Dark Zone by Stephen Coonts Page A

and updated,” said Rubens. “Two weeks ago, a change was detected.”
    “The warhead is gone?” asked Collins.
    “Part of it,” said Rubens. “Although a portion of the bomb structure remains.”
    The unfinished bomb’s nuclear “kernel” consisted of several disks of refined plutonium, which were designed to be compressed by a special girdle of high explosives to create a nuclear explosion. At least one of the disks was still in place, because the French monitoring system had not detected the change.
    “How could they miss it?” asked Lincoln.
    Rubens was tempted to say it was because the French were arrogant and pompous imbeciles who couldn’t see past their noses—but he merely shook his head.
    “Their technology is not particularly effective. And they have underestimated the size of the material from the beginning. The error is compounded greatly over time,” Rubens pointed out. “I must say, our technology frankly has some drawbacks as well—the units in place must be checked in person, and it may have been moved at any point over about six weeks between inspections.”
    “I think what you need to address,” said the President, “is how the material is likely to be used.”
    Rubens nodded. “There are two possibilities. One is as a bomb. There would be enough material to construct a weapon with a yield of sixty kilotons, more likely less, possibly more, depending on the state of the plutonium and of course the design of the bomb. The material could be inserted into a properly prepared bomb; anyone with access to the plans from the time should be able to construct a high-explosive shell to set it off. Anyone without access to that could engineer a solution. In neither case is it easy, but it’s certainly do-able. More likely, in our opinion, the plutonium could be used in conjunction with other radioactive materials to create a number of dirty bombs.”
    Rubens turned to his theory that the material had been stolen by a private criminal organization with the idea of selling it on the open market. It did not appear to have been sold already—or at least the NSA detection net had not spotted it in the Middle East.
    “Our best guess is that it is still somewhere in Algeria. Alternatively, it may be in France.”
    “France?” asked Collins.
    Rubens didn’t think so himself, but a radiation counter on a ship to Marseilles had some anomalies that were still being investigated. The ship had docked in Bilbao, Spain, after visiting the French port—and there the anomalies had disappeared.
    “Either there was a problem with the device, which is not unheard of, or the material was carried into France. As you know, it can be somewhat easier to move things into Europe than the Middle East,” added Rubens. This was because the Arab and northern African countries were covered by a network of American, Israeli, and NATO sensors. Scrutiny at European ports was not nearly as intense.
    “We have some additional information from an eavesdropping source in Morocco,” added Rubens. “It ties the ship to a charity used by different terrorist groups. It’s circumstantial, however.”
    “Which means you have no real information,” said Collins. She was angry because Rubens hadn’t shared the information about the missing material privately before the meeting. The fact that Hadash had ordered him not to—a fact that neither Rubens nor Hadash would volunteer anyway—was beside the point.
    “That’s true,” said Rubens. “It’s merely a suggestion, not hard data.”
    “Are you pursuing that source?”
    “We’re working on it,” said Rubens.
    The “source” was actually an eavesdropping device in Morocco. As luck would have it, the battery that powered the device had died twenty-four hours before; Rubens was scrambling to plan a mission to replace it.
    “We want to locate the bomb and raise the issue with the French,” said Hadash. “The difficulty is how to do it. We don’t want to give away our