In fact, no peril had arisen from the transaction. Saddam had not produced a nuclear weapon for use against Iran, Israel, or the allied nations during the first Gulf War. With the eyes of the world upon him, the dictator could not openly pursue nuclear refinement technologies. But the weapons now posed a new sort of risk to the French government. If the inspectors from International Atomic Energy Agency found the detonators, it would be scandalously embarrassing to the French government. And now that victory in the war to oust Saddam ensured that every corner of the country would be scoured for anything relating to weapons research, such a discovery seemed inevitable.
But help had come from an unexpected source. An atomic scientist and UN official named Pierre Chiron, who had always been a thorn in the side of the Defense Ministry for his opposition to ongoing testing of France’s nuclear arsenal, had approached his long-time nemeses with a conciliatory offer. He believed he could locate the missing detonators, and with help from a commando team, secure or destroy them. The matter was given over to the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (General Directorate for External Security) who in turn handed the assignment to one of their top field officers: the woman who now called herself Rebecca Gault.
Rebecca immediately recognized the shipping containers. The numbers stenciled on each were identical to codes she had been given, but that was only the first step toward verification. She leaned close to the scattered pieces until her eyes fell on twin hemispheres, the disassembled halves of the primary detonator. The primary was essentially a conventional bomb: a layer of plastique, held in place by interlocking hexagons of solid titanium. However, the detonation alone would not be enough to initiate a critical reaction. Between the explosives and the solid plutonium core was a layer of neutron rich beryllium. In the instant of the blast, the metal skin of the ball would focus the energy inward, driving the neutrons into the core, where they would shatter the reactive plutonium atoms to trigger a runaway fission reaction. Without the core, the primary was still a dangerous explosive device, albeit one of relatively low yield, but plastique was relatively stable. She felt no trepidation as she lifted one of the hemispheres and turned it over. Each hexagonal plate was stamped with a unique serial number, verifying what she already knew to be true: this was unquestionably one of the detonators from the Ripault research center.
She broke the seals on the remaining cases and repeated the process with both detonators. “Mission accomplished,” she announced. She spent another two minutes packing blocks of Semtex from her combat pouch around the detonators. Into each square of the pliable explosive compound, she carefully inserted a three-volt blasting cap, all of which were linked together with spliced sections of speaker wire. When she was done, she walked backwards, spooling out the wire as she went, to link up with her comrades outside the laboratory.
In the time it had taken for her to authenticate the three nuclear devices, her team had set charges throughout the facility. She added her wire to the web, and connected them all to a single electronic timer. “Half an hour should be enough time for us to reach the surface again.” She directed her words to Chiron. “You will be returning with us?”
He nodded.
Rebecca bit her lip. She didn’t care what fate had befallen the scientist’s companions, or at least that’s what she kept telling herself. But she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the old dodderer had coldly killed them, which suggested that they were probably still alive somewhere, perhaps bound and gagged. It was Chiron’s intention to leave them here to be buried alive when the charges they had planted eventually went off.
Oh, well. It’s on his head.
His worst nightmare had come true. He was in the desert, surrounded by his enemies, and he was going to die here.
Saeed sighed wistfully and closed his eyes, trying to remember his villa on the French Riviera, but the memory was an elusive chimera. The gravity of his present situation was too strong for the magic of daydreams.
It had been a long night. After leaving their hiding place on the banks of the Euphrates, he and Farid had rendezvoused with a dozen of his brother’s most trusted compatriots. To a man, they despised Saeed. No doubt they had heard of his earlier life as an intelligence agent and minion of the hated dictator. But their hatred of the new enemy, the American invaders, was greater, and the old proverb held true: the enemy of their enemy was now their friend. Saeed had given them a target for their rage, and so he was to be tolerated, if only temporarily.
The desert crossing was no easy matter. Their destination lay far to the south, in the empty reaches of the Arabian desert. Saeed had never been there, but knew the longitude and latitude of the place well enough to plot the course on a map. Out here in the wilderness however, maps had little value. Every few kilometers, it was necessary to stop and check their heading against a compass reading, but even at that, they might be off by a few crucial degrees, which over the course of an all-night journey might translate into a navigational disaster.
To make matters worse, they had to steer an elaborate zig-zagging course in order to avoid what Saeed could only assume to be the probable reach of coalition patrols. As they cruised along, without the benefit of headlights, each man knew that at any moment they might be strafed by an Apache gun ship or obliterated by a TOW missile. Farid’s militants were philosophical. Inshallah—God willing—we will survive. Saeed could not share their ambivalence toward danger and was forced to put his faith in his own uncertain skills.
Whether by the grace of Allah, or his own abilities, Saeed led them true. As the sun began creeping over the horizon, they arrived at a rocky plateau, which rose from the sand like an island. Leaving behind the vehicles, they commenced a three-kilometer trek to a fissure that split the sandstone formation like a canyon. Yet, in spite of having survived the gauntlet, and the nearness of their destination, Saeed’s dread was multiplying like a virus; it was as if the desert was eating him alive.
He would feel better once Nick Kismet was dead.
“What now, brother?” inquired Farid, gazing over the lip into the chasm.
“There should be an opening in the wall. It is quite large, but impossible to see from the air.”
Farid squinted into the shadows. Through their sun-blasted eyes, it was difficult to differentiate anything in the darkness below. “I think I see it. But we have no rope.”
“This entrance was accessible only by helicopter,” Saeed volunteered.
His brother threw him a contemptuous glance. “We also have no helicopter. “ He began unwinding his kefiya, the traditional head covering which he wore like a turban for added protection from the scorching sun. His confederates, as if telepathically linked, did the same, and when knotted together, the woven scarves formed a cord about eight meters long.
Saeed regarded the improvised rope dubiously. “Will that hold a man’s weight?”
“Will it hold? Is it long enough?” Farid shrugged. “Inshallah, my brother.”
One end was tied around the stock of an AK-47, which was in turn braced by two of the now bareheaded desert fighters. Farid led the way, easing his wiry form over the edge to begin his descent. In a matter of seconds, he was low enough to swing inside a barely visible recess. One by one, the militants followed suit, until only Saeed and the two men holding the belay were left. One of them addressed him with barely veiled scorn. “You must go also.”