Pinnacle Event

by Richard A. Clarke

  Dugout picked up his Bowman-paired iPad and tapped a red app with a white exclamation point in the middle. The app was labeled ALERT. It was after midnight in the Clock hotel near Jaffa in Tel Aviv, when Ray’s iPad made a noise he had never heard from it before. It woke him from the first deep REM sleep he had enjoyed in a week. When he woke, he knew neither where he was nor what the awful buzzing sound was. In a minute after talking with Dugout, he knew both. In five minutes, he knew that a different clock had just started ticking.

  19

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25

  CLOCK HOTEL

  JAFFA/TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  “You were going to tell me when?” Bowman bellowed in the private breakfast room that Avidar had the hotel set up for them.

  “I found out about the heist around the same time you did,” Mbali protested.

  “The heist, yes, but how long have you known about Potgeiter’s tunnel at Cullinan and its secret, little research reactor still making fucking tritium”

  “I wasn’t authorized to tell you. I asked for permission, but the President said no,” she said.

  “Wonderful. Here I am running around, wasting time trying to confirm that there was a secret facility in South Africa where the extra bombs were stored in the nineties and where there was a tritium production facility and you already knew. Better yet, the fucking thing is still running, still making tritium. For who? For what?”

  “It’s a secret contract with the Pakistanis,” she admitted. “That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

  “The Pakistanis, oh, joy. No wonder they’re cranking out H-bombs like sausages. They have a reliable supplier of tritium boosters,” Ray was yelling as Danny Avidar walked in. “Well, the poor Pakistanis are not getting their shipment this time, are they? Because some bunch of lunatics heisted it an hour outside of your goddamn capital city. And your people have not a clue where it went.”

  “Where what went?” Avidar asked.

  “Enough tritium to blow Israel to the moon,” Ray boomed. “Or to blow up the U.S. just before our election, which by the way, is two weeks from today.”

  “We are looking everywhere. The tritium can’t get out of the country,” Mbali said. “Keep your voice down. People will hear.”

  “He owns the damn hotel. It’s a Mossad proprietary. Everyone here is cleared,” Ray said, more quietly.

  “Really?” Mbali asked, looking at Danny Avidar.

  “Yes, of course,” Avidar said. “Who has tritium?”

  Ray answered, “Whoever the hell has the bombs. Now we know what they were waiting for, the tritium to boost the yield by a factor of ten. Now they don’t have to wait anymore. Now their South African bombs have South African tritium. Boom.”

  “I’m going to have to tell the Prime Minister,” Avidar said, moving back toward the door. “He’ll want to seal the borders.”

  “Tell him he can’t do that. It won’t do any good and it will tip them off, they may go sooner,” Ray said.

  “You tell him,” Avidar replied.

  “Good, let’s go.” Ray looked at Mbali. “You, stay here. We’ll sort this out when we get back.”

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26

  MORONI, COMOROS ISLANDS

  Two hours into the twenty-sixth, the Boeing Business Jet took off to the northeast, resuming its flight plan to Dubai. It had been on the ground in the Comoros for less than fifteen minutes. Air Traffic Control and Customs had not recorded the arrival, or the departure. As far as the records showed, the BBJ had left South Africa on a nonstop to Dubai.

  At the request of the South African government, the aircraft would be searched by Emirati customs officials in Dubai. All aircraft that left South Africa around the time of the tritium heist were being searched, but the BBJ would be cleared because the tritium had been off-loaded in Moroni, where a little money went a long way.

  The tritium gas had been “bottled” for Pakistan by the South Africans at their secret “research” reactor. Pakistan had provided the containers, which were specially designed to fit into Islamabad’s missile warheads. They would, however, also fit into the larger cavity in the older South African missile warhead design. All five bottles would easily fit in one large suitcase, but in the villa on the hill above Moroni, they were carefully placed into five separate, appropriately lined, briefcases.

  The next day they would be flown again, this time to where they would be mated with the five 1990s-era nuclear missile warheads. The tritium gas would act as steroids for the aging bombs, giving their relatively small amount of highly enriched uranium a destructive yield almost ten times what it would otherwise have been.

