Politika pp-1

by Tom Clancy

  “That’s been confirmed by the visual record,” Nimec said. “I’ve already had our experts do computer magnifications of the televised footage. And we’re trying to dig up amateur videos. There must have been thousands of people with minicams at the scene. But even in the absence of other evidence, I think we can assume the bomb was inserted into the area by means of the booth. Whether it was with or without the knowing complicity of the donut man is still anybody’s guess.”

  “One thing’s for sure,” Scull said, “whoever planted the charge got plenty of bang for his buck.”

  Nimec looked stiffly at the eyehole camera lens atop the video monitor.

  “The charge was very compact in proportion to its effectiveness, yes,” he said, his frown making it clear that he disliked Scull’s particular shorthand. “I’m guessing it was something like C-4 or HBX.”

  “And the secondary explosions?” Gordian asked.

  Nimec shrugged. “Hard to tell at this stage,” he said.

  The room was quiet for a moment. Gordian drank some coffee.

  “Okay, Pete, supposing we go along with your assessment for now, and put aside homegrown terrorists as the culprits,” he said. “What about militant Islamic fundamentalists?”

  “All of them, you mean?”

  Gordian looked at him. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “Neither was I. It’s just that things aren’t always very straightforward when it comes to our enemies in the Arab world. On the one hand, they’re more likely to be interested in causing mass destruction for its own sake. Their hatred of America makes no distinction between its government and its citizens,” Nimec said. “On the other hand, we in this room really must draw a distinction between state-sponsored terrorism and acts committed by extremist fringe groups, or by lone wolves with nebulous ties to both. The line between them isn’t always clear, but it exists. And it may be very relevant in this instance.”

  “As I’m sure you’ll explain,” Gordian said, still regarding him steadily.

  “In my opinion, the World Trade Center bombing fits more or less into the third category,” he said. “There’s never been any conclusive proof that would link the conspirators to a foreign government. Ramzi Yousef, the so-called mastermind of the plot, was an incredible bungler. His bomb was supposed to cause the largest of the Twin Towers to crack up and fall into the other, which didn’t happen. It was also supposed to release a poisonous cloud of cyanide gas. Obviously that didn’t happen either, since the sodium cyanide he’d impregnated it with vaporized in the heat of the blast… something any high school chemistry student with a B grade average would have foreseen. Two years later, Yousef sets his Manila hotel room on fire while making liquid explosives and takes off for Pakistan to avoid arrest, leaving behind a computer whose hard drive is full of incriminating data files. If this fool was an agent of a hostile Middle Eastern nation, his superiors must have been quite desperate for a henchman.”

  “Okay, so he was a regular Shemp. I’ve got no problem with what you’re saying,” Scull said. “But while we’re doing Terrorism 101, I think we ought to mention the guys that knocked Pan Am 103 out of the air.”

  “Scull’s right, we should,” Nimec said. “Even at this early stage, it seems to me there are at least superficial comparisons to be made. Both were efficient, well-financed, and bloodthirsty operations. And, God help humanity, the men who did the work were slick professionals.”

  “We know that the Pan Am 103 disaster was underwritten by Libya,” Gordian said. “What you’re suggesting, then, is that last night’s attack has the earmarks of state-supported terrorism.”

  “I’m not at all ready to go that far. But it certainly meets several of the criteria,” Nimec said. He smoothed a hand over his bristle of close-cropped hair. “The question is, who’d want to do the deed?”

  “I think I see what Pete means,” Nordstrum said. “All the usual suspects have been quiescent for some time now, though for different reasons. The Khatami government in Iran’s trying to impress the European Union with a more moderate posture than its predecessors. Ditto for Iraq, where Saddam’s been hoping to achieve an easing of Gulf War sanctions by acting like the boy next door. We know the Syrians are engaged in back channel peace talks with Israel… offhand, I can’t see that any Moslem regime would want to rock the apple cart right now.”

  “I didn’t hear you mention Khadafy in that list of the born again,” Scull said.

  Nimec was shaking his head. “He’ll always have fangs, but there’s no benefit to him in stirring up trouble at a time when the rest of his Arab brothers are reaching out across the water. He’s not going to risk isolating himself.”

  The five of them were silent awhile. Gordian rose from the table, went to the credenza, topped off his coffee, and sat back down. He stared into his cup without drinking for several more seconds, then looked up at the others.

  “I may as well be the first to say what’s on everybody’s mind,” he said at last. “It’s conceivable that it could be Russia. Or factions within the Russian government, anyway. Starinov has any number of political opponents who would like to see him get egg on his face… and who’d have access to money, materials, and highly proficient operatives.”

  He noticed that Megan’s eyes had narrowed in thought.

  “Meg?” he said.

  “It’s just that the whole thing isn’t coming together for me. Nobody’s claimed responsibility for the bombing—”

  “And it could be nobody ever will, if I may interject,” Nimec said. “The trend for the past decade has been for terrorist groups to avoid drawing attention to themselves, the idea being to keep their enemies guessing, and jumping at shadows.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Megan said. “But in this instance the act would have been committed with very specific aims in mind — namely a chilling of relations between our two countries, and the weakening of Starinov’s prestige and authority within his own government. Seems to me, there’d be no sense in it unless the finger of blame very clearly pointed in his direction. Furthermore, why would Starinov have engineered the strike, unless he wanted to bring about his own downfall? Like I said, it doesn’t gel. There’s no damn logic to it.”

