Pinnacle Event

by Richard A. Clarke

  “Any chance to get off that UN island in the Danube. I hate that late twentieth-century architecture, so cold, impersonal. Give me an old Viennese café any day. And any chance to see my good friend Raymond, who the drum signals had said was gone from government, out of the spook world. But here I see it is not so? The drums have told false tales again?”

  “Let’s just say that I am doing some research. Perhaps I am writing a book?” Ray responded.

  “With respect, Raymond, you could no more have the patience to write a book than you could train the dancing white horses across the Platz. But I will play along. What would this book be about, Iran and its nuclear weapons program?”

  The elderly waiter brought the coffee and cake. “I will have you know that I was an accomplished horseman one summer in Montana, admittedly many years ago,” Moe asserted. The waiter departed.

  “No, not Iran again. Ancient history. South Africa.”

  Moe’s eyes darted quickly up from his chocolate cake and his expression became more serious. “The double flash in August that I am not supposed to know about, that your government failed to mention to the IAEA. Finally you are taking it seriously?”

  “I don’t know anything about a double flash.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I am concerned with more ancient history,” Bowman replied. “Nineteen ninety-one. The destruction of the six South African nuclear bombs. IAEA went in after they were disassembled and had a look. The records say you were on that mission.”

  Jonas Moe withdrew a pack of Marlboros and lit a cigarette. They were not in the larger smoking room of the café, but this room was almost empty and the waiter would not object unless some tourist complained. “You have been snooping in the records of a UN Agency again? You Americans are worse than the Chinese, hacking into everything.” He flicked an ash into his saucer. “My first field mission with the Agency. Two months in South Africa. Very pretty country and great wine, so tragic their race hatred.”

  “The IAEA report said the bombs probably were destroyed. The enriched uranium from the bombs was placed under safeguard, under seal, and monitored with cameras,” Ray recalled.

  “Highly enriched uranium was declared by their government. We placed it under seal. We audited their production records. It seemed that we had all the HEU they had made. This is all in public documents, reports.”

  Although Ray loved cigars, the cigarette smoke was already affecting his sinuses. “But you thought the records were doctored, that they had produced much more HEU?”

  “You have hacked into my brain, too? Accessed my old cerebral files?” Jonas Moe asked.

  “You thought that some warheads were never destroyed, that there was extra HEU they used to make more warheads, which they kept, somewhere,” Ray asserted, bluffing.

  “When you are Russia with forty thousand nuclear weapons, half of them unsafe, you can disassemble the old ones and harvest the uranium for other uses. You Americans have also cut your own inventory in half over the last twenty years. But when you have only a few, they are very special to you. And in 1991 when the world was in flux, the Cold War ending, the Communist bloc disintegrating, Apartheid finally being abolished, and Nelson Mandela about to be freed and to take over … in this sort of world do you give up all your crown jewels? No, you doctor your books.”

  Bowman noticed that the café was beginning to fill up as the morning wore on. He was relieved that his one-time source had snubbed out the cigarette. “So, Jonas, did they do a good job doctoring the books?”

  “They tried to, but that’s all they needed to do really. Botha was meeting with Mandela. It was all about to end, peacefully. The UN was not going to call them liars about the nukes.”

  Bowman knew Jonas Moe’s concern over nuclear weapons proliferation was a driving passion, his life’s work. He found it hard to believe that a younger, even more idealistic Moe had turned a blind eye to nuclear weapons going missing. “But you wanted to make sure that the bombs did not get into the wrong hands,” Ray suggested. “How did you do that?”

  “My Team Chief, an Argentine, would have whitewashed it, but I told my South African counterpart that I would not. I was young and brash. The South African, good fellow he was, was a physicist with their Atomic Energy Commission. He was pissed at ARMSCOR, the defense industry because they had taken over the program. He told me to take a good look at the HEU production numbers from the Y Plant. He hinted that they were faked.”

