Major Schaeffer inquired again, “What were you doing there?”
“I was sizing up the suspect and collecting forensic evidence.”
“What kind of forensic evidence?”
“Hairs and carpet fibers.” I explained what I’d done.
Major Schaeffer listened, then asked, “Where is this evidence now?”
“In my possession.”
“When are you giving it to me?”
“Well, I think there’s a jurisdictional question that needs to be resolved first.”
“No, there isn’t. Murder is a state crime.”
I reminded him, “You haven’t classified it as a murder.”
There was silence as Major Schaeffer contemplated the consequences of his fence-straddling. Finally, he said, “I could arrest you for withholding evidence.”
“You could, if you could find me.”
“I can find you.”
“No, I’m really good at this.” I said, “I’ll think about what’s best for this investigation, and best for me and my partner.”
“Don’t think too long.” He asked me, “What did Madox have to say?”
“We talked about bears.” I informed Major Schaeffer, “I put Bain Madox on notice that he was a material witness in a possible homicide investigation.” I explained how I did that, and concluded, “Now, he needs to cooperate, voluntarily, or involuntarily, and that also puts some heat on him.”
Schaeffer replied, “Yeah. I understand how that works, Detective. Thank you.” He asked me, “When did murder in New York State become a Federal crime?”
“When did Harry Muller’s death become a murder?”
Clearly, Major Schaeffer was not happy with me or my methods, so he didn’t answer my question, but informed me, “Madox may now have to cooperate in the investigation, but you’ll never see him again without his lawyer present.”
I wondered if Madox’s lawyer was coming to dinner. On that subject, I decided not to tell Schaeffer about Madox inviting me to dinner until I was well on my way to Custer Hill. I mean, I needed him to know where I was, in case there was a problem. But I didn’t want him to know about it too early in case he or Griffith became part of the problem by arresting me.
He said, “Okay, I’ve done you some favors, and you’ve done me some favors. I think we’re even on favors.”
“Actually, I have a few more favors to ask of you.”
“Put them in writing.”
“And then I’ll owe you a favor.”
No reply. I think he was pissed. Nevertheless, I said, “Speaking of diesels, did you ever find out how big those diesel generators are at Custer Hill?”
“Why is that important?”
“I don’t know that it is. I’m sure it’s not. But I saw that building there—”
“Yeah. I saw it, too, when I was hunting there.”
I let a few seconds pass, then he said, “I had one of my men call Potsdam Diesel, but my guy got the information wrong, or their office person didn’t read the file right.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, my guy said they told him the generators put out two thousand kilowatts.” He paused, then said, “Each. Hell, that could power a small town. It must be twenty kilowatts—maybe two hundred, tops. Or maybe twenty thousand watts.”
“Is there a difference?”
“There is if you stick your dick in a light socket.” He dropped that subject and said to me, “Let me give you some advice.”
“Okay.”
“You’re not in business for yourself. This is a team effort. Rejoin the team.”
Kate raised her hand in a seconding motion.
I said to Major Schaeffer, “It’s a little late for that.”
“You and your wife should get over to headquarters now.”
It’s always nice to be invited home again, and it’s tempting, but I didn’t trust my family any longer, so I said, “I think you have all the Federal agents you need there.”
He offered, “I’ll meet you someplace that’ll make you feel . . . safer.”
“Okay. I’ll let you know where to meet us later.”
Before he could respond, I hung up and looked at Kate, who said, “John, I think we should go to—”
“End of discussion. New topic. Potsdam Diesel.” I picked up the phone and dialed Potsdam Diesel, whose phone number I recalled from their service truck.
A young lady answered, “Potsdam Diesel. This is Lu Ann. How can I help you?”
I hit the Speaker button. “Hi, Lu Ann. This is Joe, the caretaker at the Custer Hill Club.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have Al here servicing the generators.”
“Is there a problem?”
“No, but could you pull the sales and service files for me?”
“Hold on.”
The speaker started playing Muzak and I said to Kate, “I’m not current on watts—no pun intended—but Schaeffer wasn’t believing six thousand . . . what were they called? Megawatts?”
Kate replied, “Kilowatts. A thousand watts is a kilowatt. Six thousand kilowatts is six million watts. A lightbulb is usually seventy-five watts.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of—”
Lu Ann was back. “I have it. How can I help you?”
“Well, if I lost power and the generators kicked in, could I make toast and coffee in the morning?”
She laughed and said, “You could make toast and coffee for Potsdam.”
“Yeah? So, how many kilowatts do I have?”
“Okay, you have three Detroit brand, sixteen-cylinder diesel engines, each capable of driving its matching generator to two thousand kilowatts.”
Kate and I exchanged glances.
I said to Lu Ann, “No kidding? How old are these generators? Is it time to replace them?”
“No. They were installed in . . . 1984 . . . but they should last forever with service.”
“But how much is a new one?”
“Oh . . . I’m not sure, but the cost of these in 1984 was $245,000.”
“Each?”
“Yes, each. Today . . . well, a lot more.” She asked me, “Is there a problem with the service?”
