Cold Shot (25 page)

“Yeah.”

“And those pirates burned to death,” he said. “The ones in the cargo container.”

“Yeah, it sure looked like it.” Kyra zoned out the world and focused on his face, watching the theory play out in his mind, one logical connection joining another and another, latching on to each other in a steady trail. “If Ahmadi was smuggling nuclear material, that would make sense.”

“Not if he was smuggling processed uranium. Even weapons-grade uranium is only weakly radioactive . . . all the isotopes are unstable. It decays by releasing alpha particles. Anything blocks alpha particles, even your skin. It can’t burn you from the outside. You’d have to inhale it for it to kill you.”

He was staring past her into space now, his hand pressing against his forehead like he was trying to squeeze the thoughts out. It usually meant the logical leaps were coming too fast for even him to track and he had to slow down his mind.

“All the nuclear weapons ever designed have only used two kinds of fissionable material . . . uranium and plutonium. You want plutonium if you can get it because you only need ten kilograms of the stuff to create critical mass, but you need three times as much uranium. More bang per kilo, as it were, but making it is complicated,” he replied, trying to organize his theory as he spoke. “And at weapons grade, neither one would burn you to death in the time it takes to cross the Atlantic.”

“So what cooked the pirates?” He’d have the answer, she was sure.

“Plutonium is a by-product of nuclear reactors,” Jon said. “U
238
goes in and nuclear waste comes out—spent fuel rods made up of U
234
and trace amounts of plutonium
239
and a laundry list of nasty isotopes that emit beta and gamma particles that can cook a human being in short order. That’s why they have to bury the stuff behind some serious shielding for a few million years. But with the right equipment, you can extract the plutonium from the fuel rods. You need a reprocessing facility to do that and one key element of the reprocessing cycle is nitric acid.”

“And they set up shop in a chemical factory,” Kyra replied, repeating his assertion. Her own mind was racing now, trying to follow his leaps and conclusions. “The Venezuelans mine the uranium and ship it to Iran, where it’s processed and run through a reactor to produce spent fuel rods. Then they ship the fuel rods and other parts for the warhead back here,” she realized, “and the Venezuelans reprocess the waste to extract the plutonium.”

“Which they use to make the nuclear ‘pit,’” Jon agreed. “Except this time, a group of pirates took the ship and broke into the cargo hold. They cracked open one of the fuel-rod containers and got a lethal dose. The Iranians took the ship back and locked the bodies down in the hold, except for the one they threw overboard—”

“Why do that?” Kyra asked. “That makes no sense.”

Jon shook his head. “I don’t know. It was a stupid act, but that’s not the point.”

“The point is that the CAVIM facility isn’t just a chemical factory,” Kyra said. “It’s a nuclear reprocessing plant.” She looked at Jon and realized that she’d reached the end of his analytical process. “The Iranians aren’t shipping nuclear warheads into Venezuela. They’re making the nuclear warheads
here.
”

UN Security Council

“And in December 2008, the Republic of Turkey intercepted an IRISL vessel carrying cargo destined for this so-called tractor factory.” Rostow’s list of allegations was getting tedious now, coming one after another in an endless stream of criminal charges, but Cooke kept herself rigid. The audience was alternately locked on to the American president or their laptops and tablets, and the CIA director could hear the combined sounds of dozens of reporters and spectators clicking away at their keyboards. “But the cargo didn’t contain tractor parts. It contained large quantities of explosives. Now, why would a tractor factory need explosives? It’s a shame President Avila isn’t here to tell us, isn’t it?”

Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

“You’d need them to build an implosion weapon,” Jon explained. “You surround the nuclear core with explosives in a very precise pattern. They go off simultaneously, forming a perfectly spherical pressure wave that compresses the core, forcing it to critical mass. Inject a little tritium or deuterium at the right moment to enhance the fission reaction and you’ve got a bomb with more explosive yield than either Fat Man or Little Boy.”

“Convenient that the CAVIM factory produces explosives,” Kyra observed.

