Blue Gold

  “I’d say I’m standing on the deck of the Gogstad ship.”

  “Correct. Built in Norway between A.D. 700 and 1000. The original ship was seventy-nine feet long and was constructed entirely of oak, something a bit more substantial than light beams. This is a half-scale model.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Austin said, “but what does it have to do with the material I gave you?”

  “I’ll show you what I found.”

  They walked through the shimmering walls back to the console.

  “It wasn’t hard getting some data on the Mulholland Group,” Yaeger said. “As your dead lawyer friend told you, the company is involved in hydraulic projects. I had to dig around, but I found that it was part of a larger corporation called Gogstad. The logo of the parent company is the ship you see before you.” The hologram disappeared, and a stylized version of the ship appeared on the monitor.

  “Tell me more.”

  “I asked Max to start playing around with Gogstad. I didn’t get much on the company, but apparently it’s a huge transnational corporation involved in all kinds of stuff. Finance. Engineering. Banking. Construction.”

  He handed Austin a computer disk. “This is what I found. Nothing startling. I’ll keep trying.”

  “Thanks, Hiram. I’ll review it. In the meantime I’ve got another favor to ask of you and Max.” He related his visit to the Garber center and his interview with the pilot’s son. “I’d like to know if this plane was ever built and what happened to the pilot.”

  Max had been attentive again. A photograph of a large wing-shaped craft appeared on the screen.

  “This is a picture from the Smithsonian files of the YB-49A, the last Northrop flying wing bomber to take to the air,” the low voice purred. “I can give you a three-D rendering, like the ships.”

  “This is fine for now. The designation etched on the cylinder was YB-49B.”

  The photograph was replaced by a drawing. “This is the YB-49B,” Max said.

  “What’s the difference between this model and the one you just showed us, Max?”

  “The designers ironed out the oscillation problem that bothered the bombardiers. In addition it would have flown faster and farther than the earlier model. It was never built.”

  Austin knew better than to argue with Max. Instead, he watched the statistical and performance figures roll under the picture. Something in the data bothered him.

  “Wait,” he said. “Go back. See there, it says the cruising speed was five hundred and twenty-five miles per hour. How would they have known the speed if they hadn’t conducted field trials?”

  “It may be an estimate?” Yaeger ventured.

  “Maybe. But it doesn’t say that it’s estimated.”

  “You’re right. They would have to have conducted field trials back then because they didn’t have smart machines like Max to simulate flying conditions.”

  “Thank you for the compliment, although it does state the obvious,” Max said. “Kurt has a point, Hiram. While you were talking I checked and found that in every instance where a plane was designed but not actually built, its speed was estimated. Except for this one.”

  Yaeger knew better than to argue with Max. “It seems that maybe this plane did exist? But what happened to it?”

  “This may be as far as we get for now,” Austin said. “The Northrop and Air Force records were lost. What can Max tell us about the pilot, Frank Martin?”

  “Do you want the quick economy search or the full-blown probe?” Max asked.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The quick tour goes to the Pentagon’s armed services registry, which contains the name of everyone, living or dead, who served in the armed forces. The full monte digs additional information from the Pentagon’s classified files. I’ll throw in the National Security Council, the FBI, and the CIA just for ha-has.”

  “This is a mere technicality, but isn’t it illegal to hack into those databases?”

  “Hack is such an ugly word,” Max said. “Let’s say I’m simply paying social calls on fellow computer systems so we can exchange gossip.”

  “In that case, do all the socializing you want to,” Austin said.

  “Interesting,” Max said after a moment. “I’ve tried to open several doors, but in every case Harry has put a lock on them.”

  “Who’s Harry, another computer?” Yaeger said.

  “No, silly. Harry Truman.”

  Austin scratched his head. “Are you saying that all the files on this pilot were sealed by order of the president?”

  “That’s right. Aside from the most basic information about Mr. Martin, everything else is still classified.” There was an uncharacteristic pause. “That’s peculiar,” Max said. “I just got a trace. It was as if someone opened a door that was locked. Here’s your boy.” A picture of a young man in an Air Force uniform appeared. “He lives in upstate New York near Cooperstown.”

  “He’s still alive?”

  “There seems to be some disagreement on that. The Pentagon says he died in a plane crash in 1949. This new information says just the opposite.”

  “A mistake?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Humans are fallible. I’m not.”

  “Does he have a phone?”

  “No. But I have an address.”

  A printout came out of a slot on the console. Still puzzled, Austin looked at the name and address as if they were in vanishing ink. He folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. “Thanks, Hiram and Max. You’ve been a great help.” He started for the door.

  “Where you off to now?” Yaeger said.

  “Cooperstown. This may be my one and only chance to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

  21

  ACROSS THE POTOMAC at the new CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence was wondering if his computer was having the hiccups. The analyst, an eastern European specialist named J. Barrett Browning, stood up and peered over the partition into the adjacent cubicle.

  “Say, Jack, do you have a second to look at something really weird?”

  The sallow-faced man at the cluttered desk put aside the Russian newspaper he had been marking up and rubbed his deep-set eyes.

