I sighed. "Did you read the whole file, especially the part about what happened to me and the other members of my section? What happened to us was pretty crystal-clear as well."
He took another swallow from his Coke. "Sure, and sorry about that and all. But look what I signed up to do. Skulking around in the shadows, trying to make sense out of poorly microfilmed documents more than a half-century-old. Flying around in circles with detection gear, trying to ignore readings from hospitals or industrial facilities that use radioactive materials. Tracking down high school students over the Internet who've made a bomb threat against Cleveland. Man, when I signed up for this gig, I thought I'd be doing something, you know. Searching out bomb material in Kazakhstan or Iraq or someplace. Not friggin' New Hampshire."
I was trying to think of a suitable retort when another door opened up and Laura Reeves strode in. “Gus,” she said crisply. “If you’d excuse the two of us.”
“Sure,” he said, but while his tone might have been cheerful, his eyes told me another story. I got the feeling that among the things red-haired Gus Turner didn't like about this assignment included being bossed around by Laura Reeves.
When Gus had gone out into the other room, Laura sighed heavily and sat down, hooking one leg over the arm of the chair, letting her leg swing back and forth. "Well, I just got off the phone with the Secretary. Of Energy, in case you were wondering."
"Go on."
"It seems things are moving quickly in other arenas, and poorly."
"Poorly in which way?"
She rubbed at her face and sighed again. "Poorly in that if we don't get this uranium back and soon, it looks like a nice little war is going to break out in North Africa. That poorly enough for you?"
My mouth got dry and I wished I hadn't turned down that drink offer.
"Yeah," I said. "That's poorly enough for me."
Chapter Fifteen
Laura Reeves rubbed at her face again and started talking. "Here's the deal. Our little friend out in the North African desert, the one who's hot to trot to get a hold of this uranium, it seems like he's made more progress than anybody thought. The necessary equipment and machinery have been assembled and are in a series of caves at the base of a range in the Atlas Mountains. Intelligence estimates show that they've geared up, and they're waiting for one little piece of the puzzle to start work on a North African bomb."
"The German uranium."
She took her hands down, clasped them across her flat belly. "The same. So the boys and girls down south in DC are getting nervous, quite nervous. If we don't get a handle on this uranium soon, and I mean quite soon, Lewis, then something is going to happen to that installation in the Atlas Mountains." She reached over and poked through the piles of folders and envelopes, and then flipped over a photocopy of a newspaper article. "Sec this? It appeared in today's
Washington Post.
You don't get that paper up here, do you?”
I picked up the paper, saw that it was a facsimile. “I see it on the Web, when I feel a need to see what’s going on in DC. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen that often.
I scanned the article. It was buried in one of the A sections of the newspaper, and the small headline said CARRIER GROUP ON MANEUVERS, and mentioned that the
USS George Washington
and its support fleet had left a port-of-call visit in Tel Aviv a day early to conduct maneuvers in the central Mediterranean. I looked up at Laura. "Gulf of Sidra again?"
She smiled. "Very good. Sure we can't get you a job here when this is all over?"
"Positive."
Laura shifted some in the chair. "Gulf of Sidra, back in '86, was just a little exercise, looking for an excuse to punch al-Qaddafi in the nose. Al-Qaddafi claimed the entire Gulf as his own, and we sent in a carrier group to quote, exercise the right of free passage through the seas, or some damn thing. He sent up a couple of MiGs to tangle with a couple of our Tomcats ---- always a bad idea --- and those MiGs were shot down. A couple of more clashes later we sent in a flight of F-111s to give him a heavy dose of punches in the nose. But still he's there, and every now and then he makes trouble. Lewis, one of our raids back in the eighties killed an adopted daughter of his. You think if he had the bomb, he might not use it over here somewhere?"
"This carrier group, I take it, is not going to be tooling around the Gulf of Sidra on some routine exercise."
A quick shake of the head. "Nope. And a reminder about the non-disclosure form you signed, Lewis, because it covers everything and anything we discuss. Such as the fact that the carrier group is going to be in a certain position in a few short days, and they aren't bringing flowers."
It was as if the whole hotel room and the two of us had been picked up and transported back in time, back when I worked at the Pentagon and dealt with these kinds of issues all the time, month after month. Now I knew why this room had seemed eerily familiar to me. I had been in similar rooms before, years ago.
"If you don't get the uranium under your control soon, the carrier group is going to attack, won’t they?
“They will.”
I thought for another moment. "If I read correctly last week, the current Mideast peace negotiations are in a rather delicate phase, aren't they. I'd imagine they'd collapse for a long, long while if our bombers and cruise missiles are going into North Africa and killing Libyans and blowing up installations."
"So true," she said. "And after that happens, you can bet that the news will come out that we went ahead and blasted an aspirin factory or baby-milk factory or textile factory, and whatever low prestige we have in the Arab world will get even lower. It might be another four or five years before the peace negotiations get back on track, if then."
"Some pressure," I said.
"Some understatement," she said.
"You getting any additional resources coming your way?" I asked.
"Yeah, another NEST team is winging its way east, and the local FBI offices have been placed at my disposal. But you know the FBI guys are more experienced dealing with mob matters or bank robberies or white-collar crime. There's a special unit coming up from Quantico, but by the time everyone's landed and gone to the rest room and been debriefed, it'll be a couple of days before they can make a contribution. By then, the trade-off most likely will have taken place, and that uranium will be out of the country. And then the bombers and the missiles will start flying."
"No news on who the new contact might be?"
She shook her head, kept on moving her leg back and forth.
