Goodbye California. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ He’s the kind of trusty henchman that Donahure surrounds himself with.’

      ‘Donahure could block the enquiry.’

      ‘No chance. John Aaron, the Editor of the Examiner, has been campaigning for years against police corruption in general and Chief Donahure in particular. A letter to the editor asking why Donahure failed to act on information received would be transferred from the readers’ page to page one. The swamp, you say, Jeff? Me, I’d go for Cypress Bluff. Two hundred feet sheer into the Pacific, then sixty feet of water. Ocean bed’s littered with cars past their best. Anyway, I want you to take your own car and go up there and drop all this confiscated stuff and the rest of those old police badges to join the rest of the ironmongery down there.’

      Jeff pursed his lips. ‘You don’t think that old goat would have the nerve to come around here with a search warrant?’

      ‘Sure I do. Trump up any old reason – he’s done it often enough before.’

      Jeff said, wooden-faced: ‘He might even invent some charge about tampering with evidence at the reactor plant?’

      ‘Man’s capable of anything.’

      ‘There’s some people you just can’t faze.’ Jeff left to fetch his car.

      Jablonsky said: ‘What was that meant to mean?’

      ‘Today’s generation? Who can tell? You mentioned the GAO. What about the GAO?’

      ‘Ah, yes. They produced a report on the loss of nuclear material for a government department with the memorable name of the “House Small Business Subcommittee on Energy and Environment”. The report was and is classified. The Subcommittee made a summary of the report and declassified it. The GAO would appear to have a low opinion of ERDA. Says it doesn’t know its job. Claims that there are literally tons of nuclear material – number of tons unspecified – missing from the thirty-four uranium and plutonium processing plants in the country. GAO say they seriously question ERDA’s accountability procedures, and that they haven’t really a clue as to whether stuff is missing or not.’

      ‘Dr Durrer wouldn’t have liked that.’

      ‘ERDA were hopping. They said there was – and I know it to be true – up to sixty miles of piping in the processing system of any given plants, and if you multiply that by thirty-four you have a couple of thousand miles of piping, and there could be a great deal of nuclear material stuck in those pipes. GAO completely agreed but rather spoiled things by pointing out that there was no way in which the contents of those two thousand miles could be checked.’

      Jablonsky peered gloomily at the base of his empty glass. Ryder rose obligingly and when he returned Jablonsky said accusingly but without heat: ‘Trying to loosen my tongue, is that it?’

      ‘What else? What did ERDA say?’

      ‘Practically nothing. They’d even less to say shortly afterwards when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission compounded that attack on them. They said in effect two things: that practically any plant in the country could be taken by a handful of armed and determined men and that the theft-detection systems were defective.’

      ‘You believe this?’

      ‘No silly questions, please – especially not after what happened today.’

      ‘So there could be tens of tons of the stuff cached around the country?’

      ‘I could be quoted on my answer?’

      ‘Now it’s your turn for silly questions.’

      Jablonsky sighed. ‘What the hell. It’s eminently possible and more than probable. Why are you asking those questions, Sergeant?’

      ‘One more and I’ll tell you. Could you make an atom bomb?’

      ‘Sure. Any competent scientist – he doesn’t have to be a nuclear physicist – could. Thousands of them. School of thought that says that no one could make an atomic bomb without retracing the Manhattan project – that extremely long, enormously complicated and billion-dollar programme that led to the invention of the atom bomb in World War Two. Rubbish. The information is freely available. Write to the Atomic Energy Commission, enclose three dollars and they’ll be glad to let you have a copy of the Los Alamos Primer, which details the mathematical fundaments of fission bombs. A bit more expensive is the book called Manhattan District History, Project Y, the Los Alamos Project. For this you have to approach the Office of Technical Services of the US Department of Commerce, who will be delighted to let you have a copy by return post. Tells you all about it. Most importantly, it tells you of all the problems that arose in the building of the first atomic bomb and how they were overcome. Stirring stuff. Any amount of works in public print – just consult your local library – that consist of what used to be the supersecret information. All else failing, the Encyclopedia Americana will probably tell any intelligent person as much as he needs to know.’

      ‘We have a very helpful government.’

      ‘Very. Once the Russians had started exploding atom bombs they reckoned the need for secrecy was past. What they didn’t reckon on was that some patriotic citizen or citizens would up and use this knowledge against them.’ He sighed. ‘It would be easy to call the government of the day a bunch of clowns but they lacked the gift of Nostradamus: “hindsight makes us all wise”.’

      ‘Hydrogen bombs?’

      ‘A nuclear physicist for that.’ He paused then went on with some bitterness: ‘Provided, that is, he’s fourteen years of age or over.’

      ‘Explain.’

      ‘Back in nineteen-seventy there was an attempted nuclear blackmail of a city in Florida. Police tried to hush it up but it came out all the same. Give me a million dollars and a safe conduct out of America or I’ll blast your city out of existence, the blackmailer said. Next day came the same threat, this time accompanied by a diagram of a hydrogen bomb – a cylinder filled with lithium hydride wrapped in cobalt, with an implosion system at one end.’

      ‘That how they make a hydrogen bomb?’

      ‘I wouldn’t know.’

      ‘Isn’t that sad? And you a nuclear physicist. They nailed the blackmailer?’

      ‘Yes. A fourteen-year-old boy.’

      ‘It’s an advance on fireworks.’ For almost a minute Ryder gazed into the far distance, which appeared to be located in the region of his toe-caps, through a drifting cloud of blue-grey smoke, then said:

      ‘It’s a come-on. A con-job. A gambit. A phoney. Don’t you agree?’

      Jablonsky was guarded. ‘I might. If, that is to say, I had the faintest idea what you were talking about.’

      ‘Will this theft of the uranium and plutonium be made public?’

      Jablonsky gave an exaggerated shrug. ‘No, sir. Not if we can help it. Mustn’t give the shivers to the great American public.’

      ‘Not if you can help it. I’ll take long odds that the bandits won’t be so bashful and that the story will have banner head-lines in every paper in the State tomorrow. Not to mention the rest of the country. It smells, СКАЧАТЬ