Ops Files II--Terror Alert (13 page)

Uri watched as she walked to the entrance. “I’m keeping the guns until tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll leave them at the hotel and let you know the room number – there’ll be a room key waiting at the desk for whoever you send to retrieve them.”

“Probably wise. Tell them Sam is coming. I can remember that.”

“Will do. See you around, Uri.” And with that, she opened the door and slipped out without looking back. The door latched softly behind her, and Uri sat heavily in his swivel chair and turned to face the monitors. He watched her depart, noting how she blended with the pedestrians almost instantly, and nodded in approval.

“You never know, Maya. It’s an odd world,” he whispered to himself. “Odd, indeed.”

Reims, France

A cold wind blew down the industrial street on the outskirts of Reims, the sky gunmetal gray. A kit of pigeons soared overhead as an overloaded truck labored along the thoroughfare. It was the only vehicle on the road, the warehouse district effectively shut down for the weekend.

Vladimir and Vahid walked briskly along the sidewalk, their destination a small building surrounded by pallets and crates. A single watchman stood by the iron gates, a navy blue knit cap on top of his head and a dusting of dark beard at the bottom. He took a long pull on a hand-rolled cigarette and shifted from foot to foot as the two men approached, his right hand in the pocket of his peacoat as he watched the arrivals through slits of eyes.

Vladimir greeted him in Russian and the guard answered in kind, reaching to pull open the heavy gates. The barrier rolled to the side with a creak, and Vladimir led the way to the building entrance, where a VW Golf and a Peugeot were parked. Another guard stood under the overhang, both hands in his pockets. Vladimir nodded to him and he returned the gesture and stepped aside so Vladimir and the Iranian could enter.

The interior of the warehouse was shrouded in gloom, the only light from a few high windows coated in grime. Scaffolding rose a story and a half in the far reaches, surrounding a newly constructed vault near the back wall. Vladimir strode to the heavy vault door and yet another Russian pulled it open for them.

Inside, Vahid moved to the smaller chamber that occupied the center of the room and inspected the construction of the walls and door jamb.

“Where did you get the lead?” he asked.

“From a hospital construction firm in Finland. They use it for shielding the radiation oncology vaults.”

“And you built it to my specifications?”

“Actually, no. We doubled the tolerances so we could handle more radioactive projects if the need arose.”

Vahid eyed the huge monitor occupying a third of a table with what looked like a gaming console sitting before it. He lowered himself into a Herman Miller Aeron chair and studied the levers and buttons, and then powered the monitor to life.

An image flickered on screen – the interior of the vault. In the foreground, a robotic arm was mounted on an overhead track. Vahid moved the joystick, and the arm slid toward the object in the center of the room – the Siberian generator’s radioactive source.

Vahid nodded in approval. “Excellent. I trust that the control sensitivity and speed are user adjustable?”

“Of course. All done through the computer interface. You can program the movements to whatever you feel comfortable with.” Vladimir studied the image. “How long do you think it will take to finish the device?”

“I want to double-check the work that’s been done so far, but assuming it’s been competently executed, no more than a day. The conversion of the strontium salts into a dispersible form is the most sensitive – your man was up to speed on how to best achieve that?”

“The technician we used was said to be one of the best.”

Vahid swiveled to face the Russian. “What happened to him?”

“It was an idiocy. He and a friend were coming back from a restaurant in Hautvillers when a drunk driver hit them head-on. They were both killed instantly.”

“A bit of bad luck.”

Vladimir frowned. “Yes. Fortunately, the project was far enough along that we could wait for your arrival. Otherwise we would have completed it and merely had you verify the device was constructed correctly.”

“Well, no harm, then. I trust you have all the other gear I requested.”

“Yes.”

“What are you using for the explosive?”

“A Semtex variant that won’t trigger any sensors. Manufactured by a specialty outfit in Russia.”

Vahid sat back. “Tell me about the size of the stadium.”

“I can do better than that. We have full plans of the venue.” Vladimir unfurled a blueprint, and Vahid eyed the legend at the bottom.

