Impact (3 page)

Ford leaned over and peered through a thick glass window in the top of the box. Inside winked a number of deep orange gemstones. “Can’t say I have.”

“They appeared on the Bangkok wholesale market about two weeks ago. Going for big money—a thousand dollars for the cut carat.”

A serving man came in wheeling a fussy little sideboard with silver coffeepot, lump raw sugar, cream and milk in separate silver pitchers, and china cups. The little tray rattled and squeaked as it was pushed along. He parked it next to Ford.

“Sir?”

“Black, no sugar, please.”

The man poured. Ford sat back with the steaming cup and took a sip.

“I’ll leave the pot here in case the gentleman wants another.”

The gentleman would want another
, thought Ford, draining the tiny china cup with one gulp and refilling it.

Lockwood worried the stone in his hands. “I’ve got a team of geophysicists at Lamont-Doherty in New York working on what they are. The stones are unusual in composition, with an index of refraction higher than a diamond, specific gravity thirteen point-two, hardness nine. The deep honey color is almost unique. A beautiful stone—with a twist. They’re laced with Americium-241.”

“Which is radioactive.”

“Yes, with a half-life of four hundred thirty-three years. Not enough radiation to kill you right away but enough to create long-term exposure problems. Wear a string of these around your neck and you’re liable to lose your hair after a few weeks. Carry a pocketful of these around for a couple of months and you might sire the monster from the black lagoon.”

“Lovely.”

“The stones are hard but brittle and easily pulverized. You could take a few pounds of these gems, grind them up, pack them in C-4 in a suicide belt, detonate it in Battery Park when the wind is from the south, and you could loft a nice radioactive cloud over the financial district, wipe out a few trillion dollars of U.S. market capitalization in half an hour and render lower Manhattan uninhabitable for a couple of centuries.”

“Nice work if you can get it.”

“Homeland Security is freaking out.”

“Do the Bangkok dealers know they’re hot?”

“The reputable wholesalers won’t touch ’em. They’re being funneled through the dregs of the gem market.”

“Any idea how these gems formed?”

“We’re working on it. Americium-241 is not an element that exists naturally on Earth. The only known way it can be made is as a by-product of a nuclear reactor producing weapons-grade plutonium. These ‘honeys’ might well be evidence of illicit nuclear activity.”

Ford finished his second cup and poured himself a third.

“All indications are that the stones are coming out of a single source in Southeast Asia, most likely Cambodia,” said Lockwood.

Draining the third cup, Ford leaned back. “So what’s the assignment?”

“I want you to go undercover to Bangkok, follow the trail of these radioactive honeys back to the source, locate it, document it, and come back out.”

“And then?”

“We make the problem go away.”

“Why me? Why not CIA?”

“This is sensitive stuff—Cambodia is an ally. You get caught, we need deniability. It’s not the kind of operation the CIA does well—small and quick, in and out. A one-man job. I’m afraid you won’t have Agency backup on this one.”

“Thanks for the offer.” Ford set down his cup and rose to leave.

“The president’s approved the op personally.”

“Excellent coffee.” He headed for the door.

“I promise, we won’t hang you out to dry.”

He paused.

“It’s simple: go in, find the mine, get out. Do absolutely nothing. Don’t touch the mine. We’re still analyzing those gemstones—they might be extremely important.”

“I have no interest in going back to Cambodia,” said Ford, his hand resting on the doorknob.

“It does no service to your wife’s memory to keep running from your past.”

Ford was startled at this unexpected and painful insight from Lockwood. He sighed and folded his arms.

“The money’s good,” said Lockwood, “the CIA won’t interfere, you’ll be in control, in charge of your own people. You have the backing of the Oval Office—what more could you want?”

“What’s my cover?”

“Crooked American black-market gem wholesaler.”