  Moe looked up and right into Bowman’s eyes. “I couldn’t prove it, but unless they were terribly inefficient, they probably made almost half again as much HEU as what they reported. My official submission was that there were ‘apparent inconsistencies.’”

  “But your bosses here in Vienna wanted the story to go away,” Ray guessed aloud, “and so upon further analysis the inconsistencies became plausible numbers, within the statistically acceptable band.”

  Moe nodded. He looked off into the distance, remembering those days. “But, Raymond, they knew I knew. The South Africans were fully aware that I was not fooled. So months later when I was back there again, my South African counterpart had me over to his house for dinner. After the feast with the family, he took me down to his lager, his private workspace under the house.

  “He showed me a video, like a secret documentary they made, of how they had made some missile warheads and then shipped them secretly to Israel in 1994, not that the Israelis needed them, but it was a way of saying thanks for the Israeli help with the Jericho missiles that would have carried the South African weapons. And in the end, the South African team that had made the warheads just could not stand to see them destroyed. So they gave them to Israel.”

  This was the part of the interview that Bowman had the most trouble planning. He did not want it to seem to Jonas Moe that this entire discussion was about him, or his possible failure a quarter century earlier. “It was credible, this video?” Bowman asked.

  “My South African counterpart was. He joined IAEA and became a colleague. He worked on the Pakistan and India problems for years. Later, when he retired, he still consulted with the Agency. He was a good friend of ours, my wife and me, for many years, poor man. We miss him. We used to go hiking together in the Wienerwald.”

  “I take it he has passed on?” Ray asked.

  “This summer. Awful, really. A tram hit him out by Grinzing, smashed into his car, split the fuel tank, horrific explosion and fire. I just hope he died quickly and did not feel the flames.”

  “Well, if you believed him and the documentary that the bombs went back to Israel, what do you think caused the new Indian Ocean flash,” Ray asked, “assuming there was one, of course.”

  Jonas Moe moved the last bit of Sakertorte around on his plate with his fork. He did not look at Bowman. “That’s what I have been wondering. Mainly in the wee hours of the morning, when I should be asleep. It seemed so much like the 1979 test on a ship in the middle of nowhere. But it can’t be the South Africans. Everyone who was involved in that program is either old or dead, and none of them are even living in South Africa anymore. And besides, their warheads all went to Israel or were dismantled.” Moe looked at the man who had paid him for information for years. “Maybe it was North Korea. They do odd things.”

  Ray smiled at his old source. “Yes, they do.” He signaled for their check. It was always hard to get them to give you a bill in Vienna. “Jonas, tell me one more thing if you will. The Israelis. Did you or anyone in the IAEA ever ask them whether they were given the warheads or what they did with them?”

  Jonas Moe stood to leave. As they shook hands, he spoke in a low voice, his mouth near Ray’s ear. “The Israelis would not talk to us. They never did, until they started giving us information about Iran lately.” He picked up his pack of Marlboros and moved quickly to a side door in the back of the room, a door Ray had missed when he first entered the café.

  He had chosen the café so that he would be close to his next meeting, but it took
Ray Bowman another fifteen minutes to get the check and leave the café. He had to hurry through the rain to his appointment two blocks down the narrow Herrengasse in the Palais Modena, the two-hundred-year-old headquarters of the Bundesministerium für Inneres, the BM.I, Austria’s secret police.

  5

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

  PALAIS MODENA

  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

  After showing a passport to the guard at the front door, he was escorted upstairs to the office of Gunter Rosch, Deputy Director of the BVT, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism. Apparently the Austrians thought those were two distinct missions, but close enough for one agency to handle.

  Rosch’s office had been a salon when the Modenese Duke lived in the Palais. The ceiling was twenty-two feet high and decorated in a rococo style. The computer terminal on the Deputy Director’s desk seemed incongruous, like a visitor from the twenty-first-century future appearing in the middle of a nineteenth-century present. “Great to see you, Ray. Welcome back to Vienna” Rosch boomed as he crossed the large expanse of his office. “I am told you are here as a tourist and I should not tell your embassy on Boltzmanngasse that you are in town. Special project or something?”

