“Is there a Russian connection?” said the president.
“Not with their government,” said Charness.
“That’s not what I meant. You said there was information that this group might be trying to get weapons out of the former Soviet Union?”
“Well, yeah, there seems to be some information that some of the people involved might be hired professionals.”
“What kind of weapons are we talking about?”
“One of these people, a mercenary of some kind, was killed in a small plane crash. They found a small item floating with the wreckage. Something called a dosimeter.”
The president gave an expression as if it meant nothing to him.
“It’s what radiologists wear. That little piece of plastic with paper in the frame that they wear on the lapel of their lab coats. It’s used to measure doses of radiation,” said Charness.
The president nodded.
“Like I say, it probably means absolutely nothing, but it was passed up the chain, and I thought I’d mention it.” Charness started to move toward the door.
“Maybe I should see the memo,” said the president.
“I can send it to NSA,” said Charness. He was talking about the National Security Agency. “I don’t want to bother you with it.”
“I think it might be a good idea. Why don’t you send it over here. Fax it back when you get to your office. I’d like to look at it before we forward it on.”
“Sure. If you think it’s important enough.” Charness opened the door and was headed out, past the little cubicle occupied by the president’s secretary.
“And, Abe.”
The attorney general turned around. The president was standing in the open door.
“Keep me posted if you hear anything more about this.”
FRIDAY HARBOR, WA
It was now dark. The only light came from a few vapor lamps that threw a yellow haze over the mist as it rose from the still waters of Friday Harbor. The ferry boat dock was empty. There was one late-night run, but it wasn’t due for more than an hour.
Over the last decade, the commercial fishers had been decimated by fished-out salmon runs and large factory trawlers that prowled off the coast. The few sport fishing boats that were left clung to docks in slips out at the end, beyond the pleasure boats with their bright canvas dodgers and gleaming fiberglass hulls.
Gideon parked his van at the end of Front Street, across from the small building with a sign over the door: PORT OF FRIDAY HARBOR. The building was dark, except for one light outside over the door.
“These fishing boats that belong to your clients. Do you know where they are moored?”
“A general idea,” said Joselyn. She started to open the door to get out.
“Let me do this.”
“Why you?” said Joselyn.
“Because it may be dangerous.” Gideon moved quickly out of the vehicle and around to the other side.
“Tell me what you think is out there.” Joselyn wanted to know what they were facing.
“I don’t know. I can’t be certain.”
“But you have some idea.”
“It is based only on the information I have from my travels in Russia.”
Joselyn looked at him, waiting for an answer.
“We may be dealing with old nuclear devices. If I am correct, they date back to the early nineteen-sixties. Such weapons can be very dangerous.”
“You’re talking about an explosion?”
“It is not what I am worried about.” Gideon knew that if some group intent on an act of terror had gone to the trouble of smuggling nuclear weapons into the U.S., they were not going to waste them on some isolated islands in Puget Sound. They had a more strategic target in mind. The question was where?
“I am concerned about oxidation,” he told her. “Plutonium, when it is exposed to the air, turns to a fine powder. This powder is very radioactive. It can be very dangerous.”
“And yet you’re going to go out there.”
“I know what I am looking for. Besides I will take precautions.”
He opened the sliding door to the van. He had borrowed the vehicle from a friend who worked for the University of Washington, someone in the radiation lab he’d met years before. With the information he had gathered in Sverdlovsk, he knew he might need the equipment, and it was the only local source. Inside were a number of large metal boxes. On a hook was a yellow suit with a hood and what appeared to be a breathing apparatus that attached to the face mask.
“I only have one of these,” he said, pointing to the suit. “Besides, if I get into any trouble out there, I will need someone back here on the docks to call for help.”
Joselyn looked at the boxes and the suit inside the van. She didn’t like it, but what he said made sense.
“I’m coming at least inside the gate on the dock. I want to get as close as I can.”
“I want you out of harm’s way,” he told her.
“I can’t help you if I can’t see you.”
Gideon agreed. Then he opened one of the boxes and took out a flashlight and another small device. Joselyn instinctively knew what it was, even though she had never seen one up close: a Geiger counter. He slung it over his shoulder by the strap attached, then grabbed the suit off the hook and slid the door to the van closed. He started to walk toward the dock.
“What about the suit?” said Joselyn. “Aren’t you going to put it on?”
“Not yet.” He headed across the street and Joselyn followed him.
WASHINGTON, DC
It was nearly one in the morning when Sy Hirshberg reached the security kiosk leading to the West Wing of the White House. The uniformed Secret Service agent waved him through, and Hirshberg parked his car and walked quickly to the entrance.
There were a few lights on, even in the middle of the night. The West Wing never shut down completely. Hirshberg didn’t stop at his office but headed to the southeast corner of the ground floor. A Secret Service Agent stepped from the shadows of a room directly across from the Oval Office. He recognized Hirshberg, greeted him by name, but stood in the way until he checked a clipboard showing appointments for the president. This one showed that the president himself had cleared the appointment an hour earlier. The agent tapped on the door to the Oval Office.
