‘Sounds fine,’ Whitlock replied.
‘I’ll organize a dosemeter badge for you,’ she said, reaching for the telephone.
‘A what?’ Whitlock asked, affecting ignorance.
‘It’s a badge containing a strip of masked photographic film worn by all personnel working within the plant itself. When the film’s subsequently developed the degree of darkening reveals the radiation dose received.’ She replaced the receiver and gave him an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry about having to rush off like this but I promise I’ll be free tomorrow.’
‘Duty calls,’ he said with a wry grin.
She scribbled something on her memo pad and slid the paper across the desk to him. Ask me out tonight.
He looked up in bewilderment and noticed the self-assurance had gone from her eyes. She looked frightened.
‘I was wondering, would you be free tonight?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, injecting a little hesitancy into her voice.
‘I thought we could go out for a meal,’ he said folding the paper and slipping it into his jacket pocket.
‘That would be nice. Did you have anywhere in mind?’
‘I’ll leave the decision to you.’
‘The Rheingrill at the Hilton’s about the best in town.’
‘Eight o’clock?’ he said.
‘I shall look forward to it. You’ll have to excuse me now, I’ve still got a few things to see to before my audience arrives. My assistant will be with you shortly.’
He slumped back in the armchair after she had left.
What the hell was going on?
It had taken Sabrina forty minutes to drive from Lausanne to Fribourg and another fifteen minutes to find the isolated goods yard where Teufel, the porter at Lausanne, had said she would find the freight cars. She parked the hired Audi Coupé in front of the wire fence then reached into the back for the holdall containing the Geiger-Müller counter which she had managed to buy after numerous telephone calls to a succession of Lausanne retailers. The icy wind cut across her face as she opened the door and she zipped her anorak up to her throat and tugged the protective hood over her head.
The gate was padlocked from the inside. She slipped the holdall straps over her shoulder and effortlessly scaled the fence, jumping nimbly to the ground when she was halfway down the other side. She crouched down behind a row of freight cars and took in her surroundings: to her right a goods shed, to her left two sets of parallel track and a rusted freight car, its wheels barely visible through the tangled mass of overgrown weeds. The whole area was completely deserted. She transferred the Beretta from her shoulder holster to her anorak pocket then moved down the row of freight cars, checking for the serial number which corresponded with the one Teufel had written down for her. It was stencilled in white paint on the freight car fourth from the front. She took the Geiger-Müller counter from the holdall but couldn’t get a reading from around the seal of the door. She then ran her finger along the narrow groove between the door and the frame to check for wires in the unlikely event of it having been booby-trapped. Her fears were groundless and she slid the door back. She saw the shadowy movement out of the corner of her eye and she was still reaching for her Beretta when she was struck heavily on the shoulder, knocking the Geiger-Müller counter from her hand. It smashed against the rusted freight car behind her, shattering the glass exterior and buckling the sensitive anode.
The ginger tomcat glared up at her, its tail lashing furiously from side to side. She waited until it had stalked away before picking up the remains of the Geiger-Müller counter and dropping them into the holdall. Her grim smile was triumphant when she turned back to the open freight car. Its sole contents were six metal beer kegs. She clambered up into the car to take a closer look at them, careful though to remain at what she considered to be a safe distance. All six bungs were sealed and there was no evidence that any of them had ever been damaged. Even a master welder would have left some traces of his craftsmanship. It had to be a trap.
The bullet smashed into the nearest keg. She flung herself to the floor and rolled to safety behind the half-opened door, the Beretta clenched tightly in her gloved hand. Although the gunman had her pinned down he wasn’t her immediate threat. Her heart was pounding fearfully as she slowly looked over her shoulder. The bullet had torn a jagged hole in the side of the keg but there was no sign of the deadly plutonium she had imagined would be seeping out into the atmosphere. She let out a deep sigh of relief. These were the decoy kegs after all–
Mike had been right. From the angle at which the bullet had penetrated the keg it had to have come from the direction of the shed. The door of the freight car was useless as an escape route: the sniper would have it covered. She noticed one of the wooden struts on the opposite wall had snapped off leaving an aperture the size of a football in the corner of the car. It solved the mystery of how the cat had managed to get inside. She pressed her back against the wall and shuffled on the seat of her jeans to the aperture, her eyes continually flickering towards the open door to ensure she was still out of sight of the shed. Rot had already set into the damp wood and she was able to break chunks off the strut as though they were bits of soggy cardboard. The strut above was more durable but the nails came loose when she struck it firmly with the heel of her boot. She kicked out again, this time cracking it a couple of feet from the juncture with the adjacent wall. The third kick splintered it enough for her to break it off.
She peered out through the hole but all she could see was the perimeter fence thirty yards away. Sweating with fear she wriggled through the hole, then ducked under the freight car and crawled slowly forward on her belly between the two sets of rails. Although she couldn’t be seen herself, neither could she see the shed or, more importantly, the exact location of the sniper.
She was only a few feet away from the buffer when a rat darted in front of her, and although she jerked her head back sharply its wet tail brushed against her cheek as it disappeared into a gap between the two lengths of corroded track. She bit her lower lip to stifle the cry in her throat and felt the goosepimples bristling across her skin. Where was the damn cat when she needed it most? She had always prided herself on her resoluteness and fortitude but there was one fear she had never managed to conquer – a fear of rats which dated back to an incident when she was three years old. She had been inadvertently locked in a disused cellar and the only sound she had heard while cringing in a darkened corner was the incessant scratching as the rats scurried across the concrete floor around her. When she had finally been rescued some two hours later it was discovered that the hem of her frock had been chewed away.
She winced painfully as a burning sensation spread across her cheek, and jerked her hand away from her face. Without realizing it she had been rubbing the area of skin which had touched the rat’s tail. She began to crawl forward again, her eyes continually flickering between the tracks on either side of her. Rats, like rabbits, were notorious breeders. She reached the buffer and rolled out from underneath the freight car, safe in the knowledge she was on the sniper’s blindspot. Only it worked both ways. The shed was at least twenty yards away and there was no cover.
She took several deep breaths, then broke cover and sprinted in a zigzag weave across the open ground. The first bullet struck the earth behind her, spitting up a mound of soil. The second bullet followed almost immediately, this time in front of her, and she had to fling herself the last few feet, landing heavily against the side of the corrugated-iron door. She massaged her collarbone gingerly and tried to calm her ragged breathing. The bullets had followed each other too quickly from different angles for them to have been fired by the same person. She had an idea where the first sniper had been but in any case he could have moved. The second sniper could be anywhere. She knew it would be tantamount to suicide to try to go in through the open doorway so she made her way cautiously around the side of the building, careful to duck low enough under the shattered windows to avoid detection. There were two doors at the back of the shed, one partially open, its frame warped from years of neglect. It was the only way in. She pressed herself against the wall inches away from the door and used a piece of corroded piping at her feet to ease it open. A volley of bullets immediately peppered the ground directly in front of the doorway, confirming her worst fears. They were armed with semi-automatics, not sniper rifles. Her view of the interior of the shed was limited but what she did see raised her hopes. It was the first bit of luck she had had all afternoon. A faded yellow skip stood a couple of feet from the door, well within diving distance.