The Inca Prophecy (38 page)

O’Connor walked casually through the carriages, hand on his Glock, making a careful check on the passengers. By the time he returned to his seat, the staff had served afternoon tea on crisp white linen and the train began to descend into the fertile valleys of the Urubamba Canyon, following the rocky beds of the Vilcanota and Huatanay rivers. Here the fields were dotted with workers and the rivers were lined with eucalypts and willow trees. Not long after, the train slowed as it approached the outskirts of Cusco. From there, it would be on to Machu Picchu.

To the north, the American embassy in Lima was a hive of activity. The
New York Times
had reported on the Wikileaks cables that accused the State Department of asking diplomats to spy on host nations. Over 1300 of the cables had come from Lima, and the CIA’s beleaguered chief of station, Cameron Reyes, was enduring another tirade from Wiley on the need for secrecy when deploying the sniper asset to Machu Picchu.

Chapter 46

The guard on the main entrance to the heavy-water reactor complex at Arak snapped to attention as Brigadier General Shakiba’s official car swept through. The general was expected.

‘The technical problems have been solved, General,’ Colonel Rostami informed his boss proudly as he escorted him into the lift that would take them to Arak’s underground laboratory, more than a hundred metres below the main reactor dome. They stepped into a tunnel at the bottom where the chief nuclear scientist, Dr Assad Khadem, was waiting. General Shakiba slipped into a white lab coat and overboots and followed Khadem and Rostami into the near-sterile laboratory.

‘The plutonium cylinders are loaded here,’ Khadem explained, indicating the array of computers where a technician was working at the remote controls of a robot, guiding the arm with pinpoint precision. The delicate task of loading the nuclear suitcase-bomb cylinders
was being carried out in a sealed chamber with a thick glass viewing screen. Air had been evacuated from the chamber and the pressure was maintained at less than one atmosphere as a further precaution against any radioactive material escaping.

‘The cylinders each contain ten kilograms of plutonium,’ Khadem continued, ‘fashioned into a sphere. We’ve designed a tamper that will reflect any escaping neutrons back into the plutonium core, which has enabled us to reduce the size of the sphere in diameter.’

‘And the critical mass?’ Shakiba asked.

‘The tests on the implosion design have been successful, and we’re confident the plutonium sphere can be uniformly compressed into a critical mass. Once this is achieved, a fraction of a second later, fission will occur. Provided we get a uniform detonation, ten kilograms of plutonium will generate the equivalent of 200 000 tonnes of TNT.’

‘How confident are you of a uniform detonation?’ Shakiba asked.

‘That’s hard to predict, General,’ Khadem replied. ‘But even if we only achieve 50 per cent …’

Shakiba nodded, his eyes narrowing. Suitcase bombs yielding 100 000 tonnes of TNT, timed to go off in cities like New York, London and Sydney, would destroy most of Lower Manhattan, the key icons like Westminster, Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral in London, and the Opera House and Harbour Bridge in Sydney.

Major Golzar was waiting in the remote mountain location when General Shakiba’s car arrived at the training base set up as part of Operation Khumm. Fewer than fifty recruits had graduated from
the Yawm al-Qiyamah Jihad elite suicide squad. The last group was scheduled to graduate in a week’s time and General Shakiba watched as Golzar put them through their paces on the obstacle course. Each carried a mock-up nuclear suitcase in a backpack.

‘Well done, Shahadi. Good effort!’ Golzar enthused as Ahmed Shahadi led his closest rival by a good twenty metres going over the two-metre wall. Judging his run, Shahadi leapt onto the rope hanging over the ‘bear pit’, a six-metre pit of water with snow and ice floating on the top. With perfect timing he released the rope, allowing his momentum to carry him to the other side. Without breaking stride, he dived forward and leopard-crawled under the razor wire to the finish of the gruelling kilometre-long course.

‘The Lebanese recruit Shahadi is by far the best student we’ve had on the entire course, General,’ Golzar confided when they retired to his office for coffee.

Shakiba nodded. ‘Hezbollah also gave him very high marks.’

‘He’s asked to be given the toughest assignment … says he owes it to his family. He keeps a photograph of them in his room.’

