Brian Freemantle: The Watchmen

“So it was both a chemical and biological attack?” broke in Frank Norton. The president’s chief of staff was a former Pentagon general on the short list for when the present White House incumbent completed his second term of office. He’d already decided that the outcome of what had been thrust upon him now could determine whether there needed to be anyone else in the race. It had been Norton, who cultivated for its political appeal the appearance of the rawboned marine officer he’d once been, who’d proposed the media invitation. The concentration on the goddamned FBI man had been unexpected and annoying.

“Absolutely.” Schnecker frowned, surprised at the question. “We’d never encountered a delivery system like it before at Fort Detrick. It seems to be a modification of a Russian missile known as the Grail or SA-7: two warheads attached to the body of a rocket intended to carry just one. Which probably prevented the catastrophe. It’s top-heavy, quite out of balance. All the forensic examinations we’ve carried out so far point to it spinning, top over bottom, instead of traveling in a proper trajectory. And to it, incredibly, striking glass through which it passed virtually unobstructed. The fins and the body sustained all the impact damage and in doing so snapped the detonation mechanism, which was extremely crude: percussion pins intended to shatter the containers to release their contents.”

“Thank God for a bad design,” said Hartz.

“An almost too obvious bad design,” Burt Bradley broke in quickly. “Bad enough to have been realized from its first test firing. Accepting that it’s Russian, what’s the chances of the warhead being put together here, by unqualified people?”

“All our ferroalloy tests haven’t been completed yet,” the scientist said doubtfully. “So far all the metal is provably Russian. If it was a hybrid cobbled together here, there’d be some American components. I don’t think we should overlook the possibility that we’ve never seen anything like it before because it was a design that didn’t work and was abandoned after preliminary or failed tests. The date on the casing was 1974.”

Cowley saw the overly ambitious antiterrorist chief wince at the rejection in front of the FBI director, a carelessly fat, carelessly dressed man. If Ross saw it as a rebuff he gave no indication.

“Guide us here,” demanded the CIA director, John Butterworth, a retired navy admiral anxious to counteract criticism of naive amateurism from intelligence professionals at his Langley appointment. “What would have happened if the missile had missed the tower? Flown on?”

Schnecker frowned at the hypothesis. “I can’t itemize every one, but there are quite a few skyscrapers after the UN building it could have hit. Had it done so, there probably wouldn’t have been the miracle of it going through window glass. Or tailfirst. If it missed all the high buildings, I guess it would have gone on into New Jersey. The single payload of the SA-7 is fifteen kilograms, with a range of ten kilometers, or 6.2 miles. This double warhead weighed twenty-two kilograms. That would have shortened the range, which would also have been affected by the top-over-bottom instability. And there was the crosswind. You want a ballpark guess, draw a line down from Newark to Trenton.”

“And how likely would it have been that the warhead would have burst simply by impact against the ground, whether it hit nosefirst or not?” asked Butterworth, a bald, angularly featured man.

Schnecker continued frowning. “It’s another hypothesis, but I would say a rupture of some sort, if not an actual detonation, would have been inevitable.”

“What about the combined effect of both warheads, if they’d exploded?” asked Norton.

“I’m not aware of any research that’s mixed the two. Scientifically it’s not possible to combine them. I think the idea was a double delivery of two separate agents.”

“Are there antidotes, treatment?” said Ross.

“There’s treatment for isolated cases, if it’s immediate. The casualty rate yesterday, if they’d activated, would have been overwhelming.”

“How many?” demanded Norton, seizing the headline question. “The president guessed at a thousand dying.”

Schnecker hesitated. “It could have been more than a thousand.”

“How many more?” demanded the man. “Tens or hundreds?”

“It could have gone as high as five, conceivably higher still,” estimated the scientist. “It wouldn’t have simply been the sarin or anthrax. It would have accelerated existing medical conditions from which people were already suffering. The vapor could have gotten into hospitals through the air conditioning.”

“Jesus!” said Norton, the only sound in a long silence.

Breaking it-and remembering his conversation with the UN secretary-general the previous day-Cowley said, “They meant to kill. Dramatically and hugely. Next time they will. And people this determined will do it again, if they have a missile. Or a way to get another one.”

“How’s an SA-7 fired?”

“Shoulder-held portable launcher,” replied Schnecker.

“All the statements aren’t in yet, but it’s obvious it was fired from a moving boat,” said Cowley. “Assuming that the UN tower was the target, which I think we must, the fact that it was hit at all from a shoulder-held rocket launcher fired from a moving boat-to some extent against the wind-surely indicates whoever did it has some military experience of missiles.”

“I would say so, yes,” agreed Schnecker. “From which a working knowledge of missiles naturally follows.”

Looking to the antiterrorist chief, Cowley said, “There are files on known or suspected terrorists, right?”

“Yes?” Bradley frowned.

“Anyone specifically listed with a knowledge of missiles would be worth publicly posting.”

“The check’s already being made,” the younger man said impatiently.

Then it would have helped if you’d mentioned it at the breakfast meeting, thought Cowley. To Schnecker he said, “What about something as practical as fingerprints on the missile?”

Schnecker shook his head. “Clean.”

“Knowingly to set out, as these people did, to kill thousands of people is fanaticism. Zealotry. Or total homicidal madness,” said the terrorist chief, who had a degree in forensic psychology. “Zealous fanaticism fits Islamic fundamentalism, which we’re all familiar with from the past.”

Bradley had shared the breakfast meeting with the FBI director but hadn’t offered any opinion about anything, remembered Cowley. Now Bradley seemed to be trying too hard. Leonard Ross appeared to have the same impression, looking curiously sideways at the man. Cowley said, “Don’t we have the same problem if we’re dealing with a bunch of homicidal maniacs?”

Bradley shook his head. “They wanted to hit and run. So they’ll want to boast, claim responsibility.”

“Why haven’t they, after more than twenty-four hours?” asked Cowley.

“What’s your point?” the younger man demanded belligerently.

“Simply that at this stage, this early, we don’t know enough to speculate about anything and certainly not to exclude any group,” said Cowley.

“The obvious essential is to prevent a repetition,” declared the CIA director. “I suggest we make it immediately public that the missile is a flawed design that won’t work. If the terrorists have another, it might prevent them from trying to use it.”

There were frowns at Butterworth from around the table.

“Sir,” said Schnecker. “The missile that hit the UN building didn’t detonate because it went in backward and through practically unresisting glass. A fluke. If it had hit the concrete of the building, it would have gone off. As would another-bad design or not-if it hit a hard and solid object.”