by Reevik, Carl
Brussels
Anatoly Slavkin was back behind the large wooden table for phone duty when the phone rang.
‘Yes, I am listening.’
‘This is Pavel. Where is he?’
‘Please say the new numbers, then I’ll tell you.’
Pavel exhaled through the nose, then quoted a new sequence of numbers.
‘Correct. The car came, the driver with the glasses dropped off a young man in a dark grey winter jacket. He walked across the street and drove off with another young man in another car. Do you want the description?’
‘Did you do what I told you to do?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Then I don’t need a description.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No. I’ll come to the embassy to pick up equipment.’
They both hung up. Well done. There was certainly a reason they had posted Slavkin where they had. And he knew precisely what that reason was. He would get very, very far.
Petten
They had left the motorway at a town called Alkmaar, north of Amsterdam, and had driven on straight country roads through the dark, flat landscape. They had reached the compound of the Petten nuclear research centre twenty minutes later.
The entrance was a high-security gate, illuminated in the darkness by powerful lamps. A uniformed guard came to the driver’s side of the car, his colleague waiting at the passenger’s side. They both carried submachine guns.
Hans and Siim identified themselves with their national identity cards and their Commission badges. Clarissa had made sure in advance that they would be allowed to pass. The guard waved into the darkness and the steel gate slowly opened sideways while the barrier behind it was raised. They drove for another one hundred metres through the dunes to reach the first actual facilities.
Clarissa met them in the middle of a yard. Hans and Siim stepped out of the car into the cold wind and the darkness, and heard the roar of the sea behind the dunes. Clarissa came closer, and she and Siim embraced for a passionate kiss with their mouths open. They kept it short, though, presumably because Hans was standing right next to them. Alternatively they could have chosen a less erotic but then longer kiss. Yet they had preferred the passion.
Even though it was darker here than it had been at the gate, Hans had recognised Clarissa immediately. Her long black hair, her oval face, her dark eyes. She had been the roommate of his Danish acquaintance in Brussels, plus she was Siim’s girlfriend, so he had met her a few times before.
Hans looked around. The whole area looked like a military installation. High fences, patrolled by security men with dogs. Dozens of buildings, beyond them the dunes and, somewhere behind them, the vast blackness of the sea. On the compound itself the view was ominously dominated by a gigantic grey dome.
Clarissa turned to Hans, and hugged him, too. ‘I’ve heard it in the news,’ she said softly, her mouth already behind his ear, her chin resting on his shoulder. He held her body as she held his. It’d been a long time since he had been embraced, since he’d held someone in his arms. The wind blew her hair in his face.
Hans let go. He didn’t want to draw it out to an inappropriate length.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Clarissa said. ‘Hans, I booked you a room in the guesthouse for the night. The house is almost empty anyway now, just me and my colleague Kenneth. And there’s a kitchen.’
She took Siim by the hand and led the way to a small two-storey building at the edge of the central yard. They entered into a warm glow of hospitality, agreeably reinforced by the deliciously sweet smell of fresh onions fried in a pan.
14
They’d had a very pleasant late dinner around the guesthouse kitchen table. Kenneth, Clarissa’s co-worker at the research reactor, had sat with them for a while. He’d had a glass of the red wine they’d opened, and they’d all talked a little about where in the world they’d been and what they’d seen. Hans had enjoyed talking and thinking of something else. And Kenneth had turned out to be an amazing individual. He had toured the globe, he’d worked as a translator, as a teacher, as an election monitor in Botswana. But he had studied physics originally, in his native Britain, at a pretty high level even, and now he had returned to nuclear science. He had worked in a nuclear research lab in America before coming to Petten on a scholarship.
And now it was just the three of them. Hans, Siim and Clarissa were sitting around the table. Kenneth had left the compound to visit someone in town, a mystery relation as he’d put it. The bottle was empty, Siim was trying to squeeze the screw exactly vertically into the cork of the next one.
