The Espionage Game

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  “You don’t think so!” Grigori Sechenov shouted. Sakharovsky trembled. He had never seen Grigori Sechenov so angry before. Grigori’s fit of rage had caught Yakov Sakharovsky completely by surprise.

  “I’ve told you all we know,” Sakharovsky replied. “Your warning was delayed in the communications room for almost a half-hour. No one there knew how important it was because it was already encoded. However, we do know that the officer in charge of the smoke rockets has his men so well trained that they had the valley covered in less than a minute after your warning arrived.”

  General Sakharovsky took a deep breath. “On the other hand, the radar defenses took longer. Although they turned on every radar in the area of the projected flight path, they never saw a thing. Only one of our early warning satellites over the North Pole saw anything unusual, a rocket motor being fired over Iceland. It appears to have been a space shuttle preparing for reentry, but the Americans had no shuttles in space at the time. Nor did it correspond with any other missile or satellite known to be in orbit. We must, therefore, assume that it is was whatever they sent over Iraq.”

  “Didn’t you say that it was flying the wrong way?” Grigori interjected while he sat behind his Louis XIV desk, scowling at General Sakharovsky.

  “Yes, General,” Sakharovsky replied, “It was flying east to west, with the rotation of the earth and not against it. However, that simply means that they had enough power to achieve orbit without the help of the earth’s spin. It also means that they did so over the south Pacific where none of our satellites were watching. If it weren’t for your warning, we would never have known that anything happened.”

  “Getting back to the important point, General Sakharovsky,” Grigori Sechenov said testily, “did they see into the valley?”

  “If our calculations are correct, General,” Yakov told him, “the smoke screen went up as their spy plane was crossing southern Iraq. If that is true, then they couldn’t have seen the valley floor.”

  “And if you’re wrong by only five minutes, where would the American spy plane have been?” Grigori asked, glaring at the man standing before his desk.

  “Over the northern Turkey.”

  “So they would have seen everything!”

  “However, the error in the calculation is only three minutes, plus or minus.”

  “Where would their spy plane have been if they were three minutes ahead of where you place them?”

  Sakharovsky swallowed hard. “Southern Turkey.”

  “However, they would have seen what we’re doing?”

  “Yes, General, that is absolutely correct.”

  The rage faded from Grigori Sechenov even though he continued to glare at his subordinate. He had been appraising Yakov Sakharovsky’s performance and, on the whole, was pleased. Sakharovsky held his ground well, but readily admitted the weaknesses in his arguments. He was the sort of man Grigori wanted, a man who could be trusted to tell the truth, no matter how distasteful.

  “You have done well, Yakov Makarovich,” he said. “If there is any fault, it’s with the communications room. You are to continueOperatsiyaBronirolovo Kulaka , Operation Armored Fist, with the assumption that you are correct about the Americans not learning what we are doing. In any case, we shall know for certain in few days.”

  “But how, General?” Sakharovsky responded with a startled expression.

  Grigori Sechenov glanced up at Sakharovsky, then asked, “Yakov Makarovich, what would you do if you were in the Americans’ shoes and your super-secret spy plane failed to get the information you need?”

  “I’d send in someone on the ground, a single man, perhaps.”

  “That’s right, and knowing the Americans, that’s exactly what they’ll do,” Grigori Sechenov acknowledged.

  Grigori Sechenov grabbed a sheet of paper from his portfolio and scribbled a quick note.

  “Here, Yakov Makarovich,” he said as he handed him the paper, “I want you to go to Iraq immediately and personally keep an eye on Operation Armored Fist.If an American spy suddenly shows up, then we’ll know that their spy plane failed to get the pictures.”

  “Hello, Mr. President, it’s so nice that you were able to talk to me,” Avraham Harkabi announced over the phone. His tone was unctuous.

  President Hayward didn’t respond at first, unsure of whether the Israeli Prime Minister was being sarcastic or not. “I was out of the office,” he answered.

