Long Road to Mercy

Chapter 45

Pieces of paper containing scribbled words were all over Pine’s bed. Blum was actively helping her in her task by feeding her words that Pine then inputted to her computer program.

“When did you download this software?” asked Blum.

“As soon as I failed at getting the password manually,” Pine replied, her fingers flying over the laptop keys. “I’ve been crunching passwords all this time, with no result. But it helps a lot if we can narrow the parameters of what the password might be. And maybe we can finally do that.”

Blum set down the last piece of paper. “Okay, I think that’s everything.”

“Let’s see if we’re going to get lucky.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t been lucky in like twenty years.”

Pine hit a key on the laptop. “Here goes.”

The program started sorting through possible password combinations.

“What made you think of Capricorn?” asked Blum.

“I was wondering why Priest would have chosen that name for a nonexistent company. I don’t know if he’s a Capricorn too or not, but it was the only lead I could think of. But until you started talking about being a Leo, I never even considered it. So, if it works, you get the credit.” She paused and looked at the screen. “Damn.”

A password had just been typed in and the screen started to change.

“We nailed it,” said Pine.

“What was the password?” asked Blum.

Pine looked at the password box. “Something unbelievably complex, but everything except the letters w and m are connected to the sign of Capricorn.”

“And what do the letters w and m refer to?”

“Probably to Billy and Michael. William would be Billy’s real name. Which goes to show that Priest did value his nephews, at least to the extent that he would include them in a password.”

“What the hell is that?” said Blum.

A picture had appeared on the screen. Pine scrolled down page after page. They were all very technical drawings. She stopped at one ominous diagram and hit some keys to enlarge it. She read the language on the screen next to the device.

“That’s... those are Korean characters.”

“Can you understand what it says?”

“No, but I can find a translation really fast.” She wrote some of the characters down on a piece of paper and then went online to a translation site and input the Korean characters. The translation was almost instantaneous.

“Fissile material,” said Pine slowly. “Fissile? That has to do with nuclear material.”

Blum sat back on the bed. “Dear God. Is North Korea going to... nuke us?”

“If so, that might explain David Roth’s involvement. And Sung Nam Chung’s. Is this the North Koreans’ backup plan in the event the peace talks cratered? Hit us with a nuclear weapon?”

“But if the North Koreans are planning something like that, how do you explain the military chopper taking the Priest brothers away?”

Pine shrugged. “Maybe they know about the plot and are trying to trace it back to its source.”

“So, do we show this to, I don’t know, the FBI director?”

“We have no proof that any of this is true. If we go in with this, we might disappear.”

“But people don’t just disappear in this country.”

“Tell that to the Priest brothers.” Pine fell silent for a moment. “And even if we get proof, I’m not sure who we should take it to.”

“What do you mean?”

“The DD did his best to have me called off this case. And he never would have done that without the approval of his boss and his boss’s boss. In fact, this might go all the way to the top, Carol.” She stared pointedly at the woman. “And I mean all the way to the very top.”

Neither woman said anything for a few seconds, as they both seemed to let the enormity of this possibility sink in.

“But we have to do something,” Blum finally said.

Pine nodded in agreement. “We have to find David Roth, for starters.”

“How?”

Pine said, “He was last seen in the Grand Canyon. Wait a minute. There’s more to the file.” She scrolled down some more pages until she came to something different.

“That looks like a map,” she said. “It has latitude and longitude markers.”

“Agent Pine, that looks like the Grand Canyon.”

She paled. “Shit, it is.” Pine turned a shade whiter as she stared at the map. “Do you... do you think the North Koreans somehow planted a nuke in the Grand Canyon?”

“And Priest and Roth found out about it?” said Blum.

Pine nodded. “That must be why Roth wanted to get into the Canyon. To find the bomb.” Her phone buzzed. It was a text. “It’s from Oscar Fabrikant. He’s in Russia.”

“What does it say?”

Pine read the text. “Check out the death of Fred Wormsley. He was very close to both Roth and Roth’s father.”

Pine went online and found an article on point.

Blum read over her shoulder.

“Okay, it says here that Fred Wormsley’s body was found in the Potomac near Three Sisters Island a while back. The police speculated that he fell in somewhere along the GW Parkway, was sucked under by the current, and drowned.”

“But obviously Fabrikant thinks there’s more to it,” said Blum.

“And maybe so does David Roth.” Pine pointed to another part of the story. “Wormsley worked at the NSA. He was very high-up there. That’s why the police investigation was a little bit more involved than would be normal. They still concluded it was an accident, and now I wonder if they were pressured to say that.”

Blum sat back and seemed to process all this. “Okay, Roth is a WMD expert. He found out about this plot by the North Koreans, maybe from Wormsley. Wormsley might have learned about it through his work at the NSA. Then he got killed, maybe by this Sung Nam Chung. After that, Roth hooked up with Priest. They somehow discovered there’s a nuke planted in the Canyon. And he impersonated Priest and went down there to find it so no one would know he was involved. So, is he trying to disarm it?”

“I don’t know. But why would Roth turn to Ben Priest?” asked Pine.

“Maybe they knew each other before. And Priest was helping him out.”

“But if Roth knew there was a nuke in the Canyon, why not just call in the government?”

Blum thought about this for a few moments. “Maybe he’s afraid if the North Koreans know that we’re on to them, they’ll detonate it. Maybe he’s trying to disarm it by stealth. I’m just speculating here. I have no idea how nuclear weapons even work.”

Pine said, “Neither do I. I just know what they can do when they go boom.”

“Okay, now what do we do?”

“I think it’s time to head back west.”

“Thank goodness. I can already feel my tan fading.” She smiled embarrassedly. “Sorry, bad joke. I do that when my nerves are about to run away with me.”

Pine was punching in numbers on the computer. “What if the longitude and latitude lines indicate the spot where the nuke is located? And maybe Roth was trying to give whoever found that dead mule a clue. J and k? That could point to a hidden cave for those who know about the legend.”

“A lot of questions to answer,” noted Blum.

“And the answers apparently lie in one of the biggest holes on earth.”