Clarissa said to Hans, ‘So, are you going to tell us, or tell me, what happened?’
Hans finished his glass and put it down. He was thinking where and how to start.
Finally he said, ‘Okay. None of what I’ll say is certain, but I’ll give you the most plausible version so far. I believe there is a man who covered up the theft of uranium that was intended for reactors across Europe, including this one maybe. I also believe that the man was a Russian agent. He is now dead, and I believe he was killed.’
Clarissa listened attentively. She didn’t interrupt.
‘But I don’t know very much about that uranium, to be honest. I know it’s low-enriched, and I know it had the form of fission targets, but I’m not completely sure what that implies. If this material is being diverted, then I don’t know what it could be used for, other than for research somewhere else. Or for hospitals. I am worried that it could be used to build a dirty bomb, with uranium of Western rather than Russian origin. And I was hoping you could help me, Clarissa.’
Siim opened the bottle with a plop, and poured some more for everyone. He put the bottle on the table and whispered to Clarissa, ‘Can I get you anything else? Water, something from the fridge?’
‘No thanks,’ she whispered.
‘You, Hans?’
Hans shook his head. He had noticed already earlier that Siim became a completely different person around Clarissa.
Clarissa took a sip of her wine and started her reply. ‘Uranium is a metal, you extract it from ore, and it’s actually pretty common. But it comes in different forms, or isotopes, depending on the number of neutrons in the atomic core, and it’s the mix that counts. The interesting isotopes in the mix are those that are fissile, meaning that their atomic core splits up if you shoot more neutrons at it. In its natural state most of the uranium is not fissile, so you have to enrich it to increase the percentage of fissile isotopes in the mix. Are you following?’
Hans was following, in spite of the wine. He nodded, and Clarissa continued. ‘Now, the purest mix, if you like, is the weapons-grade uranium. It’s high-enriched and almost completely fissile. This is what supports an uncontrolled chain reaction in atomic bombs. For power plants you typically use a less pure mix, the low-enriched uranium. The chain reaction is controlled, it just produces heat. The heat boils water, the steam drives turbines which make electricity.’
Siim took another big sip of wine. Hans didn’t. Clarissa didn’t, either.
She continued. ‘Hospitals don’t really need uranium at all. What they use are weakly radioactive forms of other elements that are collectively called medical isotopes. These are used for example in tracer liquid. They inject it into the bloodstream, so on the image it lights up and you see where the blood vessels are. Another medical use is radiotherapy, whereby the radiation is used to destroy tumour cells in cancer patients.’
Now she took a sip as well. Hans did the same. Siim hadn’t really stopped sipping.
‘The medical isotopes are essentially a by-product from splitting up uranium. That’s what research reactors like Petten are for, or it’s one of the things we do. We take low-enriched uranium, we put it into the reactor, we split it up and that way we produce medical isotopes for customers across Europe. Like Mo-99, which slowly decomposes into other isotopes. We’re one big isotope factory to supply hospitals, basically.’ She waved at the kitchen door
, indicating the direction of the reactor dome in the compound. ‘Plus there’s the actual research, obviously. What Kenneth and I do, in a team led by Professor Koopmans, is test new cooling technology. So we can power reactors up and down more quickly, for a more efficient electricity production if combined with wind and solar. We’re trying liquefied gases in various combinations, to see how they interact with each other and how the cooling affects the chain reaction itself and the production of isotopes.’
The research, of course.
‘Publish or perish, right?’, Hans said. Clarissa nodded.
It’s what Julia had explained to Hans once. The quest to expand humanity’s scientific knowledge and understanding of the world was at the same time a climb up the academic pyramid. And to take the steps, researchers had to publish their findings in ever better scientific journals while also advancing in the name ranking to become, ideally, a paper’s first or second author in a team of half a dozen co-authors or more.
