Ollie realized he had to quickly arrange for moving the device to the secure location that he had prepared in a small farmhouse near San Giorgio delle Pertiche, about 14 kilometers northwest of Padova. Only Ollie and Andreas knew about this place and they thought that the two of them could rent a self-drive truck with a crane to transport the device there without any of the workforce noticing their destination. Ollie had considered "taking out" the entire workforce, including Professor Modena and Dr. Jay, but thought that none of them knew what his real objective was, so if they were apprehended and questioned they would only be able to disclose the plan to blackmail the governments into expelling immigrants and "unwanted elements", which would distract the authorities away from himself and his true target. He knew that he would have to eliminate Andreas once the device was safely stored in the farmhouse but there was no hurry to carry that out.
So Ollie congratulated everyone on the excellent job, announced that they would gather for a modest celebration at noon the next day and promised them all a fat bonus. He then called Andreas aside and asked him to go and pick up the truck he had booked from a local rental company. He told Andreas to use a false name, pay cash and to try and avoid having his driver's license photocopied. He said that this could be done with a few additional bank notes slipped quietly under the counter. They decided that the two of them would take the completed device to the new hiding place immediately after the little party. Andreas quietly asked him if it was safe to allow everybody to just walk away but Ollie convinced him that as they did not know where the device would be hidden there was less risk in letting them go unscathed than in leaving a mess and a mass of dead bodies. He also told him that the rumors about some big and unconventional terrorist act would make their blackmailing job easier. Andreas was still skeptical and went as far as quoting Stalin, the infamous dictator who executed many of his own countrymen, and quoted the saying attributed to Stalin "no man no problem". Ollie was a bit surprised that Andreas made such a dramatic proposition but finally convinced him to bring the truck with the crane at noon and not worry about the loyal workforce.
May 18th, Padova, noon and afternoon
At noon the entire workforce gathered in the front office where tables were laden with good Italian food and bottles of French champagne. After everyone held a flute of champagne in their hand Ollie, Andreas, Professor Modena and Dr. Jay raised their glasses together and Ollie delivered a toast praising them all for their exceptional achievement. He then addressed the professor and asked them all to have a drink honoring him and wished him luck in gaining the long deserved recognition of his genius by his colleagues and by the Nobel Prize committee. Next he toasted Dr. Jay and acknowledged his great contribution to the cause and told him that he would be remembered by history as the man who had constructed the device that would purify Europe of all inferior races. Finally, he faced Andreas and thanked him for his leadership in the unification of the European racist (he used the term "true nationalist") movements under one common cause. He also wished all separatists success in achieving their goals, particularly the Catalan movement heralded by Professor Modena. Then he opened his large duffel bag and removed several envelopes stuffed with large denomination Euro notes and distributed them among the workers. He asked them all to stay in the warehouse for another hour and then leave quietly in groups of two or three and return to their home countries without raising suspicion, or to take a well deserved vacation in their favorite location. He strongly warned them not to say a word to anyone about the project, its objective, about the laboratory and especially about their colleagues.
With the help of several men the device was moved into the garage where a standard shipping container marked as "agricultural machinery" was waiting on the platform of the truck he had rented. Assisted by the crane, and some manual force, the device was loaded inside the container, the steel suitcase with the detonators and the car battery were also placed in the container and its doors were sealed with a stamped optical tamper proof seal. Ollie took the duffel bag that still contained a lot of cash that he figured he would need and then he and Andreas got into the truck's cabin and slowly backed out of the garage. The doors of the garage closed behind them and they headed on the short drive towards the farmhouse. They drove slowly in order not to attract police attention and within less than 30 minutes were at the cattle gate of the farm. Ollie got out of the cabin and opened the gate while Andreas drove carefully into the farm grounds. Ollie closed the gate and got back in the truck that was driven into the empty barn where the container was unloaded with the trucks winch and placed on the ground. Ollie locked the barn door and directed Andreas to drive back to Padova while he remained at the farm to keep an eye of the device and container. They had arranged for Andreas to return the rental truck and come back to the farm with a regular car. Then Ollie went into the farmhouse to prepare a "warm welcome party" for Andreas.
