The Australian government had also thoughtfully provided photographs, and at the end of the Victor 1 South route, the photos panned to the west. Waheeb’s eyes glistened in anticipation. If they chose a relatively clear day, his pilot would be able to see the landmarks of Australia’s most iconic city very clearly. If he turned west before the heads and the main entrance to the harbour, his pilot would be able to pick out the sails of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge in the distance. Would it be better to fly the aircraft into the bridge, Waheeb wondered, but he quickly ruled it out. Although the explosion and radioactivity would undoubtedly close the bridge for a very long time, cutting one of the city’s main arteries, they would still be able to use their tunnels and much of the radioactive debris would be lost into the harbour. Far better to aim at the centre of the CBD, he thought. Two targets would be clearly visible to a pilot. The 300-metre high Sydney Tower in Market Street in the very centre of the city, with what to Waheeb looked like a big cupcake on the top, was certainly visible, but with its relatively slender supporting column, it might be harder to hit. A better option, he thought, would be what was listed as Australia Square. The building itself, he noted, was round, but it was 50 floors high and had the added advantage of not being surrounded by other high-rise buildings. That, he decided, would allow a greater spread of the radioactive particles. The distance by road between Watsons Bay and the Sydney CBD was 13 kilometres, but flying across Rose Bay, it was less than eight, and his pilot could cover that in just under four minutes. His pilot would be instructed to respond to the Infidel’s queries in broken English with a claim that he was lost. By the time air traffic control’s queries were delayed, Waheeb was confident the ISIS aviation convert could slam the aircraft into Australia Square, although the broken English would have to be practised. Recruiting a pilot had been one of the Australian recruiting operation’s spectacular successes. Tariq Ally was a third-generation Australian Muslim with nearly 2000 hours on commercial aircraft. It was a qualification Waheeb intended to put to the best possible use.
Although a final problem remained. If all went to plan, Waheeb knew it could still come unstuck at Bankstown Airport. If his pilot chartered a plane, it might be very difficult to get the bomb on board, but if ISIS bought an aircraft, and arranged for it to be parked at Bankstown, that would provide a much greater chance of success. Waheeb scanned the online sales. Cessna 182s ranged from A$40 000 to A$70 000 but he knew money was not the problem. Oil revenue was shrinking, but at its peak, ISIS controlled 60 per cent of Syria’s oil wells and over 300 oil wells in Iraq, and that had netted the group nearly three million dollars a day. The cost of a used Cessna for a one-off mission was negligible.
Frustrated at the apparent failure of the mission to Nangalam, but buoyed by the success of the raid at Arandu, Waheeb shut down his computer.
The dawn was breaking and Dawud Sayyaf slowed as he reached the outskirts of Karachi. The sprawling seaport had been Pakistan’s first capital until the early 1960s when the Army took control of the country and built a new capital in Islamabad. The city of over 20 million people was still Pakistan’s financial and industrial hub but lawlessness had taken hold. With nearly 3000 people murdered each year, Karachi was famous for its ‘motorbike assassins’ and it was rated as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. For between US$700 and US$1000, it was an easy way to assassinate political opponents, businessmen and even police.
With the precious strontium-90 secured in the back of his Toyota, Sayyaf drove past open drains full of sewerage and piles of rubbish on the side of the roads and in the alleys. Tier after tier of houses were constructed from rusted corrugated iron and stone and the washing hung from every available verandah and rooftop. The criminals had moved in, and it had not been difficult to secure two containers for shipment to the United States and Australia, ostensibly filled with basmati rice. Sayyaf sounded his horn at the gates to the warehouse, and his contact, Hamid al-Masri, appeared from a grimy little office at the entrance. Al-Masri directed Sayyaf to the far end of the compound where the two containers had been readied for shipment. Together, they packed each of the deadly lead-shielded strontium-90 into basmati boxes, covered them with rice packets and positioned those boxes in the centre of the others filling the shipping containers.
