"What do they do?"

"EMIS. Electromagnetic isotope separation. In your language, they refine crude uranium-238 to filter out the bomb-grade uranium-235.

You say this place is in Iraq?"

"Yes. It was bombed by accident a week ago. This picture was taken the next day. No one seems to know what it means."

Lomax gazed across the valley, sucked on his b.u.t.t, and let a plume of azure smoke trickle away.

"Sonofab.i.t.c.h," he said again. "Mister, I live up here because I want to.

Away from all that smog and traffic-had enough of that years ago.

Don't have a TV, but I have a radio. This is about that man Saddam Hussein, ain't it?"

"Yes, it is. Would you tell me about calutrons?"

The old man stubbed out his b.u.t.t and stared now, not just across the valley but back across many years.

"Nineteen forty-three. Long time ago, eh? Nearly fifty years. Before you were born, before most people were born nowadays. There was a bunch of us then, trying to do the impossible. We were young, eager, and ingenious, and we didn't know it was impossible. So we did it.

"There was Fermi from Italy, and Pontecorvo; Fuchs from Germany, Nils Bohr from Denmark, Nunn May from England, and others. And us Yankees: Urey and Oppie and Ernest. I was very junior. Just twenty- seven.

"Most of the time, we were feeling our way, doing things that had never been tried, testing out things they said couldn't be done. We had a budget that nowadays wouldn't buy squat, so we worked all day and all night and took shortcuts. Had to-the deadline was as tight as the money. And somehow we did it, in three years. We cracked the codes and made the bomb. Little Boy and Fat Man.

"Then the Air Force dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the world said we shouldn't have done it after all. Trouble was, if we hadn't, somebody else would. n.a.z.i Germany, Stalin's Russia-"

"Calutrons ...," suggested Martin.

"Yeah. You've heard of the Manhattan Project?"

"Of course."

"Well, we had many geniuses in Manhattan, two in particular. Robert

J. Oppenheimer and Ernest O. Lawrence. Heard of them?" "Yes." "Thought they were colleagues, partners, right?" "I suppose so." "Wrong. They were rivals. See, we all knew the key was uranium, the world's heaviest element. And we knew by 1941 that only the lighter isotope, 235, would create the chain reaction we needed. The trick was to separate the point seven percent of the 235 hiding somewhere in the ma.s.s of uranium-238. "When America entered the war, we got a big leg up. After years of neglect, the bra.s.s wanted results yesterday. Same old story. So we tried every which way to separate those isotopes. "Oppenheimer went for gas diffusion-reduce the uranium to a fluid and then a gas, uranium hexafluoride, poisonous and corrosive, difficult to work. The centrifuge came later, invented by an Austrian captured by the Russians and put to work at Sukhumi. Before the centrifuge, gas diffusion was slow and hard. "Lawrence went for the other route-electromagnetic separation by particle acceleration. Know what that means?" "I'm afraid not." "Basically, you speed the atoms up to a h.e.l.l of a velocity, then use giant magnets to throw them into a curve. Two racing cars enter a curve at speed, a heavy car and a light car. Which one ends up on the outside track?" "The heavy one," said Martin. "Right. That's the principle. The calutrons depend on giant magnets about twenty feet across. These"-he tapped the Frisbees in the photograph-"are the magnets. The layout is a replica of my old baby at Oak Ridge, Tennessee." "If they worked, why were they discontinued?" asked Martin. "Speed," said Lomax. "Oppenheimer won out. His way was faster. The calutrons were extremely slow and very expensive. After 1945, and even more when that Austrian was released by the Russians and came over here to show us his centrifuge invention, the calutron technology was abandoned. Decla.s.sified. You can get all the details, and the plans, from the Library of Congress. That's probably what the Iraqis have done." The two men sat in silence for several minutes. "What you are saying," suggested Martin, "is that Iraq decided to use Model-T Ford technology, and because everyone a.s.sumed they'd go for Grand Prix racers, no one noticed." "You got it, son. People forget-the old Model-T Ford may be old, but it worked. It got you there. It carried you from A to B. And it hardly ever broke down." "Dr. Lomax, the scientists my government and yours have been consulting know that Iraq has got one cascade of gas diffusion centrifuges working, and it has been for the past year. Another one is about to come on stream, but probably is not operating yet. On that basis, they calculate Iraq cannot possibly have refined enough pure uranium-say, thirty-five kilograms-to have enough for a bomb." "Quite right," nodded Lomax. "Need five years with one cascade, maybe more. Minimum three years with two cascades."

