Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “Don’t touch me. I’ll scream.”

  “Please. Do not be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Stay away from me.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Let me help you up.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  He ignored her and stepped forward, but instead of grabbing her, he reached gently for her foot with one hand. “That looks bad. You are bleeding. Here, let me help you.”

  The gentleness in his voice calmed Joss, but she was still wary. He was huge, at least six feet five, perhaps taller. In a single fluid motion, his arms were under her, cradling her back and under the bend of her knees. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, turned toward the lighted doorway, kicked it fully open, and carried her through into her own office.

  He placed her gently on the couch against the wall in the reception area, then turned, and headed for the door. He started to close it.

  “Don’t,” said Joselyn.

  He didn’t turn around but looked at her over his shoulder. “I thought you might be cold. I will leave it if you wish.” He left the door open and in three steps crossed the room to where she lay on the couch.

  “That does not look good.” He was foreign, had an accent. Joss wasn’t sure from where. The blood from her heel was soaking into her sock, turning it a bright red. “I’ll have to take that off to get at the glass.” As he gently removed the sock, he caught the edge of glass in the fabric and she winced in pain.

  “Sorry. If you lie still, I think I may be able to get it.” As he studied her foot, Joselyn got her first good look at the man. He had fair skin, wavy blond hair, and broad shoulders. The features of his face were sharp as if etched in stone; a straight nose, high cheekbones, full parted lips.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a four-inch folding knife.

  Joselyn’s eyes went wide, but before she could speak he plucked a tiny pair of tweezers from the handle of the knife and laid it on the small end table at the foot of the couch.

  He looked at her. “Very handy little things,” he said.

  Joselyn smiled nervously and nodded.

  “Think about something pleasant and don’t look at your foot,” he told her.

  That was not going to be easy. She lay back and looked up at the ceiling. She felt the tweezers at work, but his large hands were amazingly gentle. Then sharp pain. Her leg jerked uncontrollably.

  “Easy. I got most of it. Let me see.”

  She looked down at him as he studied intently the underside of her foot.

  “Did you cut your knee when you fell?”

  “What?” Joselyn looked down.

  There was blood running down her leg from her knee. The adrenaline rush on the ferry caused her to not even notice until now.

  “An earlier accident,” she told him. Joselyn had cut her knee to the point of bleeding while clawing her way back onto the deck of the ferry.

  “You lead a hazardous life,” he said.

  “You have no idea,” she said. Joss was beginning to relax. If he wanted to kill her, he could have done it by now. “What are you doing in my office?”

  “This is your office?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then you are Joselyn Cole?”

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer her but adjusted the light from the table lamp at the end of the couch. “One thing at a time,” he said. “I should concentrate, or the glass in your foot may require a visit to the hospital.”

  He picked at her again with the tweezers, and she flinched in pain, forgetting for the moment questions about the man’s identity.

  “There. I think that is all of it. That I can see anyway. You will know in a day or two if I have missed any. It will begin to fester. Very painful,” he said.

  “That’s encouraging.”

  “I’m not the one who was running through glass in my stocking feet.”

  “Let’s get back to what we were talking about,” said Joselyn. “Who are you and what are you doing in my office?”

  “Ah, yes.” He reached into an inside coat pocket and came out with a business card. He handed it to Joselyn.

  “My name is Gideon van Ry.”

  She read the business card. “What is the Institute Against Mass Destruction?”

  “We are what you call a think tank dealing with international relations. Specifically the institute monitors fissile materials, missile systems, weapons of mass destruction. We publish reports, a database.”

  She looked at him, taking it all in, nodding almost as if in a daze.

  “Why did you break into my office?”

  “Oh, I didn’t.” He looked up and saw that she was focused on the door and its splintered wooden frame. “I found it that way.” He raised one hand as if taking an oath. “I was looking for you. Found your office. I discovered the door as you see it.”

  “And you just let yourself in?”

  “It was open. I thought perhaps someone was inside.”

  “Was there?”

  “No. Whoever did this had already left.”

  “It’s not going to be cheap to get that fixed.” Joselyn was looking at the door again.

  “Unfortunately whoever did that did not stop there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The inner office,” said Gideon.

  She tried to get up off the couch.

  “Easy.” He pressed her back down gently and dabbed the blood off the bottom of her foot with his handkerchief one more time, then tied it around the wound.

  Joselyn swung her legs off the couch and stood. She took one step and began to hobble as if she might go down. He grabbed her arm and steadied her, helping her as she hopped on one foot to the door to her office.

  When Joselyn got there, she just stood in the open doorway, looking. The desk was turned over. Her two filing cabinets had been pulled over on their faces, the drawers pulled out and the contents thrown all over the floor. The glass in the frames holding her degrees and licenses had been smashed, though two of them still hung on the wall behind broken splinters. Whoever had vandalized her office had done a world-class job.

