Reaching the far side of the perimeter, she was afforded her best view of the complex yet. In the moonlight, the domes atop the containment buildings glimmered like ancient temples. La Reine was a post-9/11 plant, meaning it had been built to the most stringent security specifications. The domes were actually two hulls of one-meter-thick steel-reinforced concrete-one inside the other, designed to withstand the direct impact of a fully fueled passenger jet traveling at over 700 miles per hour. Inside these domes was the reactor vessel, molded from a single slab of the strongest reinforced stainless steel in the world. Only one company in the world was able to manufacture steel of this strength: the Japan Steel Company of Hokkaido, formerly makers of the world’s finest samurai swords. For all intents and purposes, the plant was indestructible.
At least from the outside.
Nuclear power plants operated on a simple proposition. Steam turned turbines and turbines powered generators. All you needed was lots of steam. That’s where the nuclear part came in. The fuel needed to make the steam was uranium 235, and this isotope of uranium was fissile, meaning it emitted blazingly hot, lightning-fast atoms if given the correct environment to create a nuclear chain reaction. Put uranium in water, and pretty soon the water would start boiling like crazy and producing all kinds of steam. The steam then drove the turbine generator, which generated electricity.
It was as easy, or as monstrously complex, as that.
Uranium 235 was therefore the counterpart of coal, gas, or oil-fired boilers used to power the traditional smoke-belching fossil-fueled plants. And these days uranium was in large supply, and therefore cheap. Far cheaper than oil. That’s why so many nuclear power plants were suddenly being built all over the world.
Not everyone thought that was a good idea.
In fact, there were some who would kill to prevent it.
From her pocket Emma pulled a handheld instrument-metal, heavy, colored yellow, with a viewfinder on one side and a lens on the other. The instrument was a portable theodolite, and it measured a chosen object’s relative height above sea level. Putting the viewfinder to her eye, she focused on two separate points, one at the far side of the reactor building and the other at a point on the spent-fuel building approximately 15 meters away from it.
The fuel used to power the reactor took the form of long, slim rods of uranium (actually, hundreds of uranium pellets stacked on top of each other). The rods measured 16 feet in length and an inch in diameter, the width of a tube of Chanel lipstick or a Panatela cigar. They were grouped in square bunches, seventeen by seventeen, into a single fuel assembly unit. The rods stayed “hot” or “fissile” for four years. After that they were removed from the reactor vessel and transported a short distance aboard a miniature rail car through a tunnel into the spent-fuel building, where they were lowered into a pool of cold water and kept there until most of the radiation and heat had been bled out of them.
Emma checked the height readings from the two points and performed a calculation inside her head. The result pleased her. The plan was going to work.
Her task completed, she retraced her steps through the field and climbed the steep hillock. Her car was where she had left it, parked in a copse of ground oaks, covered by a profusion of branches. She cleared the foliage, threw her bag into a false compartment in the trunk, then climbed into the car. In a moment she was speeding down the highway toward Paris. The entire reconnaissance had taken her forty-five minutes.
Getting in was the easy part.
43
The director general of MI5 was Sir Anthony Allam. Allam was a career officer, a graduate of Leeds University who’d joined the Security Service directly after completing his studies. He’d done stints in all the major branches during his time: Northern Ireland, capital crimes, extremist groups, and most recently counterterrorism. He was a slight, unprepossessing man, with neatly trimmed gray hair, unfailing manners, and an ill-fitting suit. One of the meek who had little chance of inheriting the earth, no matter what the good book might say.
But looks were deceiving. One didn’t rise to be head of Five without superior intelligence and more than a little of what his Welsh mother had called moxie. Behind the furtive blue eyes and the deferential smile hid a volcanic temper. Word round Thames House was that when Sir Tony, as he was known, was angry, you could hear him all the way to Timbuktu.
“You mean to suggest that Igor Ivanov was not the target?” said Sir Tony as he peered at Charles Graves.
“The bomb was a diversion. It was meant to precipitate the evacuation of the ministry building in order to steal some laptop computers that the visiting IAEA team had brought with them.”
“You’re certain?”
Graves looked at Kate. They nodded. “We are,” she said.
“Interesting. Very interesting indeed.” Allam leaned back in his seat. “But if you want me to go to the PM with this, you’re going to need hard evidence. He’s got himself convinced that it was the Chechens or some group pushing for democratic reforms in Russia. Rather likes the idea, too. Feels it takes him off the hook somehow.”
“We’ve got evidence,” said Kate. “May I?” She picked up the remote control and punched the play button activating the DVD player.
Graves narrated. “This feed is from the ministry building at One Victoria Street. Third floor, corridor seven, east. The camera covers the hall directly outside the conference room where the team from the IAEA and our lads from the Safeguards Authority were holed up.”
“Is it in focus?” asked Allam as he slipped on a pair of glasses. “Half the time the lenses are fogged.”
“Crystal-clear,” said Graves. “We’ve got the woman going into the room at eleven-eighteen and coming out at eleven-twenty.”
“Two minutes. She moved fast,” said Allam.
“Yessir,” said Kate. “She knew what she was looking for.”
Onscreen a corridor appeared. It was a typical government office building: linoleum floor, message boards on the wall. The color picture was grainy but in focus, as promised. A time code ran in the upper right-hand corner. At 11:15 the camera shook violently.
“There goes the bomb,” said Graves.
Seconds later the first of the building’s occupants began to file out of their offices. The trickle grew to a flood, and by 11:18 the corridor had emptied.
“Here she comes now. Keep your eye on the bottom of the screen. Can’t miss her.”
At 11:18:45, a figure entered the screen from the bottom left, moving against the current of workers, and walked directly to conference room 3F. The figure was moving rapidly, her face ducking the camera. Still, her attire was easily identifiable. Jeans. Black T-shirt. And, of course, there was the hair.