Ricks was just fast enough to realize that he had crossed over a line, that there really were no “off-the-record” talks in the Navy. He had defied his squadron commander, a man already on the fast track, a man trusted and believed by the Pentagon and the OP-02 bureaucracy.
“Sir, excuse me for being so positive. It’s just that nobody likes to be called down when—”
Mancuso smiled as he cut the man off. “No problem, Harry. We Italians tend to be a little passionate, too.” Too late, Harry....
“Maybe you’re right. Let me think it over. Besides, if I tangle with that Akula, I’ll show you what my people can do.”
Little late to talk about “my people, ”fella. But Mancuso had to give him the chance, didn’t he? Not much of a chance, but a little one. If there were a miracle, then he might reconsider. Might, Bart told himself, if this arrogant little prick decides to kiss my ass at the main gate at noon on the Fourth of July while the marching band passes by.
“Sessions like this are supposed to be uncomfortable for everybody,” the squadron commander said. Ricks would end up as an engineering expert, and a good one, once Mancuso got rid of him, and there was no disgrace in topping out as a captain, was there? Not for a good man, anyway.
“Nothing else?” Golovko asked.
“Not a thing,” the Colonel replied.
“And our officer?”
“I saw his widow two days ago. I told her that he was dead, but that we were unable to recover the body. She took the news badly. It is a hard thing to see so lovely a face in tears,” the man reported quietly.
“What about the pension, other arrangements?”
“I am seeing to it myself.”
“Good, those damned paper-pushers don’t seem to care about anyone or anything. If there’s a problem, let me know.”
“I have nothing more to suggest from the technical-intelligence side,” the Colonel went on. “Can you follow up elsewhere?”
“We’re still rebuilding our network inside their defense ministry. Preliminary indications are that there is nothing, that the new Germany has disavowed the whole DDR project,” Golovko said. “There is a hint that American and British agencies have made similar inquiries and come away satisfied.”
“It is unlikely, I think, that German nuclear weapons would be a matter of immediate concern to the Americans or the English.”
“True. We are carrying on, but I do not expect to find anything. I think this is an empty hole.”
“In that case, Sergey Nikolayevich, why was our man murdered?”
“We still don’t know that, damn it!”
“Yes, I suppose he might now be working for the Argentineans....”
“Colonel, remember your place!”
“I have not forgotten it. Nor have I forgotten that when someone troubles to murder an intelligence officer there is a good reason for it.”
“But there’s nothing there! At least three intelligence services are looking. Our people in Argentina are still working—”
“Oh, yes, the Cubans?”
“Correct, that was their area of responsibility, and we can scarcely depend on their assistance now, can we?”
The Colonel closed his eyes. What had KGB come to? “I still think we should press on.”
“Your recommendation is noted. The operation is not over.”
Exactly what he could do now, Golovko thought after the man left, exactly what new avenues he should explore ... he didn’t know. He had a goodly percentage of his field force sniffing for leads, but as yet there was nothing. This miserable profession was so much like police work, wasn’t it?
Marvin Russell went over his requirements. Certainly these were generous people. He still had almost all of the money he’d brought over. He’d even offered to make use of it, but Qati would have none of that. He had a briefcase in which were forty thousand dollars in crisp twenties and fifties, and on setting himself up in America he’d take in a direct bank transfer from an English bank. His tasks were fairly simple. First he needed new identities for himself and the others. That was child’s play. Even doing the driver’s licenses was not difficult if you had the right hardware, and he’d be purchasing that for cash. He’d even be able to set the equipment up in the safe house. Now, exactly why he had to do hotel reservations in addition to setting up the safe house was another question. These characters sure liked to keep things complicated.
On the way to the airport he’d taken a day to stop at a good tailor shop—Beirut might have been at war, but life still went on. By the time he boarded the British Airways jet for Heath-row he looked quite distinguished. Three very nice suits—two of them packed. A conservative haircut, expensive shoes that cramped his feet.
“Magazine, sir?” the stew asked.
“Thank you.” Russell smiled.
“American?”
“That’s right. Going home.”
“It must be rather difficult in Lebanon.”
“Did get kind of exciting, yes.”
“Drink?”
“A beer would be very nice.” Russell grinned. He was even getting the businessman lingo down. The plane was not even a third full, and it seemed like this stewardess was going to adopt him. Maybe it was the tan, Russell thought.
“There you go, sir. Will you be staying long in London?”
“’Fraid not. Connecting to Chicago. Two-hour layover.”
“That is too bad.” She even looked disappointed for him. The Brits, Russell thought, sure were nice people. Almost as hospitable as those Arabs.
The last bundle went in just after three in the morning, local time. Fromm didn’t alter his demeanor a dot. He checked this one as carefully as he had checked the first, fixing it in place only after he was fully satisfied. Then he stood straight up and stretched.
“Enough!”
“I agree, Manfred.”
“This time tomorrow we’ll have the assembly finished. What remains is simple, not fourteen hours’ work.”
“In that case, let’s get some sleep.” On the way out of the building, Ghosn gave the Commander a wink.
Qati watched them depart, then walked over to the senior guard. “Where’s Achmed?”