  “Not apparently, and not yet,” Nimec said. “But our players might have a subtle strategy that we just aren’t grasping at this juncture.”

  “I agree,” Nordstrum said. “It may feel like forever since the bombing, but the fact is it’s barely been twelve hours. We have to wait for more information, see how everything develops—”

  “And do what in the meantime? Sit on our hands?” Scull said. “Gord, listen to me. Can you imagine the negative impact on our plans for the ground station if the blast is pinned on Starinov? I’m the one in Russia. I’ve got a close-up view of what’s going on politically. And I can tell you, there are a lot of people in high positions who’d love for our Yankee asses to ride on out of here on horseback.”

  “Jesus, Scull,” Megan said. “Hundreds of innocent people were killed last night, we’ve been discussing a situation that could destabilize an entire region, and you’re—”

  “What? Being up front about why I’m talking to my videophone at midnight Kaliningrad time and trying to figure out the big picture? If we aren’t concerned about our interests in Russia, who’s gonna be? And how come Gord called this coffee klatch in the first place?”

  Nordstrum sighed and rubbed his eyelids. “Obviously we all know why we’re here, Scull. But I think Megan was trying to add some perspective to the—”

  “Wait,” Gordian said, holding up his hand. “I’m sure that none of us have had much sleep, and everybody’s frazzled. But some extremely important issues have been raised, and I’m glad we didn’t postpone this discussion. Somebody, I think it was Julius Caesar, once said that the art of life is more like the wrestler’s art than the dancer’s, and what I’ve always thought he meant was that you’ve got to meet the unexpected head-on, grapple with it, rather than tr
y to tiptoe around it. That’s the reason we developed the Sword project.” He paused for comment, received none, and turned toward Nimec. “Pete, I want Max Blackburn to assemble a team that will gather information about who may have been responsible for the bombing. He’s to spare no expense.”

  Nimec nodded. There was a look Gordian occasionally got in his eyes, a tight, hard focus, that always evoked a mental image of someone holding a magnifying glass into the sunlight to set a leaf on fire. A look that made whoever it was turned upon feel as if he were being bathed in combustible heat. It was a look that he was giving Nimec right now.

  “I think it’ll be best if Max flies to Russia as soon as possible. He can coordinate things from there, use the ground station as our primary base of operations,” Gordian continued. “At the same time, Pete, you track down whatever leads you can here in the U.S. I’m hoping for fast progress.”

  Nimec nodded again.

  “We keep a low profile, okay?” Gordian said. “If the intelligence community gets the slightest hint we’re conducting an independent investigation, they’ll shut us down.”

  Gordian swung his gaze around the table.

  “Any comments?”

  “Only one,” Nordstrum said.

  Gordian looked at him, waiting.

  “You know that quote about the wrestler and the dancer?”

  “Right.”

  “It comes from Marcus Aurelius, not the emperor Julius.”

  Gordian looked at him another moment. Then he slowly lifted his coffee to his lips, drained the cup, and nodded.

  “Appreciate that, my friend,” he said.

  * * *

  The Blue Room at New York’s City Hall, where official press briefings normally took place, was too small to hold the crowd of print and film journalists who wanted to attend the city’s first press conference since the explosion. Figuring out where to hold this briefing had been only one of a hundred decisions that had to be made by the mayor’s office.

  But the mayor was gone. Dead. Killed in the blast like a thousand others.

  The deputy mayor was in the hospital and expected to be there for at least a week. Internal injuries. He’d taken a chunk of the bleachers in the gut and was considered to be lucky to be alive. Nobody knew when he’d be back on the job.

  Half of the borough presidents were too battered to attend, and the police commissioner was both too shattered by his personal tragedy and too focused on the actual investigation to, as he put it, waste his time on PR bullshit.

  But the news media was clamoring for anything. For crumbs. So Press Secretary Andrea DeLillo had spent the last fifteen hours pushing her coping skills to world-class levels. She’d fended off politicians determined to make political hay in the glare of the spotlight focused on Times Square. She’d gotten numbers from the crews at the site, from all of the hospitals, and from the EMS sites that had survived. She’d pushed the pain of her own losses into the background, not to mention the fear that she’d probably lose her job as soon as a new mayor took office. If anything she could do would shake loose the killers who had brought the angel of death down on her city, she would do it. She would feed the media the facts as she knew them, and turn them loose to find the perps. It was all she could manage right now. She could only pray it was enough.

  The mikes were set up at a podium at the top of the City Hall steps. A huge crowd of reporters of all kinds, all bundled up against the cold, flowed down the stairway and into the street, which had been blocked off and barricaded by the police department. Flanked by representatives from the police, the fire department, the city council, and the FBI, Andrea surveyed the crowd.

