The animal leaped straight up, its back violently arching. Endo had the speaker on, and he heard the sable scream once before it fell dead.
There was pandemonium in the cages as the other animals went berserk, understanding instinctively what was happening. But within a couple of minutes all eight of them were dead, and the technician turned off the machine, unclipped the lead and pushed the cart away.
A pair of technicians, these dressed in radiation suits, came from behind a lead shield in the assembly area across the lab. One of them opened the cages and removed the animals’ bodies, handing them to the other tech who dumped them in a lead-lined bin. It was a simple precaution in case the animals had somehow become contaminated.
The bin would be buried in a hole bored one thousand yards into the bedrock beneath the laboratory level so that no radiation would ever be detected here, even if someone managed to penetrate this far.
Endo had turned that thought over many times, and he’d discussed it once with Fukai, who’d agreed that extraordinary measures would be taken to discover who was behind the… attack. Therefore every effort would have to be made to thwart the ensuing worldwide investigation.
When the last of the animals’ remains had been disposed of, the technician removed the false bottom from the first cage, and from within gingerly withdrew a gray cylinder about the size of an ordinary thermos flask, and cradling it in both hands very carefully handed it to the second technician.
There was little or no danger of harmful radiation at this point, because the cylinders they were handling were lead-lined containers for the weapons-grade plutonium.
But there was always the possibility of accidents, and every man working on the project understood that the amount of material they would be handling this evening constituted a critical mass.
It would take the precise mechanism of the bomb itself to cause the material to actually explode. But if a critical mass were to be accidentally assembled, a meltdown would occur that would kill everyone in the lab, and possibly burn as much as ten or fifteen yards through the solid rock. Nothing would live down here for a very long time to come; possibly as long as ten thousand years. So the technicians were all taking extreme care with their work.
Endo leaned forward on the balls of his feet, practically pressing his nose against the window so that he could get a better look. Power had always impressed him. It was one of the reasons he had gone to work for Fukai in the first place, and one of the reasons he’d become the old man’s right hand. For power, Endo would do anything.
Literally anything.
But this, now, below in the assembly laboratory, was the ultimate of powers on earth.
A few pounds of dull gray metal; not so heavy that a man couldn’t lift the weight, was enough to kill 100,000 people. Powerful enough to change the course of world events-witness what had happened because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Endo felt the flush of his bitter shame reach his neck, and he rocked back.
That would change, after all these years. The score would be evened.
Chapter 71
Kelley Fuller watched as McGarvey pulled on the single scuba tank, adjusted its weight on his shoulders, and fastened the Velcro straps holding his buoyancy control vest in place.
They were huddled out of the wind behind some rocks twenty-five yards below the highway, and barely six feet above the waters of the bay. In the distance, to the north, they could make out the lights of Fukai Semiconductor. It was 11:00 p.m.
“You still haven’t told me what you hope to find over there,” she said. “Or how you’re going to get inside. There’ll be security on the docks.”
“I’m going to get aboard the boat first, and then go ashore as one of the crewmen,”
McGarvey said, checking the seals on the waterproof camera case which they’d picked up at the dive shop where they’d rented the scuba gear. Earlier in the afternoon they’d purchased a compact Geiger counter from a scientific school supply house in Nagasaki. The unit fit perfectly in the camera case.
“What if the crew is all Japanese?”
McGarvey looked up. “It’s possible,” he said. “But I saw a good number of Westerners in the compound this morning. So it stands to reason there’ll be Westerners as crew aboard a pleasure boat that’s registered out of Monaco.”
“Once you’re ashore, what then? It’s a big place.”
“If there’s a lab to handle nuclear material, it’ll be beneath ground. In a sub-basement or even lower, which means it’ll have to be equipped with an elevator, perhaps an emergency stairwell, or access tunnel, and probably an air shaft or two. I’ve seen these sorts of things before.”
“If you don’t find it?” she persisted.
He smiled. “I don’t give up that easily. Especially now that we’ve come this close.
Besides, I owe this one to someone I’m very close to.”
Kelley’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What if you don’t find it?”
“Then I’ll find Kiyoshi Fukai, and ask him to show it to me.”
“He won’t tell you anything.”
“Then if I can prove that he’s involved, I’ll kill him,” McGarvey said evenly, and Kelley shivered because she believed him.
“Good,” she said, and she helped McGarvey pick his way across the rocks and into the water. His leg was giving him trouble because of the weight of the equipment he was carrying.
McGarvey spit on the inside of his mask, spread it around with his fingers, then rinsed it off in the bay. “If I’m not out of there by daybreak, I want you to call Carrara and tell him what’s happened.”
She nodded. “Is she beautiful?”
McGarvey donned the mask. “Very,” he said.
“Who is she?”
“My daughter.”
He had timed his entry into the bay to coincide with slack tide. Even so he briefly surfaced twice to make sure he was swimming a straight line underwater. The Grande Dame 11 was at least a mile from where he’d started at the edge of the Fukai compound, and being off by one or two compass degrees he could have swum past it in the pitch-black water.
But he was right on course, and the second time he surfaced he was close enough to pick out a lot of activity on the dock.
From the window of the headquarters building this morning he had spotted closed-circuit television cameras and what he took to be proximity alarm detectors along the line of the docks, which meant they were more concerned about someone coming ashore than anyone in the water.
Storm sewer openings would be screened and equipped with integrity alarms. And although he’d hoped to find the ship dark, and possibly even unattended, the unexpected activity would serve his purpose just as well, distracting attention away from the bay side of the ship’s hull.
The other thing he’d seen from the waiting room above the dock was the Grande Dame II’s
anchor chain. Apparently because of tidal currents, the anchor had been dropped to keep the ship from swinging too hard against the docks. It would also provide a way aboard.
Of course there was still a high probability that he would be spotted and challenged.
But if it happened, it happened, he told himself, biting down so hard on his mouthpiece that he nearly severed the thick rubber.
The expression in Elizabeth’s eyes that night off Santorini had not faded days later when she came to him in the hospital. He didn’t think it would ever go away, because she had become a frightened woman. Her self-confidence had been taken away from her by these people. And now if someone got in his way … it would be too bad.