by Tom Clancy
The sintering process for the tungsten-rhenium was simplicity itself. They used a radio-frequency furnace much like a microwave oven. The metallic powder was poured into a mold and slid into the furnace for heating. After it became dazzlingly white hot—unfortunately not hot enough actually to melt the tungsten, which had a very high thermal tolerance—pressure was applied, and the combination of heat and pressure formed it into a mass that while not quite metallically solid was firm enough to treat as such. A total of twelve curved sections were made one after the other. They required machining to modest tolerances of shape and smoothness, and were set aside on their own section of shelving installed in the fabrication plant.
The big milling machine was working on the final large beryllium component, a large metallic hyperboloid about fifty centimeters in length, with a maximum width of twenty. The eccentric shape made for difficult machining, even with computer-assisted tools, but that could not be helped.
“As you see, the initial neutron flux will be a simple spherical expansion from the Primary, but it will be trapped by the beryllium,” Fromm explained to Qati. “These metallic elements actually reflect neutrons. They are gyrating about at approximately twenty percent of the speed of light, and we will leave them with only this exit into the cone. Inside the hyperboloid will be this cylinder of tritium-enriched lithium deuteride.”
“It happens so fast?” the Commander asked. “The explosives will be destroying everything.”
“It requires a new way of thinking. As fast as the actions of the explosives are, you must remember that we require only three shakes for the bomb to complete the detonation process.”
“Three what?”
“Shakes.” Fromm allowed himself another of his rare smiles. “You know what a nanosecond is—that is one billionth of a second, ja? In that span of time, a beam of light goes only thirty centimeters. The time it takes a beam of light to go from here to here.” He held his hands out about a foot apart.
Qati nodded. Surely that was a very brief time indeed.
“Good. A ′shake’ is ten nanoseconds. The time for light to go three meters. The term was invented by the Americans in the 1940s. They mean the time for a shake of a lamb’s tail—a technical joke, you see. In other words, in three shakes, the time needed for a beam of light to go approximately nine meters, the bomb has begun and ended the detonation process. That is many thousands of times less than the time required for chemical explosives to do anything.”
“I see,” Qati said, speaking both the truth and a lie. He left the room, allowing Fromm to return to his ghastly reveries. Günther was waiting out in the open air.
“Well?”
“I have the American side of the plan,” Bock announced. He opened up a map and set it on the ground. “We will place the bomb here.”
“What is this place?” Bock answered the question. “How many?” the Commander asked next.
“Over sixty thousand here. If the bomb’s yield is as promised, the lethal radius will encompass all of this. Total dead will number between one and two hundred thousand.”
“That is all? For a nuclear bomb, that is all?”
“Ismael, this is merely a large explosive device.”
Qati closed his eyes and swore under his breath. Having only a minute before been told that it was something completely out of his experience, now he was being told the reverse. The Commander was bright enough to understand that both experts were correct.
“Why this place?” Bock explained that, too.
“It would be very gratifying indeed to kill their President.”
“Gratifying, but not necessarily beneficial. We could take the bomb into Washington, but I evaluate the risks of detection as serious, far too serious. Commander, my plan must take into consideration the fact that we have only one device and only one chance. We must therefore minimize the risk of detection and base our target-selection on convenience more than any other factor.”
“And the German end of the operation?”
“That is more easily accomplished.”
“Will it work?” Qati asked, staring off at the dusty hills of Lebanon.
“It should. I give it a sixty-percent chance.”
At the very least we will punish the Americans and the Russians, the Commander told himself. The question came next: Is that enough? Qati’s face became hard as he considered the answer to that.
But there was more than one question. Qati thought himself a dying man. The disease process had its ebbs and flows, like an inexorable tide, but a tide that never quite restored itself to where it had been a year or a month before. Though today he felt well, he knew that this was a relative thing. There was as much chance that his life would end in the next year as there was that Bock’s plan would succeed. Could he allow himself to die and not do everything he could to see his mission accomplished?
No, and if his own death was likely, what importance should he give to the lives of others? Were they not all unbelievers?
Günther is an unbeliever, a true infidel. Marvin Russell is another, a pagan. The people you propose to kill ... they are not unbelievers. They are People of the Book, misguided followers of Jesus the Prophet, but also people who believe in the one God.
Yet Jews were also People of the Book. The Koran proclaimed it. They were the spiritual ancestors of Islam, as much the children of Abraham as the Arabs. So much in their religion was the same as his. His war against Israel was not about religion. It was about his people, cast out of their own land, displaced by another people who also claimed to be motivated by a religious imperative when it was really something else.
Qati faced his own beliefs in all their contradictions. Israel was his enemy. The Americans were his enemy. The Russians were his enemy. That was his personal theology, and though he might claim to be a Muslim, what ruled his life had precious little to do with God, however much he might proclaim the opposite to his followers.
“Proceed with your planning, Günther.”