  “Sex, crime, and more sex. I don’t know what could be weirder than the Russian press,” said John Rowland, a respected translator who had joined the CIA after the agency’s dark Nixon days. “It’s like U.S. supermarket tabloids on hormones. I almost miss the tractor production statistics.” He rose from his work station and came around into Browning’s cubicle. “What’s the problem, young man?”

  “This crazy message on my computer,” Browning replied with a shake of his head. “I was scrolling some historical material on the Soviet Union, and this popped up on the screen.”

  Rowland leaned forward and read the words: “PROTOCOL ACTIVATED FOR SANCTION WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.”

  Rowland tugged his pepper-and-salt goatee. “Extreme prejudice? Nobody uses language like that anymore.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It’s a euphemism. Goes way back to the cold war and Vietnam. It’s a polite way of referring to a hit.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t they teach you anything at Yale?” Rowland said with a grin. “Sanctioning someone is setting him up for assassination. Real James Bond stuff.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Barrett said, looking around the room at the other cubicles. “Let’s guess which of our esteemed colleagues is the practical joker.”

  Rowland was in deep thought and didn’t reply. He slid into Browning’s chair and studied the underlined file number at the end of the message. He highlighted the number and hit the enter key. A series of digits appeared.

  “If this is a joke, it’s a good one,” he muttered. “No one has used this encoding since Allen Dulles was agency director after World War II.”

  Rowland hit the print button and took the copy of the message to his cubicle with his p
uzzled colleague right behind him. He made a quick phone call, then fed the code into his computer and tapped the keys. “I’m sending this down to a pal in the decoding division. It’s pretty antiquated stuff. He can decipher it in a matter of minutes with the programs available today.”

  “Where do you suppose it came from?” Browning said.

  “What were you reading when the message appeared?”

  “Archives material. Mostly diplomatic reports. One of the Senate staff guys needed it for his boss who’s on the armed services committee. He was looking for patterns of Soviet behavior, probably so he could jack up the defense budget.”

  “What was the context of these reports?”

  “They were from field agents to the director. It had to do with Soviet nuclear development. They were in the old files that Clinton ordered declassified.”

  “Interesting. That tells us that that the material was meant for eyes only at the highest level.”

  “Sounds plausible. But what’s this business with the protocol?”

  Rowland sighed. “I don’t know what the agency is going to do when old war horses like me get put out to pasture. Let me tell you how the protocols worked back in the old covert action days. First a policy would be approved, usually at the highest levels, with the director, NSA, joint chiefs all signing on. The president would be kept out of the loop officially, for purposes of deniability. The policy would generate a course of action in response to a given threat or threats. That was the protocol. The action was distilled into an order. The order was broken down into a number of parts.”

  “Makes sense. That way those who carried out the order only knew their small part of it. You preserve secrecy.”

  “Aha, I guess they did teach you something in the halls of Eli, even if it’s all wrong. Those nutty plans like whacking Castro or Iran-Contra were set up that way, and they all fell apart.”

  “So why have a protocol at all?”

  “The prime reason is so the guys at the top can disallow responsibility. A protocol was usually reserved for the most serious type of action. In this case, we’re talking about a political assassination. It was not something taken lightly. Heads of state are not supposed to plot the demise of other heads of state or people in their own government. It makes for bad precedent. So the order would be multilevel. It was designed not to leave fingerprints. No one gave orders that could be traced back. A number of predetermined circumstances had to come about for the command to be followed through to its end.”

  “It sounds like the fail-safe system they used with the nuclear bombers. There were several steps involved, and the mission could be aborted up until the very last.”

  “Something like that. Let me give you another analogy. A threat is perceived. One hand takes out the gun. The threat grows. Another hand loads the bullet. The threat escalates. A third hand cocks the hammer. Next, the trigger is pulled and the threat is eliminated. All those action-reaction steps would be necessary for the gun to fire.”

  Browning nodded. “I understand what you’re saying, but I can’t figure out how the bloody thing got onto my computer.”

  “Maybe that’s not as mysterious as it seems.” Most of Rowland’s days were spent in the boring task of reading and analyzing newspapers, and he relished the chance for intellectual exercise. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.

  “The protocol originally would have been recorded on paper, probably broken down into parts. It is never carried out. Then the agency goes from paper to computers. The protocol becomes encoded in the agency’s database. It sits there for decades, until all the triggering mechanisms are in place to activate it. The director is supposed to be notified automatically, only the files have been declassified and the computer doesn’t know that a lowly analyst will be reading a file meant only for the director.”

  “Brilliant,” Browning said. “Now we have to figure out what could have set a fifty-year-old protocol in motion. I was looking at these same files yesterday. This was not there.”

  “That means the protocol was activated in the last twenty-four hours. Wait—” The e-mail was blinking. Rowland retrieved the message.

  “Dear Rowland. Here’s your message. Ho-hum. Please send something more challenging next time.”

  The words on the screen simply said, “Sanction under way.”

  “It’s a coded reply from the hit man,” Rowland said. Browning shook his head. “I wonder who the poor bastard was.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about the past; it’s the future I’m concerned about.”

