Pinnacle Event
Page 13
A waiter appeared with the dinners that Burrell had preordered, Dover sole and Brussels sprouts. “You know the Cosmos Club actually started across the street from the White House in Dolly Madison’s town house. Moved here over sixty years ago, but this mansion is twice that old.”
Dugout played along. “Ray took me to the Metropolitan Club once, He’s a member there. Much closer to the White House.”
“Yes, but it’s all goddamn lawyers and lobbyists from K Street. Cosmos has had three dozen Nobel laureates and twice as many Pulitzer Prize winners.”
The waiter finally departed and Winston Burrell got back to business. “The Israelis say the car bomb was driven by an Arab. Could be al Qaeda showing its hand, trying to kill Bowman.”
“Could be, but was it them trying to kidnap him in Cape Town? Did they bring a boat or a plane to Madagascar to pick up the warheads? Did they do a truck heist outside of Pretoria?” Dugout asked.
“You’re asking me? It’s your fucking job to find connections among all of these threads.” Burrell yelled. “You don’t think al Qaeda has enough money to buy people to do all of that?”
“Probably, or they could get the money from their friends in Kuwait and Qatar,” Dugout agreed. “I’m looking at money movements from their backers. They handle hundreds of millions in cash. They use these unofficial exchanges called hawalas. They don’t leave a lot of electrons behind them for me to find.”
Burrell put his fork down and put his hand of Dugout’s shoulder, squeezing the corduroy jacket. “I know you are doing your best and it’s better than all the rest of the agencies put together. They got nothing.” He resumed the dissection of the sole. “Do you buy Bowman’s fear that when we start searching cargo with radiation detectors the terrorists will know we know about them, will move up their schedule, will…” He had a hard time getting out the last word. “… Detonate?”
“Election Day is coming up fast. If they want to affect it somehow, maybe, but I’m not sure we know their motivation with the election,” Dugout replied. “I have Minerva running through all sorts of data on the heist, the car bomb, the people who tried to kidnap Ray, the Trustees, the way the money was moved, how the warheads were moved. There must be a correlation there I am missing, a motivation.”
“Well, I know my motivation. It’s to get through the next three months without a disaster, so it does not happen on my President’s watch and so I can hand this job off to the next sucker,” Burrell said. He pressed the SERVICE button to call the waiter. “And so far it doesn’t look like I am going to make it.”
21
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27
OUTSIDE MORONI, COMOROS ISLANDS
As the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370 in 2014 had proved, the Indian Ocean is vast, largely empty, and infrequently traveled. Even on some of its island nations, the world seldom took note of what happened and, in truth, little ever did happen.
The test of whether the South African bombs would still work had been a detonation on August ninth in a part of the Indian Ocean almost never transited by ship or plane. The MV Octavius had vaporized almost three thousand miles east of the South African coast, almost twenty-five hundred miles from either India or Australia. Most spots in the Indian Ocean are like that, a long way from anything.
Yet, immediately off the coast of Africa, the Indian Ocean is filled with small island nations and one very large one. Less than three hundred miles from the African coastal nation of Mozambique is the island of Madagascar, a nation as large as Texas, but with nothing like that state’s big cities. Scattered around Madagascar are several of the smallest and most beautiful islands in the world. Some, like the Seychelles, the Maldives, and Mauritius are nation states. Some, like Reunion, Tromelin, and Glorioso are territories of France. One, Diego Garcia, is owned by Britain and rented to the Pentagon.
It was in the isolation of Madagascar that the South African Trustees had stored their bombs for over twenty years without anyone noticing. From there, the test bomb had sailed east in July on the MV Octavius. Also from there, after the test, the remaining bombs had been flown out immediately by their new owners. The bombs had been flown back toward the African coast, to a cluster of islands in the Mozambique channel, almost halfway between the African coast and the giant island of Madagascar. That island cluster, once owned by France, is now the nation of Comoros, where three quarter of a million people eked out a living by farming and fishing. Comoros has a million people if you count Mayotte, the one island in the cluster that France had retained.
Shortly after midnight on October 27, on one of the islands in the Comoros, they inserted the tritium bottles into the bombs. That was the last step in getting the weapons ready to be placed on the ships. For two months they had been slowly and carefully replacing the wiring and the batteries. Although the weapons were over twenty-five years old, with the new tritium, wires, and batteries, they were as good as new. The key part of the weapons, the highly enriched uranium, was as good as when it had been first made. HEU took over a thousand years to decay.
The Pakistani-designed tritium container was smaller than the old South African bottle it replaced, but it rode securely in the larger cavity designed for the original booster. The consensus was that it would work well, giving a forty-kiloton yield, maybe more. Even if the gas was defective, the HEU would provide an explosion larger than any conventional weapon. And they had seen with their own eyes what that looked like on August 9. It was a sight like nothing they had ever seen.
Even from the aircraft so many miles away, it had seemed immense and threatening, but also oddly beautiful, almost like something natural, perhaps the way the Big Bang appeared in the first nanoseconds of the birth of this universe. When the next five went off, it would, the men who now owned the bombs assured each other, also be the beginning of a new era.
