Let's face it: after a while, international terrorism becomes a job just like any other.
I know my business is supposed to be glamourous. But try taking glamour to the bank. I mean to say, you can't just walk up to some girl in a bar and tell her you're the people's soldier. She'd either laugh her head off or call the FBI.
Don't get me wrong; terrorism has been good to me. I work with the People's Equalitarian Army (better known by its unfortunate acronym, PEA), a young but increasingly competitive terror firm based in the greater New York area. The job has its perquisites--flexible hours, travel opportunities, choice of salary or commission, that sort of thing.
But the PEA is like any business. Somebody gets to have all the fun, and somebody else has to do the paperwork.
I do the paperwork. After three years as the PEA's desk man in New Jersey, I still wouldn't know an AK-47 from a popgun. The world knows me as a certified public accountant with four polyester suits and an office in Bayonne. Not a hell of a lot of glamour about that, is there?
I hope you'll understand, anyway, that I'm basically an average guy. And if you understand that, maybe you'll also understand how it was that I managed to lose a gram of pure plutonium on a bus in Port Authority Terminal.
It happened, as these things invariably do, on a Monday. I had just fixed a morning cup of the instant mountain-grown, and was settling in at my desk for the usual quixotic stab at the "In" tray, when someone knocked at the door.
This kind of thing is a constant annoyance. Every few days, some idiot shows up at my office in search of a legitimate CPA. Since I know even less about accounting than I do about guerilla warfare, I have to politely refer him to a distinguished colleague, picked at random from the phone book. Simple enough, but it takes time.
Today's idiot proved to be a thin, nervous young man with the complexion of a nascent Richard Burton. The kind of kid who gives added meaning to the word "callow," if you know what I mean. I contrived a stage yawn and shot him the classic opening gambit.
"What can I do for you?"
He swallowed visibly and shuffled.
"Some friends of mine told me you're...political. Is that right?"
I didn't feel like spending forty minutes working around to the point. He obviously wasn't interested in having his books done, and he didn't look like an FBI agent. Even FBI agents don't wear white socks and penny loafers anymore. So I took the direct approach.
"That's right," I said.
"Then you are who I think you are?"
"I think I am."
"Well, then, I guess you are."
"What?"
"What I think you are."
This was beginning to sound like an absurdist drama. I felt it was time for a new track, and pulled a line from an otherwise forgotten detective novel.
"Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. What's it to you?"
My visitor groaned.
"I didn't know I was going to have to deal with this Bogart shit," he said.
So much for playing detective. In my line of work, reality always seems to interfere with romance.
"Sorry," I said. Another painful pause. "So what's the problem?"
He drew a long breath.
"Well, I picked up something...at my job." Yet another pause. "I thought maybe you could use it."
"So what is it?" I asked with some agitation. I was getting bored.
"It's plutonium. A whole gram. One hundred percent pure."
In the tradition of Danny Thomas, I spewed a mouthful of coffee all over the desk blotter. I wasn't ready for plutonium at 9:30 on a Monday morning.
"I work for the power company, see?" he continued. "I've got these friends who work in the research lab. They're kind of political, too. Get the idea?"
I got the idea, and I told him so. I was ready to hear more, but he seemed to get spooked all of the sudden. Maybe he thought it unhealthy to hang around with the kind of dangerous loony who dribbles coffee down his shirt front. In any case, he slipped out the door without further word, leaving what appeared to be a lunch sack on my desk.
I looked inside. One cylindrical metal container, made presumably from lead, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. If my young friend was to be believed, there was plutonium inside that vial. I was sure of one thing--I wasn't going to be the one who found out.
Frankly, I had been about to tell him to get out and take his plutonium with him. I had no interest in handling that kind of contraband, regardless of its supposed political value. From what I understand about plutonium, you make one false move with the stuff and you've sterilized yourself and everyone else within a couple hundred miles downwind. Moreover, parts of you begin to fall off at unpredictable times, causing, I would imagine, considerable embarrassment at social gatherings.
