The Alexandria Connection (23 page)

‘I have a small task tonight, and then I have a couple of days before McNamara wants me back.’

‘A couple of days . . . is that all I get?’ Aleta pouted, but her eyes were smiling.

O’Connor parked in a narrow laneway, a hundred metres from the perimeter fence of the Kashta Palace, put on his balaclava and leather gloves and scanned the area with his night vision goggles. The CIA station chief at the Cairo embassy had done well, O’Connor mused. Not only had Cairo organised a lengthy surveillance, showing the palace had remained unused ever since the mysterious meeting here, but the station chief had also organised for one of his agents to infiltrate the cleaning company. The intelligence reports indicated a detachment of two security guards was based on site, operating out of a large control room in the basement that would be at full capacity when meetings took place with a level of security not out of place at a gathering of G7 world leaders. The shifts changed at seven a.m. and seven p.m, with an external patrol of the building conducted at ten p.m. and another at two a.m.

It was just on ten p.m., and right on cue, a swarthy, thickset guard appeared through the front door, cigarette dangling from his mouth. O’Connor waited until the guard completed his inspection of the exterior of the buildings and disappeared back inside. He focused his night-vision goggles on the iron perimeter fence. Wireless CCTV cameras were in place, every 60 metres, but at the rear of the complex, two large sycamore trees overhung the fence. O’Connor stood behind one of the trees, fixed a small, powerful laser to the tree trunk and aimed it at the camera covering that section of the fence. The near-perfect monochromatic light source of the laser obliterated any image being transmitted by the camera, and in the control centre, if it was being monitored at all, it would look like a simple malfunction.

O’Connor checked the silencer on his 45-calibre Glock 21 and replaced it in his shoulder holster. The Austrian pistol had long been O’Connor’s weapon of choice. He scaled the fence with ease and headed toward the main building, moving silently through the extensive gardens, past statues, ponds and palm trees, his tools of trade in a bag slung across his broad shoulders. The agent in the cleaning crew had provided a layout of the building, and more importantly, the location of the alarm box and a large safe in the basement. It was possible that with security guards on the premises, the alarm would not be activated, but O’Connor wasn’t prepared to take that risk, and he made his final approach along the front of the building, keeping close to the stone façade. The heavy wooden door was set under a stone arch and the lock was as the agent had reported, a relatively common ‘five-pin and tumbler’ barrel lock, and O’Connor chose a small diamond-shaped pick. O’Connor had excelled on the courses at ‘the farm’, the CIA’s top secret training area on the south bank of the York River in Virginia, where instruction on the dark arts had no peer.

He slipped a tension wrench into the barrel lock and applied a small amount of pressure on the plug. He then took his pick and began work on each of the pins. Two minutes later, the final pin was forced flush with the shear line. He quietly turned the cam and the door swung open.

O’Connor moved quickly across the black-and-white Italian tiles in the foyer to a wooden cupboard on the far side. The faint sound of Arab music drifted up from the basement. At least they’ve got good taste, O’Connor thought, recognising the sultry tones of Elissa Khoury. He opened the cupboard door, sprung the back from the alarm box, quickly disabled it and disconnected the phone line, just in case it was programmed to send an automatic warning to the control room. He was about to retrieve his pick and tension wrench and close the door when the music got louder and a shaft of light appeared from the stairwell below. O’Connor moved back into the gloom of the foyer and waited.

The guard reached the top of the stairs and immediately spotted the open door. ‘What the —!’ The guard quickly moved toward the entrance, but before he could reach it, O’Connor moved behind him and cracked him over the head with the butt of his Glock, using just enough force to knock him out. His quarrel was not with innocent security guards. He dragged the unconscious guard to the rear of the foyer, retrieved some gaffer tape from his bag and in less than a minute immobilised him.

Now for the second guard, O’Connor thought, closing the heavy entrance door. The music coming from the control room gave O’Connor some cover, but he descended the stone steps slowly, Glock drawn, and he cautiously approached the control room. The guard had his back to him, swaying to the sensual tones of the music. Above him, one of the screens was filled with a blurry reddish-orange glow from the CCTV camera O’Connor had disabled. Was that what the first guard had gone to investigate? O’Connor closed the gap quickly but at the last moment the guard turned. Wide-eyed, he reached for his pistol lying on the table. O’Connor fired twice, hitting the guard in the wrist and shoulder. The guard’s pistol described a gentle arc, clattering onto the stone floor.

‘
Ebn El Sharmoota!
Son of a bitch!’ The guard launched himself forward but O’Connor smashed him with a left hook and followed up with a knee into the man’s groin. The guard doubled over in pain and O’Connor whipped him around and bound his hands behind his back. He continued to scream obscenities, and O’Connor none-too-gently wound gaffer tape over his mouth and secured him in the corridor.