  Finally she stepped up to the mike and began her presentation. As the grim statistics rolled off her lips, she made a silent vow: Somebody would pay for this if she had to see to it herself.

  TWENTY

  WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 2, 2000

  FROM THE WASHINGTON POST:

  FBI Official Leaves Questions of Fifth Bomb Unanswered

  Fuels Conjecture With Statements About Evidence at FBI Explosives Lab

  Washington — During a news conference today at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Assistant Director Robert Lang remained vague about whether the FBI is in possession of physical clues to the identity of the bomber or bombers responsible for the bloody New Year’s Eve attack that left an estimated 700 persons dead and injured thousands more in Times Square.

  In a prepared statement to the media, Lang officially confirmed for the first time that the powerful explosion that occurred at 11:56 P.M. was followed by three secondary blasts of “a deliberate nature,” ruling out the possibility that they may have stemmed from violent damage to underground gas mains in the bombing, as had been reported by some news organizations. He went on to term eyewitness accounts “extraordinarily helpful to the investigation,” and expressed confidence that photographs and video tapes taken at the scene will provide law enforcement agents with a clear picture of “matters of relevant interest that occurred before and after the event.”

  Lang was considerably more guarded, however, when asked about an item found by investigators rumored to be a fifth explosive device that failed to detonate. “I can only tell you that we do possess substantial evidence believed to have been left behind by the perpetrator or perpetrators, and presently under analysis in our Laboratory Division’s Explosive Unit-Bomb Data Center,” Lang said in a brief Q&A session following his prepared statement. “We are unable to be more specific right now for investigative reasons, but want to reassure the public, and especially the relatives of those indiscriminately killed or injured in the blast, that we are as sickened by what happened as anyone else, and have committed all our resources to solving this case.”

  Rather than quell speculation that another bomb may have been discovered by members of the New York Police Department Emergency Services Unit within minutes of the fatal explosions, Lang’s comments drew attention for having mentioned the EU-BDC— which serves as the FBI’s primary laboratory for the examination of bombing devices — as the unit where the mysterious evidence is being processed. Also, while noting that tests of explosive residue and other trace materials are among the functions normally performed by the EU-BDC, Lang refused to “limit the categorization of evidence to one particular type or another” when responding to follow-up questions by reporters.

  The implications of this may be significant, say many forensics experts. Even partial remains of an explosive device are likely to reveal “signature” characteristics that can be matched against those of devices used in other bombing incidents and potentially link it to a suspect or terrorist organization…

  The reports about the mysterious fifth bomb were almost on the money.

  The undetonated satchel charge was, in fact, found outside a storefront on Fifty-second Street and Seventh Avenue, although by firemen rather than police officers. In response to a request for operational support from the NYPD, technicians wearing bomb protective suits from the FBI’s New York field office were quickly dispatched to collect the evidence. When it was determined that the device’s fusing system was inoperative, and that it was therefore safe for transport, the specialized unit — in a procedure okayed by the local assistant director — arranged for the satchel charge to be delivered to FBI HQ in Washington, D.C., where it was given over to the EU-BDC for scientific examination. A further discovery at the bomb scene by agents equipped with ultraviolet lights had caused the laboratory to buzz with anticipation well in advance of the package’s arrival: fluorescence had been detected in both the unexploded charge and debris samples collected near the site of the initial blast, strongly indicating the explosives had been tagged with chemical markers by their manufacturer. Their reaction was strongly warranted — while not yet legally mandated in the United States, tagging had been required by the Swiss government for years and was a voluntary practice among an increasing number of international explosives suppliers. If indeed present, th
e expectation was that the markers would lead investigators back to the point of sale, and produce valuable information about the purchaser of the bomb-making material.

  Soon after the C-4 satchel charge reached the lab, a microthin sliver was taken from it, placed on a specimen slide, and then exposed to a Tesla coil magnet for the purpose of orienting the tags of melamine plastic — each chemically inert particle about the size of a speck of pollen and striated with color — that it might contain. Typically taggants were mixed with explosive ingredients at concentrations of 250 parts per million, a ratio that allows the explosive to retain its full stability and performance, while showing up for easy viewing under microscopic examination. In this instance, an Olympus binocular light microscope equipped with 35mm Polaroid video was used by a forensics specialist who immediately verified the presence of markers and, working with feverish excitement, read and photographed the taggants for their color-coded information about the manufacturer, production date, and batch number of the plastique.

  From there it became a fairly routine computer search. The information was checked against the main charge identification database for commercial explosives which had recently been added to the Explosives Reference and Search System — dubbed EXPRESS by government techies with a fondness for acronyms — and drew a hit on the first shot.

  The manufacturer was ID’d as Lian International, a chemical firm that was part of a larger Malaysian conglomerate based in Kuala Lumpur, and headed by an ethnic Chinese businessman named Teng Chou. Though this was an important and satisfying investigatory link, it paled in comparison to what was uncovered next: when a trace was run on the plastique’s batch number, it turned out to match that of a shipment recently sold to a Russian munitions distributor with strong government ties.

  With that piece of info under their belts, the investigators in the EU-BDC knew they had come onto something big.