  ANTSAKABARY, MADAGASCAR

  Almost three hundred miles north of Madagascar’s capital, an old Dauphin helicopter landed on a cleared space outside of the town. Marcus Stroh emerged from the backseat of the aircraft and stretched. It had been a bumpy ride. He grabbed his backpack from the helicopter and walked toward his waiting hosts from the Madagascar Central Intelligence Service, the CIS. They had a new, four-door, Hilux pickup. Not bad for the local CIS, Marcus thought, as he prepared to make his introductions.

  “The boys in Antananarivo said to be sure to give you this package,” Stroh said after the handshakes. “It’s from my boss lady in Cape Town, Mbali Hlanganani. It’s her way of saying thank you for all of your help, from a brother African service.” Wrapped in newspaper and coarse rope, the five hundred 5 euro notes were clearly visible. Stroh had left ten times that in the CIS headquarters in the capital, Antananarivo.

  The two local officials drove Stroh up the dirt main street of the town toward the mountain that dominated the horizon. The road quickly became rutted and then more or less disappeared into grasslands. The three-mile journey from the town took almost an hour of circumnavigating creeks and boulders and then, inexplicably, a dirt road appeared near the base of the mountain. In one direction it lead off down the east side of the hill. In the other, it led past several small, abandoned, cinder block buildings and, after a turn, to a gatehouse where they parked the Hilux.

  Stroh could see the tunnel entrance ahead, sealed with a poured cement wall and, in the middle, two metal doors. Someone must protect that, Stroh thought, or that metal would be long gone for its scrap value. He also noticed an electrical line running in from the poles along the road.

  His hosts, who spoke a version of French with some English thrown in, explained that there had once been thousands of fruit bats inside. Marcus took some comfort in their use of the past tense. The locals were taking in no special protective equipment. They did, however, produce three dim flashlights.

  Marcus Stroh opened his large backpack and produced a strap-on headlamp, a camera, and then some sort of electronic device about the size of a large laptop. When he turned the device on, it buzzed and lights flashed, giving rise to nervous laughter in his hosts. Stroh went first into the tunnel, followed by his guides. Inside, it was cool, but dry. It was also lit by neon tubes every ten feet. They provided only a dim illumination, but Stroh thought, the point was that they were still working.

  When they emerged twenty minutes later, the South African removed the last of his devices from the backpack, a satellite phone. With it, he beamed photographs and radioactive readings back to Cape Town. Then he called Mbali in Tel Aviv.

  “Well, boss, you were spot on. There were five sort of shelve things, purpose built to store something. And each of them lit up the sensor,” Marcus explained. “Nobody around here today, but it looks like they may still be paying some locals to guard the place, otherwise it would have been stripped bare by now. I also spotted something interesting on the way up to the cave. There’s also a truck road, which my hosts either did not know about or didn’t want me to see.”

  “And I suppose nobody in the town remembers seeing a bunch of trucks two months ago?” Mbali asked.

  “No, of course, not,” Stroh laughed. “But I will see if the guys will ask around again. I’ll also see if we can drive back down the hi
ll on the truck road and find out where it goes, but I’ve only got the chopper for a few more hours and I do not, repeat not, want to spend the night up here.”

  “Is where you’re staying in Antananarivo that much better?” Mbali asked from her suite in the Clock.

  “As Paris is to Soweto, boss,” Stroh said before he powered down the Satcom.

  20

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26

  JAFFA/TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  “Why do I want to meet this woman, Margaret Taylor?” Mbali asked Danny Avidar as they drove through the narrow streets toward the sea.

  “You don’t. And you won’t, she’s not there today,” Avidar said, as he steered the car through the traffic. “And it’s Tayar, not Taylor. It’s a good, little restaurant, with a nice view. That’s all.”

  “Does Mossad own the restaurant, too?”

  “No, but we rented it today so there will be no tourists, just us,” Avidar explained and then added, “… and Raymond.”

  She glared at him.

