“Al, it’s George Wylie, from Deerfield Auto.” Wylie was a major contributor to Trent’s political campaigns, and the owner of a large business in his district. For both of those reasons, he was able to demand Trent’s attention whenever he desired it.
“How the hell did he track me down here?” Trent asked the ceiling as he reached for the phone. “Hey, George, how are you today?”
Trent’s two aides watched their boss set his soda down and reach for a pad. The congressman always had a pen in his hand, and a nearby pad of Post-it notes. Seeing him scribble a note to himself wasn’t unusual, though the angry look on his face was. Their boss pointed to the TV and said, “CNN!”
The timing turned out to be almost perfect. After the top-of-the-hour commercial and a brief intro, Trent was the next player to see the face of Bob Wright. This time he was on tape, which had been edited. It now showed Rebecca Upton in her NTSB windbreaker and the two crumbled Crestas being hauled aboard the wreckers.
“Shit,” Trent’s senior staffer observed.
“The gas tanks, eh?” Trent asked over the phone, then listened for a minute or so. “Those motherfuckers,” the congressman snarled next. “Thanks for the heads-up, George. I’m on it.” He set the phone receiver back in the cradle and sat up straighter in the bed. His right hand pointed to his senior aide.
“Get in touch with the NTSB watch team in Washington. I want to talk to that girl right away. Name, phone, where she is, track her down fast! Next, get the Sec-Trans on the phone.” His head went back down to his working correspondence while his staffers got on the phones. Like most members of Congress, Trent essentially time-shared his brain, and he’d long since learned to compartmentalize his time and his passion. He was soon grumbling about an amendment to the Department of the Interior’s authorization for the National Forest Service, and making a few marginal notes with a green pen. That was his second-highest expression of outrage, though his staff saw his red pen poised near a fresh page on a legal pad. The combination of foolscap and a red pen meant that Trent was really exercised about something.
Rebecca Upton was in her Nissan, following the wreckers to Nashville, where she would first supervise the initial storage of the burned-out Crestas and then meet with the head of the local office to begin the procedures for a formal investigation—lots of paperwork, she was sure, and the engineer found it odd that she was not upset at her wrecked weekend. Along with her job came a cellular phone, which she assiduously used only for official business and only when absolutely necessary—she’d been in federal employ for just ten months—which meant in her case that she’d never even reached the basic monthly fee which the company charged the government. The phone had never rung in her car before, and she was startled by the sound when it started warbling next to her.
“Hello?” she said, picking it up, wondering if it were a wrong number.
“Rebecca Upton?”
“That’s right. Who is this?”
“Please hold for Congressman Trent,” a male voice told her.
“Huh? Who?”
“Hello?” a new voice said.
“Who’s this?”
“Are you Rebecca Upton?”
“Yes, I am. Who are you?”
“I’m Alan Trent, Member of Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” Massachusetts, as any elected official from that state would announce at the drop of a hat, was not a mere “state.” “I tracked you down through the NTSB watch center. Your supervisor is Michael Zimmer, and his number in Nashville is—”
“Okay, I believe you, sir. What can 1 do for you?”
“You’re investigating a crash on 1-40, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want you to fill me in on what you know.”
“Sir,” Upton said, slowing her car down so that she could think, “we haven’t even really started it yet, and I’m not really in a position to—”
“Young lady, I’m not asking you for conclusions, just for the reason why you are initiating an investigation. I am in a position to help. If you cooperate, I promise you that the Secretary of Transportation will know what a fine young engineer you are. She’s a friend of mine, you see. We worked together in Congress for ten or twelve years.”
Oh, Rebecca Upton thought. It was improper, unethical, probably against the rules, and maybe even fattening to reveal information from an ongoing NTSB accident investigation. On the other hand, the investigation hadn’t started yet, had it? And Upton wanted to be noticed and promoted as much as the next person. She didn’t know that her brief silence was as good as mind-reading to the other person on the cellular circuit, and couldn’t see the smile in the Hartford hotel room in any case.
“Sir, it appears to me and to the police who responded to the accident that both gas tanks on both cars failed, causing a fatal fire. There appears on first inspection to be no obvious mechanical reason for the tanks to have done so. Therefore I am going to recommend to my supervisor that we initiate an investigation to determine the cause of the incident.”
“Both gas tanks leaked?” the voice asked.
“Yes, sir, but it was worse than a leak. Both failed rather badly.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“Not really at this time, no.” Upton paused. Would this guy really mention her name to the Secretary? If so ... “Something is not right about this, Mr. Trent. Look, I have a degree in engineering, and I minored in materials science. The speed of the impact does not justify two catastrophic structural failures. There are federal safety standards for the structural integrity of automobiles and their components, and those parameters far exceed the conditions I saw at the accident scene. The police officers I spoke with agree. We need to do some tests to be sure, but that’s my gut-call for the moment. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you any more for a while.”
