“Dad,” Peter said, “they put us through the big search again at the front gate. Has something happened?”
“No, no,” Stone replied. “The security folks are just a little nervous, what with two presidents here and a lot of celebrities to arrive tomorrow. Will you excuse us, please? We have some things to discuss.”
“Sure,” Peter said. “What about a swim, everybody?”
The others nodded, and they all went to change.
“Let’s go into the study,” Stone said when they had gone. The three men got up and walked into the next room, and Stone closed the door behind them. “All right, Mike, what’s up?” he asked.
Mike sat down. “First of all, Agent Rifkin, I want to apologize to you and the Secret Service.”
“For what?” Rifkin asked.
“Late yesterday I got word from the NSA that they had located the geographical point from which the e-mails were sent by our friend Algernon. It was an apartment house in Palo Alto.”
“Why didn’t you call me at once?” Rifkin asked.
“That’s why I’m apologizing,” Mike said, “for that and my reason for not calling you.”
“Which is?”
“Frankly, I don’t think your people are sufficiently trained and experienced to work a scene as well as… well, some other agencies. Nor as well as our people at Strategic Services.”
Rifkin thought about that, but didn’t contradict him. “Go on, what did you find?”
“Not much,” Mike said. “The place had been cleaned and wiped down-very professionally, I might add. Except for one thing.”
“Come on, Mike,” Stone said, “spit it out.”
Mike set his briefcase on the coffee table and unlatched the locks. “We found these under a table.” He reached into his briefcase and removed a zipped plastic bag containing a pair of heavy gloves.
“I’m sorry,” Stone said, “I don’t get it. Gloves?”
Mike set the bag on the coffee table. “They’re lab gloves,” he said. “There’s good news and bad news about them.”
“Go on, tell us,” Stone said.
“The good news is, they’re not sufficiently protective for handling plutonium.”
“And the bad news?”
“They’re sufficient for handling enriched uranium.”
“Oh, my dear God,” Rifkin said.
38
Mike waited for a moment before continuing. “On the way in here I ordered my people to redouble their efforts to search every vehicle and guest entering the grounds. They’re already at work. Agent Rifkin, I suggest you issue the same order to your people.”
Rifkin produced a cell phone and pressed a single button. “This is Rifkin,” he said, then he gave orders to intensify the search routine.
“Further good news,” Mike said when Rifkin had finished, “is that my people checked the gloves with a Geiger counter and got a negative reading, and we are not expecting a rush of guests until tomorrow. Further good news is that, if a nuclear device is being brought here, it will be too large to easily smuggle in. The suitcase nuclear bomb is a myth-even a small one would be much larger than that. We have to comb the entire hotel and inspect anything that came in a large package-a kitchen appliance, a piece of furniture. The bell captain can tell us by questioning his staff if anything like that was taken into a suite or room by one of his bellmen.”
“I know what’s coming next,” Rifkin said.
“Well, I don’t know,” Stone said, “so tell me.”
Mike spoke up. “What Agent Rifkin means is, if a nuclear device is involved, it won’t have to be on the hotel grounds to destroy the place.”
“How big an area are we talking about?”
“The Arrington is in a canyon,” Mike explained. “Anyone who wanted to destroy the hotel would need to place the device in the canyon, not beyond it, where the landscape would deflect the blast.”
“I’m going to have to call my director,” Rifkin said, “and ask for more agents and the authority to search every house and building in Stone Canyon.”
“I don’t think you’ll have to search every house,” Mike said. “It’s enough to talk to the occupants and see if a large package has been delivered to them. Most of them will not be suspicious characters, but we’re dealing with a Middle Eastern threat, so anyone with that appearance living locally should have his residence thoroughly searched. Can you get a broad federal search warrant?”
“In the circumstances, yes,” Rifkin said. “The more immediate question is whether to get the two presidents out of here.”
“I think it’s logical to assume,” Mike said, “that such a threat would be carried out at the time when it could do the most damage, and that would be on the night of the grand opening, when the place will be packed. And there’s always the concert to think about, too.”
Rifkin left the room and walked out onto the patio with his phone.
Stone looked at Mike. “Should I get my people out of here?”
“Not yet,” Mike said. “We don’t want to start anything until we’ve searched the place. If we find the package, Rifkin will call in the various bomb squads to deal with it, but we’ll evacuate everybody first.”
“And the two presidents?”
“One minute after Rifkin’s phone call, the president will know, and he will make that decision, presumably in concert with President Vargas.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Stone,” Mike said, “you have to remember that we’re talking about this because of a pair of gloves. We don’t even know if they were used for what we think they were. After all, they’re clean of any nuclear material.”
Rifkin returned after fifteen minutes. “My director spoke with the president, and since there was no radioactivity associated with the gloves, his decision is to redouble the search of guests and vehicles, but not to canvass the neighborhood. However, he has authorized another one hundred federal agents from various agencies to be on standby, in case further evidence points to a nuclear device.” He picked up the gloves and put them into his own briefcase. “In the meantime, I have some people on the way over here with equipment to check the gloves further.”
Mike nodded. “I think the response is at the correct level for the moment,” he said. He looked at Stone. “If I had a family here-which of course I don’t-I would not get them out at this time.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Stone said. “I’ll say nothing to my party about this, not even Dino.”
Rifkin left by way of the patio, and Mike and Stone returned to the living room. They could hear the kids laughing and splashing in the pool outside.
“I don’t think it’s too early for a drink,” Stone said, going to the bar. “How about you, Mike?”
Mike nodded. “Large scotch, please. Rocks.”
39
Hamish McCallister sat in a golf cart with The Arrington’s director of public relations, a lovely young woman named Clair Albritton, as she showed him the grounds of the hotel.
“Vance Calder planted more than a thousand specimen trees around the property,” she was saying, “and we have preserved every one of them, although we had to move and replant a couple hundred of them.”
“They are very beautiful,” Hamish said, and he meant it. “This is really an extraordinary property.”
“Yes, Vance bought the first of it in the 1940s, and he continued to buy up neighboring plots to the end of his
