It required ten additional hours until the seventieth and last explosive block sat in its resting place. Ghosn attached its wire lead to the proper terminal, and that was that. He extended his hand to the German, who took it.
“Congratulations, Hen Doktor Fromm.”
“Ja. Thank you, Heir Ghosn.” Now we only need to weld the case shut, draw the vacuum — oh, excuse me, the tritium. How did I forget that? Who does the welding?' Manfred asked.
“I will. I'm very good at that.” The top half of the bombcase had a wide flange to ensure the safety of that procedure, and it had already been checked for a perfect fit. The machinists had not merely handled the precise work on the explosive part of the device. Every single part — except for the single mis-trimmed fitting — had been cut and shaped to Fromm's specifications, and the bomb-case had already been checked. It fit as tightly as the back of a watch.
“Doing the tritium is easy.”
“Yes, I know.” Ghosn motioned for the German to go outside. “You are fully satisfied with the design and the assembly?”
“Completely,” Fromm said confidently. “It will function exactly as I predict.”
“Excellent,” Qati said, waiting outside with one of his bodyguards.
Fromm turned, noting the Commander's presence, along with one of his ubiquitous guards. Dirty, scruffy people, but he had to admire them, Fromm told himself, as he turned to look at the darkened valley. There was a quarter moon, and he could just make out the landscape. It was so dry and harsh. Not these people's fault that they looked as they did. The land here was hard. But the sky was clear. Fromm looked up at the stars on this cloudless night. More stars than one could see in Germany, especially the Eastern part, with all its air pollution, and he thought about astrophysics, the path he might have taken, so closely related to the path he had.
Ghosn stood behind the German. He turned to Qati and nodded. The Commander made the same gesture to his bodyguard, whose name was Abdullah.
“Just the tritium remains,” Fromm said, his back to them.
“Yes,” Ghosn said, “I can do that myself.”
Fromm was about to say that there was one more thing. He let it wait a moment, and didn't pay attention to Abdullah's footsteps. There was no sound at all as the guard removed a silenced pistol from his belt and pointed it at Fromm's head from a range of one meter. Fromm began to turn, to make sure that Ghosn knew about the tritium, but he never made it around. Abdullah had his orders. It was supposed to be merciful, as it had been for the machinists. It was a pity that it had been necessary at all, Qati thought, but it was necessary, and that was that. None of that mattered to Abdullah, who merely followed his orders, squeezing on the trigger smoothly and expertly until the round fired. The bullet entered the back of Fromm's skull, soon thereafter exiting through his forehead. The German dropped in a crumpled mass. Blood fountained out, but sideways, without reaching Abdullah's clothing. The guard waited until the blood flow stopped, then summoned two comrades to carry the body to the waiting truck. He'd be buried with the machinists. That, at least, was fitting, Qati thought. All the experts in the same place.
“A pity,” Ghosn observed quietly.
“Yes, but do you really think we would have further use of him?”
Ibrahim shook his head. “No. He would have been a liability. We could not trust him. An infidel and a mercenary. He fulfilled his contract.”
“And the device?”
“It will work. I have checked the numbers twenty times. It is far better than anything I might have designed.”
“What's this about tritium?”
“In the batteries. I only need to heat them up and bleed off the gas. Then the gas is pumped into the two reservoirs. You know the rest.”
Qati grunted. “You have explained it, but I do not know it.”
“This part of the job is work for a high-school chemistry lab, no more than that. Simple.”
“Why did Fromm leave it for last?”
Ghosn shrugged. “Something has to be last. This is an easy task rather than a hard one. Perhaps that is why. I can do it now if you wish.”
“Good.”
Qati watched the procedure. One after another, Ghosn loaded the batteries into the furnace, which he set for very low heat. A metal tube and a vacuum pump drew off the gas emitted by each in turn. It took less than an hour.
“Fromm lied to us,” Ghosn observed when he was done.
“What?” Qati asked in alarm.
“Commander, there is almost fifteen percent more tritium than he promised. So much the better.”
The next step was even simpler. Ghosn carefully checked that each reservoir was air- and pressure-tight — it was the sixth such test; the young engineer had learned from his German teacher — then transferred the tritium gas. The valves were closed and locked shut with cotter pins, so that any vibration in transit could not open them.
“Finished,” Ghosn announced. The guards lifted the top of the bombcase and lowered it into place from an overhead winch. It fit precisely into place. Ghosn took an hour to weld it shut. Another test confirmed that the bombcase was pressure-tight. He next attached a Leyboold vacuum pump to the case.
“What exactly do you need to achieve?”
“A millionth of an atmosphere is what we specified.”
“Can you do that? Won't it harm—”
Ghosn spoke not unlike Fromm, surprising the both of them. “Commander, please? All that presses in is air. It does not crush you, and it will not crush this steel case, will it? It will take a few hours, and we can also test the integrity of the bombcase again.” Which had also been done five times. Even without being welded, the case held well. Now one piece of metal, it would be as perfect as the mission required. “We can get some sleep. It doesn't hurt the pump to run.”
“When will it be ready to transport?”
“In the morning. When is the ship leaving?”
“Two days.”
“There you have it,” Ghosn smiled broadly. “Time to spare.”
First, Marvin visited the local branch of Colorado Federal Bank and Trust Company. He amazed and delighted the branch vice president by placing a call to England and having five hundred thousand dollars transferred by wire. Computers made things so much easier. In seconds, he had confirmation that Mr. Robert Friend was every bit as substantial as he claimed to be.
“Can you recommend a good local realtor?” Russell asked the very solicitous banker.
“Right down the street, third door on the right. I'll have your checks ready when you get back.” The banker watched him leave and placed a rapid phone call to his wife, who worked in the real-estate office. She was waiting for him at the door.
“Mr. Friend, welcome to Roggen!”
“Thank you, good to be back.”
“You've been away?”
“Spent some time in Saudi Arabia,” Russell/Friend explained. “But I missed my winters.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Oh, a medium-sized ranch, place where I might raise some beef.”
“House, barns?”
“Yeah, a good-sized house. Not that big, don't need it — there's just me, you see — say about three thousand square feet. I can go smaller for good land.”
“You originally from around here?”
“The Dakotas, actually, but I need to be close to Denver for the transportation — air travel, I mean. I do a lot of that. My old homestead is too far from things.”
“Will you want help to run your ranch?”