This kid is going far, Trent told himself in his room at the Hartford Sheraton. “Thank you, Miss Upton. I left my number with your office in Nashville. Please call me when you get in.” Trent hung up the phone and thought for a minute or so. To his junior staffer: “Call Sec-Trans and tell her that this Upton kid is very good—no, get her for me, and I’ll tell her. Paul, how good is the NTSB lab for doing scientific testing?” he asked, looking and feeling more and more like Churchill, planning the invasion of Europe. Well, Trent told himself, not quite that.
“Not bad at all, but the varsity—”
“Right.” Trent selected a free button on his phone and made another call from memory.
“Good afternoon, Congressman,” Bill Shaw said to his speakerphone, looking up at Dan Murray. “By the way, we need to see you next week and—”
“I need some help, Bill.”
“What kind of help is that, sir?” Elected officials were always “sir” or “ma‘am” on official business, even for the Director of the FBI. That was especially true if the congressman in question chaired the Intelligence Committee, along with holding a seat on the Judiciary Committee, and another on Ways and Means. Besides which, for all his personal ... eccentricities ... Trent had always been a good friend and fair critic of the Bureau. But the bottom line was simpler: all three of his committee jobs had impact on the FBI. Shaw listened and took some notes. “The Nashville S-A-C is Bruce Cleary, but we require a formal request for assistance from D-O-T before we can—okay, sure, I’ll await her call. Glad to help. Yes, sir. ’Bye.” Shaw looked up from his desk. “Why the hell is Al Trent worked up over a car wreck in Tennessee?”
“Why are we interested?” Murray asked, more to the point.
“He wants the Lab Division to back up NTSB on forensics. You want to call Bruce and tell him to get his best tech guy on deck? The friggin’ accident just happened this morning and Trent wants results yesterday.”
“Has he ever jerked us around on something before?”
Shaw shook his head. “Never. I suppose we want to be on his good side. He’ll have to sit in on the meeting with the chairman. We’re going t
o have to discuss Kealty’s security clearance, remember?”
Shaw’s phone buzzed. “Secretary of Transportation on three, Director.”
“That boy,” Murray observed, “is really kicking some serious ass for a Saturday afternoon.” He got out of his chair and headed for a phone on the other side of the room while Director Shaw took the call from the cabinet secretary. “Get me the Nashville office.”
The police impound yard, where wrecked or stolen vehicles were stored, was part of the same facility that serviced State Police cars. Rebecca Upton had never been there before, but the wrecker drivers had, and following them was easy enough. The officer in the gatehouse shouted instructions to the first driver, and the second followed, trailed by the NTSB engineer. They ended up heading to an empty area—or almost empty. There were six cars there—two marked and four unmarked police radio cars—plus ten or so people, all of them senior by the look of them. One was Upton’s boss, and for the first time she was really aware of how serious this affair was becoming.
The service building had three hydraulic lifts. Both Crestas were unloaded outside it, then manhandled inside and onto the steel tracks. Both were hoisted simultaneously, allowing the growing mob of people to walk underneath. Upton was by far the shortest person there, and had to jostle her way in. It was her case after all, or she thought it was. A photographer started shooting film, and she noticed that the man’s camera case had “FBI” printed on it in yellow lettering. What the hell?
“Definite structural failure,” noted a captain of the State Police, the department’s chief of accident investigation. Other heads nodded sagely.
“Who has the best science lab around here?” someone in casual clothing asked.
“Vanderbilt University would be a good place to start,” Rebecca announced. “Better yet, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.”
“Are you Miss Upton?” the man asked. “I’m Bruce Cleary, FBI.”
“Why are you—”
“Ma’am, I just go where they send me.” He smiled and went on. “D-O-T has requested our help on the investigation. We have a senior tech from our Laboratory Division flying down from Washington right now.” On a D-O-T aircraft, no less, he didn’t say. Neither he nor anyone else in his office had ever investigated an auto accident, but the orders came from the Director himself, and that was really all he needed to know.
Ms. Upton suddenly felt herself to be a sapling in a forest of giants, but she, too, had a job to do, and she was the only real expert on the scene. Taking a flashlight from her pocket, she started a detailed examination of the gas tank. Rebecca was surprised when people gave her room. It had already been decided that her name would go on the cover of the report. The involvement of the FBI would be downplayed—an entirely routine case in interagency cooperation, backing up an inquiry initiated by a young, dedicated, bright, female NTSB engineer. She would take the lead on the case. Rebecca Upton would get all the credit for the work of the others, because it could not appear that this was a concerted effort toward a predetermined goal, even though that’s precisely what it was. She’d also begun this thing, and for delivering political plums this large there had to be a few seeds tossed out for the little people. All the men standing around either knew or had begun to suspect it, though not all of them had begun to grasp what the real issues were. They merely knew that a congressman had gotten the immediate attention of a cabinet secretary and the director of the government’s most powerful independent agency, and that he wanted fast action. It appeared that he’d get it, too. As they looked up at the underside of what only a few hours before had been a family car on the way to Grandma’s house, the cause of the disaster seemed as straightforward as a punch in the nose. All that was really needed, the senior FBI representative thought, was scientific analysis of the crumpled gas tank. For that, they’d go to Oak Ridge, whose lab facilities often backed up the FBI. That would require the cooperation of the Department of Energy, but if Al Trent could shake two large trees in less than an hour, how hard would it be for him to shake another?
