“What do you need?”
“I need a computer, and I need you to keep me a secret for a few more days.”
“I can’t give you connection to the internet,” Sam said, emphatically.
“I don’t need it. I just need to review some data I already have.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You can’t.” She smiled. “But while we’re out at sea, without access to your satellite phone, there’s nothing I can do. In fact, it’s probably the safest place for you to keep me.”
“You’ve already admitted that you work in intelligence gathering for a foreign country. Your entire training and purpose is to spy and gather information that might be used against my country. Why should I help you fix problems in your own government?”
She set her jaw firm. “Because I heard that whoever infiltrated my government has penetrated yours, too.”
Sam expelled his breath. She had hit a raw nerve. This was precisely what the president had feared.
“Go on.”
“And what’s more. Whoever betrayed me was involved in the sinking of the Omega Deep.”
Sam met her eye.
Against his better judgment, he said, “All right. You have three days until the Maria Helena arrives. You can stay aboard until then.”
Chapter Forty-Three
The next two days passed quickly.
On the morning of the third day, the Matilda rendezvoused with the USS Gerald R. Ford. Svetlana remained below decks, while Sam went on board to have a meeting with the secretary of defense who had flown there directly to discuss their progress in person.
At a length of 1,106 feet, with a beam of 206 feet and 25 decks, the USS Gerald R. Ford made the Matilda look like a bath toy. Sam ran his eyes across the vessel. He’d been on the same aircraft carrier previously, shortly after she was first launched, but somehow every time he came onboard he was amazed by the sheer size of it. To him, the aircraft carrier, with more than 75 aircraft and a complement of nearly 4,000 servicemen and women, the place always appeared more like a small city, than a ship.
He was taken to a strategic planning room. With its leather chairs and mahogany table, the place looked more like the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company than the meeting place for military strategists.
The officer who had escorted him asked him to take a seat. Sam took a seat and a moment later, the secretary of defense entered the room, closing the door behind her.
“What did you find?” she asked, without preamble.
“On board the Vostok?”
“Yes. On board the Vostok. Why else do you think you were sent here?”
Sam ignored her derision. “She was frozen solid.”
“Any survivors?”
“No,” Sam lied.
He didn’t trust Svetlana, but he had accepted her case that they shared a common enemy. Someone had infiltrated a high level of both their governments and militaries. It was a long shot, but if she could find out who, then he was betting it would be worth his time to give her the opportunity to do so.
Besides, the secretary of defense had already admitted they believed they had a leak in the U.S. government.
The secretary fixed her emerald green eyes on him, as though she could see his discomfort. “What did you find, Mr. Reilly?”
“Like I said, ma’am, the entire place was frozen solid. I broke into the iced-over frigid bridge. The digital systems were all destroyed by ice, and their Admiralty charts were nothing more than a ruse, identifying deep shoals and reefs known to be good for longline fishing.”
“Did you retrieve anything of use?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Why did it sink?”
Sam sighed. “It was listing to port heavily. I believe the melting ice had flooded the bilge. The Vostok sank within an hour of boarding it. I nearly got caught below decks.”
The secretary scrutinized him with her piercing green eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Sam smiled. He’d never been a good liar, and even the best couldn’t lie to the secretary. “I can’t tell you yet.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“No. I don’t trust anyone.”
“Will this lead you to the Omega Deep?”
“It may.”
“All right.” She asked, “How long do you need?”
“Another week. Then, one way or the other I can reveal what I know.”
“Okay. After that, I’m bringing you back in, and I expect you to give me a full, unadulterated report.”
Sam stood up. “Understood, Madam Secretary.”
“Sit down, Mr. Reilly,” she said. “You’re not finished, yet.”
Sam swallowed but remained silent.
“I have someone here who has something that may help you find the Omega Deep.” She pressed an intercom and said, “Please send the professor in.”
Sam turned to see Professor Douglas Capel enter the room, an astrophysicist and astronomer — the same man who’d first identified the strange material now known to be blackbody. Sam stood up to greet the professor.
Professor Douglas Capel said, “Hello, Mr. Reilly. It’s good to see you again.”
Sam shook his hand. “You, too, professor.”
The professor was tall for his generation, standing eye-to-eye with Sam. Wiry gray hair sprouted from his head and made his eyebrows look like those of a mad scientist. The same hair sprung from his ears like coiled antennae. His skin was surprisingly smooth in contrast. His blue eyes twinkled with good humor. A ready smile, somewhat crooked, gave him the appearance of smirking below a large, well-shaped nose.
Both men took their seats.
The professor handed Sam a metallic suitcase. “Madam Secretary has brought me up to date with our problem.”
Sam met his eye. “And you’ve found a solution?”
“I’ve found a tool that might help you, but first you’ll need to locate the rough location of the USS Omega Deep.”
Sam asked, glancing at the metallic case. “What have I got here?”
The professor smiled. “Radioactive isotopes.”
“Of course,” Sam said, willing to accept anything.
“As I’m sure you will remember from your high school chemistry, an isotope is an element that contains equal numbers of protons, but different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei, and hence differ in relative atomic mass.”
“Sure,” Sam agreed.
“In that case, you have naturally occurring cadmium, which is composed of 8 isotopes. For two of them, natural radioactivity has been observed, and three others are predicted to be radioactive but their decays were never observed, due to extremely long half-life times.”
“Right.” Sam squinted as though it would help him put everything together. “And how is this going to help me locate the Omega Deep?”
“It won’t. You’ll need to find the rough location of the submarine, but this should help you locate the otherwise invisible hull.”
“Go on.”
“Cadmium is in a class of isotopes, known as primordial isotopes.” The professor pulled his glasses forward to meet Sam’s eye, and seeing little understanding there, made a dramatic sigh, as though a complaint on the state of science education these days. “Primordial isotopes were present in the interstellar medium from which the solar system was formed and were theoretically brought together during the Big Bang.”
Sam simply said, “Of course.”
“This is important for you because when we were running tests on blackbody, we discovered that it had an extremely powerful affinity to the unstable isotope of cadmium. These have been coated with ultraviolet materials, meaning that they will be easy to see under UV light.”