Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “If it were only the inventory records, you would be right,” said Mirnov. “But there is the more troubling matter of the facsimile shells.”

  “What facsimile shells?”

  “We found two dummy devices in the bunker, empty shells, made to look like the real thing. We do not know how long they were there. It would appear that this is the reason we did not pick up the error in the count of the bunker’s weapons.” The Russian gave a heavy sigh.

  “I don’t understand,” said Gideon. “Why would anyone go to the trouble of replacing the real thing with dummies and then simply drop them from the count on the inventory sheets?”

  “I can think of only one reason,” said Mirnov. “There was no need to continue with the deception, because the devices had been removed and were beyond our reach.”

  The Russian’s cold logic sent a chill up Gideon’s spine.

  “Then let’s start with one assumption,” said Gideon. “Someone took the trouble to maintain false inventory records at least until they didn’t need to cover their tracks any longer.”

  “That appears to be the case,” said Mirnov.

  “Who had access to these records?”

  “That is the problem. Only two people. Dimitri and myself.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s Dimitri?”

  “We have been looking for him since he left the facility. His apartment. Places where he has been seen. We have not found him. But we are still looking. Unfortunately, it appears that Dimitri is involved,” said Mirnov.

  “Obviously,” said Gideon.

  “I have called my sister to see if she has seen him.”

  “Why your sister?”

  “Dimitri is my brother-in-law.” Mirnov said it like Gideon should have known. No wonder he was doubling up on the shots of vodka. One thing was clear; Gideon had to get whatever information he could from Mirnov before his superiors got there. Once they arrived, the Russian was likely to be removed, taken someplace for debriefing, and Gideon would not see him again.

  “We don’t have much time. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” The Russian said it with soulful eyes.

  “Then you’ve got to tell me everything you know.”

  Mirnov looked at him for a moment and thought. He had worked for nearly five years at a salary that barely provided a subsistence for himself and his family. For months he had not been paid at all. His family was not eating well, and his children had holes in their shoes. Mirnov had done it out of duty to his country and a belief that Russia alone was responsible for its weapons of war. It had built this arsenal, and national pride dictated that it should control it. He could have done as Dimitri had and taken money. There were many in Russian crime who would pay handsomely for nuclear and chemical materials smuggled from Sverdlovsk. But Mirnov had never taken a ruble.

  He looked at Gideon and wondered if the governments of the West were any better than his own. He had heard about politics in Washington on CNN, about a government run by and for the people “inside the beltway,” about endless scandals over money. Still, under the skin, he felt some kinship with this man. Gideon was not part of any government. He did not have to travel all the way from California to Moscow and Sverdlovsk to double-check on an error in paperwork. The people at the institute could have simply published the information and garnered international headlines, but they did not. There was something in that act of caution, a respect for the truth that impressed the Russian.

  “If I were to tell you what we know, it would remain confidential?” said Mirnov.

  “I would have to tell my people at the institute,” said Gideon.

  “Of course. But would it go any farther?”

  “That would depend. If there was a bona fide threat, authorities would have to be notified.”

  “I understand,” said Mirnov. “But you would not go to the press? You would not identify me as being the source of this information?”

  “No.”

  “There would be no public disclosure? The Western governments would treat it as confidential?”

  “I believe I can assure you that the information would be treated as confidential as long as public safety could be protected. No one wants a needless panic. And in any event, you would not be named as the source.” Gideon could not control what would happen if the information was disclosed to authorities. But he could protect his source.

  “We have discovered two forged waybills,” said Mirnov. “A man named Grigori Chenko, a technician who worked at Sverdlovsk, prepared both of the documents. The first about four weeks ago. The second about two weeks after that. Each document listed machine parts that were crated and shipped east to the port of Vladivostok.”

  “How do you know these were the bombs?”

  “We don’t,” said Mirnov. “Not with certainty. However, before they were shipped, the two crates were weighed. Each time the weight was precisely the same, a little over one hundred four kilos. Accounting for the weight of the wooden crates themselves, it is almost precisely the weight of the two field artillery devices.”

  “You say the first one was shipped a month ago?”

  “Yes,” said Mirnov.

  Gideon corrected a note and looked at the scrawl he had written quickly underneath it as Mirnov spilled out his information. “This man Chenko. Where is he?”

  “That is what causes us concern. We don’t know. Shortly after this shipment was made, he disappeared. He simply stopped coming to work.”

  “And you never checked?”

  “We assumed he found a better job. It is not unusual,” said Mirnov. “I have lost more than half of my staff in the past year. If you don’t pay people, they stop coming to work. If I stopped to check with each of them, I would never get anything done. Do you know that months now go by and the military isn’t paid? Soldiers and sailors, who were once gods, are now treated like trash,” said Mirnov. “When a government starts doing that, they are asking for trouble.”

