The Innocence of Trust

by Roland Ladley

  Vlad couldn’t see Sam – but guessed she had a surprised look on her face after being presented with her newfound area of expertise.

  Bukhalo moved in his seat. He had a resigned look on his face. His son would have to wait.

  Vlad pulled up a chair and interviewed the CEO for 30 minutes; the transcript was picked up by a voice recorder, which he’d placed on Bukhalo’s desk. The questions included: the CEO’s role; his knowledge of the decommissioning process; previous unreported loss of fuel rods (there were none); and how he thought the uranium might have been removed. Further questions included his view of likely suspects and motives; to which Bukhalo didn’t add anything to the sum of all knowledge.

  Then Vlad changed tack, as he and Sam had agreed.

  ‘What are your political affiliations?’

  The redness in the CEO’s face returned.

  ‘What sort of question is that?!’ He voice was somewhere between talking and shouting.

  ‘Can I remind you that 30 kilograms of nuclear waste has disappeared on your watch? Your watch.’ Vlad didn’t need to use his finger to make a point; but he did anyway. ‘Just answer the question.’ Vlad thought he probably sounded as bored and frustrated as he felt.

  ‘I am a loyal United Russia party supporter and a paid-up member. I have been for over a decade. You can check my voting slips, if you haven’t already.’ Bukhalo’s response came out as an affronted bluster.

  Vlad looked across at Sam. She was still sat there, hands on knees.

  This isn’t going anywhere.

  Then, against their agreed protocol, she butted in.

  ‘Do you have a relationship with Nikolay Sokolov?’

  Vlad shot Sam another glance, which he hoped would stop any supplementaries. Sam’s question was not one they had agreed.

  Bukhalo looked confused.

  ‘What? No! He’s an oligarch, and a prime arsehole. He’s everything I hate about the current Russian system. Last year I refused a permit to let him berth his massive yacht in this yard.’ Bukhalo’s venom wasn’t far beneath the surface.

  No love lost there, then. I’ll let you have that one, Sam Green – not a bad question.

  There was a prickly silence.

  ‘OK, Commodore. That’s enough for today.’ Vlad checked his watch. It was 6.35pm. ‘We have your Chief Operations Officer (COO) to see next. And I understand your Chief Finance Officer (CFO) is back from annual leave tomorrow? We will see him and your contracts and technical leads first thing. Please make sure they are available from 8.30am.’

  Vlad looked across at Sam. His look beckoned any further questions. Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.

  Vlad stood and leant forward, offering his hand to Bukhalo, who took it.

  ‘I hope your son has a delightful birthday party.’

  Their interview with the COO followed the same pattern. Almost exactly, although his response to Sam’s question about Sokolov was less damning. But, as with Bukhalo, she thought both were telling the truth. Unless the two were very good liars, neither appeared to have a connection with the theft of the fuel rods.

  Sam was already thinking that perhaps her impetuosity was currently her least reliable weapon. She had always followed her nose; always gone where her inclination had led her. And that had worked. Maybe this trip was going to prove that rule – or blow it out of the water?

  As they left the two-storey, flat-roofed, red-brick headquarters into the dark, cold evening, Sam’s phone rang. She checked the screen. It was Julie; Kabul. Secure.

  Sam held her hand up to stop Vlad. And, as she pressed the green ‘Accept’ button, she moved into the lee of a large metal shed to shelter from the sleety rain which had begun to fall.

  ‘Julie. How’s it going?’

  ‘Good. And you?’

  ‘I’m up at the shipyard with an FSB colleague. It’s where the fuel was stolen from. So far, nothing to report. And you?’

