Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

Sandecker nodded. “No details of this schoolboy spy prank will ever go beyond the walls of NUMA.”

“The Agency appreciates your discretion,” LeGrand said.

Sandecker raised a red eyebrow. “You’re not entirely off the hook,” he said archly. “In exchange I want a full accounting of this sordid affair.”

LeGrand knew there would be a quid pro quo. There always was with Sandecker. He had already decided to lay his cards out on the table.

“You’re certainly justified in demanding an accounting,” he agreed.

“I think so,” Sandecker said agreeably.

“It was quite a task to piece this story together, especially on such short notice, but I’ll do my best to explain what happened.”

“Or thankfully in this case,” Sandecker said, “what didn’t happen.”

LeGrand smiled wanly. “The end of World War II is the beginning of the story. With Germany defeated, the Allied coalition fell apart. Churchill came out with his Iron Curtain speech, and the stage was set for the cold war. The U.S. was still complacent because it was the only country that had the bomb. That smugness was eroded when the Soviets exploded their own nuclear device, and the arms race was on. We gained headway with the hydrogen bomb. But the Russians were breathing down our necks, and it was clearly a matter of time before the Soviets gained parity. As you know, the hydrogen bomb utilized a different process to create an explosion.”

“The thermonuclear bomb uses fusion rather than fission,” said Sandecker, who was well versed in atomic physics, having served on nuclear-powered submarines. “Atoms are joined rather than split apart.”

LeGrand nodded. “The hydrogen atom was fused with the helium atom. The sun and other stars use the same process to create their energy. Once it became known that the main Soviet fusion lab was in Siberia there was talk in our government of sabotage. Hubris was still strong after defeating the Axis, and some people talked nostalgically of the commando raid on the heavy-water plant in Norway. You’re familiar with that mission, of course.”

“You mean the plant that was producing an isotope needed for the production of a German A-bomb,” Sandecker said.

“That’s right. The raid delayed the German effort.”

“A similar commando raid in Siberia would have been an ambitious undertaking, to say the least.”

“As a matter of fact, it would have been impossible,” LeGrand said. “The Norway raid was incredibly difficult to launch, even with accessibility and strong partisan support. There was another consideration as well.”

Sandecker, who tended to see situations from a global perspective, said, “Germany was at war with the Allies at the time of the Norway raid. The U.S.S.R. and the U.S. had not declared open hostilities. Both sides were careful to avoid direct military confrontation. A raid on a Soviet laboratory would be considered an overt act of war that could not be ignored.”

“That’s correct. It would be no different from the Russians destroying a lab in New Mexico. It could have provoked a shooting war.”

Sandecker was not exactly innocent when it came to making end runs around politically dicey situations. “A raid might be feasible, but it would have to be an ironclad secret with no way to trace it.”

LeGrand nodded. “That was precisely what the president said when the situation was presented to him.”

“A tall order indeed,” Sandecker noted.

“Granted, but these were not ordinary men. They had created the greatest military industrial machine in history virtually from scratch and ruthlessly used it to squash two formidable foes on several continents and seas. But even all their determination and resourcefulness wasn’t up to this challenge. Fortunately for them, two unconnected developments intersected and showed them the way. The first was the development of the aircraft that came to be known as the flying wing. The design had its problems, but there was one unplanned characteristic that made it very attractive. Stealth technology. The plane’s slim silhouette and clean surface meant that under the right circumstances it could slip undetected past radar.”

“My guess is that you’re talking about Russian radar,” Sandecker said.

LeGrand smiled mysteriously. “Supposedly all flying wings, including those still in production, were destroyed by the Air Force. But the president gave the go-ahead for a modified version to be built in secret. It had even greater range and speed than any of the original models. In short, here was a delivery system that could get in and out of Siberia without being detected.”

“In my experience the Russians are not a dull people,” Sandecker said. “If their lab went up in smoke they would surmise the U.S. was behind it.”

“Undoubtedly, which is why the second part of the equation was crucial,” LeGrand said. “That was the discovery of anasazium. It was a by-product of the work at Los Alamos. The scientist who discovered the substance was an amateur anthropologist. He was fascinated by the old Pueblo culture that once lived in the Southwest. He named his discovery after the Anasazi. The material has a number of interesting properties. The one that attracted the most interest was its ability to change the hydrogen atom in subtle ways. If anasazium could be secretly introduced into a Soviet weapons lab, it might mess up the fusion research. Estimates were that it would hamstring their bomb project by several years. The U.S. would gain time to build an intercontinental bomber and missile fleet so advanced that the Soviets would never catch up. The plan was to float bombs down on parachutes. They would explode, and release the substance in liquid form, which would get into the lab’s ventilation systems. By itself the substance is not any more harmful than water to humans. Those under attack would think they heard a very strange thunderstorm of extremely short duration.”

“It doesn’t sound exactly like pinpoint bombing.”

“It wasn’t. As they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“What if the plane crashed for some mechanical reason?”

“That possibility was taken into account. There was no poison pill like the one Francis Gary Powers didn’t take after his U-2 crash. They wanted no talkative survivors. No parachutes were packed for the crew. In fact, it would have been impossible to parachute from the plane. Ejection seats had not yet been developed, and the pilot’s canopy could not be jettisoned. If wreckage were found it could always be said that this was an experimental plane tragically gone off-course.”

“The crew knew this?”