  The light from the office’s reception area and the open door offered a clear line of sight, even from across the street with the driver’s window rolled up. With a rifle, he could have taken both of them right there. But Thorn insisted it had to look like an accident.

  The car was rusted out, its motor idling. The driver reached up with one hand and grabbed the bandanna. The gray woman’s wig slid off his head with it. His eyes never left the two figures standing, centered in the doorway of the second-floor office. He had to admit that from behind she had a nice body. She also had nine lives. He was sure he’d gotten her on the ferry. He wondered who the blond giant was standing next to her. He dreaded his next task: telling Thorn that she was still alive.

  EIGHTEEN

  WASHINGTON, DC

  Hirshberg reported to the president in a written memo, sealed and marked, FOR THE PRESIDENT’S EYES ONLY. The memo was brief, discreet, and factual, reporting only what had been confirmed so far: that a Russian ship had gone down off the coast of Washington State, that it was believed to have been carrying fissile materials, perhaps a nuclear device, and that the device or materials were unaccounted for. He held the information on Kolikoff’s involvement to a single line at the bottom of the memo. It was sealed and hand-delivered to the president by one of Hirshberg’s aides.

  Three minutes after the president slit the envelope and read the memo, he was on the phone to his national security adviser.

  “Sy. Who else knows about this?”

  “You mean the Russian ship, Mr. President?”

  “And Kolikoff’s involvement.” The president cut right to the chase.

  “CIA, FBI, and Military Intelligence know about the ship, the fact that it was carrying fissile materials.”

  “And Kolikoff?”

  “
Only myself and the CIA deputy director.” Hirshberg could hear a palpable sigh of relief at the other end.

  “Which deputy is that?”

  “Malcolm Sloan,” said Hirshberg.

  “Oh, yes. Sloan. He’s a good man.” Interpretation: Sloan was ambitious and could be reached by the White House for the proper spin on the story if it became necessary.

  “I’d like you in my office in ten minutes to discuss this.”

  “Would you like me to call Sloan, or Director Gentry?” Kurt Gentry was director of the CIA, and Sloan’s boss.

  “No. I don’t think there’s any need for Gentry to know anything more at this point. He knows about the Russian ship, I’m sure. I’ll call Sloan myself,” said the president. The president was busy trying to narrow the circle of knowledge. Information in politics was power, and compromising dirt on a president was the ultimate form.

  “Don’t talk to anyone about this. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, Hirshberg and Sloan had their preliminary rewards for silence and discretion. They were named to chair the special crisis task force appointed by the president to look into the ship Isvania, its cargo, and whether the incident posed any imminent threat to national security.

  Assigned as staff were all of the people in Hirshberg’s Working Group. Notably, their bosses had all been cut out of the loop. Hirshberg and Sloan were to report directly to the president. If their bosses, the directors of the CIA, FBI, or Joint Chiefs of the military interfered, Hirshberg and Sloan were to report the matter to the president.

  Both men were given special passes, issued by the president himself and authorizing them to interrupt presidential business if at any time, in their judgment, there was a need. It was something sure to cause rancor within the White House pecking order. The president’s chief of staff, the principal gatekeeper, jealously guarded his prerogatives, foremost among which was access to the Oval Office. Now he would be left to stare at the president’s signature on the special passes and wonder what it was that Hirshberg and Sloan knew that he did not.

  To identify the group they borrowed an acronym from the FBI: ANSIR. It stood for “Awareness of National Security Issues and Response.”

  The ANSIR team convened for their first meeting less than two hours after Hirshberg and Sloan left the Oval Office. Each one of the members was reassigned on a temporary basis to full-time duties with the ANSIR team. Any questions on this assignment were to be referred to the White House—more fuel for the fires of political envy.

  “We are going to have some structural and support problems,” Hirshberg told the group. “None of the Cabinet secretaries have been told about this.”

  Heads turned and looked around the table at one another. “Why not?” Finally one of them spoke up.

  “Those are our orders,” said Hirshberg.

  “There’s no sense starting a panic.” Sloan from the CIA put a better spin on it. “The more people who know, the more chance of a leak to the press. If it gets in the media that we suspect a nuclear device is in the hands of terrorists in this country, all hell could break loose. It’s on a need-to-know basis, and they don’t need to know right now.”

  Once the Cabinet-level officers became involved, the bureaucracy would take hold. News would filter through the various agencies and before long mid-level bureaucrats would be talking over coffee about how the president compromised himself with Kolikoff. From there it was only whispering distance to the New York Times and the Washington Post. As a consequence, the limitations on the ANSIR group were severe.

  Hirshberg sat at the head of the table, flanked by Sloan, who saw the entire exercise as a fast elevator to the penthouse of power. The very surroundings confirmed his sense in this regard: the White House Situation Room with its proximity to the president.

  “Here are the ground rules,” said Hirshberg. He read from hastily written notes prepared during his meeting with the president.