Ford shook his head. “Won’t work. A wholesaler wouldn’t care about finding the source—he’d be content to buy from middlemen. I’ll be a get-rich-quick schemer looking for a one-time killing—the kind of guy who thinks he’ll get a better price by bypassing the wholesalers and going directly to the source.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Give me a rap sheet with an arrest for smuggling cocaine, dismissed on a technicality.”

“You want to get killed?”

“And two brutal murder charges, acquitted. That’ll make ’em think twice.”

“If that’s the way you want to play it, fine.”

“I’ll need some gold to throw around. American eagles.”

“Will do.”

“I want translators standing by, twenty-four/seven, fluent in the common Southeast Asian languages, especially Thai. There are a couple of high-tech devices I’ll need.”

“No problem.”

“If I fail, bury me in Arlington Cemetery, twenty-one-gun salute, the works.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” said Lockwood, his thin lips tightening into a mirthless smile. “Does this mean you’re in?”

“What’s the compensation?”

“A hundred thousand. Same as last time.”

“Make it two, so I can pay my secretary’s health insurance.”

Lockwood extended his hand. “Two.”

They shook. As Ford left the office, he noticed the worry stone going a mile a minute in Lockwood’s manicured hand.

5

Mark Corso entered his modest apartment and shut the door. He stood there for a moment, as if seeing it for the first time. The crying of a baby came through the walls and a heavy smell of fried bacon permeated the stale air. The air-conditioner unit, which took up a third of the window, thumped and shuddered, issuing a feeble current. The faint sound of sirens penetrated from outside. In front of him, the picture window looked out over a busy intersection with a car wash, drive-thru burger joint, and a used-car lot.

For the first time, Corso took a grim satisfaction in the general seediness of the apartment, the paper-thin walls, the stains on the rug, the dead ficus in the corner, the soul-crushing view. A year ago he had rented the apartment long-distance, suckered by the glowing description on a Web site and a raft of artfully shot photographs. From Greenpoint, Brooklyn, it had seemed like pure California dreaming, a large one-bedroom “drenched” with light, with a private garden, swimming pool, palm trees, and (best of all) a parking garage with his very own assigned space.

Now, finally, he could say good-bye to this dump.

The past few months at NPF had been crazy, with his old professor and mentor Jason Freeman getting canned—followed by his freakish murder in a home invasion and robbery. That had shaken Corso up like nothing since the death of his father. Freeman had been going downhill for a while, coming in late to work, blowing off staff meetings, arguing with colleagues. Corso had heard rumors of women and heavy drinking. It distressed him deeply because Freeman, his undergraduate thesis advisor back at MIT, had been the one who brought him into the Mars mission at NPF.

That morning, Corso had learned he was going to be promoted to Freeman’s place. It was an enormous step forward, with a new title, more money, and prestige. He wasn’t even thirty yet, younger than most of his colleagues, a rising star. Nevertheless, his good fortune built on the back of his beloved teacher’s failure filled him with conflicting feelings.

He turned from the window and pushed the sting of guilt out of his mind. What happened to Freeman was tragic, but it was random, like being struck by lightning, and Corso had done all he could. He’d supported Freeman among his colleagues and had tried to warn him about what was happening. Freeman seemed in the grip of some reckless obsession or force larger than life that was dragging him down, despite all Corso could do.

The promotion meant he’d finally have the money to break his lease, kiss his security deposit good-bye, and find something better. No problem there; Pasadena wasn’t like Brooklyn and there were thousands of other apartments for rent. Having been there a year, he was familiar enough with the area to know where to look and which areas to avoid.

In the middle of these thoughts a timid knock came on the door. Corso turned from the window, peeked through the eyehole to see the building super standing with something in his hand. He opened the door and the rotund little man stuck out a hairy arm with a small cardboard box. “Package.”

He took it, thanked the man, shut the door. Something from Amazon, it seemed . . . but then he looked more closely and felt a sudden freezing of his spine. The box had been reused; the package was from Jason J. Freeman.