"But supposing they've been using calutrons in tandem. If you were head of Iraq's bomb program, how would you play it?"

"Not that way," said the old physicist, and began to roll another cigarette. "Did they tell you, back in London, that you start with yellowcake, which is called zero-percent pure, and you have to refine it to ninety-three-percent pure to get bomb-grade quality?"

Martin thought of Dr. Hipwell, with his bonfire of a pipe, in a room under Whitehall saying just that.

"Yes, they did."

"But they didn't bother to say that purifying the stuff from zero to twenty takes up most of the time? They didn't say that as the stuff gets purer, the process gets faster?"

"No."

"Well, it does. If I had calutrons and centrifuges, I wouldn't use them in tandem. I'd use them in sequence. I'd run the base uranium through the calutrons to get it from zero to twenty, maybe twenty-five-percent pure; then use that as the feedstock for the new cascades."

"Why?"

"It would cut your refining time in the cascades by a factor of ten."

Martin thought it over while Daddy Lomax puffed.

"Then when would you calculate Iraq could have those thirty-five kilograms of pure uranium?"

"Depends when they started with the calutrons."

Martin thought. After the Israeli jets destroyed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, Baghdad operated on two policies: dispersal and duplication, scattering the laboratories all over the country so they could never all be bombed again; and using a cover-all-angles technique in purchasing and experimentation. Osirak had been bombed in 1981.

"Say they bought the components on the open market in 1982 and a.s.sembled them by 1983."

Lomax took a stick from the ground near his feet and began to doodle in the dust.

"These guys got any problem with supplies of yellowcake, the basic feedstock?" he asked.

"No, plenty of feedstock."

"Suppose so," grunted Lomax. "Buy the d.a.m.n stuff in K-mart nowadays.

After a while he tapped the photo with his stick.

"This photo shows about twenty calutrons. That all they had?"

"Maybe more. We don't know. Let's a.s.sume that's all they had working."

"Since 1983, right?"

"Basic a.s.sumption."

Lomax kept scratching in the dust.

"Mr. Hussein got any shortage of electric power?"

Martin thought of the 150-megawatt power station across the sand From Tarmiya, and the suggestion from the Black Hole that the cable ran underground into Tarmiya.

"No, no shortage of power."

"We did," said Lomax. "Calutrons take an amazing amount of electrical power to function. At Oak Ridge we built the biggest coal- fired power station ever made. Even then we had to tap into the public grid. Each time we turned 'em on, there was a brown-out right across Tennessee-soggy fries and brown light bulbs-we were using so much."

He went on doodling with his stick, making a calculation, then scratching it out and starting another in the same patch of dust.

"They got a shortage of copper wire?"

"No, they could buy that on the open market too."

"These giant magnets have to be wrapped in thousands of miles of copper wire," said Lomax. "Back in the war, we couldn't get any.

Needed for war production, every ounce. Know what old Lawrence did?"

"No idea."

"Borrowed all the silver bars in Fort Knox and melted it into wire.

Worked just as well. End of the war, we had to hand it all back to Fort Knox." He chuckled. "He was a character."

Finally he finished and straightened up.

"If they a.s.sembled twenty calutrons in 1983 and ran the yellowcake through them till '89 ... and then took thirty-percent-pure uranium and fed it into the centrifuge cascade for one year, they'd have their thirty- five keys of ninety-three percent bomb-grade uranium ... November."

"Next November," said Martin.

