Several photographs, taken at close range, of the barge were accompanied by an artist’s sketch of the entire object. It was a medium-sized barge, intact, resting on its bottom on the seabed. “We took water and soil samples, of course, and that’s when everything changed.”
Hardy reached into the podium and took out a document, which he offered to Vaslev. “This contains the gamma-ray spectrum analysis we collected near the barge. The many others we’d taken up to that point are listed in the official study I’ve already mentioned. They showed cesium, strontium, cobalt — typical components of spent fuel or radioactive waste. This sample had had a particularly dominant isotope of one element: plutonium 239, in concentrations consistent with a nuclear weapon.”
Hardy paused to let that sink in. “Photographs taken by the remote vehicle showed the inside of the barge filled with cases. They did not look like waste drums. On my own authority, I brought Memphis in closer to the site. We sent out divers who entered the barge and opened one of the cases. This is what they found inside.”
Vaslev, still reeling from the idea of American divers operating covertly inside Russian territorial waters, saw a photograph, in poor lighting, of a cone-shaped object. A diver to one side let him judge the size: almost two meters long and slightly less than a meter across at the base. The poor-quality image was replaced by another, presumably of the same object, out of the water in normal lighting. It was dull green or black, and detail photos of the base showed white Cyrillic lettering.
“Stoy!” Vaslev shouted, so upset that he had to deliberately recall the English word, and finally repeated, “Stop!” He looked over at his two colleagues. Their expressions were unreadable. They were both looking over to him, perhaps for guidance. He gestured for them to remain silent, and gathered his thoughts.
Vaslev stood, and said, “The enormity of this act is almost overwhelming. The American navy entered Russian waters and stole this object…”
Hardy interrupted, “Actually we took two, this one, and another still in its case. Aren’t you even interested in what they are?”
“They are obviously property of the Russian government,” Vaslev answered immediately. After a moment’s pause, he added, “This confession, years after the fact, does not alter the seriousness of this violation of our territory…”
“We didn’t ask you here to confess anything, Mr. Ambassador.” Secretary Lloyd’s voice overrode Vaslev’s speech. “You haven’t even asked what Soviet state property we stole. We recovered two reentry vehicles for a Russian RT-21 Pioneer missile, each fitted with a 150-kiloton thermonuclear warhead. The RT-21s were medium-range ballistic missiles that were supposed to have all been withdrawn under the INF treaty in 1987. Observers watched the destruction of the missiles and the disassembly of all the warheads, at least all those reported under the treaty. Can you explain where these came from?”
Vaslev, surprised by Lloyd’s speech and then its sternly delivered content, appeared genuinely confused, but said, “I have no information about this barge or alleged warheads. These are serious charges. My country has always lived up to the letter of every international treaty, and…”
Lloyd’s tone sharpened. “Mr. Ambassador, I’m not interested in the party line. We are ready to hold a press conference and wheel both bombs out in front of whoever wants to see them. I’m sure the media would be very interested in this.”
Vaslev held up his hands. “What can I say, Secretary Lloyd? Again, I have no knowledge of this. I’ll of course contact my government as soon as I return to the embassy.”
“You can also tell your government that the exterior of the barge has some marine growth, but hadn’t been in the water more than ten years. Was your government deliberately concealing nuclear warheads, in violation of the INF treaty, since at least the mid-nineties?”
Vaslev sat. After a brief pause the ambassador ventured, “The ocean is not typically used for storing anything. Since you found these objects in the same area as radioactive items that had been discarded, perhaps these were also discarded.” Vaslev was warming up to the idea. “These may be warheads that are flawed, or defective and were dumped by the old government.”
Hardy shook his head. “Our examination of the two devices showed them to be fully functional, ready for installation on the warhead bus of a ballistic missile. And you forget the marine growth…”
Vaslev waved his hand to brush the argument aside. “Seaweed is not proof of anything.”
Hardy nodded to Davis, who pressed a key, and a new image appeared on the screen. “Then how about an acoustic sensor, fixed to the seabed near the barge, and placed at the same time? Somebody was keeping watch on those nuclear weapons.”
The ambassador glanced over to Mishin, who was studying the image carefully. He looked at Vaslev and nodded his head slightly. He recognized it. In Russian, he reported, “It is a standard type of fixed acoustic sensor.”
The implications and consequences of this discovery were beginning to take shape in Vaslev’s mind. But he needed to think…
“Why are you telling us this now, after so many years?” It was an honest question, the first the ambassador had asked. It was intended to buy time, but he was curious.
Hardy replied quickly, “Because there is a high probability that the weapon detonated in Kashmir came from this source.”
Vaslev’s thoughts struggled to follow several tracks at once. Foremost was protecting Russian interests. Second was trying to understand the Americans’ intent. Consideration of the actual facts being presented came third and last. But the American’s statement brought everything to a sudden halt.
Stunned, the ambassador blinked, then blinked again. Almost automatically, with reflexes trained by years of diplomatic service, he asked, “What proof do you have of this?”
Hardy handed the Russians two documents. “The first one is an analysis of the fallout and soil samples from the Kashmir explosion. It’s more detailed than the one released to the public last week. The second is our analysis of the reentry vehicles’ fissile material. The isotope ratios of the plutonium in all three cases are identical. The measured size of the explosion also matched the warheads’ rated yield — one hundred and fifty kilotons.”
Vaslev studied the tables on the marked pages. His spoken English was good, but he sometimes had trouble with the Roman alphabet. Now the words might as well have been printed in Martian. But numbers were the same in both languages, and so were the chemical symbols for uranium and plutonium.
Lloyd, still standing nearby, waited until Vaslev had looked at both analyses and handed them to Mishin, then sat down next to the ambassador. “Mr. Ambassador, as the representative of the United States, I am speaking to the representative of the Russian Federation. There is or was a large cache of nuclear warheads in your northern waters. Whether they were put there at the orders of your highest leaders, or by some faction within your government, one of those weapons has now exploded, causing exactly the type of destruction its designers intended.
“The United States is deeply concerned that the Russian government has lost control of these weapons, indeed if they ever had control. They present a grave danger, not just to Russia, but the entire world. We will give you every scrap of information we have about them, but the trail leads back inside Russia, and your country must take the lead in tracking them down.”
Vaslev sighed, not in surrender, but in the realization that Russia was indeed in grave, perhaps mortal danger. He truly did not know anything about the barge the Americans described. That was no surprise in a country that still told one only what was needed to do one’s work, and sometimes not even that. And who knew what secrets had been fed into the communist regime’s shredders before they lost power?