Corrine was in her car when the secure satellite phone rang.
“Corrine here.”
“Wicked Stepmother, we really have to stop meeting this way.”
“Ferg.”
“Did you get the bag?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Everything in that bag comes from a place called Science Industries in Daejeon.”
“What do you want me to do with it?”
“That’s the ten-million-dollar question. I don’t trust Seoul, so I didn’t want them getting their paws on it.”
“Do you trust Slott?”
“Yeah.”
Corrine heard a note of hesitation in his voice.
“I think I do,” Ferguson added, “but that’s not good enough. He’s going to hate me, he may even fire me, but I want you to have them all independently tested. Take the computer things to Robert Ferro at the NSA. You know him?”
“Deputy director.”
“Yeah. You can drop my name if you have to to get it done quick.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.” As the president’s counsel, Corrine had more than enough political muscle of her own.
“Dirt goes to DOE. Tell them to test for plutonium.”
“I’ll do it first thing in the morning.”
“Do it tonight,” Ferguson told her. “It may take days to get the results. Tell Slott what’s going on once you have a good idea what’s on the computer disks or the tape, or once it’s gone far enough that you’re reasonably sure no one’s going to lie to you.”
“Why don’t you trust Slott?”
“I told you, I think I do. But he was in Korea for a long time. And these guys over here work for him. See, if there is plutonium there, the fact that they didn’t find it and we did is pretty embarrassing. So they have an incentive to keep it quiet.”
“You’re talking about treason, Bob.”
“Maybe just incompetence,” said Ferguson.
“How mad is Slott going to be that you went behind his back?”
“Real mad,” said Ferguson. “Real, real mad. But maybe I’ll get lucky, and he’ll never talk to me again. Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I have to get going.”
“Corrine wanted to ask about Ferguson’s cancer, but it was too late; he hung up before she could find the words to bring it up.