Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  Chaney crossed the street and headed down toward the corner. He walked two blocks and allowed at least four cabs to pass, before raising his hand to flag one down. When it pulled over, he opened the door, slid into the back seat, and told the driver: “Sea-Tac Airport.”

  HAY-ADAMS HOTEL, WASHINGTON, DC

  Joselyn heard a light rap on the door. It sounded distant and roused her only slightly from slumber, so that the voices of the men talking seemed like a dream, laid over sleep. She rolled over on the bed in the dark hotel room and looked at the illuminated digital clock on the nightstand. It was after ten. She assumed it was morning, though with the heavy drapes pulled she couldn’t be sure.

  She sat up abruptly in the bed, suddenly concerned that she might have slept away the day. She stumbled to the window with the comforter from the bed wrapped around her body and pulled back the heavy drapes. The brilliant sunlight blinded her, forcing her to turn her back and cover her eyes.

  She had a massive headache and wondered if there was any aspirin in the small bag of toiletries the agents had given her the night before. Joselyn had killed all four of the tiny bottles of scotch from the mini-bars in both rooms. She drew the line at the whiskey and left the vodka for Gideon. She fumbled through the bag in the bathroom and found nothing that would take the edge off her head. She was headed to the mini-bar to see if there was anything there when Gideon came through the adjoining door.

  “I thought I heard you moving around. Did they wake you up?”

  “Who?”

  “The agents at the door.”

  “That’s who it was?”

  “Yes. They are leaving. I’ve got your wallet, cash, and credit cards, along with my own, and the keys that were in your pocket.”

  “Then we’re free to go?”

  “No. They have asked us to remain in town until further word, in case they have more questions. But it appears that they believe everything you told them,” said Gideon. “More important, they have found the truck.”

  Joselyn was on her hands and knees rummaging through the mini-bar on her quest for aspirin, the thick comforter wrapped around her like a bearskin. She turned and looked up at him, the obvious question written on her face.

  “They found it in Seattle,” said Gideon.

  “Seattle?” Joselyn was surprised. “The bomb?”

  “They are working on it now. The agents didn’t have many details or if they did they weren’t talking. It appears the authorities got some readings off the vehicle. High gamma radiation. Beyond that, they don’t know anything more. It looks like you were wrong,” said Gideon.

  “Do you have any aspirin?” She ignored him.

  “No. But I can run down to the package shop in the lobby and buy some.”

  She shifted the bed cover around her, adjusting it from under where she sat. “While you’re at it, get me some new clothes and a bra and some makeup.”

  “We can go shopping after,” said Gideon. He could tell that her mind was on other things. “I wonder why they would go to all of that trouble to drive the device down to Seattle?”

  She looked at him and nodded from sleepy eyebrows. “I just hope the people across the street are wondering the same thing.”

  SITUATION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE

  There was an air of celebration in the Situation Room when the president came through the door, and even some brief applause.

  “Let’s not get carried away,” said the president. “We still have a lot of work to do. What have we heard from the emergency team on site?”

  “They have relatively high gamma readings but nothing above safe tolerances, which would be injurious to passers-by, people who came in contact with the truck. They think the device is shielded, probably inside a lead container in the tank.”

  “Do they have any estimates on how long it may take to defuse it?”

  “They haven’t actually gotten to the bomb itself. Right now they’re trying to clear the area.”

  “They haven’t made a public announcement?” said the president.

  “No. No. We are telling the public that we have a gas leak in one of the major mains in the area. We’re evacuating eight square blocks. It’s gonna take time. We’ve shut down I-Five at the interchange and we’ve ordered all civilian aircraft out of the area.”

  “Good,” said the president. “We don’t need any pain-in-the-ass television crews in choppers over that truck.”

  The president didn’t leave the doorway to the room but stood against the closed door, a sign that he wasn’t going to be there long.

  “Mr. President, I’d like to talk to you in private if I could.” Sy Hirshberg had been trying to get into the Oval Office all morning. The president had been taking written communiqués from Seattle all morning from military aides but, other than that, had been incommunicado. He had been locked up, in preparation for the State of the Union that evening. There had been a constant shuffle of Cabinet secretaries into the Oval Office all morning, each trying to get last-minute items into the president’s speech or to make sure that nothing from their A-list agendas had been taken out.

  “Can this wait, Sy?”

  “I believe it is important, Mr. President.”

  “Is there something having to do with the current situation I don’t know?”

  “No,” said Hirshberg. “But something that we should talk about.”

  The president looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, but it’s gonna have to wait for now. I’ve got at least two more meetings. These fanatics with their bomb could have waited a few days. It would have been a great deal easier to deal with. Education is due in my office now. The staff is waiting to put the final touches on the speech. And I need at least two hours to go over the final draft.”

  He looked at his watch. “I’ll have some time around four-forty.” Hirshberg knew that he would get the president’s divided attention at best. “I’m only gonna have about five minutes,” he told him.