  “You two have to work together. This thing is too important. So we will all have a nice meal and you two will work it out and we will get back to business.”

  Mbali started to protest.

  “No, don’t say it. You are my prisoner. You must come with me,” Avidar joked.

  Bowman was waiting on the restaurant’s rear patio. For late October, the weather was warm and lunch by the sea was a good break from his hours on the iPad with Dugout. He expected Danny to bring Mbali; for an intelligence officer, Avidar was adept at overcoming strife, or at least trying.

  Over the stuffed sardines, eggplant, peppers, and couscous, Ray offered an olive branch. “I forgot to mention that Avraham Reuven may have provided us with a lead.”

  “Really, what was that?” she asked.

  “Well, he’s an old man, maybe suffering a little Alzheimer’s, but he seemed to say that Karl Potgeiter had moved the bombs from South Africa directly to a tunnel somewhere on Madagascar. We’re going to check it out.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I already did. I can show you the photos from inside the tunnel taken this morning by Marcus Stroh. He said the radioactivity readings in the storage bays were what the experts said to except if bombs had been stored there for years.”

  “How did you…?” Bowman sputtered.

  “Danny told me,” she said.

  “I told her,” Avidar concurred.

  “Last night,” Mbali added.

  Danny Avidar nodded. “We have an intelligence liaison relationship now, our two countries, information sharing,” he said with his mouth full of sardines.

  “You…” Bowman started. “I have a team of Delta Force commandos getting ready to HALO into there. How did you even know where on Madagascar?”

  “You’re kidding, right, about the commandos?” Avidar asked.

  “No.”

  “Americans,” Mbali said, shaking her head. Avidar rolled his eyes.

  “But how?” Bowman pressed.

  “My people called up their service. It’s called the CIS, not CIA. The French helped them set it up,” she explained.

  “And so did we,” Avidar added. “Help set up their service, that is.”

  “Madagascar has a state-of-the-art database on all property records, digital,” she said reaching for the hummus. “You think only Americans have technology? Africans do, too. It wasn’t hard to track down names like Potgeiter and Merwe. Not too many of them on that island.” Both Danny and Mbali laughed.

  “We’re days away from a nuclear warhead detonating in one of our countries and you two are laughing?” Bowman said.

  “Raymond, in this business, as you should know, of all people, you have to sprinkle in some dark humor, or else you go crazy, with all the killing and the killers, the madmen,” Avidar said. “Try the Barkan. It’s their Special Reserve Chardonnay. I noticed you didn’t finish the Yarden, so I got this. Maybe you like this one. Drink.”

  “So what did you find in Madagascar?” Ray asked.

  “I’ll give you Marcus’s report when it comes in, but he found a cave that pretty obviously had been modified to securely store something very radioactive.”

  “All right, let’s talk about Rachel calling for the emergency meeting of the Trustees,” Ray responded. “When is it?”

  Mbali glared at Danny Avidar. “You told him.”

  “I did.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Rachel asked them to gather at Robert Coetzee’s place on Saturday. They’ve almost all agreed already.”

  “Dubai?” Avidar asked. “I can’t go to Dubai again after, eh, last time.”

  “Hong Kong,” Bowman corrected him.

  “Hong Kong,” she nodded.

  “Meanwhile, I don’t suppose that your people have found the missing tritium in their dragnet of the country,” Ray asked Mbali. She shook her head, no.

  “Well, I have tasked all of our technical collection platforms to scan all shipping and aircraft departures from South Africa,” Ray said. “And we are running the results through our Minerva big data correlation analytics package. I should have the results in a few hours.”

  This time it was Danny Avidar who said, “Americans.”

  Mbali nodded.

  “By the way, how did you two do with the your meeting with the Prime Minister last night?” Mbali asked.

  “He ordered all aircraft and ship cargoes to be fully searched at the point of departure outside of Israel or when they arrive. All containers, all cargo. He’s mobilizing some Army Reserve units to help,” Danny answered.

  Bowman shook his head, obviously disappointed.

  “When does that start?” she asked.

