The report claimed that after four months, the polymer’s miraculous protective qualities somehow broke down, eventually dissipating to nothing.

One day the polymer could defeat nearly any bomb on the planet; the next it could barely stand up to a mild breeze.

“When did they start the coating operation over there?” Nicky asked. He was catching on quickly.

“About three and a half months ago. They’re shamefully behind schedule. But many hundreds of vehicles are now coated and vulnerable. The soldiers call them poly-plus roadies.”

“You know what it means to try to stop this?”

“Think what it means not to, Nicky.”

“Why don’t you help me think about that?”

“Thousands of soldiers are now rolling around Iraqi streets, thinking they’re impervious to the worst the jihadis can throw at them. They’re taking risks they would never contemplate otherwise. One morning they wake up and get a very nasty surprise.”

Nicky waved the report in the air. “How do I know this is reliable?”

“Yesterday I had a chat with the president of Summit Testing. The company’s credible. Its reputation within the industry is impeccable. They were hired, almost two years ago, by Perry Arvan to conduct a field test in Iraq. A private defense contractor agreed to serve as the guinea pig. Dozens of its vehicles were coated and sent into the most violent streets in Baghdad. For four months, no problems, everything worked great. Then one day the polymer broke down completely.”

“How?” Nicky asked. “Why?”

“They have a hunch. They aren’t entirely sure it’s right, though.”

“Let’s hear the hunch.”

“The reactive explosives in the polymer are nitrogen-based. It’s a rare occurrence, but they suspect ultraviolet rays from the sun break down the reactive qualities. Starts out gradually, then accelerates quickly. Physicists could explain it better than me, but apparently it’s known to happen.”

It was suddenly clear to Nicky how volatile the summary in his hand was about to become. Senior people in the Defense Department had pressed hard for a quick, noncompetitive contract for CG. Nicky had heard rumors about shortcuts and favors. All big defense contracts generated plenty of nasty gossip, often spawned by jealous competitors, but in the strain of running a building that spends five hundred billion dollars a year, they were usually ignored as long as they weren’t too serious or perceptibly credible. This one just became all too credible.

Nicky swiped a hand through the gray stubble on his scalp. “So you’re asking me to take this upstairs based on a guess? To stop the biggest, most publicized defense breakthrough of the decade because of a hunch?”

“It’s no hunch that the polymer breaks down, Nicky. Let’s not argue, okay? You’ve got the report. It’s a stone-cold fact. The only uncertainty is what causes it.”

Nicky collapsed back against his desk. He pretended to read the file again and think about it. He wasn’t squeamish, nor was he cowered by CG’s reputation and power. In twenty years in this racket, he’d seen it all. He’d been involved in taking down some of the biggest giants in industry, been cursed at and threatened, once had bricks thrown through his car window. No, he wasn’t worried about the fallout.

What bothered him was Mia.

He’d been getting pestering calls for days, asking what she was up to. As large and fragmented as the Pentagon was, it had a small-town culture with gossips and nosy busybodies on every hallway. She was hassling CG, and vacuuming up contracts and background material from the procurement people. She was doing this all on her own. The question was, why? He considered three or four reasons and liked none of them.

But it really didn’t matter. He had no choice. None at all. Nicky finally said with clear reluctance, “All right, I’ll bring this upstairs to the director. But I’m not happy, Mia. I don’t like being the caboose.”

“You’re doing the right thing,” Mia said, making an obvious effort to sound reassuring. “I’ll tell you everything when the time’s right.”

23

It took only six hours for the summary Mia put in Nicky’s hands to work its way up the chain to the very top. Three hours to be read, confirmed, and painfully contemplated by the director of the DCIS. An hour and a half to be viewed with undisguised horror by the undersecretary for procurement. Then another hour and a half for the director of test and evaluation to dream up a few lame excuses, none even remotely credible, before the procession of deeply addled senior officials marched into the office of the secretary of defense with the alarming news.

The president of Summit Testing fielded calls from every level. At one point, he even gathered the evaluation team that had spent six long months in Iraq. On the speakerphone, they defended their scientific judgment and recited their impressive résumés-two PhDs in molecular chemistry from MIT, three master’s degrees from a series of other distinguished academic institutions-and recounted how they arrived at the incontrovertible conclusion that the polymer was a star that quickly fizzled into a flop.

They explained that the study and pictures CG had bandied around town to such terrific effect in fact represented only their preliminary results. For three months and twenty-nine days the polymer had worked like magic. In jubilation they had prepared their report and labeled it as the final; the polymer was the thing dreams are made of, with an album of astonishing pictures to prove it.

Only a few days after the “final” report was finished, and only two days before the crew was scheduled to climb on a freedom bird and fly home, did the word “final” turn into “disastrously premature.” The first bad news hit. Two coated vehicles were destroyed by roadside bombs.

The wrecks were hauled back to the compound and rigorously inspected. The remarkable defensive qualities were entirely and mysteriously gone. History. The polymer was now nothing but a ridiculously expensive paint job. Over the ensuing weeks, as more of the polymer-coated test vehicles became casualties, the examinations continued. More wrecks hauled into their yard, more head-scratching, more disappointment as the team realized all those months were a waste. You see, they said, not all the vehicles deteriorated at the same pace, or even the same way.

There were variations. Some coated vehicles degraded quickly; a few lingered months longer. Some vehicles exhibited a patchwork, a quilt of polymer with all its amazing qualities intact, intermixed with large dead spaces. Others seemed to turn off uniformly as if flipped by a big switch. Why remained a mystery. The answer was complicated and elusive. There were too many variables, too many unanswerable questions: how long a vehicle remained under cover from the sun; how thick the coatings were; how the intensity of the sun fluctuated with the seasons.

All these things could be factors, or maybe none of them at all. It was impossible to say.

The team remained in Iraq another two months, until the last of the coated fleet was completely defenseless. There were no visible signs of degradation, they said; the polymer gave up no clues as to its virility. Worse, there was no safe way to test for the degradation of the polymer they were aware of.

Aside from flinging an explosive against the vehicle and watching it either burst into a fireball or shrug it off, you couldn’t tell whether the polymer was effective or not. A vehicle could survive the worst you throw at it one minute, and be a death trap ten seconds later.

That troubling unpredictability meant the polymer was dead on arrival.

The old, now disproved “final” report was stuffed in a drawer, never meant to see the light of day. Few copies had been produced. Distribution was strictly controlled. Aside from Summit’s own file copies, only Perry Arvan had received, or even laid eyes on, the fool’s gold, to the best of their knowledge.