The Hammer of God

by Tom Avitabile

  Damn.

  What the author had pleaded for in his book 35 years ago — that someone with access to the “new calculating machines” would run his numbers and pick up where he left off — was all in the report that Bill now held in his hand.

  Bill sat motionless for nearly five minutes. His mind replayed the President’s serious concern, Peter’s running away at the mere mention, scientists stumbling across that which was only held in close confidence by three living men in the world, then disappearing. Correction he thought. Three men in the free world. Did every nation who possessed nukes know that the rules of warfare were subject to solar tides?

  He picked up the phone and called Cheryl. He asked her to get the White House travel office started on getting 10 SCIAD members to his office the day after tomorrow at 10 a.m.

  Rodney had an instant dislike for the new guy, Number 11, who showed up today. It was the leather jacket. The guy was full of himself and that leather jacket and sunglasses were the height of smugness. Number 11 was the helicopter pilot. Unfortunately, Rodney had to train for two days with him.

  Joey waited for Bill’s 10:30 meeting to wrap before he went in. Five glum-looking people walked out of his office.

  Joey went right in. “No happy campers in that bunch, boy.”

  “Why is it that they think lawyers beat scientists like rock beats paper? They think because it’s a political football that I can just change the science! Science is not negotiable. It’s not politically convenient. It is what it is.”

  “What it is. Right on brother!”

  “Shut up!” Bill picked up a red pen and — with extreme prejudice — crossed out the title page of whatever it was they left behind. He then tossed the document into the out basket. “What do you have for me, Joey?”

  “Your call the other day could be the walking dead. We are very quietly exhuming the body from Woodlawn. We’ll have DNA and fingerprints in a few hours.”

  “I just hope Signora Remo doesn’t get wind of this unless we are sure her son isn’t in that grave.”

  “I got Johnny ‘No’, as next of kin, to approve the order. He and I agreed it’s better not to put his mom through this.”

  “Do you think Peter gave his jacket to someone or do you think it was lifted?”

  “It could have gone down like this: the Surete has seen neither hide nor hair of a grifter that operated in the clubs in that part of St. Germain for the past two weeks. Word is he crossed a family member of a very connected Frenchman who wanted him hurt bad for ripping off the man’s nephew. It’s possible Peter had his jacket off in the club, maybe behind a chair, and this guy sees one of the men the uncle sent to break his legs so he quick changes his appearance by grabbing Pete’s jacket, then heads upstairs, but the henchmen catch on and get him on the stairway. They break his legs and stab him for good measure. The creep doesn’t die fast, manages to make it to the street, but goes cold in the gutter and some poor schmuck on his way to make baguettes before dawn runs over his pumpkin. Splat! No identity other than Pete’s papers in the ‘borrowed’ coat.”

  “The FBI teach you to talk like that?”

  “No, Mr. Garafolo in gym.”

  “So everyone just accepts that he’s Peter because he’s got my card and that makes this a case the locals want no part of.”

  “So they don’t do the basics and we just accept the body.”

  “And poor Anna Remo cries because we tell her she lost her son.”

  “Yep.”

  “What a way to run a railroad.”

  Riding along in the passenger seat of Jamal’s truck, Bridge peered into his satchel. The L.E.D. meter of the radiometer, the latest generation of Geiger counter, was kicking above normal. That almost certainly meant this could have been the truck. Bridge decided to take the risk.

  “What kind of loads do you usually work?”

  “Used to do a lot of furniture — desks, tables, chairs. Lately, a lot of electronics. I have televisions back there now.”

  “Ever carry any dangerous stuff?”

  “Like what?”

  “Radioactive material.”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  Bridge took the Berretta out of his bag and pointed it at Jamal.

  “You jackal; are you going to rob me?”

  “Pull over. And say nothing.”

  “You are a dog, you bastard.”

  “I said shut up and pull over.”

  Jamal acceded to the gun. He looked at the picture, taped to the dashboard, of his wife and four children.