  He was right. What’s more, Gideon knew the Russians weren’t alone in this. Both sides were guilty of the sin of denial. The danger lay in the fact that it had become politically unfashionable to worry about the bomb. Nuclear winters and atomic holocausts were the phobia of the 1960s and 1970s, no longer chic in the world of the Internet and the global economy. Why should politicians warn their citizens that nuclear annihilation was still a possibility? Why trouble them with such negative thoughts? After all, the Cold War was over. In the West, they were closing military bases, wallowing in the peace dividend, appraising with new capitalist vigor the expanding world markets. The president of the United States and the premier of Russia were friends. Why worry people with reports that their cities might be incinerated by an errant nuclear bomb? This, even as daily intelligence reports told world leaders that Russia was losing its grip on the atomic genie. And what if the unimaginable happened? Gideon had no doubts. The American president would declare a national emergency, call out FEMA, and tell the survivors that he felt their pain. It was what passed for statesmanship at the end of the millennium, a poor cry from Roosevelt and Churchill.

  “What type of work did Mr. Chenko do?” asked Gideon.

  “As I said, he was a technician. He was employed in disassembling the devices.”

  “The warheads themselves?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he would know how to assemble them as well?”

  “Of course.” The Russian answered without any hint as to the gravity, though he obviously had considered the significance of this himself. Someone with these skills would be sought after by governments outside of the nuclear club or by “subnationals,” one of the euphemisms in the intelligence community for terrorists.

  Gideon looked at his notes, underlined several items, and went over them again, committing the details to memory, then asked Mirnov for a match. In front of the Russian, he put the single sheet of paper with his notes in a large ashtray on Mirnov’s
desk, struck the match, and set an edge of the paper on fire, then watched it burn until there was nothing left but smoking cinders.

  “One last question,” he said. “What was the final point of destination for the two shipments?”

  Mirnov swallowed hard. His superiors would draw and quarter him. “We have not had this conversation,” he said.

  “Agreed.”

  “We cannot be certain with regard to the second crate. We do know that it is no longer in the warehouse at the port in Vladivostok. But the first shipment,” said Mirnov, “had what you call a paper trail. The documentation of marine transshipment was telefaxed to me this morning.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and began to unfold a piece of paper, spreading it out flat on the desk.

  “No one except myself and the port administrator in Vladivostok have seen this, and he does not know the significance.”

  “I understand,” said Gideon.

  The Russian turned the paper around on the desk so that Gideon could read it and commit its terms to memory. The shipment was marked, at least on paper, for a destination in the United States, a company called Belden Electronics.

  EIGHT

  ROCHE HARBOR, WA

  A thin vapor of fog rose like steam from the surface of the water so smooth and mottled it had the appearance of a pane of windowed bottle glass. Joselyn could see wisps of smoke winding from the chimneys of homes on Henry Island, a mile away.

  She checked her watch. It was now five minutes to seven. She was hoping they would make it on time. Federal judges have a bad habit of issuing bench warrants for the arrest of witnesses who fail to appear, warrants that, from time to time, may embrace a lawyer or two. It was her signature, under her letterhead, faxed to the court that had assured Belden’s appearance.

  She looked back from the dock toward the parking lot. There was no sign of Belden and no cars on the road winding down from the hill above the resort.

  The white facade of the Hotel de Haro, with its second-story balcony wrapped in vines, looked like a wedding cake. Dating from the 1800s, it had been built by a business baron who owned a limestone quarry. The quarry had been closed forty years ago, but the hotel had found another heyday. With its adjoining restaurant, it was one of the most charming spots in the islands. Far from the glitz of Saint-Tropez and the Costa del Sol, the rich and famous, the sultan of Brunei and Microsoft king Bill Gates, had been known to moor yachts in the harbor and to take meals at the restaurant.

  She looked again at her watch as she heard the monotonous hum of an engine somewhere overhead. She feared her suspicion was correct. She turned to fix it low in the sky and approaching from the west. Perhaps it was the early-morning seaplane from Victoria. It serviced the island twice daily.

  The plane swooped down toward the channel, gliding just above the mist, between Henry Island and the harbor, then settled onto the water and skimmed across the glistening surface. It made a big circling turn and headed toward the dock, throwing up spray behind it from the prop wash.

  As it approached, the roar of the big radial engine shattered the tranquility of the inner harbor. A small flock of Canada geese took flight, followed by three mallards.

  Joselyn had never been this close to a float plane before—no more than a hundred feet away, when the pilot cut the engines. All she could see was the outline of a dark silhouette in the cockpit. The plane drifted in silence like some mythic bird of prey, its momentum carrying it toward the dock.

  At the last instant, the door under the wing opened and the pilot gracefully lowered himself down, one hand on the wing strut, one foot on the pontoon. In a fluid motion, he stepped across onto the dock. As if by some magic of leverage, he brought the heavy plane to a stop without the pontoon even touching the dock.

  Joselyn’s fears were realized. It was Belden. She wasn’t hot to fly, even in commercial planes. Now this. The man was full of surprises.

  “You were expecting me?” He looked at her and smiled.

  “And we’re going to fly down in that?”