‘And as far as dirty bombs are concerned, their environmental impact is very much overrated,’ Clarissa concluded. ‘It all depends on the quantity and the location, of course. But if we take the quantities that a terrorist group could accumulate from medical waste, a blast would have very little effect, even in a city. The radiation wouldn’t be much higher than what you get from the sunlight when skiing in the mountains. Clean-up is expensive but possible.’
‘So it’s mostly about the psychological effect, right?’, Siim said. ‘Take a city like Tallinn. It’s not exactly New York, but it’s a capital city, a financial centre for the country, with hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. And then there is radiation in the middle of it. Who would want to live there? It would be more disastrous than the cyber-attack.’
In 2007 the internet services of Estonia’s government institutions had been subjected to a hacker attack on an unseen scale. Popular consensus was that the attack had originated in, and been sponsored by, a neighbouring country. And it wasn’t Latvia. It had been in the middle of a row over the relocation of a Soviet-era memorial to the Red Army soldiers who had died in the liberation of Estonia from the Nazis. A memorial to just another set of occupants, critics in Estonia had said. The tomb of the unknown rapist. Hans had found it all unnecessary at the time; the critics he’d found hysterical, and the mostly Russian-speaking protesters out of control. But the cyber-attack hadn’t been virtual, it had caused real economic damage. There were powers willing to use disruptive force against his country.
‘There’s more than just Tallinn,’ Hans said. ‘I’m from Tartu, the second city. My parents live there. They’d have to evacuate them.’ He thought of his father’s plans to build a simple little house up the river. Maybe that would come in handy. Hans frowned. He was getting ahead of himself. What was he talking about? The point had been clear anyway. It was the wine.
‘In both cases this would be the main application of a dirty bomb,’ Clarissa nodded, ignoring the emotional interjection. ‘A disruption of the economy, the spreading of fear.’
Hans asked, ‘Can you use low-enriched uranium or medical isotopes to make a dirty bomb?’
‘Sure, you can use anything you like, as long as it’s radioactive.’
‘Is it true that the origin of uranium can be traced?’
‘Yes, by looking at the impurities in the uranium ore.’
‘Sorry, I’ll be right back.’ Siim left for the bathroom.
Hans and Clarissa sat in silence for a moment.
‘This man died in an explosion, they said in the news,’ Clarissa said in a low voice. ‘Were you close by, Hans?’
‘It wasn’t a big explosion.’
‘How did he die then?’
Hans hesitated, then he said it. ‘Someone put an explosive in his mouth.’
‘Like a hand grenade?’, Clarissa asked. She hadn’t paused for a second.
‘A grenade is too big and too powerful. Something smaller.’
Something smaller that fits into a mouth. Something smaller that fits into a box not much larger than his phone.
The box.
Uranium.
‘Do you have a Geiger counter?’, Hans asked Clarissa. ‘I’m sure you do.’
‘Of course we do. You need one now?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble, yes please.’
Clarissa nodded, got up, touched Siim on the shoulder as he came back from the bathroom, took her coat from the coat hanger in the hallway and left the guesthouse.
‘Where are we going?’, Siim asked.
‘Clarissa will fetch a Geiger counter,’ Hans said. To check out how hot we are. Hans didn’t want to say it.
***
Clarissa lifted the black tube that was connected by a cable to a box with a number display. The box started emitting irregular clicking sounds, each click representing a radioactive particle passing through the tube, as far as Hans remembered.
Siim was very enthusiastic about this. ‘At school they told us that the man Geiger was a research assistant who got sick of counting the flashes by hand, with pencil and paper. So he invented the counter.’
Clarissa didn’t answer. She held the tube against Hans, then against Siim, then against herself. The frequency of the clicking stayed at the same low level.
Hans got op, went to the coat hanger, unzipped the pocket of his jacket, took out the black box and laid it on the table.
Clarissa held the tube above it. There was no sudden crackle. The radioactivity was the same as before.
‘Okay, thank you Clarissa,’ Hans said. ‘I just needed to be sure.’
He sat down again.