20
COMPETITION
At the halfway point of the NFL season, the Vikings and Chargers were still the class of the league. Shrugging off their overtime loss to Minnesota, San Diego took their revenge the next week at home against doormat Indianapolis, whom they buried 45-3, while the Vikings had to struggle against the Giants in a Monday Night game, emerging on the sweet side of a 21-17 score. Tony Wills passed a thousand rushing yards in the third quarter of the season’s eighth game, and was already consensus rookie of the year, plus becoming the official NFL spokesman for the President’s Campaign Against Substance Abuse (CASA). The Vikings stumbled against the Forty-Niners, losing 24-16, which evened their record with San Diego’s 7-1, but their nearest competition in the NFL Central—“Black and Blue”—division was the Bears at 4—3. Parity in the National Football League had come and gone. The only serious challenge in the American Conference came, as always, from the Dolphins and Raiders, both of which were on the Chargers’ dance card for the tail end of the season.
None of this was the least comfort to Ryan. Sleep came hard, despite the enveloping fatigue that seemed to define what his life had become. Before when thoughts had plagued his night, he’d come to the windows facing the Chesapeake Bay and stood, watching the ships and boats pass a few miles away. Now he sat and stared. His legs were weary and weak, always tired, until standing took a conscious effort. His stomach rebelled at the acid produced by stress and augmented by caffeine and alcohol. He needed sleep, slumber to relax his muscles, dreamless oblivion to loosen his mind from the day-to-day decisions. He needed exercise. He needed many things. He needed to be a man again. Instead he got wakefulness, a mind that would not stop turning over the thoughts of the day and the failures of the night.
Jack knew that Liz Elliot hated him. He even thought he knew why, that first meeting a few years before in Chicago where she’d been in a bad mood and he’d been in one also, and their introduction had been one of harsh words. The difference was that he tend
ed to forget slights—most of them, anyway—and she did not; and she had the ear of the President. Because of her, his role in the Vatican Treaty would never be known. The one thing he had done that was untainted by his work at the Agency—Ryan was proud of what he’d done in CIA, but knew that it was narrowly political or strategic, aimed at the betterment of his own country, while the Vatican Treaty had been for the betterment of the whole world. That one proud insight. Gone, credited to others. Jack didn’t want sole credit. It had not been exclusively his work, but he did want fair mention as one of the players. Was that asking too much? Fourteen-hour days, much of it spent in cars, the three times he’d risked his life for his country—for what? So that some political bitch from Bennington could tear up his evaluations.
Liz, you wouldn’t even be there except for me and what I did, and neither would your boss, the Ice Man, Jonathan Robert Fowler of Ohio!
But they could not know that. Jack had given his word. Given his word to what? For what?
The worst part of all, it was now affecting him in a way that was both new and totally unexpected. He’d disappointed his wife again this night. It was incomprehensible to him. Like throwing a light switch and getting no light, like turning the key to start the car and—
Like not being a man. That was the simple description.
I am a man. I’ve done all the things a man can do.
Try explaining that to your wife, chump!
I’ve fought for my family, for my country, killed for my family and my country. I’ve won respect among the best of men. I’ve done things that can never be known and kept the secrets that had to be kept. I’ve served as well as any man can.
So why are you looking out at the water at two in the morning, ace?
I’ve made a difference! Jack’s mind raged.
Who knows? Who cares?
But what of my friends?
A whole lot of good they do you—besides, what friends? When’s the last time you saw Skip Tyler or Robby Jackson? Your friends at Langley—why not confide your problems to them?
Dawn came as a surprise, but not so much a surprise as that he’d actually slept, sitting alone in the living room. Jack rose, feeling the aches in his muscles unhelped by whatever number of hours he’d not been awake. It hadn’t been sleep, he told himself on the way to the bathroom. It was just that he hadn’t been awake. Sleep was rest, and he felt singularly unrested, with a pounding headache from the cheap wine of the previous night. The only good news—if that’s what it was—was that Cathy didn’t get up. Jack fixed his own coffee and was waiting at the door when Clark drove up.
“Another great weekend, I see,” the man said as Ryan got into the car.
“Et tu, John?”
“Look, Deputy Director, you want to take a swing at me, go right ahead. You looked like shit a couple of months back and you’re getting worse instead of better. When’s the last time you took a vacation, got away for more than a day or two, you know, maybe pretended you were a real person instead of some fuckin’ government ticket-puncher who’s afraid that if he leaves nobody’ll notice?”
“Clark, you do have a way of brightening my mornings.”
“Hey, man, I’m just an SPO, but don’t bitch if I take the ‘protective’ part seriously, ’kay?” John pulled the car over and parked it. “Doc, I’ve seen this before. People burn out. You’re burning out. You’re burning the candle both ends and the middle. That’s hard to do when you’re in your twenties, and you ain’t in your twenties anymore, in case nobody bothered telling you.”
“I’m quite aware of the infirmities that come with age.” Ryan tried a wry smile to show that it wasn’t that big a deal, that Clark was overdoing it.
