“A smoking stick into the hornet’s nest,” he said with a laugh. He glanced at Remo, but the man never took his eyes off the road.
Suarez returned to his typing. There would be more than a mere FBI investigation underway. If he was correct, the CIA would be working inside the USA, their resources added to that of the local police and the FBI, to monitor the activities of all internal religious and minority groups. Divide and confuse, he thought.
President Kerry was with the Joint Chiefs all day. No one was quite sure who had called who first that morning. It didn’t real y matter.
It was with great reservation that the New York Times had printed the terrorists’ manifesto. When their first call to verify the story had been met with the simple statement from the Pentagon to “just print it”, they had taken that as verification enough and done so. It was the Times article and the threat that, if it wasn’t printed, “more” bombs would be detonated that had led President Kerry to address the nation. But, with typical political vagueness, he’d omitted the details, and many analysts thought he had left some doubt about the real situation.
Because of this, the Times found itself the fall guy, trying to answer questions without any real information.
Their best reporters couldn’t crack anyone in Government, and no one was being allowed into McMurdo or any other place in Antarctica. The world now knew about the bombs in the ice, and they knew from the manifesto and the speech that one of those bombs had been detonated. But subsequent editorials in the Times and other papers called the information just “credible speculation”. Some sources told the media it was true, others denied it. Still other — usually reliable — sources claimed to know nothing at all. The world was up to its ears in half-truths, gossip, speculation and denial.
Dedicated as it was to the “fair dissemination of truth”, the New York Times was becoming concerned that it had become a source of not facts but mere rumours. The best it could offer anyone was the manifesto, which seemed to be mostly lunatic ravings, and that sourceless statement from the Pentagon: “Just print it”. After several days, the newspaper’s editor went on TV’s Sixty Minutes to tell the world he’d expected more information, but had it never come. He wanted to stop the calls that were cramming his switchboard. He wanted the truth to come out, and would print it the moment it crossed his desk. But all he could do was sit there for an hour and field questions.
Were there really “more” A-bombs in the ice?
Were the nations of the world taking action and, if so, what?
Could anything be done to prevent further detonations?
Had the President or anyone else talked to the terrorists?
These and hundreds of other questions remained unanswered. And the broadcast did nothing to clear his desk or put anyone at ease — in fact, the entire media industry was now believed to be involved in what many were calling the “conspiracy of fear and denial”.
The citizenry who’d been evacuated from McMurdo had been debriefed by the US military, and they’d all been told to keep quiet about the incident for reasons of “utmost national and world security”. So, even though the word had gotten out, that only told people one thing: something had happened near McMurdo, something people thought was an atom bomb. But in the end nothing could be verified, and everyone in every government was suspected of keeping secrets.
The truth was that no one knew what to say. The prime ministers and presidents of the world watched each other, waiting for someone to drop the first boot. No one wanted to do so. In the end, it was President Kerry who found himself holding that boot. He threw it, long distance, via satellite to General Hayes.
“With all due respect sir,” said Hayes into his headset phone, trying to keep the strain out of his voice, “we can’t arrest someone on a guess. We have about forty candidates vying to be our terrorist. And the latest string of copycat threats coming in around the world is clouding the issue and taxing our resources…”
Grimes and Admiral Schumacher stood at Hayes’s side in the captain’s office, waiting to offer answers should they be needed. But it seemed that the President wasn’t interested in talking to anyone but Hayes.
“I know sir,” said Hayes after a further brief pause, “but the truth is we also don’t know where he is. Yes — I’m talking about Suarez.”
Grimes shook his head and lit a cigarette. Then he looked at the ashtray in front of him and realized he already had one lit. He mumbled a curse as he tamped out the first one.
“We think he was in Chile or Bolivia around the time the bombs were planted,” said Hayes, staring at the ceiling as he leaned back in a large leather chair. “And, well, we have no record of him ever going to Antarctica. I’m sorry to have to tell you, but we can’t connect him with any atomic materials, either.”
Smoke curled slowly into the air-conditioning duct in the centre of the tiled ceiling. The general watched it move about the room as he listened to President Kerry rage at him.
“I know this isn’t what you want to hear, sir, but until we can tag him with something we have to work on the principle that he’s not our man. The only person who can place Suarez hasn’t yet been able to give us a positive ID. Yes, sir, we’ve showed him lots of pictures. We’re doing all we can.”
There was another pause.
“In Santiago, sir,” answered the general. Everyone in the room heard the President’s reaction to that one.
Hayes lifted the earphone away from his head and winced. Then he sat up in the chair and reached for his cigar, which had grown an inch of ash while he’d been talking to the President.
“Yes, sir!” he finally said.
Gladly he pushed the disconnect button on the console in front of him and got up. “You can have your chair back now, Milborne. Thanks for the loan. Er, it’s not too comfortable, is it?”
Schumacher laughed out loud. “No need to thank me.
I can’t wait to give it up to its rightful owner when he gets back from his stroke session with President Frei. Halsey’s better at politicking than I am.”
There was no need for Hayes to explain the details of President Kerry’s end of the conversation. The other two men in Halsey’s private office were well aware of the situation; what they hadn’t heard blaring from the phone’s tiny headphone they could easily guess.
“We have to find some way to get Gibbs to finger the guy,” said Grimes. “He must have looked at those photos a hundred times. The more we press him, the more unsure he gets about what the guy looked like.”
“And we haven’t got a clue where Suarez is?” asked Schumacher.
“Well, he’s not at his villa in Arica,” said Hayes.
“And we can’t shake down his family. That would just tip him off,” offered Grimes.
Schumacher: “Is there some way to draw him out?”
“I’ve considered some anonymous e-mail messages, because we know he’s receiving his e-mail,” said Hayes.
“But that’s risky.” He shook his fist at an unseen sky.
“Come on, God,” he said. “You’re supposed to be on the side of the good guys. Give us something, anything!”
Seven
“Somehow, I keep thinking we should call in,” said Sarah, rolling over under the fluffy comforter.