“No. Production of hafnium-3 is prohibitively expensive. It would cost a billion dollars for just a few grams. We have something even more powerful. A hafnium isomer called xenobium. It’s more stable than hafnium-3 and twice as powerful.”
Tyler chewed his lip. “You glossed over the fact that both hafnium-3 and induced gamma emission weapons emit gamma rays. How deadly is this xenobium?”
“It can be carried safely in a shielded lead container.”
“And the gamma rays from the explosion of the Killswitch?” Morgan said.
Kessler looked around the table and cleared his throat. “At low altitudes the explosion would produce a lethal dose of radiation for anyone within a mile or more depending on the size of the xenobium trigger.”
“Sounds like a nuclear weapon to me,” Grant chuffed.
“It is non-nuclear in the sense that it is not a fission or fusion device, and as I mentioned there is no lingering radioactive fallout. Beyond the immediate region around the explosion, the effects are not fatal.”
“Supposedly. Didn’t you just say that you haven’t tested it yet?”
“Of course. All our calculations are purely theoretical at this point.”
Everyone went silent at the potential catastrophe if the weapon was set off in a populated area, possibly on July twenty-fifth.
“Do the hijackers have this new isomer?” Tyler finally asked.
“They don’t. All one hundred grams are stored ten stories under Pine Gap, locked in a hardened vault. We had been planning to divide it into five-gram fragments to use in the Killswitch, but right now it’s still secure and in a single piece.”
“Could they have made their own xenobium?”
“As far as we know, no one else is even close to obtaining the capability to manufacture it. The problem is that they might have found another source of the isomer.”
“From where?”
Kessler took a breath and wiped his brow as he sat. “From outer space.”
“Excuse me?” Grant said with a laugh and looked at Tyler while pointing at Kessler. “I thought he said outer space.”
“That’s what I heard,” Tyler said.
“I did say outer space,” Kessler replied, not getting Grant’s sarcasm. “The sample at Pine Gap was found in Western Australia ten years ago. In 1993 a few truck drivers and gold prospectors reported a bright light and a series of thunderous booms. The explosion was so large that it registered 3.9 on the Richter scale. Because the area was so remote and because no one was injured, nobody went to investigate it for years. Some theorized it was a nuclear blast set off by the Aum Shinrikyo cult.”
“Come on!” Grant said incredulously. “The group that gassed the Tokyo subway system?”
“I didn’t say I agreed with such ludicrous speculation. No one ever detected radiation, so the likelihood of an atomic weapon was minimal. However, the impact of an iron meteorite like the one that created the Barringer Crater in Arizona was also ruled out because no crater was found at the site of the seismic event.”
“Leaving what?” Tyler said.
“We now believe it was an airburst explosion of a meteor above twenty thousand feet. With no trees in that part of the desert to be blown down by a shockwave, it’s possible that the evidence would be hard to find. When geologists went to investigate the mystery long after the event, they conducted a careful search of the area around the seismic event and came back with a single sample from the location’s epicenter. After extensive testing, it was determined that the material was an unusual isomer of hafnium called xenobium.”
“Is that the only sample in the world?” Vince asked.
“To our knowledge it’s the only one that still exists. The first known sample was discovered a century ago by a Russian scientist named Ivan Dombrovski.”
Grant snorted. “He sounds like an offensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers.”
Kessler ignored him. “Dombrovski escaped from Russia during the Bolshevik revolution. He claimed to have recovered the material from the area of the Tunguska blast and used it to buy his American citizenship.”
“The Tunguska blast?” Tyler said. “So we know if was caused by an exploding meteorite?”
“No one’s ever been able to definitively prove what caused the blast. Explanations include a meteorite, comet, or even black hole. And some crackpots theorize it was an alien spacecraft that crashed and vaporized in the explosion.”
Tyler and Grant exchanged looks at the mention of aliens. The subject did seem to keep coming up in the last few days. Tyler felt his ironclad skepticism cracking just a bit.
“You’re saying that this xenobium could be an alien artifact?” Grant said.
“Don’t be absurd,” Kessler said. “It could have easily been part of the meteorite or comet that exploded. Dombrovski just found the remnants that didn’t detonate. And so did the Australians.”
“What happened to the sample Dombrovski brought to America?” Tyler said.
“For the next thirty years, he experimented with it. He established a project to take advantage of xenobium’s unique properties and named it Caelus for the Roman god of the sky. Dombrovski was also trying to figure out how to produce more xenobium, but he never was able to.”
“What was the goal of Project Caelus?”
“We don’t know,” Kessler said. “In 1947 his lab was destroyed in a fire set by Soviet spies, taking Dombrovski and the xenobium with it. Most of the records about Caelus were lost as well, but there were enough surviving files to confirm that his xenobium was the same material as the specimen found in Australia.”
Collins entered and nodded at Morgan and Vince. “The Australian police need to talk to one of you.”
“Why?” Morgan said.
“They found the bodies of the men who picked up the Killswitch from the airport.”
“I’ll take it,” Vince said.
“Find out where the crime scene is,” Morgan said. “Tell them we’ll head there in five minutes.”
Vince nodded and left.
Kessler stood. “While we’re taking a break, I need to take my own.” He left at a trot, as though he were barely going to make it to the bathroom.
Grant grinned at the quick exit. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“They’ve been looking for xenobium ever since,” Tyler said under his breath.
“What was that?” Morgan asked.
Tyler suddenly stood when it clicked. “The Russians. They’ve been looking for more xenobium for almost a hundred years.”
“But if that’s what Colchev’s men were looking for,” Grant said, “why did they attack Fay?”
“Maybe they thought she had a sample of it. She said they were asking about a multi-hued metal object, colored like an opal. Hafnium becomes opalescent when it oxidizes, so I’m guessing xenobium does, too. But why did they think she had some?”
“Xenobium!” Grant said, slapping the table. “Remember? It was in the phrase Fay said in the video.”
Grant was right. Tyler wanted to smack himself for not making the connection faster. He wheeled around to Morgan. “Can we get to the Internet from in here?”
“No. Every computer in here is cut off. Why do you need it?”
“We need to see Fay’s video. Take me to a computer with Web access.”
Morgan was dubious but led Tyler and Grant back to the office where her laptop was, passing Vince speaking on his phone in the hallway. She opened the computer and let Tyler find Fay’s video on YouTube. He dragged the slider until he got to Fay’s appearance and the phrase she was told by the creature she’d encountered.
“Rah pahnoy pree vodat kahzay nobee um.”
“My God,” Morgan said.
“She must have gotten the pronunciation wrong. Whoever or whatever spoke to Fay was trying to tell her something about xenobium.”