  “I’ve been trying to get you all evening,” Harkabi went on. “Don’t you have call forwarding?”

  “I probably do, Mr. Prime Minister. I’ll have somebody check,” Hayward replied, trying not to let the man’s complaining get to him. “You said that it was urgent.”

  “Well, if you call there being no Middle East by this time tomorrow, urgent, it is—I guess.”

  “Why? Is somebody planning to steal it?”

  “No, Mr. President,” Harkabi grumbled, “somebody is planning to blow it up.”

  “Blow it up?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. That madman, Khalid. He’s about to attack us with nuclear weapons. He apparently is testing some sort of monster cannon that can fire shells all the way to Israel. We already know that he has enough plutonium to build twenty nuclear weapons and enough Russian help to put them together.”

  “Are you sure?” The president voice sounded genuinely concerned and surprised—a skill honed by years of political endeavor.

  “I told you about the plutonium last week,” the prime minister reminded him.

  “Yes, I remember. Have you signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty? As I remember you hadn’t and that sort of limited what I could do.” The president leaned back in his chair and winced in anticipation of Harkabi’s reaction. There were several seconds of silence instead.

  “I am talking about the survival of Israel,” the Israeli Prime Minister growled. “That madman has the capability to attack us.”

  “Are you sure?” the president challenged.

  “Absolutely,” Harkabi snarled. “My boys in the Mossad have good contacts in the Russian SVR. The information is genuine. Khalid has the ability to shoot nuclear bombs to Israel. If he does, we will respond in kind.”

  “Eye for eye, city for city?”

  Avraham Harkabi exhaled loudly. It could have been out of exasperation, or anger, or merely an effort to control his frustration.

  “We are defenseless against this monster cannon he has, Mr. President,” he said quietly. “It is beyond the range of our aircraft, and may be buried deep underground so that even missiles with nuclear warheads would have to be very close to destroy it. It he attacks, we must respond. The only thing we can do is retaliate. We would destroy his cities.”

  “I can assure you that Khalid doesn’t care about the lives of his people,” President Hayward replied. “He would merely consider their loss as part of the greater glory of his holy war.”

  “Millions would be killed, Mr. President, both Israeli and Arab,” the Israeli pleaded. “I am an old man. I don’t want to go before my God with that on my hands. Khalid is mad. He must be stopped before that happens. I need your help.”

  President Hayward sat in his chair, contemplating his response. He had anticipated this moment for weeks with apprehension. The years of glad-hand politics were no preparation.

  “What is it you want of me?” he asked.

  “Please destroy that cannon, Mr. President,” Harkabi begged wearily, “or we both will have to stand before God and explain.”

  “Oxygen flow?” Jerry Rodell asked. He inhaled deeply several times.

  “In the green,” Cleo answered.

  “Okay, Cleo,” Jerry said, “the prestart checklist is complete. Give them a call.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Cleo replied. “Hangar 18 security, Golden Eagle Two-eight is ready to roll. May we have the tug.”

  Jerry Rodell folded the checklist and stored it in a pocket on the side of the pilot’s couch. They were going flying for real, although under
severe operational restraints: three g’s max, sub-Mach 1.0, and a thousand feet clearance. That translated into gentle turns, going slow and staying well away from everything. It would barely be more than a Sunday joyride through the country, but at least it would be in a real airplane.

  He wanted to pinch himself to make certain that it wasn’t just a dream. He’d barely been back a week from his trip to Brooks. At first, he busied himself with sculpturing a bust of Madeline, and while he was pleased with his work, the siren call of flying proved too strong; so he soon showed up at the hangar asking for a ride in the simulator. He still remembered Fred Kelder’s smirk; Fred had been waiting for him. Two hours later, he was inMary Sue , letting Cleo play with the neural nexus and tweaking his viscera. It was a price he had to pay, but he was nevertheless surprised when Colonel Kelder told him that he would be going up for real inMary Lou , the ATASF prototype, the next day.