  Hirshberg nodded. He suspected that given the momentum of events, what he had to say to the president was likely to fall on deaf ears.

  THIRTY-TWO

  THE NATIONAL MALL, WASHINGTON, DC

  Scott Taggart sat on a bench and watched as young people jogged along the broad gravel path that looped around the National Mall. Behind him was the Hirshhorn Museum and beyond that, across the curving street, was the red sandstone castle, the headquarters of the Smithsonian.

  Its myriad museums, like copies of the acropolis spread out in every direction. At one end, sealing off the Mall, was the U.S. Capitol Building, with its imposing dome.

  Less than a mile away, to the west, and across the Ellipse, was the White House.

  Taggart put down the newspaper and checked his watch. The museum had been open for a little more than an hour. He got up from the bench, pulled a pair of heavy leather gloves from his pocket and put them on, then put his gloved hands into the pockets of the heavy navy pea coat. He started to walk in the direction of the Capitol. He crossed Jefferson Drive at Seventh Street and walked one block to Independence Avenue, where he turned left. Halfway down the block, he climbed the stairs in front of the massive building with its two-story glass front and followed a line of schoolchildren on a field trip into the National Air and Space Museum.

  Directly in front of him was a large information desk, and behind that, in the distance, a display entitled “Milestones of Flight.”

  For a weekday in the middle of winter, the place was crowded. The usual tours of children mingled with the retired and the growing number who took vacations in the off-season.

  To the right, Space Hall was cordoned off in preparation for the party that night. Tables had already been set up and a raised dais was in the process of being erected.

  Over Taggart’s shoulder was the Wright Brothers’ plane from Kitty Hawk, and just beyond it was the Spirit of St. Louis, hanging from wires in the ceiling.

  But today Taggart wasn’t interested in history. The thought that preoccupied
him at the moment was of a massive building three hundred yards to the north and a little west, well within the zone of maximum destruction. The offices of the Internal Revenue Service were across the Mall, wedged in behind the Museum of Natural History and the headquarters of the Justice Department. Within hours, all of these would take on the appearance of the burned-out concrete remnants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the blasts.

  Taggart convinced himself that he harbored no ill will against the people who worked in these buildings but rather against the institutions themselves. It was the reason why the cesium was so important. Computer records and documents for every agency in the federal government would be instantly transformed into nuclear waste. There was no more effective way to kill the beast than to destroy the information that fed it.

  The government was entrenched behind a Constitution that could not be amended by the people and that the politicians used at every turn to increase their own power. It could only be interpreted and constrained by judges who shared in the federal spoils system that was now expanding faster than the universe. The government grew like a tumor, engulfing everything in its path.

  In Taggart’s mind, America had reached the end of the line. It had killed Kirsten and given rise to a perpetual political class that was arrogant in its views and brazen in its corruption—a political aristocracy that displayed an indifference and contempt toward the public that was stunning. Now they would pay the price.

  At the main concourse, behind the information desk, Taggart stopped for a moment and took a small vial from his inside coat pocket. Fumbling with his gloved hands, he removed a small capsule from the vial and placed it inside his mouth, between the cheek and gum. He threw the vial in a trash can, then turned to his left and walked past the history of “Early Flight” and “Jet Aviation.”

  He strode with a purpose through the thronged gallery, passing the ghosts of another era—the airships that carried America to world power. They were old now and obsolete, like the generation that made them and the men who flew them, symbols of past glory and honor that no longer had a place in America. They and he were irrelevant to the corrupt politicians who took money from foreign countries that were our enemies.

  Taggart’s mind raced as he walked, his hands plunged deep into the pockets of his coat. He walked with purpose, looking through people as if they weren’t there. His focus was centered on the object in the far corner, on the north side the building, toward the Mall.

  There were only a handful of tourists and sightseers gathered beneath the gleaming sheets of metal with their aviation rivets and the number “82” stenciled just under the huge nose canopy.

  Like a laser, Taggart’s concentration was fastened on the cylindrical object beneath the mammoth airframe near the open bomb bay.

  Through the thickness of the gloves, he felt deep down in his pocket for the glass bottle, the one that Thorn had left for him in the locker at the Denver airport.

  The bottle contained hydrochloric acid, with a dye capable of etching metal and staining it a blood-red color.

  Taggart edged his way toward the barricade beneath the huge fuselage. He stopped and looked around to make sure that no one was likely to get in his way. Then without hesitation he stepped over the metal railing.

  One of the guards, forty feet away, saw him. He started to react, but it was too late.

  Taggart closed the distance quickly to the green metal cylinder under the fuselage, then pulled his hand from his pocket and flung the bottle at the olive-drab cylinder.

  The glass shattered against the sheet-metal casing, exploding in a profusion of blood-red dye that covered the side of the cylinder and ran down onto the floor. Taggart covered his face to escape the vapors rising as the acid ate into the metal.