‘So far, so good,’ O’Connor muttered as he made his way to the heavy safe door, which the Cairo agent had located at the end of the subterranean corridor. O’Connor already knew it would be a tough one to crack. Although it was a slightly older design with a combination lock, the manufacturer had silenced the mechanism, making it resistant to the time-honoured method of using a stethoscope to listen to the sound of the tumblers. The manufacturer had also installed a cobalt plate, which made it very resistant to drilling from the front, and O’Connor knew that even if he could get through the cobalt with the special drills he had in his kit, there was a real danger of fracturing the last line of defence – a glass relocking plate, which, if broken, would trigger a secondary locking mechanism that would effectively close the safe down. Once that was broken, even if the combination was known, it could not be opened. O’Connor had considered blowing it, but that was noisy and a last resort, and he’d resolved to come at it from an angle above the cobalt and glass plates.

O’Connor measured off 20 centimetres above the dial and extracted from his satchel a small, powerful drill fitted with a titanium bit. Using a wooden brace angled at 40 degrees, O’Connor began to drill through the tough, reinforced steel. It took nearly thirty minutes, but finally he felt the drill bit break through, and he quickly extracted it and inserted a fibre-optic borescope in its place.

Bingo, he thought. The CIA didn’t muck around when it came to borescopes, and the image of the lock mechanism was crystal-clear. O’Connor turned the combination dial and watched as first the lug on the drive cam engaged the first wheel, and then a lug on the first wheel engaged a lug on the second wheel, which in turn engaged the third, until finally the last wheel began to turn. O’Connor slowly turned the dial and watched until a recessed notch on the fourth wheel came into view. He stopped it at the very top of the turn, directly underneath a small metal bar or ‘fence’; it was designed so the bar would not drop until all the notches on each wheel were perfectly aligned. He slowly spun the dial back the other way, lining up the third wheel, then the second wheel, and finally the front wheel notch came into line and the metal bar dropped with a quiet
thunk
. O’Connor turned the safe’s big three-pronged metal wheel and with the fence out of the way, the bolts slid back into their recess.

The door swung silently, to reveal several shelves, each labelled with different years, and each containing identical leather folios. The first year was labelled 1992 and O’Connor noted that each year the number of folios seemed to increase, until it stabilised at sixteen for the past five meetings. He extracted a folio from the most recent meeting and thumbed through it, letting out a low whistle, but the revelations were cut short by the sounds of sirens in the distance.

O’Connor quickly put the folio in his bag and packed his tools of trade. He drew his pistol and made his way past the control room, where the second guard was struggling futilely against his bonds. He cautiously ascended the stairs, but the first guard was still equally immobilised. Perhaps the guard had been able to activate an alarm as he reached for his pistol?

The sirens were getting closer and O’Connor quickly pondered his options. The police might surround the fence, but they would also undoubtedly use the driveway at the front, so he made his way unerringly through the corridors he’d committed to memory, and out onto the rear balcony. O’Connor vaulted the balustrade and disappeared into the gardens just as the first police car arrived at the front patio. He scanned the road at the back of the estate, but there was no sign of any police. He climbed the fence at the same point he’d come across, retrieved the laser from the tree and disappeared down the lane to his car, reasonably confident there would be nothing to connect him with the break-in. On the other hand, O’Connor had no knowledge of Area 15 . . . yet.

‘T
his is most irregular, Mr Ruger,’ Professor Stockton complained as he led the way to the fortified compound where the Cobalt 60 was kept. ‘I can’t understand why we have to ship Cobalt 60 in three separate small containers when they’re all going to the same destination . . . one large container would have sufficed.’

‘Above my pay grade, Professor. How do you make this stuff?’

‘Cobalt 60 is highly radioactive, but let’s go over to the reactor and I’ll show you.’

Stockton escorted Ruger through security, where they both were equipped with white coats and hard hats. A short while later, they stood on a gantry above a fuel bath, the water used to keep the spent fuel rods cool an eerie aquamarine blue.

‘Cobalt is mined like any other mineral, and once we process it, we get a powder which is pure Cobalt 59. In other words, 59 neutrons in the nucleus of the cobalt atom,’ Professor Stockton explained. ‘We compress the Cobalt 59 into pellets, and among the uranium in the reactor, we’re substituting a small number of rods made up of those pellets coated with nickel. When each Cobalt 59 atom absorbs another neutron from the reactor’s fission reaction, it changes into radioactive Cobalt 60, and that’s what you will be transferring up to Idaho.’

‘So what’s it used for?’

‘A whole range of things. It’s important for the sterilisation of medical equipment, and as a radiation source in the treatment of cancer. It’s also used in industrial radiography, where engineers can inspect flaws in materials, and of course, terrorists would love to get their hands on it, because once cobalt is lifted to the sixty-neutron level, it has too many neutrons to remain stable. I won’t get too technical, but it returns to a stable state by decaying to nickel and emitting cancer-causing gamma rays in the process, which would be catastrophic in a city like New York. With a half-life of over five years, this stuff hangs around for a long time.’