It didn’t work. Suddenly it occurred to John that his wife hadn’t been at the door. Trouble at home? Well, he couldn’t ask about that, could he? What he saw in Ryan’s face was bad enough. It wasn’t just fatigue. He was tiring from within, all the shit he was taking from up the chain of command, the strain of backstopping Director Cabot on damned near everything that went out the front door. Cabot—not a bad guy, he meant well, but the truth of the matter was that he just didn’t know what the hell he was doing. So Congress depended on Ryan, and the Operations and Intelligence Directorates depended on Ryan for leadership and coordination. He couldn’t escape his responsibilities, and didn’t have the good sense to realize that some were really things he could leave to others. The directorate chiefs could have taken up more of the slack, but they were letting Ryan do it all. A strong bark from the Deputy Director’s office could have set that right, but would Cabot back him up—or would those White House pukes take it as a sign that Jack was trying a takeover?
Fuckin’ politics! Clark thought as he pulled back onto the road. Office politics, political politics. And something was wrong at home, too. Clark didn’t know what, but he knew it was something.
Doc, you’re too damned good a man for this!
“Can I lay a piece of advice on you?”
“Go ahead,” Jack replied, looking through dispatches.
“Take two weeks, go to Disney World, Club Med, find a beach and walk it. Get the hell out of town for a while.”
“The kids are in school.”
“So take them out of school, for Christ’s sake! Better yet, maybe, leave them and get away, you and your wife. No, you’re not that kind. Take them to see Mickey.”
“I can’t. They’re in school—”
“They’re in grammar school, not graduate school, doc. Missing two weeks of long division and learning to spell ‘squirrel’ won’t stunt their intellectual growth. You need to get away, recharge the batteries, smell the fucking roses!”
“Too much work, John.”
“You listen to me! You know how many friends I’ve buried? You know how many people I went out with who never got the chance to have a wife and kids and a nice house on the water? A lot, pal, a whole lot, never came close to having what you have. You got all that, and you’re trying very damned hard to end up dead—and that’s what’s gonna happen, doc. One way or another, give it maybe ten years.”
“I have a job to do!”
“It ain’t important enough to wreck your fucking life for, you dumbass! Can’t you see that?”
“And then who runs the shop?”
“Sir, you might be hard to replace when you’re at your best, but the shape you’re in now, that Goodley kid can do your job at least as well as you can.” And that, Clark saw, scored for points. “Just how effective do you think you are right now?”
“Will you do me a favor and just drive the car.” There was another SPINNAKER report waiting for him, according to coded phrases in the morning dispatches, along with one from NIITAKA. This would be a busy day.
Just what he needed, Jack thought to himself, closing his eyes for a moment’s rest.
It got worse. Ryan was surprised to find himself at work, more surprised that fatigue had defeated morning coffee and allowed him to sleep for forty minutes or so on the way in. He accepted Clark’s told-you-so look and made his way up to the 7th floor. A messenger brought in the two important files, along with a note that Director Cabot was going to be late. The guy was keeping banker’s hours. Spies were supposed to work harder, Jack thought. I sure as hell do.
NIITAKA came first. The Japanese, the report said, were planning to renege on a rare trade concession made only six months earlier. It would be explained away as “unfortunate and unforeseen” circumstances, part of which might be true, Ryan thought as he read down the page—the Japanese had as many domestic political problems as everyone else—but there was something else: they were going to coordinate something in Mexico ... something to do with the state visit of their Prime Minister to Washington the coming February. Instead of buying American farm goods, they were opting to buy them cheaper from Mexico, playing that off against reduced tariff barriers into that country. That was the plan, in any case. They weren’t sure they could get the concession from Mexico, and th
ey were planning ...
... a bribe?
“Jesus,” Ryan breathed. The Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party—PRI—didn’t exactly have an exemplary record for integrity, but this ... ? It would be handled in face-to-face talks in Mexico City. If they got the concession, trading access to Mexican markets to opening Japan to Mexican foodstuffs, then the amount of American foodstuffs they had committed to buy the previous February would be reduced. It made good business sense. Japan would get food a little cheaper than they could in America while at the same time opening up a new market. Their excuse to American farmers would have to do with agricultural chemicals that their food-and-drug agency would decide, much to everyone’s surprise, not to like for reasons of public health.
The bribe was fully in proportion to the magnitude of the target. Twenty-five million dollars, to be paid in a roundabout, quasi-legal fashion. When the Mexican President left office the following year, he would head a new corporation that ... no, they would buy out a corporation he already owned for fair market value, and the new ownership would keep him on, while inflating the value of the business and paying his impressive salary in return for his obvious expertise at public relations.
“Nice separation,” Ryan said aloud. It was almost comical, and the funny part was that it might even be legal in America if someone hired a sharp-enough lawyer. Maybe not even that much. Plenty of people from State and Commerce had hired themselves out to Japanese interests immediately after leaving government service.
Except for one little thing: what Ryan held in his hand was evidence of conspiracy. In one way they were foolish: the Japanese thought that some councils were sacrosanct, that some words spoken aloud would never be heard outside the four enclosing walls that heard them. They didn’t know that a certain cabinet member had a certain mistress who in turn had a personal beef that matched her ability to loosen a man’s tongue; and that America now had access to all that information, courtesy of a KGB officer....