The Einstein Papers (29 page)

There’s more on the way,” Miles said. “Let me hear the story again. You deliver the microbes to a ship in Port Isabel, and the same man who met you at the strip club then shoots Tolbert and your other partner. Is that correct?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Butler said.

“Do you remember the name of the ship?”

“It was a rusty old cargo ship, it might have been called Silt River, something like that. Anyway, it was two words.”

“Was it flying an American flag?”

“No, that I do remember. I looked back when I was a safe distance away. I remember the smoke was increasing from the stacks as the ship prepared to pull away from the dock, but I could still see the flag off the fantail. The flag was all red with a star in the corner.”

“You’re sure the star was in the corner?” Miles said as Carlton opened the door.

“Yeah, pretty sure,” Butler said.

Carlton handed the remaining pages to Butler, who slowly glanced at each page.

“There it is,” he said, pointing to page nine. “That’s the brand.”

Miles followed Butler’s finger to a picture of a waterfall flanked by two panda bears. She swiveled the sheet around and read the caption below. Panda Giants brand. Country of manufacture was listed as the Peoples Republic of China.

“Thanks,” Miles said, and she stood up.

“Make sure you tell the judge I cooperated,” Butler said as Miles and Carlton walked from the interview room.

“It will be duly noted,” Carlton said with contempt.

Benson leaned back in his chair opposite his second-in-command, Assistant Special Security Director Richard Allbright.

The Saudi government received a threat claiming someone was planning to wipe out their oil fields?” Benson said, incredulously.

The written demand stated they must recognize the Israeli state or their oil reservoirs would be destroyed,” Allbright said and then read from his note pad, The exact quote was, ‘A divine wrath will befall your wealth. The curse of oil has provided you a means to oppose the Jewish state. If you do not recognize Israel’s right to exist we will remove the curse forever.’ End quote.”

“What group claimed responsibility?” Benson asked.

“The Jewish Front for Recognition,” Allbright said, glancing at his briefing sheet again. “We have no records of such a group.”

Benson swiveled in his chair and glanced out the window. His thoughts were broken by the telephone buzzing. “Yes, Mrs. Mindio.”

“Sorry to disturb you, sir. I know you left instructions to hold your calls, but this is important.”

That’s okay, go ahead and explain,” Benson said.

“The duty officer just left a fresh communique. There has been a series of explosions in Israel. There was over-” Mrs. Mindio began to say.

“Bring it here, please,” Benson said.

Mrs. Mindio entered Benson’s office and placed the report on the desk. She quickly retreated back to the outer office. Benson read the papers rapidly, then handed them to Allbright.

“The NIA will be called in on this, Dick. Our agency’s primary charter is antiterrorism. Begin a class-one file-I want you to pull out all the stops to gather information. Cull through all the other agencies’ files and see what you can find. Next have someone get me a Defense Department reading on our possible military response-I want to know what military units are being moved to the area to counter the threat. We may need to coordinate a joint operation if we send our agents into the area.”

Allbright rose from his chair as Benson’s phone rang.

“Get me some real-time data, Dick, as fast as possible. We have some decisions to make before the president calls,” Benson said as he grabbed the ringing phone.

Allbright scurried from Benson’s office.

Benson lifted the telephone receiver to his ear. “This is Colonel Thompson at the NSA. We just intercepted a telephone call from a pay phone in Maryland to the Chinese Embassy in Washington. The party at the pay phone asked where he should deliver the package. The party at the embassy replied the ‘river dropoff.’ That was the entire message.”

“Where was the pay phone?” Benson asked.

“Near a town named Lanham,” Thompson replied.

“Excellent,” Benson said.

“We’ll keep monitoring for you,, sir,” Thompson said and hung up.

Benson leaned back in his chair. First China, now the Middle East. He reached in his desk drawer and removed an orange, which he peeled and began earing. It would turn out he would have no time for lunch.

Before he had eaten a slice of the orange he was already dialing his phone. “Get me a 7.5-minute topographic map of Maryland near the town of Lanham,” he ordered his research division.

Benson dialed again.