Ruger watched as the three small blue steel containers of Cobalt 60 were loaded into the shipping container. ‘They look pretty solid.’

‘They have to be. That said, there are never any guarantees with radioactive material, Mr Ruger, but we comply with the standards set down by bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. The cobalt itself is encased in 11 inches of lead sheeting, and that’s surrounded by a double-insulated steel cage. Those containers have to pass testing which simulates anything from a train crash to a ship collision, so you can be confident that your cargo is well protected.’

Ruger slowed the brand new FUSO ten-tonne truck and pulled into the nondescript EVRAN warehouse on the outskirts of San Francisco, where two more drivers were waiting with another two trucks. As soon as it was loaded the first truck took off, headed for a warehouse in Chicago. The two six-metre shipping containers destined for overseas were loaded with furniture, and Ruger hid the blue cobalt containers inside cavities in two large sideboards.

Ruger and the other driver pulled out of the warehouse complex, and they headed south along Route 5 toward Los Angeles, sticking to the speed limit. It would take five days and five states to cover the 2200 miles to New Orleans and the Port of South Louisiana. From Los Angeles, they would head across the deserts of Arizona to Phoenix; through Las Cruces in New Mexico; on to San Antonio in Texas; and finally South Louisiana. And the Port of South Louisiana had not been chosen by accident. It was the ninth largest port in the world after those like Shanghai, Singapore and Rotterdam, and it was easily the biggest in the United States. Between them, the Ports of New Orleans, South Louisiana and Baton Rouge stretched for nearly 300 kilometres along the banks of the Mississippi, and that posed a particular challenge for the port authorities. Only a fraction of cargoes could be checked, and the authorities relied on intelligence. The containers of furniture destined for overseas were being consigned with that in mind. In the United Kingdom, the cargo would be picked up at Felixstowe in Suffolk, the United Kingdom’s busiest container port, and in Australia, the cargo was destined for Melbourne. With fewer than one in a hundred containers being physically examined in either country, the chances of the shielded cargo getting through were high.

Sadiq Boulos and Gamal Nadar walked from the Blackfriars Underground and headed down to Fleet Street, where they turned right to walk the last few blocks to St Paul’s Cathedral.

‘The house of the Infidel’s false god has possibilities,’ Boulos whispered, as they approached one of the greatest churches in all of Christendom.

‘Let’s see,’ Nadar said quietly, looking behind him to ensure no one was within hearing distance. ‘Security is probably not as tight as the other buildings in the financial district, and if we can get up to the Golden Gallery, that would be perfect. Lunchtime would be best . . . a lot of people are out of their offices then, although that won’t make much difference. Gamma rays go through everything.’ Nadar smiled broadly at the thought of it.

The traffic was heavy, and the pair had to wait for several iconic London taxis to pass, along with the number fifteen bus to Blackwell, and the number seventy six to Tottenham, before they could cross to the cathedral’s west front with its wide, stone steps and paired Corinthian columns. After the original church had been gutted in 1666, in the Great Fire of London, Sir Christopher Wren, arguably England’s finest architect, had been engaged to redesign it in a baroque style.

It was not the first time the great church had been deliberately targeted. Sitting on Ludgate Hill, the highest ground in the City of London, the great dome had survived several attacks during the blitz, including a huge Nazi time-delay bomb that hit the cathedral on 10 October 1940. Had it gone off, the cathedral would have been totally destroyed, but the bomb was defused by two soldiers from the Royal Engineers, Lieutenant Robert Davies and Sapper George Wylie, both of whom received the rarely awarded George Cross.

Boulos and Nader, tourist maps of London in hand, paid their entrance fee and once inside, barely paused to look at the stunning candelabra, the beautiful high ceilings and the breathtaking stonework and marble in the various chapels, naves and choir stalls. Instead they headed toward the first of a series of stone stairs that would take them to the top of the dome. Two hundred and fifty-seven steps later, they reached the Whispering Gallery which ran around the interior of the dome, and where a whisper against one wall was audible on the opposite side. A further 119 steps, and they were able to inspect the Stone Gallery.

‘We can do better,’ Nadar said quietly. ‘It’s only 50 metres to the ground from here.’

Boulous nodded and they climbed another 152 steps to the Golden Gallery, which gave them stunning views of London. But the vista of the River Thames, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Tate Modern in one of the world’s great cities was the last thing on their mind. Instead, they walked around the outside of the dome with its near shoulder-high iron railing providing protection. On the northern side, they could look down on Paternoster Square.

‘Even if the wind is not in our favour, the effect will still be devastating,’ Boulos whispered, taking a picture of the London Stock Exchange building, which took up the whole of the northern side of the square.

To the west, across the Atlantic Ocean, and to the east, across the Indian Ocean two more teams were playing the role of tourists, calculating likely wind directions in key cities in the US and Australia, and how they might best spread one of the deadliest substances on the planet.