Lomax rose, stretched, reached down, and pulled his guest to his feet.

"No, son, last November."

* * * Martin drove back down the mountain and glanced at his watch. Midday. Eight P.M. in London. Paxman would have left his desk and gone home. Martin did not have his home number. He could wait twelve hours in San Francisco to telephone, or he could fly. He decided to fly. Martin landed at Heathrow at eleven on the morning of January 28 and was with Paxman at twelve-thirty. By two P.M., Steve Laing was talking urgently to Harry Sinclair at the emba.s.sy in Grosvenor Square and an hour later the CIA's London Station Head was on a direct and very secure line to Deputy Director (Operations) Bill Stewart.

It was not until the morning of January 30 that Bill Stewart was able to produce a full report for the DCI, William Webster.

"It checks out," he told the former Kansas judge. "I've had men down at that cabin near Cedar Mountain, and the old man, Lomax, confirmed it all. We've traced his original paper.-it was filed. The records from Oak Ridge confirm that these disks are calutrons."

"How on earth did it happen?" asked the DCI. "How come we never noticed?"

"Well, the idea probably came from Jaafar Al-Jaafar, the Iraqi boss of their program. Apart from Harwell in England, he also trained at CERN, outside Geneva. It's a giant particle accelerator."

"So?"

"Calutrons are particle accelerators. Anyway, all calutron technology was decla.s.sified in 1949. It's been available on request ever since."

"And the calutrons-where were they bought?"

"In bits, mainly from Austria and France. The purchases raised no eyebrows because of the antiquated nature of the technology. The plant was built by Yugoslavs under contract. They said they wanted plans to build on, so the Iraqis simply gave them the plans of Oak Ridge-that's why Tarmiya is a replica."

"When was all this?" asked the DCI.

"Nineteen eighty-two."

"So what this agent, what's his name-"

"Jericho," said Stewart.

"What he said was not a lie?"

"Jericho only reported what he claims he heard Saddam Hussein say at a closed conference. I'm afraid we can no longer exclude the conclusion that this time the man was actually telling the truth."

"And we have kicked Jericho out of play?"

"He was demanding a million dollars for his information. We have never paid that amount, and at the time-"

"For G.o.d's sake, Bill, it's cheap at the price!"

The DCI rose and went over to the picture windows. The aspens were bare now, not as they had been in August, and in the valley the Potomac swept past on its way to the sea.

"Bill, I want you to get Chip Barber back into Riyadh. See if there is any way of reestablishing contact with this Jericho."

"There is a conduit, sir. A British agent inside Baghdad. He pa.s.ses for an Arab. But we suggested that the Century people pull him out of there."

"Just pray they haven't, Bill. We need Jericho back. Never mind the funds-I'll authorize them. Wherever this device is secreted, we have to find it and bomb it into oblivion before it is too late."

"Yes. Er-who is going to tell the generals?"

The Director sighed. "I'm seeing Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft in two hours."

Rather you than me, thought Stewart as he left.

Chapter 18.

The two men from Century House arrived in Riyadh before Chip Barber did from Washington. Steve Laing and Simon Paxman landed before dawn, having taken the night flight from Heathrow.

