Code Word: Paternity, A Presidential Thriller (32 page)

***

Fahim kept his nimble fingers and
restless mind occupied repairing the old cabin in the Idaho mountains. Most evenings he
took
a cup of hot sweet tea to the porch and watched
the sun go down. And waited for The Base to give him another mission.

Afterword and
Acknowledgments

“
The Commission believes that unless the
world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than
not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack
somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.”
 
So states the opening paragraph of the Executive Summary to the report
of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass
Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, December 12, 2008.

Code
Word: Paternity
is a
novel, not a prophecy. But much of it is, unfortunately, fact. The spread of
nuclear weapons, dubbed “nuclear proliferation” by scholars and governments, is
real. A. Q. Khan’s nuclear smuggling ring significantly increased the risk of a
nuclear weapon getting into the hands of terrorists. The late Kim Jong-il and
his father did, indeed, buy and sell and barter nuclear weapon and missile
technology with regimes controlled by other dangerous, unpredictable—perhaps
unhinged—dictators. They did, indeed, engage in the astonishing assassinations,
kidnappings, and warlike acts recounted by President Martin’s secretary of
state and his CIA director. All of the technologies described in
Code Word: Paternity
exist: in fact
analyzing the debris of a nuclear explosion is old hat, having been mastered
some fifty years ago during the days of nuclear weapon testing in the
atmosphere.

The Paternity Project is my invention, in
the sense that the name is my creation and to my knowledge there has been no
government announcement of such a capability. I had no access to classified
information. But one can find press reports from the late 1940s through the
early 1960s describing the use of techniques like those of my fictional
Paternity Project to analyze nuclear detonations. My surmise—indeed my
expectation—is that the U.S.
government has such a program, perhaps resident in the Department of Homeland
Security’s National
Technical Nuclear
Forensics Center.

Although nuclear terrorism hasn’t
happened, America’s
shield against it may be wearing thin. That shield, called nuclear deterrence,
is the belief of all rulers possessing or developing nuclear weapons that
should the United States be attacked anonymously with a nuclear weapon, the
U.S. government has the scientific capacity to rapidly identify the nation that
manufactured the weapon’s nuclear core and would retaliate against that country
in kind, regardless of the affiliation of the operatives who emplaced and
detonated the bomb.

But our deterrence shield is constructed
largely of two materials: the assumption that all who control nukes regard U.S.
nuclear retaliation as their own ultimate catastrophe, and their belief that
the president of the United States possesses both the resolve and the political
capital to order nuclear retaliation in circumstances when the identity of the
enabler nation is not established beyond all doubt. Unfortunately we live in a
period when the first of these factors can no longer be taken for granted and
the second depends on the ability of every ruler controlling nukes to
accurately perceive the qualities of both America’s president and its
politics.

America
’s political discourse now features
frequent attacks on the character of our president, regardless of party.
 
And the proliferation of cable television and
Internet outlets catering to micro-audiences offers great temptation for
someone—be he or she a “shock jock” or a head of state—to substitute googling
for thought and simply reinforce beliefs already held.

Kim Jong-il, “the Dear Leader,” died in
2011. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that he, given his
life journey and probably psychotic personality, was at risk of making the
colossal misjudgments portrayed in
Code
Word: Paternity
. Perhaps his successor, son Kim Jong-un, is unlike him and
will take North Korea
in a different direction. But, then again, perhaps not. And there are other
autocrats who, should they possess nukes, could have the same combination of
absolute authority and delusional thinking as Kim Jong-il and make the same
catastrophic error that “my” Kim made.

I wish to acknowledge a number of works
that were essential to my research for
Code
Word: Paternity
. I benefited enormously from them; any errors in the novel
are my own. Professor Graham Allison has written widely and authoritatively
about nuclear weapon issues, especially the dangers of nuclear proliferation.
The title of his 2004 book,
Nuclear
Terrorism, The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe
, cannot be surpassed as a
summation of the situation in which we now live. Professor Allison describes
the risks and proposes solutions much less sanguinary than the one that Rick
Martin ultimately employed. May they come to pass!

