“Isn’t there a special event in India a few days from now?”
“Vasant Panchami?”
“What’s Vasant Panchami again?”
“It’s a Hindu festival celebrating Saraswati, who many believe is a goddess of music and art.”
“So the ADM will be part of the Vasant Panchami fireworks?”
Jinnah stared at Charlie as if he were speaking an alien tongue.
“I take it Vasant Panchami’s not the day you’re planning to detonate the bomb?” Charlie said.
“
“What else would you do with it?”
The Indian drew away. “I am here on behalf of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Trombay. Our aim is to prevent illegal arms dealers like your father from selling such weapons to parties who would not hesitate to detonate them-for instance, the terrorists in the Punjab.”
Jinnah was an excellent liar, Charlie thought, or an even better cutout.
What mattered was that Jinnah was not an excellent physicist, or at least that his arsenal of electronic gauges would fail to detect that the ADM’s uranium pit contained the enriched uranium version of fool’s gold.
After a careful examination, the Indian deemed the weapon “the real deal,” to the satisfaction of everyone but himself.
Bream placed the satellite phone call, commencing Alice’s liberation, and video of her face flickered onto his satphone display, terribly out of focus. Still, Charlie drank it in.
The picture sharpened, revealing her to be standing outdoors, in a rural location, at nighttime. She was pale and, despite a parka and a thick woolen cap, shivering, exhaling streams of vapor that were illuminated by a streetlamp.
“Chuckles,” she exclaimed. Another of her safety codes. “How’s it going?”
“It’s a laugh a minute here,” he said, signifying all was well on his end. Relatively.
“And my other friend?”
Bream pushed a button near his mouthpiece, possibly initiating voice alteration. “Hang on,” he said. He angled the lens at Drummond, who had fallen asleep. “Captain, you have a call.”
Drummond rose wearily. He eyed the satphone’s display without recognition. “How are you?”
“Very excited about the prospect of using a ladies’ room without people watching me.”
“Oh.”
“Okay, enough chitchat.” Stuffing the satphone into a pocket, Bream waved at the washing machine. “Time for you fellas to step up to the plate.”
Charlie suddenly thought of all the things that might have gone wrong with the bomb’s delicate inner workings after sitting in a damp cave for weeks and then bouncing around the Caribbean. “Dad, do you remember how to use this?” he asked.
“Of course,” Drummond said. “I helped write the Perriman manual.”
“This is the souped-up model.”
“Oh, right. It isn’t an ordinary washing machine, is it?”
“Right.” Charlie felt the weight of his responsibility triple.
With a yawn, Drummond stepped to the water’s edge, then smiled as the bubbly surf trickled through his Crocs’ ventilation holes. Corky traced Drummond’s movements with an Uzi. In his late twenties with long tangles of sun-bleached hair, Bream’s associate could have passed for a surfer if it weren’t for the especially grim Grim Reaper tattooed over much of his back, its outsized bloody sickle curling around his neck.
Charlie carefully opened the washing machine’s lid. Even the fool’s gold of uranium was highly volatile, and it was hot enough inside the machine to broil a chicken. Hoping to sidestep the demonstration altogether, he pointed out the steel strip on the control panel. “The code is this sequence of fifteen numbers,” he said. “Five for each of the PAL knobs inside.”
“Ah.” Jinnah squinted. “Show us, if you please.”
“Yes, if you please,” Bream repeated, without any of the cordiality.
Charlie bent into the machine. He cleared a path through the jungle of wires to the permissive action links, three big numeric dials, like those on floor safes. If he were to misdial the fifteen numbers more than twice, an anti-hacker device would render the system unable to detonate. Or worthless for today’s purposes.
He carefully clicked to the first number, 37. Sweat stung his eyes. Millimeters at a time, so as not to dial past a number, he input the remaining two-digit numbers on the first dial, then began on the second.
In a bit under five minutes, though it seemed like well over an hour, he finished. Now, even if he had correctly entered the code, who was to say that the sensitive detonation mechanism still functioned?
The readout panel duct taped to the inside of the lid was lifeless. Then it began to glow a pale green. Black characters formed against the backdrop …
Charlie pumped a fist. “Your turn,” he said to Bream.
His eyes on the readout and his face a shade whiter than before, Bream snapped open the satphone. “Okay,” he said into it. “Give her her bus fare and her parting gift.”
Alice’s captors had agreed to hand over ten 100-euro notes and a loaded gun before releasing her in proximity to public transportation, presumably somewhere in Europe. She would then tell Charlie that she was safe.
Bream showed his satphone to Charlie. On the display, Alice stuffed a sheaf of bills into her parka, checked the mag in a pistol, then walked backward, keeping the barrel leveled at whoever held the satphone on her end.
“We’re good, Chuckles,” she said. “See you in St. Louis.”
By St. Louis she meant Paris. Dr. Arnaud Petitpierre, the neurologist who ran the Alzheimer’s clinic in Geneva, had a daughter studying art history at the Sorbonne. Without drawing undue attention, Petitpierre could minister to Drummond at a safe house with a view of the Ile Saint-Louis-hence the code name.
Charlie watched Alice recede down a deserted, snow-lined country road. The odds of seeing her again seemed awfully long.
His thoughts were interrupted by Bream. “Chuckles, how about you do everyone here a favor and turn off the nuclear bomb?”
Once Charlie did, Bream let out a whoop, quickly adding, “Now let’s get the hell off this rock.”
Corky dollied over a black plastic case big enough to hold a man. The ZODIAC logo gave Charlie a clue to both its contents and Bream’s plans. He knew Zodiac boats as the wobbly rubber rafts on
Watching Jinnah help Corky lower the case to the sand, Charlie asked Bream, “Is that our ride home?”
Bream laughed. “No, that’s transport to the mother ship for Doc Jinnah and Corky and their passenger.” He cocked his head at the washing machine. “The Culinary Institute of America won’t think to look for a rubber raft. You, me, and Pop can take the rent-a-plane Corky and the doc came in.” He pointed to a clearing on the far side of the woods. The tail of a small airplane glistened in one of the few rays of light that pierced the ceiling of branches and leaves.
“To where?”
“You want to go back to Europe, right?”
“You’ll take us there?”
“Would if I could. That plane is from Saint Lucia and it’s not good for much more than a dime tour of the area. But if we fly it back to Castries, you won’t need to go through customs-there’s no need for you to even leave the tarmac. Just play rich tourists and buy your way onto a general aviation flight. Go to some little airfield in Europe.”
It sounded like a fine plan to Charlie except for one large blemish: Bream’s clear incentive for him and Drummond to be dead. Then again, the pilot knew that if he let them live, they wouldn’t dare go to law enforcement. So, from his standpoint, giving them a lift ensured their silence as well as bullets would. Allowing them to leave safely also meant two less bodies left on his trail, and no risk of reprisal from Alice or Drummond’s
