Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [72]
Bream placed the satellite phone call, commencing Alice’s liberation, and video of her face flickered onto his satphone display, terribly out of focus. Still, Charlie drank it in.
The picture sharpened, revealing her to be standing outdoors, in a rural location, at nighttime. She was pale and, despite a parka and a thick woolen cap, shivering, exhaling streams of vapor that were illuminated by a streetlamp.
“Chuckles,” she exclaimed. Another of her safety codes. “How’s it going?”
“It’s a laugh a minute here,” he said, signifying all was well on his end. Relatively.
“And my other friend?”
Bream pushed a button near his mouthpiece, possibly initiating voice alteration. “Hang on,” he said. He angled the lens at Drummond, who had fallen asleep. “Captain, you have a call.”
Drummond rose wearily. He eyed the satphone’s display without recognition. “How are you?”
“Very excited about the prospect of using a ladies’ room without people watching me.”
“Oh.”
“Okay, enough chitchat.” Stuffing the satphone into a pocket, Bream waved at the washing machine. “Time for you fellas to step up to the plate.”
Charlie suddenly thought of all the things that might have gone wrong with the bomb’s delicate inner workings after sitting in a damp cave for weeks and then bouncing around the Caribbean. “Dad, do you remember how to use this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Drummond said. “I helped write the Perriman manual.”
“This is the souped-up model.”
“Oh, right. It isn’t an ordinary washing machine, is it?”
“Right.” Charlie felt the weight of his responsibility triple.
With a yawn, Drummond stepped to the water’s edge, then smiled as the bubbly surf trickled through his Crocs’ ventilation holes. Corky traced Drummond’s movements with an Uzi. In his late twenties with long tangles of sun-bleached hair, Bream’s associate could have passed for a surfer if it weren’t for the especially grim Grim Reaper tattooed over much of his back, its outsized bloody sickle curling around his neck.
Charlie carefully opened the washing machine’s lid. Even the fool’s gold of uranium was highly volatile, and it was hot enough inside the machine to broil a chicken. Hoping to sidestep the demonstration altogether, he pointed out the steel strip on the control panel. “The code is this sequence of fifteen numbers,” he said. “Five for each of the PAL knobs inside.”
“Ah.” Jinnah squinted. “Show us, if you please.”
“Yes, if you please,” Bream repeated, without any of the cordiality.
Charlie bent into the machine. He cleared a path through the jungle of wires to the permissive action links, three big numeric dials, like those on floor safes. If he were to misdial the fifteen numbers more than twice, an anti-hacker device would render the system unable to detonate. Or worthless for today’s purposes.
He carefully clicked to the first number, 37. Sweat stung his eyes. Millimeters at a time, so as not to dial past a number, he input the remaining two-digit numbers on the first dial, then began on the second.
In a bit under five minutes, though it seemed like well over an hour, he finished. Now, even if he had correctly entered the code, who was to say that the sensitive detonation mechanism still functioned?
The readout panel duct taped to the inside of the lid was lifeless. Then it began to glow a pale green. Black characters formed against the backdrop … 20:00. And a second later, 19:59.
Charlie pumped a fist. “Your turn,” he said to Bream.
His eyes on the readout and his face a shade whiter than before, Bream snapped open the satphone. “Okay,” he said into it. “Give her her bus fare and her parting gift.”
Alice’s captors had agreed to hand over ten 100-euro notes and a loaded gun before releasing her in proximity to public transportation, presumably somewhere in Europe. She would then tell Charlie that she was safe.
Bream showed his satphone to Charlie. On the display, Alice stuffed a sheaf of bills into her parka, checked the mag in a pistol, then walked backward, keeping the barrel leveled at whoever held the satphone on her end.
“We’re good, Chuckles,