  “America is a nuclear murderer!” Taggart shouted at the top of his lungs as tourists retreated from the airplane and guards moved in. They watched his hands for signs of a weapon but saw none.

  The acid from the bottle was beginning to eat a small hole in the side of the metal display.

  Taggart continued to shout. “America is a nuclear killer.”

  He lashed out with his foot, kicking the metal cylinder, and smeared the dye with his gloved hands.

  Though seemingly hysterical, he possessed the presence of mind to strip the gloves from his hands before the acid could penetrate and dropped them onto the floor.

  Before he could kick the metal side of the cylinder again, two of the security guards were on him. They wrestled him out beyond the barricade and within seconds managed to cuff his hands behind his back.

  Before the guards could even lead him away, the staff of the museum had moved in to assess the damage. The gleaming fuselage, perhaps the most significant icon of the age of air power, was untouched. But the acid on the metal cylinder beneath it continued to send off noxious vapors.

  Quickly two maintenance men bent low under the fuselage and pushed with their hands against the tail fin. Using the rectangular wheeled dolly that was part of the display and all of their strength, they maneuvered the green metal casing out from under the giant body of the Enola Gay. They wheeled the dolly toward the open door at the rear shop entrance to the museum and watched as the acid ate and etched the metal of the faithfully authentic replica of “Little Boy”: the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

  OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE

  The president looked up from the thick sheaf of papers spread out before him on the desk. He was crossing out words and lines and inserting others with a pencil. Sy Hirshberg was standing in the open door to the Oval Office.

  It was nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. “What is it, Sy? I don’t have much time.” The president was only four hours from the State of the Union address, and butterflies were beginning to gather in his stomach.

  “Anything new from Seattle?” he asked.

  “Not yet. They’re trying to figure out how to get into the tank without applying heat to cut the metal. They’ve tried X-rays to see inside, but there’s a lead shield.”

  “Can’t they just move the damn thing? Tow it onto a boat and take it out into the ocean.”

  “They’re concerned that it might be booby-trapped.”

  The president took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. “How in the hell am I supposed to go before two hundred million people and talk about the state of the nation while on the other coast we have men trying to disarm a nuclear bomb?”

  “That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Mr. President.”

  The president looked at Hirshberg.

  “I think you should cancel the speech.”

  “What?”

  “Just postpone it, Mr. President.”

  “What the hell. I can’t do that. Not now. It’s too late. We’ve given embargoed copies of the speech to the press. Do you have any idea what they would say if we canceled it. They’d want to know why.”

  “Maybe we should tell them.”

  “No!” The president was adamant. He swiveled around in his chair, so that Hirshberg was presented with the high leather back.

  “There’s no reason to cancel,” he told Hirshberg. “If that bomb is safely disarmed, why should we needlessly alarm the public? And if it’s not, canceling the speech isn’t going to do a damn bit of good.”

  “And if it goes off during the speech, Mr. President? What then?”

  “At least the president will be seen as engaged in the country’s business, even in the face of a crisis,” said the president.

  “There is another possibility,” said Hirshberg. “Much more serious.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That the device isn’t in Seattle.”

  The president wheeled around in his chair to face him again. “What are you talking about? They found the truck.”

  “Yes. But they haven’t gotten inside of it.”

  “They have radiation readings.”

  “That’s true. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the device is ins
ide. Remember, Mr. President, that there were much higher radiation readings on those fishing boats, the ones the Navy hauled out of Friday Harbor and sent to the bottom in the North Pacific. It could mean that the truck was used to transport the bomb. It is possible that the device could have been removed before the truck was ever driven to Seattle.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “That the truck could be a decoy, Mr. President.”

  “Bullshit,” said the president. “We have the device, and you know it. And if your people were smart they’d get it the hell out of that city before we have an accident.”

  “An accident?” said Hirshberg. “This is no accident. They are people bent on mass carnage. If there is a chain reaction, fifty thousand people could lose their lives. Maybe more.”

  “I thought you evacuated the area.”

  “Twelve blocks, Mr. President. If that device goes off, the fireball will take out the entire metropolitan area of downtown Seattle. The shock wave would cross the sound in less than three seconds and take out the eastern waterfront of Bainbridge Island, a major residential community. That would be awful,” said Hirshberg. “But what if the bomb isn’t there?”

  “If it isn’t there, where would it be?”

  “Need I remind you, sir, that in four hours you are going to be assembled in the same building with every member of Congress, the Cabinet, except for a single member, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the entire federal government under one roof.”

  “You’ve been talking to that woman,” said the president. “What’s her name?”

  “Ms. Cole. No, I haven’t seen her since she left the Situation Room yesterday. But I will tell you that what she had to say about this man Belden has been troubling me ever since. Why did they make the truck so easy to find?”