An hour later Andreas returned to the farmhouse and found Ollie sitting on the veranda, enjoying the last rays of the setting sun and a bottle of Chianti red wine. Ollie held up his full glass and invited Andreas to join him in celebrating the great success of the Astraea project. Andreas sat down and Ollie poured him a glass of wine from the open bottle. Andreas and Ollie took large sips of their wine and a couple of minutes later Andreas's head dropped on the table and he passed out. Ollie lifted him out of his chair, no easy feat as Andreas weighed some 140 kg, and managed to drag him into the living room and seat him in a solid wooden chair and tie his hands and feet to the chair with strong plastic manacles. Two hours later Andreas slowly regained consciousness and shook his head. When he tried to move his hands and feet he realized that he was restrained by these cuffs. Ollie faced him and proceeded to tell Andreas what his real objective was and that he had manipulated the most chauvinistic fanatical and xenophobic movements to support the Jihad holy war of Islam against the European colonialists and racists. Andreas was so shocked by these revelations that he almost forgot to fear for his own life. Ollie was extremely pleased by this reaction and for a moment he even considered letting Andreas live in shame but then cold logic told him that if Andreas lived to disclose his plan it would make it more difficult to smuggle the device out of Italy and to Jerusalem. In comradeship he told Andreas that he would allow him to choose his mode of death – quickly by knife or to starve slowly. Andreas looked him in the eye, spat at his feet and said he did not care one way or the other. Ollie coolly pulled a commando knife from his boot and with the serrated edge cut Andreas's throat leaving him tied to the chair.
Ollie left Andreas's body in the chair and entered the barn with a radiation detector. As he approached the sealed container the detector clicked more and more rapidly as he got closer. He then moved away and out of the barn and noted that the reading of the detector, the background level, was below 1 count per second (cps). At a distance of 10 meters from the container there was only a very slight increase in the reading, at 5 meters it already increased to 2 cps and at 1 meter was near 50 cps. This bothered him as he realized two things: first, the radioactivity might trigger an alarm if the container was monitored by a dedicated portal when it was loaded on a ship in Italy or after being unloaded in Israel. Secondly, this meant that the U-232 level was higher than expected which could cause failure of the device. While he knew that he could alleviate the first problem by adding another layer or two of radiation absorbent materials such as lead or even depleted uranium, there was nothing he could do about the second problem. Even dissolving the U-233 core and purifying it would not remove the U-232 isotope, so all he could do was pray to Allah and hope for the best. The fact that the radiation outside the barn was at the background level assured him that unless someone opened the barn door and entered it with a radiation detector the device would remain secure and protected from detection. If someone would see the container in the barn he would assume it was just some piece of agricultural equipment unless he had a radiation detector or broke the seal and opened the con
tainer.
He left the farm in the car that Andreas had rented and headed towards the Rijeka port in Croatia where he expected security to be much less rigorous than in Venice or Trieste ports that he had planned to use earlier. He also assumed that there wouldn't be any radiation detectors and monitors there. He knew that this change of plans would involve crossing borders but also knew that arrangements could be made to evade a close examination of the container's contents by bribing the customs and border people. He would tell them that the "agricultural machinery" was actually a shipment of electronic commodities that he intended to sell in Zagreb. In Rijeka he would say that he was smuggling the same commodities to the Palestinian Authority via the Haifa port in Israel. In both cases he would make sure that the generous payment would keep their eyes closed and their mouths shut for at least a month. For a short while he regretted Andreas's death as he knew that the Swede had connections in Italy and Croatia that could smooth the way, but the remorse did not last more than a moment.
May 18th, Padova, late afternoon
The Italian anti-corruption unit, headed by Piero Adriano, had combed the area in and around Padova looking for sources of gamma radiation. Handheld radiation detectors were distributed among the troops and they had meticulously scanned every farm, villa or secluded residence in a vast area. In addition, unmarked vehicles specially mounted with highly sensitive detectors had traversed the many gravel roads in Veneto province around Padova travelling at very low speed causing traffic delays and giving the impatient Italian drivers cause for silent complaints and not-so-quiet verbal abuse. The only positive responses the radiation detectors attained were from discarded smoke detectors that contained americium.
David was given a daily report of the lack of progress and growing frustration but could not reveal the fact that a search on a smaller scale by the Mossad team also yielded no results. He gradually became convinced that the clandestine laboratory had to be in a central location so that the unexplained burst of activity would not be noticed by local authorities and residents. He advised Piero that they should focus on finding a group of foreigners that resided and dined near the center of town and, although not really expecting successful identification of the two scientists, asked him to check the hotels and restaurants in the vicinity. He consulted with Umberto and Piero if the time was right to permit the agents to use the photos of Modena and Smalley and the police artist's image of the blond man when questioning the staffs at the hotels and restaurants. He emphasized that they were running out of time and needed to take a chance that word of the ongoing intensive search would reach the suspects. The Italians agreed that they needed to use more decisive measures and all the agents were sent to inspect the tourist areas in the town itself.
Umberto said that people trying to keep a low profile would probably shy away from the large tourist hotels as those insisted on registering the guests and photo-copying their passports and were usually paid with credit cards whose records of transactions could be followed. In addition, a group of men staying for an extended period in a large hotel was bound to raise suspicion that something irregular and illegal was taking place. On the other hand, the small bed and breakfast places often "forgot" to register guests and preferred cash deals, so that there would be no record that could attract the attention of the tax authorities. He reckoned that there would be a couple of dozen of these places near the center and promised to send the agents to cover all of these with a top priority. Within 24 hours the proprietors at all these small B&Bs were questioned.
