Element 94

by Kleiner Jeffries

  “Doctor, do you have any idea how much additional explosive force we are talking about?” The question came from General Fitzpatrick, whom Leo assumed was already estimating the radius of destruction, and perhaps even the protection such a bunker as they were now housed in might afford.

  “General, I’m sorry. As I told you, I am just not in a position to determine that yet. If the secondary reaction is a fission reaction, then that depends on the mass of 94 assembled, which again is not limited by a critical mass, and so can be quite significant. But it is also likely to be on a magnitude exponentially smaller than the fusion-type thermonucs we possess in our arsenal. On the other hand, if this material somehow undergoes a non-fission reaction, well”, his voice trailed off, leaving a pregnant pause in the air.

  “Well what!” Q broke the eerie silence.

  “Well, then we’re in uncharted territory. And barring further experiments, which would require a lot more material than I’ve got, I just can’t tell you”

  “What on earth are you talking about Leo? Fusion? Do you possibly think 94, with an enormous atomic mass, can undergo… it just can’t be. But what else then?” Dr Lee asked incredulously

  “I don’t really know Marty. But when I bombarded a minute mass of 94 in our cyclotron, the energy release was far greater than predicted based upon a fission reaction. But I agree, fusion doesn’t make sense either. So we’re left with no rational explanation. But, whatever it is, I think we’re dealing with a type of reaction that is totally novel here.”

  “And perhaps a completely new type of radiation”, Marty added intelligently

  “Yes”

  So Marty believed in the unbelievable then, Leo thought. He knew him to be open-minded; an original thinker who wasn’t constrained by prior dogma. But even Leo was impressed by how quickly Marty was willing to buy into a radical idea that seemed contradictory to everything they otherwise knew about the physical properties of matter at the subatomic level.

  “Okay, does anyone else have anything to add here?” asked Q, sensing the briefing was reaching its conclusion and knowing they all had to urgently mobilize to the crisis now unfolding.

  Bill Kelly shifted in his seat, leaned forward, and began to speak.

  “Dr. Koval, one thing puzzles me with your report. You mentioned the soil sample in question exhibited significant spontaneous decay, in fact the full panoply of radioactive emissions – alpha, beta, and gamma rays. You then isolated a metallic core resembling Plutonium, or some variant thereof, and went on to state that this particular isotope was radioactively stable. How do you rationalize these seemingly incongruous points?”

  Leo smiled at Kelly’s obvious attention to detail. The man continued to impress him. “Mr. Kelly, that is an excellent point, and one that puzzled me for some time. When I mentioned 94 had negligible detectable radioactive decay, I isolated and examined the element in the controlled environment of a cyclotron. For those not familiar with a cyclotron, the device contains a vacuum chamber, in which a target may be bombarded with accelerated particles generated using magnetic and electric focusing. In such a vacuum, 94 exhibited tremendous radioactive stability. However, in ambient oxygenated environments, tremendous radioactivity was generated. So somehow, oxygen seems to destabilize the substance. Alternatively, 94 emits a type of radioactivity that cannot be detected through traditional means. This energy can then secondarily stimulate surrounding gasses to less stable configurations, which then undergo traditional spontaneous decay, eliciting a positive reading on a conventional Geiger counter.”

  This latter possibility had the military and intelligence brass once again squirming at the possibilities conjured up by this chilling disclosure. Weapons-grade nuclear material totally impervious to detection by radio-sensing devices when isolated in an oxygen-deprived environment. It was one thing to know your enemy possessed material that could be incorporated into the most powerful weapon man had ever produced. But the image of such a device being able to be smuggled into the country, right under the umbrella of the Radio-detection system (RDS), the complex network designed to detect any such material entering sovereign US territory, was unfathomable. Development of RDS was instrumental in allaying fears of such a scenario after the events of September 11, 2001, and the proliferation of nuclear capabilities to Rogue states in the years that followed. Now, in one fell swoop, the entire system was rendered obsolete by this strange and mysterious new substance.

  Leo noticed Kelly leaning over and whispering something in General Fitzpatrick’s direction, who in turn spoke quietly, inaudibly, to Q who was conveniently – but not accidentally - sitting directly to the general’s left. The conversation lasted maybe a minute, and then Q dismissed the assembly with a terse, “Okay, we’re done here”. Leo closed his presentation, removed the disk, and motioned to leave the room. But before he could make any headway to the exit, he was stopped in his tracks by Kelly, who gently grabbed him by the elbow

  “Good job doctor.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  “Can you spare just a minute more. There’s something I…”, a brief pause as Kelly’s eyes met Q’s stare from the far end of the room, “We would like to talk to you about”.

  “Sure thing Mr. Kelly”

  At that point the room had emptied, and Q was alone with the CT chief and Columbia scientist.

