Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “Yes.” Caroline Clark was a graduate student from Britain via Princeton University, where she had taken her undergraduate degree in physics. She was one of four interns assigned to work with van Ry on analysis and reporting.

  There was a veritable stream of young interns who passed through the institute, remaining for anywhere from six months to two years. When they returned home, many of them, in time, went on to play prominent roles in the weapons-control programs and policies of their own countries. It was one of the principal goals of the institute: to plant that seed in fertile multinational ground.

  “Have you shown this to anyone else?” asked Gideon.

  “Not yet. I was going to if you didn’t get back today. I didn’t think it should wait.”

  “You’re right.”

  The notes were cryptic, typed quickly on an old typewriter. It was a note from an old friend of Gideon’s, a fellow student from his days in Moscow. Gideon had maintained correspondence with him for several years during his studies at Cal Tech, but had not heard from him in more than a year.

  Yuri Valentok worked deep in the bureaucracy of Russia’s nuclear industry, one of the many bureaus that issued statistics and records on what was becoming a burgeoning business behind the old Iron Curtain: the dismantlement of nuclear armaments.

  The Institute Against Mass Destruction (IAMAD) had gone to great lengths to maintain contacts with people who worked in this field. It fostered communication across national boundaries, all with a common purpose: the dismantlement of weapons of mass destruction, the science of nonproliferation.

  IAMAD had gone to great lengths to avoid being accused of fronting for any government. Its information was available to the world. Anyone with the price could log on to its database, one of the most extensive lists of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the world. Its purpose was to shine light into a dangerous crevice, the deadly and growing commerce in weapons of mass destruction.

  Founded in the late 1980s, the institute had sprouted like a field of wild mushrooms until it now occupied a sizable Spanish colonial bungalow in the historic area of old Santa Crista. It was a deceptively tranquil location for activities that took its resident scholars and graduate students to some of the hottest spots on earth: the Middle East, the volatile republics of the former Soviet Union, and the fractured former Yugoslavia, ethnic hotbed of the Balkans.

  “What do you make of it?” he asked her.

  She shrugged, a sign that she couldn’t be sure. “It’s possible it’s just a case of poor recordkeeping.” It sounded a lot like wishful thinking.

  “You know the problems over there. Limited staff, no money. Items get misplaced all the time.”

  “True.” Still Gideon knew it had to be checked out.

  “Could they have been dismantled?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “If so the Pu-239 from them would have shown up in the stockpile of raw materials. It doesn’t.”

  It was like the daily tally of cash drawers in a bank. If significant amounts of plutonium or highly enriched uranium showed up missing at the end of a month, alarms would sound off all over the institute and the information would be beamed around the world on its database.

  Gideon checked his watch. There was an eleven-hour difference. “I don’t think this can wait. If we have no one in place, I am going to have to call the director, get authorization for travel.”

  “You’re going to Sverdlovsk?”

  “I’m the only one who could gain access,” said Gideon.

  He was right. Sverdlovsk was one of four nuclear-dismantlement sites in Russia. Each was heavily guarded. None admitted observers from the West. But Gideon was Russian. He had been raised largely in Russia, at least in his later years, and had contacts in the Russian government, people who, if he approached them in the right manner, might allow one of the fellow countrymen access.

  “It could be a mistake,” said Caroline. “Someone could have transposed a number. You know how they’re overworked.” She was talking about the Russian nuclear technicians, scientists, and military men, most of whom hadn’t been paid in months.

  “In which case we will not embarrass ourselves with an erroneous report to the international community.”

  She looked at him as if she was not sure what to do.

  “What if it’s not a mistake?” Gideon knew that as things grew more desperate in Russia, the risk of a guard being paid to look the other way, or a technician to smuggle a few kilos of uranium from a facility, grew with each passing month.

  “When did you get it?” he asked.

  “Two days ago.”

  “Then figure two weeks,” said Gideon. The question was, if the items were taken, when was it done? Operating on the principle of the worst possible scenario, Gideon was already working backward to determine how long thieves may have had to transport the materials across national borders.

  “As it stands we either have a mistake,” said Gideon, “admittedly a rather gross one … ”

  She agreed.

  “… or loose nuclear devices or dismantled devices with weapons-grade material on the loose. In any event, if we’ve caught it, the Russian authorities have had enough time to discover the same discrepancy. Check and see if there are any signs of an investigation.”

  Russian-language analysts, either at the institute or at the Defense Language Institute, would be scanning newspapers and radio news reports from the region. They would check to see if these were reporting anything unusual.

  “Then you don’t want me to check directly with Russian authorities?”

  “Not yet.” Yuri Valentok had written to him in confidence. If the institute checked with Russian authorities directly, they would want to know the source of the institute’s information. It was important for Gideon to protect his source. He would have to make discreet inquiries, use what contacts he had to gain access without causing alarm in the Russian nuclear community. If he wasn’t careful, all the doors would slam in his face and an internal investigation would be conducted. He was half Russian, but he had lived for years in the West. It would require some diplomatic skills.

