Da Vinci's Epitaph

By Alex Gabbard

Copyright © 1999

All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

"Yes, Senator. I wrote that report."

The assembly of senators, staff and intelligence corp remained silent, anticipating a fiery showdown from the Senator. His cheeks puffed under his wire rimmed glasses as he spoke.

"And did you realize that you were telling every terrorist in the world where they could get uranium for bombs?"

"Yes."

"Yes? YES!? That's all you can say? YES!"

Dr. Miles Aston grinned. "Senator, the book of physics is open to anyone who wishes to read it. Perhaps you should do some remedial reading some time." The murmur of laughter was quelled by the old Senator's harsh glances around the assembly.

"Indeed," he scoffed.

"It's rather straight forward, Senator. The same physics that worked at Alamogordo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki can work for anyone who reads the book."

"It's that easy? Just read 'the book'?"

"With a little thought."

"What sort of thought?"

"Anyone who reads nuclear physics learns what the books say. A few facts in this book, a few more in that book, a few calculations within the capability of any college physics student who thinks about it can result in the same conclusions."

"Are you telling this body that a college physics student anywhere can design a nuclear bomb?"

"Yes. That was shown some time ago at Princeton along with hundreds of detonations around the world since the initial blasts in 1945. The concepts are quite well proven and well known."

The Senator glanced at the CIA Director for confirmation. The top sleuth, a portly man who swept his hair from one temple to the other in a vane attempt to cover his receding hairline, sat non-committal, his beady eyes fixed on the senator who interpreted his non-response as a confirming nod.

"Dr. Aston, are you saying that we spent two billion dollars during the war and billions more since then to invent and maintain atomic bombs, and a college physics student in Timbucktu can do the same thing with a pencil and paper?"

"No. That is not what I am saying. What you've related is the simplicity we get from the media and movie-makers."

The muffled mumblings around the assembly room were once again quelled by the Senator's stern glances.

"To go from pencil and paper to bombs requires a working infrastructure of knowledge and equipment built on a vast body of knowledge. That infrastructure is neither easy to acquire nor easy to maintain. The two billion you mentioned was in 1945 dollars. What..."

"What would it cost today?" the Senator asked gruffly. Dr. Aston's smirkish grin raised the Senator's eyebrow.

"I suspect that is a secret. And I suspect that whoever should undertake to make bombs isn't going to tell us, are they, Senator?"

The old man did not like the condescending tone of that remark, and was surprised when Dr. Aston abruptly continued.

"But, the concept and details of how to make nuclear weapons are freely available on the World Wide Web, courtesy of Greenpeace and other nuclear weapons tutorials."

"What?! Greenpeace? Come now, Dr. Aston. We can check that sort of thing."

"And you should, since you obviously haven't."

The Senator's face flushed at the suggestion that he was un-prepared for this investigation. "Surely, sir, an environmental organization of the renown of Greenpeace would not be so brazen."

"Brazen indeed. I remind you, Senator, that the use of the weapons during World War Two told everyone the concepts work. But more than one secret was revealed in that blinding white flash over Hiroshima. The student who thinks about it can arrive at the same conclusion.

Testing need not be repeated. No demonstrations of that design were needed then and none are needed now; only acquisition of the right materials in the right configuration, and it works. The knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons exists in many books, along with details from website tutorials, such as from Greenpeace and enumerable freely available publications. The student needs nothing more than a calculator, not even a personal computer."

"And you told the world where to get the materials, did you not?"

"Did you actually read my report, Senator?"

"I remind you, Dr. Aston, this inquiry is not directed at me or this council. We are here to determine the severity of your scientific indiscretion during a time of growing world tensions. Giving this sort of knowledge to terrorists is a grave act, a very grave act."

"Senator, they already have this information. It's been around for fifty years in multitudes of books and reports, many written by the original bomb builders, now de-classified per regulations of this government, and they are available to anyone who asks for them. Libraries at every university have the information or can get it. The media has told the story repeatedly, and now the web..."

The old senator pointed his finger at Dr. Aston. "You are a scientist, Dr. Aston. Certainly you can see that your pronouncements are confirmatory of such material. A movie-maker simply portrays entertainment that need be no more than plausible. Newspeople simply relay events, however skewed they may present them, but when a scientist provides confirmation of where to get nuclear weapons material, combined with data that you say is readily available to make bombs, that creates destabilizing influences against mankind," the Senator hesitated and waggled his finger, "caused by your indiscretion."

