Radiant Angel (10 page)

“I get it.” I informed him, “It’s very difficult—actually impossible—to get a ship that’s emitting radiation past the harbor forts that aim radiation detectors at passing ships.” I further informed him, “Also, the NYPD Harbor Unit patrol boats have radiation detectors, as do the Coast Guard cutters.” I also told him, “And if the Russians tried to get a suitcase nuke off the ship and into the city, they wouldn’t get it past Customs, who also have radiation detectors on the piers.”

“I’m sure the Russians have a plan.”

Indeed they must. But it occurred to me that a Russian ship, such as a cargo ship or a luxury liner, would be subject to extra scrutiny at Ambrose Buoy, the security checkpoint, before it approached New York Harbor. It also occurred to me that the Russians wouldn’t want to be caught with a suitcase nuke aboard one of their ships. And if the nuke did go off, it could be determined that the Russian ship was ground zero, and that could start a nuclear war. So some of this wasn’t computing.

Also, why did Petrov, Gorsky, and the nuke guy, Urmanov, have to take an amphibious craft out to rendezvous with this Russian ship that had a nuke onboard? They could have boarded the ship in Russia. So maybe Buck got this wrong, and Petrov was now having a vodka on a party boat with Tasha on his lap. And that’s what I’d conclude—if it wasn’t for Urmanov.

Buck broke into my thoughts and said, “We don’t know if Petrov and his friends have a plan to escape the detonation, or if this is a suicide mission.” He added, “I think a man like Petrov would like to see the result of his work, so he may have a plan to get clear of the explosion, along with his two companions. But for the young ladies and everyone else aboard whatever ship they rendezvoused with, this is a suicide mission, though I’m sure they don’t know that.”

And never will, I thought; they will become one with the universe at the moment of the Big Bang. More importantly, I hoped this wasn’t a suicide mission for Petrov, because suicide missions, like 9/11, were more likely to succeed than missions where the perpetrators need an escape plan. Lots to think about. Especially the things that weren’t computing.

Buck may have thought that I needed more evidence. But he didn’t have any, so he told me a story.

“Not far from here,” he began, “is a place called Nassau Point.” He asked, “Have you heard of it?”

“Been there.”

“So was Albert Einstein, who spent the summer of 1939 there in a rented cottage.”

“He deserved a break.”

Buck continued, “In July of that year, Einstein received a visit from two well-known physicists, Eugene Wigner and Leó Szilárd, who convinced Einstein that he needed to write a letter to President Roosevelt alerting the president to the threat of the German atomic bomb program.”

I’d actually read the famous Nassau Point Letter, so I knew where this was going, but Buck likes to tell stories, so I let him continue.

“In that letter, Einstein says something that… well, is a warning from the past to us in the future.” Buck looked at me and said, “Einstein wrote to Roosevelt, ‘A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.’ ” Buck stayed silent a moment, then said, “I believe that day has arrived.”

Well, I thought, the nuclear nightmare seemed to have begun in the minds of scientists long before anyone else even knew what nuclear energy was. Einstein was a smart guy.

Buck said, “Roosevelt took this seriously, and so should we.”

That seemed to be the end of the pointed story, and Buck asked me, “Do
you
take this seriously?”

“It’s credible.”

“Not everyone thinks so.”

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

He didn’t respond to that and asked me, “Any word from Captain Kalish?”

“No.”

Tess said to me, “We’d like you to call the Suffolk PD and get some detectives to accompany you and me to the Tamorov house.”

“All right.” I guess I’m the front guy and the go-to cop. But before going to see Tamorov, I asked Buck, “What do you know about Georgi Tamorov?”

“Not much more than everyone else knows. He’s made billions from oil and gas and he has financial interests all over the world, including America. He’s close to Putin and he’s a globe-trotting playboy. He owns a Falcon 900 that flies him to the playgrounds of the world.”

“Does he own cargo ships or luxury liners?”

“Good question, but no.” Buck added, “Though I’m sure he knows people who do.”

I nodded and asked, “Personals?”

“Tamorov has been married to the same woman for about twenty-five years and they have a son and a daughter, both at university in England.”

I said to Buck, “I seem to remember that Tamorov has a place in Manhattan.”

“Yes, he has a townhouse in Tribeca and offices near the former World Trade Center.”

“He won’t have either if a nuke incinerates Lower Manhattan.”

“Correct. So I can’t imagine that Tamorov knows what his guest is up to.” Buck added, “Also, Tamorov’s wife is currently in New York.”

And Petrov’s wife isn’t.

So, I was off to see Georgi Tamorov, and also Dmitry the driver, both of whom knew
something
.

Buck gave me the standard warning. “What you’ve heard tonight is need-to-know and SCI—Sensitive Compartmented Information—not to be repeated to anyone under any circumstances.”

I didn’t reply.

“We know you can keep a secret, John, as you did in Yemen. We trust you.”

Sorry I can’t say the same.

Buck said to me and to Tess, “Let’s pray that we are wrong, and that we are misinterpreting what we see.”

Right. Just like in Yemen. I said, “I will leave you two to pray, and I’ll call when I have something.” I added, “Good powwow.”

Tess said, “I’m going with you.”

“You’re fired.”

Buck interjected, “I’m afraid I have to insist that you take Tess with you.”

“Really?”

“Please.” He explained, “Tess has contact information for resources that you may need at a moment’s notice.”

That might be true, but Buck also wanted his colleague to keep an eye on me. So, knowing I could dump her anytime, I said, “All right.” Buck wasn’t telling me what his next move was, and I didn’t ask. Maybe he was going to take a nap.

