Project Cyclops Part 38

9:43 P.M.

"We'll be working together, kid," Dore Peretz was saying. "We're a team." He swept back his mane of salt-and-pepper hair, then moved next to Georges LeFarge. The young engineer didn't like anything about the Israeli, right down to the cheap aftershave he was wearing, but he had to admit the guy seemed unfazed by all the hardware that controlled Big Benny, the Fujitsu supercomputer.

It was a correct a.s.sessment. Dore Peretz was definitely in his element.

He had taken his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984, then returned to Israel to accept a high-paying research job at the Weizman Inst.i.tute, Israel's top- secret nuclear facility near Tel Aviv. During the next seven years he had advanced to the level of senior inst.i.tute scientist, becoming an expert in every technology connected with nuclear weapons.

From the specialty of ma.s.s destruction he graduated to another hot topic--the emerging preeminence of smart weapons. Conventional delivery technologies, the war in the Gulf had shown, were no match for the new "smart" antimissile systems. It was back to the drawing board. What Israel needed in her a.r.s.enal was the next generation of weaponry.

He had gone on to head up a research team that played computerized war games, studying the "what ifs" of whole new generations of technologies matched against each other. The end result of this fascination was that he became a computer and missile-guidance expert--which, when added to his knowledge of nuclear weapons, made him a double-threat man.

It also made him perfect for what Sabri Ramirez wanted to do.

When Ramirez found him, he already had departed the inst.i.tute, and also for reasons that suited Ramirez perfectly. Whereas Dore Peretz had an IQ off the scale, his social development was considered--even by those who tried to like him--as scarcely progressed beyond the infantile. His was an independent . . . make that irreverent . . . temperament that was bound to clash with the bureaucracy of a straitlaced place like the inst.i.tute. He had particular trouble fitting in with the deadly- serious, high-security environment that surrounded military contract research. The problem had been obvious from the first day he arrived, but his genius was such that it had been overlooked and worked around by both sides. His final rupture with the Israeli defense establishment resulted from what--to his mind--was a totally compelling event.

He had personally developed a computer-a.s.sist program that provided special procedures for the quick arming of a nuclear device in case Israel found itself facing an imminent attack. It was important, and it worked.

He had expected, reasonably enough, a rousing financial tribute for this effort, or at the very least a citation. What he got instead was screwed. When the yearly Summary of Technical Research arrived on his desk January last, he discovered the computer program had been "created" by the vice president in charge of his section, with the "a.s.sistance" of someone named Dr. D. Peretz.

A reaming by an incompetent bureaucrat whom he had hated from the beginning was the last straw. He resigned in traditional style, papering the inst.i.tute with a fusillade of memos that reviewed in detail the failings of its top management and then for good measure scrambling the electronic combination on his personal safe as he was readying to walk out the door.

At that point he did not know what he wanted to do next, but he was d.a.m.ned sure it would not involve further interaction with a bureaucracy.

Being no dummy, he also fully antic.i.p.ated the response to his outrage.

And sure enough, he found he had transformed himself into a high- profile security risk that Mossad suddenly found very interesting.

Israel's intelligence service remembered all too well the case of Mordecai Vanunu, the thirty-one-year-old technician who had worked at the plutonium separation facility at the Dimona complex for nine years, then left in a huff and sold pictures and a detailed description of the facility to the London Sunday Times. Mossad had no intention of letting it happen again.

Dore Peretz was interrogated for weeks, threatened repeatedly, then placed under close surveillance. They had no grounds to arrest him, but they were going to intimidate the h.e.l.l out of him.

Their hara.s.sment, however, achieved precisely the opposite effect. They galvanized his anger. In a degree of soul searching quite foreign to his normal mental activity, he found himself wondering why he owed Israel such allegiance in the first place. This was their thanks for all his service.

So why not give it back to the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, in spades? He became a "scientific adviser" to the PLO.

That only confirmed Mossad's fears and intensified their hara.s.sment: his phone was tapped, his mail opened, his stylish Tel Aviv apartment repeatedly and blatantly searched in his absence. The overall effect was c.u.mulative, rendering him an ever-more-vociferous critic of Israel's conservative coalition government.

