Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [71]
“If it is the men we’re after, and you lose them, what will your division chief do?”
“It certainly wouldn’t be my fault for going by the book. Do you have any idea what it costs to redirect a satellite? More per hour than flying a 747.”
This was why Stanley admired the Cavalry. Their operations incurred collateral damage—put bluntly, innocents fell victim to cross fire—but at least there was action.
“Nobody’s answering,” Javier called down from the bridge, mystified.
Corbitt relented, cabling the chief of the Latin America division, who flashed the satellite request to headquarters.
Twenty-one minutes later, headquarters approved a redirect. Thirty-four minutes after that, the Latin America desk had a picture. Given the analysts’ subsequent assessment that the cigarette boat had landed at one of fourteen small islands within a fifty-eight-minute radius of the detention center, that imagery came approximately three minutes too late.
It was hard to believe, but the nuclear weapon inspection site was idyllic, a sparkling white beach ringing a secluded clear blue lagoon. A canopy of palm fronds provided both shade and protection from eyes in the sky. While Drummond lay against a coconut palm, watching the gentle waves curl and whiten, Charlie stood on the beach alongside a slight, bespectacled man of about forty who had introduced himself as Dr. Gulmas Jinnah, nuclear physicist. They watched Bream and his brawny “associate”—whom he called Corky—haul the washing machine off the beached cigarette boat.
Jinnah certainly looked the part of a scientist—he was thin enough that Charlie would have believed he absentmindedly forgot to eat. In spite of the high temperature, the man wore a starched white long-sleeved dress shirt and a tie.
“So you are from where?” he asked.
“Brooklyn.” Charlie hadn’t anticipated that the serious man, about to inspect a nuclear weapon, would shoot the breeze.
“I so would love to go to New York City someday.”
Charlie took that to mean that New York City wasn’t the bomb’s destination.
“How about you?” he ventured. “Where are you from?”
“Lahore. Underrated city. Definitely worth a visit if it were not for the strife in the Punjab. I hope we shall see a resolution to it soon.”
According to Alice, a Muslim separatist group from the Punjab had dispatched representatives to Martinique to purchase the ADM the same day that Fielding died. Charlie now speculated that, having left Martinique empty-handed, the same group had devised the rendition plan.
Taking into account Bream’s tight timetable for the delivery of the bomb, Charlie asked, “So you figure the strife will end with the ‘special occasion’?”
“What special occasion?”
“Isn’t there a special event in India a few days from now?”
“Vasant Panchami?”
“What’s Vasant Panchami again?”
“It’s a Hindu festival celebrating Saraswati, who many believe is a goddess of music and art.”
“So the ADM will be part of the Vasant Panchami fireworks?”
Jinnah stared at Charlie as if he were speaking an alien tongue.
“I take it Vasant Panchami’s not the day you’re planning to detonate the bomb?” Charlie said.
“Detonate the bomb?”
“What else would you do with it?”
The Indian drew away. “I am here on behalf of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay. Our aim is to prevent illegal arms dealers like your father from selling such weapons to parties who would not hesitate to detonate them—for instance, the terrorists in the Punjab.”
Jinnah was an excellent liar, Charlie thought, or an even better cutout.
What mattered was that Jinnah was not an excellent physicist, or at least that his arsenal of electronic gauges would fail to detect that the ADM’s uranium pit contained the enriched uranium version of fool’s gold.
After a careful examination, the Indian deemed the weapon “the real deal,” to the satisfaction of everyone but himself.