  “Doctor Koval, please, sit down”, Q began. “One last item I’d like to discuss with you privately. As you well know, our nation has spent a tremendous amount of time and money on gathering intelligence, in particular to ferret out potential threats relating to weapons of mass destruction – of which of course, the holy grail is a nuclear device. This has been the focus of the last 3 administrations. For years now, we’ve been honing our skills, both technologically and with traditional intel; people on the ground who have infiltrated numerous organizations thought to pose a potential threat, a potential nuclear threat, to this nation. And now this little presentation of yours, these findings, well, I can’t put it any other way; it has rendered our defenses, our technological defenses specifically, virtually useless.” Leo motioned, as if about to speak, but Q continued on. “What I am about to tell you is highly classified. And now it’s time for me to scare you a bit. Not long ago, we intercepted a ship carrying radioactive materials 100 miles off the coast of New York. Intelligence revealed the radioactive mass of these materials had a combined weight of some thirty pounds – not quite enough for a fully functional fission device, but enough to assemble quite a potent ‘dirty bomb’. A weapon designed to disperse radioactive contamination across a wide perimeter.” Leo nodded – he was familiar with the term from when it became popularized years earlier as pundits were contemplating the various terrorist scenarios that might descend upon the seemingly vulnerable nation following nineeleven.

  “Well, the ship was stopped by the coast guard. And then just blew up, taking our cutter down with her. But that wasn’t all. Investigators found radioactive waste hundreds of yards away. I don’t have to tell you doctor, if material had aerosolized and the wind had been blowing the wrong direction… Well, we got lucky that day. And miraculously, this was kept under wraps from the public, from the god dam media. And we, and that includes you and your family and friends in New York, have Bill here to thank for averting one huge crisis. It was his men who reported the threat, and…never mind, he can tell you about it someday.”

  “I lost five men that day”, Kelly intoned somberly

  “This country lost 5 men, Bill. Five more soldiers lost in this godforsaken war”. Q, turning his attention back to Leo, continued on: “As I said, our best estimate is this was a dirty bomb headed towards New York Harbor. But more relevant to us, to why we need you and your expertise, is that this should never have happened. This was not the first such device attempted to be smuggled to our shores; no, this kind of thing happened quite a bit for some time. And then, we had a relatively quiet window, as the futility of such attempts became appreciated. We though
t we had it down boy. I’m talking something on a scale of the star wars project, only nobody knew about it. We call it the radiodetection system, or RDS. But somehow, someway, this one device got by our defenses. And until this day, we’ve been racking our brains to figure out how. But now, finally, we think we have our answer. You, doctor Koval, just gave us our answer”. Q paused, continued to meet Leo’s transfixed gaze, almost as if expecting him to engage in the conversation at this point. Leo picked up on the cue, but found himself unable to speak. He just couldn’t believe what he was hearing. For maybe the first time in his life, Leo was speechless. He now understood just how imminent and grave their predicament truly was, and why some of the people in the room had reacted with the urgency that they had. And Leo was genuinely scared.

  Just who had access to this material? And how close was anyone to weaponizing it and smuggling in onto their shores? The answers, Leo would soon learn, were not reassuring.

  “Bill will fill you in on the details of RDS. We need you to fix it. To make it foolproof once again”. Q pushed himself away from the table, stood, and began to leave the room. Just before he reached the door, he turned one last time towards Leo’s direction, and in a subdued, almost solemn voice, stated rather simply and straightforwardly “Doctor Koval, we need you; this nation needs your help. What you do from hereon after will shape the future, shape our fate. And I’m glad, for I do believe we’re in good hands”. And with that, Q opened the door and walked out of the room.

  Chapter 8

  Ben Goldberg found himself spending more and more time in the war room, compiling, organizing, reviewing and digesting the data accumulated to date. They now had a solid lead as to the locations being targeted, and Ben could not help but feel jumpy, as Washington was foremost on the list. He had immediately, with Kelly’s permission, transferred his wife and 3 year old son to stay with her parents in New Jersey. The argument was straightforward; there was simply no other way he could maintain focus on his work. Besides, Ben was spending so many long hours at the office, he was barely seeing his family as it were. If he wished, he could always make the 2 and a half-hour drive north and visit them. This case was obviously becoming more and more personal for them all.

  Ben now focused on the Sayf Udeen chain of command, listed neatly on the board beside him. It was conceivable there were other conspirators, but in light of the forensic link, this organization had drawn the overwhelming focus of the agency. Below the words "Sayf Udeen" was a hierarchical tree of the group. A disturbingly large number of question marks dotted the places where the names and faces of each member belonged. They knew Ra’ed al Abbas, which translated into “Ra’ed the Lion”, was considered the supreme leader, but the only picture they had of the man was from his childhood. He had avoided direct public contact for decades, and now in his early forties one could only speculate as to his appearance from the few photos they had of his relatives. It was rumored he had a twin sibling who died in infancy, and he had no other full brothers or sisters. His mother died when he was 5, and Ra’ed was left abandoned by his father at age 12, choosing instead to make a life with his new wife and children, Ra’ed’s half-siblings who shunned the youngster. A purported voiceprint from an intercepted communication turned out not to be that of Ra’ed, and they were still working on some way to definitively identify the man.

