Riders of the Pale Horse (39 page)

“What have you done?” Allison cried.

“Let him go,” Wade replied.

Further screams from inside the building sparked them into action. The Arab.

“Quick!” Judith cried, hustling them across the street toward the taxi.

Allison fell on Wade in the backseat. Judith clambered into the front and screamed, “Drive!”

“Wait, wait,” the driver stammered. “I no drive for people in such dangers. We stop, you find new taxi, yes?”

Judith raised her gun. “Think again.”

The driver moaned and ground his gears. The Arab slammed the apartment door opened and raced out, fists waving. “Quickly,” Judith urged.

“Yes, yes, is speed now,” the driver said, swerving to avoid the fast-approaching Arab. “All the day is slow and here and there and careful, and now is speeds and dangers. This not
Gunsmoke.
You no need for pistols.”

“Can somebody untie my hands?” Wade asked.

“Lean over,” Allison said. Then, “Why did you let Robards go?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Judith added.

Wade winced as he rubbed the circulation back into his hands. “I owed him,” he replied.

“He is a thief and a smuggler and a mercenary,” Judith snapped. “Not to mention the fact that he kidnapped you.”

“Not here,” Wade said. “Before. Back in Russia.”

“Didn't you tell me he stole a truckload of your pharmaceuticals?” Allison demanded.

Wade nodded and glanced out the back window. “He also taught me courage.”

The silence held for a moment. Then Allison ran a soft hand down one side of his face. “Are you all right?”

He captured her hand with his, and said, “Take me home.”

Epilogue

We Have Been Warned

The recent availability of used MIGs comes as very bad news.... Former Communist nations are now selling them at deep, deep discounts. “They're advertising used MIGs for as low as $25,000 and $50,000. You can't even buy a Beechcraft Bonanza for that.”

The Wall Street Journal
August 5, 1992

German police have launched a nationwide search for up to 20 kilograms of deadly weapons-grade uranium smuggled into the country earlier this week by a team of Polish entrepreneurs. The uranium—enough to build a small nuclear bomb—and other highly radioactive materials are part of a consignment smuggled to the West from the former Soviet Union by five Poles and a German woman accomplice. Police had been on the lookout for smuggled radioactive material since a tip-off last month from a Swiss doctor who treated a Pole for severe radiation sickness. Last weekend a German fire brigade unit in protective clothing seized up to 200 grams of extremely toxic radioactive caesium-137—said to be one of the most toxic substances known to man—and
radioactive strontium-90 from a luggage locker at Frankfurt's main railway station.

The European
October 22, 1992

The Foreign Office official said that before the Soviet Union disintegrated, there were strict controls [on sophisticated arms sales to other countries], “although we did not like where they were exporting equipment such as Scud missiles.” Today, however, apart from a degree of central control in Russia, there was no legislation in place to check arms sales, the official said.

The Times of London
October 10, 1992

A British businessman was arrested in Germany yesterday on suspicion of smuggling 80 kilograms of plutonium from Russia. Such a quantity of plutonium, if enriched, could be used to make several atomic bombs.

The Times of London
November 4, 1992

Thousands of Iranians, celebrating the thirteenth anniversary of the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, joined in a vocal “Death to America” message to President-elect Bill Clinton on Wednesday. “You know Bush has lost and Clinton won,” a speaker told the rally marking the day in 1979 when Iranian students took over the embassy. “What we have to say to the new administration is: ‘Death to America.' ”

International Herald Tribune
November 5, 1992

State-of-the-art technologies are pouring into Iran as European, Asian, and US companies rush to profit from Tehran's
attempt to infuse its Islamic revolution with modern science and to rehabilitate the economy. Much of the technology being transferred to Iran in the export boom is categorized as militarily useful by the US government, but relatively little is being held back. That is because of policy differences on Iran between Washington and its allies.... The technology reaching Iran includes radar testing devices, navigation and avionics equipment, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, digital switches, high-speed computers, remote sensors and jet engines, according to these sources.

International Herald Tribune
November 11, 1992

White-robed Islamic militants gathered, in defiance of a government ban, to call for revolution. “Islam is at war on many fronts!” a speaker shouted, seated under a banner urging his followers to kill all nonbelievers. “We must rid ourselves of the infidels who rule this country, the Jews, the Christians, and the Communists! All are different, but all are united in their determination to exterminate Muslims!”... It was a signal that Egypt, with one-third of the Arab world's population, is in danger of losing its struggle against the regional spread of militant Islam.

New York Times Service
November 13, 1992

Ukrainian leaders have threatened to hold up approval of the treaty sharply reducing intercontinental nuclear missiles unless their new nation receives a substantial increase in Western aid. With Ukraine's economy faltering badly, leaders of the government and parliament have declared with growing determination in recent days that they will not part with strategic missiles “for free.”... Diplomats said enriched
uranium scavenged from the warheads could bring hundreds of millions of dollars.

International Herald Tribune
November 14, 1992

Egyptian fundamentalists will keep up their attacks on tourism because of its corrupting influence, a spokesman for the underground Islamic organization Jamaa Islamiya said. “Tourists bring alien customs and morals that offend Islam, especially the attire of some women,” he said in Cairo. “Tourism must be hit because it is corrupt.”

Associated Press
November 25, 1992

The world may be sitting on top of the next nuclear crisis without even knowing it. That is because at least five Middle Eastern countries—Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Algeria—are working to develop nuclear weapons.... They are buying strategic technologies from Western companies. They are also attempting to acquire nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union.