  “Okay, shut it off, hand me the keys, and get out on my side,” Bridge said as he opened the door on his side and back stepped down off the cab. He had his gun trained on Jamal. As Jamal slid across from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat, he looked at the family photo one last time, then down onto the ground. Bridge tossed the keys back to him, “Now open up the back.”

  Jamal opened the lock, then pushed the big door up.

  Bridge took out the radiometer. With the gun in one hand, he held the device inside the cargo area of the truck. It showed a very high reading.

  “I hope you’ve got health insurance my friend. Your truck is hot. Radioactivity. It makes cancer.”

  “No, you are wrong! This is a trick.”

  “A trick, is it?” He then took a knife and slit the front of a TV box. He pulled down the cardboard and, in the dark of the night, the screen glowed from the residual radiation. “These sets are glowing like your insides must be. The headaches and nausea you are having are from the radiation poisoning.” Bridge was guessing there, but Jamal suddenly placed his hand on his stomach and stood speechless.

  “Jamal, I am not here to rob you. But whoever you worked for has robbed you of your health. Let me help you. All you have to do is tell me who hired you.”

  “I will be killed.”

  “You are dying now, my friend.”

  Ross pulled up behind the truck and came over to Bridge. “Wow, the TV is glowing. That must mean one of the cases was leaking even before the operation.” Ross then turned and spoke in Arabic to the driver. “You have been handed a death sentence along with the payment for that shipment.”

  It didn’t take long before Jamal told them the entire story. They then escorted the driver to Desert Tango 1 and made sure he got radiation treatment. His truck and the cargo were decontaminated and searched for any other forensic clues. Bridgestone and Ross then left to follow the new trail.

  Joey Palumbo was getting more and more pissed off. His initial information concerning the death of Professor Ensiling was starting to become more and more suspect as he personally dug deeper into the case. Being 7,000 miles away didn’t help, but through Bill’s SCIAD net, he was able to get high quality video and stills that allowed him to do his own investigation. The big moment came when he received a street camera’s image taken just seconds before the kill-shot that ended Sonia Hensen’s life. In it, the man standing just beyond the woman on the Denmark street was indeed Professor Ensiling. Although his face was hidden, there was corroborating evidence from his hotel’s security camera that caught the professor leaving that morning in a blue coat with one sleeve button missing. Next to the ill-fated woman was the sleeve of a blue coat with a button missing. It was a dead match. It didn’t solve anything; it could just mean that the professor was there at that time or lent his coat to someone. Circumstantially, though, in the intervening weeks, no crazed lover of this woman, disgruntled employee, or random nut with a gun surfaced to discredit Peter’s claim that the professor, not Sonia Hansen, was the true target. Furthermore, there was nothing in Hansen’s background that suggested anyone would want her killed. The bullet was from a standard rifle, the likes of which were plastered all across Europe. As interesting as this was, with the loose nuke floating around out there somewhere, Joe didn’t have much time to devote to this, so he made a call to his buddy at Interpol. Ten minutes later, Bill walked into the room, and threw down a worn, yellowed, and ou
t of print, hard-covered copy of Harmonic Epsilon.

  “What’s this?”

  “I forgot a whole bunch of stuff, which I am going to brain dump on you right now. I had Horace check into this book when Peter first came to me with this cockamamie story.”

  “And what did Horace find?”

  Bill tapped the old book with his finger. “He ferreted out this book in a used book store. He also found that the author was still alive and that the formulas inside were, as best as he could deduce from the techs he spoke with, bullshit.”

  “But…?”

  “But Peter’s original galley, which his brother gave me at his house in the Bronx, is 323 pages long. This book is…” he flipped the dust jacketless book to the end page “303 pages long. I spot-checked some of the pages. Much of the text is the same, but all the formulas in Peter’s galley are vastly different from the ones that wound up in this version of the book printed for public consumption. Later today, my SCIAD group is meeting to give their opinions.”

