The sum of all fears - Tom Clancy [126]
Qati's head turned at that. The thought had already occurred to him, but he was too good a leader for that. Ghosn might not be the material of a fighter, but he was an expert at what he did. His service to the organization was as valuable as any man's. The Commander endured the rest of the ride in silence, wishing the medicines he was taking allowed him to eat - no, to retain what he ate.
Fifteen minutes later, Ghosn parked his jeep fifty meters from the shop, and led his Commander to the building by an indirect route. By this time Qati was thoroughly confused and more than a little angry. When the lights went on, he saw the bombcase.
"So, what about it?"
"Come here." Ghosn led him to the corner. The engineer bent down and lifted the tool box. "Behold!"
"What is it?" It looked like a small cannonball, a sphere of metal. Ghosn was enjoying this. Qati was angry, but that would soon change.
"It's plutonium."
The commander's head snapped around as though driven by a steel spring. "What? What do-"
Ghosn held up his hand. He spoke softly, but positively. "What I am sure of, Commander, is that this is the explosive portion of an atomic bomb. An Israeli atomic bomb."
"Impossible!" the Commander whispered.
"Touch it," Ghosn suggested.
The Commander bent down and touched a finger to it. "It's warm, why?"
"From the decay of alpha particles. A form of radiation that is not harmful - here it is not, in any case. That is plutonium, the explosive element of an atomic bomb. It can be nothing else."
"You're sure?"
"Positive, absolutely positive. It can only be what I say it is." Ghosn walked over to the bombcase. "These -" he held up some tiny electronic parts "- they look like glass spiders, no? They are called kryton switches, they perform their function with total precision, and that kind of precision is necessary for only one application found inside a bombcase. These explosive blocks, the intact ones, note that some are hexagons, some are pentagons? That is necessary to make a perfect explosive sphere. A shaped charge, like that for an RPG, but the focus is inward. These explosive blocks are designed to crush that sphere to the size of a walnut."
"But it's metal! What you say is not possible."
"Commander, I do not know as much as I should of these matters, but I do know a little. When the explosives go off, they compress that metal sphere as though it were made of rubber. It is possible - you know what an RPG does to the metal on a tank, no? There is enough explosive here for a hundred RPG projectiles. They will crush the metal as I say. When it is compressed, the proximity of the atoms begins a nuclear chain-reaction. Think, Commander: The bomb fell into the old man's garden on the first day of the October War. The Israelis were frightened by the force of the Syrian attack, and they were immensely surprised by the effectiveness of the Russian rockets. The aircraft was shot down, and the bomb was lost. The exact circumstances don't matter. What matters, Ismael, is that we have the parts of a nuclear bomb." Ghosn pulled out another cigarette and lit it.
"Can you "
"Possibly," the engineer said. Qati's face was suddenly cleared of the pain he'd known for over a month.
"Truly Allah is beneficent."
"Truly He is. Commander, we need to think about this, very carefully, very thoroughly. And security "
Qati nodded. "Oh, yes. You did well to bring me here alone. For this matter we can trust no one no one at all " Qati let his voice trail off, then turned to his man. "What do you need to do?"
"My first need is for information - books, Commander. And do you know where I must go to get them?"
"Russia?"
Ghosn shook his head. "Israel, Commander. Where else?"
Representative Alan Trent met with Ryan in a House hearing room. It was the one used for closed-door hearings, and was swept daily for bugs.
"How's life treating you, Jack?" the congressman asked.
"No special complaints, Al. The President had a good day."
"Indeed he did - the whole world did. The country owes