"We were lucky once. We weren't so lucky again. Speaking of luck, you got anything for me, anything at all?"
I began to tug nervously at the end of my coat zipper. "I know this sounds melodramatic and all, but someone tried to kill me today. Plus, I've gotten two threatening messages at home, from a woman who wants to know if my affairs are in order. Would you call that luck?"
Her leg stopped swinging. "Are you serious?"
“If you want, I can take you over to my house and show you the bullet hole in my Ford. Came a few inches from taking off the top of my head. I’m afraid I’ve erased the threatening message.”
Laura moved around in the chair, eyes now excited. "The gunshot. Where did this happen?"
"At the submarine museum in Porter. I was trying to get more information from the museum director on leads to retirees who might have been at the shipyard when the German U-boat was brought in. The guy running the place didn't have anything for me, and when I left and got to my car, that's when it happened."
"The cops up there in Porter know what happened?"
"They do," I said. "It's under investigation, but I'm not sure what they can do."
She clasped her hands together and squeezed them tight, her eyes still excited. "That's the best news I've heard all day."
I said, "I hope you wouldn't have been so excited if I'd ended up dead."
"Oh, no, no, no, you don't understand," she said. "Sorry, I know it sounded cold and all that. But you getting shot at was good news. It means that whoever's out there, in control of the uranium, he's nervous that you've been poking around and asking questions. It must mean you're on the right track Retirees, right?”
"Yeah, that's right," I said. "I figured ---"
"You figured well," she said, picking up a pen and starting to make some notes. "Gus was in charge of looking through the retiree records, trying to see if anything out there matched. There were thousands of people working at the shipyard when those U-boats came in. Thing is, it'd be very easy to overlook something." She looked up from her note-taking and grinned. "This is great. I've got some FBI agents heading over here in a few hours, and I'll get them to work on tracing those old records. That's what they're experts at, seeing old connections, old evidence. Damn it, Lewis, I think you might have given us the key."
I tried to keep my voice even. "You want I should get shot al again?"
Now her smile was affected. "I was told by Clem that you’re carrying a weapon. True?”
"Quite true."
She wiggled the pen some in her grasp. "I wish I could say I had the resources to give you twenty-four-hour protection. But I'd be lying. I'm stretched thin as it is, and even these new bodies won't help that much. Maybe you should take a couple of days off, go on a trip."
"And not see this one to the finish?" I asked. "After all you clowns did to me to get me to sign up, you think I'm going to bail out?”
"No, but I'd think ---“
I stood up. "Nope. I get the message. I'm on my own, right?”
Now her eyes were locked on to me, cold and clear. "My objective is to get the uranium back as soon as possible, and prevent lots of people from being killed, either in this country or overseas. I have to work with the resources I have. Sorry."
"Understood," I said, and I started heading for the door. Before I got there, she said, "One more thing?"
"Yes?" I said, turning, and damn if her smile hadn't come back "The other night. At your place. I enjoyed the meal and the kiss. No matter what I might have said at the time. I'd like a chance for a repeat performance, if you don't mind."
I was going to shoot something back about it only happening if I didn't get killed over the next few days, but that seemed too obvious, so I said, "Sorry, right now I don't have the resources to even consider it."
Then I left.
Outside, armed once again, I slowly walked back home in the gathering twilight. The April air was getting cooler, teasing the residents of the New Hampshire seacoast once again. During the day the sun would warm things up, tempting one to break out the shorts and T-shirts, but when the sun went down and the wind came up from the ocean, one was thankful for a nice jacket and a heating system at home.
I stopped at the side of Atlantic Avenue, waiting for the traffic to ease up before crossing the street. Of course, having a nice jacket also worked to hide one's weapon, and the weight of the Beretta was clearing up my mind. So. I was on my own. Nothing new, nothing I hadn't encountered before.
When the road was clear, I strode across and stopped for a moment in the parking lot of the Lafayette House. In the darkening sky, Jupiter was making its appearance in the west, accompanied by the dimmer star that marked Saturn. I looked up there for a bit, waiting to see if I could spot a fast-moving dot of light that'd mark the space shuttle
Endeavour
, but nothing was there. No doubt she was on the other side of the planet at this hour, and when I got home, I'd fire up my new Macintosh and get on the Web, to find out the latest orbit information.
I stopped looking up at the night sky and headed past the parked cars to my dirt driveway. All right, then, I thought. Once I had the computer work wrapped up, then what? Maybe a call to Paula, a peace offering. Maybe a call to Felix, to see how his love life was doing.
Maybe. And what about the missing uranium? It was just a few days before a North African desert would blossom with flames and explosions, death and destruction, all because of a secret almost six decades old on this stretch of coastline. A well-hidden secret, one that someone was ready to kill for to keep it hidden.
As I reached the edge of my driveway, I stopped thinking for a moment as a heavyweight blasted me across the backs of my legs.
I tripped and fell on the dirt, started rolling and rolling, reaching underneath my coat, grabbed the Beretta as a shape came running after me, and I yelled out, "Freeze, right there, or I blow your damn head off."
The shape stopped, came closer, and formed itself into Keith Emerson. His hands were empty, and he swayed a bit as he stood over me. "You serious?"
I clicked the hammer back on my pistol, the sound of metal on metal quite loud. “That I am."
He stood there for a long moment, still swaying, hands empty, staring down at me, and then he shook his head and went over a few feet and sat down on a boulder marking the edge of the parking lot. He shook his head again. "Damn it. You're not serious, not at all."
I sat up, kept my pistol aimed at him. "What makes you think that?"