“Was there anyone else in the van?” O’Brien asked. “A driver, maybe?”
“Not that I could see. One of ‘em dudes who jerked him into the van was the driver.”
“Thank you,” O’Brien said. “If there’s something else, how do I find you?”
“I’m usually here Monday and Friday’s ‘bout this time. I had me a bicycle ‘till somebody stole it from my camp.”
“Camp?”
“Yeah, I used to sleep under the I-95 bridge downtown. But it’s got so damn crazy, teenage kids comin’ in and beating up people like me. Three of ‘em like to beat me to death last winter. I stay in the woods, west side of town off Wilson Avenue. I got me a little tent and a sleepin’ bag. I don’t bother nobody.”
O’Brien handed the man a twenty dollar bill.
“Now do you believe me?” asked Hunter as he and O’Brien walked across Chapman’s parking lot.
“I questioned whether we could find him again. We did. End of that story, but it’s the beginning of the rest of the story. I want to know where you fit into all of this.”
“Jason was kidnapped, we hope not killed. It shouldn’t have happened. His girlfriend is dead. Others may die if they’re in the way of whoever’s doing this. You need my help. I can dive down there with you and pull up the U- 235.”
O’Brien was silent for a long beat, studying Hunter. “We brought it up.”
“You did? When?”
“Two nights ago. Nick and I dove back down. We off-loaded it in a storage unit, stored where only three people knew the location. Jason wasn’t one of them.”
“So they kidnapped him for information he didn’t have?”
“He initially didn’t know. Nick got boozed up, and while ranting to me, Jason overheard him. The HEU was just stolen. Storage manager was shot through the head. This tells me they got the information out of Jason. His immediate value to them may be gone.”
Hunter grunted. “How much uranium did they get?”
“Two canisters, probably enough to make a dirty bomb if they wanted.”
Dave Collins pulled his Land Rover into the parking lot. Dave, Lauren Miles, Ron Bridges, and Paul Thompson all hit the ground almost running. Nick walked behind them. O’Brien saw something in Hunter’s eyes, the subliminal recognition, the discovery and concealment coming in the blink of an eye. But it was all the time O’Brien needed. Hunter knew one of the four people.
Lauren said, “We have a multi-agency task force setting up near the U.S. Attorney’s office on the second floor of the federal building. Secretary of State and Homeland Security want hourly reports. Volusia detectives said that, when they were here earlier, the manager told them Jason bought twenty pounds of bait fish and left the store. He said no one in the store saw the abduction.”
“Guy across the street,” Hunter began, “a homeless man, said he saw two men push Jason into a blue Ford van. He said they put a pistol in his ribs and kidnapped him.”
“I’m sorry, who you are?” asked Paul Thompson.
O’Brien studied Thompson’s eyes, his body movement for a hint of deceit.
“Eric Hunter. I’m a family friend, also working with Homeland.”
O’Brien introduced Hunter to the others and looked in each person’s eyes as they greeted Hunter. Nothing. O’Brien said, “There’s a camera on the left corner of the building, pointed toward the parking lot. Did the SO look at the hard drives?”
Thompson said, “They’re doing that now at our headquarters.”
“Tape or drives?” O’Brien asked.
“Drives,” said Agent Bridges. “They downloaded the data. Drives are still in there.”
O’Brien said, “Maybe the one glass eye of the camera will give us a better picture than what a homeless man saw from across the street. Let’s go have a look.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
They lay hidden under a green army blanket on a wooden table in a small warehouse. Yuri Volkow entered the room, nodded at Andrei Keltzin and Zakhar Sorokin. He looked at Jason tied in the chair and said, “You have proved most valuable. Let us see what we have recovered from that storage room.” Volkow slowly removed the blanket from the canisters as if he was trying not to awake what slept inside.
In the middle of the table, two long metal cylinders lay side-by-side. The late afternoon sun splintered through the window giving the cylinders an antique bronze look. Still visible were the labels on the right side of both containers: U-235.
“This,” began Volkow, his voice a mix of arrogance and authority, “is going to do three things. It will settle a long-standing score between the motherland and the Americans from 1945 to 1950, the Venona Project, they called it. Second, these cylinders give us supreme reign because we decide who acquires the power inside them. And, third, we will be compensated well.”
Sorokin said, “We have the computer equipment assembled in the next room. Everything is secure, non- traceable. You can begin the auction whenever you wish.”
“Perhaps the first bid should come from those who almost acquired it before we did, that asshole Mohammed Sharif and his comrades. Will they use the power to strike the Americans, especially since it is already in this country, or will they export it to Syria or Iran?”
“Does it make a difference?”
Volkow smiled and stroked the barnacled-surface of one cylinder like a man caressing a sacred object. He looked up at Sorokin and Keltzin. “These are two of more … correct, Jason Canfield? More buried on a beach?”
“Maybe,” Jason said, the ropes dulling the blood circulation to his hands. “The old woman told Sean that the Germans buried something.”
“Where is this old woman?”
“I don’t know.”
Volkow sneered. “If we locate the other cylinders, we will begin the bidding at fifty-million dollars. Put images of these on the site.”
“Should we not find the remaining U-235 first?” asked Keltzin.
“This will arouse the appetite of our buyers.”
“Perhaps the other cylinders do not exist.” Sorokin said. “What if the Americans found them in 1945? Or they may not have been found and never will be.”
“The target area has been narrowed. Also, based on what Canfield told us, this O’Brien either knows or might be able to find the rest of the U-235. We’ll offer him a motivation, if you know what I mean, and a deadline. Set up the video camera.”
Lauren Miles pointed toward the image on the monitor and said, “Freeze that.” The Chapman’s Fish House manager clicked the mouse in his hand and the image on the screen stopped playing. O’Brien, Cronus, Collins, Bridges, Thompson and Hunter stood by the monitor and watched. Lauren continued, “There they are, coming out of the dark van under the mimosa tree.” It was a wide shot. The images on a computer monitor showed the entire parking lot. Two men walked quickly over to Jason’s truck, less than fifty feet from the van.
“The kid doesn’t even see them coming,” Thompson said.
“Play it,” Lauren said to the manager. The video continued, the men moving casually toward Jason as he placed the boxes in his truck bed and opened the driver’s side door.
Dave grimaced. “This is hard to watch.” The images showed no struggle. Jason was surprised, his head whipping right and left to look at both men. In ten seconds, he was inside the blue van, one man climbing in the back seat with him.
Eric Hunter looked away. “They’ve had him long enough to get what they want.”
