After these interviews, CIA knew what we knew: that Portman had been killed by ex-Mossad agents in the employ of Moses Adbul Tawal; that he was killed because he’d discovered the secret of the buried HEX; that Kawthar al Deen was in fact a secret IDF base for Special Forces that would pave the way for an Israeli nuclear strike, which was imminent, on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
CIA also knew that we believed there was an Israeli spy operating at a high level within the US government. We told them that this same spy had helped obtain the HEX from a US storage facility, and had been instrumental in the deaths of numerous US and Turkish citizens.
The CIA told us they believed the HEX had come from Russia. The Company doesn’t feed anyone information unless it has good reasons – mostly related to disinformation. The good reasons in this instance were that it wanted Masters and me to go away and forget everything we’d seen, heard and done. We were happy to oblige, but only because we wanted the Company off our backs. As far as we were concerned, the account had yet to be closed. We owed it to Doctor Aysun Merkit to see it through, as well as to Emir, Colonel Emmet Portman and Dutch Bremmel, Adem Fedai and Ten Pin, the dead and wounded CIA guys, and all the guys on the Onur who went to their graves in her.
Fortunately for us, Masters’ contact at the Department of Energy was still being undervalued by her employer. So, to Masters’ hotmail address, she forwarded a spreadsheet on the nation’s inventory of depleted uranium hexafluoride. The inventory revealed that there were 686,500 metric tons of the stuff contained in 57,122 cylinders stored in three DoE facilities: Portsmouth, Ohio; Paducah, Kentucky; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. A handy fact to have on hand for when dinner-party conversation slows, but what we really wanted – and what Masters’ deep-throat connection provided – was the serial number of every one of those cylinders.
There was ice in the rain and it was slanting horizontally when we arrived at the security gate to the old K-25 site, Oak Ridge Reservation. I lowered the driver’s window on the Ford rental, reached out and slid our credentials under the glass, towards the security guy. He glanced at them and signalled by holding up a finger that he’d be just a moment. A few seconds later he jogged out of the bunker and approached the window.
‘Mr Jurgensen and . . . Ms Swank. You’re down from Washington, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, how’d you know?’
‘Never mind . . . but you’re hoping to catch us with our pants down.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I asked, frowning.
‘Well, looks like you got a leak somewhere in head office. We all think that’s kind of funny.’
‘Why’s that?’ I didn’t need to have it spelt out, but it went with my disguise.
‘You’re hoping to arrive unannounced and check for leaks here, right? But all the while you’ve got one yourself back in Washington. Ha ha.’
‘Oh, yes . . . ha ha . . . I see,’ I said. ‘Funny. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who that leak is?’
‘Sorry, no can do. Gotta protect our sources,’ he replied, grinning. ‘So, anyway, I believe you’re heading for the cylinder yard.’
I pursed my lips and gave the steering wheel a thump. ‘Yes, goddamn it,’ I said.
‘You been here before?’
‘New to the job. Both of us.’
‘Well, head on straight. You’ll come to a traffic circle – go left. Come to another traffic circle, turn right, and you’ll find a security post two miles down the road. They’ll be expecting you.’
‘Thanks, damn it,’ I said, splashing the frustration around like cheap cologne.
He handed our credentials and documents back with a smile. Despite his rain hood, mini waterfalls ran off the end of his blue nose and chin. ‘You folks have a real nice day.’
The heavy boom gate lifted and we cruised beneath it, over a set of road spikes that clanged into their recess.
‘Your friend at the Department of Energy – her talents are wasted,’ I told Masters. We had no chance of sneaking into this facility as OSI special agents without all kinds of authorities and paperwork we’d never get. But posing as DoE bureaucrats and then having our surprise visit ‘blown’? Genius. The letters Masters’ friend had also supplied, as well as the security passes, could all potentially land her in a basket of snakes but, as the gate guardian rightly pointed out, you gotta protect your sources.
The windshield wipers were moving around like a conductor doing ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’, but they still weren’t managing to cope with the volume of water and sleet.
The first traffic circle suddenly appeared out of the murk and I turned left.
‘There’s a hell of a lot of real estate here,’ Masters observed, thinking aloud.
