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"It is no place for a woman." Which was honest enough that his conscience allowed itself to relax a little. He finished his coffee. "I must be off."

"Hurry back."

Manfred Fromm kissed his wife and walked out the door. The BMW was not affected in the least by the fifty kilos of weight in the trunk. He waved to Traudl one last time before driving off. He gave the house a final look in the mirror, thinking, correctly, that he might not see it again.

His next stop was the Karl Marx Astronomical Institute. The single-story buildings were already showing their neglect, and it surprised him that vandals had not broken windows. The truck was already there. Fromm used his keys to let himself into the machine shop. The tools were still there, still in hermetically sealed crates, and the crates were still marked ASTROPHYSICAL INSTRUMENTS. It was just a matter of signing some forms he'd typed up the previous afternoon. The truck driver knew how to operate the propane-fueled forklift, and drove each crate into the container. Fromm took the batteries from the trunk of his car, and set them in a final, small box, which was loaded on last. It took him an additional half hour to chain things down in place, and then he drove off. He and 'Herr Professor Fromm' would meet again outside Rotterdam.

Fromm rendezvoused with Bock in Greifswald. They drove west in the latter's car - Bock was a better driver.

"How was home?"

"Traudl liked the money a great deal," Fromm reported.

"We'll send her more, at regular intervals every two weeks, I think."

"Good, I was going to ask Qati about that."

"We take care of our friends," Bock observed, as they passed over what had once been a border crossing. Now it was merely green.

"How long for the fabrication process?"

"Three months maybe four. We could go faster," Fromm said apologetically, "but remember that I have never actually done this with real material, only in simulation. There is absolutely no margin for error. It will be complete by the middle of January. At that point, it is yours to use." Fromm wondered, of course, what plans Bock and the others had for it, but that was not really his concern, was it? Doch.

CHAPTER 15

Development

Ghosn could only shake his head. He knew objectively that it resulted from the sweeping political changes in Europe, the effective elimination of borders attendant to the economic unification, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and headlong rush to join in the new European family. Even so, the hardest part of getting these five machine tools out of Germany and into his valley had been finding a suitable track at Latakia, and that had actually been rather difficult, since negotiating the road into where his shop lay had incomprehensibly been overlooked by everyone - including, he thought with some satisfaction, the German. Fromm was now observing closely as a gang of men labored to move the last of the five tools onto its table. Arrogant as he may have been, Fromm was an expert technologist. Even the tables had been built to exactly the right size, with ten centimeters of extra space around each tool so that one could rest a notebook. The backup generators and UPSs were in place and tested. It was just a matter of getting the tools set up and fully calibrated, which would take about a week.

Bock and Qati were observing the whole procedure from the far end of the building, careful to keep out of the way.

"I have the beginnings of an operational plan," Gunther said.

"You do not intend the bomb for Israel, then?" Qati asked. He was the one who would approve or disapprove the plan. He would, however, listen to his German friend. "Can you tell me of it yet?"

"Yes," Bock did so.

"Interesting. What of security?"

"One problem is our friend, Manfred - more properly, his wife. She knows his skills, and she knows he is away somewhere."

"I would have thought that killing her carries more risks than rewards."

"Ordinarily it would