My answering machine was displaying a comfortable zero, so nobody was chasing me, threatening me, or trying to ask me questions. Not yet, at least. I went upstairs to my office and got my new computer up and running, and then went downstairs to use the phone. I called across the way, and this time Laura Reeves was there, answering almost too eagerly, as if she had been staring at the quiet phone for the past hour.
“Yes, Lewis, what is it?”
“Laura, I need to talk to you. Right now.”
“Well, come on over then.”
"No," I said. "I need to see you here, at my house. And by yourself."
"Come on, Lewis, I've been traveling all day, I really don't need to get ~y carcass up and going again and-"
I interrupted. "It's about Whizzer. I believe I know who he is."
A quick response. '”I’ll be right there."
"And I'll be waiting, upstairs in my office. The door will be open. See you soon."
After hanging up, I walked over to a window by the door, counted the seconds. In less than a minute I saw a shape up at the top of the hill near the hotel's parking lot, saw it descend down my driveway. I felt my knees quivering a bit, so I got a move on and went upstairs and sat down in my office, my computer humming contentedly by my elbow, the screen now in screensaver mode. I set the spare chair near the door, so she wouldn't have far to walk when she got here.
The door from downstairs opened up, and she said, "Lewis?"
"Up here, Laura. In my office. Come on up."
The sound of her steps came from the wooden stairs, and there she was, at the entrance to my office. Black sneakers, tight jeans, and the same MIT sweatshirt. Her shoulder bag was in her hands and I motioned to the chair, and she sat down, smiling, eyes glittering with eagerness.
"Lewis, this is great, this is really great news, I wish I could ---"
"Just a sec," I said, interrupting her again. "Before I go on about Whizzer, there's a couple of things we need to clear up first, all right?"
She nodded. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Okay," I said. "I'm curious about something." "Which is?"
"Does the Drug Enforcement Agency get angry at you folks borrowing their identity and their good name?”
The smile, the eagerness, the bright look in her expression had disappeared from one blink of an eye to the next. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Of course you do, but you're too well-trained to say anything. I, on the other hand, am still a civilian. So I'll let you in on a little secret. I know you and your boys don't work for the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the Justice Department, or anything like that. You folks work for the Department of Energy, don't you?"
Silence, but I could see the knuckles on her hands whiten as she tightened her grip on her bag. I went on. "Not just for the Department of Energy, however. Right? Though I'm sure you probably have back-up identification that says you work for the Fuel Efficiency Program or the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or something equally silly. Nope, you and those other five, Laura, you work for NEST, don't you? The Nuclear Emergency Search Team. The quite secret organization that's used to hunt out nuclear weapons in this country in case we're threatened by terrorists. You're not here because of drugs, are you? You're here because of the uranium brought here into the country back in 1945 on a U-boat. You're here because somebody else is after that uranium, somebody else who either wants to build a bomb here, or build it back in their homeland. That's what this all about. Uranium. Not cocaine or heroin."
"You have really gone off the reservation," she said, still not giving up. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Then I'll try to speak more clearly," I said, now warming up to the task. "The whole story you gave me about the Colombian cartel coming up here for alternative delivery spots is so much smoke and mirrors. I know this area. You don't. And the law enforcement types and others I've talked to all said the same thing. All the local drug activity is small-scale. There's no point in having a cartel rep up here in the area. It'd be as stupid as sending General Eisenhower and his staff in on the first wave at Omaha Beach. No sense at all. But what does make sense is the shipyard connection. And thinking that you and your high-powered friends would come here because of drugs connected to the shipyard is slim indeed. But thinking that the folks down in D.C. would send you up here because someone's trying to sell several hundred pounds of uranium-now, that makes sense."
She spoke slowly. "If I had my service weapon here right now, Lewis Cole, I'd shoot you dead."
"True, and there would be an awful stain on this floor for the next tenant to worry about. So you work for the Department of Energy. Based in Nevada, right? That explains the healthy suntanned glow you all have."
"I don't have to tell you a damn thing," she snapped. "All you have to do is do your job, what we agreed. That you find Whizzer. Nothing else."
I folded my arms. "But it's not that simple anymore. I made that agreement to help out with Laura Reeves of the Drug Enforcement Agency. I didn't make it with Laura Reeves of the Department of Energy. Assuming, too, that Laura Reeves is your real name."
"That is my real name, you idiot, and I don't care what you think; you're working for me. Don't worry what the department is. Now, tell me, who the hell is Whizzer?"
I shook my head. "Sorry. I'm on strike."
Her face was now reddened. "Then get ready to lose this house, your bank account, and quite possibly your freedom, Mr. Cole."
I shrugged. "Then get ready to lose your privacy, your anonymity, and the cover story that you're working for the DEA. I've made arrangements with a couple of members of the local media. They have the whole story, written up and sealed in envelopes, about you and your folks. About NEST and the Porter Naval Shipyard and the uranium off the U-234. Oh, you probably have low opinions of our local reporters --- just as you have low opinions about the rest of us --- but they can be smart and they can be sly. And all it will take is a phone call from them to a Boston television station or the Concord bureau of the Associated Press, and by this time tomorrow there’ll be camera crews staked out in front of the Lafayette House.
“You’re bluffing,” she said.
"Try me," I said.
While her voice was remaining calm, her face showed the struggle that was no doubt occurring inside of her. She said, "You have no idea what we're up against, what we're trying to do here. Please, trust me on this, will you? Can't I appeal to your better nature? Your patriotism?"