EILAT, ISRAEL
A half hour after the sun had set, the thirty-four-foot twin outboard left the marina near the cluster of high-rise hotels and moved slowly toward the opening in the seawall. It was a cloudless night, but the lights from the town drowned out most of the stars. When the boat passed the break wall, the young Israeli at the helm increased the speed and turned east.
Ray Bowman smiled, feeling the cool breeze on his face as the boat sped up and the wind blowing his hair around. He was glad to be wearing a warm leather jacket, courtesy of the Mossad office in the town. The sound of the engines was loud and steady, as the boat bounced over the perfectly flat sea, passed the King Herod and then the Dan Hotel.
His escort from the local office was chatting on a mobile phone, in Arabic. “There they are,” he said in Hebrew and pointed for the boat’s driver. The boat moved out farther away from the shore toward a set of small, blue lights.
As they approached the blue lights, Ray made out the speedboat laying still in the water. The running lights on Ray Bowman’s boat blinked twice and then went out. The driver cut the engine back and the two boats coasted together. The Mossad man threw a rope to the only man on the other boat and called out “As-salamu alaykum.”
“Shalom,” came the response. The two boats pulled together side by side. The Mossad man helped Bowman step from the Israeli outboard to the slightly larger Jordanian craft. He passed Bowman his two small bags.
Abdullah al Shahwan grabbed Bowman, as he jumped down to the deck. The two men embraced. “Welcome back to Jordan, Raymond,” Abdullah said in English.
“You shouldn’t have come out on the water yourself,” Bowman replied.
“It’s my boat. I almost never get to take it out. The King doesn’t come to Aqaba as much anymore, but tonight he’s in the palace here so I am here.” Behind them, the Israeli boat opened up, heading back to Eilat. Ray noticed the red and green running lights were back on. “I used to fish at night for hammour. Now I fish at night for al Qaeda and ISIS.”
“I’d rather have the grouper, the hammour, tonight. I am famished,” Ray said, sitting down in the chair next to the helm.
SDE DOV AIRFIELD
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL
“It’s an old Hawker, but trust me it’s all new on the inside. New engines, glass cockpit, like a new plane it is,” Danny Avidar was making small talk while he waited plane side with Mbali and Rachel. “From Cyprus, you will be on a charter. A Falcon. French, very nice. Bigger than my Hawker and owned by Greeks. Really. No one in Dubai will ever know you started from a small airstrip south of Tel Aviv.
“You will spend the day in Dubai, Rachel, on the South African passport, while Mbali drives to Abu Dhabi to get on an Etihad flight to Hong Kong,”
Mbali picked up the story. “I will actually arrive a day before you. You fly out the next day to Hong Kong on Emirates from Dubai.”
Rachel looked concerned. “You are worried, don’t be worried,” Danny Avidar assured her. “You’re looking at the big smoke tower at the end of the runway? No one has ever hit it.”
Rachel smiled. “It’s the first time that I have left the girls overnight with my mother since, since Dawid,” she said.
“I told you, I have my people watching the house, watching the girls. They will be fine until you get back. And Mbali will be around the corner from you all the time in Hong Kong to make sure you get back.”
Mbali pulled Rachel close. “And it won’t just be me. Danny’s people will be helping me. And I have some other friends who will be in town working with me. You go to Hong Kong, have the meeting with the new Trustees, and be back here in four days. Don’t worry.”
Rachel looked at Danny Avidar. “I consider myself to be Israeli. This is the only country I have ever really known. There is no other home. Nowhere else to go where I would feel safe. I may not practice, but I am a Jew, as are the girls. If there is any chance that a nuclear bomb might come here…”
Avidar reached out his hand to her. “You are doing your duty. You may be able to help us find the bombs and the bombers.”
“I just can’t believe that Dawid would have knowingly been part of a plot to sell a nuclear device to anyone,” she said to Avidar.
“I’m sure he didn’t know all of the details,” Avidar assured her, “but that’s what we need you to find out, the details. And I know you will, dear, I know it.” He escorted the two women to the plane, a Zulu who stood just over six feet tall in flat shoes, and a young Israeli mother who was five foot eight in heels. He had sent odd-looking teams undercover before, including men dressed as women, but he had trained those teams well. This mission was more important than any of those, but this one was being put together as they went along.
He stood by his car on the apron and watched the Hawker take off and bank west, the taillights blinking as it passed the power plant smoke tower.
22
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28
OUTSIDE AQABA, JORDAN
Abdullah added new wood to the fire, as his “tea boy” changed the tobacco in their hookahs. The lights of Aqaba below were as bright now after midnight as they had been in the early evening. No one on this side of the border was conserving on electricity or fuel.
“You have a magnificent home here. Why are we sitting on a patch of dirt above it freezing our asses off,” Bowman observed, “after a sumptuous meal with some truly outstanding Montrachet.”
“I told you my wife won’t let me smoke the hubby bubbly in the house,” he said holding a small battery powered fan over the tobacco as his aide lit the coals. “This is the good apple cinnamon from Turkey. They make good tobacco for the hookahs, the Turks.”