  “I didn’t tell the U.S. Embassy that I was coming,” Ray said, shaking the firm hand of the tall, broad Austrian. “It’s kind of an off the books project.” Herr Rosch guided him to two oversized wingback chairs by a working fireplace. “That warmth feels good on a wet autumn day,” Ray continued. “I am afraid Gunter that I can’t tell you a lot about why I am asking the questions I have, except to say that they could be related to saving a lot of lives.”

  “Raymond, I trust you. Our relationship has been tested. With all of the investigation of the U.S. drone strike on the terrorists here in Vienna, it never came out that we had tipped you to their presence,” Rosch recalled. “And it never came out that we suggested that you might want to act unilaterally, since our laws did not permit us to do anything.”

  “It was a bit messy,” Ray admitted, “but I do still believe that we prevented bombings on your subway and on U-Bahns in Germany.” A white-coated young man entered the room with two small silver trays, each with a glass of water and a cup of the thick sludge that the Viennese think of as coffee. Ray paused in his conversation.

  “Don’t mind Konrad. He is a sworn officer, indeed an armed officer, whose real job is to provide protection to my office suite and the Director’s,” Rosch explained. “In the unlikely event that the Ottomans or the Mogul come back and get through our first three lines of defense.”

  Bowman sipped briefly at the sludge and quickly returned the cup to the silver tray. “Karl Potgeiter, a retired IAEA inspector, still consulting with them, died in a car crash in Grinzing last August. He was originally from South Africa. I wonder if you had a file on him, and if the crash was investigated as possibly more than an accident.”

  Rosch turned to the armed waiter who was about to leave the office. “Konrad, please go to my computer and pull up the file on this Potgeiter for us.” Rosch clearly trusted the young waiter and aide-de-camp. “While we are waiting, Ray, I must tell you that I was impressed at who arranged this meeting for you. Not every Caribbean beach bum has the White House as his concierge.”

  “Here it is Herr Rosch,” Konrad called out from the other side of the room. “Shall I summarize?”

  “Bitte, Konrad, ja.”

  “South African nuclear physicist, worked for the IAEA. Suspected of prior involvement in the Apartheid regime and its nuclear bomb program. Lived in Grinzing. Wife deceased in 2013. Son lived nearby. No suspicious reports or inquiries about either man,” Konrad read out.

  “And his death?” Ray asked.

  “Traffic fatality. Erratic driving. Collided with a tram. Tram driver cleared of any wrongdoing.”

  “You think there is more?” Rosch asked, looking over his glasses at Bowman.

  “We think he was involved in a South African expat organization called the Trustees that controlled large sums of money,” Bowman replied. “I am also slightly suspicious of the reason for the erratic driving. It would not be the first BMW to have been hacked. Could I perhaps see the accident investigation report. And maybe talk with the son?”

  “Well, I could ask the Wien Polizei for their traffic investigation. That may take a day to get here.” Rosch rose from the armchair and went to read the computer screen that his aide had called up. “Meanwhile, perhaps Konrad could help you find the son.” As he neared his desk, one of the telephones on it rang. Rosch listened to the caller for a minute, thanked him, and hung up.

  “Well Raymond, you may not have wanted the American Embassy to know that you are here, but you seemed to have failed in that regard.”

  “How is that?” Bowman asked, stepping away from the warmth of the fire.

  “Seems you were followed here by a team of three young men from Boltzmanngasse. Perhaps it’s just a training exercise for your CIA friends.”

  Ray laughed aloud. “Gunter, the only way you would know that is if your guys were doing countersurveillance on me.”

  Rosch spread his arms out, the palms of his big hands showing. “Raymond, naturally we are giving you the services we afford our friends. Would not want some al Qaeda fellow pushing you in front of one of our trams.” He turned the computer screen so that the American could see what he had been scanning. Bowman’s German was insufficient for the electronic file to have much significance to him. “I notice, Raymond, you did not ask me to help you get access to his bank accounts with these vast sums of money. I trust you have already accessed them in some way, without, of course, violating the Austrian Bank Secrecy Law.”

