.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Maybe it’ll inspire him.”
“Or get him more pissed off at the Russians,” said Conners.
“Same thing,” said Ferg. He took one of the AK-47s and walked across the dirt road they’d driven in on, climbing a hill that overlooked the ruins.
“Jack, next time you give me background on something, get it right,” said Ferguson, as soon as Corrigan came on the line.
“What?” said Corrigan.
“That nurse almost got us wasted. I mentioned God, and she dialed up an exorcism.”
“Which? In the prison?”
“No, I had a date this morning,” said Ferguson.
“It’s not like we have unlimited resources,” protested Corrigan. “Besides, I told you I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of—”
“Then don’t give it to me.”
“That level of intelligence,” said Corrigan, remembering the information now. “Shit, Ferg, that was good stuff. When I was in the Army if we had that level of intelligence—”
“You’re not in the Army now, Jack. Intelligence is our middle name, remember?”
“Well, it’s going to improve exponentially from now on. I have a replacement for Lauren. A bit, you know, eccentric, but I think he’s a real home run hitter.”
“Good.”
Ferguson saw light glint off a windshield in the distance. He pulled up his binoculars; it was a Russian troop truck, driving on the road they’d taken.
“All right, listen Corrigan, I’d love to stand around and chat, but I’ve got work to do. Call Van and arrange a pickup for me. I want to get out tonight if we can.”
“No can do,” said Corrigan.
“Why not?”
“You’re in Chechnya.”
“Am I? No shit. I thought I was sitting in Disney World. I’m talking to Mickey Mouse, after all.”
“Working with you’s a barrel of laughs, Ferg.”
“Yeah, well listen, I have to go. See what you can figure out for me, Corrigan.”
“It may take a few days.”
“Pull something together tonight,” he said, snapping off the phone and running down the hill.
13
WEST OF KADAGAC, KAZAKHSTAN
The boxcar seemed to have disintegrated into the air. Guns and Massette drove all the way to the yard and back to the border four times without spotting it on any of the sidings; they sneaked into the yard and searched for it there, going so far as to check several cars to see if they had been painted over. Twice yardmen asked what they were doing, and at one point Guns thought he would have to pull out his gun and shoot a worker who seemed a little too insistent in his questioning.
It wasn’t in the yard. Massette thought the tunnel must have something to do with the disappearance; they searched it without finding a siding or even a doorway, Guns’s heart pounding the whole time as he worried a train would come and flatten him inside. They used their Geiger counters on the sidings without finding anything, then as a last-ditch effort began walking the tracks with the detectors.
About a half mile north of the tunnel, the tracks ran level with a sandy road on the right. Massette realized there was something odd about it, and began madly kicking around in the dirt; Guns couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing until Massette stopped with a curse, then dropped down and scraped soil from the buried rails.
“That bulldozer,” said Massette, pointing toward the woods.
There was a gap between the buried rail spur and the tracks of about four feet, just long enough for a flanged section to be fitted in. They found the pieces—the pair looked like long, curved french fries, with triangular heads—in a pile of rocks near the woods with some blocks and metal bars and chain. A few yards farther on, the rails were no longer buried; they headed through some brush toward a clearing a few hundred yards ahead.
Guns took out his pistol, holding it behind his ba
ck as they walked up the rail line. Massette stopped suddenly, catching sight of something in the distance.
“Better flank me,” he said.
Guns trotted into the woods to parallel him. The tracks ran in a large semicircle to the east, back in the direction where the tunnel had been. A small clearing sat beyond a set of cement posts; a partially dismantled train car sat in the middle of them.
“And here we are,” said Massette loudly, arriving in the clearing. “Merde alors.”
It looked as if the flat casks from the French processing operation had been stacked on the bottom and sides of the car; at roughly a foot thick, they could have been easily missed by a casual inspection. The rad meters registered only trace amounts of material, bits of contamination that had been picked up inadvertently at the original waste site and left on the car. The casks—assuming of course that they had been there—would have contained high-alpha-producing waste, highly dangerous, but only if the containment vessels were broken and the material pulverized.
“Put it in trucks here,” said Massette. “Or one truck. We should probably follow this road,” he told Guns. He pulled out his map.
“It’s not on the map,” said Guns.
“Setting this up must have taken quite a long time.”
“Yeah,” said Guns.
“The fact that they would then blow up the train and leave the remains, leave the bulldozer, eliminate the possibility of using it again—they’re ready to go.”
14
CHECHNYA, NORTH OF GROZNYY
The Russian truck drove up the road at a steady speed, not racing but not plodding either. Conners had pulled their vehicle behind the only large hunk of remains and done his best to obscure any tracks leading off the roadway; he hunkered in the ruins with their prisoner, ready with the RPG. Ferguson, crouched in a ruined basement closer to the road, aimed his AK-47 at the truck, even as he willed it to continue on its way.