Jack Ryan 7 - The Sum of All Fears (61 page)

“And Ron Olson?” Trent asked.

“He's circling his wagons.”

“You'll have a better chance if he asks,” Fellows told Ryan.

“I know. Well, at least we'll have our system up and running in three more weeks. We've started turning out the first set of discs and doing preliminary tests now.”

“How so?”

“We use a computer to look for non-randomness. The big one, the Cray YMP. We brought in a consultant from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to do a new kind of type-token program. In another week—ten days, call it—we'll know if the system is what we expect it to be. Then we'll start sending the hardware out.”

“I really hope you're wrong on this,” Trent said, as the meeting closed.

“So do I, man, but my instincts say otherwise.”

“And how much is it going to cost?” Fowler asked over lunch.

“From what I gather, two or three hundred million.”

“No. We've got budget problems enough.”

“I agree,” Liz Elliot said. “But I wanted to discuss it with you first. It's Ryan's idea. Olson at NSA says he's full of it, says the systems are secure, but Ryan's really crazed about this new encoding system. You know he pushed the same thing through for the Agency—even went to Congress directly.”

“Oh, really?” Fowler looked up from his plate. “He didn't go through OMB? What gives?”

“Bob, he delivered his pitch for the new NSA system to Trent and Fellows before he came to see me!”

“Who the hell does he think he is!”

“I keep telling you, Bob.”

“He's out, Elizabeth. Out. O-U-T. Get moving on it.”

“Okay, I think I know how to do it.”

Circumstances made it easy. One of Ernest Wellington's investigators had been staking out the 7-Eleven for a week. The Zimmer family business was just off U.S. Route 50 between Washington and Annapolis, and was adjacent to a large housing development, from which it drew much of its business. The investigator parked his van at the end of a street that gave him both a view of the business building and the family house which was only fifty yards away from it. The van was a typical covert-surveillance vehicle, custom-built by one of several specialty firms. The roof vent concealed a sophisticated periscope, whose two lenses were connected respectively to a TV camera and a 35mm Canon. The investigator had a cooler full of soft drinks, a large Thermos of coffee and a chemical toilet. He thought of the cramped van as his own personal space vehicle, and some of its high-tech gadgetry was at least as good as NASA had installed on the Shuttle.

“Bingo!” the radio crackled. “Subject vehicle is taking the exit. Breaking off now.”

The man in the van lifted his own microphone. “Roger, out.”

Clark had noticed the Mercury two days earlier. One of the problems with commuting was that the same vehicles kept showing up from time to time, and he'd decided that's all it was. It never got close, and never followed them off the main road. In this case, as he took the exit, it didn't follow. Clark shifted his attention to other matters. He hadn't noticed that the guy was using a microphone . . . but those new cellular things had you talking into the visor, and—wasn't technology wonderful? A good chase car need not tip himself off anymore. He pulled into the 7-Eleven parking lot, his eyes scanning for trouble. He saw none. Clark and Ryan exited the car at the same instant. Clark's topcoat was unbuttoned, as was his suit jacket, the easier to allow access to the Beretta 10mm pistol riding on his right hip. The sun was setting, casting a lovely orange glow in the western sky, and it was unseasonably warm, shirt-sleeve weather that made him regret the raincoat he was wearing. D.C.-area weather was as predictably unpredictable as anywhere in the world.

“Hello, Dr. Ryan,” one of the Zimmer kids said. “Mom's over at the house.”

“Okay.” Ryan walked back outside, and headed for the flagstone walk to the Zimmer residence. He spotted Carol in the back, with her youngest on the new swing seat. Clark trailed, alert as ever, seeing nothing but still-green lawns and parked cars, a few kids throwing a football. Such temperate weather in the beginning of December worried Clark. He believed it heralded a bastard of a winter.

“Hi, Carol!” Jack called. Mrs. Zimmer was closely observing her youngest in the swing seat.

“Doc Ryan, you like the new swing seat?”

Jack nodded a little guiltily. He should have helped get it together. He was an expert on assembling toys. He leaned over. “How's the little munchkin?”

“She won't get out, and it's dinnertime,” Carol said. “You help?”

“How's everyone else?”

“Peter accepted in college, too! Full scholarship MIT.”

