CHAPTER 9
He was still struggling to come to terms with the truth and still staring into the fridge when Heather and Hari returned from the hall.
‘Ah.’ Hari came to see. ‘It is C4 plastic explosive?’
‘It’s Semtex. You can tell by the smell. C4’s a sort of off-white colour and it doesn’t smell much.’ Coburn shut the door. ‘I know what all this is about. I know the whole damn thing.’
‘You mean you know it is your friend the truck driver who has been here?’
‘Not just that. What I said — everything. I’ve got it all figured out.’
Heather didn’t believe him. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ she said, ‘well, nothing except for you throwing me across the room, and your fridge being booby-trapped.’
‘It’s not Armstrong.’ Coburn went to sit down. ‘It never has been. And it’s not the International Marine Bureau. I don’t think it’s O’Halloran either.’
She pulled up a chair for herself. ‘All right then,’ she said, ‘who is it?’
‘The US Government.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ She frowned. ‘How can it be? Why on earth would the US Government be paying someone to kill you?’
‘Because you and I are in their way. Because they’re shit scared that sooner or later one of us is going to work out the real reason why the crew of the Rybinsk died of radiation sickness, and why those kids were run over at the beach.’
She still had a frown on her face. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Yes, you do. Think for a minute. The Americans had no idea you had a job at Fauzdarhat. They didn’t know you had a godfather who’d get in touch with the IMB, and they sure as hell weren’t expecting the IMB to send me to find you in Bangladesh.’
‘Are you saying all this started because of the Rybinsk?’
‘It all started because of Iraq. The US Administration knows they’ve dug themselves a hole they can’t get out of. They might be a superpower, but they haven’t got a friend left in the world. In Afghanistan they’re losing the battle against the Taliban. They’re worried sick about Iran. They’re making the Israeli — Palestinian problem worse, and they’re hated by every Muslim country you can think of. But the biggest problem they think they have isn’t any of those: it’s North Korea.’
The implications hadn’t passed Hari by. ‘You believe the American Government wishes to stop the covert development of nuclear weapons by North Korea?’
‘You can bet on it. The US doesn’t trust the Kim Jong regime, and they know damn well that if Pyongyang wants to carry on with its weapons programme, it’ll just be shifted underground where satellites can’t see it and no one’s going to find it.’
‘I see.’ Hari produced his lighter. ‘May I be permitted to smoke in your apartment?’
Coburn smiled. ‘Help yourself. There’s still beer in the fridge if you want one.’
‘For myself I prefer not to open the door. So you are suggesting that the Americans have decided to overcome their difficulties with North Korea in a clever way?’
Coburn nodded. ‘Washington knows the American public won’t stand for any more armed interventions, and the US Government won’t risk attacking North Korea by themselves because they can’t afford an international backlash that would damage their trade balance and maybe cut off their oil supplies. That’s why they had to come up with a better idea.’
Heather put her hands behind her head. ‘Which you’re saying is the Rybinsk.’
‘Not just the Rybinsk. This is a whole lot bigger than a ship arriving in Bangladesh with a sick crew. It’s one bloody great set-up on a world scale. It has been right from the beginning.’
‘To do what?’
‘Justify a pre-emptive strike at North Korea. The US Administration has launched a programme to get the American public on side and make other countries think that the Pyongyang Government is such a threat that unless someone does something, nuclear war’s just around the corner.’ Coburn paused. ‘We’ve uncovered the biggest and nastiest public relations exercise anyone’s ever tried to pull off — one that Washington’s not about to let me screw up for them.’
‘Well, aren’t you clever?’ In spite of her sarcasm, Heather was looking more thoughtful. ‘All this was written on a big sign inside your fridge, was it?’
Coburn grinned. ‘Don’t you want to know why the Rybinsk is the key?’
‘Not if you’re going to say it was the Americans who arranged to have that radioactive waste hidden on board.’
‘That’s exactly who it was. It all fits. If you were given the job of creating false information that’s going to convince a whole lot of ordinary Americans to support the idea of a US strike against North Korea, how would you go about it?’
‘I don’t know.’ She frowned. ‘I haven’t thought about it.’
‘I’ll tell you what you’d do. Step one: you get on a plane to Russia where you buy yourself a bunch of Kalashnikovs and some blackmarket nuclear waste. You crate everything up, stick on false labels addressed to Plant 38 and Bureau 39 in North Korea and hide the crates on board the Rybinsk before it sails from Vladivostok. Are you with me so far?’
She nodded.
‘OK. Step two: when the Rybinsk arrives at Fauzdarhat with its crew half-dead from radiation, you make a quick trip to Bangladesh and hire yourself a truck and some local bad guys to help you retrieve the nuclear stuff. On your drive down to the beach you stop beside the road and make an anonymous phone call to the army barracks in Chittagong to say that a truckful of armed men are heading for shipyard four.
‘Step three: you deliberately leave the guns behind along with a piece of label torn off the crate you’re taking away. After that it’s easy. To make sure the Rybinsk hits headlines around the world, and that the international media pays attention, on your way back from the beach you get your men to kill all the soldiers who arrive, shoot as many shipyard workers as you can and run over a whole lot of innocent kids.’
By now Heather was ahead of him. ‘Step four,’ she said. ‘Arrange for the US Counter-Proliferation Centre to send someone to Fauzdarhat to investigate.’
‘Right. O’Halloran didn’t know it, but he was being used. Once he’d connected all the dots, he came up with exactly the answer the Americans wanted him to come up with. He had a poisoned crew, residual radiation from a missing crate and labels addressed to Plant 38 and Bureau 39. And if that didn’t give him the message about North Korea, he had guns, dead soldiers, dead shipyard workers and the children. Pity none of us realized the whole thing was a crock of shit. O’Halloran thought he’d cracked it, and you and I believed him.’
‘What about step five?’
Coburn hadn’t got that far. ‘Which is?’
She smiled at him. ‘Keep reminding people about what happened, and keep pumping up the story to feed public paranoia in the States. Then, when you’ve got all the mileage you can out of Bangladesh, do the same sort of thing in other places so it looks as though North Korea is buying arms from everywhere, selling arms to terrorists and getting more dangerous by the day. We know that’s happening because of all those news reports.’
‘Which is why I’ve got half a pound of Semtex sitting in my fridge. Every time Armstrong’s tried to find out something for me by asking questions in the wrong places, all he’s done is make Washington more nervous about me getting closer to the truth.’
Hari went to the sink and extinguished his cigarette. ‘Uncovering the truth does not make you safe,’ he said. ‘If you are right you must assume the Americans will try again to kill you.’