  ‘Well, it’s interesting. We have nothing concrete here. Except, and this is very odd, some low-level chatter heard by one of our local informants. He’s an older, always Taliban, man – been around a bit. He described it as similar to what he remembered in 2001, just before 9/11. That sort of unplaceable, excited murmur. Like people knew something big was going down, but nobody had a clue what it was. Do you remember the post-9/11 wash-up lecture the retired CIA bigwig gave us during training? He spoke of the same – which they picked up in the summer of 2001 at Langley. A hum of rumour that was unspecific, untraceable, but it was strong enough not to ignore. They’d never heard of the likes of it before, but couldn’t find anything. So, in the end they had to ignore it? It’s folklore stuff – you had to be there to believe it, sort of thing. My boss thinks this is similar. And, if you hadn’t alerted us to the potential attack, we probably wouldn’t have recognised the hum. Not yet anyway.’

  ‘Wow.’ Sam would need to repeat the gist of the conversation in Russian for Vlad, once she and Julie had finished. ‘Can your local man press for anything more?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But our view here is that this is not Afghani based. As you suggested, probably Saudi. It seems unlikely that we will unearth anything specific. But we’re onto it.’

  ‘Thanks Julie. Great stuff. Is there any correlation between the level of hum and the timing of the attack? Big hum equals imminent threat?’

  Julie seemed to be in thought for a second.

  ‘It’s a fair point, but no. Even if we were to do some stats, they would be so unreliable as to be misleading. I think we’re going to have to wait for a known piece of intel.’

  Or a uranium primed explosion rocking the centre of a European city?

  ‘OK, Julie, Thanks. Anything else?’

  ‘No, that’s it, Sam. Keep at it.’

  Sam closed the call and recounted the conversation to Vlad.

  ‘That’s good. At least it seems we’re heading to the end of the right rainbow.’

  They walked out into the sleet, Sam pulling up the collar on her Mountain Equipment waterproof jacket to protect her neck.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the manhole cover. And then I’ll call the local boys to take us to the hotel?’ Vlad suggested.

  ‘Good idea.’ After gravy for lunch, Sam was famished. And cold. They hadn’t got the drainage plans yet, so couldn’t follow a potential escape route to beyond the fenced boundary – if there was one. But they could check out the entrance and see if there was any radiation noise. Then Tweedledum and Tweedledee, her pet names for the two short and addled local FSB men, could pick them up and take them somewhere warm.

  A couple of minutes later they were standing in the area of where the manhole cover should be. Initially, they couldn’t find it. It was dark, wet and the ground had collected a covering of sleet. They were going to struggle in these conditions.

  Thinking along the same lines, they both got out their phones and switched on their torches. Vlad started kicking at the sleet with his feet. From what Sam could see, he looked despondent. And in a thin, black jacket and just a pair of jeans, he looked cold and despondent.

  Sam stood still. Turning her head, she found the corner of the huge Number 2 shed and another, smaller building she’d remembered from the satellite photo. She triangulated her position and, as Vlad continued aimlessly to kick snow about, she walked out 20 long paces. Then, shuffling her feet, she marked out a circle. Vlad was outside the shape, shoulders hunched, still pushing white stuff around.

  ‘In here.’ Sam used her torch to highlight the circle she’d made with her feet. ‘Walk extending chords from one point on the circumference.’ Sam drew a zigzag motion with her torch’s beam explaining what she meant. ‘You start from where you are. I’ll go from here.’ Her torch marked her spot.

  Vlad grunted. Then, a minute of clearance later, shouted, ‘Got it! I am a genius!’

  Sam smiled inwardly at the success of a basic military reconnaissance method. She strode the few metres to Vlad’s position. He had already cleared mo
st of the snow.

  It was a rectangular manhole cover; bigger than the average you’d find for domestic use. It looked heavy and, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t open it. To compound things, as neither of them had gloves, their hands were beginning to protest loudly.

  ‘Try the Geiger counter,’ Sam suggested.

  Vlad was a bit finger and thumby, but he soon had it working. He scanned the edge of the closed, metal hole and got a few background clicks, but nothing else. He and Sam looked at the accompanying blue-lit dial. It showed a reading of 80 counts per minute.

  ‘It’s normal,’ said Vlad. ‘Nothing here.’

  Sam thought for a second.