“No. Al’s doing a great job. I can see him sweating from here. When is he going to be finished?”
“Well . . . we only have Al and Kevin . . . this was called in Saturday afternoon, and we’re real busy . . . You know you’re paying on an expedited basis?”
Kate and I again glanced at each other. I said to Lu Ann, “No problem. In fact, add a thousand dollars to Mr. Madox’s bill for Al and Kevin.”
“That’s very generous of you—”
“So, what do you think? Another hour?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to call them, or do you want to go talk to them?”
“You call them. Look, we’re having a big dinner party, so maybe they can come back another time.”
“When would you like to schedule that?”
“November thirty-first.”
“Okay . . . oh . . . I see here there’s only thirty days in—”
“I’ll call you on that. Meanwhile, give these guys a holler, and tell them to knock off. I’ll hold.”
“Hold on, please.”
The phone started playing “The Blue Danube Waltz” for some reason, and I said to Kate, “I should have done this an hour ago.”
“Better late than not at all.” She added, “Six thousand kilowatts.”
“Right. Why am I listening to The Blue Danube Waltz?”
“You’re on hold.”
“Do you want to dance—?”
Lu Ann came back on the line and said, “Well, I have good news. They’re finished, and they’re packing their tools.”
“Great.” Shit.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Pray for world peace.”
“Okay . . . that’s nice.”
“Lu Ann, you have a good evening.”
“You, too,
Joe.”
I hung up and said to Kate, “In the history of the world, this is the first time a service crew finished ahead of schedule.”
“Madox wasn’t going to let those guys leave anyway. So, if we weren’t convinced that we were looking at an ELF antenna, that information should convince us.”
“I was already convinced. This is the clincher.” I added, “If you notice the silverware glowing tonight, let me know.”
“John, we are not going—”
“What is the downside of going there for dinner?”
“Death, dismemberment, disappearance, and divorce.”
“We can handle that.”
“I have a better idea. Let’s get in that van and drive to Manhattan. Now. We’ll call Tom on the way—”
“Forget it. I am not going to be on the fucking Thruway talking to Tom Walsh on my cell phone, while the shit is hitting the fan right here. In fact, the real reason we’re going to the Custer Hill Club tonight is not dinner, or to gather more evidence, but to determine if we can and should place Mr. Bain Madox under arrest for the murder of—sorry, the assault on—Federal Agent Harry Muller.”
She thought about that, then replied, “I don’t think we have enough evidence, or probable cause to—”
“Fuck the evidence. We have the evidence. It’s in those bags. And the probable cause is the sum total of everything we’ve seen and heard.”
She shook her head and said, “An arrest on any Federal charge—especially of a man like Bain Madox—would be premature, and could get us in real trouble.”
“We’re already there.” I added, “We need to arrest this bastard tonight. Before he does whatever he thinks he’s going to do next.”
She didn’t say anything, and I thought I’d made my point. “All right, let’s have the bad news.” I added, in a nicer tone, “Then I can make a rational decision about what to do next.”
She said, “I thought you might have figured it out by now.”
“I would have mentioned it if I did. Hold on.” I thought for ten full seconds, and something was trying to connect in my brain, but I had too many things on my mind, so I asked, “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”
She moved to the desk and, still standing, pulled the laptop closer. “Let me show you something.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Kate hit a few keys on the laptop computer, and a page of text came up on the screen. She said, “That’s an unpublished piece about Mikhail Putyov, written ten years ago.”
I glanced at the screen. “Yeah? And?”
She turned the computer toward me and said, “The writer is a fellow named Leonid Chernoff, another Russian nuclear physicist, also living in the U.S. This piece is in the form of a letter to fellow physicists, in which he praises Putyov’s genius.”
I didn’t respond.
She continued, “And here”—she scrolled—“Chernoff writes, and I quote, ‘Putyov is quite content now in his teaching position, and finds his work challenging and rewarding. Though one must ask if he is as challenged as when he worked at the Kurchatov Institute on the Soviet miniaturization program.’” She looked at me. “End quote.”
“Miniaturization of what?”
“Nuclear weapons. Like nuclear artillery shells, for instance, or land mines. Also, nuclear suitcase bombs.”
It took me half a second to get it, and I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. “Holy shit . . .” I stared stupidly at the illuminated laptop screen, my mind racing through everything we’d heard, discovered, knew, and suspected.
“John, I think there are two nuclear suitcase bombs in Los Angeles, and two in San Francisco.”
“Holy shit.”
“I don’t know the final destination of those weapons, or if Madox’s two aircraft are going to be transporting those suitcases to their ultimate destination or destinations, or if they’re going to be put on a ship, or—”
“We need to ground those aircraft.”
“Done. I called my friend Doug Sturgis, who’s the ASAC in the LA field office, and told him to put those two aircraft under surveillance in case the pilots show up, or have the planes impounded as evidence in a Federal case that was urgent and of the highest priority.”