“It’s large. Ideally you’d want the device to detonate above it.”

The Russian shook his head. “That’s not an option. The airspace is too tightly controlled.”

“Then how? With the shielding, it will be far too heavy for a suitcase.”

“A vehicle will bring it into the stadium. From there it will be transported to the upper reaches of the coliseum. Next best thing to airborne.”

“The kill ratio will be smaller.”

“How much so?”

Vahid studied the image and did a quick calculation. “You might see a fifty percent exposure pattern.”

“So perhaps…twenty thousand casualties?”

Vladimir shook his head. “Oh, no, not anywhere close, at least not initially. Remember that the whole point of a dirty bomb is not just the initial blast effect and the subsequent radiation poisoning – it’s the epidemiology crisis from the exposure that will manifest over years. Strontium-90 is absorbed into the system and tends to collect in bone marrow, so you could expect to see huge increases in related cancers. The eventual toll might be in the thousands, although most of the damage would be psychological – nobody would want to be anywhere near ground zero for a long, long time, and those who were exposed could contaminate others. Depends on a host of factors, but it’s incredibly nasty stuff.”

“The blast alone should kill several hundred. The stadium will be densely packed, and the shielding, as well as the metal casing, should act like shrapnel and cut through the crowd.”

Vahid nodded. “Again, if it could be detonated in the air over the stadium, you would see a far greater effect.”

“Understood. But there’s a method to choosing this approach. Imagine the cleanup costs – not only will the health system be taxed beyond imagination by thousands, or tens of thousands, of cases of radiation poisoning and related cancers, but it will cost billions to make the area safe, and take years.” Vladimir eyed the screen. “That will make more devices enormously appealing for my client base – the likely success of any negotiation will rely on the other party’s understanding of the costs involved in refusing to negotiate. After this, anyone promising to use one will have to be taken seriously, which should change the political landscape for those whose interests align with yours.”

“That’s the hope. Something needs to change, because the imperialist aggression and refusal to recognize the basic rights of those in the Middle East seem like they will continue forever at the present rate, especially now that the Americans are funding their own false flag terrorist organizations to justify their invasion of the region’s oil-rich nations. Any death is a tragedy, but perhaps if those in the West understand that they will pay in kind, at home, where they believe themselves to be safe…”

Vahid trailed off at the thought and focused his attention on the console. He familiarized himself with the controls, moving the robotic arm to and fro, swiveling it, lowering and raising it, and then set to work on adjusting the velocity so he could perform the precision moves he required. Vladimir watched him for several minutes and then walked to the exit. “Want some coffee?”

The Iranian raised his head and smiled. “That would be great. I didn’t have a particularly restful night.”

“I’m not surprised. Freedom will do that for you.”

“I’ll begin work on this now, but I’ll be taking frequent breaks and might need to get a few hours of sleep. It’s not the kind of thing you want to be groggy for.”

Vladimir smiled, which lent him the appearance of a moray eel. “No, I wouldn’t imagine that would be good.” He hesitated as he took a final glance at the screen. “It will be sufficiently hardened so it won’t leak any radiation? That’s critical. There are detectors at all the ports.”

“Of course. As long as it’s properly packed, it will be undetectable. Just ensure your people don’t mishandle it. There’s only so much you can do.”

“Very good. Let me know if you require anything else. Food, stimulants, whatever. I’ll be back with the coffee in a few minutes.”

Vahid nodded absently, his concentration back on the computer screen. The Russian pushed the door open and strolled over to where a suite of offices were built out of sheetrock along one wall, and checked his watch. It would be a very long afternoon and likely an even longer night.

Manchester, England

Max Petrov chewed on a stub of cigar, dipping the tip into a snifter of brandy as he sat back in his executive chair, phone clenched to his ear, admiring the wood-paneled walls of his office adorned with oil paintings from the turn of the century in ostentatious gilded frames.

“Yes, yes, of course. The insurance policy is in place. All will be made right shortly, I assure you,” he declared in a hearty voice.