Besides Allison’s book, I relied on
Gordon Corera’s
Shopping for Bombs
,
also on
Nuclear Jihadist
and on
Fallout
, both by Catherine Collins and
Douglas Frantz. Michael Levi’s
On Nuclear
Terrorism
was important for its discussion of nuclear forensics, the
techniques behind my fictive Paternity Project. Though first published over
sixty years ago,
The Effects of Nuclear
Weapons
, edited by Samuel Glasstone, remains an essential resource on the
topic and implies how much may be deduced from analysis of a nuclear
detonation. I depended on Bradley K. Martin’s
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader
for information about North Korea’s
ruling dynasty of Kims. My copy of Don Oberdorfer’s
The Two Koreas
became well thumbed. I got a key story idea from
Senator Jim Webb’s
A Time to Fight
:
the kernel of Ray Morales’ conversation with President Martin—Martin’s
epiphany.

With great pleasure I express
appreciation for the support of family and friends—and writing instructor Steve
Alcorn—during my journey to the completion of
Code Word: Paternity
. Besides her steady encouragement, my wife,
Janie, gamely read the entire manuscript and made comments that improved it. So
did Robert Bishop, Sandra Bovee, John Dill, John Fredland, Dan Hahne, Bill
Mason, Bob (the WO) Miller, Ted Mussenden, Barbara Sheffer, Chip Sterling,
Kathy Sterling, and Bob Williams. P.T. (Pete) Deutermann gave me pithy comments
on the writer’s craft and life that helped me find perspective. My thanks also
to Robert Brown, Jr. whose contribution went beyond his eagle-eyed copy
editing. Paul Chamberlain of Cerebral Itch and Megan Hahne gave me my first
inkling about cover creation.
 
Connie
Reider, friend and wonderful portrait photographer, created my author photo.
And my appreciation to the staff of Nimitz Library at the US Naval Academy
where I did most of my research.

GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TERMS

ACLU
. Abbreviation for
American Civil Liberties Union
.
The ACLU is
a membership organization that advocates in courts, legislatures, and
communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the
Constitution and laws of the United
States guarantee.

Andrews.
Andrews
Air Force Base
, near Washington DC,
houses the squadrons that provide transportation to the president and other
senior government officials. It is the airport normally used by the president.

BMEWS
. Abbreviation for the Cold War-era
Ballistic Missile Early Warning System
,
which
could provide long-range warning of a ballistic missile attack over the
polar region of the northern hemisphere.

CBP.
Abbreviation for the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection Agency
. It
is one of the Department of Homeland Security’s largest components, with a
priority mission of keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the United States.
It also has a responsibility for securing and facilitating trade and travel
while enforcing hundreds of U.S.
regulations, including immigration and drug laws.

CIA
. Abbreviation for the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency
. The
director of the Central Intelligence Agency leads the organization and reports
to the director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Dear
Leader
. Term used by
North Koreans to address or refer to Kim Jong-il.

DHS
. Abbreviation for the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security
. The
secretary of homeland security is an officer of the cabinet, responsible to the
president.

DMZ
. Abbreviation for the
Demilitarized Zone
, a buffer free of
soldiers established along the border between North
Korea and South
Korea.

DNI
. Abbreviation denoting the U.S.
Director of National Intelligence
, who
serves as the head of the intelligence community, overseeing and directing the
implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal
advisor to the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland
Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security.

DOE
. Abbreviation for the U.S.
Department of Energy
, responsible for
insuring the integrity and safety of the country's nuclear weapons, promoting
international nuclear safety, advancing nuclear non-proliferation, and
continuing to provide safe, efficient, and effective nuclear power plants for
the U.S. Navy. The secretary of energy is an officer of the cabinet responsible
to the president.

DPRK
. Abbreviation for the
Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea
,
commonly referred to as North
Korea.

DSP
. Abbreviation for the
Defense Support Program
.
DSP satellites are a key part of North America's
early warning system. They help protect the United States and its allies by
detecting missile launches, space launches, and nuclear detonations.

