“Are you suggesting corporate espionage might be behind all this?”
“I really don’t know, but there’s big money to be made in nuclear power. That’s especially true with emerging nuclear states like China. They need power badly, and I can believe they could see this as the way forward for them.”
“Okay. Good to know. Let me think about that.”
Prichard had some decisions to make and I was getting antsy to get going. I knew what had to be done, even if he didn’t. As the pensive silence on the phone grew, I knew I needed to prompt him. He needed to know it was okay to get me involved. With nobody else around to tell him that, it fell to me.
“Jeff,” I said with compassion as well as a sense of urgency in my voice, “the clock is running. We have a short time frame and a lot to do. What I need from you right now is the green light to proceed.”
I heard him take a deep breath, as if thinking of all the ways this could come back to haunt him if he authorized me to proceed, and a number of ways it would if he didn’t. In the end, I knew he would come around to doing something proactive. Guys like him are men of action. Conservative decision makers for the most part, but action oriented nonetheless. With conviction in his voice, he said, “Go.”
“I’ll do my best for you, sir.” And with that, I hung up. Time to get moving. Prichard knew enough to approve my actions, without compelling me to tell him my plan. As hard as it was going to be for him, the less he knew about what I had in mind, the better for the time being.
Prichard put his phone down. He was used to spending money to make his plant the showpiece in the industry. For the last several years he’d done just that in his tenure as the leader of this technological marvel. Now he was sure he’d just hired the best protection services available. He didn’t know exactly what would be done or how, but he knew a bit more about Nick than perhaps Nick knew. When he was in Washington, he’d attended a confidential meeting in which NeXus was discussed. For all intents and purposes, NeXus was a private firm. But he’d found out that the government fully supported its efforts with intelligence and equipment. The real skinny always comes out during one-on-one meetings over dinner or drinks with high-ranking government officials. It seemed Nick was something of an anomaly in military circles. Seems that Nick had been awarded the Medal of Honor and was currently one of only a handful of living recipients of that honor. He was also the only one still in the service of his country. All the other living recipients were in their sixties or seventies. But even more interesting to Prichard was that Nick’s earning the military’s highest award was classified information, which, despite his connections, he was not able to find out much about. He could only speculate about what Nick had done to earn it, and polite inquiries were immediately rebuffed. Prichard knew it would be unwise to continue to ask. But he also knew enough to know that Nick was something special. And right now, he was very glad to have had Nick’s assurance that he would do his best.
CHAPTER 24
I met with Pete back at the cabin over a quick sandwich and filled him in on what was going on, including a rundown on the fight in The Tavern and seeing Jansen outside.
“I had the distinct impression he wanted me to see him.”
“That’s about his style,” Pete observed. “He always was a bit of hot dog, wasn’t he?” Pete knew Jansen, too. “What else do we have?”
“Not much yet. But the plant’s senior NRC resident is involved and she’s the one who brought us the intel. I’ve got her keeping track of the FBI and the locals.”
“She? Is she up to this?” Pete said with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
I chose to ignore the inference for the moment. “My read is yes. We’ll see. We don’t have much to say about it either way. She has intel about what’s going on and she’s already involved.”
I’d worked with women operatives before, overseas. Most of them were locals and, because of that, they were well motivated. But Marti wasn’t an operative. She was probably an engineer by trade who’s training was in regulatory enforcement. I had no clear idea how she would perform under pressure. Like all people, she’d probably perform consistent with her abilities. Not knowing what those were, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt — for the time being. I really had no choice. She was in this and it might be for the best.
“We have to assume the report has been compromised and that Jansen has it,” I told Pete.
"I assume you left a few things out of the report, as usual?”
“Of course,” I said with a sly smile. “I don’t want them to know everything I know.”
“Does Prichard know that?”
“No, I didn’t tell him. Best to leave it at that for now.”
I usually found a few things that were best not to bring to anyone’s attention. These were things that were either too extreme to really matter or too sensitive to put down in writing. All these big plants have a Trojan horse or back door through their security system if you know where to look and if you have the resolve to exploit it. But you had to know what you were looking for. And I did.
“Intel we got from Marti indicates the terrorists have knowledge of the dead woman. So we have an insider, which has been confirmed by the FBI. Because of that, we need to focus our efforts on the plant and not worry about the external threat to the transmission system, if in fact there is one.”
Pete was listening as he worked on his computer. He could multi-task easily enough.
“One more thing,” I continued. “The dead woman was married to a ventilation system engineer. We have to assume that the engineer didn’t kill his own wife. So it’s reasonable to assume the insider killed her, maybe to get to him.”
“That’s risky, isn’t it?” Pete observed. “It tips their hand. They couldn’t assume that nobody would find that out. They can’t be that stupid.”
“We can hope they’re that stupid, but I don’t think so. That means they’re either reckless and amateurs or they’re confident that it really doesn’t matter. More likely it means they assumed that by the time anyone found out, it wouldn’t matter anymore. That points to a short timetable.”
Pete looked up from his computer. “Agreed. Based on what we’re seeing so far, something tells me that this could get seriously bad in a hurry.” Then, as an afterthought, he said, “I’m surprised Jansen did that, to tell the truth. Know what I mean?”
I shoot him a look but moved on. “I’m sure there’s more to that than we know. The good news is that we have some time, though not much, to get into this before something happens. But we need to get moving.”
“What do you have in mind?” asked Pete, ready and anxious to begin.
“I have some ideas, but nothing solid yet. I need you to get all the intel you can from the sheriffs office, the FBI, wherever. We’re going to need to know what they know and what they’re planning to do. Meanwhile, I’m heading south. I need to talk this over with the Old Man. It’ll be late by the time I get there. I’ll probably spend the night and come back early tomorrow.”