Dr. Aston grinned again, unperturbed by the Senator's penetrating remarks. "Both the material and the knowledge precede me, Senator. Today and always." He pointed toward Director Baird and his CIA staffers. "Stabilization is a job for today's intelligence network. These sleuths have a new charter. I only tell them where to look, places where they haven't looked before. When there's a BOOM and a blinding white flash somewhere, then it's too late to wonder how it could happen. Their job is to prevent it from happening."

The senator banged his fist, "Your report should have been classified and not available to the public," he barked. "You have made the job of intelligence and counter-measures much more difficult, haven't you, Dr. Aston?"

"No, I haven't. The job of the CIA and international intelligencia is to learn who has the knowledge before a mushroom cloud from a Hiroshima-like blast rises over some city somewhere. After the fact, councils such as this will convene to determine how a nuclear warhead got into the wrong hands rather than address the possibility that they built the thing themselves - from reading the right books. I haven't put knowledge in the wrong hands; they already have it. What I have done is raise the awareness of anti-proliferation and intelligence people to this possibility and to ask if they are looking in the right places. Are they asking the right questions?" Dr. Aston's confident composure penetrated through the Senator's scowl. "Are you talking to the right people, Senator?"

The Senator growled again, "So, you think you did a good deed?"

"Good or bad, the deed was done at Alamogordo and Hiroshima. All I can do now is educate."

"And you think that's what you are doing, educating?"

"Yes I do, Senator. Terrorist, spook, sleuth and housewife alike. Take notice that this possibility is real. Mother nature speaks the same language to anyone who studies it. Application of the knowledge is the same regardless of whose hands it comes from. History certainly confirms this thesis. You are aware, Senator, that South Africa built similar bombs. India? Pakistan. Other nations. Who’s next?"

The Senator brushed the question aside. "Just like that, you relieve yourself of any responsibility?"

"Ah, responsibility. Just as I thought. This is a witch hunt, isn't it, Senator? I remind you that what we know with certainty is that ideas are easy. Bringing them into practice is the tough part. It takes more than one bright student who asks the right questions and gets the right answers. It takes a firm commitment and time to reach weapons capability, but once there, the result is the same, and the practitioners better know what they are doing because the stuff that goes BOOM is absolutely unforgiving if mishandled during the making."

"So, the only insurance mankind has against nuclear terrorism is no more than the technology gap?"

"Simply stated, that is all we have."

"Frankly, Dr. Aston, that's scary as hell."

"Hell, indeed, Senator. But no more than Soviet, French, Indian, British, Israeli, Chinese, South African bombs, many others; hundreds of nuclear tests since Alamogordo, and you want to close Pandora's box now by putting the lid on a single report? Are we being naive, Senator?"

Dr. Aston said cooly. "I remind you that there is nothing supreme about American physics or the American view of the world."

"Dr. Aston, your exposé of the quantity of nuclear material in coal is nothing but a giant step toward world instability."

"The step toward instability, Senator, is not paying attention to that knowledge. I remind you and this gathering that you support the export of uranium."

The Senator became incensed. "Be careful of your accusations, sir. I am on record opposing transfer of nuclear technology abroad."

"And I remind you, Senator, that you are on record supporting increased export of US products to adjust the imbalance of trade. Isn't that correct, Senator?" The old Senator gritted his teeth. "Once again, I am not the subject of this inquiry. It is not my ambition to waste the taxpayers money following your evasions."

Dr. Aston gave the Senator another annoying smile. "For every hundred million tons of coal we mine in this country and export, which you support, over two hundred tons of uranium and almost five hundred tons of thorium go with it. That's more than enough fissile material for twenty Hiroshima mushroom clouds from the uranium alone, and it's your policy, the policy of the United States Senate, the White House, and the Congress to sell coal to whoever wants to buy it without consideration of what goes with it. You should read my report, Senator."

Red-faced, the Senator attempted his own evasion. "Your report? Your report! Clearly you have taken credit for others who contributed to 'your report', Dr. Aston." The Senator held up a copy. "Only your name appears on this report."