  She made a note. Caroline had met some of the Russian scientists and technicians on a tour the year before. They were dedicated people, and she found it difficult to believe that any of them would sell nuclear materials on the black market.

  Gideon scratched his chin. “What troubles me is that two items are missing. Why would they take two?” He looked at her.

  “In for a penny, in for a pound? That is, if there is a theft.”

  He shook his head. “Yes, but it increases the risk of detection.”

  There had already been several documented cases of black marketeering, mostly low-grade fissile materials being smuggled from former satellite countries into Afghanistan and peddled with indiscretion so that the perpetrators were quickly caught. The usual pattern of theft was in the nature of pilfering: a few grams of low-grade uranium, probably not weapons grade, taken over an extended period until the thieves possessed a kilogram or so. It was stuff that might be used for a “dirty bomb,” something that would never reach critical mass for a chain reaction but that might produce a toxic effect and could, with enough high explosives, contaminate a considerable area.

  But the information Gideon had before him was something different—two intact nuclear weapons with detonators. This was on a scale so bold as to be unbelievable. It was the reason Caroline did not buy it, and Gideon knew he would need more information to convince others, if it was something more than a mistake.

  “What do we know about the items?”

  She had the file in her hand, working notes that included information that was not usually entered on the institute’s base. This was stuff not generally for public consumption. For reasons of security, IAMAD did not usually identify the precise location of weapons storage facilities or the items contained in them, even if they knew. This would only serve to mark them as targets for terrorists or the Russian m
ob.

  Caroline fingered quickly through handwritten notes in the file.

  “The missing items are from Sverdlovsk-45. The facility was renamed about a year ago. It’s now called Lesnoy, a principal location for dismantling warheads in the southern central part of the country.” She pulled a printout of a map from the file, walked over, and set it on the desk in front of Gideon.

  “Here.” She pointed to the location on the map.

  “It stores both plutonium and weapons-grade uranium. According to our information, it’s one of Russia’s largest weapons-dismantling sites. About fifteen hundred a year.”

  “Sounds like a good place,” said Gideon, “if the plan were to lose something. They are no doubt backed up with business.”

  She agreed.

  “Inadequate storage facilities. It might take them a while to discover that something was missing. Do we know their security status?”

  Caroline looked down the sheets clipped into the file. The International Atomic Energy Agency rated all facilities in the world where fissile materials were processed or stored.

  She sighed. “It’s unsafeguarded.”

  “I could have guessed.” The Russians didn’t have the money to meet international standards for security. In some places, there were holes in chain-link fences through which children routinely climbed to play, where only meters away were earthen bunkers of plutonium-filled canisters behind rusting iron doors. It was a prescription for disaster, one that was getting worse, not better.

  “According to information from Valentok, it looks like the two items in question were scheduled for dismantling,” she said.

  “Do we know what they were?”

  “It looks like they were relatively small, core assemblies complete with detonating devices for two field tactical nuclear artillery shells. One hundred fifty-three millimeter. Assembled in the sixties.”

  “So no PALS?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  PALS were shorthand in the trade for “permissive action links,” the security mechanisms for nuclear devices that would prevent their detonation without approval from multiple levels of government control. Many of the devices made in the early 1960s, in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, lacked such controls. This made them prime targets for terrorists. The weapon of choice if they could get their hands on them.

  The look on Gideon’s face said it all. Devices that could be hidden anywhere and detonated without much difficulty. A terrorist’s dream. The question was whether they would work.

  “Do we know the yield?”

  She shrugged, shook her head. “According to the book, eight-tenths of a kiloton. Of course the book is notoriously understated.” During the Cold War, both sides lied regularly regarding the potency of their weapons in order to gain an edge in arms treaties.

  “If they’re similar to comparable U.S. weapons,” said Gideon, “they are probably somewhere on the order of between two and five kilotons.”

  This would make them small, easily transportable, and nearly as powerful as the devices that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Alone, either device could take out the downtown section of a sizable city. Detonated together, they could destroy Manhattan and kill a half million people instantly, leaving another half million to die of agonizing radiation poisoning.

  He picked up the receiver from his phone and punched a two-digit number on the corn-line. “Sally.” It was his secretary. “See if you can get a meeting with the director for me early this afternoon. Tell him it is very important. Cancel my afternoon appointments. If you need to reach me, I will be at home.” Gideon would have to pack. He didn’t know how long he would be on the road.

  He put the phone in its cradle, picked up his briefcase, and made sure his passport was still inside.

  “Get me a flight, as direct as possible,” he told Caroline, “from San Francisco to Moscow.” He knew he would have to wait until he got to Moscow to make connections over the Urals into Siberia. He had never been to that forbidding place, and the thought sent a chill through his bones.