FAA
. Abbreviation for
Federal Aviation Agency,
which is among other things responsible
for U.S.
air traffic control.

FEMA
. Abbreviation for the
Federal Emergency Management Agency
, a
unit of the DHS.
FEMA is tasked with handling all possible disasters in
the United States.
This includes both natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, and
manmade ones, such as hazardous substance spills, bombings, and war.

GOC.
Abbreviation for
Government
of China.
This formulation is sometimes used in American diplo-speak to refer to other
governments, e.g., GOJ for the Japanese government.

Gulf
One.
A term referring to
the UN-authorized international military operation that drove invading Iraqi
forces out of Kuwait
in 1990.

Great
Leader
. Term used by
North Koreans to address or refer to Kim Il-sung, father of Kim Jong-il and his
predecessor as dictator of North Korea.

HEU
. Abbreviation for
Highly Enriched Uranium
. The fissionable material of particular
interest in natural uranium ore, U-235, occurs naturally in low concentration,
too low for powering a nuclear reactor or serving as the fissionable core of a
bomb. For those purposes it must be concentrated, or enriched. When enriched to
a concentration of twenty percent U-235 or greater, uranium is said to be
highly enriched. The degree of enrichment wanted for a bomb is much higher than
twenty percent.

IAEA
. Abbreviation for the
International Atomic Energy Agency
. The
IAEA is
an independent, intergovernmental science-and-technology-based organization
in the United Nations family that serves as the global focal point for nuclear
cooperation. Among other functions, it verifies through its inspection system
that nations comply with their commitments, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty
and other non-proliferation agreements, to use nuclear material and facilities
only for peaceful purposes.

ICC
. Abbreviation for the
International Criminal Court
. The ICC is
the first permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court established to
help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to
the international community. It came into operation in 2002. Unlike the
International Court of Justice (ICJ), the ICC tries individuals and is not part
of the UN system.

JCS
. Abbreviation for the U.S.
Joint Chiefs of Staff
. They are the
chairman, the vice chairman, the chief of staff of the army, the chief of naval
operations, the chief of staff of the air force, the commandant of the marine
corps and the chief of the national guard bureau. The collective body of the
JCS is headed by the chairman, who is the principal military advisor to the
president, secretary of defense, and the National Security Council (NSC).
However, all JCS members are by law military advisors, and they may respond to
a request or voluntarily submit, through the chairman, their advice or opinions
to the president, the secretary of defense, and the NSC.

Juche
. An ancient Korean philosophy adapted
and perverted by both Kims to sustain their absolute rule. North Koreans are
immersed in its teachings and shielded as much as possible from contrary views.
Among its tenets are the absolute subordination of the people to their wise
rulers and the idea that Koreans are a chosen people who can be completely
self-sufficient and who have no need of contact with the inferior, outside
world.

NATO
. Abbreviation for the
North Atlantic
Treaty Organization
. The signatories,
including all major European powers, Canada,
and the United States,
are pledged by Article Five of the treaty to treat an armed attack on one
member as an attack on all members. Formed to resist the Soviet
Union’s westward push after World War II, the institution
diminished greatly in the twenty-first century.

NEST.
Abbreviation for
Nuclear Emergency Support Team
. Its
mission is to provide specialized technical expertise to the federal response in
resolving nuclear or radiological terrorist incidents. NEST capabilities
include nuclear materials search and identification, diagnostics and assessment
of suspected nuclear devices, technical operations in support of render safe
procedures, and packaging for transport to final disposition.

NORAD
. Abbreviation for the
North American Aerospace Defense Command
,
a bi-national United States
and Canadian organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning and
aerospace control for North America. Aerospace
warning includes the monitoring of manmade objects in space and the detection,
validation, and warning of attack against North America
whether by aircraft, missiles, or space vehicles. Aerospace control includes
ensuring air sovereignty and air defense of the airspace of Canada and the United States. These missions are
managed from a command center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

NSA
. Abbreviation for the
National Security Agency
, the U.S. government
organization that makes and breaks codes that protect information. One very
important task of the NSA is to intercept, decode, and analyze all forms of
communication. NSA's listening mission is specifically limited to gathering
information about international terrorists as well as foreign powers, organizations,
or persons.

