The Spanish police had no difficulty in locating Dr. Smalley and arresting him as he was too intoxicated to resist or even understand the charges against him. Before he sobered up he was already on a plane to London under heavy guard. When confronted by Thomas he was shocked to hear that the man he knew as Ollie was a convert to Islam and not the racist, rabid hater of Muslims and foreigners, as he had presented himself. Jay broke down and confessed all, except the connection with Dooley whom he believed remained his only ally. He felt that he had been led on by Ollie and played as a fool by him and sought revenge so he told Thomas all about the laboratory in Padova. Thomas already knew about the laboratory, and about the professor and the device, but wanted to get more details concerning the device from the very person who had manufactured it.
Dr. Jay described the device and mentioned all the difficulties and potential pitfalls. He said the core of the improvised nuclear device consisted of a sphere containing about 12 kg of U-233 metal. The core was completely surrounded by an array of shaped high explosive charges. The explosives were provided by Ollie who said they were purchased from a North Korean official who also supplied them with fast detonators of the type used in nuclear devices. Each shaped charge had a small slot drilled into it to provide a hole into which the detonators were to be inserted. All the detonators were wired to the timing mechanism. Smalley proudly told Thomas that it was designed by him based on his experience in AWE, in a way that would assure simultaneous activation of all the detonators. He explained that the detonation of the high explosives would compress the U-233 core to a supercritical configuration, just like the implosion bomb developed by the US during WWII. The whole system weighed a few hundred kilograms and was packed in a thin steel shell with inserts for the detonators. He also explained that a standard car battery powered the whole device and an alarm clock would be used to trigger the device. Thomas asked how the device was armed and Smalley said that the detonators had to be inserted in the slots, connected to the timing mechanism and the battery and could be dismantled by simply disconnecting the battery. Thomas then asked whether there were any health hazards and Smalley laughed and said that no one would feel comfortable sitting next to a few hundred kilograms of high explosives or if the device fell on someone's foot it could be painful. Thomas was not amused by this answer and asked if there was any radiation emitted from the U-233 core and Smalley replied that there was a slow build-up of decay products from the U-232 impurity, and particularly one of those, thallium-208 had a nasty energetic gamma ray that easily penetrated through the layer of high explosives and thin steel shell. This radiation could be detected from a distance of a few meters. He also added that during the production of the U-233, the workers at the Padova laboratory would have been exposed to gamma radiation and the longer they worked with the material the higher the risk. He stated that he had noticed some symptoms of radiation sickness in Professor Modena's behavior but thought that the other workers would not be at a serious risk because of the short duration of the project.
Thomas thanked him for the information and said that his cooperation might help reduce his prison sentence or at least allow him to get better treatment in jail. Smalley said that he would like to know what happened to Ollie and wished him to burn slowly in hell. Thomas then conveyed all the information provided by Jay to the members of the international task force and mentioned that it corroborated the information given by Stavros under duress.
The Panamax class cargo ship from Limassol arrived at the port of Haifa with 3,568 containers on board. The unloading was routinely executed and the ship was quickly ready to take on a new load of containers with goods exported from Israel. All the offloaded containers were placed in the port's holding area until custom officials examined their documents and cleared them. Since the radiation detectors were closed down for periodic maintenance, once the containers cleared customs they were loaded on trucks and transferred by land to their destinations without any further checks.
The container marked as "agricultural machinery" was placed on a truck and transported to the Khodori Institute in Tulkarm. Crossing over from Israel into the territory of the Palestinian Authority involved a long delay at both checkpoints but no special examinations of the container's content were carried out. Dr. Anwar El-Alami, the dean of research at the school, had been told that a container with agricultural machinery would be delivered to the institute but he was not to open it until the technician whose job was to install the equipment arrived. El-Alami was not used to having containers delivered to his poorly equipped school and was even more surprised by the directive not to open it. He inspected the container and saw that it was closed with a stamped, tamperproof seal, so had no option but to abide by his orders. He tried to enquire from the driver when the technician was expected but the driver said that he did not have any information. He then looked through the shipping documents and saw that Rijeka was the port of origin and the container had been transferred from one ship to another in Bari, Italy and again in Limassol, Cyprus, before reaching Haifa. He went back into his office and tried to locate Rijeka on the map and found that it was in Croatia but that did not give him a clue about the contents of the container.
Chapter 13
Ollie was pleased that the tour group had reached Jerusalem after two days in the Tel Aviv area and two days in the Galilee. In Tel Aviv he felt the pulse of this vibrant city, where traffic near the promenade along the beach at 2 am was almost as busy as in the middle of the day. The cafés, restaurants and beaches were full of people laughing, singing and having a good time. The beaches were crowded from morning to night and he saw the so many good looking girls of all ages wherever he cast his sight that he started to imagine the 72 virgins awaiting the faithful who died as Shahids, only he wasn't quite sure whether there were that many virgins among the beach goers. The group was taken to old Jaffa to get a taste of the night life, quite unexpected for a pilgrimage tour of the Holy Land.
His tried to chill his relationship with Lena once they settled in their hotel room since he didn't need the cover of a lover anymore. But Lena would not let this handsome man slip away so easily and to avoid having a big public row that would raise the suspicion of the rest of the group he had to play along. He particularly detested spending the nights in their king sized bed as he quickly found out that below her plain surface she had a voracious sexual appetite that had probably not been satisfied too often. Her looks belied the fact that she was very playful and inventive in bed. Ollie thought about the wild times he had spent with Agda and tried to blow off steam and vent his anger and frustration with Lena the same way, but she would have none of that rough business in bed. When he tried slapping her gently, as he had done with Agda, she turned red and became so indignant that she threatened to go to the police. So Ollie accepted this unexpected form of punishment and after the second night started to enjoy her enthusiasm in love making. He recalled a saying of one of his friends from the days at Uppsala University about plain looking and even ugly and fat women. The friend had said that they were so grateful to whoever slept with them that they were willing to do anything and everything to please their mate. Lena's behavior provided good testimony of this — for a kiss, a hug or a smile from him, not to mention more passionate contact, she was ready to practically become his slave and worship him. Ollie thought that this could become useful for carrying out his future plans and meanwhile made the most of her eagerness and fervor in bed.