For a crazy moment Corso thought maybe Freeman wasn’t dead after all, that the old reprobate had gone to Mexico or something, but then he noted the cancellation date, which was ten days old, and the media mail stamp on the box. Ten days . . . Freeman had mailed the package two days before his murder and it had been in transit ever since.

His heart racing, Corso took a paring knife from the kitchen and slit open the box. He removed wadded newspaper to expose a letter and, nesting underneath, a high-density hard drive stenciled with the Mars mission logo. As he lifted it out, he saw, with a sudden feeling not unlike nausea, that it was classified.

#785A56H6T 160Tb
CLASSIFIED: DO NOT DUPLICATE
Property of NPF
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

With a trembling hand Corso placed it on the coffee table and slit open the envelope with his fingernail. Inside was a handwritten letter.

Dear Mark,

I’m sorry to burden you but there’s no other way. I don’t have much time to write, so I’ll be blunt. Chaudry and Derkweiler are arrant fools, they are political animals through and through, and they’re incapable of understanding the significance of what I’ve discovered. This is huge, unbelievable. I’m not about to hand it to those bastards, especially after the way they’ve treated me. It’s a serpent’s den over there at NPF with all those self-important hemorrhoidal shit-encrusted assholes. Everything is political and nothing’s about science. I just couldn’t take it any longer. It’s impossible to work there.

To make a long story short, I saw the writing on the wall, so before I was fired I smuggled out this drive.

Someday I’ll tell you all about it over a brace of martinis but that’s not why I need your help now. My last week at NPF I did something really stupid, really compromising, and because of that I’ve got to park this drive with you. Just for a while, as a precaution, until things cool off. Do this for me, Mark, please. You’re the only one I can trust.

Don’t contact me, don’t call, just sit tight. You’ll hear from me sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I’d love to have your thoughts on the gamma ray data in here, if you get a chance to look at it.

Jason

And then, scrawled at the bottom almost as an afterthought, was the password to the drive.

For a moment Corso couldn’t even think as he stared at the letter, until he realized it was rattling in his trembling hand.

This was a disaster. A catastrophe beyond belief. A breach of security that would stain everyone involved. This would fuck up everything. Not only was it highly illegal for the classified hard drive to be outside the building, but the fact that Freeman had even managed to smuggle it out would cause an uproar. Security of classified information had been drummed into them from day one. Zero tolerance. He remembered the scandal back at Los Alamos in the nineties when a single classified hard drive went missing. The news made the front page of
The New York Times
, the director was forced out, and dozens of scientists fired. It was a bloodbath.

He sat down, his head in his hands, clutching his hair. How did Freeman get it out? These drives had to be wrapped with a security seal every night, logged, and locked in a safe. They were encrypted up the wazoo and physically alarmed. Every use of the drive was recorded on the user’s permanent security record. If the drive were moved more than a certain distance from its approved server, alarms would go off.

Freeman had somehow evaded all that.

Corso rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, tried to calm himself down. If he brought this to the attention of NPF, it would cause a scandal, cast a dark cloud over the whole Mars mission, and taint everyone—especially him. Freeman and he went back years. Freeman had brought him in, mentored him; he was known as Freeman’s protégé. He had tried to help Freeman during his free fall over the past few months.

But of course he had to do the right thing and report it. No choice. He had to.

Or did he? Was it better to do the right thing or the smart thing?

He began to understand why Freeman had sent it to him via media mail instead of by some other means. Untraceable. Nothing to sign for and no tracking number.

If Corso destroyed the drive and pretended he never received it, nobody would be the wiser. Eventually they might discover the drive was missing and that Freeman took it, but Freeman was dead and that’s where it would end. They’d never trace the drive to him.

Corso began to feel calmer. This was a manageable problem. He would do the smart thing, destroy the drive, pretend he’d never gotten it. Tomorrow, he’d drive up into the mountains, go for a hike, bust it up into pieces, burn, scatter, and bury them.

He immediately felt a wash of relief. Clearly that was the correct way to handle this problem.