‘Last glass and bedtime?’, Siim said.
‘One more question,’ Hans said, still addressing Clarissa. ‘Where do you get your uranium from?’
‘A company called A&C, they sit in Austria, in Vienna. They’re one of the largest sellers on the world market.’
‘How does it get here?’
‘By container ship to Rotterdam, then by road to here. Not all of it is for us, though. We distribute a part of each shipment to facilities in other European countries.’
‘Is it safe to just transport it by road like that?’
Clarissa smiled. ‘There are thousands of transports across Europe every day, mostly medical isotopes but also the uranium itself.’
‘Are there often cases of non-delivery here?’
Clarissa thought for a moment. ‘It happens sometimes, but not often. The last shipment was cancelled completely, which is unusual because, even if there are problems, normally at least a part of it arrives. The thing is that the production and transit of the uranium is sometimes hindered by events beyond the seller’s control. International sanctions on a producing country, for example, or corrupt customs officials, or accidents or weather events. Then a half-empty container is delivered, with just the content from digging sites that weren’t affected.’
‘What happens then?’
Siim was caressing Clarissa’s neck with his thumb. She didn’t respond very much because she was still talking to Hans.
‘We report our planned use as cancelled to the nuclear inspectorate, and they report it to you guys, to the Commission I mean. And our insurance pays out a little premium for our costs of the delay. And then we wait for the next boat.’
Now she started responding a little more. It was late. The conversation was over.
***
Hans was lying on his back, on the bed of his dark guestroom, with his eyes wide open. They had all gone to bed fifteen minutes ago. Hans to his room, Siim and Clarissa to theirs. He had put his shirt, socks and trousers on the chair, his shoes under it, and had lied down, pulling the blanket over his body. And now he was lying there, staring up into the darkness.
The interior walls in this guesthouse were very thin. Hans heard Clarissa’s badly suppressed moaning. It went on for quite a while. He didn’t hear Siim. The house was otherwise completely silent, he could only faintly hear the wind outside. And b
ecause of the darkness there was nothing to look at. There were only things to hear. Things to listen to. The sounds coming from the bedroom next door.
The moaning stopped, and after a few seconds the roles were reversed. He heard Siim, but not Clarissa.
Hans was lying on his back, feeling his erection with his hand. He only held it, though, and not very firmly. He wasn’t moving his hand either. His eyes were still wide open.
Some of the background noise outside must be the sea, he thought. The sound of waves in the distance, immersed in the sound of wind over land.
Something changed again on the other side of the wall. Siim stopped moaning, and for a few seconds there was no sound at all. Then Clarissa’s voice started erupting joyful moans between breaths. It was more intense than before. Again, there was no sound from Siim.
Hans threw his blanket to the side and got up. He pulled up his trousers, folding his penis sideways into the fly, put his shoes on, went out into the hallway and put on his jacket without the shirt.
The moment he opened the door to the yard, a sharp wind started whipping his skin and wetting his face. He closed the door behind him, crossed the yard and stood in the middle of the compound. It was completely dark, except for the illumination from the lamps along the fence, and the projectors highlighting the frightening reactor dome. A dog barked, barely audible in the gusts. A security man with a German shepherd was patrolling the perimeter.
Hans’s erection was long gone. He faced the strong wind with his eyes closed and let it forcefully chill his forehead, his eyebrows, his lips, his chin. Tiny arrows of water hit his skin and formed larger drops.
Then he opened his eyes. He held them wide open. The water in the wind hit his pupils like shards, the cold was tormenting them. He forced himself to keep his eyes open. They hurt, they felt like they were burning. The lids were pressing him to squint, but he resisted. Tears formed inside his eyes and started running down his cheeks, first from one eye, then from the other. He kept them wide open. When the pain in his eyes became unbearable he finally squinted. But he kept them narrowly open nonetheless. He stood there for a long while, squinting into the wind coming in from a stormy sea, freezing, his eyes hurting, tears running down his cheeks.