‘Uh-huh.’ There was. The Oak Ridge Reservation was built on a colossal scale. It was the backbone of the Manhattan Project, which gave birth to the bomb in 1945.
We turned right at the next traffic circle. Signs told us where to go in case we weren’t sure. The security gate for the cylinder yard eventually reared out of the rain.
‘Just a suggestion,’ Masters said with a smile.
‘What?’
‘Try not to put it on quite so thick this time. Acting’s not your strong suit.’
‘Thanks for the confidence builder,’ I replied, before hitting the window button.
A woman in a grey hooded raincoat with broad yellow reflective strips came out in the rain to meet us.
‘Morning,’ I said through the crack in the top of the window, holding up the paperwork.
‘That’s okay,’ she replied in a husky voice, waving it aside. ‘Milton called – been expecting you. Turn right after the barrier arm and keep to your right till you get to the main building. Kevin will meet you there.’
‘So much for the element of surprise,’ I said, giving her a shrug.
‘Don’t feel bad, Mr Jurgensen. We don’t get a lot of visitors to the cylinder yard. Nothing ever happens, so we’re glad of the attention. We got nothing to hide here anyway. As we say, it’s all out in the open.’
‘I guess you’re right. Thanks.’ I edged the Ford over another set of spikes.
Masters gave the woman a wave and I watched her turn and go back inside her bunker.
Through the driving rain and the razor wire, I could see row after row of neatly stacked cylinders containing uranium hexafluoride. Like the lady said, it was all out in the open. The rows went on seemingly forever, disappearing into the driving rain. How easy would it be to misplace just one? Throw enough money around and anything was possible. And HEX was hardly plutonium – it couldn’t be put to a lot of use, not even by terrorists. The containers were just sitting here exposed to the weather, getting old and leaky.
The main admin building was a piece of 1940s kitsch – small secretive windows and a tiled exterior. Inside there were probably still pictures of FDR and Ike on yellowed walls. A guy in the regulation raincoat was waiting in a driveway beneath a portico, waving us in. Kevin, I presumed. We parked and got out.
‘Hello. I’m Sonny Jurgensen and this is Ms Swank,’ I said as I shook Kevin’s big wet paw.
‘Kevin Greig. Glad to meet you. You want to come in and have a cup of coffee before you get started, wait for a break in the weather?’
I looked at Ms Swank and she gave her head a slow and solemn shake. ‘I don’t think so. We have a schedule to keep, Mr Greig,’ she said.
Kevin didn’t mind. ‘Then where do you folks want to begin?’
‘There might be something wrong with our records, but it seems there are a number of cylinders that haven’t been visually inspected for five years.’
‘Really?’ Kevin asked, doubtfully. ‘I don’t see how that’s possible.’
‘Neither do we, Mr Greig, but we have a responsibility to the American people to ensure the records are up to date.’
‘You folks really are new to this, aren’t you?’
‘Excuse me, sir?’ Masters asked.
The guy shrugged. ‘So th
is is not a snap inspection of the facility?’ he asked, a little disappointed.
‘No,’ Masters replied.
‘Oh,’ he said, dejected. ‘We all thought it was. Don’t get many visitors to the yard. Okay . . . Well, follow me.’
Kevin led us inside to a change room. ‘You folks going to poke around the cylinders, get your hands dirty, or you just want to have a general look around?’
‘It’s not a great day for gymnastics,’ said Masters. ‘But we have a job to do.’
‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘Well, I’ll break out a couple of NBC suits for you.’ He took a step back and sized us up. ‘The suits’ll keep the rain out, too. At least, you’d hope they would . . .’
Kevin was expecting a chuckle. I gave it to him.
A little over ten minutes later, Masters and I were suited up and waiting beneath the portico for Kevin, as instructed. There was no break in the weather. A white DoE-branded pick-up with a revolving yellow beacon appeared from around the side of the building and parked beside our rental. Kevin got out, leaving the motor running.
‘You folks ready to roll?’
‘Ready,’ said Masters.
‘You got serial numbers for the cylinders you want to look at?’
‘Right here.’ She waggled her notebook.
‘I can take you down the line, if you like,’ Kevin suggested.
‘Thank you, Kevin,’ I said. ‘We sure appreciate your willingness to assist, but we have to muddle through this sometime. Today might as well be the day.’