  “So all that could mean is that Peter’s formulas are a different, or an older, kind of the same bullshit!”

  “Not likely. My guys would have smelled it and we wouldn’t be meeting.”

  “Okay, that’s mildly curious, intellectually. But I’m a cop. What else you got, boy?”

  “Peter said the publishing company in Hong Kong was burnt to the ground along with all the books and plates and manuscripts and he had the only surviving copy of the book. Check it. Also, he said he was on a secret committee for the U.N. on UFOs; he called it UNCOMUFO. I called the Ambassador, Susan Clark, but she can’t find any record of it. Yet…”

  “Yet…” Joey repeated.

  Bill handed Joe a letter in a plastic sleeve. “Yet in Peter’s shit was this letter signed by Secretary General U. Thant defining the committee’s scope. Check it; make sure it’s real. And lastly, since he alleges Ensiling was just one of the committee members killed, check the other names mentioned in the letter. See who’s living or dead and get them here to the White House… the living ones, that is.”

  “Slow down Hiccock. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Ensiling’s file was red-flagged, I found that out when I was trying to arrange for a posthumous Presidential Letter of Recognition for him.”

  “Is that why Peter first came to you?”

  “No. Peter had a suspicion that he was murdered. Anyway, find out why the government pegged Ensiling persona non grata and what for.”

  “Hey, pal, there’s a loose nuke out there. You just gave me a month of homework.”

  “Here’s the topper, copper — one of the names on that letter rang a bell at CIA.” Bill affected a bad impersonation of a game show announcer. “And now the next answer on ‘Jeopardy:’ The country this former member of the committee was last seen in… drum roll… wait for it….”

  “Shit…Egypt!” Joey said.

  “Actually, I was looking for ‘What is Egypt?’ but I’ll accept it.”

  “Is he still there?”

  “Let’s move onto the final question on ‘Jeopardy.’ Would you like to try ‘Famous European Cities’ for $800? This city of lights is where two secret investigators, mean mothers, have followed leads to…”

  “Paris…er, what is Paris?”

  “Astounding,” Bill announced.

  “Okay, tell me what I’ve won and it better be half the fucking FBI because we are going to need a lot of shoe leather help.”

  “That was the other thing I came to tell you. I got you five million dollars to start. Go hire, get, grab, or steal whoever you need. Somehow or other, Peter may have tripped over the suitcase nukes plot without even knowing it. And the committee members may have been sacrificed to keep the identity of one of their members secret, lest he lead us to the nukes.”

  “Five million can get this puppy moving all right. Hey, who was the embassy guy in Paris?”

  “Frank somebody. Frank…Randall! He’s the Station Chief.”

  “Good, then he’s CIA. I’ll wake him up.” Joey grabbed the phone. Hiccock left, already late, for a meeting.

  Aside from the President almost firing him over a code name, Bill couldn’t remember the last time he was called into the principal’s office. But it wasn’t so long ago to stop his stomach from producing a few butterflies. The principal this day was Ray Reynolds, the Chief of Staff. Bill and Ray had started out on opposite sides of every issue. But eventually, after Bill had success and more success, he won the trust and respect of Ray and Ray’s boss, James Mitchell, the President of the United States. Twice before, the President had given Bill carte blanche to investigate and operate separately and autonomously from the rest of the government. The last time proved to be a good call when it turned out the government itself was the bad guy.

  This time the bad guy seemed to genuinely be a foreign entity. Bill knew, however, that all the brownie points he had amassed couldn’t avert the “heart to heart” that was on the other end of the call to come to the Chief of Staff’s office. Bill knew Reynolds was calling him in because his “Operation Stork” was getting operational fast. In Washington, a town of institutional rivalries, that kind of money, attention, and power attracted more detractors than supporters. Twenty seven million to start up, five million more on a hunch, and unlimited access to the Justice Department had to ruffle feathers inside the corridors of power.

