Eugene asked Blakey if there was anything they could do before the Fourth of July party and Blakey said that they could get the NSA to monitor telephones and e-mail addresses that were registered to key Pakistani personnel and try to find out whether there were any contacts with Nagib and Alia. He added that best thing would be to contact their man at the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and find out if there was any word of blueprints of advanced designs turning up. Eugene commented that he had heard that when cellular phones were invented no one could wipe the smile off the faces of the NSA director. He believed that even the tiniest bit of communication would be recorded on the agency's powerful computers and analyzed by human experts or sophisticated software so the "bad guys" (and countless innocents) would have nowhere to hide, something that was confirmed by Edward Snowden who was considered by some as a whistleblower and by others as a renegade. The nightmare of the NSA director was soon to become a common reality — cheap, unregistered prepaid SIM cards and single-use SIM chips or burn-phones. These devices combined with terrorists, or other people who were up to no good according to the NSA hit-list, who were reasonably intelligent enough not to use words that would obviously trigger the automatic monitoring system, made the task of randomly following the "bad guys" practically a futile exercise.
Blakey agreed that the chances of the NSA striking gold were pretty slim and did what old agents liked to do — rely on HUMINT or human intelligence provided by flesh and blood agents and not by computers or machines. So he summoned Linda to his office and when the young woman walked in Eugene saw the intelligent look in her eyes and her athletic body that was honed on the soccer field of her college and had a feeling that she could be trusted. After the brief introductions Eugene outlined the situation. Linda asked some astute questions about the form in which the information will be handed over to the Pakistanis and what it contained. Eugene said that it would probably be electronic files as no hardcopies were taken from the Lab although they could have been printed since the disappearance of the couple. The files contained classified designs and blueprints that were highly sensitive. Linda said she could imagine what kind of designs but a warning look from Blakey stopped her before she could elaborate. She asked about the time frame and Blakey told her that the couple had arrived in Islamabad less than two days earlier but there was no trace of their whereabouts. Eugene said that the data would probably be given to the PAEC scientists within a day or two. Linda said she would contact Alma and make sure that she met with her scientist lover, Jairo, within a couple of days. Linda said she would discretely direct Alma how to obtain the information.
Rahman arrived at the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence service and went straight to General Masood's office. Rahman saw that there were two other men in the spacious room. The general was expecting him and as soon as he entered the office the general and the other two men stood up and gave him a quiet applause. Masood introduced the older man as Professor Abdul Malick, a physicist and senior research scientist with PAEC, and the younger man as Dr. Khadim Ansari, an engineer with the Kahuta Project. Masood said that he had already given the two gentlemen a brief description of the classified material that was now in their possession without specifying who brought it to the Pakistan intelligence service and where it had come from, although the logo of Los Alamos National Laboratory testified to its source. Masood explained that the blueprints they now had were the most advanced designs of small, tactical warheads, but the "treasure chest", as he called the asset, had detailed designs for many more nuclear devices that were more powerful than anything in Pakistan's arsenal.
Rahman inserted the San Disk flash memory with the design of the small nuclear device in Masood's computer and switched on the overhead projector. Meanwhile the general pressed a button on his desk and the window shutters closed, so as soon as the projector's lamp reached its full luminosity even the most minor details could be clearly seen. The two scientists took a few minutes to study the images of the completed weapons that were displayed and then went over the detailed cross-sections of the components. The scientists talked to one another, completely ignoring the general and Rahman, and from the looks on their faces it was obvious that they were taken by surprise by the innovative design. After a few minutes Prof. Malick said that they were impressed by the simplicity and sophistication of the weapon and added that although the Pakistani arsenal had a weapon of similar geometrical dimensions the yield of the US design they were watching was probably higher by a factor of 10 or 20, making it equivalent to the large first generation atomic bombs like those used against Japan. Masood was extremely pleased with the response and asked Dr. Ansari how long it would take PAEC to produce two of these warheads. Here the scientists went into a short conference, once again ignoring the general and Rahman, and said that although all the mechanical parts were easily copied — they had the proper machinery and construction materials on hand — the core of the device that contained the fissionable material was made of an alloy of plutonium that they were not familiar with. In addition, they said, the quality of the plutonium used in the core, super-weapon grade plutonium that contained over 99 % of the fissionable plutonium-239, was something that Pakistan had never produced.
Seeing the question forming of General Masood's lips, the Professor went into his teaching mode and gave a short lecture on the production of plutonium. He explained that plutonium was produced in a nuclear reactor fueled with uranium. When a fertile uranium-238 atom captured a neutron it could be transmuted into plutonium-239, the fissionable atom used in nuclear weapons. The amount of plutonium produced in a reactor depended on the burn-up of the uranium fuel — more irradiation produced more plutonium. However, there was a catch — if irradiation continued some of the plutonium-239 also captured a neutron and was converted to the undesirable plutonium-240, and with further neutron captures even heavier isotopes of plutonium would be formed. Each of these complicated the construction of an efficient nuclear weapon. Plutonium-240 had a tendency to spontaneously emit neutrons that could lead to a premature ignition of a chain-reaction and low yield or even a fizzle of the weapon. Plutonium-241 decayed to form americium-241 that emitted powerful gamma radiation that could deleteriously affect the conventional explosives used to compress the plutonium to a critical mass that enabled the chain-reaction to proceed. Rahman and Masood looked at each other for a moment and then asked why that concerned the scientists so the Professor explained that Pakistan had needed a lot of bombs quickly that required a lot of plutonium, and therefore the burn-up of fuel in Pakistani reactors was higher, leading to larger fractions of plutonium-240 and plutonium-241 and only about 93 % plutonium-239. Thus the plutonium that Pakistan possessed may not be suitable for the advanced design brought to them. The general said that as far as he understood plutonium was plutonium and the whole lecture was just a waste of his time. The scientists protested but the now furious general said that if they couldn't deliver he would find other scientists who could. Rahman was taken aback by the general's blatant reaction and tried to get everybody to calm down and discuss the matter in terms of scientific and engineering principles and see what could be done. He suggested that they convene a board of scientists to see how to overcome the problems raised by the professor.