“And did the Sauds change?” Chapel asked.
“You tell me?”
“Not a lot.”
“What they did begin doing was financing a lot of radical Islamic groups to make it look like they took their promise of Wahhabism seriously. They might not practice it, but they were certainly going to preach it.”
“And so we get Hijira,” said Chapel. “I can see why Gabriel’s family would be upset. But whom do they want to get even with? The Saudis for corrupting their religion in the first place? The French for helping put down the rebellion? The Americans for exporting their cultural drivel into their country?”
Sarah answered matter-of-factly. “Why, all of them, of course.”
Mordecai Kahn picked his way among the nude bodies, lifting his feet gingerly, squinting to adjust to the amber-hued dark. He had no desire to observe these people engaged in the most intimate act, yet he couldn’t help but look at them, if only so he would not stumble. There was little joy in their pursuits. The men moved brusquely, without tenderness or passion. The women bore an expression he could best describe as “suffering for their art.” Groans came and went. Gasps. Occasionally, even something that might pass for pleasure. And always the piped-in dance music, the steady beat, the trebly vocals.
A hand clamped his leg, and he froze, horrified. The hand belonged to a recumbent woman. She was svelte and from what he could make out, attractive. Several men had gathered around her, masturbating. Her free hand aided first one, then another. Apparently, she desired one more. Kahn freed his leg and moved on without speaking.
It took some time, but he managed to find a dark recess where he could stand without peering at any active men or women. Like the others in the wandering suite of rooms they called “Bilitis’s Vineyard,” he was naked, except for the elastic wristband that held a key and a pendant engraved with the number forty-seven. One floor below in a rickety wooden locker he could pick with a paper clip, the package sat in a briefcase covered by his clothing.
He had made it. Tel Aviv to Paris. Three thousand miles in four days. He was tired, hungry, anxious, and elated, all at once. In a few minutes, he would receive the final payment, his salary for what remained of his life. It was a bargain for what lay inside the briefcase.
Kahn imagined the compact weapon. They had named it “Salome,” after the biblical dancer who had asked for the head of John the Baptist on a plate. The neat stainless steel casing hardly larger than two packs of cigarettes contained fifty grams of plutonium-239 in a fissile core. Technically, it would be called a “fusion-boosted fission weapon” utilizing an implosion design. A thin outer shell of plutonium would be driven inward by an explosive charge at a velocity of five kilometers per second. The impact of the outer shell on the center plutonium sphere would create two high-pressure shock waves, one traveling to the center of the shell, the other outward. The resulting pressure would compress the plutonium to four times its normal density. The collapse of the central sphere would crush the fusion fuel in its center. A chain reaction would ensue, resulting in a one-kiloton blast, the equivalent of ten tons of TNT. The design was hardly revolutionary. Similar bombs had been in production for thirty years. Kahn’s genius was to create an explosive compound so powerful that only thirty grams were needed to initiate the chain reaction. This, along with the huge strides made in microchip technology that had reduced the components of the firing mechanism by a scale of ten, resulted in a significant miniaturization of the weapon.
Stealing the device had not proved difficult. It was merely a question of defeating the biometric security mechanisms governing entry and exit to and from the research and development laboratory. Only a small cadre of vetted scientists was allowed inside. A fingerprint scanner confirmed each scientist’s identity. A scale recorded his weight and was calibrated to allow a variance of one pound from the time he entered to the time he left. Security was designed with a single goaclass="underline" to prevent the theft of any of the devices being developed and constructed deep below the earth at the Eilbrun facility.
Kahn’s challenge was to convince the scanner and the scale that he was another man. Someone who weighed exactly 4.3 pounds more than he. That man was his friend and colleague of twenty years, Dr. Lev Meyerman. Meyerman, who stood five foot five inches to Kahn’s six foot two. Meyerman, who weighed one hundred eighty-one pounds to Kahn’s one hundred seventy-six. Eyeballing his friend’s weight was not a possibility. Kahn was a man of science and approximation reeked of luck. The task demanded he take matters into his own hands, and if it was not science that supplied the answer, it was, at least, social engineering.
For months, Kahn pressed Meyerman to diet. Each day, he accompanied him on lunchtime walks around the complex’s perimeter. Each day, he lectured him on the benefits of fruits and vegetables. Together, they monitored the shorter, huskier man’s weight as it dropped from two hundred pounds to one hundred ninety, one hundred eighty-five, and finally, to one hundred eighty-one pounds.
Beating the fingerprint scanner demanded less finesse. Kahn lifted latent prints of the man’s index finger from Meyerman’s morning bottle of Perrier. Using cyanoacrylate adhesive fumes, more commonly known as Krazy Glue, he enhanced the fingerprints and photographed them with a digital camera. Adobe PhotoShop sharpened the contrast of every ridge and whorl. When printed onto a transparent sheet, the resulting reproduction was impeccable.
Using a photosensitive circuit board he’d purchased at RadioShack in Tel Aviv and the transparency, Kahn etched the fingerprint into the copper board, effectively creating a mold.
As for the “finger,” he’d had the ingredients all along. Five gummy bears melted on a Bunsen burner provided the gelatin with which to shape the last joint of an index finger. As the “finger” cooled, he pressed its tip against the circuit board. The impression was perfect. Lifelike. The scanner, which did not measure body heat, was fooled. In the end, Kahn walked out of the laboratory with Salome inside his jacket and a nonfunctional prototype left behind in the vault.
Kilotons. Plutonium. Fissile Material.
The words scalded Kahn’s tongue. Tomorrow, he would be free of this devil’s lexicon. His duty-as an Israeli, a Zionist, and a father-fulfilled, he would fly south to Madrid, then on to Cape Town. The city housed a prominent colony of Jews: seekers, strivers, pioneers like him. He would fit in nicely. He hoped for a teaching post. High school physics would suit him, as would chemistry, or even Hebrew. It was time to give back.
A hand touched his shoulder and Kahn flinched uncomfortably. Who was it now? Another potbellied Romeo? A saggy-breasted matron seeking gratification from a skinny old Jew? Turning, he found himself looking at the man with the smiling eyes.
“Good evening, friend,” said Marc Gabriel. “You are a long way from home.”
Chapter 47
Admiral Owen Glendenning stared in disbelief at the printout of Adam Chapel’s monthly account activity at the Hunts Bank. “When did you discover this?” he asked Bobby Freedman.
Allan Halsey answered in his subordinate’s stead. “Bobby came across the info a little more than an hour ago,” he began. “He was-”
“I believe I asked Mr. Freedman,” Glendenning interrupted.
“Yes, sir.”
The three men were standing at the back of the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center’s operations room at CIA headquarters in Langley. An uncharacteristic calm hung over the auditorium. Glendenning was bleary-eyed and scruffy. He’d slept ten hours since Blood Money had begun its search for Hijira. “Well, Mr. Freedman, I’m waiting.”