“Isn’t it?” he agreed.

UN Security Council

The audience had fallen silent. Rostow had finally stopped speaking, using the dramatic pause in his presentation to enhance the effect of its blistering rhetoric.

The U.S. president said nothing for almost ten seconds, then leaned forward, his voice low and measured again. “After my recent broadcast, President Avila of Venezuela released a statement declaring his country’s innocence and accusing my country of imperialism. He accused my country of hypocrisy and of faking the evidence presented. Well, President Avila,” Rostow said, staring directly at the network cameras in the back of the room, “let me say to you, sir, that the evidence released then and the evidence I have released now have not been faked or fabricated in any way. It is you, sir, who have deliberately and cynically deceived this body and the world about your efforts to help Iran evade its obligations in pursuit of nuclear weapons. It is you, sir, who is trying to upset the balance of security in the world. You and Venezuela, in concert with Iran, have created this danger, not the United States. The world has seen how far a Venezuelan chief of state is willing to go in order to deceive this body.”

Rostow leaned back, pulled off his glasses, and dropped them on the table, exaggerating the weariness implicit in his gesture. “Mr. President, members of the council, I have ordered the United States Navy to establish a blockade of the northern coast of Venezuela and prevent any ship or aircraft from departing the country. We cannot afford to allow President Avila the opportunity to smuggle Hossein Ahmadi or any illegal nuclear materials out of the country. I ask this council to pass a resolution supporting that action. I further ask this council to pass a second resolution imposing economic sanctions on Venezuela if it does not immediately comply with its obligation under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and open its nuclear sites to IAEA inspectors immediately. I am submitting draft resolutions to that effect today.”

The UK prime minister nodded slowly, then leaned forward to his own microphone. “The draft resolutions are accepted for review. We will take a ten-minute recess and then reconvene.” He slammed the gavel on the wooden desktop.

The audience erupted; arguments and conversations broke free in a dozen languages, and more than a few members of the crowd ran for the doors, cell phones pressed to their ears.

Feldman spun around in his seat. “Where’s Avila?” he growled.

“Caracas, I presume,” Cooke replied.

“Why isn’t he
here
?!”

“We have no intelligence that answers that question,” the CIA director replied.

“That isn’t acceptable,” Feldman told her.

“It’s the only answer I can give you. But if you’re asking for a theory, I’d say he’s not here because he had a good idea of what the president was going to say and didn’t feel the need to defend himself . . . possibly because he’s close to becoming a nuclear power and there’s nothing the UN can do to stop him before he gets that warhead put together.” She pushed herself up and began to button her jacket. “If you don’t need me to be a show prop anymore, I have to get back to Langley. I still have people down there and we need to get them out.”

“Don’t try to bring them home just yet, Kathy. This isn’t over and I don’t need you diverting resources that we might need—” Feldman began to order.

“We all serve at the pleasure of the president.” Then Cooke leaned over, putting her face inches from his. “But I’m going to protect my people, Mr. Feldman,” she told him.

She turned her back to the men, made her way around the center table, and walked out of the Security Council chamber. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency was quite sure she would never see it again.

Caracas, Venezuela

The American Marines had broken out the riot gear now. The television on the hotel wall showed the U.S. military guards standing in a line, making a show of force for the mob that certainly numbered in the low thousands now. The scene shifted to show the crowd on the other side of the gates. The protest signs they carried were crude, offering the usual insults and making the typical demands. They’d burned a few flags, but having run out of those they had begun to express their anger through violence, and the bricks and bottles were now coming over the wall at a steady clip. The heavy metal barrier was holding the crowd back despite their best efforts to shake it free from its hinges in the masonry—the U.S. State Department clearly had learned a few things about security and construction since losing its embassy in Iran to the locals in ’79—but it couldn’t restrain them forever. Only a few
caraqueños
had tried to climb the walls, mostly young, stupid boys anxious to prove their manhood to their peers and nearby girls, but they’d had the sense to retreat when the soldiers had moved toward them. That couldn’t last. One of the boys would finally try to outdo his fellows by staying on the wall too long and then things would get interesting.