  Ray Bowman smiled at his colleague. “I would not want to burden you with too many requests, Gunter.”

  “Well then, Konrad, this is a chance for you to get back on the street. Take a car and go find the son, this Johann Potgeiter. Be polite about it, but get him to talk.”

  6

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19

  GRINZING

  VIENNA, AUSTRIA

  “The crash was just there,” Konrad Voltke pointed. “Potgeiter was coming down the street into the city, as was the trolley. He sped up to pass the trolley and turned right in front of it, attempting to get into Daringergasse, but he was not far enough in front of the number 38 and it hit him when he turned. The tram driver did not have time to stop. The car exploded and burned poor Herr Potgeiter beyond all recognition. The file says they did the identification with dental records.”

  They were sitting in one of BM.I’s many, blue BMWs, a five series. “Why would Potgeiter want to turn into that street? Where does it go? Where was he going?” Bowman asked his young driver.

  “It’s a residential street, nothing special,” Konrad replied. “Herr Potgeiter was driving into the Innenstadt for his morning coffee and newspaper read, as was his custom, at least that’s what the accident investigation report says. I called a friend in the Polizei and he read it to me. The actual file will show up tomorrow morning.”

  “So, why veer right into Daringergasse?”

  “Why indeed? You think he was drugged, perhaps, Herr Bowman?”

  “No, Herr Voltke, I think he was hacked, or rather, his car was.”

  As they drove up the Grinzinger Alle into the little town, Bowman scanned the BM.I police file on the dead man’s son, Johann. From what he could discern from the German language report, the son of the late South African physicist was forty-two and had become an Austrian citizen. He worked as a financial analyst and investor in the private equity arm of an old Viennese bank. Speaks English. Married to an Austrian woman, he has three daughters. Since his father’s death, they had moved a few streets over into the father’s larger house, the house Johann had grown up in. There was nothing suspicious about him. Nonetheless, the BM.I had a file on him. Some habits die hard, Bowman thought as they entered the square.


  The Potgeiter house looked modern, white, with a lot of glass. A man who could be Johann was taking grocery bags from the back of a Volvo station wagon in the garage, as the BVT car pulled up. “Herr Potgeiter?” Konrad called out as he and Bowman walked up the short driveway. “Konrad Voltke, Federal Interior Ministry.”

  “Oh, no, not about the taxes again?” Potgeiter replied.

  “No, we are here about a request from the American government. Herr Thomas here is with their Treasury Department. We would like to talk with you about some funds that transferred through American banks.”

  “It’s a routine money laundering investigation, but you are not the target or under suspicion,” Ray Bowman said, showing his identification as Harold Thomas. “We just need your help.” Johann Potgeiter showed them into the house.

  The three men settled around a table in the informal dining area off the kitchen. The picture window looked up at the vineyards on the hill behind the house. In a city of small apartments, this was a spacious home. California style, Johann called it. He spoke in German-accented English.

  “When my father died, I took over managing many of the accounts he ran as a favor to his friends from the old days. Many of South African expats trusted him to manage their money and he did very well for them, I must say,” Johann said. “Naturally, I didn’t ask them where their money came from. I assume they liquidated their land and such in the old country in time, before the land values crashed after the takeover. Such crime there now, nobody wants to own things there.”

  “Except gold and diamonds, of course,” Ray added.

  “Yes, stocks in the mines are still doing well, but the rest? Such destruction of value there has been in the country of my birth. They were not prepared to govern and they have driven so many of the good people overseas. Like my father, like me.”

  “So you don’t know where the funds came from, except that they were from friends of your dad’s?” Ray asked. “Just before he died, your father received a series of deposits totaling five hundred million dollars in a few days’ time. Do you know about that?”