I unfolded my arms, leaned forward in the chair. "Once before, you might have. Before rolling in here like you owned this place and had no time to talk to the locals. Before you threatened me with bankruptcy and threatened to take away my house. So no, appeals won't work this time. The truth will. NEST. Confirm what I just said, and then we start anew. Don't think we're all stupid up here because our area code is six-oh-three, and not two=oh-two."
She seemed to mull that for a moment. "Then you'll tell me what you know about Whizzer?"
"Absolutely. "
"The non-disclosure form you signed, it still holds, Lewis. You repeat anything from what I'm about to tell you, and you'll disappear into a federal penitentiary, and I don't care what rat -ass local newspapers do or say. Understood?"
"Clearly."
"Shit," she murmured. "All right then, here it is. You're right, you bastard, about the enriched uranium. One of the many little secrets from the end of the Old War and the start of the Cold War. You know how much weapons-grade uranium and plutonium and other fissionable material have disappeared over the years since we first split the atom? I'll give you a guess. It's not in the pounds, it's not in the tens of pounds... try hundreds of pounds. More than fifty years' worth. Some of the early record keeping was so sloppy, it would make you cry. Missing plutonium or uranium would be put down to accounting problems. Dissipation. Adhering to draining equipment or testing equipment. Unbelievable. And our job is to clean up these little messes, to make sure they don’t end up in the wrong hands.”
“I thought NEST responded to more direct threats, like someone sending a note to the President, saying ‘Come up with ten million dollars in a week or we destroy some city's downtown.'"
A firm nod. "We do. It seems like every few months or so, some idiot sixteen-year-old decides to make a million dollars by making a threat about putting a nuclear device in Omaha or San Diego or Washington. Our job is to analyze the threat, respond to it, and make sure that little snot-nosed sixteen-year-old gets in a world of so much hurt that he'll never go near a computer again. Our job is also to respond to the threats that come from some adults --- to go into cities with detecting devices and search out where a bomb may be hidden. Thank God that particular scenario hasn't come up recently. It's not often that we get to respond to a real deal."
"The guy in the parking lot, shot through the head," I said. "Are the Colombians looking to get the bomb? Is that the real deal you're working on?"
"No." She looked around my office. "I can't believe I'm telling you this. No, he wasn't from the cartel. He was from Tripoli. Care to guess what his area code is?"
It felt like a draft in the room, for there was a cold tingle at the back of my neck. "Libya."
"The same. It's like a cycle over there. Every couple of years or so, while he's in a tent out in a desert, their supreme leader gets a vision that it's time for North Africa to get their own bomb. Usually it's the CIA or somebody else who nips that little beauty in the bud. A nuclear physicist goes missing. A ship transporting uranium-enrichment equipment founders during a storm. A truck with centrifuges gets blown up. The usual stuff. But then our friends with the big ears at Fort Meade --- "
"The National Security Agency," I said. "Look, once upon a time I had clearance for this stuff, so don't get all fretful. Go on."
"Okay. The NSA, our great information vacuum cleaner, listening in to everything from fax machines to cell phones, got the message about the U-234 uranium. Yon know how the NSA works, right?"
“Sure,” I said. “When it comes to message intercepts, they don’t have the manpower to listen or to read anything. What they do look for key words or phrases. Like anthrax. Or Hezbollah. I guess that U-234 and uranium were a key phrase, right?”
"Correct," she said, and I got a sense that she was eager to talk. "We've known for decades that this particular shipment been among the missing. But so far, the cover story has held, that this stuff eventually got shipped to Los Alamos and was used in one of the early atomic weapons, if not one of' the bombs we dropped on Japan."
"And what's the story behind the cover story?"
"It arrived in Porter aboard the U-boat, just like the paper accounts and books described," she said. "'Then it was taken off in the yard. Next paper record shows everything else being examined at the Navy Yard in Norfolk, but the uranium either never left Porter, or disappeared on its way to Virginia."
"The optics, the weapons, the German jet fighter? That all got to Norfolk in one piece?"
She shook her head. "Yeah, all that stuff. Man, you are up to speed."
"I try. Okay, so the NSA got the news about the missing uranium. What next?"
"What next is that they started doing real-time listening to find out why this missing shipment was being discussed. That's when we found out about Libya, and their contact in New Hampshire. All we knew about his contact was the name, Whizzer, and that he was associated with the shipyard. That’s when the great fight started. Some of our other intelligence agency boys, they wanted to snap up this Libyan intelligence agency contact the minute he got into the States. But since it involved potential weapons-grade uranium on our soil, it became our responsibility. We didn't care so much about spooks and spies and their agenda. It's the uranium we wanted. So it became our job. To track the Libyan and keep him under surveillance, and intercept the handover when he tried to purchase the uranium.”
“And what happened?”
“The meet was on for a certain time, but he left early,” she said. “Plus, he had swept the car before arriving at the state park and found our tracking device. We didn't think he would be so suspicious, but there you go. All we knew is that he'd be meeting in a park somewhere on your seacoast. Do you know how many goddamn parks you have in this stretch of coastline?"
"Enough, I'm sure. Look, you folks have any idea why the meet went bad?"
She shook her head. "No. Maybe they had a fight over money. Maybe they had a fight over religion. Who knows? But all I know is that we're going to stay here until we find this Whizzer and get that uranium back. My gut tells me that this Whizzer character might be trying to contact somebody else as equally charming as Libya. I'm sure you can think of a few countries who'd like this uranium. We sure as hell don't want to open up a weapons bazaar here. We've got to wrap it up, and quick."
I leaned back in my chair, feeling something creak, either my back or the chair. "So why didn't you tell me all this at the beginning?"
"Need to know; sorry," she said.
I said, "It would have saved a lot of time and effort on my part."