Read Online The Fifth Horseman by Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre
Tags: thriller
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in three areas. The nation’s bureaus were ordered to locate and take under permanent surveillance every known or suspected Palestinian radical.
In New York and in half a dozen cities on the Atlantic seaboard, FBI agents were in action in every ghetto, every high-crime area, “pulsing” informers, querying pimps, pushers, petty crooks, forgers, fences, hunting for anything on Arabs: Arabs looking for fake papers; Arabs looking for guns.
Arabs trying to borrow somebody’s safe house; anything, just as long as it had an Arab association.
His second effort was to lay the groundwork for a massive search for the device, if it existed, and those who might have brought it into the country. Twenty agents were already installed at the computers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service offices on I Street, methodically going through the 194 forms for every Arab who had entered the United States in the past six months. The U.S. address listed on each card was Telexed to the bureau concerned. The FBI intended to locate, within fortyeight hours, each of these visitors and clear them, one by one, of any suspected involvement in the threat.
Other agents were going through the files of the Maritime Association of the Port of New York looking for ships that had called at Tripoli, Benghazi, Latakia, Beirut, Basra or Aden in the past six months and subsequently dropped off cargo on the Atlantic seaboard. A similar operation was under way at the air freight terminal of every international airport between Maine and Washington, D.C.
Finally, Dewing had ordered a check run on every American who held, or had ever held, a “cosmic top secret” clearance for access to the secret of the hydrogen bomb. It was typical of the thoroughness with which Dewing’s bureau worked that shortly after 8 P.M. Mountain Time an FBI car turned into 1822 Old Santa Fe Trail, a twisting highway leading northeast out of the capital of New Mexico along the route over which the wagon trains of the old Santa Fe trail had once rolled. With its silver RFD mailbox, the yellow metallic newspaper tube with the words New Mexican on its side, the one-story adobe house at the end of the drive was a supremely average American home.
There was nothing average about the Polish-American mathematician who lived inside. Stanley Ulham was the man whose brain had unlocked the secret of the hydrogen bomb. It was one of the supreme ironies in history that on the spring morning in 1951 when he had made his fateful discovery, Stanley Ulham was trying to demonstrate with mathematical certainty that it was impossible to make the bomb based on the premise that had underlain years of scientific effort. He did. But in doing so, he uncovered the glimmering of an alternative approach that just might work.
* * *
He could have wiped that terrible knowledge from his blackboard with a swipe of his eraser, but he would not have been the scientist he was if he had. Chain-smoking Pall Malls, flailing feverishly at his blackboard with stubs of chalk, he laid bare the secret of the H bomb in one frantic hour of thought.
The FBI agent did not require even that much time to clear the father of the H bomb of any possible complicity in the threat to New York. Standing in his doorway, watching the agent drive away, Ulham couldn’t help remembering the words he had uttered to his wife on that fateful morning when he had made his discovery: “This will change the world.”
* * *
A gray veil of cigarette smoke hung over the National Security Council conference room despite the continuous functioning of the building’s intensive aircirculation system. It was a few minutes past ten; not quite two hours remained before the ultimatum period contained in the threat message was due to begin. Paper cups and plates littered with the remains of the cheese sandwiches and black-bean soup the President had ordered the White House kitchen to send in to the conferees were scattered along the table and by the
In New York and in half a dozen cities on the Atlantic seaboard, FBI agents were in action in every ghetto, every high-crime area, “pulsing” informers, querying pimps, pushers, petty crooks, forgers, fences, hunting for anything on Arabs: Arabs looking for fake papers; Arabs looking for guns.
Arabs trying to borrow somebody’s safe house; anything, just as long as it had an Arab association.
His second effort was to lay the groundwork for a massive search for the device, if it existed, and those who might have brought it into the country. Twenty agents were already installed at the computers of the Immigration and Naturalization Service offices on I Street, methodically going through the 194 forms for every Arab who had entered the United States in the past six months. The U.S. address listed on each card was Telexed to the bureau concerned. The FBI intended to locate, within fortyeight hours, each of these visitors and clear them, one by one, of any suspected involvement in the threat.
Other agents were going through the files of the Maritime Association of the Port of New York looking for ships that had called at Tripoli, Benghazi, Latakia, Beirut, Basra or Aden in the past six months and subsequently dropped off cargo on the Atlantic seaboard. A similar operation was under way at the air freight terminal of every international airport between Maine and Washington, D.C.
Finally, Dewing had ordered a check run on every American who held, or had ever held, a “cosmic top secret” clearance for access to the secret of the hydrogen bomb. It was typical of the thoroughness with which Dewing’s bureau worked that shortly after 8 P.M. Mountain Time an FBI car turned into 1822 Old Santa Fe Trail, a twisting highway leading northeast out of the capital of New Mexico along the route over which the wagon trains of the old Santa Fe trail had once rolled. With its silver RFD mailbox, the yellow metallic newspaper tube with the words New Mexican on its side, the one-story adobe house at the end of the drive was a supremely average American home.
There was nothing average about the Polish-American mathematician who lived inside. Stanley Ulham was the man whose brain had unlocked the secret of the hydrogen bomb. It was one of the supreme ironies in history that on the spring morning in 1951 when he had made his fateful discovery, Stanley Ulham was trying to demonstrate with mathematical certainty that it was impossible to make the bomb based on the premise that had underlain years of scientific effort. He did. But in doing so, he uncovered the glimmering of an alternative approach that just might work.
* * *
He could have wiped that terrible knowledge from his blackboard with a swipe of his eraser, but he would not have been the scientist he was if he had. Chain-smoking Pall Malls, flailing feverishly at his blackboard with stubs of chalk, he laid bare the secret of the H bomb in one frantic hour of thought.
The FBI agent did not require even that much time to clear the father of the H bomb of any possible complicity in the threat to New York. Standing in his doorway, watching the agent drive away, Ulham couldn’t help remembering the words he had uttered to his wife on that fateful morning when he had made his discovery: “This will change the world.”
* * *
A gray veil of cigarette smoke hung over the National Security Council conference room despite the continuous functioning of the building’s intensive aircirculation system. It was a few minutes past ten; not quite two hours remained before the ultimatum period contained in the threat message was due to begin. Paper cups and plates littered with the remains of the cheese sandwiches and black-bean soup the President had ordered the White House kitchen to send in to the conferees were scattered along the table and by the
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