Pinnacle Event (11 page)

“And the purpose of the money was to rearm and come back, grab a piece of South Africa for a new, smaller white lager?”

“No, no, that was just the talk,” Roosmeer said. “The money was to set us all up abroad in nice new homes, new companies, new lives. It was capital for the diaspora to start new businesses, to buy land so our children could still inherit some great plots from us when we die. Money for emergencies, maybe to get the rest of us out of the country if the race war started. It didn't start, of course.”

“And you didn't go,” Mbali said. “You were the Deputy Director of the ballistic missile program, just as high up as the others.”

“They gave me some money to buy the winery, in case you had not guessed that part. They thought I was crazy to stay. They were wrong,” Roosmeer replied.

Ray pressed on. “As a head of the ballistic missile program, you worked closely with the nuclear weapons team. Did you know that they lied to the UN, to the IAEA?”

“I could see that. They told the UN people that the only weapons we had were the six devices, not made at Pelindaba as people thought but a little ways away at an ARMSCOR place called the Circle Building. Each of them weighed a metric ton. They were 1.8 meters long. They were the devices we planned for the testing program. You could not really deliver a weapon like that, although they pretended they would put them in the old Buccaneer bomber. Those bombs we admitted to the UN, they were devices designed to go off in the test shafts, to scare the Cubans and the Communists, to prevent them from invading from their bases in Angola and Mozambique.”

Ray filled in the blanks in the story. “So the test weapons from the Circle Building were dismantled and the HEU went back from ARMSCOR to the Atomic Energy Commission at Pelindaba. That was the highly enriched uranium, the weapons-grade stuff, they showed the IAEA. Then they told the UN that was all that they had ever made, when in fact they had more.”

Roosmeer poured more of the Shiraz for himself and Mbali. “So you know the story? Why do you need me?”

“What did they do with the rest of the HEU?” Ray asked.

The older man chuckled. “Pretty obvious, no? They made missile warheads for the Jericho-II rockets that I was building from the Israeli designs. Smaller warheads, less HEU than the test devices, about half as much, but higher yields because they were boosted with tritium gas in little bottles. Instead of the eighteen-kiloton explosions of the test devices, they would have a yield of fifty kilotons.”

Mbali looked at Bowman. “Sounds like a much bigger bomb?”

“Three times bigger than Hiroshima,” Roosmeer answered before Ray could. “We had six of them finished when it all ended in '91. They fit perfectly on my missiles.”

“And they were not dismantled?” Ray asked.

Roosmeer rose and went to another decanter. “This one is a blend of Cab Sav, Petit Verdot, and Cab Franc. Like what the Americans call meritage.”

Ray stood and walked toward Roosmeer and accepted the glass of the red blend. “One of them went off in the Indian Ocean in August, Mr. Roosmeer. Where are the others?”

“If you know that one went off, I don't. Where did they go from here? Israel, that's what I was told, but I don't know. That was not my job. I made the missiles. Then an American came, young hotshot from the State Department, and got de Klerk to close my missile program, too. We could have used my missiles to send up satellites, but no, they were destroyed, the rocket engines, the missiles, everything I had built.” His tone had changed. “That is why I hated de Klerk, Mr. Radford. You want to know where the missile warheads went. Ask the Israelis. Don't you Americans pay for them to have their own country, surrounded by the Arabs? You haven't decided yet that their apartheid is bad, too, have you?”

Mbali moved to cut the tension between the two men.

“Mr. Roosmeer, if those missile warheads are on the loose now as we think they might be, if that is why the Trustees were killed, if that is why something went off in the Indian Ocean last year, we are all at risk. The Pinotage won't be drinkable with strontium-ninety in it.”

Johann Roosmeer took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Avraham Reuven is still alive in Israel. He worked with me and with Potgeiter and Steyn. He was from their Defense Ministry. He might know what happened to the warheads. He lives outside of Tel Aviv, up in the hills.” Roosmeer poured the rest of the wine in his glass into the sink. “But be careful. They killed one of the Trustees outside of Tel Aviv, whoever they may be.”