  So far, the only difference he noticed betweenMary Lou , the real ATASF andMary Sue , the simulator, was the smell.Mary Lou smelled like an airplane. She had the sweet aroma of aircraft hydraulic fluid mixed with the raw, acrid scent of kerosene. Soon he would find out how she moved. He knew that there would be differences. No matter how hard the engineers tried to mimic the movement of an aircraft with a simulator, there were always differences. Jerry expected thatMary Lou would twist and turn with the grace of aprima ballerina , while the best the simulator could do would only qualify it for thecorps de ballet . Differences might be subtle, but they would nevertheless be noticeable.

  The hangar door cracked open and the towing tug entered, as it had on every other mission he had flown with Cleo. However, this time it was real sunlight and real men on a real towing tug, even though he couldn’t tell the difference. Anticipation mounted as the two men scrambled off the tug and hurried to connect the tow bar to the nose wheel. One of the men opened an access panel and plugged his headset into the intercom.

  “Are you ready, Colonel?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Jerry answered as a smile of anticipation spread across his face. “Let’s go flying.”

  Jerry Rodell felt a gentle jerk as the tug began to move toward the now fully open doors. Another surprise was that he and Cleo would be making their first flight together in broad daylight. He had assumed that it would be a night flight to avoid snooping Russian satellites; however, Fred Kelder assured him that there would be no Russian satellites lurking overhead for at least three hours. Besides, there were safety issues; the powers that be obviously wanted to keep both him and Cleo in sight during their first flight together inMary Lou .

  The tug stopped well away from the hangar, leaving Jerry and Cleo at least a hundred yards from the nearest building. Jerry saw that a small crowd of people was collecting in front of the hangar and watching. He suddenly felt self-conscious; it was like a high school graduation ceremony, and he and Cleo were the graduating students. In a way, they were.

  He saw one figure step in front of the rest. He couldn’t make out her face, but he didn’t need to; it was Madeline, he could tell by her red dress. He raised his hand and waved.

  “Permission to start engines, Colonel,” Cleo grumbled, apparently irritated by the delay.

  “I was just waving to your mother.”

  “She can’t see you,” Cleo responded with a pragmatic indifference that surprised him.

  “I know,” he said softly, “but she’ll know I did. Permission granted to start engines and taxi out.”

  Jerry let his mind wander while Cleo concentrated on the engine startup. The airframe vibrated as the starting motor struggled to spin the left engine’s turbine ever faster. A few seconds later, as the engine rumbled to life, he turned his head toward the hangar again and could see Madeline still standing patiently a hundred yards away. It was then he realized just how important she had become to him.

  “I love you, Maddy,” he whispered softly. Then he simply sat and watched her while Cleo completed the engine startup sequence.

  “Watertown tower,” Cleo called over the radio. “Golden Eagle Two-eight, on ramp 18, with information bravo, ready to taxi.”

  “Golden Eagle Two-eight, cleared to taxi runway Three-two right. Call when takeoff checklist completed,” the tower responded.

  “Roger, Two-eight,” Cleo replied with a professional air that still surprised Jerry. She released the brakes and gently applied power. His reverie broken, Jerry picked up the final checklist.

  “Air brakes, manual,” he called, pushing his manual control. He glanced at the cockpit display to confirm that they had moved.

  “Air brakes, auto,” he called again, ordering Cleo to deploy them under her control.

  The checklist filled two pages, and required most of the time it took for them to taxi to the head of runway 32R. The final items were to set the brakes and run up the engines.

  “Full power, number one,” Jerry called. The cockpit was filled with a deafening roar as one of the afterburners kicked in.

  “Full power, number two,” he ordered. Again, a deafening roar filled his little world.

  “Final checklist complete; we’re ready to roll, Cleo,” he said. “Let’s go flying.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “As-salaam alaykum!Peace be upon you!” Dr. Hussein Muzahim, Director General of the Iraqi Institute of Advanced Studies, called when he met Iraqi leader Khalid Rashid Ribat at the front door of the institute’s building in Tarmiya, Iraqi. The compound was surrounded by a chain link fence topped by barbed wire. However, it was the two tanks, six machine gun emplacements, and several squads of soldiers that gave the place a distinctly martial appearance.

