Wild fire

“Better late than not at all.” She added, “Six thousand kilowatts.”

“Right. Why am I listening to The Blue Danube Waltz?”

“You’re on hold.”

“Do you want to dance-?”

Lu Ann came back on the line and said, “Well, I have good news. They’re finished, and they’re packing their tools.”

“Great.” Shit.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Pray for world peace.”

“Okay… that’s nice.”

“Lu Ann, you have a good evening.”

“You, too, Joe.”

I hung up and said to Kate, “In the history of the world, this is the first time a service crew finished ahead of schedule.”

“Madox wasn’t going to let those guys leave anyway. So, if we weren’t convinced that we were looking at an ELF antenna, that information should convince us.”

“I was already convinced. This is the clincher.” I added, “If you notice the silverware glowing tonight, let me know.”

“John, we are not going-”

“What is the downside of going there for dinner?”

“Death, dismemberment, disappearance, and divorce.”

“We can handle that.”

“I have a better idea. Let’s get in that van and drive to Manhattan. Now. We’ll call Tom on the way-”

“Forget it. I am not going to be on the fucking Thruway talking to Tom Walsh on my cell phone, while the shit is hitting the fan right here. In fact, the real reason we’re going to the Custer Hill Club tonight is not dinner, or to gather more evidence, but to determine if we can and should place Mr. Bain Madox under arrest for the murder of- sorry, the assault on-Federal Agent Harry Muller.”

She thought about that, then replied, “I don’t think we have enough evidence, or probable cause to-”

“Fuck the evidence. We have the evidence. It’s in those bags. And the probable cause is the sum total of everything we’ve seen and heard.”

She shook her head and said, “An arrest on any Federal charge-especially of a man like Bain Madox-would be premature, and could get us in real trouble.”

“We’re already there.” I added, “We need to arrest this bastard tonight. Before he does whatever he thinks he’s going to do next.”

She didn’t say anything, and I thought I’d made my point. “All right, let’s have the bad news.” I added, in a nicer tone, “Then I can make a rational decision about what to do next.”

She said, “I thought you might have figured it out by now.”

“I would have mentioned it if I did. Hold on.” I thought for ten full seconds, and something was trying to connect in my brain, but I had too many things on my mind, so I asked, “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”

She moved to the desk and, still standing, pulled the laptop closer. “Let me show you something.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Kate hit a few keys on the laptop computer, and a page of text came up on the screen. She said, “That’s an unpublished piece about Mikhail Putyov, written ten years ago.”

I glanced at the screen. “Yeah? And?”

She turned the computer toward me and said, “The writer is a fellow named Leonid Chernoff, another Russian nuclear physicist, also living in the U.S. This piece is in the form of a letter to fellow physicists, in which he praises Putyov’s genius.”

I didn’t respond.

She continued, “And here”-she scrolled-“Chernoff writes, and I quote, ‘Putyov is quite content now in his teaching position, and finds his work challenging and rewarding. Though one must ask if he is as challenged as when he worked at the Kurchatov Institute on the Soviet miniaturization program.’” She looked at me. “End quote.”

“Miniaturization of what?”

“Nuclear weapons. Like nuclear artillery shells, for instance, or land mines. Also, nuclear suitcase bombs.”

It took me half a second to get it, and I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. “Holy shit…” I stared stupidly at the illuminated laptop screen, my mind racing through everything we’d heard, discovered, knew, and suspected.

“John, I think there are two nuclear suitcase bombs in Los Angeles, and two in San Francisco.”

“Holy shit.”

“I don’t know the final destination of those weapons, or if Madox’s two aircraft are going to be transporting those suitcases to their ultimate destination or destinations, or if they’re going to be put on a ship, or-”

“We need to ground those aircraft.”

“Done. I called my friend Doug Sturgis, who’s the ASAC in the LA field office, and told him to put those two aircraft under surveillance in case the pilots show up, or have the planes impounded as evidence in a Federal case that was urgent and of the highest priority.”

I nodded. Her “friend” Doug was, I think, an old boyfriend from when she’d been posted in LA some years ago. I’d had the pleasure of meeting this pin dick when Kate and I had chased down Asad Khalil in California-and I had no doubt that this wimp would jump through his ass for his old pal Kate.

Still, I didn’t see how Kate could kick off a major case with a single phone call to some assistant special agent in charge in LA. I mean, the workings of the FBI remain a mystery to me, but I seem to recall a chain of command.

I asked her about this, and she replied, “What I did-to avoid going through Tom Walsh-was to ask-plead with Doug-to treat this as an anonymous terrorist threat tip.” She informed me, “That will actually get the ball rolling faster, if Doug says that the tip sounded legitimate.”

“Right. And he’s doing this?”

“He said he would.” She added, “I explained that I… and you… were having some credibility problems with the ATTF, but that I had this extremely reliable information, and it was urgent, and it was in his jurisdiction, and-”

“Okay. I got it. And he’s your pal, so he stuck his neck out for you.”

“He wouldn’t stick his neck out for anyone. But he does have to respond to a credible terrorist threat.”

“Right. I guess he knows you’re credible.”

“Can we move on?”

“Yeah. I just needed to know that this is in the right hands, and it’s not sitting in someone’s tomorrow box.”

She moved on. “I also gave Doug the names Tim Black and Elwood Bellman, and I told him that Black was probably staying in a hotel in Los Angeles, and Bellman in San Francisco, and that we needed to find these pilots ASAP.” She added, “I told him my suspicion that they could be transporting suitcase nukes.”

I nodded. That was the right move, obviously. “Did that get his attention?”

She ignored that and continued, “He promised to begin a manhunt in LA immediately, and to call the San Francisco field office, and also to put this out to all local law enforcement agencies in both cities and suburbs. He will also speak to his boss in LA, and both of them will call the Directors in Charge in New York and Washington, and report this tip. Doug will affirm that he believes it is a credible tip, based on the specific nature of the information and so forth, and he’ll describe the actions he’s taking.”

“Good. But if this turns out to be four suitcases filled with porn magazines for Madox’s Arab friends, will Doug