Perilous Panacea by Ronald Klueh Page A

accent as he fidgeted papers on his desk. Woodward was chief dispatcher for NNSA’s Southeastern Office at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the office that dispatched the lost shipments of nuclear material. He explained how CID and DOE investigators also wanted to know why three loaded trucks were sent out with only two escort vehicles, when their code four status required them to have four.
    “Andy Jordan, my boss, said Washington instructed it to be a code two. Jordan figured it was an economy move. There’s always a new economy move…on paper anyhow. That and reorganization.”
    Saul nodded. Everybody bitched about government work, but people like Woodward never quit. “You said they wanted to blame you for the hijacking.”
    “That’s right. They claimed Washington never dropped it from a code four. There was no record of a change on the computer. Jordan told them the change was in an ED, electronic directive, but he couldn’t find it on the web either, even though we both saw it. Goddamn computer. Used to be, we were covered up with paper and everybody said it would be better with computers. It isn’t. We’ve got more web-based forms and directives than we ever had paper. It’s a wonder we ever get a shipment out of here.”
    When Saul got to Andy Jordan, head of the NNSA’s Southeastern Office, he got the same story about the computer and Washington, how the ED that changed the code was no longer on the web. Jordan said, “Someone must have removed it when they found out what happened.”
    “Do Washington people ever come down to look you over?” Saul asked.
    “DOE and DOD people were all over the place when this happened.”
    “What about other times?”
    “Fortunately, not too often. Washington types would rather visit California or New York than Tennessee. We get enough of them though, like the young pup we had here six-eight months ago, one of those computer whiz-bangs I was griping about, name of Austin. He wanted to know exactly how we operate. We wasted two days showing him the procedures for storage and transportation. We showed him the trucks and everything, although I don’t know why he needed to see the trucks. He was studying how NNSA’s communications network could be improved. A lack of communications didn’t cause this screw-up. We weren’t lacking security either, because this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill hijacking. Security is what this job’s all about. Our trucks cost over a million dollars apiece. They are more like an Abrams tank than a normal truck.”
    Saul nodded, knowing what Jordan was getting at. He and Spanner suspected the same, even before he left Washington, but he was happy to get out of there for awhile, although distance hadn’t improved his relationship with Mary. When he finally got hold of her at the office today, they argued. She claimed she’d been working late last night, and then she went out to eat. It was who she went out with that interested him. That’s when the argument started.
    Jordan went on: “The trucks are called SSTs, Safe-Secure Transports. They’re made of armored steel. If one is attacked, the driver can push a button and lock the axles.” Saul had been briefed on the trucks, but let Jordan explain how they are tracked by GPS by the communications center at Kirtland Air Force Base outside Albuquerque. “And they’re not being tracked by some two-bit rent-a-cop outfit with pins in a map and a walkie-talkie. There’s a Cray supercomputer that knows what’s going on at all times. It’s a super-secure computer that nobody is going to get into from outside.”
    “I know what you’re saying,” Saul said.
    “What I’m saying is that your problem isn’t down here, it’s back in Washington. Then again, a lot of us think most everybody’s problems come out of Washington.”
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    Saul’s next stop was Tennessee State Police Headquarters, where he interviewed the investigating officers, who took him to the crime site. He learned nothing