The only thing to do, I reasoned, was to get rid of it as quickly as possible. But who would be willing to take it? The PEA already had more plutonium than it knew what to do with. Well-intentioned people had been stealing it and sending it our way for years.
Actually, though, there isn't much a political organization could do with plutonium. You've read in magazines, I know, that a six-year-old could make an atom bomb in his basement using dad's power tools. If you believe that, I suggest you get your own little vial of plutonium, or U-235, or something similarly potent. Give it a try. You'll be a smouldering pile of ash before you finish screwing the lid off.
The fact is, only two kinds of people have any use for a vial of pure plutonium: nuclear scientists and certifiable lunatics. I don't know any nuclear scientists, so I called Mongo.
Mongo (he seemed to have no last name) was a terrorist organization unto himself. He was at least six-eight and weighed about 290. Although he professed no political beliefs (as he was fond of saying, "Mongo just like to fuck things up"), he often made himself useful to the various branches of the terrorist underground. Whatever the job was, if it was too dangerous, too expensive, or too repulsive, you gave it to Mongo. He especially enjoyed the repulsive ones.
I told Mongo the story, using simple words where possible. Mongo had trouble with words of more thantwo syllables. He was, it seemed, only too happy to take the plutonium off my hands. I didn't ask why. For all I knew or cared, he gargled with the stuff.
I arranged to meet Mongo in a couple hours in the classical sculpture gallery of the Metropolitan Museum. Not that he was some kind of connoisseur; he just got a thrill from snapping the limbs off priceless statues. The next bus to Manhattan was scheduled to come by in ten minutes. I slipped the lead vial, pretty gingerly, into an overcoat pocket, and headed for the nearest stop.
I arrived in the city with an hour or so to spare. I decided to kill some time checking out the marquees in Times Square, seeing which form of public perversion was top of the pops that week.
I was on the corner of 43rd and Eighth, wondering what `erotic Rolphing' might be, when I checked my pockets experimentally. I was quick to note 1) a conspicuous absence of anything resembling plutonium, and 2) the unmistakable presence of a gaping hole in the pocket of choice.
It is not easy to describe my feelings at that moment, but I'll try. Ever heard of shitting bricks? I was shitting monumental architecture.
After a minute or two, when my pulse rate had slowed to about 200, I realized that perhaps all was not lost. Indeed, I seemed to stand a pretty decent chance of recovering--that is, if I had lost my plutonium on the bus, and not on the street. Port Authority was the end of the line for my bus. Presumably, the driver was required to have at least a cursory look around for valuables before heading for the men's room to shoot up, or whatever it is bus drivers do on break. With luck, my little vial might already be burning a hole through the Lost and Found counter.
With a surge of hope, I located a pay phone, got Port Authority on the line, and, after several excruciating minutes of Muzak, was connected with the appropriate office.
"Lost and Found," said a voice on the other end. "What didja lose, asshole?" He was polite for a New Yorker.
"Well, it was a small, cylindrical metal vial--"
"What the fuck are you talking about, Mister College Degree?"
I tried a new approach.
"It was this weird little metal thing, kind of round like, about the size of you fist. You know?"
Comprehension.
"Oh, you mean the small, cylindrical metallic vial!"
"Right."
"Jesus Christ, why didn't you say so?"
The voice on the line suddenly assumed a confidential tone.
"Listen, buddy," it said. "We were kind of wondering what that thing is. Is there anything inside it?"
I didn't have to answer. There was no reason to answer. Only a fool would have felt compelled to answer. I answered.
"It's my...asthma medication." Glib, right?
An appropriate response was not long in coming.
"My grandmother's ass."
I figured I'd had enough abuse for one telephone call. I told him I would be down in about ten minutes to pick up the goods.
"Sure, asshole," said the voice. "Have a nice day."
I hung up and headed for the terminal.
