It would never have to be an ultramodern "clean" warhead; indeed, the more basic, the "dirtier" in radiation terms, the better. Even at the level of their inhouse scientists, the terrorists knew that enough fissionable element, jacketed within enough plastic explosive, would create enough lethal radiation over enough square miles to make a city the size of New York uninhabitable for a generation. And that would be apart from the three million people irradiated into an early cancerous grave.
It had been a decade, and the underground war had been costly and intense. So far the West, assisted by Moscow more recently, had won it and survived. Huge sums had been spent buying up any fragment of uranium 235 or plutonium that came near to private sale. Entire countries, former Soviet republics, had handed over every gram left behind by Moscow, and the local dictators, under the provisions of the Nunn-Lugar Act, had become very wealthy. But there was too much, far too much, quite simply missing.
Just after he founded his own tiny section in Counterterrorism at Langley, Paul Devereaux noticed two things. One was that a hundred pounds of pure, weapons-grade uranium 235 was lodged at the secret Vinca Institute in the heart of Belgrade. As soon as Milosevic fell, the United States began to negotiate its purchase. Just a third of it, thirty-three pounds or fifteen kilogrammes, would be enough for one bomb.
The other thing was that a vicious Serbian gangster and intimate at the court of Milosevic wanted out before the roof fell in. He needed "cover," new papers, protection, and a place to disappear to. Devereaux knew that place could never be the United States. But a banana republicÉDevereaux cut him a deal, and he cut him a price. The price was collaboration.
Before he quit Belgrade, a thumbnail-sized sample of uranium 235 was stolen from the Vinca Institute, and the records were changed to show that a full fifteen kilogrammes were really missing.
Six months earlier, introduced by the arms dealer, Vladimir Bout, the runaway Serb had handed over his sample and documentary proof that he possessed the remaining fifteen kilos.
The sample had gone to Al Qaeda's chemist and physicist, Abu Khabab, another highly educated and fanatical Egyptian. It had necessitated his leaving Afghanistan and quietly travelling to Iraq to secure the equipment he needed to test the sample properly.
In Iraq, another nuclear program was underway. It also sought weaponsgrade uranium 235, but was making it the slow, old-fashioned way, with calutrons like the ones used in 1945 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The sample caused great excitement.
Just four weeks before the circulation of that damnable report compiled by a Canadian magnate concerning his longdead grandson, word had come through that Al Qaeda would deal. Devereaux had to force himself to stay very calm.
For his killing machine, he had wanted to use an unmanned, high-altitude drone called the Predator, but it had crashed just outside Afghanistan. Its wreckage was now back in the United States, but the hitherto unarmed UAV was being "weaponized" by the fitting of a Hellfire missile so that it could in future, not only see a target from the stratosphere, but blow it to bits as well. But the conversion would take too long. Paul Devereaux revamped his plan, but he had to delay it while different weaponry was put in place. Only when they were ready could the Serb accept the invitation to journey to Peshawar, Pakistan, there to meet with Kawaheri, Atef, Zubaydah, and the physicist Abu Khabab. He would carry with him fifteen kilos of uranium, but not weapons grade. Yellowcake would do, normal reactor fuel, isotope 235, 3 percent, refined, not the needed 88 percent.
At the crucial meeting, Zoran Zilic was going to pay for all the favours he had been accorded. If he did not, he would be destroyed by a single phone call to Pakistan 's lethal and pro-Al Qaeda secret service, the ISI. He would suddenly double the price and threaten to leave if his new price was not met. Devereaux was gambling there was only one man who could make that decision, and he would have to be consulted.
Far away in Afghanistan, UBL would have to take that phone call. High above, rolling in space, a listener satellite linked to the National Security Agency would hear the call and pinpoint its destination to a place ten feet by ten feet.
Would the man at the Afghan end wait around? Could he contain his curiosity to learn whether he had just become the owner of enough uranium to fulfil his most deadly dreams?
Off the Baluchi coast, the nuclear sub USS * Columbia * would open her hatches to emit a single Tomahawk cruise missile. Even as it flew, it would be programmed by the Global Positioning System (GPS) plus Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) and Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation (DSMAC).
Three navigational systems would guide it to that hundred-square-foot target and blow the entire area containing the mobile phone to pieces, including the man waiting for his callback from Peshawar. For Devereaux, the problem was time. The moment when Zoran would have to leave for Peshawar, pausing at Ra's al Khaymah to pick up the Russian, was moving ever closer. He could not afford to let Zoran panic and withdraw on the grounds that he was a hunted man and thus their deal was null and void. Avenger had to be stopped and probably destroyed. Lesser evil, greater good.
It was August 20th. A man descended from the Dutch KLM airliner straight in from Curaao to Paramaribo airport. It was not Prof. Medvers Watson, for whom a reception committee waited further down the coast.
It was not even the U. S. diplomat, Ronald Proctor, for whom a crate waited at the docks.
It was the British resort-developer, Henry Nash. With his Amsterdam-delivered visa, he passed effortlessly through Customs and Immigration and took a taxi into town. It would have been tempting to book in at the Torarica, far and away the best hotel in town. But he might have met real Britishers there, so he went to the Krasnopolsky on the Dominiestraat. His room was on the top floor, with a balcony facing east. The sun was behind him when he went out for a look over the city. The extra height gave a hint of breeze to make the dusk bearable. Far to the east, seventy miles away and over the river, the jungles of San Martin were waiting.
PART THREE
25 The jungle
It was the American diplomat, Ronald Proctor, who leased the car. It was not even from an established agency but from a private seller advertising in the local paper.
The Cherokee was secondhand but in good repair and with a bit of work and a thorough service, which its U. S. Armytrained new owner intended to give it, it would do what it had to.
The deal he made the vendor was simple and sweet. He would pay ten thousand dollars in cash. He would only need the vehicle for a month, until his own 4X4 came through from the States. If he returned it absolutely intact in thirty days, the vendor would take it back and reimburse five thousand dollars.
The seller was looking at an effortfree five thousand dollars in a month. Given that the man facing him was a charming American diplomat, and the Cherokee might come back in thirty days, it seemed foolish to go through all the trouble of changing the documents. Why alert the tax man? Proctor also rented the lockup garage and storage shed behind the flower and produce market. Finally, he went to the docks and signed for his single crate, which went into the garage to be carefully unpacked and repacked in two canvas knapsacks. Then Ronald Proctor simply ceased to exist.
In Washington, Paul Devereaux was gnawed by anxiety and curiosity as the days dragged by. Where was this man? Had he used his visa and entered Suriname? Was he on his way?