couldn’t be trusted with nukes. After all, Russia had successfully maintained its nuclear stockpile for more than fifty years, nearly as long as the United States.
The Kremlin grew even more suspicious when the American experts pressed for access to the weapons. The generals at the Ministry of Defense and Rosatom asked openly whether the United States wanted to leave Russia defenseless by disabling all Russia’s nukes and missiles. Between 1998 and 2003, the United States had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a secure depot at the Mayak plant to store plutonium from disassembled nuclear weapons. The depot had concrete walls ten feet thick and could hold twenty-five tons of plutonium. By any measure, it was the most secure warehouse for nuclear materials in all of Russia. It was almost empty. The Russian government had no plans to entrust its nuclear weapons to a building that American engineers had designed. Purdy couldn’t blame the Kremlin for being suspicious. If circumstances were reversed, the United States would hardly put all its nukes in a warehouse that Russia had designed.
Now Purdy was about to stir up this messy nest of national pride and national security again. And for what purpose? When the instructions to set up the meeting had come two days before, he’d told the secretary of state he’d be wasting his breath.
But he’d been overruled. Langley had come up with something that had made the White House sit up and take notice, and so Purdy got to put his dick on the block for the Russians to chop off. No. This time he was going to be tough. Really. He sighed and shuffled through the thin folder of papers he’d brought as the Cadillac rolled through the Trinity Gate Tower at the top of the ramp and entered the Kremlin proper.
Whatever his problems with the job, Purdy always loved this view. Unlike the White House, the Kremlin wasn’t a single building. It was a complex of more than a dozen massive structures inside a fort in the center of Moscow, on a hill that overlooked the Moscow River. To the south of the Trinity Gate were museums and churches open to tourists. North of the gate, toward Red Square, were government offices, closed to the public. No signs marked the two sides, but tourists who wandered toward the northern buildings were quickly warned back to the public areas.
On both sides the buildings were oversized and sturdy, covered with the snow that blanketed Moscow five months a year. This complex had survived invasions by Hitler and Napoleon, misrule by the tsars and Stalin. Some of the buildings inside were five hundred years old, mute testimony to the Russian capacity to endure. To endure foreign attackers, gulags and show trials, and endless mornings like this one, overcast and bitter, with a light snow falling from the gray sky. Somewhere behind the clouds the sun still shined, or so Purdy wanted to believe.
The Cadillac rolled on, alongside the massive Arsenal, which housed the elite soldiers who guarded the Kremlin, toward the yellow walls of the Senate, the gigantic triangular building where the president of Russia had his offices. Purdy gathered up his papers, wondering half-seriously if he should make a quick detour, pray at the Assumption Cathedral for a couple of minutes, light a candle to Saint George.
His dream job.
THE RUSSIANS HAD PROMISED Purdy a meeting with Anatoly Zubrov, the senior military adviser to President Medvedev. But it was General Sasha Davydenko, Zubrov’s deputy, who awaited Purdy in a windowless conference room on the Senate’s third floor. Davydenko was tall and trim and wore a flawless green uniform with enough combat decorations to stop a bullet in the unlikely event he was ever near one again.
“General Davydenko,” Purdy said. “Will Anatoly be joining us?”
“He’s been called into an urgent meeting. I assure you anything you tell me will reach him.”
Urgent meeting, right. He was probably on the beach in Brazil, and Davydenko hadn’t even bothered to make an excuse for his absence. “I was told he’d be here. This is unacceptable.”
Davydenko gave the tiniest of shrugs. “Mr. Ambassador. It’s winter in Moscow. What do you expect?” Walk out, Purdy thought. Just go. But he’d come to relay a message, and the message had to be delivered.
“Unacceptable,” Purdy said again.
“Can my men get you anything? Perhaps a glass of tea? Green tea?” Davydenko raised his eyebrows, making the suggestion seem ridiculously effete. Purdy had asked for green tea once before in these offices. An instant mistake. He might as well have requested a bottle of baby formula.
“Thank you, but no. I’m sure you’re busy—” Purdy gritted his teeth. Now he was apologizing for taking the time of a guy he hadn’t even come to see? Davydenko nodded slightly, as though both men knew the enormity of the favor he was doing for Purdy by agreeing to this meeting.
“My government has an urgent request.”
“Yes.”
“We’d like an accounting, a full accounting, of the material that’s gone missing. The nuclear material.”
“Yes?”
“The MoD originally said that five hundred grams of HEU had disappeared. Then, approximately three weeks ago, that estimate was increased to five kilograms. Where it remains. For now.”
“Yes.” Davydenko tilted his head away from Purdy, examined the ceiling, as if Purdy were barely worth listening to, a junior army officer rather than an emissary of the most powerful nation on earth. Purdy reminded himself of his vow in the Cadillac.
“General—” he snapped. “Do I have your attention?”
Davydenko pursed his lips. He seemed faintly surprised that the mouse had roared, Purdy thought. Finally, he nodded. “Of course, Mr. Ambassador. You have all the attention you require. Go on.”
“As I said. Your country has not provided the United States or the international community with an accounting of the missing material. You haven’t specified its enrichment. Nor have you given us any intelligence on the thieves. Do you believe they’re
Purdy paused, hoping that Davydenko would speak. But the general had gone back to his earlier pose, looking at the ceiling.
“General,” Purdy said. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the urgency of ensuring that we never have a nuclear event on Russian or American soil. All we’re asking is a candid assessment of the threat. You owe us that much.”
“The Russian government is fully able to handle this investigation, Mr. Ambassador. If and when we need assistance, from the United States or NATO or anyone else, we will not hesitate to ask for it. I assure you.”
“Because we have learned that a person who may be affiliated with a terrorist group is urgently seeking a component crucial to building a nuclear weapon—”
“Excuse me?” Now Davydenko did look surprised. “You have learned
“Someone—”
“Who?”
“I can’t say. But this person has offered several million dollars for a component of a nuclear weapon.”
“What component?”
“Again, I’m afraid I can’t tell you.” Purdy allowed himself to smile. For the first time in a year, he had something on these guys. “Ironic, isn’t it, that your government has been so uncooperative and yet you demand whatever scraps of information we have.”
“What is ironic, Mr. Ambassador, is that you presume to come into the Kremlin and tell us how to run our own investigation. And that you have information you refuse to share. This is not the way friends treat each other.”
“Are we friends?”
“This is not the way great nations build trust.” Davydenko banged his fist on the table and the empty glass in front of Purdy jumped. “I ask again, do you have something to tell me?”
“I will tell you that the person who is attempting to buy this component is not here in Russia.”
“Do you have any reason to connect this person, assuming he exists at all, with our missing material?”
Purdy hesitated. “Not at the moment.”