Goto was not a hard man to follow, though it could be tiring, Nomuri thought. At sixty, he was a man of commendable vigor and a desire to appear youthful. And he always kept coming here, at least three times per week. This was the tea house that Kazuo had identified—not by name, but closely enough that Nomuri had been able to identify, then confirm it. He’d seen both Goto and Yamata enter here, never together, but never more than a few minutes apart, because it would be unseemly for the latter to make the former wait too much. Yamata always left first, and the other always lingered for at least an hour, but never more than two. Supposition, he told himself: a business meeting followed by R&R, and on the other nights, just the R&R part. As though in some cinematic farce, Goto always came out with a blissful swagger to his stride as he made his way toward the waiting car. Certainly his driver knew—the open door, a bow, then the mischievous grin on his face as he came around to his own door. On every other occasion, Nomuri had followed Goto’s car, discreetly and very carefully, twice losing him in the traffic, but on the last two occasions and three others he’d tracked the man all the way to his home, and felt certain that his destination after his trysts was always the same. Okay. Now he would think about the other part of the mission, as he sat in his car and sipped his tea. It took forty minutes.
It was Kimberly Norton. Nomuri had good eyes, and the streetlights were bright enough for him to manage a few quick frames from his camera before exiting the car. He tracked her from the other side of the street, careful not to look directly at her, instead allowing his peripheral vision to keep her in sight. Surveillance and countersurveillance were part of the syllabus at the Farm. It wasn’t too hard, and this subject made it easy. Even though she wasn’t overly tall by American standards, she did stand out here, as did her fair hair. In Los Angeles she would have been unremarkable, Nomuri thought, a pretty girl in a sea of pretty girls. There was nothing unusual about her walk—the girl was adapting to local norms, slightly demure, giving way to men, whereas in America the reverse was both true and expected. And though her Western clothing was somewhat distinctive, many people on the street dressed the same way—in fact, traditional garb was in the minority here, he realized with a slight surprise. She turned right, down another street, and Nomuri followed, sixty or seventy yards behind, like he was a goddamned private detective or something. What the hell was this assignment all about? the CIA officer wondered.
“Russians?” Ding asked.
“Free-lance journalists, no less. How’s your shorthand?” Clark asked, reading over the telex. Mary Pat was having another attack of the clevers, but truth be told, she was very good at it. He’d long suspected that the Agency had a guy inside the Interfax News Agency in Moscow. Maybe CIA had played a role in setting the outfit up, as it was often the first and best source of political information from Moscow. But this was the first time, so far as he knew, that the Agency had used it for a cover legend. The second page of the op-order got even more interesting. Clark handed it over to Lyalin without comment.
“Bloody about time,” the former Russian chuckled. “You will want names, addresses, and phone numbers, yes?”
“That would help, Oleg Yurievich.”
“You mean we’re going to be in the real spy business?” Chavez asked. It would be his first time ever. Most of the time he and Clark had been paramilitary operators, doing jobs either too dangerous or too unusual for regular field officers.
“It’s been a while for me too, Ding. Oleg, I never asked what language you used working your people.”
“Always English,” Lyalin answered. “I never let on my abilities in Japanese. I often picked up information that way. They thought they could chat right past me.”
Cute, Clark thought, you just stood there with the open-mouth-dog look on your face and people never seemed to catch on. Except that in his case, and Ding‘s, it would be quite real. Well, the real mission wasn’t to play spymaster, was it, and they
were prepared enough for what they were supposed to do, John told himself. They would leave on Tuesday for Korea.
In yet another case of interagency cooperation, a UH-1H helicopter of the Tennessee National Guard lifted Rebecca Upton, three other men, and the gasoline tanks to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The tanks were wrapped in clear plastic and were strapped into place as though they were passengers themselves.
Oak Ridge’s history went back to the early 1940s, when it had been part of the original Manhattan Engineering Project, the cover name for the first atomic-bomb effort. Huge buildings housed the still-operating uranium-separation machinery, though much else had changed including the addition of a helipad.
The Huey circled once to get a read on the wind, then settled in. An armed guard shepherded the party inside, where they found a senior scientist and two lab techs waiting—the Secretary of Energy himself had called them in this Saturday evening.
The scientific side of the case was decided in less than an hour. More time would be required for additional testing. The entire NTSB report would address such issues as the seat belts, the efficacy of the child-safety seats in the Denton car, how the air bags had performed, and so forth, but everyone knew that the important part, the cause of five American deaths, was that the Cresta gas tanks had been made of improperly treated steel that had corroded down to a third of its expected structural strength. The rough draft of that finding was typed up—badly—on a nearby word processor, printed, and faxed to DOT headquarters, adjacent to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington. Though PRELIMINARY FINDING was the header on the two-page memo, the information would be treated as Holy Writ. Most remarkably of all, Rebecca Upton thought, it had all been accomplished in less than sixteen hours. She’d never seen the government move so fast on anything. What a shame that it didn’t always do that, she thought as she dozed off in the back of the helicopter during the return flight to Nashville.