“Dick,” Benson said to Allbright, who had just entered his office, “I need an assessment of what countries would enter the fray if Saudi Arabia and Israel go to war.”

The call from Long to his supervisor brought swift action. A white-colored Bell Jet Ranger helicopter flew low over the desert to King Khalid Well No. 47. The sun was below the horizon and the remaining light cast a strange orange glow over the sand.

In the rear of the helicopter, Tom Temple, a geologist employed by Aramco, the Saudi-American company that operated the oil field, checked his equipment once again, then tightened his seat belt.

The pilot spoke into the intercom strapped to his head. “We’re five minutes out, Mr. Temple.”

Temple watched from the window as they approached the well. The tiny dots on the ground became well pumps and trucks as they flew nearer. Temple could see the tracks across the sands the trucks had made as they drove to the well. It looked as if the service workers were a caravan of old, descending on an oasis. But King Khalid Well No. 47 was no oasis; it was the dusty wind that signals a drought is coming.

The helicopter pilot flew straight toward the well and landed twenty yards away.

Shutting off the engines, he turned to Temple. “Do you need help with that equipment?”

Temple glanced at several oil-field hands who were already running toward the helicopter. “I’ll get one of the roustabouts to help.”

“In that case,” the pilot said, “I need to place sand covers over my air intakes. My instructions were to wait on the ground until you finish,” he said as he climbed from the pilot s seat.

A light wind blew from the north, stirring the fallen leaves that were scattered around the grounds of the White House. Inside the Oval Office, Robert Lakeland glanced at his notes again, then continued the briefing.

“The Israeli government received a letter from a group calling itself the “Islamic Sword.” They claim they are based in Saudi Arabia, and the bombings in Jerusalem were retaliation for, and I quote, ‘The poisoning of our God-given source of wealth.’ End quote.

“Poisoning of our God-given source of wealth,” the president repeated. “What are they talking about?”

“We have a meeting scheduled with our ambassador in Riyadh in an attempt to determine what the Islamic Sword’s talking about. However, Mr. President, that is still several hours away. Whatever the case is, we have a more pressing concern.”

“What is that, Robert?”

“Both sides have begun to amass troops in preparation for war. The Israeli military is moving an armored column south to Elat, on the Gulf of Aqaba. From there they can initiate an amphibious assault on Saudi Arabia in a matter of hours. Or, if they choose, their troops can drive through the tip of Jordan and attack en masse,” Lakeland said.

“What would be the Jordanian response if that happens?” the president asked.

“The analysts believe that Jordan would be drawn into the skirmish,” Lakeland said.

“And the Saudis? What steps have they taken?”

They have moved a battalion of troops north toward the border. They are forming a defense perimeter from Aynunah on the Gulf of Aqaba in an arc to Tabuk, then on to the border with Jordan. They have asked for additional troops from Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait to assist them.”

“What has the other countries’ response been?” the president asked.

“It appears every country Saudi Arabia contacted agreed to help,” Lakeland said, glancing at his notes. “Not only that, intelligence suggests that Egypt is mobilizing their armed forces without being contacted. It seems the Egyptians are just waiting to be asked to join the fray.”

“What about the nuclear and biological capability of each side?” the president asked grimly.

“Our analysts are almost unanimous about that. They seem to feel both sides possess at least some of each type of weapon,” Lakeland answered directly.

“What’s the worst-case scenario if this thing explodes into war?” the president asked as he rubbed his temples with his fingertips.

Lakeland removed a sheet from the pile in front of him and read aloud. “The Israelis or the Saudis attack the other side. As the battle rages on, Iraq again moves against Kuwait. Iran, fearing Iraq will grow in power, sends troops across the Strait of Hormuz to attack Oman and the United Arab Emirates, thus securing access to the Persian Gulf.”

“The entire Middle East would then be at war,” the president said, shaking his head as if wishing he could toss off the problem.

“That’s about the size of it,” Lakeland agreed.

“Get the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in here, posthaste,” the president said. “I want an immediate redeployment of a sizable contingent of United States troops to the Middle East. Next, call the ambassadors for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Let’s see what we can achieve with diplomacy tempered with the implied threat of military intervention.”