‘Okay, I getcha. Well, the cylinder yard is laid out quite logical. The rows running this way are designated by letters; the ones at right angles by numbers. Mind if I have a look at your serial numbers?’
‘Not at all,’ Masters replied. She opened her notebook to a laser-printed strip of paper containing half-a-dozen serial numbers, all but one chosen at random. The cylinder we were here to inspect was buried amongst them.
‘Say you want to find cylinder BB-32-N101-A16,’ he said, pointing at the one on the top of the list. ‘Drive down BB till you get to cross street number 32. The letter N tells you your cylinder will be on the north side of block 101. The letter A tells you it’s on the bottom of the stack – C on top, B in the middle. Those last numbers in the series tell you it’s number 16 in the row.’
Masters and I must have appeared confused.
‘You sure you don’t want me to take you?’ he asked. ‘You don’t want to get lost out there. A lot of it is signposted, but some of those signs have rusted away.’
‘No, it’s okay, thank you,’ said Masters.
‘Well, I’ll see you folks when you’re done. Got any problems, use the radio.’
Masters went to the driver’s door.
‘Feeling confident, Ms Swank?’ I asked.
‘I’m just the driver,’ she said. ‘You’re the navigator.’
We nosed about, locating some of the cylinders. Finding them wasn’t so hard, but the sheer size of the yard was staggering, and the weather wasn’t doing us any favours. The cylinders themselves were big. Each weighed around fourteen tons and measured twelve feet long and four wide – not the kind of item that could be loaded on the back of a pickup and carted away.
After dicking around for half an hour, we found what we were looking for. On top of the stack should have been cylinder number JJ-74-E57-C25, and indeed there was a cylinder up there occupying the space, only it was a fake. Had to be. The real one was buried in the ground upstream of Kumayt, its poison leached into the earth. I took the ladder out of the truck, climbed to the top of the stack and confirmed the serial numbers. I read them off to Masters.
‘They’re the right numbers,’ she said. ‘What’s in it, do you think?’
‘Anything but what’s supposed to be in it. Let’s go talk to Kevin, see if we can get an introduction to his boss.’
We drove back to the main office, past thousands of HEX cylinders. I wondered how many of them were the genuine article; how many had been pilfered and for what reasons. Masters slotted the pick-up beside our rental. Kevin wasn’t around, so we found our own way back to the change room, showering in the suits first before removing them, as per the rules printed on a plate screwed to the wall beside the change-room entrance.
While I climbed back into my clothes, it occurred to me that with the serial number on the cylinder, we had something Portman never managed to get his hands on: proof. Portman had the lab report on the sample, but while the minute amount of uranium-235 it contained strongly implied US involvement, what we now had was incontrovertible. The cylinder we’d uncovered was definitely one of ours, stolen from this facility. The one in its place was a phony.
I had one last check that I had everything: wallet, keys, cell, and my uncle’s Vietnam war-era Colt 45, which I probably should have left back in DC. The thing was killing me, sticking into my rib.
Time to go.
I pushed through the swing door. Masters and I could now hand everything over to the FBI and –
‘Put you fucking hands over you fucking head.’
The shout caught me completely by surprise. The guy already had Masters pressed against the wall with his shoulder, her hair balled up in one fist, a Barak pistol in the other, the black muzzle pushed hard into her ear. Adem Fedai was found dead inside the car. He had been beaten and shot through the ear. He rolled the silver toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. I sniffed the air. There was something familiar in it.
He growled, ‘Do it, ya chatitchat hara.’
I had no idea what he was saying but I did it anyway – put my hands over my head. ‘You probably don’t know this, but there are only two kinds of people who wear sunglasses inside,’ I told him. ‘And you’re not a rock star, are you?’
‘Cooper . . .’ Masters warned.
‘Shut you face,’ he said.
‘Who? Me, or her?’
‘Both. I will kill her if you do not do exactly as I say.’ He wrenched Masters’ hair so that her head was pulled back, then slammed it against the wall. Masters’ knees buckled for an instant, then recovered. She didn’t make a sound.
‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘I’ve done it, okay – see?’ I wriggled my fingers above my head. ‘What next? What do you want?’