“Great!” Jack gave her a congratulatory hug. What's the old joke? “The doctor is five and the lawyer is three?” God, wouldn't Buck be proud of how these kids are turning out? It was little more than the normal Asian obsession with education, of course, the same thing that had stood Jewish Americans in such good stead. If an opportunity presents itself, grab it by the throat. He bent down to the newest Zimmer, who held her arms up for her Uncle Jack.

“Come on, Jackie.” He picked her up, and got a kiss for his trouble. Ryan looked up when he heard the noise.

“Gotcha.” It's a simple trick, and an effective one. Even if you know it's coming, you can't do much to prevent it. The van had several buttons which, when pressed, beeped the horn. It was a sound the human brain recognized as a danger signal, and one instinctively looked towards whatever direction it had come from to see if there was any cause for concern. The investigator hit the nearest one, and, sure enough, Ryan looked up towards the sound, with an armful of kid. He'd caught the hug for the woman, and the kiss from the kid, and now he had a full-face shot on the 12oo-speed film in his camera to backup the videotape. That simple. He had the goods on this Ryan guy. Amazing that a man with such a lovely wife would feel the need to screw around, but that was life, wasn't it? A CIA bodyguard to keep everything nice and secure. A kid involved, too. What a shit, the man thought, as the motor-drive whirred away on the Canon.

“You stay for dinnah! This time you stay. We celebrate Peter scholarship.”

“Can't say no to that one, Doc,” Clark observed.

“Okay.” Ryan carried Jacqueline Theresa Zimmer into the house. Neither he nor Clark noticed that the van parked fifty yards away pulled off a few minutes later.

It was the most delicate part of the process. The plutonium was set into cerium sulfide ceramic crucibles. The crucibles were carried to the electric furnace. Fromm closed and locked the door. A vacuum pump evacuated the enclosure and replaced argon.

“Air has oxygen,” Fromm explained. “Argon is an inert gas. We take no chances. Plutonium is highly reactive and pyrophoric. The ceramic crucibles are also inert and non-reactive. We use more than one crucible to avoid the possibility of forming a critical mass and starting a premature atomic reaction.”

“The phase-transformations?” Ghosn asked.

“Correct.”

“How long?” This question from Qati.

“Two hours. We take our time in this part. On removal from the furnace, the crucibles will be covered, of course, and we make the pour in an inert-gas enclosure. Now you know why we needed this sort of furnace.”

“No danger when you make the pour?”

Fromm shook his head. “None at all, so long as we are careful. The configuration of the mold absolutely prevents forming a critical mass. I've done this many times in simulation. There have been accidents, but those invariably involved larger masses of fissile material and took place before all the hazards of handling plutonium were fully understood. No, we will move slowly and carefully. Pretend it is gold,” Fromm concluded.

“The machining process?”

“Three weeks, and two more of assembly and testing of the components.”

“The tritium extraction?” Ghosn asked.

Fromm bent down to look into the furnace. “I'll do that right before completion, and that will conclude the exercise . . .”

“See any resemblance?” the investigator asked.

“Hard to tell,” Wellington thought. “In any case, he sure seems to like the little tyke. Cute enough. I watched them build the swing set last weekend. The little one—name's Jackie, by the way, Jacqueline Theresa—”

“Oh? That's interesting.” Wellington made a note.

“Anyway, the little one loves the damned thing.”

“Seems right fond of Dr. Ryan, also.”

“You suppose he really is the father?”

“Possible,” Wellington said, watching the videotape and comparing the picture there with the still shots. “Light wasn't very good.”

“I can have the back-room boys enhance it. Take a few days for the tape, though. They have to do it frame by frame.”

“I think that's a good idea. We want this to be solid.”

“It will be. So, what's going to happen to him?”

“He'll be encouraged to leave government service, I suppose.”

“You know, if we were private citizens, you might call this blackmail, invasion of privacy . . .”

“But we're not, and it isn't. This guy holds a security clearance, and it appears that his personal life isn't what it should be.”

“I suppose that's not our fault, is it?”

“Exactly.”

— 22 —

REPERCUSSIONS

“Damn it, Ryan, you can't do that!”

“Do what?” Jack responded.

“You went over my head to The Hill.”

“What do you mean? All I did was suggest to Trent and Fellows that there might be a problem. I'm supposed to do that.”

“It's not confirmed,” the Director insisted.

“So, what ever is fully confirmed?”

“Look at this.” Cabot handed over a new file.