  As Bill stood before the principal’s desk, Reynolds hung up the phone on a call with the sultan of some emirate. He made a notation in a folder, closed it, placed the folder in his out box, leaned back, and smiled.

  “You know, Bill, we’ve been through a lot together. You’ve earned everything and every privilege you have right now. I speak for the President when I say that you have saved this country from unspeakable calamities and all Americans are in your debt…”

  “Wow, that sounds like a set up for a bigger ‘but’ than Aunt Esther’s.”

  “Who?”

  “Forget it, Lamont. Go on, sorry I interrupted.”

  “Bill, no one is questioning your judgment, but I have to ask you some questions.”

  “Sure, Ray, I understand.”

  “Your new French initiative. How does the death of your friend, which I am sorry to hear about by the way…”

  “Thank you.”

  “How does his death connect to the search for the loose nuke?”

  “Ray, you know, I’ve been so deep into this I didn’t see the obvious inference of preferential treatment that I am giving an old acquaintance. That also means you were much nicer about this than you had to be and I thank you for the benefit of the doubt.”

  “As I said, you earned it.”

  “Sergeants Bridgestone and Ross are now in Paris after tracing the 24 nukes back through an Iranian connection.”

  “Iran? Does CIA or State have this?”

  “We’re sharing what we know…”

  “So share with me.”

  “One of Ensiling’s associates, Dr. Brodenchy, whom my friend Peter was close to, popped up in Egypt around the same time as the nukes did. Now’s he’s believed to be in France. His last posting with the U.N. was with IAEA. After his stint with the International Atomic Energy Association, he went to work for Fallon Technique, a French nuclear reactor company. That job brought him to Iran when the company started advising the Iranians about building their own nuke plant. Somewhere in between, he converted to Islam. He now goes by the name ‘Jahim El Benhan.’”

  “Wait!” Ray started scanning the file cards posted on the inside of his forehead. “Isn’t Alzir El Benhan the bioterrorist we have in custody for that flu thing up in New York?”

  “And getting him released was the reason the ambassador was kidnapped in Egypt. And that all led us to finding the nukes.”

  “So Jahim and Alzir, are brothers?”

  “Hungarian Muslims. The brother adopted his Muslim name first back in the 50’s. Dr. Brodenchy converted when his brother and he were reunited in Iran.”


  “You figure Jahim kidnapped Greeley to get his brother Alzir back?”

  “Apparently while he was in the middle of the nuke thing.”

  “There must have been a stronger reason than blood for Jahim to risk the nuke op just to get his brother back?”

  “We’ll know when we ask him.”

  “Bridgestone and Ross?”

  “They cut through countries, culture, and bullshit like a laser through butter.”

  “Thank God they are on our side.”

  “Allah be praised, man.”

  “You sold me, Bill. I’ll tell the President that you and your team are on to something and you’ll report as soon as you can.”

  “Actually, Ray, I need to see the President right now.”

  “Why?”

  “You are not going to believe me, but you are not cleared for this.”

  Ray’s eyebrows went up. He picked up his phone and asked the President’s secretary if the boss was alone.

  Ray walked Bill into the Oval and left. Bill waited until the door latched.

  “What is it, Bill?”

  “Sir, one of my Element members stumbled across the Jesus Factor. The real one this time.”

  “How do you know?”

  Bill stepped onto the shakiest limb of his professional career. “The Jesus Factor says that on certain days you can’t have a nuclear war.”

  “Close enough.” The President sat silent for a second then erupted. “Ah for the love of Mike, I told you to drop it.”

  “Mr. President, we were following the UFO angle and it cross-connected to the suitcase nukes.”

  “What? Little green men with nuclear suitcases? Are you trying to give me a brain aneurism?”

  When Bill finished filling him in, the President had calmed down.

  “So we are contained?”

  “Yes, sir. The man already works in our nuclear program and has been sworn again to secrecy on this one subject and will be here in two hours.”

  “Good,” the President mumbled with his head down.