‘Allahu Akbar,’ said Sayyaf. ‘God willing, they will reach their destination.’
Doctor Denis Bartók ran his hand through his thin, wispy hair and stretched his lanky, thin frame. He’d been the acting Director of Weapons Programs at the prestigious United States National Laboratory in Los Alamos for nearly three years. The laboratory had been established during World War Two to oversee the top-secret Manhattan Project, producing the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and although the research had since been diversified, the National Laboratory was still charged with the development, safety and reliability of nuclear weapons. Bartók’s bitterness at only being the ‘acting’ director was never far from the surface, but he pushed those thoughts to one side. ‘Today’s the start of something big,’ he told himself determinedly.
Bartók pulled the kitchen curtains and looked out onto his backyard. The modest rental bungalow on Los Alamos’ leafy 47th Street had been his home for the past 20 years, but he was very confident all that was about to change. Today, he would present the results of his experiment that mimicked the fusion energy of the sun. At the end of every year he’d raised his request to have his promotion permanently confirmed, and every year the board had found an excuse – ‘a little more time in the job’ or ‘we’ve got that on our list of priorities’. But after today, they could not possibly turn him down. This discovery was the Holy Grail of nuclear energy.
Up until now, the production of energy required a greater input than any system released. Coal-fired power stations were a classic example, with an efficiency rating of only 40 per cent, but after years of failures, Bartók had finally found a way to perfect the fusion of hydrogen isotopes, producing more energy than was required for the process. It was something that scientists around the world had been attempting for decades. Bartók knew only too well that other nation states like Russia, Israel, China, France, India, Japan and the United Kingdom were all working on fusion research. Nation states had long realised that whoever cracked the code would have a huge energy advantage over the others and now he had finally done it. Not only would it revolutionise energy production around the world, making coal and other fossil fuels obsolete overnight, but it broke an entirely new frontier in the development of nuclear warheads. Bartók knew the technology meant that the next generation of nuclear warheads could now be smaller, and far more powerful than even the massive Russian Tsar bomb which was detonated over the northern wastes of Severny Island in October 1961, with a yield of 50 million tons of TNT.
Bartók inserted a coffee capsule into the Nespresso machine and turned, surprised to find his wife was awake, let alone out of bed.
‘You’re up early.’
‘Busy day,’ Darlene Bartók replied, reaching past him for another capsule. The 52-year-old looked in the mirror she’d installed on the kitchen wall and adjusted her bottle-blonde hair before turning side on to admire the breast implants she’d had done the year before.
‘That makes a busy day for both of us,’ her husband responded enthusiastically. ‘Today’s the day I get that promotion.’
‘You’ve been saying that for years. What makes today so special?’ Darlene poured her coffee and made no attempt to hide the contempt in her voice. What did I ever see in you? she asked herself for the umpteenth time. A boring, nerdy streak of pump water. As to the bedroom, she thought even more contemptuously, when he did get that little wiener of his up, she’d never known him to last more than a minute before infuriating her with his ‘that was great – just like a neutron splitting the atom’ line. At least, if nothing else, the National Laboratory had subsidised their rental, but one way or another she was determined to get her own house
, and a much bigger one at that, and once that was achieved, she would kick her husband out.
‘Today I’m briefing senior management and even more importantly, Senator Ralph Colbeck, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s the go-to guy on the Hill for nuclear energy and weapons systems, so it doesn’t get much higher up the chain than that,’ Bartók went on proudly. He waited for a response, but there was none.
‘I’m going to demonstrate,’ he continued, almost breathlessly, ‘that we can get more than twice as much energy as we put in to deuterium and tritium – the isotopes of hydrogen . . .’
‘For Christ’s sake, Denis,’ Darlene interrupted irritably. ‘How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not fucking interested in your protons, whatsits, thingamajigs and the rest of the gibberish you carry on with? Just get the promotion so we can get out of this dump and upgrade.’
