Andrew Britton - The Assassin

“That’s a lie,” Kealey said automatically. “I don’t buy a word of it.”

Harper nodded slowly, looking over the rim of his cup. “Because of Crane.”

“That’s right.” Kealey paused and looked at his hands. He saw they were balled into fists, and he forced himself to take several deep, calming breaths. “John, Ford told Crane I took the laptop in Alexandria. We know that for a fact, but it begs the obvious question: What other information has she passed on?”

Harper leaned back in his chair, staring thoughtfully into his cup. “Rachel knew about the embassy break-in, and that means she knew about Ruhmann. She could have told Crane where he was hiding, what name he was using… everything.”

“Everything,” Kealey repeated. “And what did Crane do once she had that information? She gave it to Vanderveen.” He paused, letting them reach the natural conclusion. “How else would he know we were coming, John?”

The room fell silent. They were each lost in thought when the telephone rang. The DDO stood, went to his desk, and lifted the receiver of his secure phone. “Harper.”

He listened for a long moment, asked a few questions, then hung up. Kealey and Kharmai had heard enough to know it was relevant, and they waited for an explanation.

“Our people in Montreal managed to track down the owner of the Lake Forest storage facility, a guy by the name of Liman. He remembers the delivery of an item to Ruhmann’s unit. That occurred about six months ago. Before that, he says the unit was empty.”

“Does he know what was delivered?” Naomi asked.

“No, but he remembers what it looked like, and he remembers the approximate dimensions. He sketched it out for our people. It’s on the way by fax.”

Kealey said, “Are they still watching the building?”

“Yes. No movement so far.”

“Okay.” Kealey leaned back in his seat and tried to set aside his anger. He had no idea why Samantha Crane would betray her agency and her country, especially given her background, but he couldn’t think about it now. Instead, he focused on Thomas Ruhmann. Above all else, he was wondering what the Austrian arms broker had placed in the Lake Forest storage facility.

“John, how did we know about Ruhmann in the first place? I mean, how did he come to Langley’s attention?”

“Because of Al Qaqaa,” Naomi said, beating Harper to the punch. “Remember? He was suspected of arranging the theft of explosives back in 2003.”

“That’s right,” Kealey mumbled. “What was taken again?”

“Three hundred eighty tons of HMX and RDX.” Naomi shrugged. “Conventional explosives. Nothing special, really, except for the quantity. There was a lot of speculation in the press, of course. People thought that something else might have been stored in the buildings, but if there was, it never came out.”

Kealey pondered her words as the fax machine started up on Harper’s desk. The DDO collected two sheets of paper and examined them quickly.

“It doesn’t mean much to me,” he said, handing over the second sheet. “Do you recognize this?”

Kealey looked at the drawing, aware that Naomi had gotten out of her chair and was leaning over his shoulder. The picture was relatively crude, but it looked like a large cylinder with a conical protrusion on one end. It seemed vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

Harper was reading through the cover sheet. “According to the owner of the storage facility, this thing was about” — he paused to convert from metric to standard — “eleven feet long and four feet high.”

Kealey suddenly felt sick to his stomach. “What color was it?”

Harper scanned the text quickly. “Dark green.”

“Shit.” Kealey shook his head in disbelief. “That’s military ordnance. I think I know what it is, John.”

Harper froze and looked up from the cover sheet. “Well?”

WASHINGTON, D.C.

“It’s called a BLU-82,” Kealey said ten minutes later. He had used the office computer to download several high-resolution images of the bomb, and Kharmai and Harper were both examining printouts. They had also faxed some of the images back to Montreal and were waiting for confirmation from Liman, the owner of the storage facility.

“It stands for Bomb Live Unit,” Kealey continued, “but it’s more commonly known as a ‘daisy cutter,’ owing to the distinctive pattern it leaves after detonation. Until recently, it was the largest conventional explosive in the U.S. arsenal, and as you can see, it’s very large, with a total weight of about fifteen thousand pounds. It’s also extremely simple… nothing more than GSX slurry in a big metal container. The container itself doesn’t weigh much; nearly all the weight comes from the explosives. Twelve thousand six hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder.”

Harper looked up. “It says here it was used primarily for clearing helicopter landing zones in Vietnam. That makes it a pretty old design.”

“But still very effective,” Kealey assured him. “We used them in Afghanistan and Iraq, mostly for psychological purposes. Let me give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Back in the first gulf war, a C-130 dropped a daisy cutter on an Iraqi position just outside Kuwait City. Five minutes later, a Special Air Service recon patrol called in and asked if someone had dropped a tactical nuke in the area. At the time, the patrol was a hundred and ten miles away from the site of the bombing. What they saw was the signature mushroom cloud… They mistook the daisy cutter for a nuke. That’s how powerful it is.”

Naomi looked up from the paper in her hands, an expression of mixed confusion and concern on her face. “What does that mean for an urban area? What will this thing do?”

He looked at his hands, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “Think about Oklahoma City,” he finally said. “The bomb that took out the Alfred P. Murrah Building was about a third the size of this one. If Vanderveen actually has one of these and sets it off in New York City, it will destroy every structure within one thousand feet, and the pressure wave will shatter windows for miles. Depending on where he detonates it, casualties will probably be in the thousands.”

“Jesus,” Harper breathed. His face had turned white.

The room was completely silent for half a minute. Then Naomi said, “It was our weapon originally, right? Ruhmann must have gotten it from Al Qaqaa. If we can find someone who will say it was there, we can put everything together and bring it to the president. He’ll have to cancel the meeting at the UN. I mean, it’s not just the United Iraqi Alliance that’s scheduled to attend. The secretary of state will be there as well, not to mention the entire General Assembly. If we give him something tangible, he’ll have to call it off.”

“We don’t have time for that,” Harper pointed out. “The meeting is set for tomorrow afternoon. The Iraqi delegates arrived in New York this morning. Even if I could get an audience with Brenneman in time, he’d want a lot more proof than what we have. Remember, I’m persona non grata with him at the moment, and you two are out of the loop completely.”

“Well, we have to try,” Kealey argued. “I assume we investigated the incident at Al Qaqaa. Let’s see if we can get a list of all the agencies involved in the investigation, the individual people if possible. Maybe we’ll find a friendly face, someone willing to give us a full account of what was being stored at the facility.”

“I can get that by morning,” Harper said. “There’ll be a lid in place, of course, but I’ll work around it.”

“The main thing,” Naomi said, “is getting access to Hakim Rudaki. If anyone knows what’s coming next, it’s him.”