it.'
Stern shook his head. 'Natterman may have to stand in the stairwell and
wait for Hauer and Apfel to come running down. There's a strong chance
Hauer kvill fire a reflex shot before he even recognizes the professor.
That's why he gets the vest.'
In room 401, Professor Natterman sat with the walkietalkie clenched in
his hand. It was sticky hot inside the armored vest. He wanted to take
it off, but he reasoned that if Stern had given him the only vest they
had, he probably needed it. Setting the walkie-talkie on the table, he
stood and stretched. His joints ached terribly from all the una( tomed
exercise. He had been on his feet for less than a minute when the door
slid open.
Facing the professor stood a woman wearing an expensively cut red skirt,
a white blouse, and a red hat. She carried a Vuitton handbag in her
left hand. It took Natterman several moments to realize that she also
held a gun.
Swallow stepped inside the room and closed the door.
'I'vd come for the Spandau papers, Herr Professor,' she said in a crisp,
low voice, her British accent unmistakable.
'Would you be so kind as to get them for me?'
'I ... I don't have them,' Natterman stammered.
'Stern has them?' Swallow asked sharply.
Stunned by her knowledge, Natterman said, 'Who are you?' ' Swallow's
lips drew back, exposing her small teeth in a fierce animal glare. 'Does
Jonas Stern have the papers?'
With a fool's courage Professor Natterman grabbed for the walkie-talkie
on the table. Swallow destroyed it with a threeshot burst from her
silenced Ingrain machine pistol.
'Take off your clothes,' she ordered. 'Every stitch.'
When Natterman hesitated, Swallow jerked the Ingrain in his direction.
'Do it! ' While Natterman, pale and shaking, removed his clothes,
Swallow began searching the hotel -room.
CHAPTER THIRTY
7,40 P.N. Horn House: ThO Northern Transvaal Deep in the basement
complex of Horn House, Alfred Horn shepherded his Libyan guests through
a maze of stainless steel and glass and stone. Huge ventilator fans
thrummed constantly, forcing filtered air down from the surface one
hundred meters above. An intricate network of cooling ducts maintained
the silicon-friendly environment required by the formidable array of
computers purring against the walls; the brittle air also extended the
life of the manifold chemicals and weapons stored here. The Libyans
surveyed the labyrinth of tubing, hoods, and pipes in reverent silence.
Only young Dr. Sabri, the Soviet-educated physicist, found it hard to
suppress his enthusiasm as he toured the lab. Most of the visible
hardware had been produced by one or another of the various high-tech
subsidiaries of Phoenix AG, but the man who controlled them all was
about to reveal a product of very different pedigree. Horn gradually
led the Libyans toward the rear of the basement, where something
resembling a giant industrial refrigerator stood gleaming in the
fluorescent light. Stretching from floor to ceiling and wall to wall,
the aluminum-coated lead chamber awaited the men like a futuristic
crypt. Three great doors without handles were set in its face.
'Pieter,' Horn said softly.
The tall Afrikaner stepped over to an electronic console and flipped a
switch. An alarm buzzer sounded briefly; then, with a sucking sound,
the center door opened a fraction of an inch. A sickly orange-yellow
light dribbled out of the crack. Smuts slipped a hand inside and
pulled. When the door opened completely, the Libyan physicist gasped.
'Go ahead, Doctor,' said Horn, 'have a look.'
Sabri looked shaken. 'You don't store the weapon in halves?'
'It's quite safe,' Horn assured him. 'The core has been temporarily
removed. The weapon can be disassembled with the tools beside it. You
may verify the soundness of the design at your leisure.'
Dr. Sabri stepped gingerly into the storage chamber and tiptoed around
the weapon. The blunt-nosed cylinder stood menacingly on its tail fins
like a blasphemous icon. Painted a gleaming black, the bomb bore a
single marking, emblazoned on one of its fins: a rising Phoenix.
The bird's head was turned in profile, its sharp, break screeching, its
single fierce eye wide, its talons enjulfed by red flames. Sabri's left
hand caressed the cool metal of the bomb chassis like a woman's thigh.
Horn watched the Libyans with thinly veiled curiosity. Prime Minister
Jalloud stood well back from the vault, his eyes on the physicist. His
interpreter did the same.
Major Karami stood rigid, his black eyes fixed unwaveringly on the
upended weapon. 'Where is the core?' he asked hoarsely.
'The fissile material,' Horn replied, 'in this case plutonium 239-lies
in a lead vault below ourfeet.'
'We must see it.'
'I'm afraid you can't actually see it, Major, not without more
safeguards than are available in this room. But you can see its
effects.' Horn waved his right hand.
Smuts pressed another button on the console. Instantly a section of the
metal floor to the left of the storage chamber whirred out of sight.
Beneath it lay a lead-lined vault conraining a wooden pallet stacked
with orange fifty-five-gallon drums.
'The plutonium is in those drums?' Jalloud asked, instinctively
stepping back from the gaping vault.
'They're lined with concrete,' Horn explained. 'We're perfectly safe.
For a short time, anyway. Look while you can. Those drums contain
enough plutonium to turn the State of Israel into a smoking cinder.'
While the Arabs made approving noises, Smuts took a small metal box from
a nearby shelf. The box had a long cable dangling from it with some
type of sensor on the end.
When Horn explained that the machine was a portable radiation detector,
Dr. Sabri came out of the chamber and followed Smuts to the edge of the
vault. He watched the Afrikaner lower the sensor until it hung just
above the row of drums. Most modern radiation detectors emit no sound,
but Smuts's 'Geiger counter' began to crackle like an untuned radio
dial. All of the Libyans but Sabri drew back in terror. While the