There was a long uncomfortable pause. ‘So what have you got on today?’ her husband responded, controlling his anger.
‘Not that it would interest you, but Grover is coming around to do the pool, if you could call it that. It won’t take him long.’
Bartók said nothing. He could not understand what Darlene found to talk about with someone like Grover Adams. All he did was clean pools and work out in the gym. Bartók’s one attempt to engage Grover in conversation about the potential to rid the planet of fossil fuels had produced a blank look.
‘What time do I expect you home?’ Darlene asked coldly.
‘I may be a little later than usual – around six-thirty, seven – as I expect there will be a small celebration in the director’s office.’
Darlene watched and waited until her husband’s car disappeared down the street before she reached for her iPhone. She texted:
Coast is clear until around six tonight. What time are you free, you gorgeous hunk of a man?
Grover Adams looked at the text and paused before he replied. He was tiring of Darlene. She had big tits, and gave good head, but Sylvia up at Arizona Drive had big tits as well, and they were, he thought, ripe for picking. When he’d cleaned Sylvia’s pool the previous week, she’d appeared in a little see-through number, complaining that her husband was away and Los Alamos was one of the most boring places she’d ever lived in. Now she wanted her pool cleaned again.
Grover smiled to himself. It had been a while since he’d had two in the one day.
Pretty busy until after lunch, but might be possible this afternoon.
Doctor Bartók waited while the guard on one of the entrance booms checked his pass. Security was always tight at Los Alamos, but it was up a notch again today, he thought. He parked his battered Chevrolet Malibu and headed for the main building for the welcome to Senator Colbeck. At least he had an allocated park, and by tonight, it would be his. Permanently.
‘Senator Colbeck – a very warm welcome for what we hope will be the first of many visits to Los Alamos,’ the Director of the National Laboratory began. A Nobel Laureate, Jackson Harris was just 38 years old. The five foot eight, dark-haired nuclear physicist was one of the youngest scientists ever to lead the laboratory.
The portly senator from Texas just nodded.
‘As you’re aware, we’ve been experimenting for some years now to try and find a way of producing energy from nuclear fusion, a process which will also influence the development of smaller, more powerful nuclear weapons. At this point, I will hand over to Doctor Denis Bartók, our acting Director of Weapons Programs, who has some very exciting news, but it goes without saying, Senator, that the briefing you’re about to be given is tightly held. Very few people, both inside and outside this compound have been cleared into this compartment which is codenamed Dragon. The information is classified Top Secret – NOFORN, which, as I’m sure you’re aware, means under no circumstances is it to be released to foreigners . . . even our closest allies.’
Jackson Harris wasn’t at all sure the Senator was aware. The new Chair of the Armed Services Committee had made his millions from coalmines. Colbeck had never served on the Committee as a member, nor had he any connection to Defense, so his appointment had come as a surprise to many, but not all. Any political analyst worth their salt knew that things on the Hill had changed markedly, particularly with the election of President Travers. A decade before, seniority on a Committee had been the major factor influencing promotion to the Chair, but not any more. A second factor had now taken over. Money. Colbeck had been one of President Travers’s staunchest supporters during the latter’s long and turbulent battle for the White House, and Colbeck had contributed over US$3 million to the Travers campaign. In the smaller, but no less important battles for the Senate and the House, Colbeck had contributed a further US$3 million to the campaign war chests of individual senators and to the National Republican Congressional Committee – the body that was responsible for allocating funds for Republican candidates across the country. Nor was money restricted to influencing Republicans. Democrats were playing the same game. Money had become the lingua franca of American politics.
‘Good morning, Senator.’ Bartók had been warned to keep any technical details to a bare minimum. Colbeck had a reputation on the Hill for arrogance, ruthlessness and rat cunning, but it was an open secret that he was not the sharpest tool in the shed and he had a tendency to nod off when the Senate was sitting.