“Went to see the doctor, remember?”
“Hmmm. When’s he back?”
“Tomorrow, maybe the day after, I’m not sure.”
“Very well. We will have a special job for you soon.”
The guard watched the men walking away from the building and nodded dispassionately. “Where do you want us to excavate the hole?”
28
CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS
Jet lag could be a real bitch, Marvin thought. Russell had left O’Hare in a rented Mercury and driven west to a motel just east of Des Moines. He surprised the clerk by paying cash for his room, explaining that his wallet and credit cards had been stolen. He had an obviously brand-new wallet to support that statement, besides which the clerk honored cash as readily as any businessman. Sleep came easily that night. He awoke just after five, after a good ten hours of slumber, had himself a big American breakfast—as hospitable as people were in Lebanon, they didn’t know how to eat; he wondered how they managed to live without bacon—and set off for Colorado. By lunch he was halfway across Nebraska, and going over his plans and requirements again. Dinner found him in the town of Roggen, an hour northeast of Denver, which was close enough. Stiff from travel, he found yet another motel and crashed for the night. This time he was able to watch and enjoy some American TV, including a recap of the NFL season on ESPN. It was surprising how much he’d missed football. Almost as surprising as how much he’d missed having a drink whenever he wanted. That craving was fixed with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he’d gotten along the way. By midnight he was feeling pretty mellow, looking around at his surroundings, glad to be back in America, and also glad for the reason he was back. It was time for some payback. Russell had not forgotten who had once owned Colorado, and hadn’t forgotten the massacre at Sand Creek.
/>
It should have been expected. Things had gone too smoothly, and reality does not often allow perfection. A small mistake in one of the fittings for the Primary had been detected, and that fitting had to be removed and remachined, a process that set them back by thirty hours, of which forty minutes had been required for the machining and the rest for disassembly and reassembly of the weapon. Fromm, who should have been philosophical, had been livid during the whole procedure, and insisted on doing the fix himself. Then had come the laborious replacement of the explosive blocks, all the more onerous for having already been done once.
“Only three millimeters,” Ghosn noted. Just a mistaken setting on one of the controls. Since it had been a manual job, the computers hadn’t caught it. One of Fromm’s figures had been misread, and the first visual inspection of the assembly hadn’t caught it. “And we had that extra day.”
Fromm merely grumbled behind his protective mask as he and Ghosn lifted the plutonium assembly and gently set it in place. Five minutes later it was clear that they had it correctly located. The bars of tungsten-rhenium next fit into their own places, then the beryllium segments, and finally, the heavy depleted-uranium hemisphere that separated the Primary from the Secondary. Fifty more explosive blocks and they were done. Fromm ordered a pause—what they had just accomplished was heavy work, and he wanted a short rest. The machinists were already gone, their services no longer required.
“We should have been done by now,” the German said quietly.
“It is unreasonable to expect perfection, Manfred.”
“The ignorant bastard couldn’t read!”
“The number on the plans was smudged.” And that was your fault, Ghosn did not have to say.
“Then he should have asked!”
“As you say, Manfred. You pick a poor time to be impatient. We are on schedule.”
The young Arab just didn’t understand, Fromm knew. The culmination of his life’s ambitions, and it should have been done by now! “Come on.”
It required ten additional hours until the seventieth and last explosive block sat in its resting place. Ghosn attached its wire lead to the proper terminal, and that was that. He extended his hand to the German, who took it.
“Congratulations, Herr Doktor Fromm.”
“Ja. Thank you, Herr Ghosn. Now we only need to weld the case shut, draw the vacuum—oh, excuse me, the tritium. How did I forget that? Who does the welding?” Manfred asked.
“I will. I’m very good at that.” The top half of the bombcase had a wide flange to ensure the safety of that procedure, and it had already been checked for a perfect fit. The machinists had not merely handled the precise work on the explosive part of the device. Every single part—except for the single mistrimmed fitting—had been cut and shaped to Fromm’s specifications, and the bombcase had already been checked. It fit as tightly as the back of a watch.
“Doing the tritium is easy.”
“Yes, I know.” Ghosn motioned for the German to go outside. “You are fully satisfied with the design and the assembly?”
“Completely,” Fromm said confidently. “It will function exactly as I predict.”
“Excellent,” Qati said, waiting outside with one of his bodyguards.
Fromm turned, noting the Commander’s presence, along with one of his ubiquitous guards. Dirty, scruffy people, but he had to admire them, Fromm told himself as he turned to look at the darkened valley. There was a quarter-moon, and he could just make out the landscape. So dry and harsh it was. Not these people’s fault that they looked as they did. The land here was hard. But the sky was clear. Fromm looked up at the stars on this cloudless night. More stars than one could see in Germany, especially the Eastern part, with all its air pollution, and he thought about astrophysics, the path he might have taken, so closely related to the path he had.
Ghosn stood behind the German. He turned to Qati and nodded. The Commander made the same gesture to his bodyguard, whose name was Abdullah.
“Just the tritium remains,” Fromm said, his back to them.
“Yes,” Ghosn said. “I can do that myself.”
