Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

“Because as much as they encouraged Maria to talk she couldn’t tell them something she didn’t know.”

I sent Slick my very best dumb blond look. I didn’t trust him. And I wasn’t going to tell him something he didn’t already know.

“I don’t suppose you’d know anything about this?” Slick asked.

“Sorry. I wasn’t on deck at the end when Bill and Maria took off. There was water in the fuel line, and I was in the engine room trying to get the Happy Hooker up and running. That’s why they transferred everything over to the Sunseeker. Or at least I thought they transferred everything.”

Slick locked eyes with me for a couple beats. “You should work with us,” he said. “We can help you.”

“What happened to the inside guy?”

“Disappeared.”

“Tell me about the canister,” I said.

“You don’t want to know about the canister.”

“I can find out for myself. I was there when they brought it up, and I know what it looks like. I can go on the Net and research the markings.”

There was a silent exchange between Slick and Gimpy.

“I’ll give you a history lesson first,” Slick said. “Because if I just tell you the contents of the canister you’re going to think I’ve been seeing too many doomsday movies.

“Khrushchev launched Operation Anadry in June of ’62 and began sending troops and weapons to Cuba. The Soviet military deployment to Cuba by fall of ’62 included medium-and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missile systems, coastal defense missiles, MiG fighter aircraft, medium-range bombers, and battlefield artillery. Plus there were forty-two thousand Soviet troops on the island, operating the equipment and training Cubans.

“The warheads in place included nuclear, conventional HE, chemical, and cluster munitions that were capable of penetrating the United States and of defending Cuba.

“Khrushchev decided more was needed. So the Soviet freighter Indigirka left the Soviet Union on September fifteenth, 1962, and arrived in the Cuban port of Mariel on October fourth. The Indigirka was carrying forty-five SS4 and SS5 warheads, thirty-six FKR warheads, which were approximately twelve kilotons each, and twenty-eight warheads containing a new-generation chemical agent, SovarK2.

“Kennedy went nose to nose with Khrushchev on October twenty-second, and in November the Soviets started pulling their strategic weapons out of Cuba. To date, twenty-seven of the SovarK2 warheads have been accounted for and removed. The twenty-eighth SovarK2 warhead was smuggled out of the country, along with one hundred bars of gold from the bank of Cuba, hours after Kennedy enforced the blockade of Soviet ships en route to Cuban ports.

“Intelligence indicates that this was a back door for Castro, should he need to leave the country. He’d have money, and he’d have a bargaining chip. The gold and the canister of SovarK2 were secretly given over to Maria’s grandfather for transport to possibly Grand Cayman, and from there it would go by plane to South America.

“We’re not sure what happened, but the fishing boat never reached its scheduled destination.”

“The story I heard was that Maria’s grandfather was bringing gold into Cuba,” I said to Slick.

“When the gold and the canister of SovarK2 went missing Castro launched a search, and that was the cover story. It wouldn’t have done much for his image if it became known he was planning to flee in case of invasion. The part about Maria’s grandfather being a smuggler is probably true. There was money to be made off the Russians. In fact, the advance information Enrique Raffles had that night might have been the story circulated. It’s possible Raffles didn’t know until the very last moment, when the truck arrived on the dock with the gold and the SovarK2, what the true mission would be.”

“And this canister of SovarK2?”

“Is essentially a bomb. It contains somewhere between forty-six to fifty-three pounds of liquid SovarK2. SovarK2 is similar to the nerve agent Sarin used during the Gulf War, but SovarK2 is far more potent. It has an indefinite shelf life and is highly volatile. It’s colorless and odorless in both gas and liquid forms. Skin absorption can cause death in one to two minutes. Respiratory lethal doses kill in one to ten minutes. Liquid in the eye kills almost instantly. And you want to hope for a lethal dose of this stuff because the pain and suffering an

d permanent neurological damage will make you wish you were dead.

“The agent in the canister in question is in relatively stable form unless the canister is accidentally pierced or intentionally combined with a device to disperse. On a modest estimate, the canister has the ability to deliver six million lethal doses. If disseminated over Miami there would be tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people killed. And under the right conditions, millions could be incapacitated beyond help.”

“So, if Salzar got his hands on this and turned it over to his friend in Cuba, they could use it to persuade us to accept their government?”

“Or possibly to persuade Castro to step down and allow them to take over.”

“Would they actually use it? Are they that crazy?”

Slick shrugged. “Hard to say. The original intent was that the canister would be the payload on a warhead, and it would be exploded over a target area. But it might be possible to put a dispersion mechanism on the cylinder that would allow dissemination of a small amount and hold the rest in reserve. It would cause a lot of damage, and Salzar and friend would still have cards to play.”

The thought that this stuff even existed made my skin crawl. And the realization that we’d had it on board the Happy Hooker took my breath away.

“Here’s the thing,” Slick said. “We need to get to the canister before Salzar. And don’t for a minute think that Hooker won’t talk. Salzar will make him talk.