After being promised that no information would be passed to the tax authorities, the owner of a small pension recalled that two men, one who looked like Dr. Smalley and one like the blond man, stayed at his place for one night a few months previously. He remembered them because very few tourists came in winter and these two arrived at night, without making a booking, paid cash and checked out early the next morning without even having breakfast. They did not appear to be interested in the tourist attractions but did not look like business men. When the information was passed on to David he asked Piero if he could personally try to find out if the date of that stay was at the end of January – coinciding with the approximate date that Dr. Smalley met the mysterious blond man in London. The owner did not remember the exact date but thought that it could have been near the end of January. In one of the restaurants they also got a positive identification of all three suspects. The proprietor noted that the three men had a quiet but intense discussion in English. He remembered that they ordered two bottles of his most expensive wine, a fact that pleased him, as there were very few tourists at that time of the year. He also noticed that whenever he came close to their table to serve them their discussion ceased and was renewed after he was out of earshot. When asked again about the language they were speaking he said that they placed their orders in English but two sounded like foreigners and the third had a British accent.
David and the Italians marked the two places on a large scale map of Padova and saw that they were not far apart and quite close to the Botanical Gardens. Piero called all his agents and divided the area in question into small sections and assigned a team to meticulously comb each section. The teams were briefed to pay special attention to newly established firms that presented themselves as involved in the chemical industry, according to the list obtained from the municipal authorities under the guise of searching for a clandestine laboratory for drug manufacturing.
Given the number of agents, the small area on which the search focused and the guidelines, it was no surprise that within less than an hour the warehouse was found. The two agents saw the name Astraea on the front door and a quick inquiry of the neighbors told them that the company was allegedly involved in research and development operations in the chemical industry. They immediately called Piero, who summoned Umberto and David to the site. The front office of Astraea was closed and as far as they could tell there was no one in the building. They brought their most sensitive gamma radiation detector and noted that the reading was slightly above the background level and the source appeared to be in the warehouse. Despite the fact that it was early in the evening they managed to obtain the floor plan of the building from the municipal archives and discovered that it had a vast basement area. Without waiting for a court order Umberto gave Piero an order to break down the door but use the radiation detectors to make sure that his people were not exposed to radiation. They carefully entered the building and found that the first floor had been converted into a dormitory that appeared to have been abandoned in a hurry. David counted 12 bunks which agreed with the estimate of the size of the workforce. They also found a small kitchen and dining area in which unwashed dishes were scattered indicating that the people left the place without bothering to tidy up and probably with no intension to return.
Going down the stairs to the basement the radiation intensity grew so that even the personal detectors with their relatively low sensitivity registered significant levels. David and Umberto told the rest of the people to remain in the street level office area while the two of them slowly went from chamber to chamber in the basement taking in the equipment in the three main rooms. The radiation monitor clicked like crazy when they entered the largest chamber and saw the lead bricks that lined the walls. David took one look at the four channels that led from the corners of the room to the middle of the chamber and saw the stainless steel vessel in the center and immediately understood that Professor Modena had carried out his plan to irradiate thorium. In the next chamber they found the chemical processing equipment and realized that the U-233 must have been successfully separated and purified there. The radiation level in this chamber was also high and they noticed a few stains on the floor that indicated that some liquids had been spilled. These stains emitted particularly intense radiation and David thought that this could have been due to the uranium, thorium or fission products. In the third chamber they found a lathe that had probably been used to shape the uranium core. Umberto called
David's attention to a spherical object on a side table that actually consisted of two solid hemispheres with a diameter of about 10 centimeters. The radiation emanating from this sphere indicated that it consisted of a radioactive element but it was not as intense as the levels measured in the other rooms. David surmised that it was the mock-up core made from natural uranium that had probably been used as a mock-up model for the real fissile material core.
David told Umberto that he had to urgently inform the international task force of these findings so the two of them left the basement and ascended the stairs to the street level. Meanwhile, Piero had put his team to the task of searching for documents and papers that could help identify the people who had worked in the facility. They did not find anything specific but the food products in the kitchen implied that the workforce came from several nationalities, or at least had a varied taste for food and drinks. Piero also said that there were many plastic bags with the name of one of the major local supermarket chains and that he had already sent one of his agents to the closest store to try and enquire who did the shopping for feeding a dozen people. Umberto asked Piero to seal the warehouse and place guards outside until a scientific survey could be carried out. David said that he would ask the members of the ITF for assistance from their most advanced nuclear forensics analysts to evaluate the quality of the improvised nuclear device on the basis of the forensic evidence that could be gathered in the warehouse. He called Eugene, Vassilly and Thomas and without going into too many details on the unsecure phone line set an appointment for an urgent meeting in Vienna.
The Dreadful Alchemist: A Thrilling Espionage Novel (Techno thriller, Mystery & Suspense Book 1) Page 12
