If he was going to do the right thing, then he was better off doing it without hesitation. The sooner he clued Corrine Alston—and, in effect, the president—into what Ken Bo was doing, the sooner he would end the temptation to do the wrong thing.
Because really, the temptation was overwhelming.
Slott picked up his phone and dialed her office.
“I want to give you a heads-up about something,” he told her when she picked up her phone. “Can you come to my office?”
“When?”
“As soon as possible. Now would be good.”
“Is it about Korea?” she asked.
“I’d rather explain in person.”
“I’ll be there in about an hour.”
Corrine told her secretary to rearrange her schedule, then began closing down the documents she’d been reviewing. She was about to pick up her pocketbook when the phone buzzed.
“Mr. Ferro from the NSA,” announced Teri.
Corrine grabbed the line.
“The tape unit you gave me last night is very interesting,” said Ferro. “The system this came from, that it’s part of, uses a Cray X1E as the main computing unit. It’s a very powerful supercomputer. Where exactly did it come from?”
“You can’t tell from the data there?”
“Not without more study. It’s a backup of a large number of data sets, and it’s going to take a while to unravel.”
“I see.”
“There are several simulations that seem to deal with some sort of complicated chemical extraction. It seems to involve plutonium,” added Ferro. “We have to have an expert look at it.”
“I see.”
“Should we proceed?”
“Yes,” said Corrine. “What about the small disks?”
“Some correspondence in Korean regarding the purchase of office supplies. Looks like it’s all from a place called Science Industries. We haven’t translated it all yet.”
“You can move ahead with both.”
“All right.” Ferro paused. “Have you spoken to the CIA about this?”
“I’m on my way there now,” said Corrine.
The South Koreans tried to make their own weapons-grade uranium in the nineteen eighties and nineties,” said Slott. The words practically gushed from his mouth, and it was a relief to get them out. “The program was exposed in 2004. Ken Bo is claiming this is part of it.”
He pushed the paper across his desk to Corrine. There were only three lines on it, a brief secure e-mail that mentioned two code-word CIA projects and “Korean efforts believed related to M.”
“M is a reference to that project. You see, if he contends that this was part of that program, he and his people will be off the hook,” said Slott. “It’s a CYA memo. Cover—”
“I know what CYA stands for,” said Corrine. “Is his claim right?”
Slott shook his head.
“How do you know?”
“I know. For starters, the material was different. This was plutonium. The waste was accounted for. Blessed Peak wasn’t built until three years ago. So they would have had to hide the waste all this time, then move it here. Unlikely.”
“But the site was used as a waste site before they built the new plant.”
“For cesium, nothing else. I know because I ordered it checked, and the man who checked it didn’t make a mistake.”
“Are you sure?”
“It was Ken Bo.”
Corrine leaned back in the seat.
“Does this mean he’s not really looking for the plutonium?”
“No. He’s getting himself in a position to limit damage in the future. He is pursuing it. How hard I don’t know.” Slott rocked back and forth in his seat. “He is working on it. He has a plan to get people into the waste site and take measurements. And one of his officers has been nosing around where Ferguson was, though rather ineptly. And, frankly, it seems to have been accidental, part of standard contact gathering. Though it’s difficult to tell from here.”
Corrine put the paper down on the desk.
“I have to tell you, Dan, face-saving games . . . They’re not very important to me. I don’t care whether someone was at fault or not. I want to get results. The president, I’m sure, would feel the same way.”
“I realize that,” said Slott. “Though that’s not the way Washington works.”
“Did Bo screw up?”
“We should have known about this.” Slott picked up his pencil, twisting the lead out slowly as he continued. “It’s our job. Something like this is very important—critical. So by definition, we screwed up. And, by definition, when we screw up, it’s my fault.”
“You’re being awful hard on yourself.”
“It comes with the job.”
“I don’t see Director Parnelles taking responsibility. If the buck is going to stop anywhere, it has to stop at his desk, not yours.”
Well, he thought, that’s something at least. Not the reason I told her, but something.
“Thank you for saying that,” he told her.
“I mean it.”
Slott smiled faintly. He’d thought his conscience would feel better when he finished, but it didn’t. Now that he’d told her what he thought Bo was up to, he only felt more depressed about it.
Then again, it really wasn’t her problem, was it? It was his.
On the one hand, he didn’t want her interfering; on the other, he had given her ammunition.
But it was the right thing to do, he decided: cut off the games.
“I’m sorry if I wasted your time,” he told her.
“It wasn’t a waste,” Corrine told him, slipping the paper back. “I didn’t mean to imply it was.”
Slott started to get up, but Corrine didn’t.
“There’s something I have to tell you involving the First Team,” she said. “Bob Ferguson went into a place called Science Industries and gathered some material there. He sent it back. It’s very interesting. There may be information on extracting plutonium. I don’t have all the details yet.”
“Corrigan didn’t mention that when he briefed me this morning.”
“I know.” Corrine had debated how to present the issue all the way to Slott’s office. She decided that the best way, for the good of the team, was to blame herself: protecting the client, an old lawyer’s trick. “I had Ferg use a back channel to get the data here because I wasn’t sure how much to trust Seoul, based on your comments the other day.”
Slott folded his arms and sank back into his chair as she continued. It’s me they don’t trust, he realized, and it wasn’t just Corrine. Ferguson was in the middle of it. And probably Parnelles, whom Ferguson was close to.
Because he’d worked in Seoul, and Ferguson figured he was covering up for the people there.
Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
“The NSA has the tape and the disks,” said Corrine. “The Department of Energy has the soil samples and is scheduling the tests now. I’ll refer them to you.”
She got up to leave.
“Yeah,” said Slott, not bothering to get up. “Thanks.”