The Silent Man (32 page)

The Kremlin grew even more suspicious when the American experts pressed for access to the weapons. The generals at the Ministry of Defense and Rosatom asked openly whether the United States wanted to leave Russia defenseless by disabling all Russia’s nukes and missiles. Between 1998 and 2003, the United States had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a secure depot at the Mayak plant to store plutonium from disassembled nuclear weapons. The depot had concrete walls ten feet thick and could hold twenty-five tons of plutonium. By any measure, it was the most secure warehouse for nuclear materials in all of Russia. It was almost empty. The Russian government had no plans to entrust its nuclear weapons to a building that American engineers had designed. Purdy couldn’t blame the Kremlin for being suspicious. If circumstances were reversed, the United States would hardly put all its nukes in a warehouse that Russia had designed.
Just trust us, boys. We’re all on the same side. Really.

Now Purdy was about to stir up this messy nest of national pride and national security again. And for what purpose? When the instructions to set up the meeting had come two days before, he’d told the secretary of state he’d be wasting his breath.

But he’d been overruled. Langley had come up with something that had made the White House sit up and take notice, and so Purdy got to put his dick on the block for the Russians to chop off. No. This time he was going to be tough. Really. He sighed and shuffled through the thin folder of papers he’d brought as the Cadillac rolled through the Trinity Gate Tower at the top of the ramp and entered the Kremlin proper.

Whatever his problems with the job, Purdy always loved this view. Unlike the White House, the Kremlin wasn’t a single building. It was a complex of more than a dozen massive structures inside a fort in the center of Moscow, on a hill that overlooked the Moscow River. To the south of the Trinity Gate were museums and churches open to tourists. North of the gate, toward Red Square, were government offices, closed to the public. No signs marked the two sides, but tourists who wandered toward the northern buildings were quickly warned back to the public areas.

On both sides the buildings were oversized and sturdy, covered with the snow that blanketed Moscow five months a year. This complex had survived invasions by Hitler and Napoleon, misrule by the tsars and Stalin. Some of the buildings inside were five hundred years old, mute testimony to the Russian capacity to endure. To endure foreign attackers, gulags and show trials, and endless mornings like this one, overcast and bitter, with a light snow falling from the gray sky. Somewhere behind the clouds the sun still shined, or so Purdy wanted to believe.

The Cadillac rolled on, alongside the massive Arsenal, which housed the elite soldiers who guarded the Kremlin, toward the yellow walls of the Senate, the gigantic triangular building where the president of Russia had his offices. Purdy gathered up his papers, wondering half-seriously if he should make a quick detour, pray at the Assumption Cathedral for a couple of minutes, light a candle to Saint George.

His dream job.
Hah.

 

 

 

THE RUSSIANS HAD PROMISED
Purdy a meeting with Anatoly Zubrov, the senior military adviser to President Medvedev. But it was General Sasha Davydenko, Zubrov’s deputy, who awaited Purdy in a windowless conference room on the Senate’s third floor. Davydenko was tall and trim and wore a flawless green uniform with enough combat decorations to stop a bullet in the unlikely event he was ever near one again.

“General Davydenko,” Purdy said. “Will Anatoly be joining us?”

“He’s been called into an urgent meeting. I assure you anything you tell me will reach him.”

Urgent meeting, right. He was probably on the beach in Brazil, and Davydenko hadn’t even bothered to make an excuse for his absence. “I was told he’d be here. This is unacceptable.”

Davydenko gave the tiniest of shrugs. “Mr. Ambassador. It’s winter in Moscow. What do you expect?” Walk out, Purdy thought. Just go. But he’d come to relay a message, and the message had to be delivered.

“Unacceptable,” Purdy said again.

“Can my men get you anything? Perhaps a glass of tea? Green tea?” Davydenko raised his eyebrows, making the suggestion seem ridiculously effete. Purdy had asked for green tea once before in these offices. An instant mistake. He might as well have requested a bottle of baby formula.

