"So who does that leave?" Stubbs asked. He had a feeling he already knew.
"Let's save the obvious for last," Hansen answered. "And let me give you a quick briefing on who's in the bomb business on this planet. It just happens to be a particular interest of mine."
He leaned back. "In the Middle East proper, only one country presently has full capability. That is, obviously, Israel. They have, in fact, a lot more bombs than anybody realizes. Their plutonium-reprocessing plant at Dimona extracts plutonium from the spent fuel in their research reactor there, and CIA claims they've got at least two hundred strategic nuclear weapons. Normal plutonium bombs need eight kilograms of the stuff, but we think they've come up with a sophisticated way to make one with five. Then there're the tactical nukes. They've got nuclear artillery shells, nuclear landmines in the Golan Heights, and hundreds of low-yield neutron bombs. That's more or less common knowledge, but what's less well known is that they've also got fusion capability— H-bombs. Which, God help us, I assume is not our problem here today. Then there's Libya, though they're still trying to get enough enriched uranium together to become a credible threat. Having only one or two bombs means that if you start anything, somebody else is going to finish it, so you need a lot before you get going. Iraq, thankfully, has been put out of business. Of course, there's still India, which has plenty of unrestricted plutonium and they've even claimed they could make a bomb in a month. We happen to think they've already done it. Because . . ." He paused. "Because we know damned well Pakistan has."
“There's your non-Caucasian in the fuel supply," Davies noted. “The fuckers."
The special assistant for national security affairs, Theodore Brock, who happened to be black, did not find Davies' Alabama good-old-boy remark especially amusing.
"Exactly," Hansen continued, wondering when he would have a good public excuse to send Davies to greener pastures. 'That's got to be the 'ally' the bastard was talking about. It's a Muslim country, and their controls are a joke. It's the obvious choice."
Brock agreed solemnly. "We can start with an inquiry through their embassy. But it's going to be sticky."
The President nodded, wishing he had a hot line to the desk of every head of state in the world. It would make this kind of crisis so much more manageable.
Part of the problem, he thought, was how do you ask somebody if they've lost something that they've never admitted having in the first place? A marvel of diplomacy was in order. Still, he would have to do it. At worst, a denial wouldn't prove the terrorists did not have a bomb, but if the answer was affirmative, then knowing the size of the device could be crucial.
"We're receiving the enhanced satellite photos now." Briggs was pulling the first sheet off the machine. "Looks like ten-meter grids." He scanned over it. "But I don't see much. There're two big rockets here, but they seem to be all right."