Dark Zone

79

Rubens found it more difficult than normal to wait patiently for Johnny Bib to get to the point. He knew from experience that it would do absolutely no good to tell Johnny Bib to get to the point — if anything, it might make him take twice as long — but Rubens needed to get back to Hadash and the President as soon as possible.

“Six units of thirty-two-point-seventy-three pounds apiece,” Johnny was saying on the phone line. “Of course the original formulas were configured in kilograms and I’ve converted.”

Telach, standing over Rockman at the computer console a few feet away, waved at him.

“Johnny, what exactly are the units?” said Rubens, holding up his finger to tell Telach to wait.

Johnny was several stories above the bunkered Art Room, but Rubens could almost see him standing back from his desk in surprise at the question. He found it baffling that anyone couldn’t follow his convoluted logic through its myriad twists and turns.

“Explosive value similar to the yield of the original equation,” said the team leader. “But in small bits — in the formula they look like variables, but I asked myself, Why would the variables be just of certain sizes? And of course, if they were packages or packets that you had to carry a certain way, say if you sewed up vests full of explosive, OK? Vests a man could wear, then remove and set at the proper position. That’s the way this formula is constructed, to figure out how many packets you need and where to put it. Now, if we substitute—”

“Johnny, tell me clearly: Are you saying that this formula is related to another attack on the Eiffel Tower or not?”

“The formula includes calculations for the tensile value of steel similar to the characteristics of the girder structure between the second and third étage of the Eiffel Tower,” said Johnny Bib. “Étage means ‘floor’ in French.”

“I remember my French, thank you very much,” said Rubens, snapping his underling on hold. He pressed the button on the communications selector on his belt, connecting himself with Hadash in Air Force One. “George, there’s a new development.”