Honi and Stafford started counting.
“These stacks run all the way back to the wall,” Honi noted. “Just this much is a million dollars, and there’s…”
Stafford was counting in groups of a million as he worked his way down the aisle. When he got to the end, he turned. “I get one hundred million per shelf.”
“And we have ten shelves,” Honi said. “Five on each side.”
Jake leaned against the shelving, feeling a bit dizzy. “Where the hell did Teague get a billion dollars?” He looked at Stafford and then at Honi.
“The warhead,” they said together.
“That’s a lot of money for a single warhead,” Jake said.
“There are a number of nuclear weapons available on the black market,” Stafford explained. “They’re very expensive. But what you don’t get are the activation codes. A terrorist can get hold of a nuke and blow it up with conventional explosives, but what he’d get is a dirty bomb. The sequence and control of the detonation is critical in order to get a nuclear detonation.”
“And to get the activation codes?” Honi asked.
“You need someone like General Teague, and a lot more money.”
“General Teague was planning on getting away. Now that he’s in custody…” Jake said.
“The army doesn’t fool around. Teague will hang,” Stafford replied.
A metal cabinet stood at the far end of the aisle. Stafford opened the doors, Jake and Honi joined him.
“Guns, passports, ID papers,” Stafford said, handing over the passports. Jake examined them briefly. The papers revealed General Teague’s image, but with a different name. “I got ammo, traveling clothes, extra socks and a watch.”
“A watch?”
“Yeah. It’s weird. It runs backwards.”
Jake grabbed the watch out of Stafford’s hand. It was the same as the one he wore.
“So what’s with the weird watch?”
Jake and Honi glanced at each other and then back to Stafford.
“You’re in the middle of it now, so you might as well know,” Jake said. He held his arm out, exposing the watch on his wrist. “It’s a bit of a long story.”
CHAPTER 9
Okay, Peter Steinmetz thought. No battle plan remains intact after the first encounter with the enemy. So I counter their move. He took a look at the people he had available and who could best accomplish the job. It’s an expensive move, but Teague is currently indispensable. He got on his computer and sent his message through the encrypted network. Collateral damage, but an acceptable loss.
By late that afternoon Ken Bartholomew had arrived and confirmed that the billion dollars was real currency and not counterfeit. The passports and other forms of ID were so well done Ken couldn’t tell them from the real thing.
“They even have the correct ultraviolet markings on them,” he said. “You don’t get this level of quality from just anywhere. Somebody put a lot of time and money into these papers.”
“Bag everything up and log it into evidence,” Stafford told the CID team. He turned to Jake. “We have enough evidence to convict Teague. Time to interrogate him.”
“Mind if we join you?” Jake asked. “I know this is army jurisdiction, but I just want to get his reaction to the watch. Maybe we can get a line on why he decided to betray his country, and how he became associated with this international criminal organization.”
“I can make that happen. I’m gettin’ used to havin’ you two around.”
When they returned to Fort Hood, General Teague had already been transferred to Fort Belvoir.
“He’ll keep,” Stafford said. “We still have a mountain of paperwork to go through here. Agent Bartholomew still needs to see if he can tell us what day the W79 warhead disappeared. If he can do that, we stand a chance of finding out who else is in on this thing.”
“Do we know anything about General Teague’s mental state?” Jake asked.
“We thought we did. But finding the countdown watch and the buried shipping container containing a billion dollars? What else did we miss? Is this some kind of a death cult thing?”
“I don’t know. The guy who gave me the watch said we were all going to die when the time ran out. One nuclear artillery shell can take out part of a major city, but I don’t see that as killing all of us.”
“Maybe it’s all of the people in a particular city?” Honi said.
“Could be. He was from New York City, but he was in Washington when he told me.”
“So, two potential cities?” Major Stafford asked.
“Yeah. Both big potential targets. New York for financial reasons, and Washington for political ones.”
Major Stafford thought about the underground container with a billion dollars in it. “My guess is that Teague didn’t have a beef with the financial sector.”
“So, political,” Honi commented. “Which means Washington.”
“But why would a vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank travel from New York, a city he may have considered to be safe, to Washington, the potential target of a nuclear weapon?”
“To warn the people in that city. That would make sense. Jacobson had a countdown watch. He knew Washington was going to be safe for how many days?”
“Thirty-five, at that time.”
“Exactly.”
“Maybe you’re right. With Jacobson’s countdown watch, the watches on the two Chinese businessmen, Sylvia Cuthbert’s watch, and now General Teague’s watch, it just feels a lot bigger to me than it might look at this time. I’m beginning to think this is a worldwide operation. And with the connection between General Teague and a missing nuclear weapon, the whole thing has a very disturbing feel to it.”
“And what was Teague’s motive for betraying his country?” Honi asked.
“A billion dollars are a lot of reasons,” Stafford replied.
“True,” Jake said. “But only if you know you’re going to be alive long enough to spend it. Teague had a countdown watch. I’m thinking he knew a lot of people were going to die, and he didn’t want to be one of them.”
“What about the nuclear weapon?” Honi asked.
“Price of admission to the organization with the phoenix in the watch,” Jake said. “I think the money simply sealed the deal.”
“So what is this strange organization going to do with the nuclear weapon?”
Jake shrugged. “At this point, I have no idea.”
“Could be almost anything,” Stafford said. “The W79 is a big weapon, but it’s not that big. I mean, we have weapons here that are a thousand times larger. Why didn’t he steal one of those?”
“We’ve still got a lot to figure out,” Jake said.
“Meanwhile,” Honi interjected, “Agent Hunter and I have an interrogation to do back in Virginia.”
Jake and Honi took the FBI jet back to D.C. and caught up on some desperately needed sleep. They’d been up for the last 41 hours.
Sylvia Cuthbert again woke to the sounds from down the hall in the middle of the night. The man’s pleading varied but the torture continued unabated, every two hours, like clockwork. After three agonizing sessions, she was totally distraught. Pettigrew walked down the hall, wet as before, still ignoring her.
Half an hour later, he returned pushing a hospital gurney down the hall toward where the sounds had emanated. Ten minutes after that, he pushed the gurney back toward the front of the security office, but this time there was a large black bag on the top with a body inside.
Her stomach clenched, forcing her to bend forward in severe pain. She willed herself to lie back on the cot, trying to get the pain to subside. It seemed to take forever, but the pain finally left her just before the morning cell cleaning ritual commenced.