Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  The Russian smiled.

  They went inside, and Thorn went to work. He set up at a workbench against the back wall of the garage, opened a briefcase, and pulled out a small computer. He attached a microphone and began speaking into it, reciting only two words: “Critical Mass.” The sound of his voice was registered in spiked lines similar to a graph on the computer’s screen. He did this several times until he got a voice test he wanted. Then he saved this onto a computer disk. He removed the disk and punched it into another small computer-like device known as a “blue box.” It had a keypad similar to a computer and terminal ports. Thorn punched the keys and delivered the information on the computer’s disk to its destination. He then carried the small plastic package over to the device.

  By now, Chaney was finished fastening the two halves of the bomb casing together. He and two other men had it on a hydraulic floor jack, rolling it on wheels toward the truck.

  They stopped a few feet from the vehicle and Thorn did the final preparation. He connected the wires to a switching device capable of sending a powerful electric charge to the detonators set into the plastic explosives inside the bomb. The receiver and its wires were then carefully fitted into an area near the bomb’s large square tail-fin assembly, where the battery pack would also be placed before the device was delivered to its ultimate destination. The tail-fin assembly had been fabricated by Oscar Chaney using precise specifications from photographs taken of the original. Even the olive-drab paint had been matched with care.

  The fifteen deadly tubes that would surround the core of the device rested with their lethal liquid contents, sealed in a special lead-lined vault deep in the bowels of the truck’s tank. These would be inserted later, once the device reached its destination. They would require great care in handling and the use of a C-suit and breathing apparatus, all of which Thorn had placed into special compartments in the tank of the truck.

  “Done.” Thorn wiped his hands on a rag and turned to Chenko. “You’re sure the device is properly assembled?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “No last-minute adjustments required, anything like that?”

  “No. Connect the lead wires according to the schematic I have provided, install the batteries, and it is armed.”

  “Good,” said Thorn. “Let’s you and I go outside, have a beer.”

  The Russian smiled.

  “Oscar. Go ahead and get it inside the truck,” Thorn yelled to him across the garage, and Chaney gave him a thumbs-up.

  Thorn and the Russian went outside to the old pickup truck, where Thorn reached into the back and opened a small cooler, pulling out two glass bottles of ice-cold beer. He twisted the cap off of one of them and handed it to Chenko, then opened the other for himself.

  Inside the garage, Chaney was busy with two other men, rolling the large bomb across the concrete floor on a hydraulic alligator jack. They maneuvered it under the tank that Chaney had welded onto the bed of the truck. Then Chaney pumped the long handle of the jack, raising the bomb up into the opening under the belly of the tank. It was bolted into place and secured, and the false steel panel under the tank was put back in place.

  In ten minutes they were finished, and Chaney began pumping raw sewage from the portable john into the separated upper compartment of the tank, in case they were stopped.

  Chaney had welded a solid plate of steel, lined with lead, separating the truck’s tank into two compartments: a lower section for the bomb and an upper section for raw sewage. Conventional satellite surveillance would be of little use in detecting the truck. Plutonium gave off only mild gamma radiation, which could be shielded by a piece of paper. Thermal detection at checkpoints, if the Feds had time to set them up, could be more problematic. Thorn had taken the precaution of having Chaney line the bomb compartment with a quarter-inch lead liner. The absence of any signature from the device, coupled with the obvious presence of actual sewage in the truck, would likely cause authorities to wave them through without much question. They were counting on the normal human reaction to recoil from thoroughly inspecting such cargo. Besides, who would suppose that a septic-tank truck would be hauling an atomic weapon?

  Outside, next to the pickup truck, Thorn watched as Grigori Chenko twitched on the ground. He was in the final tremors of death. His eyes rolled back into his head like two cherries in a slot machine. Potassium cyanide worked very quickly, especially in a dosage as strong as that which Thorn had added to the beer he’d given to the Russian. Chenko’s job was done; one more loose end eliminated.

  TWENTY-ONE

  FRIDAY HARBOR, WA

  It was after four in the afternoon, and they were both tired. Out of the corner of one eye, Gideon watched Joselyn Cole as she arranged the files on her desk. She was an attractive woman, blue-eyed with shoulder-length sandy-colored hair. Her body was well proportioned and curvaceous, and she had a tawny complexion that the tall Dutchman found pleasing.

  She also had a core of iron. After the events of the previous day, many people would have gone to bed and pulled the covers over their heads for a week. But Joselyn remained focused on the job at hand.

  She looked up at him. “Thank you for your help today,” she said.

  “I must admit to a certain selfish motive,” he told her.

  “What’s that?”

  “You are the last lead I have for the two forged waybills.” He had told her about the shipments out of the port of Vladivostok. There was a grave tone in his voice. “I cannot impress upon you enough the seriousness of why I am here.”

  “Maybe if you told me a little more,” said Joselyn.

  “If I am correct, your client Mr. Belden was involved in a very dangerous matter, a matter that could have devastating consequences for your country, and perhaps for the world.”

