The Threat

Dan cradled his skull. “But I understood — the president went on record in Cleveland saying we were going to improve information sharing, get the various resources and centers talking to each other better—”

“That’s right. We can’t shrink from implementing this project. So we need to remassage these documents so they are professionally presented, provide recommendations acceptable to the budgeteers, and reach conclusions that are not blue-sky like GAO’s.”

Dan gave up. He signed letters to Sam Nunn, John Warner, and Charlie Schumer saying how important information-resources-management leadership was to the War on Drugs, and a long letter back to the GAO that took apart its proposals and regurgitated them in even more obfuscatory bureaucratese. This, Meilhamer explained, would serve the purpose of NSC–CD appearing to cooperate while postponing actually having to do anything into the next budget cycle. Dan felt sick, but once it was done there was another file, another smooth explanation by his rumpled, slovenly assistant.

Meilhamer was leaving when Dan called, “Wait. Give me back that letter to GAO.”

The assistant didn’t move. “That was the right decision.”

“No it wasn’t.” Dan held out his hand. “We owe them a better response than that. I might not get to it today, but I’ll take it home tonight and think about it.”

* * *

He went through the e-mail, the intel summaries. The first interesting thing was a report from Belize that had located the Baptist in Morawhannä, on the coast of Guyana. The silt Bloom had talked about was settling. Unfortunately, by the time the extradition paperwork got there, he’d left. Dan remembered his suspicions about a leak, but didn’t come up with any new ideas about who it might be.

He read the Early Bird,

then flicked through the cables and messages the Sit Room watchstanders had filed in his queue. One was based on his request for anything about air cargo. It looked like there was going to be another airline strike. Since freight volume had been falling, due to the recession, the companies had been trying to circumvent the baggage handlers’ union. The union was going out, just to remind them who was boss.

Message traffic about Bogotá, arrangements for the conference. He started an e-file on that, figured he’d probably be going. Major busts were going down in Colombia. Tejeiro was on the warpath. On the other hand, interception rates through the Bahamas were back up. A single factoid told you nothing in this business. It had to be part of a tapestry before it made sense. And even then, two people could use it to back up opposite conclusions.

What was the point, anyway? When marijuana got scarce everybody went to crack. If they stopped every gram of coke at the border, the Hell’s Angels would cook up more meth. If that dried up there was still alcohol, the most destructive drug ever. He wondered what they’d do when it went digital, when you just clamped a headset on and downloaded the latest buzz.

He jerked his mind back to what was in front of him. A message from the CIA feed. A raid on a Mexican power plant. He made himself read it.

He read it again.

Then went downstairs, trotted across West Executive in a cold drizzle, and let himself into the Sit Room. He stood at the director’s cubicle, looking out her window. Dead pansies thrashed in the window box, whipped by the wind.

Captain Roald glanced up. “You look terrible. What’s wrong with your eye?”

Dan dropped the printout on her blotter. It was marked “Secret,” but it hadn’t been out of his hands, and if the Sit Room wasn’t a secure space, what was? “See this, Jennifer?”

“The Laguna Verde break-in. We got the first cables at zero-six. They wrecked the place. Shot three guards.”

“But didn’t take any of the nuclear materials. What was that about?”

“Made me wonder too. I had the watchstanders make some phone calls. See if it was worth passing up the line.”

Roald said they’d finally decided it wasn’t immediate action, though she’d phone-notified the deputy NSA, and it would go in the daily summary. Took place on foreign soil, no U.S. forces or interests involved; and it hadn’t succeeded. She gave him the facts.

Laguna Verde, Green Lagoon, was on the Gulf of Mexico fifty miles north of Veracruz. The Mexican government ran two nuclear reactors there, for power and production of isotopes. Ninety percent of nuclear isotopes used in the U.S. for diagnostic X-rays, nuclear medicine, and radiation therapy were imported. A sizable percentage, Roald said, came from Laguna Verde. They included iodine-131, technium-99, cobalt-60, iridium-192, and cesium-137.

According to the police command center in Mexico City, two vanfuls of armed men had crashed the gates. They’d shot down the guards, then been taken on in a firefight by more security personnel from deeper in the plant.