‘And he will get his wish.’ Shakiba had a very special assignment for the promising young suicide bomber. ‘Where are we at with the rest of the deployments?’

Golzar extracted a laser pointer from his top pocket and flicked on a large computer screen on the far wall. ‘Team Salahuddin is undercover in New York,’ he said. ‘Team Khalil is in position in London, Team Tamerlane in Paris, Team Mehmed in Sydney and
Team Selim in Chicago. Six other teams are in the process of getting established,’ he said, indicating six more large Western cities. ‘All of them have been briefed to do nothing to draw attention to themselves. That includes attending the local mosque. For the duration of Operation Khumm, they’ve been given an exemption from Friday prayers,’ Golzar said.

‘Excellent. And the suitcases?’

‘They are being shipped as exports from a neutral third country, mainly in shipping containers of saffron, pistachios, dates and barberries. I received word yesterday that Salahuddin and Mehmed have successfully retrieved their consignments, and the others are close at hand. The infidel’s surveillance of his seaports is almost nonexistent,’ Golzar added, his eyes glinting.

‘You’ve done well, Golzar. And I have good news,’ General Shakiba said, extracting a set of insignia from his briefcase. ‘Congratulations. You are now a colonel in the Quds Force,’ he said, shaking Golzar’s hand.

The new colonel’s face cracked into a smile. ‘Thank you, General, I will wear them with pride,’ Golzar said, clicking his heels.

‘Now before I leave, I’d like a word with young Shahadi.’

Chapter 47

The scrutineers read out the results of another round of balloting. At the end of the count, the scrutineers tallied the results and the third scrutineer announced them to the college:

‘Cardinal Salvatore Felici, 37 votes …’

‘Cardinal Ferdinando Sabatani, 32 votes …’

‘Cardinal Felix Schäfer, 26 votes …’

The remaining votes were more or less evenly distributed amongst the other candidates, none of whom Felici rated highly. As the bus collected the cardinals for the short trip back to their accommodation, Felici was deep in thought. It had turned into a three-horse race, and he turned his mind to how he might approach those blocs he had not brought on board.

One of the scrutineers fed the traditional
fumo nero
candles into the antiquated stove and black smoke wisped from the makeshift chimney above the Sistine Chapel, indicating balloting was over
for the day. A collective sigh of disappointment issued from the crowded Piazza San Pietro. There was no new pope just yet.

Over a simple buffet lunch provided by the nuns, Cardinal Schäfer was engaged in conversation with the leader of the African bloc. Cardinals were forbidden from permitting external influences to affect their vote, but they were only human; the notion that ‘the Holy Spirit decided the next pope’ was tenuous at best.

‘I’m flattered by the support I’ve been given, Victor, but I think it’s time to get behind the one candidate,’ Schäfer urged Cardinal Abasi, the Archbishop of Nairobi.

‘Sabatani? What about the media reports on the discussion papers? Contraception is one thing, but a greater role for women? What sort of a role does he have in mind, Felix?’

‘We shouldn’t take too much notice of articles that appear in the media, especially ones that appear just before a conclave. Cardinal Sabatani is one of the finest theologians I know. He’s not about to do anything rash, but unless we change the outlook in Rome, we’re going to be in trouble. Have you seen the latest figures for the seminaries?’

‘I know. Thankfully Africa is bucking the trend, but the figures out of places like the United States …’

‘Which is why we need someone like Sabatani, Victor, but we’re not going to get a two-thirds majority with two progressive factions – the liberal vote’s split down the middle. I’m only fifty-four, and if God wills it, there is plenty of time for my generation.’ Sabatani
himself was nowhere to be seen. He was on his knees in prayer, alone in his sparsely furnished room.

Schäfer waited until Felici had finished speaking with two influential cardinals from the Asian bloc before strolling towards them.

The third scrutineer read out the results of the first ballot after lunch:

‘Cardinal Salvatore Felici, 58 votes …’

‘Cardinal Ferdinando Sabatani, 46 votes …’

‘Cardinal Felix Schäfer, 17 votes …’

Felici could see that his lobbying during the lunch break had some effect, but Sabatani was still very much in the race and Felici was still well short of the critical 81 votes needed for a two-thirds majority. He resolved to re-emphasise the dangers of a liberal papacy during the break between ballots.