  “Hey, c’mon, Jack, it’s been half a century since this protocol was approved. Everyone involved must be long dead. Hit man and victim alike.”

  “Maybe,” Rowland said. “Maybe not.” He tapped the words on the screen. “This reply has just been sent. It means the hit man is still alive, and so is his victim. At least for now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rowland reached for the phone, a grave expression carved into the usual cheery face.

  “The director didn’t countermand the order, so it goes to the next step. The killing.” Rowland held his hand up to cut off Browning’s question. “Please put me through to the director,” he barked into the phone. “Yes, it’s urgent,” he said, his voice rising in a rare display of emotion. “Damned urgent!”

  22

  THE BLAZE HAD BEEN extinguished and the firefighters were mopping up when Zavala returned to Hanley’s office building. Zavala bluffed his way past the yellow police tape with officious flashes of his NUMA identification card. He waved the laminated card with his picture close to the arson investigator’s nose, then quickly tucked it back into his billfold. He didn’t want to explain why someone from a federal ocean science agency was at a San Diego disaster scene.

  The investigator, whose name was Connors, said witnesses had told him about the hovering helicopter and described a strange flash of light before the explosion, but he hadn’t eliminated the possibility that the detonation was internal. Zavala couldn’t blame him. It’s not every day an armed helicopter attacks an office building in San Diego.

  “How is the injured woman?” Zavala asked.

  “Okay last I heard,” Connors said. “A couple of guys dragged her out of her office before the fire got going.”

  Zavala then thanked Connors and walked to the next block to catch a taxi. As he raised his hand to hail a cab, a plain black Ford sedan pulled up to the curb. Agent Miguel Gomez was behind the wheel. The FBI man leaned across the seat and opened the door. Zavala got in.

  Gomez gave Zavala his world-weary look. “Things sure have gotten busy since you and your partner arrived in town,” the agent said. “A few hours after you walk into my office the Farmer and his sleazeball lawyer go up in smoke. Why don’t you stick around a few more days? The whole Mexican mafia and their pals will self-destruct, and I’ll be out of a job, which will suit me fine.”

  Zavala chuckled. “Thanks again for watching our backs in Tijuana.”

  “In return for risking an international incident by bringing a sniper team across the border, maybe you’ll tell me what in God’s name is going on.”

  “I wish I knew,” Zavala said with a shrug. “What’s the story on Pedralez?”

  “He was in his armored car going through Colonia Obrera, a cutthroat neighborhood west of Tijuana. He’s got bodyguards in SUVs in front and behind. The lead vehicle gets hit first. A second later Pedralez’s car explodes. It must have been slammed real hard because that thing was built like a tank. The driver of the third vehicle does a quick U-turn and gets the hell out.”

  “An antitank missile would have done the job.”

  Gomez affixed Zavala with dark, probing eyes. “The Mexican police found the loader for a Swedish Gustav antitank missile in an alley.”

  “The Swedes are attacking Mexican drug lords?”

  “I wish. The hardware is available on the world arms market. They’re probably giving them away on the ba
cks of cereal boxes. You can fire the thing from the shoulder. They tell me two guys can get off six rounds a minute. What do you know about this thing with Hanley?”

  “Kurt and I had just left the building when we saw a green helicopter hovering outside Hanley’s office. We went back inside and heard the blast while we were in the elevator. Some witnesses saw a flash of light. It could have been from a missile launcher.”

  “How many missiles does it take to wipe out a shyster? Sounds like a lawyer joke.”

  “I don’t see Hanley laughing.”

  “Guy never did have a sense of humor. Talk about overkill. Someone really wanted him dead real bad to go through all that trouble.” He paused. “Why did you go back into the building?”

  “Kurt thought the helicopter looked like one he had seen after the explosion in the Baja.”

  “So you already talked with Hanley?”

  Gomez might look sleepy, but he didn’t miss a trick, Zavala thought.

  “We asked him about the tortilla plant. He said a Sacramento business broker contacted him for a client who wanted to get a cover operation going in Mexico. Hanley hooked his client up with Pedralez.”

  “What was the broker’s name?”

  “Jones. Save your dime. He’s dead.”

  Gomez smirked. “Don’t tell me. His car blew up.”

  “He drove off a cliff. It was supposedly an accident.”

  A man in a dark blue suit came over and tapped on the car window. The agent nodded and turned back to Zavala. “They want me inside. Let’s keep in touch.” He switched to Spanish. “We Mexican-American chili peppers have to stick together.”

  “Definitely,” Zavala said, opening the door to get out. “I’ll be heading back to Washington. Call me at NUMA headquarters if I can be of help.”

  Zavala had been truthful with Gomez up to a point. He purposely hadn’t mentioned Hanley’s disclosure about the Mulholland Group. He doubted the FBI would blast its way through the front door warrant in hand, but he hadn’t wanted to complicate his investigation. On his return to the hotel he called Los Angeles directory assistance and tried the number he was given for the Mulholland Group. The pleasant-sounding receptionist who answered the phone gave him directions to the office. He asked the hotel concierge to arrange a rental car, and before long he was driving north to Los Angeles.