“Your wife is in London. You just like pretending you’re a bedouin or a desert Arab when you have never been on a camel in your life,” Bowman laughed. He took a drag on the water pipe, tasting the flavored tobacco on his tongue. “The only things you ride are Bugattis and Black Hawks.”
“Did I tell you I qualified on the Osprey? Boy was that hard. You think flying a helicopter is difficult?” Abdullah asked. “We have three Ospreys now in the Royal Wing.”
“I don’t trust those things,” Ray replied. “Secret Service will not let the President ride in one.”
“Speaking of your President, who is going to replace him? They say it is so tight, neck and neck. His Majesty watched the debates. He loves switching between MSNBC and Fox,” Abdullah said. “We couldn’t believe they were still talking about climate change and abortion. How can anyone still not believe in climate change? And abortions? We just go to London for them.”
Ray poked at the fire, stirring it up. “I have no idea who is going to win the election. Until a little while ago I was safely off the grid, or almost. My job now is to make sure the election happens and is not canceled because of nuclear bombs going off a few days before.”
Abdullah put down the hookah. “So it’s real then? We saw the Israelis starting to inspect all their cargo with Geiger counters. There are nukes on the loose? North Korean? Pakistani?”
“No, old ones from South Africa. Somebody just bought them. Spent two and a half billion U.S.,” Ray explained. “The President is about to start holding up all of our cargo, too, looking for nukes. I was hoping you would tell me that al Qaeda just spent that kind of money on something and where I might look for that something.”
“If I knew anything like that, Raymond, Washington would already know from me. Besides, how would I know?”
Bowman took a long gasp from the hookah and exhaled a cloud. “Because you and two other royal Arab houses have pretty good intelligence services and you have each penetrated al Qaeda and its branches, AQAP, AQIM, ISIS, and the rest of the alphabet soup of sickos. You all share what you get with each other, but not always everything with Washington.”
“Raymond, who do you think pays my bills? I tell them everything, of course I do.”
“No, Abdullah, you tell them most things, you tell them facts, you don’t tell them sources. Because you fear Washington will leak to the press or some perv like Snowden will tell the Russians and your sources will be slowly flayed alive. I know because you were telling me more than you have been telling the Agency. You knew it wouldn’t leak from me and it never did.”
“Okay. I’ve heard nothing about a WMD. Neither have my brothers in the Gulf. Nothing,” Abdullah insisted.
“Tell me about the money. Could AQ come up with that kind of money to buy nukes?”
“Once maybe, not now. Their bank rollers in Qatar and Kuwait are spent out on ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt, the Nusra in Syria, their tribal militias in Libya, the Houthi down in Yemen, even Shabab in Somalia,” Abdullah replied. “It would take a major effort to get that kind of money and we would have heard about it.”
Bowman added sticks to the fire. “Can you double-check?”
Abdullah stood. “Walk up the hill a little, so we can see the stars, farther away from the villa.” Raymond Bowman followed him.
They looked down on Abdullah’s villa, the lights in the pool making the water seem like a floating blob of baby blue. “I do have a very special source, which I hear from time to time. You are right about him. Washington does not know about him. He is too precious.”
“Why is he so special?” Ray asked.
“Ray, AQ is not as fractured as Washington thinks. The big man still calls the shots on major policy decisions. Using a WMD would be a major policy decision. No one would act on a WMD without his knowledge.”
“And your source would know?”
“He is a very precious source, Raymond.”
“He calls you?”
“He communicates.”
“You have an emergency way of initiating communication?” Ray asked.
Abdullah looked up at the stars. “There is Orion’s Belt. You s
ee it?”
“If a WMD bomb goes off, or several do, and you had a way…” Ray began.
“I understand. I do, truly, Raymond, habibi, I do.” Abdullah began to walk back down the hill. “It may take several days. It may not even work.”
“Please try,” Ray Bowman pleaded.
“Of course. Anything else?”
“Are you or the King using the Gulfstream 650 tomorrow? I need to get to Hong Kong.”
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28
THE HAMILTON
F STREET NW
WASHINGTON, DC
“But you’re white,” the drummer said.
“White dudes can play tenor sax,” Dugout insisted.
“Name the great tenor saxes in history,” the drummer asked.
“Okay, okay. Charlie Parker, Coltrane, the Hawk, Dolphy, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, and Stan Getz.”
“And how many of them was a white dude?” the drummer asked.
“Stan Getz.”
“You play like him?” the drummer asked.
“No, man, I play like Charlie Parker,” Dugout answered.
The four guys in the group laughed simultaneously. “This I have to hear with my own damn ears,” the bass player said. “You’re in. Besides, our man Harold is sick and there ain’t no other tenor sax players here tonight.”
“Yeah, okay,” the drummer agreed. “Besides it’s just an open jam after the midnight show. Let’s call it practice.”
“Or we could call it integration,” the bass player joked.
“What you know, Mr. Parker, or what you say your name is.”