  “What consequences?”

  What he had discovered at Sverdlovsk could start a public panic if it were published. The fear that a nuclear device might be in the country, in the hands of terrorists, could result in wild speculation as to a target and mass migration of hundreds of thousands of people clogging highways and overrunning airports.

  “Until I know more,” said Gideon, “I can’t be sure of my information. I can tell you this much. What I know would seem to be consistent with the information given to you by the prosecutor in Seattle. It is possible that this man who called himself Belden was involved in transporting weapons of mass destruction.”

  “And you think these weapons are here, in this country?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps what they were looking for here in your office will tell us that.”

  Joselyn returned to the documents on her desk, looking through each more carefully now, mystified by what could possibly be contained in her files that would confirm van Ry’s suspicions.

  “I was curious as to why you omitted to tell the local authorities that the incident on the ferry was an attempt on your life,” said Gideon. “You told them it was an accident. Why?”

  “Because I have no proof,” she told him.

  He engaged her eyes from the other side of the room as he put the final touches on one of the filing cabinets, pushing it against the wall.

  “Do you really think it is coincidence that your client is killed in the afternoon and that night someone tries to push you and your auto off of the ferry?”

  “It could happen.”

  “I see,” said Gideon. “And you attribute all of this sudden misfortune to an unusual episode of bad karma?”

  She gave him an irritated expression but didn’t respond.

  “You might wish to check the alignment of the planets before you venture out onto the street again.”

  “You seem to have all the answers. What would you have me do?”

  “You could have told the authorities about your conversation with the prosecutor in Seattle, about Belden’s death. The two incidents, the plane exploding and the fact that you were driven off the ferry only a few hours later. I suspect they might have seen some
pattern here.”

  “Fine. And what would have happened then?”

  “I suspect they would have provided you with some protection.”

  “Great. Wonderful,” said Joselyn. “So they put a sheriff’s deputy outside my office door. That’s going to do wonders for my practice. ‘Mr. Jones, I’d like you to meet Deputy Smith. He’s going to be watching over us while we talk, just in case someone makes an attempt on my life during client consultation.’ To say nothing of the chilling effect it would have on clients in criminal cases.”

  “They would certainly know you have influence with the sheriff’s office,” said Gideon.

  Joselyn stifled a laugh. “Besides, if McCally found out about the ferry incident, he’d drag me before the grand jury for sure. Probably have me taken in federal protective custody.”

  “Why not?” said Gideon. “You would at least be safe.”

  “Just what I need, cops outside my door, or a cell, courtesy of the federal government. For how long?” she asked.

  “Until this is over.”

  “And how long will that be?”

  Gideon couldn’t answer this. The expression on his face said as much.

  “Precisely,” said Joselyn. “In the meantime, whatever meager practice I have here disappears.”

  “You would be alive.”

  “You call that living?”

  “It may be better than the alternative,” said Gideon.

  Joselyn didn’t argue the point.

  “Why in the world do they want to kill me?”

  “Because you know something.”

  “I don’t know a damn thing.”

  “They think you do, and for the moment that is the same thing,” said Gideon. “I suspect that the answer is somewhere there, in front of you.” He gestured toward the papers on her desk. She returned to the task, this time with more energy and interest.

  “Is there anything this man Belden told you?”

  “I’ve already been over all of that, with McCally and the FBI.”

  “Yes, but their powers of perception may not be as finely tuned as mine.”

  Joselyn looked up at him, cracked a smile, and they both laughed.

  “OK, Sherlock. What do you want to know?”

  “When did Belden first come to you as a client?”

  “Less than two weeks ago.”

  “And how did he find you?”

  “A referral from a banker in town. At least that’s what he told me. It was probably a lie.”

  “I suspect you are right,” said Gideon. “Did you have any special expertise that he might have been looking for?”

  “We talked about that,” said Joselyn. “In fact, it was just the opposite. He could have hired a hundred lawyers down in Seattle who knew more about business law than I did and not paid them a dime more in fees.”

  “So we know that he wanted something else,” said Gideon. He looked at her with an appraising eye, so that she could read his mind.

  “I don’t generally discuss my sex life with strange men, but if you have to ask, the answer is no, we didn’t. Not even close,” said Joselyn.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Gideon.

  Joss feigned hostility. “And why not?”

  Now his face turned a shade of red she had not seen before.

  “It’s just that… ah … Belden being a client and all,” said Gideon.

  “What’s that got to do with it?” She looked at him steely-eyed, unwilling to let him off so easily.

  “All I meant was that it wouldn’t be the professional thing,” said Gideon.

  “And you see me as the consummate professional, is that it?”

  “Absolutely,” said Gideon.

  “Gid. Can I call you Gid?” said Joselyn.

  “Whatever you want to call me is fine,” he told her.

  “If that’s the case, then for the moment I’ll just call you a bull-shitter.”