“Thank you, but no. I’m sure you’re busy—” Purdy gritted his teeth. Now he was apologizing for taking the time of a guy he hadn’t even come to see? Davydenko nodded slightly, as though both men knew the enormity of the favor he was doing for Purdy by agreeing to this meeting.

“My government has an urgent request.”

“Yes.”

“We’d like an accounting, a full accounting, of the material that’s gone missing. The nuclear material.”

“Yes?”

“The MoD originally said that five hundred grams of HEU had disappeared. Then, approximately three weeks ago, that estimate was increased to five kilograms. Where it remains. For now.”

“Yes.” Davydenko tilted his head away from Purdy, examined the ceiling, as if Purdy were barely worth listening to, a junior army officer rather than an emissary of the most powerful nation on earth. Purdy reminded himself of his vow in the Cadillac.

“General—” he snapped. “Do I have your attention?”

Davydenko pursed his lips. He seemed faintly surprised that the mouse had roared, Purdy thought. Finally, he nodded. “Of course, Mr. Ambassador. You have all the attention you require. Go on.”

“As I said. Your country has not provided the United States or the international community with an accounting of the missing material. You haven’t specified its enrichment. Nor have you given us any intelligence on the thieves. Do you believe they’re
mafiya
? Terrorists? Do they have the ability to use the material? Are they still within your borders, or have they escaped? Do you even have any answers to those questions?”

Purdy paused, hoping that Davydenko would speak. But the general had gone back to his earlier pose, looking at the ceiling.

“General,” Purdy said. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you the urgency of ensuring that we never have a nuclear event on Russian or American soil. All we’re asking is a candid assessment of the threat. You owe us that much.”

“The Russian government is fully able to handle this investigation, Mr. Ambassador. If and when we need assistance, from the United States or NATO or anyone else, we will not hesitate to ask for it. I assure you.”

“Because we have learned that a person who may be affiliated with a terrorist group is urgently seeking a component crucial to building a nuclear weapon—”

“Excuse me?” Now Davydenko did look surprised. “You have learned
what
?”

“Someone—”

“Who?”

“I can’t say. But this person has offered several million dollars for a component of a nuclear weapon.”

“What component?”

“Again, I’m afraid I can’t tell you.” Purdy allowed himself to smile. For the first time in a year, he had something on these guys. “Ironic, isn’t it, that your government has been so uncooperative and yet you demand whatever scraps of information we have.”

“What is ironic, Mr. Ambassador, is that you presume to come into the Kremlin and tell us how to run our own investigation. And that you have information you refuse to share. This is not the way friends treat each other.”

“Are we friends?”

“This is not the way great nations build trust.” Davydenko banged his fist on the table and the empty glass in front of Purdy jumped. “I ask again, do you have something to tell me?”

“I will tell you that the person who is attempting to buy this component is not here in Russia.”

“Do you have any reason to connect this person, assuming he exists at all, with our missing material?”

Purdy hesitated. “Not at the moment.”

“Not at the moment.”
Davydenko spoke with the sarcastic tone that senior Russian officials seemed able to deploy at any time. “Perhaps the next moment, then? The one after that? Maybe tomorrow? Next week? Mr. Ambassador, did you decide on this fool errand yourself? Did you miss seeing me so much? You come in here, you waste my time with this nonsense, no proof—”

“I speak for my government. And we want official assurance that you have full control of your arsenal.”

“Then it’s your government that’s wasting my time.” Davydenko stood. “We answer to our own president. Not to yours. Do we come to the White House demanding that you confirm that your nuclear weapons are safe in their silos? Do we? Do you play these games with the Chinese or the French or the British?”

“No.” Purdy knew he shouldn’t answer, but he couldn’t help himself.

“Correct. Only us. Always you treat us like children. We would never behave with such insolence. Yet you, you come in here and—Let me give you a piece of advice, Mr. Ambassador. Drink your green tea and let us handle our investigation. As for this mythical person seeking this mythical component, if and when you decide to behave ethically and tell us what you know, I will be willing to listen.”

“Is that your official response, then?” Purdy wished he could come up with something snappier, but at least he was holding his ground.