‘Up the stairs. Go!’
I took a step towards them, and he brought Masters around to face me, using her as a shield, keeping her between us. He was a well-drilled, sunglasses-wearing asshole.
‘Your name is Ari Shira,’ I said as I moved past them and commenced the climb. ‘They tell me you like ice-cream. I’m kinda fond of chocolate-chocolate chip myself.’
‘Shut you face.’
‘You’re Israeli, ex-Mossad. So is your partner, Yafa Fienmann. They kicked you out and so now you’re doing your best to give the Czech Republic a bad name. Okay, an even worse name.’
‘Keep walking,’ he said.
‘CIA knows all about you –’ I rounded the flight and saw Kevin slumped on the floor, coagulated blood trails from his mouth and nose and the air reeking of that smell. I recognised it now: chloroform. Kevin was either out cold or stone dead – it was impossible to tell. There were no gunshot wounds evident, so maybe he was lucky. Perhaps he’d wake up later with a killer headache and a real sore throat, though I didn’t like the odds on his luck being good. Yafa and this Ari character didn’t seem all that interested in temporarily knocking out the folks who got in their way.
The doorway at the top of the stairs was open. Yafa Fienmann suddenly stepped into it, a Barak held casually by her thigh. ‘Ah, so it is you. Have you brought your gorgeous partner?’ She craned her neck to look past me at her partner coming up the stairs. ‘Yes, she is here.’ The fruitloop clapped her hands – or rather her hand and gun – together with excitement. ‘Ari, do not hurt her. Not yet.’
‘Go!’ He yelled to get me moving. I reached the top of the landing and walked towards Yafa. ‘You and your beautiful friend. How do you manage it to stay alive?�
� she asked. ‘Someday we will sit down and you will tell me.’ The way Yafa was talking, she could’ve been asking how Masters and I managed to match our drapes with the carpet.
Shira said something to Yafa in an unfamiliar language. I guessed Hebrew. She turned me around, pushed me against the wall and frisked me with one hand while the other kept the pistol pressed into the base of my spine. She grabbed the fabric of my jacket, feeling for lumps of metal over the tops of my arms and then their undersides, my armpits, my ribs, belt line, small of my back, down the outside of my legs, the inside legs. The last port of call was my crotch, which she lingered over, with more interest than she needed to, looking for lumps of a different kind, cupping my testicles and then giving Little Coop a friendly squeeze. He wasn’t interested.
I went to turn around, thinking she’d missed the Colt.
‘Stay, big man,’ she said, her hand pushed between my shoulders, cold metal on the back of my neck. She went down the inside of my leg a second time, and found the pistol tucked into the top of my boot. She pulled it out.
‘Hmm . . . heavy. This is an old one, well used. A man’s gun.’ She rubbed my crotch again. Little Coop still wasn’t interested. Yafa flicked the weapon at me, indicating that I should move back and give her some room.
‘I haven’t searched the woman,’ Shira said.
‘Thank you, Ari. You have left the job to me. You are so considerate.’
He muscled Masters up the last couple of stairs and then let her go, pushing her at the wall. Masters wheeled about and glared at him while she straightened her jacket.
Yafa held my Colt in Masters’ face and said, ‘Turn around and face the wall, please. You will enjoy this.’
‘Get on with it, bitch,’ Masters spat.
Yafa put her through the same routine she’d just given me, only this search was conducted with her hands groping around inside Masters’ shirt and pants. Yafa sniffed her fingers, waved them under her nose and said, ‘I love your natural perfume.’
Masters said nothing.
Yafa shrugged. ‘Inside. Now,’ she said, gesturing at the doorway.
I covered the distance in a couple of steps. It was a corner office – the boss’s office. The smell of chloroform inside was almost overpowering. It had a sofa. It had a matching lounge chair. In the matching lounge chair sat a very large man. On the floor beside the chair and the very large man was another man in a suit, curled into a ball, blood leaking onto the carpet from a gut wound. He looked like the smiling guy in the family photo on the desk. I figured he was the boss at the facility, and now he was a loose end being tied. If I ever got out of here and pulled the boss’s financials, I suspected there’d be a very large sum of money deposited somewhere for at least one storage cylinder of HEX.
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