“Yes.”
The tone in the president’s voice was not pleasant. Hirshberg had detected an air of crisis when the president called him at home after midnight. He sensed that whatever it was, it was important, and probably not good.
“Mr. President.”
“Sy. I’m glad you got here.”
The agent stepped outside and closed the door to the office. Hirshberg had expected to find a dozen people, high-level advisers closeted in crisis mode inside the Oval Office. Instead the president was alone, sitting in front of the fire, reading papers, and making notes on little Post-its.
“What is it, Mr. President?”
“A problem. A big problem.” Without looking up at Hirshberg, the president flipped a piece of paper from the top of the stack to the other end of the couch. Hirshberg crossed the room, picked it up, and read. It didn’t take long.
“What I want to know,” said the president, “is why I have to find this out for myself. You’ve got a team of people, all the resources of intelligence, the military, and law enforcement, and I have to find out by myself about this band of crazies holed up on an island in Washington State shopping for nuclear bombs.”
“Where did you get this?” said Hirshberg.
“From the attorney general. Seems they’ve had an investigation going on out in Seattle for some weeks now, based on information that home-militia groups were attempting to obtain a weapon of mass destruction and that criminal elements in Russia were attempting to fill the order.”
The president had a pile of paper in his lap. “Grand jury transcripts,” he told Hirshberg. “It makes very interesting reading. It’s too bad the various agencies of the executive
branch aren’t sharing information. It’s just a goddamned good thing I happened to meet with the attorney general today.”
Hirshberg bit his lip. He wanted to defend himself, to tell his boss that if he hadn’t been so intent on covering his tracks following the embarrassment with Kolikoff, the Cabinet would have been alerted. The Justice Department through the attorney general would have known about the sinking of the Russian ship off the Washington coast, the suspicion that it might have been carrying one or more weapons, and no doubt would have linked it with the information in their grand jury probe. Hirshberg looked at the date of the Justice Department report. They had now lost vital time.
“I want you to get your people on this now,” said the president. He lifted the mass of transcripts so that Hirshberg could gather them up. They were trailing paper onto the floor.
“Does this mean that we can come out in the open, involve other agencies, local government?”
“Hell, no,” said the president. “I want you to read this stuff before morning. Call in whomever you need from your team. I want a briefing at eight o’clock in the morning, here. I want to know if Kolikoff’s name appears anywhere in that transcript. Do you understand?”
Hirshberg was stunned. They were confronted with the possibility of a nuclear device loose somewhere in the United States and the president’s first concern was whether it might lead to a political scandal in the White House.
“Mr. President, I think we have to call in all of the appropriate civil authorities. There is a protocol that’s been established for this very kind of situation.”
“No.” He looked at Hirshberg through intense, narrow slits of eyes.
“But, Mr. President, knowing what we now know, there is a good chance that these people have in their possession … ”
“I said no. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna have this thing splashed all over the front pages and played on an endless tape every half hour on CNN. We don’t know any such thing. All we know is that Justice has some kind of investigation going on out on the coast that may or may not lead anywhere. It’s under investigation.”
“Mr. President, we know that wreckage from the Russian ship was highly radioactive. We know that it went down somewhere off the coast of Washington State. We know from Russian sources that there has been a tremendous amount of radio traffic from this Siberian arms depot to Moscow and back. Now we have this.” Hirshberg cast a glance at the reams of paper that were now weighing him down. “I think that we can be reasonably well assured that there is cause for serious concern. That some action is essential. At least let’s find out what this militia group is doing out on the island.”
“You think the weapon might be on the island?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“We need a map.” The president was up off the sofa, grabbed the phone, and dialed the number for the Situation Room. “Who’s the duty officer tonight?” He spoke into the receiver, then waited a second.
“Monagan, this is the president. Get me a map. I’m in the Oval Office. I’m looking for an area around North Puget Sound in Washington State. There’s an island.” He snapped his fingers twice and pointed to the papers in Hirshberg’s arms, the grand jury transcripts, then put his hand over the phone and spoke to his national security adviser.
“The name of the island? It’s in the transcript. I marked it with a purple margin sticker.”
Hirshberg fingered through the pile of paper until he found the marker. “Padget,” said Hirshberg.
“Place called Padget Island,” said the president. “Get me everything you can on it and deliver it here in five minutes.” He hung up the phone and headed back to the sofa.
“We gotta be careful here, Sy. I don’t want to go off half-cocked. We can’t even be sure there is a device.” The president was in denial.
“According to Oak Ridge there was enough contamination on the junk from that Russian ship to keep the glow on Yeltsin’s nose going for the next thousand years,” said Hirshberg. It was a hard fact to ignore.