“My official response is that I have business to attend to. My captain will show you out.”

 

 

 

WHEN PURDY WAS GONE,
Davydenko walked down the hall to Zubrov’s office, just outside the presidential suite, and relayed the conversation. Not that he needed to. The conference room was miked. Zubrov had been listening all along.

“Goddamn bombs,” Zubrov said. “All these years we had all these missiles pointed at each other and nothing happened. We spent the fifties blowing up the Pacific, ten megatons at a time. Nothing. Now two assholes steal two two-hundred-kilo warheads and everything turns upside down. What do you think, General? This component, is it real?”

“That little man is too weak to lie. And they wouldn’t have sent him unless they were worried.”

“Then why won’t they tell us about this component?”

“I think what he said is true,” Davydenko said. “They’re angry that we haven’t talked to them.”

“If they only knew how little we’ve found.”

“Is there anything new on that front?”

“I wish.” The Russian investigation had stalled completely. No one in Chelyabinsk had any idea what had happened to the Farzadov cousins. Not even Tajid’s wife. The FSB had taken her into custody and spread the word to Muslim leaders in southern Russia that she wouldn’t be released until Tajid turned himself in. But Tajid was still missing. Either he’d left Russia behind or he was dead. Meanwhile, the other men in the Mayak plant had been questioned, and questioned some more, by the best interrogators the FSB had. At this point, the FSB was satisfied that no one knew anything. And as for the men who must have helped the cousins outside the plant, no one knew anything about them either. No names, no descriptions, no fingerprints, no photographs. They were smoke.

“What about this component?” Zubrov said. “What could he be talking about? Some kind of detonator? A missile?”

“A detonator wouldn’t be so expensive and I don’t know why he’d call a missile a component.” Davydenko shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. They don’t need any additional components to use these bombs. Just the codes. And they don’t have those. I’m not even sure this is related to the theft.”

“Call Pavlov”—the Rosatom deputy director—“see if he has any ideas.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, General. Let me know.” Zubrov dismissed Davydenko with a salute. When the general had closed the door, Zubrov ran a hand over his thick jowls. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a drink before noon, but today he wanted one. He wondered if he ought to tell President Medvedev that they should come clean with the United States, acknowledge the theft. But Medvedev would never agree. He wouldn’t accept losing face that way. Not unless he was sure that he had no other choice. And he did have a choice. Rosatom and the generals insisted that the weapons couldn’t be used without the codes. They’d said a dozen times: no codes, no bombs.

But what if all these fancy green uniforms were wrong? After all, these thieves had gotten into a depot that was supposed to be unbreakable. What if they had some way of cracking the codes? Or getting around them? Then what? Suppose they blew up half of Manhattan, killed a million Americans? And what if the United States linked the weapons to the Russian arsenal? Would the White House demand that Moscow be destroyed in turn?

The engineers had better be right about their damn bombs, Zubrov thought. They better not have missed anything. Or else the United States and Russia might be headed for a war that would make all the others that had ever happened look like soccer friendlies. Damn the bombs. Damn the engineers, the physicists, and mutually assured destruction. “Damn it all,” Zubrov said to the empty room.

Zubrov opened the bottom drawer of his big wooden desk, where he kept a bottle of Stoli vodka, a ceremonial gift from the president on his first day as military adviser. He reached down for it, pulled out the bottle and a dusty glass, cleaned the glass with his shirtsleeve and unscrewed the bottle for the first time. Vodka kept forever, another of its many good qualities. He poured himself a healthy shot, though not too healthy. He would have to call Medvedev after this drink. He raised his glass to the empty room, but he couldn’t think of a toast. He drank it down in silence.

T
he uranium-235 that Nasiji and Bashir and Yusuf had extracted from the warhead didn’t look like much. A hollow sphere of gray-black metal, cut into jagged slices like an orange rind, the pieces in a plastic box on a workbench. Jumbled among them was a second sphere, solid, not much larger than an oversized grape—the “spark plug” of U-235 that had formed the center of the secondary.