“Are you saying that the sub I dove near might be retrofitted to fire nuclear weapons?” I asked as this frightening specter just loomed bigger.
“Dr. Scarpetta,” said the general as he leaned closer to me, “we’re not assuming that sub has been retrofitted here in the United States. All that was needed was for it to be brought back up to speed and sent out to sea where it might be intercepted by a principality that should not have it. Work could be done there. But what Iraq or Algeria cannot do for themselves on their own soil is produce weapons-grade plutonium.”
“And where is that going to come from?” Marino asked. “It’s not like you can get that from a power plant. And if the terrorists think otherwise, then I guess we’re dealing with a bunch of redneck dumb shits.”
“It would be extremely hard, if not close to impossible, to get plutonium from Old Point,” I agreed.
“An anarchist like Joel Hand doesn’t think about how hard it might be,” Wesley said.
“And it is possible,” Sessions added. “For about two months after new fuel rods have been placed in a reactor, there is a window in which you can get plutonium.”
“How often are the rods replaced?” Marino asked.
“Old Point replaces one-third of them every fifteen months. That’s eighty assemblies, or about three atom bombs if you shut down the reactors and get the assemblies out during that two-month window.”
“Then Hand had to know the schedule,” I said.
“Oh, yes.”
I thought of the telephone records of CP&L executives that someone like Eddings might have illegally accessed.
“So someone was on the take,” I said.
“We think we know who. One high-ranking officer, really,” Sessions said. “Someone who had a lot of say in the decision to locate the CP&L field office on property adjacent to Hand’s farm.”
“A farm belonging to Joshua Hayes?”
“Yes.”
“Shit,” Marino said. “Hand had to be planning this for years, and he sure as hell was getting a lot of bucks from somewhere.”
“No question about either,” the general agreed. “Something like this would have to be planned for years, and someone was paying for it.”
“You need to remember that for a fanatic like Hand,” Wesley said, “what he is engaged in is a religious war of eternal significance. He can afford to be patient.”
“General Sessions,” I went on, “if the submarine we’re speaking of is destined for a distant port, might NAVSEA know that?”
“Absolutely.”
“How?” Marino wanted to know.
“A number of things,” he said. “For example, when ships are stored at the Inactive Yard, their missile and torpedo tubes are covered with steel plates outside the hull. And a plate is welded over the shaft inside the ship so the screw is fixed. Obviously, all guns and communications are removed.”
“Meaning that a violation of at least some of these regulations could be inspected from the outside,” I said. “You could tell by looking at the vessel if you were near it in the water.”
He looked at me and caught my meaning precisely. “Yes, you could tell.”
“You could dive around this sub and find that the torpedo tubes, for example, are not sealed. You might even be able to tell that the screw was not welded.”
“Yes,” he said again. “All of that you could tell.”
“That’s what Ted Eddings was doing.”
“I’m afraid so.” It was Wesley who spoke. “Divers recovered his camera and we’ve looked at the film, which had only three exposures. All blurred images of the Exploiter’s screw. So it doesn’t appear he was in the water long before he died.”
“And where is that submarine now?” I asked.
The general paused. “You might say that we’re in subtle pursuit of it.”
“Then it’s gone.”
“I’m afraid it left port about the same time the nuclear power plant was stormed.”
I looked at the three men. “Well, I certainly think we know why Eddings had gotten increasingly paranoid about self-protection.”
“Someone must have set him up,” Marino said. “You can’t just decide at the last minute to poison someone with cyanide gas.”
“His was a premeditated murder committed by someone he must have trusted,” Wesley said. “He wouldn’t have told just anybody what he was doing that night.”
I thought of another label in Eddings’s fax machine. CPT could stand for captain, and I mentioned Captain Green’s name to them.
“Well, Eddings must have had at least one inside source for his story,” was Wesley’s comment. “Someone was leaking information to him and I suspect this same someone set him up or at least assisted in it.” He looked at me. “And we know from his phone bills that over the past few months, he had quite a lot of communication with Green, by phone and fax, that seems to have begun last fall when Eddings did a rather harmless profile on the shipyard.”
“Then he started digging too deep,” I said.
“His curiosity was actually helpful to us,” General Sessions said. “We started digging deeper, too. We’ve been investigating this situation longer than you might imagine.” He paused, and smiled a little. “In fact, Dr. Scarpetta, you have not been as alone at some points as you might have thought.”
“I sincerely hope you’ll thank Jerod and Ki Soo,” I said, assuming they were SEALs.
But it was Wesley who replied, “I will, or perhaps you can yourself next time you visit HRT.”
“General Sessions,” I moved on to what seemed a rather more mundane topic. “Would you happen to know if rats are a concern in decommissioned ships?”
“Rats are always a worry in any ship,” he said.
“One of the uses of cyanide is to exterminate rodents in the hulls of ships,” I said. “The Inactive Yard may keep a supply of it.”
“As I’ve indicated, Captain Green is of great concern to us.” He knew just what I meant.
“Vis-a`-vis the New Zionists?” I asked.
