survivors, that a civilian cruise ship that happened to be in the area was moving to assist, and that a French military helicopter was also moving in to look for survivors. Other ships and aircraft are also deploying to the area.'
Turning, Rubens aimed the bright red dot of a laser pointer at the screen, indicating the smaller of the two ships. 'This vessel is the Pacific Sandpiper Three hundred twenty-five feet long, seven thousand, seven hundred twenty-five tons' displacement, with a crew of twenty-eight, plus thirty security personnel on board. British flagged, owned and operated by PNTL, out of Barrow, England. On board are fourteen TN 28 VT transport flasks, each weighing ninety-eight tonnes, containing a total of twenty-five hundred kilograms of plutonium. That's two and a half tonnes of highly radioactive material.'
His audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The plutonium shipments to Japan had long given the NSC cause for concern. Some of the Council's deliberations had helped shape the regulations surrounding those shipments — such as the arming of a civilian vessel and the embarkation of large numbers of armed security personnel.
Rubens shifted the laser dot to the larger vessel, riding close against the plutonium ship's right side. 'This is the civilian cruise ship that was rendering assistance,' he said. 'Royal Sky Line's Atlantis Queen. Nine hundred sixty-four feet long, displacing ninety thousand tons. A crew of nine hundred, with about twenty-four hundred passengers. British flagged, out of Southampton.' He turned back to face the audience. 'The escort was the Ishikari, with a crew of ninety.'
'A terrible tragedy, I'm sure,' Wehrum said from the far side of the table. 'How, exactly, does this involve the NSC?'
'According to Royal Sky's records,' Rubens said, 'over twelve hundred of the passengers on board the Atlantis Queen are American citizens. Further, the United States is signatory to the international agreements surrounding the plutonium shipments, and by treaty shares the responsibility for safeguarding those shipments. And, more to the point, we now believe there is a possibility that the Pacific Sandpiper has been seized by forces hostile to the United States.'
'If you mean terrorists,' General Barton snapped, 'sayso.'
'We don't know who is involved as yet,' Rubens said. 'As yet, we've been unable to make contact with either ship. But there is that possibility, yes.'
'What's that on the plutonium ship's forward deck?' Prendergast wanted to know. 'I can't quite make it out.'
'That,' Rubens said, 'is part of the problem. It's a helicopter out of Brest, France. Signals intercepts identified it as French military. The French deny that it's ALAT — French Army — and ATC records identify only a single civilian helicopter operating out of Brest this morning. We're still checking into that.'
Rubens indicated the photograph on the screen behind him, pointing to the blocks of text at the lower right, including the date and time stamps. 'This photo was taken by one of our Argus satellites at ten-forty-eight hours GMT… that's just less than five hours ago. The image was taken by narrow-aperture radar from an altitude of one hundred twenty-nine miles. Radar has a much longer wavelength than visible light, so detail resolution is necessarily lower than what we can manage with optical sensors. The target, however, was under largely overcast skies at the time, and this is the best we could do.
'As you can see, the cruise ship appears to be secured to the freighter. At first we thought that they were taking injured aboard from the Sandpiper — the Atlantis Queen has a large and well-stocked shipboard hospital — but you'll notice here…' His laser pointer flicked along the metallic glitter of the V-shaped wakes frozen astern of the two ships. 'Our analysts tell me that wakes of that size would be generated by ships of this size moving at a speed of between four and six knots.'
Rubens flicked off the pointer. 'There is something extremely wrong about this. Both the Queen and the Sandpiper should have remained in the vicinity of the disaster, assisting with rescue efforts. At the time this photograph was taken, they'd actually moved to a point some three miles southwest of the disaster. In the hours since, they have traveled an additional fifty miles, indicating an average speed of eight to ten knots.
'From the photograph, it appears that the Queen has taken the Sandpiper under tow. We have received no distress call from either ship.. save for the original traffic about the Ishikari blowing up. Under normal circumstances, other ships are not permitted to come within a mile of the Sandpiper Admittedly, the Queen might have come alongside to transfer injured personnel, but we don't understand why the two should be moving together now, at a fairly high rate of speed.
'And finally, there's this.'
Rubens reached into his jacket pocket and produced a flat silver MP3 player. 'GCHQ picked this up as a signals intercept at ten-eighteen hours GMT. It's impossible to determine the precise origin of the signal without triangulation, but we know it was from the general vicinity of these ships shortly after the sinking of the Ishikari.' Holding the player high so everyone at the table could hear, he pressed the play button.
A burst of static sounded, followed by a harsh voice saying, 'Hallak… hallak… hallak.' There was a pause filled by the hiss of static, and then the words repeated. 'Hallak… hallak… hallak.'
'Hallak, ladies and gentlemen,' Rubens said, 'is the Arabic word for now'
That caused a stir in the audience. 'A signal of some sort,' Debra Collins said. 'After the sinking of the escort.'
'It's difficult to see what else it might have been,' Rubens replied. 'It's possible that the destruction of the Ishikari was deliberate sabotage, designed both to take the Sandpiper's military escort out of the picture and to draw the cruise ship in close to assist with SAR efforts. The helicopter was over the Channel at the time, and immediately radioed Brest that it was proceeding to the disaster site to assist… despite the fact that its fuel would have been critically low if it had flown to the Ishikari and then back to Brest, even without spending any time at the scene of the disaster.'
'Obviously,' Wehrum pointed out, 'they were able to land on the Sandpiper's deck.'
'Indeed,' Rubens replied. 'But how would a civilian helicopter have known that a ship of the Sandpiper's design was going to be available for a landing at sea? We picked up nothing on radio frequencies between ship and aircraft, other than the fact that the aircraft was on its way. And the fact that that helicopter was masquerading as a military aircraft is… disturbing. It suggests that after the Ishikari explosion, which quite possibly was intended as a diversion, people on board either the Sandpiper or the Queen carried out a hijacking, probably in concert with armed attackers off that helicopter. If so, then unknown hostile forces are now in control of both vessels, and taking them to an unknown destination.'
'And just who is the enemy?' Admiral Prendergast asked. 'Al-Qaeda?'
'We don't know, sir. Not yet. However, this operation has the flash and high profile we've come to associate with them.'
'Al-Qaeda is a spent force, Mr. Rubens,' General Barton pointed out. 'Broken. They haven't been able to mount a single effective operation since nine-eleven.'
'Not for lack of trying, sir,' Rubens replied. 'And perhaps they're not as broken as we've come to believe. Or this may be a new group with a similar signature. There's no way to tell. Yet.'
'We can assume al-Qaeda until we learn differently,' Collins pointed out. 'Do you have any intelligence leads, Mr. Rubens?'
'A few. We're working them.'
'So where are those ships headed now?'
'At last report, they were on a heading of two-four-zero. That's roughly the correct course for the Sandpiper — toward the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. At this point, the Atlantis Queen is considerably off-course. She's supposed to be headed due south, toward Gibraltar and the Mediterranean.'
'I assume attempts have been made to contact both vessels,' Barton said.
'Of course, sir. There's been no response so far.'
'Then we need to intercept those ships at sea,' Collins said.
Rubens nodded. Collins was not his favorite person. They'd actually once been lovers, a bit of ancient history on which he did his best not to dwell. As Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA, Collins had often targeted the NSA's Desk Three as an asset that properly should have fallen under her jurisdiction. So far, Rubens had managed to fend off her ambitious attempts to gain control of his department, but he remained cautious in his dealings with her.
At the moment, though, she seemed to be siding with him, making him wonder what she was up to. He was
