The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“I went to see Sy Fillmore in the hospital while I was there. I got it from him.”

“Who’s he?

“A counterterrorism detective. He was doing what I used to do. He went around the bend and they’ve got him in the loony bin in Friends Hospital on Roosevelt Boulevard. So my source is somebody they’re keeping in a padded room.”

“What did he have to say?”

“The brothers in his mosque believe they are about to get their hands on a nuclear bomb.”

“That does sound a little incredible,” Miller said. “Where are they going to get it?”

Britton shrugged. “He didn’t know. What he did know was they have just bought a farm in Durham.”

“North Carolina?” McGuire asked.

“Pennsylvania,” Britton replied. “Bucks County. Upper end of the county. A couple of miles off the Delaware River. The reason they bought the place is because of the old iron mines on it.”

“Iron mines?”

“They’re going to use them as bomb shelters when the nuclear bomb takes out Philadelphia. They’re stocking them with food, etcetera.”

“Tell me about the iron mines,” McGuire said.

“Well, they’ve been there forever,” Britton said. “You remember when Washington crossed the Delaware?”

“I’ve heard about it. I’m not quite that old,” McGuire said.

“He crossed the Delaware in a Durham boat. They were called Durham boats because they moved the iron ore from the iron mines in Durham down the Delaware. They haven’t taken any ore out of them for, Christ, two hundred years, but the mines, the tunnels, are still there, because they were hacked out of solid rock.”

“You believe this story, Jack?” Miller asked.

“I don’t want to believe it, logic tells me not to believe it, but Sy Fillmore tells me the brothers believe it. And I’d like to know where they got the money to buy a hundred-odd-acre farm. That’s high-priced real estate up there. They didn’t pay for it with stolen Social Security checks.”

“Stolen Social Security checks?” Castillo asked.

“That—and ripping off the neighborhood crack dealers—was their primary source of income when I was in the mosque.”

“And the cops in Philadelphia?” Castillo asked. “Chief Inspector Fritz Kramer, for example. What do they say?”

“They found Cy wandering around North Philly babbling to himself,” Britton said. “It was three days before they even found out he was a cop. And he’s been in Friends Hospital ever since, with a cop sitting outside his door, as much to protect Sy from himself as from the AALs. No, Chief Kramer doesn’t believe it. He didn’t even pass it on to the FBI.”

“Where are they going to get a nuke?” Miller asked. “How are they going to move it around, hide it?”

“There were supposed to be thirty-odd suitcase-sized nukes here, smuggled in by the Russians.” McGuire said. “They wouldn’t be hard to move around or hide.”

“You think there’s something to this, Tom?” Castillo asked.

“No. But I’m like Jack. Sometimes there’s things you just shouldn’t ignore because they don’t make sense.”

“So what do we do, tell the FBI?” Castillo asked.

“Why don’t you send Jack back to Philly?” McGuire asked. “I’ll call the Secret Service there—the agent in charge is an old friend of mine—and tell him we’re interested in why a bunch of American muslims from Philadelphia bought that farm, where they got the money to buy it, and what they’re doing with it. And I’ll tell him we can’t say why we’re interested. If and when we get those answers, we can think about it some more.”

“Okay, do it,” Castillo ordered. “Has anyone else got anything for me?”

Everybody shook their heads.

Castillo went on: “What I am going to do now is go to my apartment and pack. Then I’m going to the Old Executive Office Building to wait for Hall. I was going to ask him what to do about our new liaison officer, but Dick and Agnes have told me that’s my problem. Then as soon as he lets me go, I’m going to Philadelphia to see Betty Schneider and then, somehow, I’m going to go to Paris, either tonight or as soon as I can.”