  Below Raed, the command structure branched laterally into several subdivisions, each with its own command structure. Some were more overt, such as education and religion, which were cultist entities used to generate the hoards of brainwashed followers to the organization. But there also existed other divisions that were only now beginning to be appreciated. These were the more surreptitious factions - operations, intelligence, and so forth. Ben had added another just recently – research and development, along with several names of scientists suspected of ties with the Sayf Udeen leadership. It was difficult to piece together a clear image of the command structure, although it seemed the intelligence apparatus held a somewhat higher hierarchical position. Of course, this was the branch of Udeen that held the most unknowns as to names, faces, and even voiceprints.

  The heightened scrutiny of Sayf Udeen, coupled with a noticeable increase in chatter, had enabled the agency to intercept several messages from known or suspected Udeen operatives. Unfortunately, most were careful to scramble the telltale signs in their speech that could subsequently be matched with a great degree of certainty, much like fingerprints. However, Ben did learn one important bit of information from the countless intercepts and interrogations – that the central figure in the intelligence chain was a man called Faarooq, which in Arabic meant “He who distinguishes truth from falsehood”. This was, in essence, the crux of the world of espionage – the search for the truth, the search for information; the irony was not lost on the U.S. intelligence analyst.

  A major hurdle in investigating Sayf Udeen was the lack of crossover and links between the more conspicuous civil and religious wings of the organization, which had an abundance of known members, and the more clandestine factions which had only recently started to register on the radar of the intelligence community. Specifically, the Sayf Udeen model was designed to withstand the collapse of one or several components within the hierarchy. The organization went to great measures to ensure that few knew the details of any single mission, much less the overarching plans of the organization. Interrogation of even a seemingly high-ranking member had thus far yielded limited information. And when it did, it seemed as if Udeen’s plans were malleable, able to adjust to the loss of personnel and compromise of information. In short, Udeen was able to cut its losses most effectively. Only if you went high up enough in the chain of command could you hope to really gain an understanding of the true nature and purpose of the group – and nobody on their side ever had.

  The military was combing Northwest Africa, where latest intelligence had placed the Sayf Udeen base of operations. Bill Kelly was hatching a plan of his own to penetrate the organization. A counter-offensive was in the works. The real questions now were, how effective would they be in striking back, and more importantly, would they be able to do so in time?

  Leo waited patiently in the holding room following the briefing. Within a short time, Bill Kelly appeared at the door.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting again, doctor. Just had to finish up with the General and NSA. Do you mind accompanying me up to Langely?"

  "To CIA headquarters?"

  "Yes - the one and only." Kelly answered

  "Hmm. Guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  "Sure you do doctor. We can't and won't force your hand in any way, but there are a few things we need to talk about before you decide if and what your next level of participation might be."

  "Next level of participation?”

  "Doctor, If it’s alright, I’d prefer not to discuss this here. There is much to talk about. Please, come with me to Langely and I'll tell you everything there is to know. And then, I promise, the choice will be yours."

  Koval agreed, and followed Kelly down the winding corridors of the nation’s defense headquarters and towards the exit. Now that they knew what it was the scientist had discovered about the new substance, this element 94, Kelly figured it was time for Koval to truly gain an understanding of what was going on. The scientist was surely already aware of the theoretical dangers 94 posed, but now Kelly wished to emphasize the gravity of the situation as bluntly as possible. Leo must learn of the urgency and ramifications of his work, and of the context in which this substance loomed as an ever-growing threat. Kelly’s intent was simple; he wished to take Leo Koval under his wing and integrate him with STAT and the vast resources at his disposal. But first he had to return an urgent call from Mack. Events were unfolding quickly now, and Kelly needed to stay abreast of all facets of the case.

  Kelly excused himself as he and Leo exited to the parking lot, and walked out of earshot to place the call.

  “…Yes, I heard. The NBC teams are mobilizi
ng. I spoke with Fitzpatrick - the Pentagon is deploying additional personnel and equipment. Everyone’s on high alert.” The news of the intercepted communication had already made its way to Kelly’s ear.

  “…No, I don’t want you bogged down with those details. You just get ready for the upcoming mission.” Mack was to lead a team to NorthWest Africa in search of Udeen and C.J. They were to work in tandem with the military’s special forces already deployed in the area.

  “Oh, one more thing - call in Ali for me. He’ll need to get ready - I’m sending him in.”

  “Undercover?” The Operations Chief knew Kelly had been itching to penetrate Sayf Udeen. They needed some human intelligence before they could effectively strike back at the enemy.