"There are no others, Senator. I alone produced that report. Read it and you will see that my exposé of the facts is not the question here. The facts have been known ever since people began searching for uranium and found it in coal. Read it and you will learn that some coal has been found to be many times richer in uranium than the global average figures I’ve used. I have done no more than remind you as a policy-maker, and every frightened housewife in America and around the world, that we cannot ignore sources of such potential. If you are opposed to exporting nuclear technology, Senator, why do you support giving away nuclear fuel in coal to anyone who wants it?"

Muscles in the Senator's jaws twitched as anger overwhelmed him. He was rarely stumped when grilling someone, but this time, he had no answer. He enjoyed the power of his office, his authority, but now it was turned upon him.

"Dr. Aston, this is a closed session. For security reasons, you are not permitted to discuss what has transpired here. Testimony is terminated until further notice." He hammered the gavel adjourning the inquiry.

A grin spread across Dr. Aston's face. His eyes met the Senator's. "Remarkable," he chuckled. The senator whirled from his chair and left the Senate chamber. Director Baird clamped his teeth on his pipe and stumbled out of his chair avoiding eye contact with Dr. Aston.

The scientist left the chamber and soon strode confidently down the steps of the Senate Building. With masterful hands he swept his flowing golden hair back over his thousand dollar SunBan custom glasses. Not only were his the hands of a brilliant scientist... He stopped a few steps down and scanned the approaches for his silver Jaguar Brooklands, then smiled to see it on the move. He stood there momentarily as if posing for the cover of International Male; his tailored Vaughan & Shenck suit of fine Egyptian weave lay perfectly over his virgin lamb classic buttondown knit in matching earthtones. His slightly flared cuffless pants fell precisely one centimeter below his ankles and brushed the hand stitching of his Scottish leather high topped wing-tips. At six feet two inches, Dr. Miles Aston was a well-honed man of breeding and spared nothing to equip himself with the finest. His fortune afforded him the best.

The Jaguar pulled to a stop just as he arrived at the curb. Brigitte stepped from the car and gave him a returning pose. The gentle autumn breeze flipped through her golden hair that accented her blue eyes that were fixed on him. Her French lips pooched, then sent a sensuous kiss to him. "Going my way, handsome American," she asked?

The falling pencil clinked when it hit the desk and startled John. He had been dozing again. He looked around quickly to see if anyone was there to notice and was relieved to see no one. He breathed a heavy sigh. The spartan office was empty; his office partner had taken a half-day of vacation that afternoon, and the closed door left John cloistered in the accumulated leftovers of three decades of low bid government contracts that furnished his office with cheap, drab, recycled equipment ancient by any measure.

He glanced at the clock. Five-ten. He took another deep breath. He was supposed to be home by five. He'd catch it again. He thought about Brigitte. Just a dream. Why couldn't she be real, he thought; beautiful, intelligent, all the things the movie women are but no real woman could ever be.

Why couldn't he be like Dr. Miles Aston? Just his imagination. Instead, he would face the terminator again; his fault again, of course. Everything was his fault. They would argue again. And he would cower and apologize again, like always. He shuddered at the prospect facing him. Life with her was like being stalked in a cage. He could not escape her lashings. With no way out he had learned to take whatever she threw at him, then go back to work to get away from her. Dr. John Lott, engineer, bored with it all, flicked the pencil with his middle finger. It ricocheted off the stack of reports on his desk, bounced a couple of times and spun to a halt by the phone. The reports had not moved in months. Why hadn't they turned to coal by now? he wondered, trying to add a little humor. He hadn't looked at them in ages. No one had. Nothing would be more satisfying than sweeping everything off his desk into the trash. Nobody read his reports, anyway. What good was all the time spent on them?

"The measure of my existence," he mused. "A stack of paper nobody reads. Nobody," he sighed again. "Nobody is the measure of my existence."

He punched the computer OFF button and thought how its whining down was like him, winding down toward the end of his career, nothing left.

"Who cares?" he muttered. Not a word of his annual performance appraisal had been typed into the machine that afternoon. He thought about Brigitte and that Jaguar, now just fast fading remnants of his imaginative dozing. He longed for a different life.

"Well, Dr. Miles Aston," he muttered under his breath, "another secret agent episode while I've managed to fritter away the afternoon. What to hell? It doesn't matter, anyway. Everything is a waste of time."

He paused and looked at the clock again. "Time, just ticking away 'til the pink slip arrives. Then what?"

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Da Vinci's Epitaph-Chapter Two

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