“No,” Wesley answered for him. “Not as opposed to but as with. My speculation is that Green is the New Zionists’ direct link to anything military, such as the shipyard, while Roche is simply his toady. Roche is the one who harasses, snoops and snitches.”
“He didn’t kill Danny,” I said.
“Danny was killed by a psychopathic individual who blends well enough with normal society that he did not draw any attention to himself as he waited outside the Hill Cafe. I’d profile this individual as a white male, early thirties to early forties, experienced in hunting and in guns, in general.”
“Sounds like the spitting image of the drones who took over Old Point,” Marino remarked.
“Yes,” Wesley said. “Killing Danny, whether he was the intended victim or not, was a hunting assignment, like shooting a groundhog. The individual who did this probably bought the Sig forty-five at the same gun show where he got the Black Talons.”
“I thought you said the Sig once belonged to a cop,” the admiral reminded him.
“Right. It ends up on the street and eventually gets sold secondhand,” Wesley said.
“To one of Hand’s followers,” Marino said. “The same kind of guy that took out Shapiro in Maryland.”
“The exact same kind of guy.”
“My big question is what they think you know,” the admiral asked me.
“I’ve thought about that a lot and can’t come up with anything,” I replied.
“You have to think like they do,” Wesley said to me. “What is it they think you might know that others don’t?”
“They might think I have the Book,” I said for lack of anything else that came to mind. “And apparently that is as sacred as an Indian burial ground to them.”
“What’s in it that they wouldn’t want anyone else to know?” Sessions asked.
“It would seem that the revelation most dangerous to them would be the plan they’ve already carried ou
t,” I replied.
“Of course. They couldn’t carry it out if someone tipped their hand.” Wesley looked at me, a thousand thoughts in his eyes. “What does Dr. Mant know?”
“I haven’t had the chance to ask him. He doesn’t answer my calls, and I’ve left messages numerous times.”
“You don’t think that’s rather strange?”
“I absolutely think it’s strange,” I said to him. “But I don’t think anything extreme has happened, or we would have heard. I think he’s afraid.”
Wesley explained to the general, “He’s the medical examiner in charge of the Tidewater District.”
“Well, then, perhaps you should go see him,” the general suggested to me.
“In light of circumstances, this doesn’t seem the ideal time,” I said.
“On the contrary,” the general said. “I think this is precisely the ideal time.”
“You might be right,” Wesley agreed. “Our only hope, really, is to get inside these people’s heads. Maybe Mant has information that could help. Maybe that’s why he’s hiding.”
General Sessions shifted in his chair. “Well, I vote for it,” he said. “For one thing, we’ve got to worry about this same kind of thing happening over there, as you and I have already discussed, Benton. So that business already awaits anyway, doesn’t it? It won’t be any big deal for another person to go along, providing British Airways doesn’t mind, short notice and all.” He seemed amused in a wry way. “If they do, I expect I’ll just have to call the Pentagon.”
“Kay,” Wesley explained this to me while Marino looked on with angry eyes, “we don’t know that an Old Point isn’t already happening in Europe because what’s going on in Virginia didn’t happen overnight. We’re worried about major cities elsewhere.”
“So, are you telling me these New Zionist fruit loops are in England, too?” It was Marino who asked, and he was about to boil over.
“Not that we are aware of, but unfortunately, there are plenty of others to take their place,” Wesley said.
“Well, I got an opinion.” Marino looked accusingly at me. “We got a possible nuclear disaster on our hands. Don’t you think you ought to stick around?”
“That would be my preference.”
The general made the salient remark, “If you help, hopefully it won’t be necessary for you to stick around because there won’t be anything for you to do.”
“I understand that, too,” I said. “No one believes in prevention more than I do.”
“Can you manage it?” Wesley asked.
“My offices are already mobilizing to handle whatever happens,” I said. “The other doctors know what to do. You know I’ll help in any way I possibly can.”
But Marino was not to be soothed. “It ain’t safe.” He stared at Wesley now. “You can’t just go sending the doc through airports and all the hell over the place when we don’t know who’s out there or what they want.”
“You’re right, Pete,” Wesley thoughtfully said. “And we’re not going to do that.”
chapter
14
THAT NIGHT I went home because I needed clothes, and my passport was in the safe. I packed with nervous hands as I waited for my pager to beep. Fielding had been calling me on the hour to hear updates and air his concerns. The bodies at Old Point remained where the gunmen had left them, as best we knew, and we had no idea how many of the plant’s workers remained imprisoned inside.
I slept restlessly under the watch of a police car parked on my street, and I sat up when the alarm clock startled me awake at five A.M. An hour and a half later, a Learjet awaited me at the Millionaire Terminal in Henrico County, where the area’s wealthiest businessmen parked their helicopters and corporate planes. Wesley and I were polite but guarded as we greeted each other, and I was having trouble believing we were about to fly overseas together. But it had been planned that he would visit the embassy before it was suggested that I should go to London, too, and General Sessions did not know about our history. Or at least this was how I chose to view a situation that was out of my hands.
