John Weisman: Direct Action

“There’s more,” Tom insisted. “There has to be.” He frowned at Reuven. “It might have been helpful for us to be able to ask the man himself.”

Reuven’s expression grew cold. “Don’t go there.”

“Why not? It’s a valid question. Why kill him in cold blood? Why did we have to kill them all before we’d had a chance to learn anything?”

“It was necessary.” Reuven turned away.

“C’mon, Reuven-why?”

The Israeli answered him with silence.

“You can’t squeeze water from a stone, Reuven. You can’t get answers from a corpse.”

“Maybe”-the Israeli whirled around-“you’d have preferred to spend two or three months double-checking everything he told us so we can separate the fabrications from the truth. If, that is, he’d even given us a grain of truth in the first place?”

“You don’t know unless you try.”

“I know he won’t make any more bombs,” Reuven growled. “I know he won’t blow up any more women and children. I know he won’t kill any more 4627 people. Maybe for you that’s not good enough, boychik. For me, it is.” Fists clenched, he advanced on Tom.

Who wasn’t about to give an inch. “He doesn’t have to make more bombs, Reuven. By your own count, there are two of them still out there-and no way to find them now that he’s dead.”

“Enough.” Wyman stepped between the two. “This bickering is getting us nowhere.” He looked at Tom. “What’s done is done. I’ll-”

He was interrupted by urgent knocking on the library door. One of the 4627 security people opened it. “Mr. Wyman? There’s a Roger Semerad downstairs asking to see you.”

Wyman’s face lit up. “Please-escort him up here right away.” He turned toward the others. “Roger’s retired FBI. He was their top explosive forensics guy until he contracted multiple sclerosis just over six years ago. He’d always been something of a maverick-and his wisecracking got on Director Freeh’s nerves. So Freeh eased him out-right into the arms of Deutsche Telecom. Now he’s based in Bonn as DT’s head of technical security. I called him last night-asked him to make the drive over, just in case.”

“Isn’t it a long way to come on spec?”

“Not for Roger. He drives a Bentley turbo. Believe me-he looks for just about any excuse to make a road trip.”

9:28A.M. Roger Semerad was a big guy with a voice to match, a face full of salt-and-pepper beard, and a bone-crushing handshake. He got around in a small black electric cart equipped with a clip-on headlight, an old-fashioned bulb-powered bicycle horn clamped to the handlebars, and a bumper sticker that readEVEN MY DOG IS A CONSERVATIVE.

He high-fived Tony Wyman then gave Tom and Reuven, whom he’d caught staring at him out of his peripheral vision, a penetrating second glance. “Here’s the story in a nutshell, fellas,” he said. “I’m Roger. I got MS. Can’t hardly feel my legs anymore, so I need the scooter, and which is also why I’m driving an automatic Bentley instead of a Ferrari. And just in case you wanted to know, frigging MS screws with you worse than a cheap gin hangover.”

There was a moment of self-conscious silence as Tom and Reuven suddenly found the pattern on the rug hugely fascinating.

Semerad cocked his head at Tony Wyman. “Think they got it, Tonio?”

“Hope so.”

“Me, too,” Semerad growled. “That said, let’s get to the problem solving.”

He scootered across the room to eyeball the display on the library table. “You guys gonna compete with the Cameroonians at the marché puces ?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, you ain’t gonna go very far on that slim inventory, Tonio. Kinda meager.”

“All depends how it’s used,” Tom said. “We think it’s enough to bring down a couple of planes, maybe more.”

“Tell you what.” Semerad took a quick turn around the library then parked himself in front of Wyman. “I’m gonna set up in that there corner.” He pointed toward the map table and its magnifying light. “Alls I need is for someone to unstrap the case off the back of this contraption and I’m happy to go to work.”

Tom gave him a skeptical glance. “Don’t you want to know what we’re looking for?”

“Nope. I kinda like to find out for myself.” He steered the cart over to the table and plucked a detonator off the green felt, hefted it, then looked it up and down. “Nice,” he said. “Whose work?”

Tom stood with his arms crossed. “We’ll let you tell us, since you like to find things out on your own.”

Semerad laughed. “Touché, kiddo.” He tooted his horn twice and wriggled his eyebrows in a passable Harpo Marx. “Gangway, gents. The cavalry has arrive-ed.”

11:55A.M. “Frigging incredible.” Roger Semerad raised the jeweler’s loupe on its headband and wiped perspiration out of the corners of his eyes with a huge blue-and-white handkerchief. “This guy’s a genius-if he weren’t a frigging criminal, I’d hire him.” When his remark was greeted by silence he waited until the others had gathered around him. “He’s managed to miniaturize a SIM card and a PDA processor and use ’em to create his detonator package.”

Wyman said, “SIM card like in a cell phone?”

“You got it, Tony. A Subscriber Identity Module. In technical language it’s the thingy that stores all your subscriber info like your account number and your phonebook. Can’t use a phone without a SIM card these days.”

“So basically what we’ve got here is a cell phone without the phone.”

Semerad nodded. “In a way.”

“So how does it become a detonator? Don’t you need a ringer to trigger the explosion?”

“That’s how it’s commonly done. Like the car bombs and IEDs we’re seeing in Iraq now. ETA-the Basque separatists-and the IRA have been using cell phones for years. They wire cell-phone ringers to detonating caps. Place a call or send an instant message to the doctored phone and kablooey. Believe me, it’s not rocket science. But there’s no ringer here. That’s the creative part. He’s replaced the ringer with a computer chip.”

Tom shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“This guy, he pulled the processor out of a PDA-like my Palm Tungsten over there, but a much older model. You know that all computer chips create heat, right?”

Tom nodded.

“Most of the newer chips have what you might call a throttle control on them. They’re programmed to shut down if they get too hot.”

“Understood.”

Semerad held up the detonator. “Well, there’s no governor on the chip in this doohickey.”

Wyman popped the monocle out of his eye. “Which means…”

“Which means when the cell-phone component responds to a call and a specific code is keyed in, it sets the chip running. And the chip keeps getting hotter and hotter. And I mean hot. Red-hot. Fire-in-the-hole hot.”

Wyman shook his head. “But heat alone doesn’t set plastic explosive off, does it, Roger?”

“You need something that produces energy to set off your explosive-like a percussion cap or even the cell-phone ringer. In this case, your bombmaker has been real inventive. First he slipped some explosive into the body of the detonator-that way, when the bomb goes off the detonator itself is destroyed, leaving very little in the way of forensic evidence. And then he’s managed to create a brief but powerful electrical charge by combining the technologies in the SIM card and the PDA chip.” He shook his head in amazement. “This guy is incredible. He’s transferred all the elements-even the carbon fiber antenna-onto some sort of flexible membrane to cut down on weight and signature. He’s miniaturized the equivalent of an electric blasting cap, a remotely operated blasting machine, and a self-destruction device and fit everything into a package that weighs, what? I’d venture less than fifty grams.” He gestured toward the Vuitton knapsacks, then looked over at Wyman. “Tonio, I’d wager a big pile of dinero that this damned thing is completely undetectable passing through airport security.”