As Mbali and Ray walked out of the old winery building, they heard and then saw the Augusta taking off, without them. “Did you only pay them to wait for an hour?” Ray asked over the noise of the helicopter and smiling at his host.

“No, Mr. Bowman, I pay them sometimes to be a diversion, especially when someone is trying to kill my guest. We are driving back to Cape Town.”

Two Range Rovers sat at the end of the path, doors open, guarded by men who looked like they had once been on a rugby team. But while rugby teams in South Africa were still largely whites only, Mbali's security team was multiracial. Ray wondered how often she had used white agents when blacks would stand out too much. He tried to guess how many white agents she had, men like Marcus Stroh, the man who had saved his life.

“You said this morning that you knew I had met with Johann Potgeiter in Vienna,” Ray noted as they got seated in the Range Rover. “However did you know that?”

“I am not without my ways, Raymond,” she smiled as she read a text message. “Now we can take you back to the safety of the guesthouse at our training facility.” She paused, buckling herself into the seat. “Or we can go watch Special Branch pick up the Nigerian who runs Black Eagle. See why he wanted to kidnap you. Which will it be?”

 

11

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21

SEA POINT

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

They saw the blinking blue-and-red lights before they turned the corner. When they stopped briefly at the police roadblock to show their identification, Ray rolled down his window and looked out. He saw the big white house at the end of the block, illuminated by spotlights, thick black smoke pouring out of its upper windows.

“Looks like we might be a little late to watch the action,” he suggested to Mbali.

“Coppers, they are always too keen to get on with the shooting,” she replied in disgust. “If they killed the Big Man, I will flay them alive. I need to interrogate that son of a bitch.”

The driver maneuvered the Range Rover through the scattered police cars and fire trucks, toward the smoking house. When they pulled up to a cluster of police commanders in white shirts, they stopped and Mbali jumped out. She almost charged the police brass. “Where is he, where is the Big Man? Have you killed another one that you were supposed to take into custody, Henry?”

“Here you arrive after all the shooting is over and start yelling,” the senior officer responded. “He's in the van, but getting him for you cost me three men wounded.” As Mbali changed direction for a large police truck, he yelled after her. “Your debt to Special Branch just got bigger.”

Ray Bowman tried to keep up with his South Africa host as she made a beeline for the vehicle holding her prey. Inside the police wagon, a very large man lay on a metal bench in the middle of the compartment, with an officer on either side and a paramedic hovering above him, adjusting an intravenous feed. Mbali and then Ray jumped up into the van.

The Nigerian was wearing a tracksuit, ripped and bloodied in several places where the paramedic had bandaged him. “Let me at him,” Mbali said, pushing the paramedic aside.

“I've sedated him, but he's stable,” the young woman said to Mbali, stepping back.

“You think you can kidnap my guest, do you, Cletus? We shot your two boys dead this morning for that. What do you think we should do with you? Maybe you bleed out in this truck.” She squeezed one of his wounds and the big man let out a scream.

“We didn't hurt anyone, Mbali,” he whispered.

“Only because we got there you before you could,” she spat back. “Now, you listen. You tell me who paid for this job or you die on the way to hospital and we send your rotten corpse to Lagos.”

Ray was wondering if she meant it and, if she did, whether it would be better for him to take a walk outside the van. Mbali ripped a bandage from the man's leg. He screamed again. “Talk!” she yelled at him.

“Kranstov, his name is Kranstov. He comes to the meetings we have in Sicily with the others. He show up here yesterday. Said he just wanted a few hours with the American, paid two million U.S.”

“How do you communicate with him?” she pushed.

“I don't,” Cletus struggled to speak. “He calls me. Burner numbers. He called this afternoon. Wanted his money back.”

Mdali stood. She was done with him. She jumped back down to the street. “Should we take him to hospital, ma'am?” the policeman in the van asked after her.

“I don't care what you do with him, but something tells me he won't be alive too long, so don't waste a lot of medicine on him,” she answered.