Fromm was about to say that there was one more thing. He let it wait a moment, and didn’t pay attention to Abdullah’s footsteps. There was no sound at all as the guard removed a silenced pistol from his belt and pointed it at Fromm’s head from a range of one meter. Fromm began to turn, to make sure that Ghosn knew about the tritium, but he never made it around. Abdullah had his orders. It was supposed to be merciful, as it had been for the machinists. It was a pity that it had been necessary at all, Qati thought, but it was necessary, and that was that. None of that mattered to Abdullah, who merely followed his orders, squeezing on the trigger smoothly and expertly until the round fired. The bullet entered the back of Fromm’s skull, soon thereafter exiting through his forehead. The German dropped in a crumpled mass. Blood fountained out, but sideways, without reaching Abdullah’s clothing. The guard waited until the blood flow stopped, then summoned two comrades to carry the body to the waiting truck. He’d be buried with the machinists. That, at least, was fitting, Qati thought. All the experts in the same place.
“A pity,” Ghosn observed quietly.
“Yes, but do you really think we would have further use of him?”
Ibrahim shook his head. “No. He would have been a liability. We could not trust him. An infidel and a mercenary. He fulfilled his contract.”
“And the device?”
“It will work. I have checked the numbers twenty times. It is far better than anything I might have designed.”
“What’s this about tritium?”
“In the batteries. I only need to heat them up and bleed off the gas. Then the gas is pumped into the two reservoirs. You know the rest.”
Qati grunted. “You have explained it, but I do not know it.”
“This part of the job is work for a high-school chemistry lab, no more than that. Simple.”
“Why did Eromm leave it for last?”
Ghosn shrugged. “Something has to be last. This is an easy task rather than a hard one. Perhaps that is why. I can do it now if you wish.”
“Good.”
Qati watched the procedure. One after another, Ghosn loaded the batteries into the furnace, which he set for very low heat. A metal tube and a vacuum pump drew off the gas emitted by each in turn. It took less than an hour.
“Fromm lied to us,” Ghosn observed when he was done.
“What?” Qati asked in alarm.
“Commander, there is almost fifteen percent more tritium than he promised. So much the better.”
The next step was even simpler. Ghosn carefully checked that each reservoir was air- and pressure-tight-it was the sixth such test; the young engineer had learned from his German teacher—then transferred the tritium gas. The valves were closed and locked shut with cotter pins, so that any vibration in transit could not open them.
“Finished,” Ghosn announced. The guards lifted the top of the bombcase and lowered it into place from an overhead winch. It fit precisely into place. Ghosn took an hour to weld it shut. Another test confirmed that the bombcase was pressure-tight. He next attached a Leybold vacuum pump to the case.
“What exactly do you need to achieve?”
“A millionth of an atmosphere is what we specified.”
“Can you do that? Won’t it harm—”
Ghosn spoke not unlike Fromm, surprising the both of them. “Commander, please? All that presses in is air. It does not crush you, and it will not crush this steel case, will it? It will take a few hours, and we can also test the integrity of the bombcase again.” Which had also been done five times. Even without being welded, the case held well. Now one piece of metal, it would be as perfect as the mission required. “We can get some sleep. It doesn’t hurt the pump to run.”
“When will it be ready to transport?”
“In the morning. When is the ship leaving?”
“Two days.”
“There you
have it.” Ghosn smiled broadly. “Time to spare.”
First, Marvin visited the local branch of Colorado Federal Bank and Trust Company. He amazed and delighted the branch vice president by placing a call to England and having five hundred thousand dollars transferred by wire. Computers made things so much easier. In seconds he had confirmation that Mr. Robert Friend was every bit as substantial as he claimed to be.
“Can you recommend a good local realtor?” Russell asked the very solicitous banker.
“Right down the street, third door on the right. I’ll have your checks ready when you get back.” The banker watched him leave and placed a rapid phone call to his wife, who worked in the real-estate office. She was waiting for him at the door.
“Mr. Friend, welcome to Roggen!”
“Thank you, good to be back.”
“You’ve been away?”
“Spent some time in Saudi Arabia,” Russell/Friend explained. “But I missed my winters.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Oh, a medium-sized ranch, place where I might raise some beef.”
“House, barns?”
“Yeah, a good-sized house. Not that big, don’t need it—there’s just me, you see—say about three thousand square feet. I can go smaller for good land.”
“You originally from around here?”
“The Dakotas, actually, but I need to be close to Denver for the transportation—air travel, I mean. I do a lot of that. My old homestead is too far from things.”
“Will you want help to run your ranch?”
“Yeah, I’ll need that, say a place big enough for two hands—maybe a couple. I really should have a place closer to town, but, damn it, I just want a place where I can eat my own beef.”
“I know what you mean,” the realtor agreed. “I have a couple of places you might like.”
“Then let’s go see them.” Russell smiled at the lady.
The second one was perfect. Just off Exit 50, five hundred acres, a nice old farmhouse with a new kitchen, a two-car garage, and three sturdy outbuildings. There was clear land in all directions, a pond with some trees half a mile from the house, and plenty of room for the cattle that Russell would never see.