It was at this time, when his name was being linked to the PLO, that Sabri Ramirez got wind of him and knew he had found a gold mine--a disaffected, activist Israeli nuclear and rocket expert looking for a cause. He sounded perfect, and he was. Ramirez approached him at a demonstration supporting a Palestinian homeland, and made him an offer he could not refuse. How would he like to get rich? He would not need to betray his country, merely lend his skills to help teach the Americans a lesson.

f.u.c.k Israel, he had declared. Then in a lower voice he had added--come to that, f.u.c.k the Palestinians, who were basically a pain in the a.s.s.

Acquiring personal wealth was a much more inspiring cause. He could not get work in Israel, any kind of work, and he was fast running through his savings.

Ramirez advanced him thirty thousand American dollars on the spot, in crisp hundreds. He immediately dropped his PLO affiliation and began lowering his profile--much to Mossad's relief. Their surveillance eased up as they gratefully turned to more pressing matters, and four months later he took advantage of his new freedom to slip into Jordan one night and from there make his way, a week later, to Beirut. It was in that ravaged city that he and Sabri Ramirez worked out the technical details of the plan.

. . . Which thus far had gone perfectly.

"We'll be modifying the payload," he announced, turning to the keyboard. "Therefore the weight will be different, so we'll have to factor that into the SORT program on the Fujitsu and run it again."

s.h.i.t, LeFarge thought, he knows about SORT. Which probably means he knows everything he needs to make VX-1

fly.

9:45 P.M.

"I have a question," Michael Vance was saying. They were still resting on the hill, and he felt himself fighting back waves of exhaustion.

"Could they get that vehicle down there off the ground without you being in Command?"

"I hate to admit it"--Calypso Andros exhaled ruefully and leaned back against the tree--"but they probably could. We've already had a final test of the power-up, everything. The Fujitsu has all the controls set.

There's nothing left to do except initiate the launch routine and then let the computer take over."

"So Bill was about to be rich." He grinned, then picked up a small white stone and flung it down the hill. "He might even have been able to pay off our bet. If I'd won."

"What bet was that?"

"Long ago and in another country." He shrugged, hardly caring anymore.

"It was a d.a.m.ned stupid stunt. We had a sailor's bet, and I lost. As it happens, your new guests here pitched in to help. But those are the breaks."

"Well, let's talk about the real world." She seemed scarcely to hear what he had said. Or maybe she wasn't interested. Vance sensed she was trying to feign normality, adopting a facade that denied the horror of watching her young technician being shot dead. "Do you think they're going to kill anybody else?"

What should I say? he wondered. Feed her a comforting lie, or tell her the truth? He looked her over and decided on the latter.

"Hate to say it, but if it's really Ramirez, he'll kill anybody he vaguely feels like. I saw him hit a U.S. frigate with a Swatter. You've got to call that ma.s.s murder. A ton of casualties, and for no good reason. He caught himself before he said more, the memory still chilling. "Then again, I'd guess he's not going to take out anybody important or technically crucial, at least for now. Which should include Bates and Mannheim. He's got to be figuring he can use the big names for headlines and leverage, if he needs it."

"I can't believe that the U.S. isn't going to send in the Marines, especially when they find out he's got a bomb."

"Don't get your hopes up. There are a couple of problems with that. The first is that they may not be allowed on Greek soil, and even if they are, it could take several days for them to mount an operation."

"That's one." She looked at him. "What's the other?"

"The other is that if the U.S. should decide to mount an a.s.sault, it could well turn into a bloodbath. I'm almost wishing they don't. Delta Force and the SEALs are well trained, but as far as anybody knows, they've never been used to carry out a straight hostage-rescue. They'd probably come in here like John Wayne and tear this place apart. I don't even want to think about the carnage." His voice trailed off.

"Take it from me. The people ARM is sending in are better suited for the job at hand. They also can deploy a lot quicker than the U.S.

government."

"Well, somebody better come. And soon." She had caught a strand of her tangled hair and was twisting it, distractedly making the tangle worse.

"What do you think these thugs really want?"

"I'd guess money's part of the package. But since Ramirez doesn't seem to be trying to extort SatCom, at least not yet, he probably has something bigger in mind." He slowly turned to her. "Tell me something.

These vehicles are intended to go into orbit, right? But what if one didn't make it." He had a sudden thought. "Or what if one of them did make it, and then the orbital trajectory got altered somehow? Retrofire and reentry. You could set it down pretty much where you wanted, couldn't you?"

She stared at him uncertainly. "What are you suggesting?"