Nuclear Reaction

“Of course. My sister is…she was a nuclear physicist. She made an honor and distinction for my family, not only graduating from the university, but second in her class. The government immediately offered her a post with their new laboratory, working on a program they call Project Future. It’s supposed to harness nuclear power for peaceful applications. Generation of electric power and the like. I don’t pretend to understand it all.”

“And then your sister—that’s Darice?” Bolan asked, reflecting on the meager intelligence he’d been given.

“It was.” A sadness there. Clearly, Pahlavi reckoned she was dead.

“And then Darice found something else,” Bolan suggested.

“Yes! She soon discovered that there was a plan within a plan, involving Sikh extremists. Project X. While some employees at the lab worked on the project everybody knows about, others were put to work behind the scenes, trying to build a compact weapon that would fit inside a piece of luggage. Darice was assigned to that division, banned from talking to the scientists working on Project Future. Banned from talking, period.”

“But she still talked to you,” Bolan suggested.

“Yes. We have been close since childhood, Mr. Cooper. Closer still, since we lost our parents seven years ago. Their bus collided with a train, and…”

Staring out his window into space, Pahlavi briefly lost his train of thought, then came back to it, waving off the lapse without comment.

“In any case,” he said, “she told me what was happening. Together, we decided something must be done to stop it, either halt production on the small bomb or prevent it being passed to other hands. You know the history of Pakistan and India?”

“I’ve just had a refresher course,” Bolan replied.

“Our leaders hate each other. I’m not sure they still remember how or why it started, but the hating has become a way of life for both countries. It’s unhealthy, but I don’t know how to change it. If it even can be changed. Our countries fight like children over lines drawn on a map, who claims this bit of land or that, as if the soil itself is somehow precious. Kashmir, for example, is a situation I will never understand.”

“How’s that?” Bolan asked.

Pahlavi shrugged. “Eighty percent of all the people living there are Muslim, like myself and my government, but it is ruled by Hindu leaders. It reminds me of South Africa, the white and black, or Protestant and Catholic in Belfast. Yes?”

Clearly, Darice Pahlavi hadn’t been the only member of her family to get an education. It was Bolan’s turn to shrug. “It happens. If we’re lucky, governments can work it out.”

“But these two only fight and threaten. Never really talking, never listening. For this, they’ve gone to war three times in forty years, but nothing is resolved. Why either country wants more mouths to feed remains a mystery to me.”

“So, that’s the rub,” Bolan said. “And you’re thinking there may be another war.”

“If Pakistan supplies a suitcase bomb to Sikh extremists and they use it against India?” Pahlavi’s smile was bitter as he shook his head. “The next war will destroy life as we know it here, and possibly throughout the world. There are alliances, support agreements. If one nation uses its atomic bombs against the other—”

Pahlavi shook his head again, slump-shouldered. At a glance, it seemed that he had aged ten years while he was talking, in the time it took Bolan to drive five miles.

“Let us assume,” Pahlavi said, “that the retaliations are confined to the subcontinent. Nearly two billion people live here. That’s about one-fourth of the whole planet’s population. Even if the fallout never drifts beyond our borders—an impossibility, all scientists agree—most of those people will be lost, either in bombings of the cities or through radiation poisoning, starvation and disease. Beyond that, if the fallout spreads…”

“I get it,” Bolan said.

“And don’t forget the various alliances, treaties and nonaggression pacts. Who knows what’s written down somewhere and hidden in some diplomatic vault? Will the Chinese move in? The Russians? Either way, it means reaction from the U.S.A. and Britain, probably the UN, too. Picture the world on fire.”

Bolan had been there in his head, a thousand times. He didn’t like the view.

“What was your plan, at first?” he asked.

“Darice would smuggle out proof of Project X, for distribution to the media. Once the conspiracy was public knowledge, those responsible would either have to stop or face the condemnation of a world united to oppose them.”

“But she never made it out,” Bolan observed.

Pahlavi’s eyes were misty now. “I still don’t know what happened, how they found her out. I’ve been in hiding since the day she…disappeared. The government wants me and everyone involved in our group, Ohm, to silence us. Even the politicians who might once have raised their voices against Project X show a united face against a threat to national security.”

“So,” Bolan asked him, “what’s your alternative plan?”

Pahlavi was quiet.

“What’s your alternative to going public in the media? You can’t do that without the evidence, so what’s up next? Why am I here?” Bolan asked.

Pahlavi swallowed hard. “We have no other choice,” he said. “We must destroy the roots of Project X.”

Although the thought had not been far from Pahlavi’s mind since the loss of his sister, it still intimidated him to speak the words aloud.

“All right,” Bolan said. “Spell it out. What have you got in mind?”

“Perhaps to penetrate the laboratory somehow,” Pahlavi replied. “Once inside, there should be some way to destroy the weapon and its plans.”

“Perhaps? Somehow? Some way?” Bolan glanced over at him, then back toward the road. “That’s not a plan. It’s wishful thinking.”

Embarrassed by the truth of the American’s words, Pahlavi said, “I grant you that I do not have full knowledge of the laboratory, how to get inside, or what to do there. I was counting on Darice to help us. She…we talked about the lab, of course. Security precautions, all the measures they employ to keep strangers out. I know where the lab is located, the best way to approach it, but I’m not a soldier. Until recently, I never thought that I would have to be.”

“Sometimes it sneaks up on you,” Bolan said. “But once you come to the decision, there’s no turning back.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I know that it may mean my death,” Pahlavi said.

“But not just yours. How has the rest of Ohm been taking this?”

“You saw Adi and Sanjiv die for us. The others feel the same.”

Bolan frowned. “Can you be sure of that?” he asked.

Pahlavi felt his hackles rising. “Ask me what you mean to say.”

“It’s SOP—standard operating procedure—for a government to infiltrate opposing groups whenever possible, keep track of what they’re planning.” Bolan spared another quick glance from the two-lane highway. “It may be an absolute coincidence that a patrol with thirty-odd soldiers came along just at the time we were supposed to meet, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.”

“You believe there is a traitor in the group?” Pahlavi asked.

“I don’t believe or disbelieve,” Bolan replied. “I’m saying it’s a possibility you should consider, if it hasn’t crossed your mind already.”

“You’re wrong,” Pahlavi answered stubbornly. “Darice and I joined Ohm. They did not come to us with flattery, pretending to believe as we did. As I do.”

“All the more reason to consider who your friends are,” Bolan said. “The group has been around a while. Presumably it’s known to the security police, maybe G-2.”

“I do not understand.”

“Army Intelligence,” Bolan explained. “I don’t know what you call it here. I guarantee your government has one or more departments dedicated to collecting information on its opposition, doing everything it can to bring them down.”