A Spy in Berlin: The Professional Friend Preview

Ray Bliss’ mobile blipped with a text message to come upstairs to FBI Liaison Mackenzie Kilbane’s office asap.

  Minutes later, a flourish of Mackenzie’s arm waved him to the chair next to Laura Murphy while she finished her phone call.

  She hung up and spoke. “London police have found a gym bag containing an explosive device that may be connected to the train hijacking.

  “A security guard at New Wembley Stadium spotted it lying on the soccer field in the pouring rain and called it in because of its similarity to the backpack train bombs in Madrid. The Brits say it’s an RDD, a radiological dispersion device.”

  “A dirty bomb?” Murphy asked.

  “Yes. But lucky for us, it didn’t have a triggering device.”

  “Even without a trigger, an RDD is scary,” Bliss said. “Was it spiked with plutonium from the train?”

  “No. Cesium chloride from a radiation therapy machine, like in those junkyard poisonings in Mexico.”

  “Thank god, it’s not connected to our train.”

  “I’m afraid it is. There was a note. ‘The train for what is ours.’”

  “Our train? The missing castor train?” Murphy asked.

  “It makes sense,” Mackenzie answered.

  “Why leave a note in London?” Bliss asked.

  “Because the train originated in England? Or maybe the hijackers are based there,” Mackenzie said. “Who knows? Criminals don’t always play with a full deck.”

  “You’ve got that right,” Laura Murphy said. “DoD and DoE have gone over the castor train specs. Even Livermore would have trouble extracting the plutonium.”

  “But it is possible,” Bliss said.

  “Maybe. But not without a fully equipped lab that includes cranes and radiation shielding. The hijackers will be downed by radiation poisoning long before they can arm a bomb. They won’t even last as long as that Litvinenko guy in London.”

  “The train for what is ours… Any idea what ‘ours’ could be?” Bliss asked.

  “Could it refer to the old pre-WWII boundaries?” Murphy said. “The train disappeared in Poland, and a huge chunk of Poland was given to the Soviet Union.”

  “After seventy years?” Mackenzie said. “Not likely.”

  “Why should Polish land remain in Russian hands decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union? And with the rise in Polish nationalism…”

  “We need to snatch Pawlowski and beat the train’s location out of him,” Bliss said. “An RDD in London is a game changer. We can make it look like an attack by a rival criminal gang. Once we have a confession, even the Eurocrats will understand how necessary it was.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” Murphy said. “But there’s a slight problem…”

  “No one knows where he is,” Mackenzie finished. “We had him going south, in the direction of the Czech Republic, then poof. He shook our tail.”

  Bliss didn’t want to hear it, but Murphy said it anyway. “We need Jordan more than ever now. We have to lure him out into the open. “Get her ready, Bliss.”

  The meeting ended, and Bliss had to do what he hated the most… play the snake in the Garden of Eden.

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