Julian Gray, the Riyadh Head of Station, met them in his usual unmarked car and brought them to the villa where he had been virtually living, with only occasional visits home to see his wife, for five months. He was puzzled by the sudden reappearance of Paxman from London, let alone the more senior Steve Laing, to oversee an operation that had effectively been closed down. In the villa, behind closed doors, Laing told Gray exactly why Jericho had to be traced and brought back into play without delay. "Jesus. So the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's really managed to do it." "We have to a.s.sume so, even though we have no proof," said Laing. "When does Martin have a listening window?" "Between eleven-fifteen and eleven forty-five tonight," said Gray. "For security, we haven't sent him anything for five days. We've been expecting him to reappear over the border anytime." "Let's hope he's still there. If not, we're in deep s.h.i.t. We'll have to reinfiltrate him, and that could take forever. The Iraqi deserts are alive with patrols." "How many know about this?" asked Gray. "As few as possible, and it stays that way," replied Laing. A very tight need-to-know group had been established between London and Washington, but for the professionals it was still too big. In Washington there was the President and four members of his Cabinet, plus the Chairman of the National Security Council and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Add to that four men at Langley, of whom one, Chip Barber, was heading for Riyadh. Back in California, the unfortunate Dr. Lomax had an unwanted house guest in his cabin to ensure he made no contact with the outside world. In London, the news had gone to the new Prime Minister, John Major, the Cabinet Secretary, and two members of the Cabinet; at Century House, three men knew. In Riyadh there were now three at the SIS villa, and Barber on his way to join them. Among the military, the information was confined to four generals-three American and one British. Dr. Terry Martin had developed a diplomatic bout of flu and was residing comfortably in an SIS safe house in the countryside, looked after by a motherly housekeeper and three not-so-motherly minders. From henceforth, all operations against Iraq that concerned the search for, and destruction of, the device the Allies a.s.sumed to be code-named Qubth-ut-Allah, or the Fist of G.o.d, would be undertaken under the cover of active measures designed to terminate Saddam Hussein himself, or for some other plausible reason. Two such attempts had in fact already been made. Two locations had been identified at which the Iraqi President might be expected to reside, at least temporarily. No one could say precisely when, for the Rais moved like a will-o'-the-wisp from hiding place to hiding place when he was not in the bunker in Baghdad. Continuous overhead surveillance watched the two locations. One was a villa out in the countryside forty miles from Baghdad, the other a big mobile home converted into a war caravan and planning center. On one occasion the aerial watchers had seen mobile missile batteries and light armor moving into position around the villa. A flight of Strike Eagles went in and blew the villa apart. It was a false alarm-the bird had flown. On the second occasion, two days before the end of January, the large trailer had been seen to move to a new location. Again an attack went in; again the target was not at home. On both occasions the fliers took enormous risks in pressing their attacks, for the Iraqi gunners fought back furiously. The failure to terminate the Iraqi dictator on both occasions left the Allies in a quandary. They simply did not know Saddam Hussein's precise movements. The fact was, no one knew them, outside of a tiny group of personal bodyguards drawn from the Amn-al-Kha.s.s, commanded by his own son Kusay. In reality, he was moving around most of the time. Despite the a.s.sumption that Saddam was in his bunker deep underground for the whole of the air war, he was really in residence there for less than half that time. But his safety was a.s.sured by a series of elaborate deceptions and false trails. On several occasions he was "seen" by his own cheering troops-cynics said they were cheering because they were the ones not at the front being pounded by the Buffs. The man the Iraqi troops saw on all such occasions was one of the doubles who could pa.s.s for Saddam among all but his closest intimates. At other times, convoys of limousines, up to a dozen, swept through the city of Baghdad with blackened windows, causing the citizenry to believe their Rais was inside one of the cars. Not so; these cavalcades were all decoys. When he moved, he sometimes went in a single unmarked car. Even among his innermost circle, the security measures prevailed. Cabinet members alerted for a conference with him would be given just five minutes to leave their residences, get into their cars, and follow a motorcycle outrider. Even then, the destination was not the meeting place. They would be driven to a parked bus with blackened windows, there to find all the other ministers sitting in the dark. There was a screen between the ministers and the driver. Even the driver had to follow an Amn-al-Kha.s.s motorcyclist to the eventual destination. Behind the driver, the ministers, generals, and advisers sat in darkness like schoolboys on a mystery tour, never knowing where they were going or, afterward, where they had been. In most cases these meetings were held in large and secluded villas, commandeered for the day and vacated before nightfall. A special detail of the Amn-al-Kha.s.s had no other job than to find such a villa when the Rais wanted a meeting, hold the villa owners incommunicado, and let them return home when the Rais was long gone. Small wonder the Allies could not find him. But they tried-until the first week of February. After that, all a.s.sa.s.sination attempts were called off, and the military never understood why.