“It better be. We did not place fifty million with you to watch it evaporate,” said Sergey Oborin angrily.

Max would have been terse too, given the circumstances. And if he’d been freezing his ass off in Moscow, like Sergey, his mood would have been even darker, he supposed. He studied the brandy like it was poison and pushed it away.

“I understand. Frankly, it came as a shock to everyone in the industry. The Swiss had been stating – officially, mind you – that they would keep the franc pegged to the euro, so it seemed like a riskless way to get the business. It’s not just my company that got caught upside down. Half the mortgages in Poland are denominated in Swiss francs. It’s going to cause seismic problems for millions of borrowers.”

“Yes, I appreciate your reasoning. However, let me remind you that the money was given to you to sanitize, not to speculate with,” Sergey warned.

“Until this happened, it wasn’t a speculation.”

Sergey sighed with exasperation. “Enough of this. We expect our money back, Max. All of it. No excuses.”

“The stadium owners can’t make the adjusted payment terms. But their insurance policy is paid current, and will more than cover their liabilities once…should disaster strike.”

“Our man is working on that.”

“Very well, then. This is merely a bump in the road. They will happen, as you well know.”

Sergey paused and then his voice softened. “Tell Svetlana hello for me.”

“Your sister always loves hearing that. I will.”

Sergey hung up and shook his head as he stabbed the power button on the burner cell phone. Max was a moron. If Sergey’s sister hadn’t married the fool, he would have already been dead.

Sergey was one of the more powerful of the new breed of Russian who’d emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union – one who thought globally rather than nationally, and whose financing and business ties owed more to transnational criminal syndicates than savvy negotiations or any particular acumen. At forty-nine, he was anonymous, operating from the shadows, allowing the more visible oligarchs to dominate the spotlight while he quietly made a fortune supplying them with whatever they needed – whether it was enforcers in Brooklyn or mercenaries in the Congo or laundering money generated in Mexico, Sergey’s value was in his contacts and his reach.

But fifty million dollars transcended family ties. If Max’s scheme to make things right failed, the group for which Sergey was laundering the funds would still want their money back – minus his ten percent fee, of course – and that was real money, even at Sergey’s level.

Max had written a second mortgage denominated in francs to the stadium’s owners, but when the Swiss had let their currency float in the market instead of pegging it to the euro, the interest payments had increased thirty percent overnight, putting the group into effective default. They’d tried workarounds, but in the end the collective had served Max formal notice that he’d have to pursue them through the courts, which would take years, and with still no guarantee he would see most of the money back.

An unplanned wrinkle, to be sure.

The only bright side to any of the failed transaction was that the insurance company, a multinational that insured sporting arenas among its many other commercial properties, had a clause that covered the stadium in the event of acts of war or terror.

From that point on, it had been a simple matter of planting the correct seeds with the madmen who, like Sergey, acted at the fringes of society, and assisting them in finding the appropriate expertise with which to carry out their scheme.

That thousands would ultimately perish so Sergey’s moron brother-in-law could pay him back the money he’d “borrowed” instead of washing as he should have didn’t bother Sergey in the least. The world was, and always had been, a brutal place, and bad things happened with regularity.

If he could profit from one of them, so much the better. The religious zealots, the wronged nationalists, the disenfranchised victims of oppression would always be plotting evil. His acting as an intermediary was no different from his masters funding both sides in any of a half-dozen conflicts. He was merely brokering know-how to those who wished to lease it. At its heart, one of the oldest professions in the world. Like the European bankers who had kept Europe at war for centuries so they could loan money to the royal families for their armies of mercenaries, without discriminating between one camp or the other. He couldn’t control events past a certain point, but he could increase his wealth.

He’d gotten the idea for the terror strike watching the New York banks during the financial crisis – the insurance company that had written insane policies backing derivatives contracts that were designed to implode had been bailed out by the American taxpayer, and the investment banks who had knowingly screwed the insurer were rewarded with full payouts on the policies.