Guilt By Silence. Taylor Smith
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the hops-and nicotine-soaked atmosphere of the Trinity Bar. Then he rolled the window up again and glanced back at the men in the rear of the van. The two Russians on the rear-most bench were heavy-eyed, their heads lolling with the motion of the vehicle, on the edge of dropping off to sleep. But Yuri Sokolov, sitting on the center bank of seats, had his gaze fixed on the road ahead, his thoughts impenetrable but obviously stone-cold sober, despite his consumption at the Trinity Bar.
At fifty-two, Sokolov was acknowledged in the arcane world of nuclear physics as the most brilliant mind in the field. Until recently, of course, his reputation in the West had been based entirely on the discoveries of meticulous spycraft, since he had never before stepped outside the Soviet weapons community, nor knowingly circulated a paper in the West.
Sokolov glanced briefly at Kingman, then focused again on the road ahead, watching the snow spinning through the van’s headlights—remembering Moscow nights, perhaps. They were intellectual brothers, Kingman reflected, forced to live their lives as enemies until suddenly, one day, someone had decided to change the rules. Now they had a common purpose—always had, maybe. The vagaries of politics irritated him. There was neither method nor reason to human behavior, and politicians were more irrational than most. Only science was constant, sane.
The single set of headlights rolling north on NM 68 toward the van belonged to a tanker truck making a night run to Taos. Diamond-shaped plaques on the tanker noted the contents as gasoline—hazardous material, highly flammable. The rig was hauling over eight thousand gallons of unleaded fuel and doing sixty on the open road.
When the two vehicles collided, the explosion could be heard all the way to Taos. The fireball rose eighty feet into the air, lighting up the night sky, although the only immediate witnesses to the event were jackrabbits and owls. The heat generated by the fire was enough to twist steel into Silly Putty and incinerate anything else unfortunate enough to be caught in the vicinity. Within a matter of seconds, even the asphalt road was ablaze.
Another car traveling south on NM 68 came upon the accident six minutes after the collision. After realizing that nothing could have survived the inferno, the driver turned back toward Taos to telephone for help from the Trinity Bar. When the emergency vehicles arrived, there was nothing they could do but try to keep the blaze from spreading to the surrounding juniper and piñon trees. It took three hours for the fire to burn itself out. Fire fighters doused the site with foam to guard against another flare-up, but this only served to seal the tomb.
The next day, curiosity seekers from both sides of the closed highway swarmed over the hills for a look, but nothing was left at the scene except a surreal metal sculpture, smoldering ash and the stench of burnt rubber.
A piece of evidence that had miraculously survived the impact of the crash and resulting blaze—the van’s rear license plate—allowed state police to trace the ownership and determine that it had been signed out to Dr. Lawrence Kingman, deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who had been squiring around some scientists visiting New Mexico under the Russia/U.S. Nuclear Cooperation Pact. Someone at Los Alamos remembered that Kingman and a few others attending a dinner at the Hilltop House Hotel earlier that evening had headed down the mesa for drinks afterward.
The police spoke to a waitress at the Trinity Bar who clearly remembered the group and was able to confirm that there had been three Russians and two Americans. The Russkies had been obvious, she’d said, rolling her eyes at the memory of the new cowboy getups they had worn. The table had ordered several drinks over a couple of hours, although they hadn’t been staggering or anything when they left. She was really sad to hear about the accident—the older American had seemed like a good guy.
The federal government took a close interest in the follow-up investigation and insisted that the van and the remains of its occupants be returned. The coroner explained that anything they scraped off the melted highway would consist primarily of American automotive technology and very little by way of identifiable human remains. Investigators were sifting through the rubble, but the blaze appeared to have made as effective a funeral pyre as any crematorium could boast, if a little less tidy.
All the same, the federal men were insistent, and around northern New Mexico everyone knew that you didn’t argue with the feds. They had played a mysterious role in the area ever since World War II, when Manhattan Project scientists working at Los Alamos had conducted a top-secret test—code-named Trinity—of the world’s first atomic bomb. The Trinity test had led directly to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the war with Japan.
If the feds wanted a bulldozed pile of ashes and twisted steel, the coroner decided, they were welcome to it.
4
His secretary hadn’t arrived yet when Mariah entered her chief’s office the next morning to go over the report on the terrorist arms connection. Frank Tucker was there, though, standing at the window and talking on the phone. She hesitated in the doorway, but he spotted her and waved her in, raising a finger to indicate he would be done in a minute.
Perching herself on the edge of his desk, Mariah examined the dusty framed photos of his kids and grandson while she waited. She picked up the picture of Carol, Frank’s daughter, standing in a wedding dress beside her husband, Michael. They had been married four years earlier, just a few weeks before Mariah and David had left for Vienna. Examining the picture, Mariah smiled as she remembered Frank’s uncharacteristic beam when he had walked his daughter down the aisle. His only regret, he’d said, was that his wife hadn’t been there to see their daughter happily married.
Next to the wedding picture was a shot of baby Alex, Carol’s son— “the ankle biter,” Frank called him, his pride obvious behind his good-natured grumbling. He had been born eight months earlier, but the only photo Frank seemed to have was the infant’s hospital picture, little Alex’s face red and squashed like that of every newborn babe since the beginning of time—Lindsay included, Mariah thought, touching the photo with a soft smile. She returned the baby’s picture to its place on Frank’s desk and picked up the remaining frame.
And then there was Stephen, Carol’s twin. The high school graduation photo was at least ten years old. Joanne Tucker’s leukemia had been diagnosed when the twins were two, and they were fifteen when Frank’s wife finally lost her battle with the disease. Carol had become the family’s mother substitute during the long crisis, but Stephen had reacted with anger and defiance, most of it directed against Frank. It hadn’t been an easy time for either of them. Maybe it would have happened, anyway, Mariah thought, a normal conflict between a strong-willed father and an equally stubborn son. In the end, after a period of sullen rebellion and minor scrapes with school authorities, Stephen had finally managed to pull his act together. Now, at twenty-eight, he was a computer specialist deep in the bowels of the CIA. But despite the fact that he had followed his father into the Company, the two were still as different—and incompatible—as night and day.
Frank hung up the phone and turned to Mariah. “Okay, what have you got for me?”
“The latest take on that new arms link,” she said, slipping off the edge of the desk and into a chair across from him. “You know, I still don’t know why we’re doing this, Frank.”
“Doing what?”
“Chasing crazy Irishmen and Libyans and Iranians and God knows who else. How did we get into the terrorist game? You and I are supposed to be Soviet experts.”
“Times have changed. The Soviet Union is kaput.”
“Yes, but their nukes aren’t. Why didn’t they make you head of the new nonproliferation unit? You were the logical choice—and that’s where I wanted to be, too.”
“Call it career development. Guess they decided we should widen our focus a bit. Anyway,” he said, more briskly, “let’s get on with this report. That was the seventh floor on the phone just now. The director wants to read it over the weekend, so we’re going to have to hustle and get this baby delivered.”
“It’s under control.”
Frank nodded.