  ‘No, it’s not as simple as that. The snow and the wet will have dampened any reading. And it’s been days since they may have used this route. We need to get inside where the conditions are more benign. Maybe see if there is a constriction where what they were carrying scraped along the wall. We’ll do that tomorrow?’

  Sam could pick out Vlad’s face in the half-light of their torches and a nearby streetlamp. He didn’t look impressed. Bless him. He probably needed a drink.

  ‘Call Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I owe you a drink. And…’ Sam touched his arm, ‘trust me. We’re doing the right thing.’

  Am I sure about that? She really wasn’t convinced – not after their two disappointing interviews.

  Vlad grunted and swiped at his phone, turning off the torch and accessing his keypad.

  Lost in thought and struggling with the cold, Sam stared ahead at the huge decommissioning shed. It looked big enough to hold a zeppelin. Which shouldn’t have surprised her. The TK-202 was the biggest submarine ever built. It weighed 44,000 tons and was now an enormous piece of scrap metal. The size of it was overwhelming.

  Overwhelmed? That was an apposite word.

  What were they on the periphery of? How big was this thing they were chasing? Were they missing something; running down the wrong leads?

  Had she led them on a wild goose chase? Pursuing a man for all the wrong reasons? Was it a vendetta? Was she thinking straight?

  Who did you think you are Sam Green?

  It was a good question. At that point, the wet snow that was accumulating on her shoulders added to the burden she was carrying. All of a sudden Sam felt very tired. And very lost.

  This time, it just might all be too much for her.

  Nordsky Hotel, Severodvinsk, Russia

  By the time Sam and Vlad had showered and made it downstairs for a pre-dinner drink, it was 8.35pm. They put the round on Sam’s bill and rushed into the restaurant before it closed for the evening. Vlad was always hungry, but after an hour or so in the sleet, and after an already fairly testing day, he was ravenous.

  Sam seemed lost as to what to eat – it was essentially different cuts of pork, potatoes and root vegetables, although they did have a cheeseburger on the menu.

  The waiter floated to the table.

  ‘Cheeseburger please,’ Sam asked.

  Why wasn’t Vlad surprised?

  He ordered pork chops in a local sauce, dumplings with carrots and swede.

  They chatted for a bit about the cold, and the state of their pretty average hotel. It could have been a converted block of flats, such was the care taken with the design. Maybe it was? But it was warm. And they served pig and beer. What more could you want?

  The food arrived quickly. The chef was obviously in a rush to get home.

  As Vlad swigged his drink and tore off chunks of pork, smothering them in potatoes and gravy, he could sense Sam judging him.

  ‘What?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing. Just interested in what the man about Severodvinsk eats nowadays. Does Alyona feed you this at home?’

  Vlad paused his fork halfway to his mouth, looked at it lovingly, tipped his head to one side, and ate it anyway. Between chewing he said, ‘No. That’s why I’m making the most of what’s on offer today.’

  Sam, who was obviously making a point, only ate the meat and cheese of her burger, and a couple of chips. She finished by placing the napkin to the side of her plate.

  ‘I’ve had some stuff through from Moscow.’ She looked around the room; Vlad thought she was checking that no one was listening. ‘Our boffins in the UK have designed a bomb for us. With explanatory notes. What they’ve sent through has surprised me.’

  Vlad was finishing off. He took another swig of his beer, caught the waiter’s eye and ordered a second. Sam declined.

  She moved from her chair onto the bench seat so that they sat next to each other. She opened her work’s tablet and showed Vlad the pictures.

  It was incredible what her people had done. Vlad doubted their science team, based in a separate building in Moscow, could have produced a piece of work of this quality without very clear instructions. And certainly not in under 24 hours. He would have struggled to get something by next month.

  There were five diagrammatic images, almost cartoon-like, and a couple of pages of notes – bomb-making for idiots. His written English was poor, but the pictures were worth more than a thousand words.