Editorial in the New York Times
November 26, 1992
Kenneth R. Timmerman

Nuclear materials have probably been smuggled out of at least one former Soviet republic, raising new alarms about proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday. Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat from Georgia, who just returned from a trip to five former Soviet republics, said that senior officials in Belarus—one of the four former republics that still has nuclear weapons on its soil—told of “several
cases” of intercepting uranium as smugglers sought to take it across the border into Poland.

International Herald Tribune
November 26, 1992

Investigators looking into a recent rash of European criminal cases involving illicit smuggling and sale of radioactive materials say they have found evidence of thefts from former Soviet and East European nuclear plants, both commercial and nuclear.... Evidence in these cases suggests that freelance con artists and small groups of criminals are crossing borders opened after the end of the Cold War in search of quick profits from potentially dangerous radioactive contraband, and that the smugglers are using routes and methods adapted from Europe's heroin and illicit cigarette trades.... Uranium of the sort being seized in the smuggling cases could prove useful to a nuclear bomb manufacturer if acquired in large enough quantities.

Washington Post Service
November 30, 1992

U.S. intelligence analysts are divided on the issue of what Iran's $2 billion-a-year military buildup—including its nuclear program—means, and whether Iran could replace Iraq as an aggressive, expansionist military threat in the Gulf region in the coming years.... The new report also draws strong conclusions about the leadership in Tehran, asserting that President Hashemi Rafsanjani has built a team of nuclear experts, many of them educated in the United States, to direct a nuclear program. Based on their activities, as well as on Iran's nuclear research and development programs, the study concludes that there is more certainty about Iran's intentions.... The worst case scenario for Iran has been articulated by Mr. Gates. He said in an Associated Press interview published last week that Tehran could pose
a threat to the United States and its allies in the Gulf within three to five years.

New York Times Service
December 1, 1992

Saudi Arabia has been thrown into an open struggle between the ruling al-Saud family and the increasingly powerful religious establishment. King Fahd has been forced to make the unprecedented move of dismissing more than half of the country's religious council because of its implicit support for a petition criticizing his rule.... Though Fahd is an absolute ruler, his political legitimacy is based on his claim to rule an Islamic society.... This latest upsurge of religious extremism dates back to the Gulf war, when Fahd allowed 500,000 allied troops into Saudi Arabia. Ultra-conservatives opposed the presence of “foreign infidels.”

It also attacked the kingdom's foreign policy for accommodating “interests of Western governments.”

The Sunday Times
December 13, 1992

Federal authorities arrested a suspect Thursday in the bombing of the World Trade Center and said others were being sought. The man arrested was a member of a Muslim fundamentalist group.

International Herald Tribune
March 5, 1993

As long as they have nuclear weapons, and as long as there is a market, you will probably see people in Kazakhstan—not necessarily the government, but maybe the entrepreneurs or unemployed apparatchiks—who will try to turn a quick buck through the sale of weapon components.... Given the political entente, it would surprise me greatly if nuclear weapons cooperation had not only been discussed, but deals
actually consummated, where Kazakhstan has provided nuclear weapons to Iran.

Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy
Washington, D.C.
Interviewed on BBC-TV Dispatches Program
May 12, 1993

To make an atomic bomb, a terrorist or a would-be proliferator would need to get hold of only 5 kg of weapon-grade plutonium or 15 kg of weapon-grade uranium, less than you would need to fill a fruit bowl. At present the world probably contains about 250 tons of this sort of plutonium and about 1500 tons of the uranium. To lose one bomb's worth from the stock is the equivalent of losing a single word from one of three copies of
The Economist.
But the loss would be harder to detect. The world's stock of nuclear explosive material is dispersed and hoarded. Almost none of this material is covered by international nuclear-accounting rules. And more than half of it is inside the chaotic relic of the former Soviet Union.

The Economist
June 5, 1993

With the help of a confidential informer operating inside a suspected bombing ring, federal agents recorded many private conversations of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the Egyptian cleric who has been blamed for inspiring terrorism in Egypt and the United States.... Six of the eight men arrested on Thursday in a plot to assassinate political leaders and bomb the United Nations, the FBI's New York headquarters and two commuter tunnels, were followers of the sheikh.... As a loosely knit organization, Al Fuqra turned to Mr. Hampton-El and perhaps a few others in the Black Muslim community
to provide it with weapons and expertise in carrying out attacks, the detective said.

International Herald Tribune
June 28, 1993

Eighteen months after Algeria's military leadership canceled the country's first free parliamentary elections to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from coming to power, the already violent struggle between security forces and Muslim guerrillas appears to have entered a more ominous phase. Islamic extremists appear to have embarked on a new terror campaign in the past three months.... The killings have already sent shivers of fear and suspicion through Algeria's middle-class professional community.

Washington Post Service
June 28, 1993

The visions were apocalyptic: bomb blasts spreading fire and smoke through United Nations headquarters and a lower Manhattan skyscraper that houses, of all things, the New York offices of the FBI. Other explosions the same day in the Holland and Lincoln tunnels under the Hudson River, crushing motorists inside cars turned to twisted junk, killing many more by spreading intense heat, smoke and noxious fumes throughout the enclosed space of the tubes. Thousands dead, thousands more injured, the nation's biggest city in a wild panic. It was supposed to happen this week, stunning America with a new and ghoulish kind of pre-Fourth of July fireworks display.

Time
July 5, 1993

The Islamic Group, led by Sheikh Abdel Rahman, vowed in Cairo for the first time to launch a retaliatory terrorist campaign against US targets in Egypt and the United States.
“We will hit American targets,” said a leader of the Islamic Group in the militant stronghold of Imbaba, “and not just American targets in Egypt, but throughout the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.” In a sign of concern Saturday about possible retaliation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened the command post that it uses to keep watch over crises.