  Avidar looked at his watch. “An hour and ten minutes ago.”

  Something bleated. Mbali grabbed for her large Dior bag and withdrew a mobile phone. “Yes, Marcus?” She listened for several minutes and then signed off.

  “Is that encrypted?” Bowman asked.

  “No, why would I care if the Israelis intercept the call?” she replied. “I’m going to tell Danny here anyway.”

  “Tell me what?” Avidar asked.

  “Marcus, my man in Madagascar who found the weapon storage tunnel. Before he left town, he went to the little Catholic church on a hunch. Marcus thinks priests know the secrets in any town. There was a priest there who told him that everyone in the town actually knew about the tunnel and the CIS guys had helped to guard it.

  “The priest remembered a big convoy of trucks that went up and back to the tunnel on the road that goes around the town,” Mbali went on.

  “When?” Avidar asked.

  “The priest said something I don’t understand. Maybe it’s some sort of code,” she said. “Something about St. Lawrence.”

  “St. Lawrence Day? When was that?” Ray asked.

  “August tenth. And when was the mysterious double flash?”

  Avidar was looking at the calendar on his own mobile.

  “August ninth,” Ray replied. “So the one test bomb worked and then they moved out the others the next day. The buyers must have been impressed with the test and moved fast.”

  Mbali pushed her chair back from the table. “I have to go meet with Rachel. She wants help on what she says at the Hong Kong meeting, how she can figure out if any one of the new Trustees know who their predecessors sold the bombs to.”

  On the narrow street, the small white Hyundai Accent pulled up quickly outside the restaurant and onto the sidewalk. The young Arab driver sat there, with the engine running. A woman across the street began yelling at him.

  As the trio walked back from the rear patio into the little indoor dining area, there was a sudden large, blinding light, the furniture came flying toward them, plaster fell from the ceiling, and then an overpowering noise engulfed them, and an invisible force field pushed them to the floor. Outside automobile alarms began wailing.

  Two minutes later Bowman pushed h
imself up. His vision was blurred, but he saw Mbali, dusting herself off. His own blue blazer was covered in white plaster, but he saw through it on his right shoulder where the spot from the brain matter from Cape Town had not completely come out in the hotel’s dry cleaning. From behind him, he heard, “Car bomb. We are lucky.”

  It was Avidar talking, and coughing. “It went off a little early.”

  COSMOS CLUB

  MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE

  WASHINGTON, DC

  The National Security Advisor was not one for formal greetings. Dugout had been on time and been waiting for twenty minutes. When Burrell sat down his hand went out, not to shake, but for the glass of Macallan, neat, that had already been placed on the table. “I talked with Bowman. He says he’s fine, just some ringing in his ears.”

  “I talked to him, too. He said the Israelis have begun searching everything with radiation sensors,” Dugout replied as he sat down at the small table between the marble columns. The Heroy Room could hold thirty for dinner, but it was often just National Security Advisor Winston Burrell and a few guests. When it was a one-on-one, he sat in the alcove by the fountain, as they did now.

  “Glad to see you remembered to wear some sort of jacket and tie this time,” Burrell greeted him. Even in the private dining rooms, Cosmos enforced the dress code. “I know about the Israelis searching. The Prime Minister called the President this morning to explain. Said he couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “The media are already speculating that there must be intelligence about a loose nuke or an improvised nuclear device,” Dugout added.

  “I know. The President wants to say it’s a bilateral exercise, with our part of the drill beginning within forty-eight hours.”

  “That’s earlier than planned,” Dugout noted. “I told Bowman you had agreed to wait until November first.”

  “That was before the tritium heist, before the Israelis jumped the gun. Tell me what you know about the heist.”

  Dugout opened his iPad and read from his notes. “South African security thinks the heist was done by a gang of eight to ten men, most or all of whom were probably white. Probably not Arabs. The kind of professional hit that trained military or ex-military commandos would do. They’ve begun searching outbound cargo for the tritium, but it is a small container. The searching is drawing media attention there, too. Their cover story is that there was a diamond heist, but it’s a thin cover.”