  The first image showed how the pieces of fuel, which were shown as egg-sized pellets, might have been removed and taken elsewhere. It seems that when reaching the end of their useful life, and after a considerable period of cooling, the fuel can be separated into small balls. The experts showed the pieces being carried away in simple glass or metal jars, with the radioactive material suspended in brine. Next to the container there was a label: ‘WARNING – VERY HOT!’ Vlad understood that piece of English. Obviously, the fuel still retained its heat.

  The second image was an overview of the bomb-making equipment. As well as 30kg of spent fuel rod (Vlad reminded himself that that was the equivalent of 30 bags of sugar), the team had drawn in 60 kilograms of explosive – the easiest to procure was quarry-ready plastic explosive. They also showed four industrial detonators, and five ten-kilogram bags of sharp sand. Finally there was a metal container, a pig’s trough with a lid, or similar.

  The third image was a straightforward, internet-available priming and detonating kit. It consisted of two lithium-ion laptop batteries, a Raspberry Pi children’s programmable circuit board, two mobile phones and a lot of speaker cable.

  The fourth image showed the constructed bomb. What surprised Vlad was that the glue which held the bomb together was the plastic explosive. The explosive was inert until set off by separate detonators, and pliable like Plasticine. The uranium fuel and the sand was layered between the explosive in the container – like a series of Victoria sponges. Key, however, seemed to be an inner core of explosive, about 20 kilograms worth. The rest was moulded around the sand and uranium in the container.

  The fifth image showed detailed circuitry, which was lost on Vlad, connecting one phone, the Raspberry Pi and the four detonators. As Vlad finished off taking it all in, Sam pointed to the lines of Python code on the accompanying notes that would need to be programmed into the Raspberry Pi; these were to ensure that the mobile phone signal sent the right messages to the four detonators.

  ‘Assuming that we have hundreds of fundamentalist volunteers lining up to drive this baby into a city centre somewhere, why are your people suggesting that the device is remotely detonated by mobile signal?’ Vlad asked.

  ‘The collective wisdom is, I think, that even Islamic fundamentalists are human. In the old days of the IRA, the terrorists used to tie locals into cars or lorries which were rigged with explosives; they kept their loved ones as hostages. They then ordered them to drive to the target, and detonated the bomb remotely. This is,’ Sam pointed at the final image, ‘no great stride forward. Humans are unreliable. Mobile communications are not. I think it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘But, this is just a suggestion?’

  ‘Yes. That’s true. It would be simpler to have a car battery with two crocodile clips on the passenger seat. Your suicide bomber drives up. Stops. One terminal is already connected. All he or she needs
to do is touch the free crocodile clip to the spare terminal. And boom!’ Sam showed her childlike side by describing the explosion with her hands.

  Vlad couldn’t stop himself from laughing.

  The waiter appeared. Vlad was about to order another beer when Sam butted in.

  ‘Two coffees please.’ She smiled at him, and moved back to her chair. When she was settled, he looked across and scorned.

  ‘And why the sand?’ Vlad asked.

  ‘That’s what surprised me. The notes say that it does two things. First, it helps keep the radioactive material cool. The pellets of fuel, even if they’ve been allowed to cool for a couple of years – which is where we are with the TK-202, can still be too hot to handle. The sand acts as a heat barrier. Second, it’s a sort of radioactive shrapnel. The explosion will be huge – blow cars over at 100 metres. The sand, and the outer casing of the bomb, will be radioactive. First, by dint of the fact that they’ve been in contact with a highly radioactive material for maybe a couple of weeks. And, second, because the uranium will be vaporised by the explosives – which will transfer a good deal of its radiation to the sand. Think of it as radioactive sand-blasting.’

  ‘The sand will pepper and lodge into building facades and ensure that they remain radioactive for longer?’

  ‘Exactly. Decontamination will be much more than just washing down walls with whatever it is they use nowadays – in my day it was fuller’s earth. They’ll have to knock down buildings, tear up tarmac – everything will have to go.’

  ‘So, what do we tell our people to look for?’