Mbali strode back to her Range Rover, as Ray Bowman caught up with her. “We'll get the phone records. But I am sure Cletus is right. This Mr. K probably used burner phones to call him, but we may be able to see where they were bought and who bought them. Might give us a lead. We'll also check with Border Control to see who landed in the last few days who might be interesting. Did he say ‘Knarsoff'? Sounds Russian.”

“Sounds like an alias,” Bowman suggested. “It will lead nowhere.”

“What do you think we should do now?” she asked as they got back in the Rover.

“I'm due in Israel,” Ray answered.

“Think they'll let me in?” she asked.

“Who said you were invited?”

“I told you, bartender, I am your termite. Until we find these nukes, where you go, I go.”

 

12

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21

POLICY EVALUATION GROUP

NAVY HILL, FOGGY BOTTOM

WASHINGTON, DC

The iPad buzzed. Dugout knew it was Ray Bowman calling. No one else could connect to that device. He had designed the two specially converted iPads as a paired set. Each had the necessary encryption key to communicate to the other, but those keys existed nowhere else. Inside the fat iPad 2, there were chips that created what Dugout called a “sandbox,” a separate hard drive that could only be accessed after a four-factor authentication.

When Bowman had clicked on the Games folder and then the Hearts card game app, two windows had appeared. He had placed his thumb over the first window for a fingerprint read and looked into the second window for an iris scan. Then a number pad appeared and he had typed in an eight-digit pin he had memorized. Finally, a phrase appeared on screen and he had read it aloud for voice recognition. The entire process took almost two minutes. It was not like hitting 911 on a phone, not particularly good when seconds counted.

“I'm in South Africa,” Ray began.

“I know. The iPad has GPS. Besides, I've been following reports about you in the Austrian and South African security services chatter,” Dugout replied, setting the iPad up against his desk lamp.

“So you know, half the spooks in Vienna were following me around town. It was like
The Third Man.
Then some Nigerian fucking drug gang tried to kidnap me here yesterday and I end up with brain splatter on me. Find out who hired them. The Nigerian is claiming it's some guy name Kranstov, first name unknown. Check it out.”

“Will do,” Dugout said, tapping the name in to his search list.

“I thought you were supposed to be giving me some sort of top cover through cyberspace. Where were the warnings Duggie, huh?”

“I didn't hear about those problems until after they happened,” Dugout stammered, “but you seem to be okay.”

“No thanks to you. Listen, after the visit here I am pretty satisfied there were six more nuclear bombs than the South Africans reported to IAEA. They may have been shipped to Israel years ago. I am going to go there to see if I can verify that and, if so, where they went from there. Have you gotten anywhere?”

Dugout hit the touch screen on the laptop next to the iPad, pulling up a program that the Minerva software was plowing through. “Maybe. I figure that the five remaining warheads were probably moved after their sale. Likely in shipping containers with special shielding to avoid detection by Geiger counters. So I am looking for unusual movement around then, shipments of containers originating in one place and then being off-loaded and shipped to likely target locations. Looking at aircraft, ships not operated by Maersk and the other big lines, going to the U.S. or Israel. There is a lot of data to crunch. Still running through it.”

“By the way, when you have your next little séance with Winston at the Cosmos Club, tell him to keep the CIA away from me,” Ray said. “Having them tailing me around is like hunting deer with a boombox by your side. Speaking of our illustrious Intelligence Community, have they or any of the others come up with anything?”

“Dry holes. Winston won't let them talk to any liaison services about it because he thinks it will leak in minutes that we're looking for loose nukes and then the bad guys could detonate once they know we're on to them.”

“Well, tell Winston that the South African intel service already figured it out and their President has stepped up searches for radioactivity in shipping containers. The story is going to leak out pretty soon,” Ray thought out loud. “Gotta go.” The screen reverted to a game of Hearts.

Dugout checked what the search program had found for Kranstov. He hit the first entry on the short list. “This growth mechanism for thin film was first noted by Ivan Stranski and Lyubomir Kranstov in 1938.” Wonderful, probably not him, Dugout thought. It had not been a productive day, so far.