  “Unless you have wings.” He had that cocky grin, like Robert Redford in The Great Waldo Pepper.

  She stood looking at him, her feet frozen to the dock.

  “Come on. It’s only about forty minutes by air to Seattle. Besides, you’ll love it.”

  Inside of Joselyn that voice that speaks to each of us silently was now spitting expletives. Taking her own name in vain for lacking the sand to tell him no. “I don’t get into small airplanes with men I don’t know. In fact I don’t get into small airplanes at all.”

  “You are afraid?”

  “No.” What made her say it, she wasn’t sure.

  “Good. Then hop in.”

  Holding onto the strut of the plane, he took her briefcase and put it down on the dock, then helped her step across onto the pontoon.

  “Use the step up.”

  She placed her left foot onto a metal step built into the strut of the plane. She had visions of falling between the pontoon and the dock: FLASH! “Woman Killed Falling from Plane.” Embarrassing details to follow.

  Somehow in heels and a business suit with a tight skirt that ended up high around her thighs, she managed to pull herself up into the pilot’s seat. When she looked down, Belden was checking out her legs, and from the expression on his face, enjoying the view.

  “Let’s change clothes and you can try it,” she told him.

  He laughed. “No. No. I’m sure it wouldn’t be as fetching.”

  She got up out of the seat, straightened her skirt, and stepped around the controls in the center console. There were six seats in the rear of the plane, two on either side and a bench across the back.

  “Take the copilot’s seat on the other side up front,” he told her.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. That way you can see where we’re going.”

  “I may not want to.”

  “You’re going to love it.” He didn’t give her time to argue. Instead he threw Joselyn’s briefcase up to her. She caught it in midair and stumbled into the seat up front.

  He pushed off before she had a chance to change her mind, and they drifted quickly away from the dock. He climbed up into the pilot’s seat and closed the door, flipped a couple of switches overhead while he fastened a headset with a microphone over his ears. He flipped several more switches and turned a dial. Suddenly the propeller kicked over and the engine started.

  Belden looked out the side window, watching to be sure that his wing cleared any obstructions on the dock. “Have you flown in a seaplane before?”

  “Never.”

  “But you have been up in small planes.”

  She shook her head as he watched her out of the corner of one eye, his hands continually messing with the controls overhead.

  “Then it should be exciting.” He looked down at her skirt. “Though you might want to buckle your seat belt so it doesn’t get too exciting.”

  She buckled the single belt, low across her lap, fumbled with it until the ends snapped together, then pulled the strap until it was tightly pulling her down into the seat.

  “There’s nothing to worry about.” He looked over at her. He could smell fear. “I’ve been flying planes for years.”

  “I’m not scared.” She lied.

  “Good. Then that makes one of us.” He gave her a smile, more Redford. Before she could say another word, he pushed a lever forward and the engine literally ignited in a burst of power. The plane lurched forward and into a slow turn, away from the dock and out toward the open channel.

  Her knuckles were white from gripping the front edge of her seat. She looked over at him and the smile finally left his face. He was now all business concentrating on the channel out in front of them.

  The movement of the plane over the water picked up a rhythm, and she began to relax, to settle in. It glided smoothly, then hit a wake, probably its own from the trip in. The plane lurched a little.

  Belden made a turn
and lined up in a straight path down the channel between the harbor and Henry Island. Without hesitation, he reached for the handle on a control that rested on the console between them. He pushed it forward and the plane began to move faster through the water, lurching over mild undulations in the surface of the sea. The noise and vibration of the engine increased until Joselyn could hear nothing but the rattle of metal and the pounding of pontoons on the water. The plane picked up speed as his hand pushed the control farther forward, and the noise became a roar that filled her senses, the vibration chattering her teeth and penetrating to the core of her body.

  Belden’s concentration was intense, eyes straight down the channel as they bounded over the water, until in one smooth motion he pulled back slowly on the wheeled yoke, and like Pegasus they broke contact with the shimmering surface of the sea and lifted skyward.

  This was a new sensation for Joselyn, since she had never flown in a small plane. Unlike heavily powered passenger jets, they were buffeted by air pockets and rocked by crosswinds. The sensation of perpetual climbing was strange, as if any instant gravity would reassert its power and pull them down into the sea.

  Joss looked down at the islands of the San Juan chain, hundreds of them, spread out beneath them, verdant mountains rising from a carpet of blue water, shimmering in the morning sunlight. “It’s beautiful!”

  “It’s one of the reasons I like to fly. You can’t see this in a jet. They get above the clouds too fast. Besides, I’m a control freak. When I’m going somewhere, I like to have my hands on the wheel.”

  She nodded like she understood.

  They continued to climb for several minutes as they circled over the islands then headed south, down the sound. The engine ceased its struggle as they leveled off and settled into a steady monotone.

  “Why don’t you take it for a second?”

  “What?”

  “The controls,” he said. His hands were off the wheel before Joselyn could say anything else. She grabbed the controls in front of her, and the right wing started to dip.