his boss, the deputy director of operations at the CIA.
Only his voice was melodious.
“You shot up a police station?” demanded Daniel Slott, by way of a greeting.
“Actually, Dan, it wasn’t a police station. And knowing what your reaction would be, we used nonlethal weapons.”
“Tell that to the ambassador.”
“Give me his number.”
“The secretary of state is wondering what the hell is going on,” said Slott, in a way that implied he actually cared what the secretary of state thought — which Ferg knew wasn’t true. “He asked the director in front of the president what we’re doing tear gassing Police officers in Kyrgyzstan.”
“How is the General, anyway?” Ferg asked, referring to Thomas Parnelles, who headed the CIA. Parnelles was an old CIA hand and a good friend of Ferguson’s deceased father; they’d done time together during the good ol’ bad days of the Cold War. General was a nickname from an operation where Parnelles impersonated a Jordanian officer.
Only a captain, actually. But Ferg’s dad had been a private, and to hear the story not a very convincing one.
“Don’t change the subject on me, Ferguson,” said Slott. “You used tear gas in a police station?”
“I can definitively say we did not use tear gas in a police station.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I recovered a member of my team who was being held under false pretenses.” He yawned. “I’m a little tired.”
“You’re a little reckless. More and more.”
“More and more?” asked Ferguson. “I wasn’t reckless before? I thought that was a job requirement.”
Slott made a grinding noise with his teeth. Recognizing that he would get no real details from Ferguson — and admitting to himself that he probably didn’t want any — he changed the subject. “Have you found out what’s going on?”
“Working on it.”
“Did they take uranium or what?”
“I don’t think so. The way it looks, the most likely accounting for the discrepancy is two casks of the control rods,” said Ferg. “But that’s only that one trip. I’m not really sure.”
“When will you know?”
“Not sure. We’re working on it.”
“Well work faster.”
“Aye-aye, Captain Bligh.” Ferg leaned forward and took hold of his glass. “If you’re through busting my chops, I’d appreciate talking to Corrigan again.”
There was a click. Corrigan came on the line with an apology.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ferguson told him. “You run through the satellite photos?”
“We have it narrowed down to six possible spurs,” said Corrigan.
“Just six?” said Ferg. “Not twelve?”
“Actually, it is more like twelve. But I had them arbitrarily lop off some.”
“Who the fuck is doing the analysis for you, Corrigan? Monkeys?”
“Monkeys would be faster,” said the deskman. “We’ve been screwed since Nancy left. I need someone who can coordinate this stuff for me.”
Special Demands was essentially a client to the analytic side of the Agency, which could supply a variety of intelligence reports, processed or unprocessed. The staffer who had worked to coordinate the reports — and had the more difficult job of assessing them — had gone on maternity leave two weeks before, and had not yet been replaced.
“You’ve been moaning about this for days, Corrigan. Get somebody.”
“Easy for you to say. Just finding a warm body that has something approaching the background and clearances—”
“Man, you’re a whiner.” Ferg glanced at his watch. “We’ll look at them all.”
Having lost their source in Kyrgyzstan, they were back to grunt work — looking at all of the places where something might have been taken from the containment cars. It seemed logical that it had happened at a siding, and there were twelve between the last sensor and the border. The Team had extremely sensitive radiation meters — detectors based on gallium-arsenic chips that were as sensitive as gas-tube Geiger counters but fit in the palm of the hand — that would detect trace radioactivity. Unfortunately, this was likely to find something only if the material had been handled or some stray waste had attached to the train and been deposited accidentally.
“So tell me who Sergiv Kruknokov is,” Ferguson said, sliding around in the seat. “You’ve had enough time to write the guy’s biography.”
“I keep telling you, I need someone to handle real-time intelligence. I literally got this as your call came through.”
“Whine, whine, whine,” Ferguson told him. “You have it or not?”
“Yes.”
“So?”
Conners gave him a thumbs-up from the side; the others had finally come in. Ferg waved to him, and Conners left to make sure the others had no problem getting settled.
“Antiterrorism division of the Federal Security Bureau. High-level guy,” said Corrigan, who was scanning a paper report.
“I didn’t think he handled shoplifting.”
“Yeah, well, listen to this. He was involved in a case in 1996 involving a plot to explode a dirty bomb in Moscow.”
“Whoa, no shit. Give me the details.”
“Chechens wanted to blow up a dirty bomb in Moscow. They broke it before the bomb went off.”
“Dirty bomb. What kind of waste?”
“Um, that was cesium, I think. Medical stuff. Nowhere near as dangerous as spent uranium or the control rods you’re after.”
“Nasty stuff though?”
“You saw the science reports — depends who you’re talking to. You have enough of it, and it’s a problem.”
Ferguson sat back, thinking about what they had: a discrepancy in a waste shipment, a Russian investigator with expertise in dirty-bomb investigations, a question about someone named Kiro who apparently operated in Chechnya, and an attempt to explode a dirty bomb nearly a decade before in Moscow. Shit.
“Was this ‘Kiro’ involved?”
“We haven’t ID’d Kiro yet. All the known conspirators are dead or in jail.”
“Those spurs connect to Chechnya?” Ferguson asked Corrigan.
“Uh, hold on, let me get the map up. Remember, Ferg, the satellites showed all the cars made it. Hell, if they had a car missing, that would have set off all sorts of alarms. This may all be a wild-goose chase.”
A waiter poked his head out from the doorway. Ferguson pointed to the bottle of water and asked for another, just to get rid of him.
“Ferg? You with me?”
“Just a distraction,” Ferguson said.
“You could get there by train, but it’s awful convoluted and far.”
“Truck?”
“Sure. Same thing.”
“Where’s Sergiv been lately?”
“The Russian?”
“No, my brother-in-law.”
“Don’t have a good line on it.”
“Find out. Because if it’s in Chechnya, that’s where I’m going next. And run down Kiro, okay?”