I was feeling pretty cheerful by the time I reached the Lost and Found counter. Luck, it seemed, was with me again. For one thing, I had managed to find a working pay phone in central Manhattan, a small miracle in itself. For another, it looked as though I was certain to make good my loss, with no questions asked.
Well, as my friend on the telephone might have said, my grandmother's ass. I was striding toward the counter, displaying my practiced winning smile, when I caught a glimpse of something in the periphery of vision. It was only a brief glimpse, but years of paranoia have schooled me in rapid observation.
Behind the counter was a half-open door. I had seen, slipping through that door, a figure. A figure attired in the natty blue uniform of the New York City Transit Police. It could have been a coincidence, I guess. Nobody--not even someone as demented as I--could have guessed what was in that vial. On the other hand, a guy who leaves a strange metallic object on the bus, afterwards insisting that it contains his asthma medication, is obviously up to some kind of no good. Ten to one, they figured I was smuggling drugs.
Get it? Some poor bastard spends twenty years behind the counter at Port Authority. Suddenly, he sees the chance to get his picture in the Daily News: "Bus Employee Cracks Drug Ring." So he hails the nearest transit cop, sticks him in the back room and waits.
Only a scenario, to be sure. But I was in no mood to take any chances. The thought of waiting at the counter, wearing a shit-eating grin while an imbecilic cop struggled to open a vial of stuff that would make Long Island glow in the dark, was too much for me.
I didn't have to write to Ann Landers to figure out what to do next. Take off. Split. Hit the trail. Make self scarce. And get Mongo.
It was the work of the moment to sashay outside and flag down a cab. I made it to the Met right on time.
Mongo was easy to find. He was removing the fingers from a Roman copy of Praxiteles' Hermes. Say what you will about him, Mongo has taste.
As I recounted the day's events, a disturbing gleam appeared in Mongo's eyes. He wasn't angry. Mongo likes a challenge.
He handed me a couple of marble fingers--a token, I suppose, of his esteem--and lumbered off toward the exit. I didn't follow him. I still have some instinct for self-preservation, and I had a feeling it was going to be a pretty blue Monday down at Port Authority.
To judge by the next morning's headlines, I was right.
Times: "Three Die, 17 injured in Bus Station incident."
Daily News: "Monster at Large after Port Authority Bloodbath."
Post: "Kill! Human Juggernaut Screamed."
I figured Mongo had had himself a pretty good old time. I gave him a call a few days later. It wasn't really my business any more, but I must confess to a certain curiosity, especially after headlines like those.
Unfortunately, Mongo was taciturn as always.
"Mongo get mad. Real mad," was the most he would tell me.
On a whim, I asked him what he planned to do with the plutonium. For a moment he was confused. Then the light dawned, and he told me his story in Mondo-fashion, relying heavily on onomatopoeia and the present indicative.
I was able to piece it together with a little effort. After wreaking considerable mayhem, Mongo, I gathered, had left the station with the vial in hand. He had tried to open it as soon as he hit the street. Fortunately for the tri-state area, the thing was equipped with a Mongo-proof cap. He tried squeezing it, biting it, and smashing it against the hoods of passing taxi cabs. Nothing worked. Finally, he got frustrated and threw it in a trash can.
I gave Mongo a cheerful goodbye and rang off.
God only knows where that plutonium is now. The way I see it, it's only a matter of time before someone gets curious of the container corrodes. I don't like to contemplate what will happen then.
Not that I care much about the fate of countless millions up and down the Eastern Seaboard. I hear people are nicer in California, anyway.
It's just that when the worst happens, the PEA will be left out in the cold. Everybody from the PLO to the DAR will claim the credit, and we'll have no way of proving our responsibility.
That irks me. The PEA is in competition with a lot of other organizations, after all. You might say we're vying for the top spot on the terrorists' Fortune 500. A coup on the order of several million deaths would have been bound to put us in control of the market.
We blew it, I guess. You see, it's a business. Just like any other.
Jacob Levich is a Yale dropout working for a S.E. Portland scandal rag. He is married and the proud father of no children.
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