The president looked down at the carpet and took a long, deep sigh. “OK. All right. We’ll put the island under surveillance.”
“Watching it through binoculars is not going to tell us what’s going on,” said Hirshberg.
“What do you recommend?”
“We need to get somebody on the island. Eyes and ears,” said Hirshberg.
“I don’t want some shoot-out, another Waco or Ruby Ridge.”
“I understand,” said Hirshberg. “But we don’t move now and they have a device and they move it… ” He didn’t have to finish the thought.
They had worried for years about people like Saddam and Qaddafi getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction. Sail a nuclear bomb into Seattle on a cargo ship or, better yet, up the East River and park it just off the U.N. Plaza and you could destroy half a city and cut off the head of the United Nations at the same time. Such a message would have a clear impact on world policy and the willingness of nations to form a united front.
The maps came from the White House Map Room, and a military aide spread them on the president’s desk.
The president thanked the aide, and the marine left the room. The president and Hirshberg scanned the map and found Padget Island.
“It’s not very big,” said the president. The map did not show any structures or streets. “We could get aerial surveillance, some satellite photos.”
“It wouldn’t do us any good. If the device is there, it’s probably pretty small. Not likely we’d be able to see anything. And it would take time, and that we don’t have. If the device is there, we have to confirm it quickly and bottle up the island as fast as possible.”
“So what do we do?”
“I would suggest, Mr. President, that we send in a small contingent, a platoon. Probably Navy SEALs,” said Hirshberg. “We have them plant listening devices and cameras and then we take them off. A quick insertion, in and out. If it’s done right, the people on that island will never know we’ve been there. Then we’ll know what the hell’s going on.”
The president had a long, drawn expression on his face. If shooting broke out on the island, he had visions of news crews with live cams on yachts taking it all in for CNN and the networks. Things could get quickly out of his control. Congress would start asking questions, and before he knew it Kolikoff’s name would surface in connection with a nuclear bomb. Considering the lack of alternatives, however, there wasn’t much choice.
“I don’t want to go through the Joint Chiefs on this,” said the president. “All we need is a story about some loose nukes in the country, and the Pentagon will be using it to beat me over the head with Congress to reinstate budget cuts.”
The administration had spent four years reducing the defense budget and closing bases around the world. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the military brass had been forced to sit quietly on the sidelines and take it. But there were those among the Joint Chiefs who would relish the opportunity to roast the administration for its lack of readiness. They would serve the president up on a platter to the press if they had a chance.
“This insertion on the island. Can you arrange it through your Navy rep on the ANSIR team?”
Hirshberg didn’t like it. Presidential concerns over a scandal were now driving military policy. What if shooting did break out? What if it turned into a rout on the island and Navy SEALs were killed? The military leadership in the Pentagon would be outraged and rightly so.
“The man’s only a captain,” said Hirshberg.
“That’s all right. I’ll give him whatever authority he requires.”
“We’ll need the cooperation of the SEALs down at Coronado. SEAL team one,” said Hirshberg.
“That can be arranged.” The president had him boxed. It was against Hirshberg’s better judgment, but it was either avoid the normal chain of command or do nothing. They had to find out quickly if the devices were in the country and, if so, where.
�
��If we’re going to do it, we need to go in and set up intelligence on that island in the next twenty-four hours,” said Hirshberg. “I don’t know if they can be ready.”
“Let me handle that,” said the president.
Time was running out. If there was a device, and the militia group on the island had time to move it, the chances of finding it again were slim.
The president looked at him with a reluctant expression, took one more deep breath, then nodded. “Then we’re agreed. Twenty-four hours,” he said.
TWENTY-THREE
FRIDAY HARBOR, WA
The damp night air seeped through Joselyn’s clothing and chilled her to the bone as she and Gideon made their way to the gate leading out onto the floating dock at Friday Harbor.
Gideon kept a close eye on the Geiger counter’s meter and listened for the telltale clicks of danger. So far all he got was mild background radiation, nothing that would indicate the presence of fissile materials.
At the gate, he stopped her. “I want you to stay here.”
“The boats are way out there.” She pointed out into the dark distance. “You won’t know which boats to look for.”
She had given him the names of the vessels and a general description of their location on the docks. They would be with the sport and commercial fishers out near the end, near open water.
“It is too dangerous,” said Gideon. “This is my job.” He was adamant. “There is a cellular telephone in the van. If I am not back in ten minutes, call this number.” He pulled a card from his pocket and circled one of the telephone numbers on it with a pen.
“It is a special twenty-four-hour number at the institute. Use my name. Tell them what we know, about the sick fishermen and the boats. They will know what to do. Then call the police and have them cordon off the docks. Tell them not to allow anyone on or off and to wait for help.”
“But you’ll be back by then,” said Joselyn.
“Perhaps.”
The way he said it caused Joselyn to think she might not be seeing him again. There was more danger than he was admitting.
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