The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [249]
"She won't get out, and it's dinnertime," Carol said. "You help?"
"How's everyone else?"
"Peter accepted in college, too! Full scholarship MIT."
"Great!" Jack gave her a congratulatory hug. What's the old joke! 'The doctor is five and the lawyer is three!' God, wouldn't Buck be proud of how these kids are turning out? It was little more than the normal Asian obsession with education, of course, the same thing that had stood Jewish Americans in such good stead. If an opportunity presents itself, grab it by the throat. He bent down to the newest Zimmer, who held her arms up for her Uncle Jack.
"Come on, Jackie." He picked her up, and got a kiss for his trouble. Ryan looked up when he heard the noise.
"Gotcha." It's a simple trick, and an effective one. Even if you know it's coming, you can't do much to prevent it. The van had several buttons which, when pressed, beeped the horn. It was a sound the human brain recognized as a danger signal, and one instinctively looked towards whatever direction it had come from to see if there was any cause for concern. The investigator hit the nearest one, and, sure enough, Ryan looked up towards the sound, with an armful of kid. He'd caught the hug for the woman, and the kiss from the kid, and now he had a full-face shot on the 400-speed film in his camera to backup the videotape. That simple. He had the goods on this Ryan guy. Amazing that a man with such a lovely wife would feel the need to screw around, but that was life, wasn't it? A CIA bodyguard to keep everything nice and secure. A kid involved, too. What a shit, the man thought, as the motor-drive whirred away on the Canon.
"You stay for dinnah! This time you stay. We celebrate Peter scholarship."
"Can't say no to that one, Doc," Clark observed.
"Okay." Ryan carried Jacqueline Theresa Zimmer into the house. Neither he nor Clark noticed that the van parked fifty yards away pulled off a few minutes later.
It was the most delicate part of the process. The plutonium was set into ceriumsulfide ceramic crucibles. The crucibles were carried to the electric furnace. Fromm closed and locked the door. A vacuum pump evacuated the enclosure and replaced argon.
"Air has oxygen," Fromm explained. "Argon is an inert gas. We take no chances. Plutonium is highly reactive and pyrophoric. The ceramic crucibles are also inert and non-reactive. We use more than one crucible to avoid the possibility of forming a critical mass and starting a premature atomic reaction."
"The phase-transformations?" Ghosn asked.
"Correct."
"How long?" This question from Qati.
"Two hours. We take our time in this part. On removal from the furnace, the crucibles will be covered, of course, and we make the pour in an inert-gas enclosure. Now you know why we needed this sort of furnace."
"No danger when you make the pour?"
Fromm shook his head. "None at all, so long as we are careful. The configuration of the mold absolutely prevents forming a critical mass. I've done this many times in simulation. There have been accidents, but those invariably involved larger masses of fissile material and took place before all the hazards of handling plutonium were fully understood. No, we will move slowly and carefully. Pretend it is gold," Fromm concluded.
"The machining process?"
"Three weeks, and two more of assembly and testing of the components."
"The tritium extraction?" Ghosn asked.
Fromm bent down to look into the furnace. "I'll do that right before completion, and that will conclude the exercise "
"See any resemblance?" the investigator asked.
"Hard to tell," Wellington thought. "In any case, he sure seems to like the little tyke. Cute enough. I watched them build the swing set last weekend. The little one - name's Jackie, by the way, Jacqueline Theresa -"
"Oh? That's interesting." Wellington made a note.
"Anyway, the little one loves the damned thing."
"Seems right fond of Dr Ryan, also."
"You suppose he really is the father?"
"Possible," Wellington said, watching