  “All discussion of the device, its alleged smuggling into the country, and steps to discover its location or to secure and disarm it if it was in the country, are to be confined to members of this group, at least until further orders.”

  He looked around the table to be sure that this was understood.

  “Assets for any investigation will include only military intelligence.”

  Hirshberg tried to go on.

  “Excuse me.” It was the representative of the FBI. “The bureau has principal responsibility for domestic terrorism. I can’t just go behind my director’s back. I would at least ask to get clearance. To discuss it with the director.”

  “I’ll look into it,” said Hirshberg. “I’ll talk to the president. But for the moment you are to say nothing. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the moment the president, as commander in chief, wishes to deal with this issue through the military chain of command. Therefore for the time being we are to rely principally on Naval Intelligence.” There was a muted but obvious smile from the naval officer at the other end of the table. What it boiled down to was that the people who already knew about the Russian ship, and the name Kolikoff, had now been effectively co-opted by the president.

  The FBI interceded again. “The problem is we have contingency plans for these situations. This effectively makes those plans worthless.”

  “Sorry. But that’s the way it is,” said Hirshberg. “At least for the moment.” Hirshberg agreed with the FBI. The problem was, the president saw it differently.

  “What we can all do to alleviate the situation is to work quickly,” said Hirshberg. “If we can confirm that there is no device in the country, that it went down with the ship, then there won’t be any further need for this group to meet or for further action to be taken, other than perhaps to recover whatever is out there. For the moment, we can’t be sure there was a device.

  “If on the other hand a device is in the country, then I will prevail on the president to put all of our resources to work. I’m sure he will see the wisdom of bringing in the Cabinet and all the appropriate agencies at that time.” Actually Hirshberg wasn’t sure of this at all, but he would do his damnedest to convince the man.

  “Where do we go from here?” Hirshberg looked at Sloan.

  “I think it would be best if we start with an analysis of what we already know. In the last twenty-four hours we’ve gathered new information which indicates that the device or devices in question… ”

  “There’s more than one?” The FBI was asking questions again.

  “We’re not sure,” said Sloan. “There may be.”

  The FBI started searching other faces around the table for support but didn’t get it.

  “As I was saying, new intelligence reveals that the devices in question may have been paid for, at least in part, by a rogue state, possibly Iraq. According to our reports, they’re keeping their distance. It’s likely that the people involved at this end don’t even know about the outside support. They’re merely being used to achieve a mutual goal. If the reports are correct, the Iraqis may have put up considerable cash to obtain the device and are probably paying a middleman to facilitate assembly and transportation.”

  “The middleman. Do we know who he is?” asked the FBI.

  “No. Unfortunately we have no information, but we’re following it up. We do have solid information that whatever it was that was shipped out on the trawler in question was obtained by the Russian Mafiya, specifically a corporation founded by KGB money as the Soviet Union collapsed. It is now run by former rogue agents. Its CEO is Viktor Kolikoff.”

  Sloan shot a sideways glance at Hirshberg. He didn’t intend to get into the finer details of Kolikoff, though most of the people in the room had read the newspapers and could fill in the blanks for themselves. The president’s political predicament was going to make their job much more difficult.

  “Do we know if there is verifiable state sponsorship for these activities?” It was the man from t
he State Department asking.

  “You mean Iraq?” said Hirshberg.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “If so, the administration is on record. It has not ruled out a nuclear strike in retaliation for such an attack.”

  “And your point is?” said Sloan.

  “It’s vital that any foreign state actively involved with domestic terrorists understand the risks to themselves.”

  “You’re suggesting we contact the Iraqis?” said Hirshberg.

  “If we have incontrovertible evidence of their involvement,” said the man. “It’s possible that we can peel them away from whomever they’re dealing with in this country if the risks to themselves are made readily apparent. A full-out nuclear attack,” said the man.

  Sloan looked over at Hirshberg and wrinkled an eyebrow. It wasn’t a bad idea. “Who knows, the Iraqis might give up whoever is working at this end if they know their own ass is in the flames,” Hirshberg said.

  “Thank you. We’ll see if we can firm up the Iraqi connection.” Sloan made a note. The item was now firmly in his own quiver of ideas, the ones he would fawningly present to the president. Sloan wouldn’t remove lint from the shoulder of a friend’s coat unless he got credit.

  “There’s another aspect to this whole thing.” This time it was Navy Intelligence.

  “What happens if a device is detonated in a major American city? How could we be sure some other power doesn’t panic and launch a full-out preemptive strike out of fear?”

  “Why would they?” said Sloan.

  “He has a point,” said the man from the State Department. “Another nuclear power, Russia, China. Even if they’re not involved, if they think there’s a chance we might suspect them, they could launch before we have a chance to quell their fears.”

  “You mean a full-out preemptive strike?” said Hirshberg.

  The man from the State Department nodded his head. They all knew that the Cold War might be over, but the risks of nuclear annihilation were not.