When she got near the case, she spoke to Henry Wong once again.
“Okay, here we go.”
“Be careful, Kady.”
“You think?”
She stepped right up to the open case, which was maybe thirty inches long, rectangular, with reinforced corners. The contents were nestled within a thick polystyrene base. The main unit was a metal pipe, which ran for most of the length of the case. One end was thicker than the other, as if ringed by an additional reinforcing band of metal. A wire extended from the other end, and ran to a black control unit, with a series of switches, a keypad, and a digital timer. There were no numbers showing on the timer, no dramatic countdown, just a bunch of controls with Russian markings. A single, small red bulb glowed, to indicate that the unit was receiving power from its electric cable.
Kady pointed the spectrometer at the unit. A series of digits and letters appeared on its display, and, via the cable, on a screen in front of Henry Wong. There was a low, awestruck whistle in her ear.
“Weapons-grade uranium-two thirty-five. You just found a genuine suitcase nuke, Kady. Man, that is cool.”
She smiled, the tension momentarily broken. “That’s not the word I’d have chosen. It looks to me like Alexander Lebed was telling the truth. The Soviets really did cache portable nukes all over the Western world. But if this is one of them, where are the rest?”
“Not our problem,” said Wong. “And nothing we can do till this one’s deactivated. Why don’t you get on down here, we can recheck those readings?”
“Sure. But not till I get a close-up of this thing on video. We need to have a record of exactly what we’re dealing with.”
She made her way back to the camera, still taking care over every step, but feeling a fraction more secure now, having faced the weapon once and survived. Now that she knew what she was dealing with, she felt as if she were more in control of the process. As she unscrewed the video from its tripod and carried it back toward the case, she told herself she’d worked on far more powerful warheads, both Russian and American, and never come to any harm. Why should this be any different?
She didn’t notice the loose nail protruding from the floor till the boots of her suit snagged against it. Her hands were gripping the camera, so she had no way of using her arms to regain her balance or break her fall as she tripped.
“Kady!” shouted Wong, as she fell on top of the case, becoming hopelessly entangled in her air tube as the light on the control unit began flashing and the bomb emitted a rapid series of high-pitched beeps.
Like a warning.
A booby trap activated.
The tension she had felt since she clambered up into the loft was blown away in an instant by a nauseating, heart-pounding, flop-sweating rush of pure terror. The fear seemed to blur her vision her as she thrashed her limbs, frantically trying to scramble away, as though that would do any good.
In her ears she could hear Wong’s voice, “Oh, shit…”
The beeping stopped.
There were no more words in her headphones.
She lay stock-still, unmoving, unable to breathe in the absolute silence of the loft.
From somewhere inside the case there came the noise of a feeble detonation, no louder or more powerful than a Christmas cracker. Then silence once again.
Kady scrambled back onto the floor, trying to get her breath back. Then she noticed the electric plug, sitting at the end of the cable that led from the case. It had been jerked from its socket by the impact of her fall. The flashing and beeping were simply a warning to the bomb’s users that its power had been cut. There was no booby trap.
But there were Soviet suitcase nukes loose in the world. And neither Kady nor anyone else in America had any idea where they were.
38
The staff of the bierkeller weren’t too anxious to let Carver and Larsson in. A waitress tried to tell them the place was about to close. Carver took out a hundred bucks.
“We’ll only be a few minutes,” he said.
The waitress took the banknote and nodded toward the empty tables. “Help yourself.”
They ordered a couple of wheat beers, an authentic taste of Germany, right in the heart of French Switzerland. Carver looked around. There was only one other customer in the place, a bland-looking man in his thirties or forties, sitting in a corner of the room, nursing a glass of whiskey. He was thinning on top, wearing a mass-produced gray suit, just one more lonely salesmen on another solitary night.
Carver turned his attention to the phony Bavarian decor and the two waitresses in their wigs and costumes, both tired and short-tempered at the end of a long shift. He felt ashamed to think of Alix working in this dump, into the early hours every night. She’d always been at the hospital first thing in the morning-she must have been exhausted. Maybe that’s why she’d run away. She needed a decent night’s sleep.
He finished his drink and went up to the bar.
“How much for two beers?”
“Ten francs,” said the barman.
Carver paid with a fifty and told him to keep the change.
The barman thanked him, then regarded Carver, an eyebrow raised, lips pursed, as if to say, “There has to be a catch.”
Carver caught the look. “You’re right,” he said, slipping into French without a second thought. “I do want something.”
He slipped his photo of Alix across the table.
“Do you know this woman? Her name is Alexandra Petrova. She used to work here.”
The barman said nothing.
“Look,” said Carver, “I’m not a cop. I’m just a friend of hers. She’s disappeared and I’m trying to find out what happened to her, that’s all.”
Finally the barman spoke. “You English?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Been in the hospital lately?”
Carver unfolded the photograph and showed him the other half.
“Okay,” said the barman. “I heard about you. But I don’t know where Alix went. One night she was here, the next… poof!”
He shrugged and lifted up his hands to emphasize his bafflement, then pulled out a cloth from behind the bar and started wiping the countertop in front of Carver.
“But maybe Trudi can help you. She was a friend of Alix’s.”
The barman gestured at one of the waitresses-the one Carver had met at the door.
“Hey, Trudi! He wants to buy you a drink.”
The waitress made a show of looking Carver up and down.
“Do I get another hundred dollars?” she asked and sauntered over.
The balding man in the corner, attracted by the sound of conversation, watched her as she walked toward the bar. Carver saw him and just for a second thought he caught something in the man’s eye, a way of looking that suggested intense concentration, a kind of professional curiosity. But then Trudi was standing next to him, cheerful, busty, the classic barmaid-her costume laced extra-tight to make her cleavage all the deeper-and the thought vanished.
“So, are you going to get me that drink?” she said.
“Sure,” said Carver. “What are you having?”
“Double vodka and tonic.”
The drink appeared. Trudi downed half of it in one gulp and gave a contented sigh.
“I needed that. So, what can I do for you?”
“It’s Alix. I’m trying to find her.”
Trudi looked at him for a moment, then a sly smile crossed her face.
“So you’re her mystery man, huh? She talked about you a few times. Not often, though-it upset her to say too much. I thought you were sick in the hospital.”