Everyone took their places at the table. Sarov had placed himself at the head, with Alex on one side of him, Kiriyenko on the other. The doors opened and the waitresses came back in, this time with bowls brimming over with tiny black eggs which Alex recognized as caviar. Presumably Sarov had it directly imported from the Black Sea -it must have been worth many thousands of pounds. Russians traditionally drink vodka with caviar, and as the bowls were positioned around the table, the guests were each given a small tumbler filled to the brim.
Then Sarov stood up.
“My friends,” he began. “I hope you will forgive me if I address you in English. There is unfortunately one guest at this table who has yet to learn our glorious language.”
There were smiles around the table and a few heads nodded in Alex’s direction. Alex looked down at the tablecloth, unsure how to respond.
“This is for me a night of great significance. What can I tell you about Boris Nikita Kiriyenko? He has been my closest and dearest friend for more than fifty years! It is strange to think that I can still remember him as a child who teased animals, who cried when there was a fight, and who never told the truth.” Alex glanced at Kiriyenko. The president was frowning. Sarov was presumably joking, but the joke had failed to amuse his guest. “It is even harder to believe this is the same man who has been entrusted with the privilege, the sacred honour, of leading our great country in these difficult times. Well, Boris has come here for a holiday. I’m sure he needs one after so much hard work. And that is the toast that I wish to make tonight. To his holiday! I hope that it will be longer and more memorable than he ever expected.”
There was a brief silence. Alex could see that the guests were puzzled. Perhaps they’d had difficulty following Sarov’s English. But he suspected it was what he had said that had thrown them, not how he had said it. They had come expecting a good dinner, but Sarov seemed to be insulting the president of Russia!
“Alexei, my old friend!” the president said. Boris had decided that it was a joke. He smiled and continued in his thickly accented English. “Why do you not join us?” he asked.
“You know that I never drink spirits,” Sarov replied. “And I hope you will agree that at fourteen, my son is a little too young for vodka.”
“I drank my first vodka aged twelve!” the president muttered.
Somehow, Alex wasn’t surprised.
Kiriyenko lifted his glass. “Na zdarovie!” he said. They were about the only words of Russian that Alex understood. Your health!
“Na zdarovie!” Everyone round the table chorused the toast.
As one, they drank, throwing back the chilled vodka, as is traditional, in a single gulp.
Sarov turned to Alex. “Now it begins,” he said quietly.
One of the bodyguards was the first to react. He had been reaching out to help himself to caviar when suddenly his hands jerked, dropping his fork and plate with a crash. Every head turned towards him. A second later, at the other end of the table, one of the other men threw himself forward, head-first, onto the table, his chair capsizing underneath him. As Alex watched, his eyes wide with horror, every person at the table began to react in the same way. One of them fell backwards, dragging the tablecloth with him, glasses and cutlery cascading into his lap. Several of them simply slumped where they sat. Another of the bodyguards managed to get to his feet and was scrabbling for a gun underneath his jacket, but then his eyes glazed and he collapsed. Boris Kiriyenko was the last to go. He was standing, swaying on his feet like a wounded bull. His fist was clenched as if he knew he had been betrayed and wanted to strike out at the man who had done it. Then he sat down heavily. His chair tilted and he was thrown onto the floor.
Sarov muttered a few words in Russian.
“What have you done?” Alex gasped. “Are they…?”
“They are unconscious, not dead,” Sarov said. “They will, of course, have to be killed. But not yet.”
“What are you planning?” Alex demanded. “What is it you’re going to do?”
“We have a long journey,” Sarov said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
The entire compound was lit up. Men-guards and macheteros-were running everywhere. Alex was still dressed in the clothes he had worn for dinner. Sarov had changed into dark green military dress, this time without his medals. One of the black limousines was waiting. Conrad had driven up at the wheel of an army truck. As Alex watched, two more guards appeared at the main entrance of the Casa de Oro and began to walk down the wide steps. They were moving forward slowly, carrying something between them. The moment they appeared, everyone around them stopped.
It was a large silver chest about the size of a school trunk. Alex could just see that the top was flat metal, but that it had a number of switches and dials as well as some sort of slot device built into the side. Sarov watched while it was carried over and loaded into the truck. All the other men did the same, as if the two guards had just come out of a church and this was an an effigy of a saint. Alex shuddered. He knew exactly what he was looking at and didn’t need the Geiger counter to confirm it.
This was the nuclear bomb.
“Alex?” Sarov was holding the car door open for him. Dazed, Alex got in. He knew that he had reached the end. Sarov had shown his hand and put into action a series of events from which there could be no going back. And yet even now, at this late stage, he had no idea what the general intended to do.
Sarov sat next to him. A driver got in and they moved off, Conrad following behind in the truck. At the very last moment, as they passed through the barrier, Sarov glanced back, very briefly. Alex saw the look in his eyes and knew that he had no intention ever to return. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but he said nothing. This wasn’t the time. Sarov was sitting quietly, his hands on his knees. But even he couldn’t disguise the tension. Years of planning must have been building up to this.
They drove down darkened roads with just occasional flickers of light showing that the island was actually inhabited. No other cars came their way. After about ten minutes, they began to pass buildings. Looking out of the window, Alex saw men and women sitting in front of their houses, drinking rum, playing cards, smoking cigarettes or cigars beneath the night sky. They were on the outskirts of Santiago and suddenly they turned down a road that Alex recognized. He had taken it on the way in. They were going to the airport.
This time there was no security, no queues for passport control. Sarov didn’t even have to enter the main terminal building. Two airport guards were waiting for him at a gate which was opened to allow him to drive straight onto the runway. The truck followed. Alex looked over the driver’s shoulder and saw a plane, a Lear jet, parked on its own. They stopped.
“Out,” Sarov said.
There was a breeze blowing across the airport runway, carrying with it the smell of aviation fuel. Alex stood on the tarmac, watching as the silver chest was loaded onto the plane, Conrad shouting instructions. He found it hard to believe that such an ordinary-looking thing could be capable of destruction on a massive scale. He remembered films he had seen. Flames and gale force winds rushing through whole cities, ripping them apart. Buildings crumbling. People turned to ashes in an instant. Cars and buses flicked like toys into oblivion. How could such a terrible bomb with so much power be so small? Conrad closed the cargo door himself. He turned to Sarov and nodded. Sarov gestured. Unwillingly, Alex walked forward and climbed the steps into the plane. Sarov was right behind him. Conrad and the two men who had been carrying the bomb followed. The door of the plane was closed and sealed.