  Gideon tried to maintain composure but could not. The red veins in his neck began to stick out, and he started to laugh. “What is it they say? Takes one to know one.”

  “That’s what they say,” said Joss.

  He settled into one of the client chairs across from her desk. “We know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There is clearly some connection between what happened in Sverdlovsk and whatever is going on with your grand jury down in Seattle.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “According to the prosecutor, your client Mr. Belden, or whatever the latest name he is using, was expert in the handling of certain large-scale weapons. It cannot be a coincidence that fissile materials are missing from a Russian storage facility, traced to the port of Vladivostok, and that forged waybills show a shipment to Belden Electronics. I would think the prosecutor knows something.”

  “Maybe he does, but you can be sure he’s not telling us.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Gideon. “But he might tell someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “His own government.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “We have some contacts in the intelligence community. I will call my director at the center and see if perhaps we can float some balloons, do some checking. If it is a matter of national security, the Justice Department might contact the National Security Agency.”

  “What good would that do us?”

  “At least we would know that intelligence agencies are, as they say, in the loop. And after all,” said Gideon, “we do have information to trade.”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “What I learned in Sverdlovsk,” he said. He clearly had more confidence in government than she did.

  Joselyn was holding a single piece of paper in her hand, searching the surface of the desk for the appropriate file as he spoke. She had been looking at it intermittently, trying to find the file it belonged to. Suddenly she realized the file wasn’t on her desk.

  She stepped across the room to the filing cabinet that Gideon had straightened against the wall. Joselyn opened the second drawer and thumbed through the files. She turned and looked at him, a troubled expression on her face.

  “What is it?”

  “Are all the files back in the cabinet?”

  “Except for the ones on your desk.”

  She retraced her steps and checked the surface of the desk one more time. It wasn’t there.

  “What is it?”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” said Joselyn.

  SEATTLE, WA

  Thomas McCally flipped through the pages of the report. Only three pages long, it was lean on many details. The FBI was still investigating, but two federal prisoners awaiting trial had escaped from the Kent jail. One of them was of particular interest to McCally. Oscar Chaney was a bank robber with no prior criminal history but a colorful military record. He had been trained by Army Special Forces in what was euphemistically called “special ops” and had participated in what the report called “operations other than war.” McCally was no military tactician, but he knew what this meant. These were insertions into other countries that were never publicly reported, sometimes into hostile Third World countries, sometimes into the territory of allied nations. The purpose might be to gather intelligence on the ground or deliver arms to insurgent movements or to destroy some strategic facility, a radio station or fuel depot. The people who did this work were highly trained. Oscar Chaney had done this and was also active in the Gulf War. He’d cashiered out of the military, and for the past five years he had lived abroad. According to the State Department, he traveled in Europe, Africa, and Latin America. More important, information obtained by the FBI from European intelligence sources indicated that Chaney had been involved with Harold McAvoy, alias James Regal, alias Liam Walker, alias Dean Belden.

  The report provided clear evidence of outside help and extensive planning in the jailbreak that sprang Chaney. The FBI had already arrested one of the men assisting from the outside. The
man arrested had extensive contacts with a local militia group.

  “It looks like they wanted Chaney out, and they came well prepared.” As McCally read the report, the FBI agent who had delivered it paced the office in front of his door. “They cut the bars with a torch,” said the agent. “We didn’t find it, but the thermal marks on the steel are unmistakable. We also found a small portable wire transmitter. According to the one arrested, there were three others helping from the outside.”

  “The one you picked up. Is he giving up any information on Chaney’s whereabouts?”

  “I don’t think he knows. He says he was drafted for the job by higher-ups in his militia cell. He doesn’t know the names of the others involved in the break. My guess is they all came from different cells, and if we go up the food chain, we’re going to find out that the people who tapped them for the job don’t know any more than they do.”

  “How did we arrest the one guy?” said McCally.

  “He was shootin’ his mouth off in a bar about how easy it was, the jailbreak,” said the agent. “Like he was looking for more clients.”

  “If the information in this report is accurate, he’s not the kind Chaney would run with or trust very far,” said McCally. “Which brings us to the question of why Chaney was robbing banks.”

  “And doing it so poorly,” said the agent.

  “What do we know about the local militia groups?” asked McCally.

  The agent gave him an expression as if to say, “not much.” “Mostly situated up north and on the other side of the Cascades. Rural counties. They operate in leaderless action cells—small, loosely organized units. There’s not a lot of contact between the cells. Nothing you could call organized command and control. It’s mostly a mixed bag of nuts, some with racial motives, some just hate the government, and a lot of wanna-be soldiers. Almost all male. Mostly in their thirties and forties.”

  “Have we been able to penetrate any of the cells?”

  “Not a problem. Just go to weekend war games and bring your own rifle. Problem is because of the small size and lack of cohesion between the groups you’d need a thousand agents in war togs and face paint to cover them all. For the most part, the ones here in Washington have generally been satisfied with hating the world and shooting at cardboard targets. Not that violent.”