NSC
. Abbreviation for the U.S.
National Security Council
, t
he
president's principal forum for considering national security and foreign
policy matters with his senior national security advisors and cabinet
officials. The NSC is chaired by the president. Its other statutory members are
the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the
assistant to the president for national security affairs. The chairman of the
JCS is the statutory military advisor to the NSC, and the director of national
intelligence is the intelligence advisor. Other officials, such as the director
of the CIA, the secretary of homeland security, and the secretary of the
treasury, attend as appropriate.

Pak
. English slang term for Pakistan and
its peoples.

Pantex.
Pantex Plant, located
near Amarillo, Texas,
maintains the safety, security, and reliability of America’s nuclear weapons
stockpile. The facility is managed and operated by B&W Pantex for the U.S.
Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. Among its
functions is the dismantling of nuclear weapons that are surplus to the
strategic stockpile.

Predator
. The MQ-1 Predator is a medium-altitude,
long-endurance, remotely piloted aircraft. The MQ-1's primary mission is interdiction
and conducting armed reconnaissance against critical, perishable targets. It is
used extensively against insurgents in Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
Although the pilots and their remote control gear can go anywhere, the major
drone control site is Creech Air Force Base, thirty-five miles from Las Vegas.

ROK
. Abbreviation, usually pronounced
“rock,” for the
Republic
of Korea
,
frequently called South
Korea. Its derivative, ROKs (pronounced
“rocks”) is sometimes used in reference to ROK officials or military forces.

RFID
. Abbreviation for
Radio Frequency Identification
. A technology similar in application
to bar code identification, RFID can be used just about anywhere, from
clothing, to missiles, to food. Attached RFID tags
use transponders to
transmit significant amounts of data to a receiver; often such tags are used as
part of a real-time locator system.

Sandia
Labs
.
Sandia National Laboratories
, near Albuquerque, New
Mexico. Sandia's primary mission is ensuring the U.S. nuclear arsenal is safe, secure, reliable,
and can fully support U.S.
deterrence policy.

SECDEF
. Abbreviation for the
Secretary of Defense
. The secretary is
an officer of the cabinet, responsible to the president.

SCIF
. Abbreviation for
Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility
. The most sensitive of
classified information is allowed to flow only to particular individuals—each
specifically cleared for access to that source of information—and is called
“Sensitive Compartmented Information,” or “SCI.” SCI may only be discussed in an
SCIF, an ultra-secure facility colloquially known as a “skif.”

SEAL
. Acronym for
Sea, Air, and Land
used in reference to the navy’s Special
Operations Forces. Navy SEALs operate in all of those environments.

Situation
Room/Sit Room
. The
Situation Room
is actually a five- thousand
-square-foot complex of rooms on the ground
floor of the West Wing. The staff of the Situation Room helps the president
connect with intelligence agencies and important people overseas. The Sit Room
watch provides continuous monitoring of world events and briefs the president.
Because of its location, security, and high-tech bells and whistles, the Sit
Room complex is often used for national security meetings and for monitoring
crisis events.

Tenet,
George
. CIA Director at
the time of Nine-eleven. He served from 1997 through 2004.

WMD
. Abbreviation for
Weapons of Mass Destruction
. Nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons are considered WMDs.

Yongbyon
. North Korea has several known
facilities that produce nuclear material for bombs. Most are located at
Yongbyon
,
sixty miles north of Pyongyang
,
which has a staff of about two
thousand. The major installations include a five-megawatt electric research
reactor, a fifty-megawatt reactor under construction, and a plutonium
reprocessing facility. Yongbyon is also the site of the Radiochemical
Laboratory of the Institute
of Radiochemistry, the
Nuclear Fuel Rod Fabrication Plant, and a storage facility for fuel rods.