‘Fusion is considered to be the Holy Grail of nuclear energy, Senator. Whichever country is able to perfect the process will hold a massive advantage, both in the development of nuclear weapons and in clean energy.’
‘Well, let me stop you right there,’ the senator growled. ‘All this talk of clean energy, and there’s a lot of it in the media, is just that . . . talk. Oil, gas and coal are going to be powering the world for the next 50 years, so I for one fail to see why we’re spending all this money down here chasing moonbeams.’
‘We’re more concerned with the development of smaller, more powerful warheads, Senator,’ Harris intervened, nodding for Bartók to continue.
‘Unlike the earliest atomic bombs which relied on fission, or a splitting of atomic nuclei by neutrons, fusion combines them but that requires an enormous amount of energy. In the experiments I’ve been conducting here, we’ve fused deuterium and tritium – they’re both forms of hydrogen but with slightly different structures – what we call isotopes.’ The senator’s eyes were starting to glaze over and Bartók flicked on a PowerPoint slide, emblazoned with Top Secret – NOFORN at top and bottom. It showed an atom of deuterium firing toward an atom of tritium to form a larger atom of helium, together with Bartók’s calculations.
‘What we get when deuterium merges with tritium is helium, another neutron, and massive amounts of energy, but to achieve that, scientists around the world have been concentrating on heating those two elements to 100 million degrees Celsius. As a comparison, the hottest part of the sun, at its core, is 15 million degrees. Here, we’ve taken a different approach,’ said Bartók, and he proudly put up a second PowerPoint that no one outside the room had ever seen.
‘So as you can see, Senator, we’ve made a startling breakthrough here.’ Jackson Harris indicated to Bartók that he would take over. ‘China is training over 2000 scientists in fusion research. In southern France near Marseille, at the French nuclear Cadarache Centre, US$14 billion is being spent to build the International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Reactor, and at the UK atomic energy facility at Culham in Oxfordshire, research is being conducted via a JET or Joint European Torus reactor. But despite all this international effort, no other country has come close to what we’ve achieved here.’
Bartók felt the bitterness rise again. He had achieved this breakthrough on his own, but all of a sudden it was ‘what we have achieved here’.
The Senator grunted. ‘Is that it?’ was all he said.
‘Well,’ Jackson Harris began. ‘We need to resolve the Director of Weapons position, and I think we all agree, from the candidates we’ve spoken to, David Magnuson fro
m Livermore is the stand out.’ Jackson Harris had called in his two most senior executives: his deputy, Redfield Reed, and the Executive Director, Irving J. Williams. Several weeks before, Harris had reached a tentative decision to not confirm Bartók in his appointment. He had very quietly narrowed possible candidates to a short list of three, and then just as quietly interviewed them. ‘The question is, what do we do with Bartók? He’s just cracked the Holy Grail of energy and we’re not going to confirm him in his job.’
‘Jackson, there’s no doubt he’s an excellent physicist.’ Irving J. Williams was the first to speak. Measured and balanced, Harris had a high opinion of his executive director, to whom the day-to-day workings of the laboratory were entrusted. ‘But we’ve been around this buoy before. Bartók is an accomplished scientist, but he’s also very erratic. He has an alcohol problem and he doesn’t take criticism – constructive or otherwise. He’s flown off the handle at his staff more than once and they only tolerate him because of his expertise. And . . .’ Williams paused.
‘The bottle blonde?’ Harris anticipated his exec’s next comment. He’d already had two unfortunate encounters himself.
‘Darlene.’ Redfield Reed raised his eyebrows and looked to the ceiling. ‘You weren’t the only one to get an earful at the Christmas function,’ he said. ‘She was as pissed as a parrot, and it was “fuck this” and “fuck that” . . . According to her, we wouldn’t know if a San Francisco trolley bus was up our rear ends until the people got off.’
The Russian Affair Page 10