  “Wa alaykum as-salaam. And upon you be peace,” Khalid responded. “I understand that you have joyous news for me?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Muzahim replied. “Our Russian friends have been very successful in reproducing their weapons for us. Would you like to see?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Good, then be so kind as to follow me. We will have to take an elevator down to the workshops. They are nearly a hundred meters underground and so we use the stairs very rarely.”

  The workshops, as Dr. Muzahim called them, were a series of concrete rooms about ten meters square connected on the outside by a long corridor. A thick glass window allowed one to look into each room from the corridor.

  “These are what are called hot cells,” Dr. Muzahim told Khalid. “They are designed to handle highly radioactive material, or extremely dangerous material like plutonium. Each of the cells has a negative air pressure so that any leaks that might exist are into the cell. The technicians enter through the airlocks on the right side of the room.”

  He pointed to a steel door that had a thick rubber gasket around it.

  “This cell is used for machining the plutonium,” he said. He pointed through the window. Inside, several men were working on what seemed to be ordinary machine tools. What was surprising was their garb. They were dressed in what looked like space suits.

  “The men have to wear pressurized suits to prevent even the finest particle of plutonium from sticking to them, or worse, being inhaled. Plutonium is not only radioactive but as poisonous as cyanide as well.”

  “What are they doing?” Khalid asked while peering nervously into the room. Dr. Muzahim’s casual attitude did little to put him at ease.

  “They are re-machining the plutonium you purchased from the Russians to the finest tolerances. What they are doing is making the perfectly fitted wedges which when assembled make up a sphere of plutonium. The spheres are then assembled in the second hot cell. If you would come this way, please.”

  He led Khalid down the corridor to the next window. Inside were more men dressed in pressure suits. However, they were bent over what appeared to be an operating table. On one side of the room sat a table with a number of shiny metal wedges laid out on it.

  “These men are taking the finished plutonium and checking the fit of each piece to make sure that every piece is perfectl
y made. When they are finished, they will have the core of the bomb assembled.”

  Dr. Muzahim tapped on the glass. One of the men heard the noise and looked over at the window. A brief startle response flashed on the man’s face when he saw Khalid’s white uniform and realized who their visitor was. Instinctively, he bowed. Dr. Muzahim waved him aside. The man nodded that he understood and beckoned to his companions to move away. A nearly completed sphere sat on the table. It was only about ten centimeters in diameter.

  “It’s so small,” Khalid commented when he saw it.

  “It will nevertheless give the equivalent of fifty kilotons of TNT, and enough neutrons to instantly kill every Zionist within two kilometers,” the doctor announced proudly. “That’s our third warhead. The second is in the next cell being fitted with the triggering device.”

  Somewhat in awe of the power of the little sphere of metal, Khalid followed the scientist to the next cell. Inside were yet more men, However they were dressed in overalls instead of the pressure suits.

  “Why aren’t they wearing proper protection?” Khalid demanded when he saw them.

  “They are,” Dr. Muzahim replied. “It’s only when minute particles of plutonium can be floating around in the air that we have to take such precautions as you have seen. Once the sphere of plutonium is assembled, it is relatively safe to handle. These men are attaching the explosive lens which when fired implodes the sphere of plutonium and causes it to reach critical mass.”

  “Implodes?” Khalid appeared puzzled. “I thought explosives explode.”

  The scientist laughed. “They do, however, when you completely surround something with explosives and set them off, they squeeze whatever is inside them. That is what implode means. The plutonium sphere you saw in the second hot cell is specially prepared with other materials so it has a lower density than pure plutonium. That way, even though there is enough plutonium for the critical mass, the density of the metal is low enough so that the individual atoms aren’t close enough together to have sustained reaction. The explosives literally squeeze the metal so that it becomes denser for a brief instant. However, that’s all it takes.”