  THREE

  DEER HARBOR, ORCAS ISLAND, WA

  The 1979 Ford pickup crabbed its way up the dusty road, its ass-end off to one side like a dog whose hind quarters had been run over. It was splattered with so much off-road mud that dirt would no longer stick. In the rear window was a placard the size of a license plate:

  HOW’S MY DRIVING

  CALL 1-800-EAT-SHIT

  The truck skidded to a dusty stop in front of the lead-gray metal building. Oscar Chaney got out and slammed the door.

  Another man stood in front of the building next to a pile of stomped-out cigarettes.

  “You’re late.”

  Chaney shot him a look. “Send me a bill for your time.”

  “Why all the games with these redneck idiots? I don’t get it. Why’s the colonel using code names. It’s like we’re dealing with a legit government.”

  “Exactly for the reason that they are idiots,” said Chaney. “Sooner or later, they will make mistakes. He doesn’t want those mistakes to take us down. It’s the reason you’re to have no contact with them. Understand?”

  The guy nodded. “Fine by me. Where did you get the truck?” Chaney’s colleague looked at it, unimpressed, taking in all the dents and dirt, something from a destruction derby.

  “My contribution to local color,” said Chaney. “It makes me look like one of them, don’t you think?”

  “Fuck local color. I just want to get this over with and get home.”

  “Patience, Henry. With the money we’re getting for this job, you can take a nice, long vacation.”

  They had worked together for nearly five years. The colonel had kept them together ever since their time in the Caucasus under U.N. auspices, where they’d met as part of a peacekeeping force. Peacekeeping. It was a joke! They were professional soldiers, and they weren’t even allowed bullets for their weapons for fear they might create an international incident. The four of them had mustered out, Fritz from Germany, Oscar from the U.S., Henry from the U.K., and the colonel who’d taken his training in South Africa but packed a British passport. Now they were on their own. In the last two years, they’d made a small fortune hiring out their services.

  “What’s it like inside?” Chaney gestured toward the building.

  “Four walls and a roof.”

  Chaney took a few steps and pushed his way past and through the half-open door. He took a quick survey of the building.

  Inside was an empty concrete floor heavily stained in places by oil and grease. There were a few pieces of scrap metal in one corner and a workbench against the far wall. On it was an electric grinding wheel, bolted down, and a vise. There were a few soiled rags lying about on the bench and a handful of discarded hand tools, assorted wrenches, and a pair of pliers.

  A spray of light flickered through the metal roof where somebody had missed a few screw holes and the sun had blistered away the caulking.

  “Has it got sufficient power for the arc welder? I’ll need a big welder.”

  “Yes. Plus running water and lights. There’s a latrine out back.”

  Against one wall of the building was a large sliding door, suspended from a metal runner. Chaney walked over, grabbed the door, and gave it a hefty push. It rattled open, sliding along the outside of the building, and stopped with a thud. The opening was about twelve feet wide and ten feet high, more than enough for the job he had in mind.

  “Who owns the place?”

  “A woman in a place called Kirkland. Over on the mainland. Her husband used to use it to do what he called ‘parting out’ cars, taking the parts from stolen vehicles and selling them separately.”

  “Ah.”

  “‘Til one of cars fell off a jack,” said Henry. “Crushed his leg.”

  “Bad luck,” said Chaney. “It will do nicely. Secluded. Out of the way. This car-parting business. Were the police involved?”

  “No. I checked. The man was taken to
another location before the ambulance was called. They dumped a car off a jack out on the highway and called them. Then they took their time and got rid of what was here. The police have never seen the place.”

  “Good. That is good.”

  “What do you know about the people who own it?”

  “The guy walks with a gimp. The woman has money.”

  “Are they likely to come over here looking around?”

  Henry shook his head. “No. I did what the colonel said. Told them we would pay cash every month. It’s twice what they could get in rent from anybody else. I told them that we needed lots of electricity. He has to be thinking drugs,” said Henry. “That we are putting in lights for a marijuana grow. A sizable nursery. They didn’t ask too many questions after that. I think the old man figures the less he knows, the better. So that if the government comes calling he can say he didn’t know. That way they can’t confiscate his property.”

  “Good. We chain off the road out there. Post some big NO TRESPASSING signs, and get a couple of mean dogs. I am talking something that will rip the ass out of anything that moves. Chain them to the outside of the building and make sure they can reach both doors. And somebody’s got to be here all the time. Sleep here at night.”

  Henry nodded, taking it all in. “How much time do we have?”

  “Enough,” said Chaney. “But just barely. The colonel told me this morning that the government is poking around, issuing subpoenas. They’re looking for organization.” He laughed a little. “Fortunately for us, they are sniffing up a road which is about to become a dead end.”

  He took a final appraisal of the building. “I’d say to be safe we have ten days.”

  “Can we do it in that time?” asked Henry.

  “I can do the truck. I’ve got the frame and bed already. There’s an old fertilizer tank on a farm on the other side of the island. I found it last week, talked to the owner. I can buy it and use it to fabricate the container on the back. The problem is the technical stuff. Handling it, and making sure we don’t end up glowing like fireflies.”

  “I know,” said Henry. “I don’t like dealing with that stuff.”