deputy director of Rosatom, and about his suspicion that a nuclear weapon had gone missing. Wells didn’t tell Kowalski about the report that Duto had passed to him, but the details seemed to line up.
“So the Russians are missing material,” Wells said when Kowalski was done. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“All right. Let me start at the beginning. Two years ago, a man comes to me, a Turk who lives in Germany, he wants three thousand AKs, a million rounds.”
“What’s his name?”
“Let’s call him the Turk.”
“Clever,” Wells said. “So you did the deal. You weren’t worried the German police were setting you up? Or someone else?”
“If the German police try to sting me, I know it before the men who are running the operation. Anyway, this wasn’t illegal, what he wanted.”
“Isn’t it unusual for someone to come to you like this, out of the blue?”
“Not so much. People know who I am, they know what I do, if they call me I answer. Or one of my men does.”
“But he comes to you, wants to spend a few hundred thousand on rifles, you don’t ask where they’re going.”
“Of course I do. He told me Nigeria, he knew a general there, they’d done business before, used jeeps. This time, the man wanted AKs for a brigade of police, paramilitaries.”
“And this guy, the Turk, he wasn’t lying about the buyer?”
“On a first-time sale like this, I don’t do the deal until I’m sure. So I checked. The story was what the Turk said, Nigeria. It isn’t complicated. You understand how it works?”
Wells shook his head.
“The Turk comes to me with these papers called end-user certificates, a promise by the Nigerian government that the weapons won’t be resold. I check, make sure everything’s in order, I set up the deal. AKs are easy to find, they make them all over the world, China, Russia, Bulgaria, wherever. I buy the AKs for $150, sell them for $220 each, including the transport. Three thousand guns, $70, a nice little profit, $210,000, plus the ammunition. A small deal, but for a few hours work, a few phone calls, not bad.”
“And the Nigerian government can’t do this on its own?”
“Of course it can.” Kowalski’s heavy eyes were half-closed now, as if having to explain all this bored him. “And $220 is a very fair price for a new rifle. But you must understand, the license, the EUC, end-user certificate, it says four thousand AKs, not three thousand.”
“So?”
“So the Turk, or the general, somewhere up the line they’re adding a thousand AKs of their own, old bad guns, maybe cost twenty dollars each, and pocketing the difference. The general finds the Turk, the Turk finds me, everybody makes money. They don’t ask me for a kick-back, even, they just want me to forget the extra thousand rifles. And I’m very good about things like that.”
“No doubt,” Wells said.
“Then, last year, the Turk, he calls me again, another order. Bigger. This time six thousand AKs, a few machine guns, plus a few SPG-nines. Just four.”
“The Spear?” Wells had seen them in Afghanistan. The Spear was a 73-millimeter recoilless rifle, Russian- designed. Basically an oversized bazooka. It was advertised as an antitank gun, but that was an exaggeration. The Spear could take out pickup trucks and medium-armored Humvees, but it wasn’t much use against anything heavier.
“Yes.”
“Did he say why he wanted those?”
“No. Same deal as before. This time the license says eight thousand rifles. Okay. And the Spears, it’s a little strange, they’re under a separate license, but so what, who cares? It’s not like he’s buying a tank.”
“So you sold him the guns.”
“I am an arms dealer, Mr. Wells. I do arms deals. But then, a few months ago—”
“When?”
“Six. Six months. The Turk called me again. This time he wanted beryllium. He was coy about it, very cagey, but he wasn’t joking.”
“Beryllium?”
“A metal. It’s for bombs. Nuclear.”
“Can you use it for anything else?”
“Not so much. Do you understand the physics?” Kowalski explained the rudiments of bomb design, scribbling on a pad he’d brought. After a few minutes, Wells understood, or thought he did.
“So the beryllium reflects the neutrons back at the bomb?”
“Exactly. It goes around the core of the nuclear material and speeds up the chain reaction. But you can’t make a bomb with it. It’s useless without the plutonium or the uranium. And the Turk didn’t seem to have that. His question was more in the nature of a hypothetical. If he needed beryllium, could I get it? I told him probably not, but for the right price, I would look.”
“Were you surprised he came to you? You could have gone right to the Swiss police. Or even the Germans.”
“We did two deals already, they went well, so no. Anyway, everyone knows I don’t go to the authorities. If I can’t make a deal, I don’t make it. But that’s my business, no one else’s. And there’s no law against asking about beryllium.”
What a fine human being you are, Wells didn’t say. “All right. He came to you. Suppose the Turk and his friends could get enough HEU or plutonium for a bomb. Would it be hard to make?”
“I’m not an expert, but I don’t think so.”
“How many men?”
“Fewer than five. Remember, this is very old technology.”
Wells thought of the new Russian estimate of missing material. “If they had the uranium, how long would it take?”
“I don’t know. It depends if they know what they’re doing, how much they have. Two weeks at least, three months at most.”
“
“All smoke,” Kowalski agreed. “But what if it’s not?”
Wells looked around. This bar was the wrong place for the discussion they were having, and not because it was insecure, though it was. The room around them just didn’t match the subject at hand. But then what room would? An underground bunker at Strategic Air Command headquarters, maybe. World maps glowing on wall-sized monitors. Stern-faced men with stars on their shoulderboards watching the beast slouch closer. Not here, not with a fifty-something bottle blonde three couches away.
“You know what,” Wells said to Kowalski. “I will have a drink.”
THE BAUR AU LAC didn’t have Bud, so Wells ordered a Heineken. The waiter’s nose twitched at the order, nonetheless he returned in a few seconds with the bottle and delivered a perfect pour into a long tall glass.
“So what’s his name?” Wells said.
“And what do you give me in return?”
“A truce. Your life.”
“Maybe it’s your life. Maybe my men will get you this time. I don’t have to do this.”
“Then why bother?” Wells said. “This bomb, even if it’s real, it won’t go off in Zurich. So why do you care? Worried that it’ll be bad for business?”
“A nuclear explosion? Bad for business?” Kowalski smirked. “In New York, let’s say. The United States will go mad. You’ll threaten every country between Morocco and Bangladesh and actually attack half of them. New bombers, new aircraft carriers, new tanks, laser guns. Satellites that fire missiles. A trillion dollars a year in spending. More. You don’t believe me? Look at what’s happened since September 11. That was nothing compared to this.”
