“Was that your objective?” Ryan asked in considerable surprise, drawing on the two hours of sleep he'd had. “Was that what you wanted to do? Oh, my God!”
“Your god?” Qati spat.
“What of Marvin Russell?” Murray asked.
“We killed him. He was merely an infidel,” Qati said.
Murray looked at Ghosn. “This is true? Wasn't he a guest in your camp?”
“He was with us for some months, yes. The fool's help was indispensable.”
“And you murdered him.”
“Yes, along with two hundred thousand others.”
“Tell me,” Jack said. “Isn't there a line in the Koran that goes something like, 'If a man shall enter your tent and eat your salt, even though he be an infidel, you will protect him'?”
“You quote poorly — and what do you care of the Koran?”
“You might be surprised.”
44
THE BREEZE OF EVENING
Ryan's next call was to Arnie van Damm. He explained what he had learned.
“My God! They were willing to—”
“Yeah, and it almost worked,” Ryan said huskily. “Clever, weren't they?”
“I'll tell him.”
“I have to report this, Arnie. I have to tell the Vice President.”
“I understand.”
“One more thing.”
“What's that?”
The request he made was approved, largely because no one had a better idea. After the two terrorists had had their hands treated, they were bedded down separately in FBI holding cells.
“What do you think, Dan?”
“It's — Christ, Jack, where are the words for something like this?”
“The man's got cancer,” Clark said. “He figures that if he has to die — why not a bunch of others? Dedicated son-of-a-bitch, isn't he?”
“What are you going to do?” Murray asked.
“We don't have a federal death-penalty statute, do we?”
“No, neither does Colorado as a matter of fact.” Murray took a moment to understand where Ryan was heading. “Oh.”
Golovko had considerable trouble tracking Ryan down with his phone call. The report on his desk from Dr. Moiseyev, sitting there amid all the other things, had dumbfounded him, but on learning Jack's plans, it was easy to set the rendezvous.
Perhaps the only good news of the week was the rescue. The Admiral Lunin pulled into Kodiak harbor at dawn. Alongside the pier, she offloaded her guests. Of the Maine 's crew of one hundred fifty-seven, perhaps a hundred had gotten off before the submarine was claimed by the sea. Dubinin and his crew had rescued eighty-one of them, and recovered eleven bodies, one of which was Captain Harry Ricks. Professionals regarded it as an incredible feat of seamanship, though the news media failed to cover the story until the Soviet submarine had put back to sea. Among the first to call home was Ensign Ken Shaw.
Joining them on the trip out of Andrews was Dr. Woodrow Lowell of the Lawrence-Livermore Laboratory, a bearded, bearish man, known to his friends as Red because of his hair. He'd spent six hours in Denver reviewing the damage patterns.
“I have a question,” Jack said to him. “How was it the yield estimates were so far off? That almost made us think the Russians did it.”
“It was a parking lot,” Lowell replied. “It was made of macadam, a mixture of gravel and asphalt. The energy from the bomb liberated various complex hydrocarbons from the upper layer of the pavement and ignited it — like a great big fuel-air explosive bomb. The water vapor there — from the snow that flashed away — caused another reaction that released more energy. What resulted was a flame-front double the diameter of the nuclear fireball. Add to that the fact that snow cover reflected a lot of the energy, and you got a huge augmentation of the apparent energy released. It would have fooled anybody. Then afterwards, the pavement had another effect. It radiated residual heat very rapidly. The short version is, the energy signature was much larger than the actual yield justified. Now, you want the real bad news?” Lowell asked.
“Okay.”
“The bomb was a fizzle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it should have been much larger, and we don't know why. The bomb residue was lousy with tritium. The design yield was at least ten times what it actually delivered.”
“You mean?”
“Yeah, if this thing had worked…”
“We were lucky, weren't we?”
“If you want to call that luck, yeah.”
Somehow Jack slept for most of the flight.
The aircraft landed the next morning at Beersheba. Israeli military personnel met the aircraft and convoyed everyone to Jerusalem. The press had found out some of what was happening, but not enough to be a bother, not on a secure Israeli Air Force Base. That would come later. Prince Ali bin Sheik was waiting outside the VIP building.
“Your Highness.” Jack nodded to him. “Thank you for coming.”
“How could I not?” Ali handed over a newspaper.
Jack scanned the headline. “I didn't think that would stay secret very long.”
“It's true, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you stopped it?”
“Stopped it?” Ryan shrugged. “I just wouldn't — it was a lie, Ali. I was lucky I guessed — no, that's not true. I didn't know that until later. It's just that I couldn't put my name to it, that's all. Your Highness, that's not important now. There are some things I have to do. Sir, will you help us?”
“With anything, my friend.”
“Ivan Emmettovich!” Golovko called. And to Ali, “Your Royal Highness.”
“Sergey Nikolay'ch. Avi.” The Russian walked up with Avi Ben Jakob at his side.
“Jack,” John Clark said. “You guys want to get to a better spot? One mortar round sure would waste a lot of top spooks, y'know?”
“Come with me,” Avi said, who led them inside. Golovko briefed them on what he had.
“The man is still alive?” Ben Jakob asked.
“Suffering all the pains of hell, but yes, for another few days.”
“I cannot go to Damascus,” Avi said.
“You never told us you lost a nuke,” Ryan said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. The press doesn't have that yet, but they will in another day or two. Avi, you never told us there was something lost out there! Do you know what that might have meant to us?” Ryan asked.
“We assumed that it had broken up. We tried to search for it, but—”
“Geology,” Dr. Lowell said. “The Golan Heights are volcanic, lots of basaltic rock, makes for a high background count, and that means it's hard to track in on a hot spot — but you still should have told us. We have some tricks at Livermore we might have used, stuff not too many people know about.”
“I am sorry, but it is done,” General Ben Jakob said. “You fly to Damascus, then?”
They used Prince Ali's plane for that, a personal Boeing 727 whose flight crew, Jack learned, was exclusively composed of former drivers from the President's Wing. It was nice to travel first class. The mission was covert, and the Syrians cooperated. Representatives from the U.S., Soviet, and Saudi embassies attended a brief meeting at the Syrian Foreign Ministry, and then they went off to the hospital.
He'd been a powerful man, Jack could see, but he was wasting away like dead, rotting meat. Despite the oxygen line under his nose, his skin was almost blue. All his visitors had to wear protective gear, and Ryan was careful to keep back. Ali handled the interrogation.
“You know why I am here?”
The man nodded.
“As you hope to see Allah, you will tell me what you know.”