“Very good, sir,” Lakeland said as he rose and raced from the Oval Office.

“One last thing, Robert,” the president said as Lakeland paused at the door to the Oval Office. “Get Benson from the NIA to explain to me what this Islamic Sword is. I want to know who we’re dealing with.”

“Right away, sir,” Lakeland said as he rushed off.

Jake Long peered through the microscope Temple had set on a table next to King Khalid Well No. 47. The oil sands under magnification were retrieved from deep inside the ground. They glowed with an eerie incandescence.

“What the hell is this stuff?” Long asked.

“I think it’s an oil-eating microbe. And it’s reproducing at an alarming rate,” Temple said.,

“It must have been injected from that tank my crew removed from the wellhead,” Long said. “That tank had no business on this well, I can tell you that.”

“That would be my guess,” Temple said as he walked toward the helicopter. “I’d better contact my office.”

Once inside the helicopter, Temple reached his office on the radio. ‘This is Temple. Get me Farouk Aziz, please,” he shouted to the radio dispatcher.

Long’s roustabouts had removed the sampling tool from the wellhead and were now running the color camera down the pipe leading from King Khalid Well No. 47 to the main pipeline. Meanwhile, Long had finished his inspection of the tank his crew had removed and was stowing the tank in the rear of his truck.

“This is Farouk, Tom. Did you find out what was wrong with the well?” Aziz said seconds later.

“I believe the well was injected with what I think is an oil-eating microbe. The sands are completely dry, with no oil residue whatsoever. It is as if someone cleaned them in a giant washing machine.”

“Could you have made a mistake?” Aziz asked. “Might it be something else?”

Temple said quietly, “We’ll test to be sure, but time is very critical.”

“What do you think we should do?” Aziz asked.

“The microbes were introduced from a tank hooked to the wellhead. The first thing to do is have crews fan out and check all the wells,” Temple said.

“That will take days,” Aziz noted correctly.

“The design of the tanks is such that the microbes can only be injected when the well is off gas pressure. That means as long as they are pumping, we have time.”

“What do you mean?” Aziz said.

Temple watched from the helicopter as Long raced toward him.

“It appears that the tank was designed so that when the wells quit pumping, the gas-pressure relief valve opens and allows the microbes to enter the well.”

In his office in Riyadh, Aziz stared at a huge wall that listed the oil fields scheduled maintenance.

“We have a problem, Tom. That entire field is scheduled to come off-line so we can run a cleaning plug through the delivery pipeline.”

“When?” Temple asked.

“About fifteen minutes from now.”

“You have to stop it, Farouk,” Temple said.

He heard Aziz shouting hurried instructions across the room at the same instant Long arrived at the helicopter.

“The microbes are in the pipeline,” Long said, panting from the exertion of running across the sand.

“Farouk,” Temple shouted, “the bugs are in the pipeline. You have to destroy the line.”

“How soon?”

“Right now,” Temple replied. “Blow that son-of-a-bitch sky high.”

In a massive air-conditioned underground hangar at Saudi Military City in the sandy hills outside Taima, a flashing red light and whooping alarm filled the vast space. A hydraulically operated rear vent door opened at the same time two technicians attached an auxiliary power unit to a jet. Off to the side in the ready room, General Sultan Saud stared through the window at the jet preparations as he spoke on a red-colored telephone. While his mission was still being described to him he punched his choice of armaments into a computer keypad on the wall next to the telephone. He watched through the window as two teams consisting of a pair of men each began pushing carts containing missiles from a weapons locker. Each of the two teams was responsible for one wing of the jet.

“Inshallah,” General Saud said when the telephone call ended.

Racing to a dressing room, he quickly got into his Nomex flight suit. Carrying his helmet under his arm, he pulled on his gloves as he walked onto the hangar floor. The two teams of weapons specialists were attaching the last pair of air-to-ground missiles to the far edge of the wings. As General Saud reached the bottom of the ladder to the cockpit he paused. Turning to the specialists, he spoke.