“Like your own revolution, no?” Avila asked. Ahmadi and the soldier, Elham, stood inside the room, staring at the television. The crowd below seemed to offer no fascination for the Iranians, he saw.
Well, it isn’t their country,
he supposed. The future of their mutual enterprise was at stake, admittedly, but the protests and sporadic violence signaled their triumph, he was quite sure.

Ahmadi grunted. He could hear the yells from the streets below even here on the top floor of the residential tower where the Venezuelan president had arranged to hide him from sight. “It does remind me of my younger days,” he admitted. “The day we took the Americans’ embassy in Tehran was the real moment we saved our country from the West. It is strange how easy it was in the end. The Americans are like shadows . . . frightening until you finally touch them and realize that their image was their power all along. A little courage is enough to break their hold.”

Avila smiled and leaned on the balcony rails, placing his forearms on the metal guard. “Our
comandante
Chávez first tried to take power in 1992, when he staged a coup against
el presidente
Carlos Andrés Pérez. The plan was to take Miraflores, the Ministry of Defense, the military airport, a few other important sites. But he was betrayed by defectors and trapped inside the Military Museum. This . . .” Avila raised his hands in a sweep over the protests twenty floors below. “This is what he had hoped to see. And some civilians did rally here and in other cities . . . Maracaibo, Valencia. Still, it all fell to pieces. The
comandante
was captured and went to prison. But God’s will was done and he emerged victorious. The coup earned him the people’s loyalty and they elected him president seven years later. But his revolution truly began that night of the coup.”

“You were there?” Elham asked.

“I was,” Avila told him, pride on his face. “Would that I had been a soldier and had been taken with him that night, but I was just a factory worker then. But when I heard of his move on the capital, I ran out and joined the civilians who moved against the city center in Valencia. The troops came against us and we fought them. I escaped arrest, but I knew that God had called me that night to join the Bolivarian revolution. I moved to Caracas, and when the
comandante
was freed, I devoted myself to his cause. He was more than a leader, I think. He was like a prophet, blessed by heaven to return freedom to this country.”

“And how many died in your coup?” Elham asked.

Avila shrugged. “A dozen soldiers in the actual attack. A few dozen more when they were called to suppress the crowds. They killed almost a hundred of us. But you are right,
hermano.
Their courage was enough to bind the movement together.” The president slapped the metal rail standing between him and the empty air beyond. “And now Chávez’s dream is made real. The revolution will never end, but here, today, it becomes
final 
. . . irreversible.”

“But not all of these people are protesting against the Americans,” Ahmadi said. “I’m told that a good many are against you.”
And me,
he didn’t say.

“We have experience handling protests,” Avila said, waving a dismissive hand at the crowd.

Ahmadi nodded, then looked back at the city below. “And President Rostow’s address to the UN doesn’t worry you?”

“What can they do now?” Avila said.

“They do have a fleet off your coast,” Ahmadi observed.

“And what will they do with it? What will they shoot with it?” Avila asked. “We will harass them and they will do nothing . . . perhaps turn some ships away from our ports, but nothing else. You will see. As you said, their image is their power. Even when they put up a line around Cuba during 1962, they wouldn’t attack the island itself. They knew what the price would be. And when the weapon is assembled, we will announce it to the world and the Americans will leave. No doubt there will be a period of upheaval. The Americans will try to rally the world against us, to impose sanctions or some other punishment. But our brother Castro has survived sanctions for decades. Your own country has survived sanctions for decades. We will persist and the Americans will have to accept what is.”

“I think you will find that the Americans do not like to accept ‘what is.’ They much prefer to define the rules by which everyone else must play. They’re stubborn that way,” Elham told him.

The door to the room opened without warning. Carreño stomped in and tossed a leather briefcase on the desk before collapsing himself on the cushions. “You have good news, I presume?” Avila said, more an order than a question.