I nodded. Her “friend” Doug was, I think, an old boyfriend from when she’d been posted in LA some years ago. I’d had the pleasure of meeting this pin dick when Kate and I had chased down Asad Khalil in California—and I had no doubt that this wimp would jump through his ass for his old pal Kate.
Still, I didn’t see how Kate could kick off a major case with a single phone call to some assistant special agent in charge in LA. I mean, the workings of the FBI remain a mystery to me, but I seem to recall a chain of command.
I asked her about this, and she replied, “What I did—to avoid going through Tom Walsh—was to ask—plead with Doug—to treat this as an anonymous terrorist threat tip.” She informed me, “That will actually get the ball rolling faster, if Doug says that the tip sounded legitimate.”
“Right. And he’s doing this?”
“He said he would.” She added, “I explained that I . . . and you . . . were having some credibility problems with the ATTF, but that I had this extremely reliable information, and it was urgent, and it was in his jurisdiction, and—”
“Okay. I got it. And he’s your pal, so he stuck his neck out for you.”
“He wouldn’t stick his neck out for anyone. But he does have to respond to a credible terrorist threat.”
“Right. I guess he knows you’re credible.”
“Can we move on?”
“Yeah. I just needed to know that this is in the right hands, and it’s not sitting in someone’s tomorrow box.”
She moved on. “I also gave Doug the names Tim Black and Elwood Bellman, and I told him that Black was probably staying in a hotel in Los Angeles, and Bellman in San Francisco, and that we needed to find these pilots ASAP.” She added, “I told him my suspicion that they could be transporting suitcase nukes.”
I nodded. That was the right move, obviously. “Did that get his attention?”
She ignored that and continued, “He promised to begin a manhunt in LA immediately, and to call the San Francisco field office, and also to put this out to all local law enforcement agencies in both cities and suburbs. He will also speak to his boss in LA, and both of them will call the Directors in Charge in New York and Washington, and report this tip. Doug will affirm that he believes it is a credible tip, based on the specific nature of the information and so forth, and he’ll describe the actions he’s taking.”
“Good. But if this turns out to be four suitcases filled with porn magazines for Madox’s Arab friends, will Doug take the rap? Or will he mention your name?”
She looked at me and asked, “Do you think I’m wrong on this?”
I thought a moment, then replied, “No. I think you’re right. Four suitcase nukes. I’m with you.”
“Good. Thank you.” She continued, “I told Doug to ask for an elevated domestic terrorist threat level.”
“That should get the LA office off their surfboards.” I reminded her, “This is not actually a domestic threat.”
“No. And Bain Madox is not a terrorist . . . well, maybe he is. But I couldn’t figure out how to classify a plot to send four suitcase nukes overseas, so I said to Doug, ‘Treat it like an elevated domestic threat, as long as we believe the suitcases are still in LA and San Francisco.’”
“Good move.”
“The FBI in both cities are contacting all the local cab companies to see if any of their drivers remember picking up a male passenger at the taxi line at LAX and SFO, carrying a large, black leather trunk. But I think that’s a long shot because, as you know, many of those cabbies are foreigners, and they don’t like to talk to the police or FBI.”
That was not a politically correct statement from a Federal employee, but when the pressure was on, even the Feds had to retreat into reality.
She continue
d, “We have a better description of the trunks than of the pilots and co-pilots. So, I asked Doug to call the FAA and get Black and Bellman’s license photos e-mailed to the FBI in LA and San Francisco ASAP. Then, I learned, to my amazement, that pilot licenses don’t have photos on them.”
“Unbelievable. Another incredible example of FAA post-9/11 stupidity.”
“So I used the FAA addresses for the pilots to get their state driver’s licenses with their photos. Black lives in New York, Bellman lives in Connecticut.”
“I see you were busy while I was gone.”
“I got real busy after I realized we may be dealing with suitcase nukes.”
“Right. And how is Doug?”
“I was too busy to ask him. But he did send you his regards.”
“That’s nice.” Fuck him. “Did he appreciate you telling him how to do his job?”
“John, I had the information, and I’d been thinking about this, and he was . . . well, stunned. So, yes, he appreciated my input.”
“Good.” Also, I recalled he seemed dim-witted.
I thought about this new and exciting development, and my mind was trying to compute all the angles, equations, and possibilities. I said to Kate, “If these pilots went to hotels, and if this is some kind of secret Madox mission, which it seems to be, then these four guys probably checked in under false names.”
She nodded. “But we have the real names of the two pilots, so the FBI will have their driver’s license photos very soon, if not already.” She informed me, “Doug is asking the Kingston regional office in New York to send an agent to the GOCO dispatch office at Stewart Airport to find out who the co-pilots were.”
“Good thinking.” It seemed that this end of the problem was covered, but I thought that finding those four pilots would not be easy, especially if Madox had instructed them to lay low, not answer their cell phones, stay in their hotel rooms, and use false ID.
Kate said, “Unfortunately, the suitcase nukes—if that’s what they were transporting—could very well be out of their hands by now.”
“They are suitcase nukes. Just call them what they are.”