Slott thumbed through the preliminary technical report on the soil that Ferguson and Guns had gathered at the South Korean waste site. The report contained several pages of graphs and esoteric formulas as well as a dozen written in almost impenetrable scientific prose, but the data could be summed up in one word: inconclusive.
No plutonium had been found, though the scientists weren’t sure that was because there was none there or because the field equipment they’d taken to Hawaii simply wasn’t strong enough to detect it. A further analysis of the soil would take place in two days at a special CIA lab in California. There, the dirt would be compressed in a chamber and pounded with a variety of radioactive waves in a process one scientist had compared to high-tech gold panning. If there were any stray plutonium-239 atoms—actually, there would have to be a few more than one, but Slott wasn’t up on the specifics—the machine would find them.
There was one technical caveat. The analysis relied on the fact that anyone trying to hide plutonium would go only so far as necessary to prevent its detection by standard equipment. The nano technology the Agency was using was exponentially more powerful; still, in theory a scientist who was aware of the lower detection threshold might be able to counter it. But if that were the case, Slott reasoned, they wouldn’t have found anything in the first place.
Directly below the report was a response from Ken Bo regarding the plutonium and its possible origin. Stripped of its many qualifications—and complaints about the “unusual” operation that had found it—was a theory that the material had come from the closed TRIGA Mark-III research reactor in Seoul. The reactor had been used in the 1980s and probably the 1990s to conduct experiments testing extraction techniques from depleted uranium. Other experiments, continuing until 2004, had produced other isotopes.
While not generally known, those experiments had been detected by the IAEA roughly five years after they’d been reported to the president and the Intelligence Committee by the CIA.
Bo’s contention—he phrased it as a hypothesis—was that the plutonium that had just been discovered was merely waste material left from those activities.
The theory would make a certain sense to a layman; the readings had been found at a waste dump, after all. But Slott knew that wasn’t what was really going on. First of all, the experiments had never been aimed at or succeeded in producing plutonium. TRIGA Mark-III had been shut down, and all the material, even potential waste products, accounted for. Slott knew this because it had all happened on his watch in South Korea.
But few other people, even within the CIA, did. Much of the data on the experiments was highly classified and had not been found or reported by the IAEA. Information about the program had not been included in any of the briefing papers on the new treaty, and it was obvious to him that neither Corrine nor Parnelles for that matter was aware of it.
Bo’s theory could get Seoul—and, by extension, Slott—off the hook if they were criticized. By carefully controlling the release of information about the TRIGA experiments, Slott could easily make it seem as if the CIA knew about this material all along and had in fact told Congress and the president.
Bo would never put this in writing, of course. He was counting on Slott to understand and play along.
Slott got up from his desk and began pacing around his office. Five people had known the entire TRIGA story from the Agency’s perspective. Slott was one; Bo was another. A third was now dead. That left the former head of the CIA, now dying of Alzheimer’s disease, and an officer now working in a staff position in what amounted to semiretirement.
He didn’t even have to manipulate the records. If anyone asked, he could say that plutonium had been mentioned but not put in the reports for some reason he no longer knew.
Had it been found?
No. Definitely it hadn’t. Definitely not. They had access to the South Korean documents, and it wasn’t there.
And they were all the documents.
He knew that, because he’d verified it with the Korean document tracking system. But who in Congress or the administrative branch would know that? Even Parnelles wouldn’t know that.
They could find it out, if they knew the right person to ask, but it would be difficult.
Slott rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t lie. And he wasn’t going to play the CYA games. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. That wasn’t who he was.
Slott stopped in front of his desk, looking at the picture of his wife and kids. It was a year old, taken when they’d moved into their new house. His only boy—they had three older girls—had just lost his first tooth.
If he didn’t play the games, he might very well lose his job. They’d lose their house, have to move. He’d end up selling cars or insurance somewhere out West where no one knew who he was.
Or he could just keep his mouth shut and see what happened. Protect Bo, even though this raised some serious questions about Bo’s competency.
Everyone was entitled to one screwup, wasn’t he? And it wasn’t even clear this was a screwup.
Slott went back behind his desk. He still had his son’s baby tooth in the top desk drawer, an accidental souvenir he’d retained after exchanging it for a gold dollar.
The tooth fairy—a little white lie.
Not even that. His son had brought up the tooth fairy and the promise of money. Slott hadn’t said anything, one way or another.
Daddy didn’t lie, David. He was just protecting the family.
Would that be better to tell his boy or his girls than: Daddy’s not the incompetent screwup the congressmen are claiming?
Slott pushed the desk drawer closed. He told himself he needed more information before he could decide what to do.
It wasn’t true, but it was the sort of lie he could live with.