The Threat

Its output appeared as a funnel-shaped, pulsating amber wedge. They stared at it. “Can you print that out?” Dan said at last. Harlowe pressed a button and a wet-paper printer off to the side, huge, old, grimy, hummed suddenly, as if startled out of a long sleep.

A duty officer, holding up a handset: “One of you Lenson?”

It was Bloom. He started off too fast, and Dan had to slow him down. Finally he got on sync. “I talked to the lieutenant governor of Veracruz — the state, not the city. He confirmed material is missing. But he can’t say that officially.”

“Well, look, Miles, that’s just not good enough. We’re getting confirmation through Luis too, but it’s still unofficial. We need someone to go on the record about this,” Dan told him. “I don’t mean to the press; just to us, here in the Sit Room. Call your guy back. Work the ‘White House is calling’ angle. I want a faxed statement. Promise him a medal from the president. A job this side of the line. A date with Sharon Stone, she’s always hanging around at De Bari’s parties. Just get it.”

It was starting to roll. He felt as if he were riding a snowboard on the crest of an avalanche. He left them all working and went in to see Roald again.

* * *

But she motioned him to wait. He hovered as she said into the phone, “Yes … yes … not yet. No.”

When she hung up she looked pensive.

“What is it?”

“The team leader at NORAD doesn’t think he can declare an alert.”

“We don’t need to launch interceptors. Just click the readiness up, in case we have to.” But even as he said this it occurred to him that it was conceivable, it was just conceivable, that if what he was guessing at was taking place, a plane with those isotopes aboard could be in the air right now. No reason it couldn’t be.

For the first time, he really felt afraid.

Roald was saying, “The bottom line is there’s no confirmation from the Mexican authorities. And we’re not the initiating authority for alerts for most of these agencies. Not for FEMA. Not for NORAD. I can’t even get anybody at Transportation. They’re supposed to have a duty officer but there’s no answer.”

“Well, who’s the initiating authority for an alert if not the White House? Presidential emergency authority—”

“Whoa, there. Don’t get the Sit Room confused with the national command authority, Dan. Remember, we just answer the phones here,” Roald said mildly.

“Okay, okay, I know.… But how about NMCC? The Pentagon’s got to have the authority to get the Air Force moving, and maybe the FBI.”

“The National Military Command Center has no link with the FBI. But they could get interceptors up, yes. If they believed there was an imminent threat.”

“How about calling the FBI direct then?”

“They’re in the crime-fighting business, not round-the-clock command stuff. They don’t have a 24/7 operations center.” Roald considered it. “I could probably punch the book and get somebody’s pager, or contact a phone watch. Ask for a callback. But I doubt we’re going to get any live people to talk to this late on a Friday. Let alone somebody who can order a raid in California. We’d do better to wait till eight or eight thirty in the morning, catch people as they open for business — no, then it’ll be Saturday.”

“How about the CIA?”

Roald bared her teeth. “Believe me, you want somebody to actually do something, Dan, you do not go to Langley. Just trust me on that one.”

Dan stared at her, then reached for her phone. Her hand closed over his. “Hold on, Commander. I’ve presented the issue where it needs to be presented. They’re doing the notifications according to their lists. If they think it’s worth going to general quarters for, they’ll go.”

“But how long will that take?”

For answer he got his hand back. “I don’t know. But I’ll keep pushing the other buttons. Maybe try the Los Angeles Police Department.”

“Call the Pentagon again. Damn it, let me talk to them.”

“No. I have a call in to the deputy assistant. If she thinks we have something worth pursuing, she’ll call Mrs. Clayton. Who will then, if she agrees, be the one to really light things off. That’s how we’re going to do it. By the book.”

He was about to burst out that while they were playing Mother May I and making sure no one got offended, terrorists might be loading an aircraft with the most dangerous payload since Nagasaki. But then he remembered how deftly Jennifer Roald had handled a call from Eritrea. How she’d defused that situation, and probably saved a general officer’s career. If she thought he was getting tunnel vision, maybe he was. He took a deep breath. “All right. We’ll do it your way. Until I see that’s not working.”

He felt her cool gaze brush him. As if about to ask: And then what? But she didn’t, just picked up the phone and tapped a single button.

“This is the White House Situation Room,” she said. “I need you to call me back just as soon as you hear this message.”

* * *