Chip Barber arrived at the British villa in Riyadh just after midday on the last day of January. After the greetings, the four men sat and waited out the hours until they could contact Martin, if he was still there. "I suppose we have a deadline on this?" asked Laing. Barber nodded. "February twentieth. Stormin' Norman wants to march the troops in there on February twentieth." Paxman whistled. "Twenty days, h.e.l.l. Is Uncle Sam going to pick up the tab for this?" "Yep. The Director has already authorized Jericho's one million dollars to go into his account now, today. For the location of the device, a.s.suming there's one and only one of them, we'll pay the b.a.s.t.a.r.d five." "Five million dollars?" expostulated Laing. "Christ, no one had ever paid anything like that for information!" Barber shrugged. "Jericho, whoever he is, ranks as a mercenary. He wants money, nothing else. So let him earn it. There's a catch. Arabs haggle, we don't. Five days after he gets the message, we drop the ante by half a million a day until he comes up with the precise location. He has to know that." The three Britishers mulled over the sums that const.i.tuted more than all their salaries combined for a lifetime's work. "Well," remarked Laing, "that should put the breeze up him." The message was composed during the late afternoon and evening. First, contact would have to be established with Martin, who would have to confirm with preagreed code words that he was still there and a free man. Then Riyadh would tell him of the offer to Jericho, in detail, and press on him the ma.s.sive urgency now involved. The men ate sparingly, toying with food, hard pressed to cope with the tension in the room. At half past ten Simon Paxman went into the radio shack with the others and spoke the message into the tape machine. The spoken pa.s.sage was speeded to two hundred times its real duration and came out at just under two seconds. At ten seconds after eleven-fifteen, the senior radio engineer sent a brief signal-the "are you there" message. Three minutes later, there was a tiny burst of what sounded like static. The satellite dish caught it, and when it was slowed down, the five listening men heard the voice of Mike Martin: "Black Bear to Rocky Mountain, receiving. Over." There was an explosion of relief in the Riyadh villa, four mature men pumping each other's backs like football fans whose team has won the Super Bowl. Those who have never been there can ill imagine the sensation of learning that "one of ours" far behind the lines is still, somehow, alive and free.

"Fourteen f.u.c.king days he's sat there," marveled Barber. "Why the h.e.l.l didn't the b.a.s.t.a.r.d pull out when he was told?" "Because he's a stubborn idiot," muttered Laing. "Just as well." The more dispa.s.sionate radio man was sending another brief interrogatory. He wanted five words to confirm-even though the oscillograph told him the voice pattern matched that of Martin-that the SAS major was not speaking under duress. Fourteen days is more than enough to break a man. His message back to Baghdad was as short as it could be: "Of Nelson and the North, I say again, of Nelson and the North. Out." Another three minutes elapsed. In Baghdad, Martin crouched on the floor of his shack at the bottom of First Secretary Kulikov's garden, caught the brief blip of sound, spoke his reply, pressed the speedup b.u.t.ton, and transmitted a tenth-of-a-second burst back to the Saudi capital. The listeners heard him say "Sing the brilliant day's renown." The radio man grinned. "That's him, sir. Alive and kicking and free." "Is that a poem?" asked Barber. "The real second line," said Laing, "is: 'Sing the glorious day's renown.' If he'd got it right, he'd have been talking with a gun to his temple. In which case ..." He shrugged. The radio man sent the final message, the real message, and closed down. Barber reached into his briefcase. "I know it may not be strictly according to local custom, but diplomatic life has certain privileges." "I say," murmured Gray. "Dom Perignon. Do you think Langley can afford it?" "Langley," said Barber, "has just put five million greenbacks on the poker table. I guess it can offer you guys a bottle of fizz." "Jolly decent," said Paxman.