“I’m not sure I trust your motives,” I said to Wesley as the jet took off like a race car with wings. “And what about this?” I looked around. “Since when does the Bureau use Learjets, or did the Pentagon arrange this, too?”
“We use whatever we need,” he said. “CP&L has made available any resource it has to help us resolve this crisis. The Learjet belongs to them.”
The white jet was sleek, with burlwood and teal green leather seats, but it was loud, so we could not speak softly.
“You don’t have to worry about using something of theirs?” I said.
“They’re just as unhappy about all this as we are. As far as we know, with the exception of one or two bad apples, CP&L is blameless. In fact, it and its employees are clearly the most profoundly victimized.”
He stared ahead at the cockpit and its two well-built pilots dressed in suits. “Besides, the pilots are HRT,” he added. “And we checked every nut and bolt of this thing before we took off. Don’t worry. As for my going with you”—he looked at me—“I’ll say it again. What happens now is operational. The ball has been passed to HRT. I will be needed when terrorists begin to communicate with us, when we can at least identify them. But I don’t think that will be for several days.”
“How can you possibly know that?” I poured coffee.
He took the cup from my hand and our fingers brushed. “I know because they’re busy. They want those assemblies, and there are only so many they can get per day.”
“Have the reactors been shut down?”
“According to the power company, the terrorists shut down the reactors immediately after storming the plant. So they know what they want, and they are down to business.”
“And there are twenty of them.”
“That’s approximately how many went in for their alleged seminar in the mock control room. But we really can’t be sure how many are there now.”
“This tour,” I said, “when was it scheduled?”
“The power company said it was originally scheduled in early December for the end of February.”
“Then they moved it up.” I wasn’t surprised in light of what had happened lately.
“Yes,” he said. “It was suddenly rescheduled a couple of days before Eddings was killed.”
“It sounds like they’re desperate, Benton.”
“And probably more reckless and not as prepared,” he said. “And that’s better and worse for us.”
“And what about hostages? Is it likely they will let all of them go, based on your experience?”
“I don’t know about all of them,” he said, staring out the window, his face grim in soft side lights.
“Lord,” I said, “if they try to get the fuel out, we could have a national disaster on our hands. And I don’t see how they think they can pull this off. Those assemblies probably weigh several tons each and are so radioactive they could cause instant death if you got close. And how will they get them away from Old Point?”
“The plant’s surrounded by water for purposes of cooling the reactors. And nearby, on the James, we’re watching a barge we believe belongs to them.”
I remembered Marino telling me of barges delivering large crates to the New Zionist compound, and I said, “Can we take it?”
“No. We can’t take barges, submarines, nothing right now. Not until we can get those hostages out.” He sipped coffee, and the horizon was turning a pale gold.
“Then the best-case scenario is they will take what they want and leave without killing anybody else,” I supposed, although I did not think this could happen.
“No. The best-case scenario is we stop them there.” He looked at me. “We don’t want a barge full of highly radioactive material on Virginia’s rivers or out at sea. What are we going to do, threaten to sink it? Besides, my guess is they’ll take hostages with them.” He paused. “Eventually, they’ll shoot them all.”
I could not help but imagine those poor people now as fright shocked every nerve cell every moment they breathed. I knew about the physical and mental manifestations of fear, and the images were searing and I seethed inside. I felt a wave of hatred for these men who called themselves the New Zionists, and I clenched my fists.
Wesley looked down at my white knuckles on the armrests, and thought I was afraid of flying. “It’s only a few more minutes,” he said. “We’re starting our descent.”
We landed at Kennedy, and a shuttle waited for us on the tarmac. It was driven by two more fit men in suits, and I did not ask Wesley about them because I already knew. One of them walked us inside the terminal to British Airways, which had been kind enough to cooperate with the Bureau, or maybe it was the Pentagon, by making two seats available on their next Concorde flight to London. At the counter, we discreetly showed our credentials and said we had not packed guns. The agent assigned to keep us safe walked with us to the lounge, and when I looked for him next, he was perusing stacks of foreign newspapers.
Wesley and I found seats before expansive windows looking out over the tarmac where the supersonic plane waited like a giant white heron being fed fuel through a thick hose attached to its side. The Concorde looked more like a rocket than any commercial craft I had seen, and it appeared that most of its passengers were no longer capable of being impressed by it or much of anything. They served themselves pastries and fruit, and some were already mixing Bloody Marys and mimosas.
Wesley and I talked little and constantly scanned the crowd as we held up newspapers like every other proverbial spy or fugitive on the run. I could tell that Middle Easterners, in particular, caught his eye, while I was more wary of people who looked like us, for I remembered Joel Hand that day I had faced him in court and had found him attractive and genteel. If he sat next to me right now and I did not know him, I would have thought he belonged in this lounge more than we.
“How are you doing?” Wesley lowered his paper.
“I don’t know.” I was agitated. “So tell me. Are we alone or is your friend still here?”
His eyes smiled.
“I don’t see what’s amusing about this.”
Five Scarpetta Novels Page 24