“By definition, it’s not credible. We aren’t missing a weapon. As long as we can’t admit this, it seems to me we shouldn’t go talking to anybody.”
Carrothers started to reply but then sat back down at his desk. Fuller was right. What he really wanted to do was talk to Stafford, this time without the atmospherics of the tombs at Anniston. But he was not so sure he wanted to tell this slippery colonel what he was really thinking. Fuller was still Waddell’s man, and Carrothers knew he was on thin ice with what he was doing visa-vis Wad dell’s orders.
“What you say is true, Colonel. But I think we have a responsibility to make damn sure this weapon isn’t still out there somewhere, especially if there’s an unknown biological capability hatching out in that cylinder. I think Mr. Stafford knows more than he’s letting on.”
“Based on what, General?”
Carrothers started to tell him, but then he thought better of it.
Waddell did not know about his little excursion to I Anniston. Fuller is Waddell’s man, he reminded himself again.
“I just do,” he said. “A hunch, I guess.”
Mason came back into the office. “DCIS regional office, Symrna. Mr. Ray Sparks, regional supervisor. I have the number here.”
“Get him on secure.”
As Mason left the room, Fuller asked Carrothers if he’d like to see a video on Wet Eye he just happened to have.
Carson’s secretary came in with a yellow message slip. “Another losing bidder, wants to complain,” she said, handing him the slip. He nodded and went back to the paper he was working on tfhtil she left the office.
He glanced at the 800 number. Tangent. Good.
He waited fifteen minutes and then told her was going to lunch. Ten minutes later he was standing in a phone booth out on State Road 42. He had to close the door because of all the truck noise. The booth immediately began to cook in the bright Georgia sun. He’d been doing a lot of thinking about how to make the transfer.
“Carson,” he said when the phone was picked up.
“Right. We’ve dropped a little nugget into the FBI’s intelligence system. Stafford should now be in deep kimshii.”
“How in the hell did you manage that?”
“The FBI pays confidential informants to report interesting rumors in the international arms markets. A lot of it’s total bullshit, but sometimes they get lucky. We’re one of the informants.”
“Jesus, that’s playing with fire, isn’t it?”
“Not really. You want to hide from the FBI, do business with them right out in the open. They tend to make everything they do really hard.”
“Won’t DCIS find out about it?”
“Very probably, but we didn’t identify Stafford as a government guy.
Just used his name. But because we said chemical weapon, the Army will probably get a call from the Bureau, and they’ll know exactly which Stafford. That way we get one government agency leaning on another one.
They’ll get all wrapped around the axle over jurisdiction, and we, in the meantime, will get a window to do this thing. You ready?”
“Yeah, but all this other shit’s been distracting the hell out of me.
But I’ve decided one thing: I want the money in cash. Greenback dollars.
Hundreds.”
“You do know you’re talking ten thousand hundred dollar bills, right?
That’s a stack of hundreds about ten feet high.”
“That’s a footlockerful. And that’s how I want it. I don’t know anything about diamonds or any of the rest of that stuff. And I really think we ought to do it here, at the DRMO. Now that the Army’s looking, I don’t want to move that thing.”
Tangent was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “I suppose we can do it there. My client is nervous about our going onto a federal facility for this kind of transaction, that’s all. Some gate guard searches the vehicle, finds the money, it’d be tough to explain.”
“There aren’t any gate guards here at Fort Gillem. It’s an open post.”
“Okay. How’s about the ‘when’ question?”
Carson was ready. “This is Monday. How soon can you have your people here in Atlanta? With the cash?”
“Hell, logistically, we’re ready now. To get down it there, get set up, eight, twelve hours.”
“Okay, here’s how I want to do it. I’ll assume your people can be ready by midnight tonight. That’s twelve hours from now. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours after that, I’ll call them at a number that you designate and tell them to come to Fort Gillem. They get here, there will be instructions on what to do and where to go next.”
“Don’t make this too complicated, Carson.”
“I’m trying to make it safe. For me. A million in cash is a tempting amount of money.”
“How do we know you won’t stiff usl”
“What else am I going to do with this thing except sell it, huh?” Carson asked. “It’s not like I want to own it.” Especially, he thought, after I found out it might be cooking.
“Okay, that works for us. I’ll call one more time to confirm all this.
In about two hours.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
35
“I’ve got Mr. Sparks’s office on secure, General,” Major Mason said from the doorway.
General Carrothers picked up his handset.
“This is Brigadier General Lee Carrothers, deputy commander of the Army Chemical Corps,” he announced.
“This is Leslie Smith, General. I’m the regional DCIS office manager in Smyrna. As I just explained to the major, Mr. Sparks is not available to speak to you, sir.”
“He’s not there? When will he be available?”
“He’s not available to speak to you, General,” she repeated patiently.
“I can’t say when he will be available, sir.”
Carrothers frowned. “You telling me he won’t talk to me, Ms. Smith?”
“I’m just telling you what Mr. Sparks told me to tell you, sir.”
Carrothers held his temper. She wasn’t being disrespectful; she was merely doing what her boss had told her: that he wouldn’t take this call. -, “Okay, Ms. Smith, I understand. Do you have a secure fax number? I need to send something down there that might make Mr. Sparks change his mind.”
She gave him the secure fax number. He thanked her and hung up.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “This guy Sparks won’t take my call.”
Colonel Fuller gave the general a bemused look. “You practically arrested one of his people,” he said. “Held him for a day on a closed post, made him take a lie-detector test, and then turned him loose without so much as a by your-leave, and his boss won’t talk to you?
Unusual boss, this day and age.”
“Maybe. Although I don’t think Stafford knew who I was.”
“He knew it was Army Chemical Corps hassling him, General.”
“Yeah, well. Mason, send a copy of this spot report to this number,” he ordered, handing Mason the paper. “Addressed to Mr. Sparks. Make sure my name and secure drop are on the cover sheet.”
“Yes, sir. Right away.” Mason left the office.
“And Colonel Fuller, when he’s done, I want you and Major Mason to sit down and design a special response team that would be capable of recovering and decontaminating, if necessary, a Wet Eye exposure incident. From both the CW and the BW perspectives.”
Fuller nodded slowly but then frowned. “I can do half of that, General.
The CW side should be pretty straight forward. The chem team and their transport vehicles MOPPed up to the max. Standard decontamination procedurescurrent MOPP gear will protect the troops against the chemical agent. But as I told you, we can’t know what the bugs ‘are doing in there. Or what kind of toxins they might be generating. What granularity, for instance vis-avis the respirator filters.”