A single week had brought about a transformation in Edith Hardenberg-a week, that is, and the effects of being in love. With Karim's gentle encouragement she had been to a coiffeur in Grinzing, who had let down her hair and cut and styled it, chin-length, so that it fell about her face, filling out her narrow features and giving her a hint of mature glamour. Her lover had selected a range of makeup preparations with her shy approval; nothing garish, just a hint of eyeliner, foundation cream, a little powder, and a touch of lipstick at the mouth. At the bank, Wolfgang Gemutlich was privately aghast, secretly watching her cross the room, taller now in one-inch heels. It was not even the heels or the hair or the makeup that distressed him, though he would have flatly banned them all had Frau Gemutlich even mentioned the very idea. What perturbed him was her air, a sense of self-confidence when she presented him with his letters for signing or took dictation. He knew, of course, what had happened. One of those foolish girls downstairs had persuaded her to spend money. That was the key to it all, spending money. It always, in his experience, led to ruin, and he feared for the worst. Her natural shyness had not entirely evaporated, and in the bank she was as retiring as ever in speech if not quite in manner. But in Karim's presence, when they were alone, she constantly amazed herself with her boldness. For twenty years things physical had been abhorrent to her, and now she was like a traveler on a voyage of slow and wondering discovery, half abashed and horrified, half curious and excited. So their loving-at first wholly one-sided-became more exploratory and mutual. The first time she touched him "down there," she thought she would die of shock and mortification, but to her surprise she had survived. On the evening of the third of February he brought home to her flat a box wrapped in gift paper with a ribbon. "Karim, you mustn't do things like this. You are spending too much." He took her in his arms and stroked her hair. She had learned to love it when he did that. "Look, little kitten, my father is wealthy. He makes me a generous allowance. Would you prefer me to spend it in nightclubs?" She liked it also when he teased her. Of course, Karim would never go to one of those terrible places. So she accepted the perfumes and the toiletries that once, only two weeks ago, she would never have touched. "Can I open it?" she asked. "That's what it's there for." At first she did not understand what they were. The contents of the box seemed to be a froth of silks and lace and colors. When she understood, because she had seen advertis.e.m.e.nts in magazines-not the sort she bought, of course-she turned bright pink. "Karim, I couldn't. I just couldn't." "Yes, you could," he said, and grinned. "Go on, kitten. Go into the bedroom and try. Close the door-I won't look." She laid the things out on the bed and stared at them. She, Edith Hardenberg? Never. There were stockings and girdles, panties and bras, garters and short nighties, in black, pink, scarlet, cream, and beige. Things in filmy lace or trimmed with it, silky-smooth fabrics over which the fingertips ran as over ice. She was an hour alone in that room before she opened the door in a bathrobe. Karim put down his coffee cup, rose, and walked over. He stared down at her with a kind smile and began to undo the sash that held the robe together. She blushed red again and could not meet his gaze. She looked away. He let the robe fall open. "Oh, kitten," he said softly, "you are sensational." She did not know what to say, so she just put her arms around his neck, no longer frightened or horrified when her thigh touched the hardness in his jeans. When they had made love, she rose and went to the bathroom. On her return she stood and looked down at him. There was no part of him that she did not love. She sat on the edge of the bed and ran a forefinger down the faint scar along one side of his chin, the one he said he had sustained when falling through a greenhouse in his father's orchard outside Amman. He opened his eyes, smiled, and reached up for her face; she gripped his hand and nuzzled the fingers, stroking the signet ring on the smallest finger, the ring with the pale pink opal that his mother had given him. "What shall we do tonight?" she asked. "Let's go out," he said. "Sirk's at the Bristol." "You like steak too much." He reached behind her and held her small b.u.t.tocks under the filmy gauze. "That's the steak I like." He grinned. "Stop it-you're terrible, Karim!" she said. "I must dress." She pulled away and caught sight of herself in the mirror. How could she have changed so much? she thought. How could she ever have brought herself to wear lingerie? Then she realized why. For Karim, her Karim, whom she loved and who loved her, she would do anything. Love might have come late in her life, but it had come with the force of a mountain torrent.