the Dodge and ran forward. 'I was monitoring their set – they didn't get through the jamming…'
'Stop jabbering, Walgren, and get this thing open…'
LeCat found the keys inside Gibson's pocket and used them to open the back of the truck. Rows of steel boxes were stacked along either side of the truck and each box had a legend stencilled across its lid. LeCat started on the difficult task of levering off the padlock from one of the boxes with a wrench. 'Keep an eye on the bloody road,' he told Walgren as he strained at the heavy padlock. Then the hasp cracked. LeCat switched on his torch again, lifted the lid cautiously, stared inside. The box contained two large steel canisters, each protected with foam rubber to minimise travel shake.
LeCat lifted one canister out by its handle, grinning sourly as the American stepped away from the truck. 'Frightened, mon ami? This stuff is as safe as milk – until our associate, Antoine, has treated it. One five-kilogram canister would be more than enough, he said…'
He slid the canister carefully inside a reinforced carton Walgren had placed on the floor of the truck, a carton which was the right size because the American had known in advance the exact dimensions of the canister. Like the steel boxes, the canister carried the same warning legend. GEC, Morris, Illinois. Highly Dangerous -Plutonium.
On the night when LeCat attacked the armoured truck in Illinois, the plutonium was flown across the United States border aboard a Beechcraft piloted by Walgren, who had served with the US Army Airforce during the war. So while a huge dragnet was spread out south of the border, the plutonium canister was taken across Canada to Vancouver by car. As a precaution, LeCat kept the canister inside a house in Winnipeg for a few days, then, when it was clear that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had not spread its own dragnet, he completed his journey across the continent.
Antoine had to wait two weeks for the canister's arrival, but for the French physicist it was a busy fortnight. He constructed his laboratory in the large basement of the house from equipment LeCat had arranged to be delivered there. For a man of Antoine's background it was not too difficult; Walgren, using Arab money, had earlier found the engineering workshop by the simple process of consulting the 'for sale' section in trade magazines. There were plenty to choose from with so many small firms going bankrupt through the mounting energy crisis. And the nuclear physicist had just completed his preparations when LeCat delivered the plutonium late one evening at the end of March.
It took Antoine seven months to make the nuclear device.
During that time he never left the house on Dusquesne Street. He worked a twelve-hour day, working alone except for an ex-OAS engineer, Varrier, who produced the required metal casing and parts under Antoine's instruction. There was one other man in the house, forty-four year old Andre Dupont, the man who had met them with Walgren when they arrived in Montreal. Dupont doubled up as cook and housekeeper. It was a regime most men could never have endured, but Antoine was a scientist who lived only for work and reading the novels of Marcel Proust. And the cuisine was good – Dupont in his youth had once served an apprenticeship in the kitchens of the Ritz in Paris before he was discovered trying to blackmail a wealthy woman of a certain age staying at the hotel.
LeCat had delivered to Antoine no more than five kilograms of reprocessed plutonium – used fuel refined back to its original energy-producing state at the GEC plant at Morris, Illinois. This plutonium had been on its way back to a nuclear power plant when it was hi-jacked by LeCat. Antoine's task was to design a nuclear device and insert the charge inside it. The public, with memories of the vast plant required to make the first atomic bomb, still imagined that something on the same scale was necessary to make a nuclear device. But that vast plant had been required to process the plutonium – and Antoine had in his possession the end-product which came from Morris, Illinois.
Antoine's agreed price for this dangerous assignment was fifty thousand tax-free dollars, together with the passport to enable him to start a new life in the province of Quebec once his work was finished. Being a solitary man, he probably enjoyed the seven months it took him to complete his task.
Following LeCat's detailed instructions, he constructed a device which was the size of a largish suitcase. In fact, when the device was ready, he fitted it inside a specially reinforced suitcase and then plastered the outside with hotel labels from different parts of the world which Andre Dupont supplied. The case was very heavy – the plutonium charge was packed inside a heavy steel shell to maximise its power on detonation and weighed almost two hundred pounds. But a man of exceptional strength like LeCat could carry it short distances as though he were transporting an ordinary suitcase. When Antoine completed his work in late October, LeCat was informed and flew direct to Vancouver from London on a BOAC flight.
'Show me how it works,' LeCat demanded when they stood in the basement laboratory with the suitcase open on a work-bench.
'This activates the trigger…'
'I shall need to attach a time mechanism…'
'I would suggest…'
LeCat listened only to the first part of the explanation. As an explosives and boobytrap specialist, the Frenchman knew before Antoine explained how he was going to deal with the problem – he simply wanted confirmation that he would be going about it the right way. After all, the nuclear physicist had produced a bomb large enough to destroy a medium-sized city.
Antoine had carefully not enquired to what purpose the device would be put; he believed he knew – that it would be handed over to either Israel or one of the Arab states for a large sum of money. The Frenchman had managed to persuade himself that he was going into business like any other armaments manufacturer; if he did not supply the device, someone else would. It was the way of the world, and fifty thousand dollars was a sum he would never have seen all his life had he remained in the service of his own government.
'You are leaving tonight,' LeCat said abruptly. 'You will be driven from here after dark.'
Antoine was surprised at the suddenness of his departure, and a worry he had been nursing for some time came to the surface. 'The fifty thousand dollars…'
'I shall bring it here in a few hours. We do not want you travelling back the same way you came – across Canada. I have to drive you into the States by a devious route to Seattle. From there you will catch a train to Chicago and you will enter Canada again from America. Then we are finished with you.'
Antoine, clever enough at his own job, did not fully understand the reasons for this, but the complexity of the plan impressed him. Except for one question. 'I can enter America without a visa?'
'Of course! You forget – you are now a Canadian citizen with your new passport. Canadians can go across the border as often as they like – they only have to show their passport. I will see you this evening …'
LeCat left the house with the suitcase and drove to the ferry point where he crossed to Victoria. He took a cab to the wharf where the trawler Pecheur was anchored and spent some time aboard the vessel. Most of the time he spent chatting to the French captain while the hours passed, and during his stay he enjoyed a typically French meal of endless duration. It was after dark when he arrived back at the house on Dusquesne Street with another suitcase.
'You can count it if you like,' LeCat said, 'but we have a long journey ahead of us…'
Fifty thousand dollars. Antoine opened several of the hundred dollar bill packets inside the suitcase and checked the currency with a feeling of embarrassment – and relief – which amused Le-Cat. Then he closed the case, locked it, put the key inside his wallet. 'I suppose I'd better bank it a little at a time?'
'That's right,' LeCat said amiably. 'Keep the rest inside a safety deposit. And now, if you're ready…'
LeCat suggested putting the suitcase in the boot of the car, but Antoine said he would prefer to ride in the back with the case beside him. LeCat shrugged, climbed behind the wheel, and they drove off, leaving Dupont and the engineer, Varrier, to remove the laboratory equipment Antoine had dismantled and packed up. They drove east out of the city in the darkness, up into the mountains.
LeCat shot Antoine three times through the chest when they had stopped by the side of a lake. He weighted the body with chains he had concealed under canvas in the boot, put it inside a small boat moored to the water's edge, and rowed the boat far out. Antoine was dropped in the lake, which at this point was over one hundred feet deep, and LeCat returned to the car and the suitcase containing fifty thousand dollars.
LeCat did not take the money for himself: it was part of the arrangement with Ahmed Riad – who had hired him in Algiers -that this amount would be used to pay the French crew of the trawler Pecheur; one-third to be paid now, the balance of two-thirds to be handed over when the trawler had served its ultimate purpose.
When he returned to the Pecheur, Andre Dupont was waiting for him, and a powerful launch was putting out to