“This is S
PINNAKER
. Why haven't I seen it yet?”

“Just read it!” Cabot snapped back.

“Confirms the leak . . .” It was a short one, and Jack raced through it.

“Except he thinks it's a leak in the
Moscow
embassy. Like a code clerk, maybe.”

“Pure speculation on his part—all he really says is that he wants his reports transported by hand now. That's the only definite thing this tells us.”

Cabot dodged. “I know we've done that before.”

“Yes, we have,” Ryan admitted. It would even be easier now with the direct air service from
New York
to
Moscow
.

“What's the rat line look like now?”

Ryan frowned at that. Cabot liked to use Agency jargon, though the term “rat line,” meaning the chain of people and methods that transported a document from agent to case officer, had actually gone out of favor. “It's a fairly simple one. Kadishev leaves his messages in a coat pocket. The check-room attendant at their Congress retrieves the messages and gets them off to one of our people by brush-pass. Simple and direct. Also rather fast. I've never been comfortable with it, but it works.”

“So now we have two top agents who're unhappy with our communications systems, and I have to fly all the way to Japan—personally—to meet with one.”

“It's not all that unusual for an agent to want to meet a high Agency official, Director. These people get twitchy, and knowing that some higher-up cares about them is what they need.”

“It'll waste a whole week of my time!” Cabot objected.

“You have to go to
Korea
in late January anyway,” Ryan pointed out. “Catch our friend on the way back. He's not demanding to see you immediately, just soon.” Ryan returned to the S
PINNAKER
report, wondering why Cabot allowed himself to be sidetracked by irrelevancies. The reason, of course, was that the man was a dilettante, and a lazy one, who disliked losing arguments.

The new report said that Narmonov was very worried indeed that the West would find out just how desperate his situation with the Soviet military and KGB was. There was no further information on missing nuclear weapons, but plenty on new changes in parliamentary loyalties. The report gave Ryan the impression of having been slapped together. He decided to have Mary Pat look at it. Of all the people in the Agency, she was the only one who really understood the guy.

“I presume you're taking it to the President.”

“Yes, I think I have to.”

“If I may make a suggestion, remember to tell him that we have not really confirmed anything Kadishev has said.”

Cabot looked up. “So?”

“So, it's true, Director. When you single-source something, especially something that's apparently highly important, you tell people that.”

“I believe this guy.”

“I'm not so sure.”

“The Russian department buys it,” Cabot noted.

“True, they've signed off on it, but I'd feel a hell of a lot better if we had independent confirmation,” Jack said.

“Do you have any firm basis to doubt this information?”

“Nothing I can show to you, no. It's just that we ought to have been able to confirm something by now.”

“So, you expect me to go all the way down to the White House, present this, and then admit that it might be wrong?” Cabot stamped out his cigar, much to Jack's relief.

“Yes, sir.”

“I won't do that!”

“You have to do that, sir. You have to do that because it happens to be true. It's the rule.”

“Jack, it can get slightly tedious when you tell me what the rules of this place are. I am the Director, you know.”

“Look, Marcus,” Ryan said, trying to keep the exasperation out of his voice, “what we have with this guy is some really hot information, something which, if true, could affect the way we deal with the Soviets. But it is not confirmed. It just comes from one person, okay? What if he's wrong? What if he misunderstands something. What if he's lying, even?”

“Do we have any reason to believe that?”

“None at all, Director, but on something this important—is it prudent or reasonable to affect our government's policy on the basis of a short letter from a single person?” That was always the best way to get to Marcus Cabot, prudence and reason.

“I hear what you're saying, Jack. Okay. My car is waiting. I'll be back in a couple of hours.”

Cabot grabbed his coat and walked out to the executive elevator. His Agency car was waiting. As Director of Central Intelligence, he got a pair of bodyguards, one driving, and the other in the front-passenger seat. Otherwise he had to deal with traffic the same as everyone else. Ryan, he thought on the drive down the
George Washington Parkway
, was becoming a pain in the ass. Okay, so he himself was new here. Okay, so he was inexperienced. Okay, so he liked to leave day-to-day stuff to his subordinates. He was the Director, after all, and didn't need to deal with every little damned thing. He was getting tired of having the rules of conduct explained to him once or twice a week, tired of having Ryan go over his head, tired of having analysis explained to him every time something really juicy came in. By the time he entered the White House, Cabot was quite annoyed.