“Hard to believe,” Golovko said.
“Sergey Nikolay'ch, if your suspicions are correct, then this program we were tasked to investigate is a matter of grave importance to them, is it not? We may have confirmed something in the most expensive way possible.”
General-Lieutenant Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko was silent for several seconds. It's not supposed to be like this, he told himself. The intelligence business is supposed to be civilized. Killing each other's officers is a thing of the distant past. We don't do that sort of thing anymore, haven't done it in years… decades…
“None of the alternatives are credible, are they?”
The Colonel shook his head. “No. But the most credible is that our man stumbled into something both real and extremely sensitive. Sensitive enough to kill for. A secret nuclear-weapons program is that sensitive, is it not?”
“Arguably, yes.” The Colonel was showing the sort of loyalty to his people that KGB expected, Golovko noted. He was also thinking over the alternatives and presenting his best estimate of the situation.
“Have you sent your technical people to Sarova yet?”
“Day after tomorrow. My best man was sick, just got out of the hospital — broke his leg in a fall down some stairs.”
“Have him carried there if necessary. I want a worst-case estimate of plutonium production at the DDR power stations. Send another man to Kyshtym to back-check the people at Sarova. Pull in the other people you sent to Germany. We'll restart the investigation more carefully. Two-man teams, and the backup man is to be armed… that is dangerous,” Golovko said on reflection.
“General, it takes a lot of time and money to train my field people. I will need two years to replace Feodorov, two whole years. You can't just pull an officer out of another branch and drop him into this line of work. These people must understand what they are looking for. Assets like that should be protected.”
“You are correct. I will clear it with the Chairman and send experienced officers… maybe some people from the Academy… credential them like German police officials…?”
“I like that, Sergey Nikolay'ch.”
“Good man, Pavel Ivan'ch. And on Feodorov?”
“Maybe he'll turn up. Thirty days before he's declared missing, then I'll have to see his wife. Very well, I'll pull my people in and start planning the next phase of the operation. When will I have a list of the escort officers?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Very well, General, thank you for your time.”
Golovko shook the man's hand and remained standing until the door closed. He had ten minutes until his next appointment.
“Damn,” he said to his desktop.
“More delays?”
Fromm did not quite manage to hide his disgust. “We are saving time! The material we will be working on has machining characteristics similar to stainless steel. We must also manufacture blanks for the casting process. Here.”
Fromm unfolded his working drawings.
“We have here a folded cylinder of plutomum. Around the plutomum is a cylinder of beryllium, which is a godsend for our purposes. It is very light, very stiff, an X-ray window, and a neutron reflector. Unfortunately, it is also rather difficult to machine. We must use cubic boron-nitride tools, essentially an analog to industrial diamond. Steel or carbon tools would have results you do not wish to contemplate. We also have health considerations.”
“Beryllium is not toxic,” Ghosn said. “I checked.”
“True, but the dust resulting from the machining process converts to beryllium oxide, which when inspired converts again to beryllium hydroxide, and that causes berylliosis, which is uniformly fatal.” Fromm paused, staring at Ghosn like a schoolmaster before going on.
“Now, around the beryllium is a cylinder of tungsten-rhenium, which we need for its density. We will purchase twelve kilograms in powder form, which we will sinter into cylindrical segments. You know sintering? That is heating it just hot enough to form. Melting and casting is too difficult, and not necessary for our purposes. Around that goes the explosive-lens assembly. And this is just the primary, Ghosn, not even a quarter of our total energy budget.”
“And the precision required…”
“Exactly. Think of this as the world's largest ring or necklace. What we produce must be as finely finished as the most beautiful piece of jewelry you have ever seen — or perhaps a precision optical instrument.”
“The tungsten-rhenium?”
“Available from any major electrical concern. It's used in special filaments for vacuum tubes, numerous other applications, and it's far easier to work than pure tungsten.”
“Beryllium — oh, yes, it's used in gyroscopes and other instruments… thirty kilograms.”
“Twenty-five… yes, get thirty. You have no idea how lucky we are.”
“How so?”
“The Israeli plutonium is gallium-stabilized. Plutonium has four phase-transformations below melting point, and has the curious habit, in certain temperature regimes, of changing its density by a factor of over twenty percent. It is a multistate metal.”
“In other words, a sub-critical mass can—”
“Exactly,” Fromm said. “What appears to be a sub-critical mass can under certain circumstances convert itself into criticality. It will not explode, but the gamma-and neutron-flux would be lethal within a radius of… oh, anywhere from ten to thirty meters depending on circumstances. That was discovered during the Manhattan Project. They were — no, not lucky. They were brilliant scientists, and as soon as they had a gram or so of plutonium, it was decided to investigate its properties. Had they waited, or simply assumed that they knew more than they did — well…”
“I had no idea,” Ghosn admitted. Merciful God…
“Not everything is in books, my young friend, or should I say, not all the books have all the information. In any case, with the addition of gallium, the plutonium is a stable mass. It is actually quite safe to work, as long as we take the proper precautions.”
“So we start by machining out stainless-steel blanks to these specifications, then make our casting-molds — investment casting, of course.”
Fromm nodded. “Correct. Very good, mein Junge.”
Then when the casting is done, we will machine the bomb material… I see. Well, we seem to have good machinists.'
They'd “drafted”—that was the term they used — ten men, all Palestinians, from local optical shops, and trained them on the use of the machine tools.
The tools were all that Fromm had said they were. Two years earlier, they'd been totally state-of-the-art, identical to the equipment used in the American Y-12 fabrication plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Tolerances were measured by laser interferometry, and the rotating tool heads were computer-controlled in three dimensions through five axes of movement. Instructions were passed to the computers via touch-screens. The design itself had been done on a mini-computer and drawn out on an expensive drafting machine.
Ghosn and Fromm brought the machinists in and set them to work on their first task, making the stainless steel blank for the plutonium primary that would ignite the thermo-nuclear fire.
“Now,” Fromm said, “for the explosive lenses… ”
“I've heard much about you,” Bock said.
“I hope it was good,” Marvin Russell replied with a guarded smile.
My first Indian, Bock thought quickly. He was oddly disappointed. Except for the cheekbones, he might have easily been mistaken for any Caucasian, and even those could seem like a Slav with perhaps a taste of Tatar in his background… What color there was had come mainly from the sun. The rest of the man was formidable enough, the size and obvious strength.
“I hear you killed a police officer in Greece by snapping his neck.”
“I don't know why people make a big deal about that,” Russell said with weary honesty. “He was a scrawny
