material in the second bomb.”
Bashir thought he understood. “So the first bomb sets off the second bomb, just the way the explosives around the first bomb set that one off?”
“Exactly,” Nasiji said. “And because the secondary is coming together under such force, it blows up with incredible power. So this is what’s called a two-stage bomb. Or a thermonuclear, because it’s all the heat from the first bomb that sets off the second bomb. You know those films of the bombs they set off over the Pacific, the Russians and the Americans, those giant mushroom clouds.”
“Of course,” Yusuf said.
“Well, those were thermonuclear bombs, just like this one. A lot bigger, but the same design.”
“So we’re going to make one of them, too, once we’re done taking this one apart?”
“I wish,” Nasiji said. “No, what we’re going to do is take the uranium, the U-235, from the second bomb. The secondary. And then we’re going to make a bomb of our own, a simple one, a one-stager. Assuming we have enough material, that the storm and that fool captain didn’t ruin it for us.” Nasiji sighed. “But I can’t think about that now. Let’s talk about what we’re going to see in this gadget of ours once we get it open.”
“But—”
“I know what you’re going to ask, Yusuf. If these designs are national secrets, how do I know? Yes?”
Yusuf nodded.
“That first bomb was a long time ago. Over the years, the facts have come out. Mainly about the American designs. But remember, these bombs, American or Russian, they’re all roughly the same, because the physics are the same everywhere. Everyone has the same design problems, and there are only so many solutions. The basics haven’t changed since the 1950s.”
So for the next several hours, Nasiji sketched out, in detail, what they would see once they broke through the outer casing of the warhead. The initiator, which released neutrons into the center of the primary bomb just as the explosion began, speeding up the chain reaction. The plates of plastic explosive around the primary. The hard plastic foam that was turned into plasma by the first explosion and channeled the energy that set off the second bomb. The explanation was complex and Bashir was glad when Thalia knocked on the door and announced that lunch was ready.
They trooped upstairs for dates and couscous with raisins and carrots and fresh orange juice that Thalia had squeezed herself. She stood in the kitchen and shyly watched them eat, coming in only to clear dishes and refill glasses. “You like it?” she said when they were done and Yusuf and Nasiji had disappeared downstairs.
“Very much.” He patted her arm tentatively, and under her headscarf she smiled.
“Good,” she said. “I don’t want you to be hungry.”
“Not much chance of that.” He ran a hand over his belly. He’d once been thin, but too many years of fourteen-hour days in surgery had filled him out.
“No, don’t hide him. I like him.” She put a finger to Bashir’s stomach and smiled. His pulse quickened at her unexpected touch. She’d been inexperienced when they married, a real virgin who’d never even kissed a man. Now she was becoming increasingly comfortable with him in their bedroom, but she was still shy outside it.
“We’ll keep him then,” he said. She giggled. Sometimes he forgot she was just twenty-two. He was embarrassed now. “So, back to work.”
FOR THE REST of the afternoon, Nasiji took them through the physics behind the bomb. Bashir sensed Nasiji was talking for himself as much as for them, reminding himself of the concepts that would help him design their own bomb. The faint winter light outside the basement windows disappeared and still Nasiji talked, even after Bashir began to doze and Yusuf laid his head on the table.
“Enough,” Yusuf said, as Nasiji began to diagram the decay of a U- 235 atom. “This might as well be Hebrew for all the sense I can make of it.”
“But if something happens to me, you need to know—”
“If something happens to you, we’ll shoot one piece of uranium at the other and hope for the best. That’s what all this comes down to, right?” Yusuf waved a hand at the three whiteboards, filled edge to edge with equations and diagrams in smudged black ink. “Before lunch was fine, but now we’re wasting time. Let’s cut the thing open and see what we find.”
Slowly, Nasiji nodded. “It’s a whole desert of sand I’ve given you, isn’t it? And you’re right. What matters is what’s inside that warhead. Tomorrow we find out.”
18
Wells sat in his suite at the Baur au Lac, pretending to watch television, flicking between CNN and BBC and Sky, pretending he hadn’t already made up his mind, pretending he hadn’t already wasted most of a day chewing over a decision that was no decision at all.
He couldn’t say no to Kowalski. He needed the name. Though part of him wondered whether he and Duto and Shafer weren’t overreacting. Probably this would turn out to be nothing, another in the long string of false alarms since 9/11.
But he couldn’t take that chance.
Wells wished he could be certain why Kowalski had come to him, wondered if there was some double- or triple-cross he wasn’t seeing. Most likely not. The simplest explanation was usually the best, and the simplest explanation here was that Kowalski feared he’d be sent straight to hell if a bomb went off and the United States found out that he had information that could have stopped it. So he’d decided to give Wells the name, get Wells off his back, two birds, one stone.
Wells had been ready, more than ready, to make Kowalski pay for Exley and all those nameless Africans who had died from the bullets that Kowalski sold. Even at the price of losing Exley. And maybe one day Exley would have forgiven him, understood that he’d needed to kill Kowalski to make sense of all the rest of the killing he’d done. Or maybe not. But though Wells always would have hated himself for driving her away, he never would have been sorry for killing Kowalski.
Or maybe. he would have found a way to change his mind. Maybe he would have realized that vengeance wasn’t his to take. And then he could have told Exley:
Instead Wells would lose both ways. Snake eyes. Kowalski would live. And yet Wells wouldn’t be able to tell Exley that he’d found peace in his heart and walked away from the fight. Kowalski was simply buying his way out, plea-bargaining for his own survival.
As Wells had known all day. Now he was wasting time, and Kowalski was right. These terrorists, whoever they were, they wouldn’t wait once the bomb was done. Wells flicked off the television and picked up the phone.
A HALF-HOUR LATER, the hotel’s Bentley brought him through snow-covered streets to the gates of Kowalski’s mansion. Wells stepped out and watched as the big black sedan, a brick on wheels, silently rolled away. Then he pushed the bell and the wrought-iron gates swung open and he walked up the gravel driveway toward the house, three stories high and wide and made of solid red brick. It looked like it belonged in Boston and not Zurich.
The front door was opened by a uniformed housekeeper. She curtseyed and stepped aside, revealing the most beautiful woman Wells had ever seen, tall and slim and high-breasted and wearing a black crepe dress that seemed molded to her body.
“Nadia,” she said, extending a hand.
“John.” Wells stood in the door, trying to brush off his long blue overcoat, feeling clumsy as a sixth-grader on his first date. He’d expected to be met by Tarasov, or the shooter whom Kowalski called the Dragon. Not this creature, whose eyes were as blue as Exley’s.
“Please, come in. Let Fredrika take it.”
The housekeeper helped him out of the coat and gloves and disappeared. Nadia cocked her head and looked