Buck wished us luck and offered me his hand, but I didn’t take it, and reminded him, “We have unfinished business.”

Tess and I walked through the graveyard back to the Blazer.

She asked me, “Do you believe what Buck is suggesting?”

“Do you?”

She walked on in silence, then replied, “It’s just so beyond anything I can imagine…”

Well, Albert Einstein imagined it long before the first bomb was even built, and that’s why we carry radiation detectors. I asked her, “When did you know about this?”

“I wasn’t fully briefed until I called Buck from the diner.”

That could be true, considering she didn’t want me to crash Tamorov’s party. The problem with compartmented information is that nobody knows what the hell is going on. Or why they’re doing what they’re doing. If the police operated like that, they’d never make an arrest.

She added, “When I told Buck that our three Russians took off in an amphibious craft, he suspected something was up.”

“He suspected something was up long before tonight. That’s why he was in New York and not Washington. And that’s why he stuck me with you.”

She didn’t reply.

I always believed that 9/11 never would have happened if these people talked straight to each other. Now we were looking at something that would make 9/11 look like a bad day at the office.

We reached the Blazer and I said, “I’m driving,” and got behind the wheel.

Tess got in the passenger side and reached back into the rear where all the toys were kept, including the pocket-sized portable radiation detector, which she placed on the console between us.

She asked, “May I have my gun back?”

I handed her her Glock and her creds.

I drove back to the road and headed out of the Shinnecock Reservation.

I looked at the portable radiation detector. There are two ways to detect radiation. One of them is with a PRD before nuclear fission takes place, and the other is too late.

A
s the last of the twilight disappeared on the western horizon, the amphibious craft carrying Vasily Petrov, Viktor Gorsky, and Dr. Arkady Urmanov approached a long white yacht sitting at anchor in international waters, twelve nautical miles off the coast of Southampton.

The yacht was named
Hana
, which Petrov knew meant “happiness” in Arabic.
Happiness will be at planned time and place.

The yacht’s portholes and decks were aglow, and Petrov noticed a green-and-white flag flying from the stern, which he knew was not a national flag, but the personal ensign of His Royal Highness, Prince Ali Faisel of Saudi Arabia.

The helmsman brought the amphibious craft around to the starboard side of the two-hundred-and-twenty-foot super yacht, and the twelve ladies onboard became excited as they realized this was where they were heading. Several of them stood, and the second crewman motioned them to sit.

Petrov said to the ladies in Russian, “If you fall overboard, we will not rescue you.”

The ladies laughed, and Petrov smiled.

Viktor Gorsky, the SVR assassin, snapped, “Sit!”

The ladies sat.

Petrov looked at Urmanov sitting across from him. The man
seemed far away, and Petrov said to him, “Doctor, is your mind working on mathematical formulas? Or are you seasick?”

Urmanov looked at his compatriot, but did not reply.

Petrov was annoyed with the man, and more annoyed at the GRU idiots who had chosen Urmanov for this mission. Urmanov was becoming a problem as he understood the reality of what he had agreed to do.

The amphibious craft continued on a course toward the starboard side of the yacht, and as they drew closer Petrov could see a large door in the hull partly below the waterline—what was called a shell door—about fifteen meters from the stern.

As the amphibious craft approached, the door began to open upward, letting the sea into the hull.

This, Petrov had been told, was a unique feature of this ship. Most garage doors were above the waterline, and the tender craft was pulled into the ship’s garage by means of a ramp and a winch. But the Italian shipbuilders who had designed
The Hana
had devised a float-in dock for the prince so that the garage could be flooded and a small craft could sail directly in and out of the hull without the delay or discomfort of a ramp and winch. Wonderful engineering, Petrov thought, and as it turned out this special feature solved one of his and Moscow’s problems—the problem of how to mask the radiation of the nuclear device that would later come onboard
The Hana
. The device had a lead radiation shield that had once been sufficient, but no longer was because of the more sophisticated American radiation detectors now in use. Thousands of liters of water, however, along with the lead shield, would ensure that the American radiation detectors in New York Harbor would stay dark and silent.

In fact, the greatest fear of the American nuclear security forces was something like this—an explosive nuclear device attached underwater on the hull of a ship coming into an American port. Well, Petrov thought, the Americans’ worst fears were about to be realized, though this nuclear device would not be attached to the outside hull of the ship where the Americans had sonar devices to detect unusual shapes on the hull; this nuclear device would be submerged inside
the flooded watertight compartment of
The Hana
where it would be undetectable.

Petrov exchanged glances with Gorsky and they both nodded.

The helmsman pointed his bow at the open door, then cut the throttles as the craft slipped through the opening into the flooded garage. There was a dock on either side of the garage and the helmsman steered to the one toward the stern where deckhands awaited them. The opposite dock was empty, Petrov noted, but not for long. Tonight, another small craft, a lifeboat, would be arriving from a Russian fishing trawler—
the fish is swimming
—and that fishing trawler would deliver a small package of death, no larger than a steamer trunk, but with enough atomic energy inside it to level Lower Manhattan.

Petrov looked at Dr. Urmanov, who had been given very few details of the operation, but who knew that the device would be arriving and that his job was to ensure that it was operational and armed. Urmanov had actually designed these miniature nuclear weapons—what the Americans called suitcase nukes—in the 1970s, and they had worked perfectly in tests when new. But they were complex and temperamental, and they needed periodic maintenance and a technician to properly arm them—or the inventor himself, if a major problem was discovered. The device that was to be delivered to the yacht, Petrov knew, would yield ten to twelve kilotons of atomic energy. Petrov would have liked a bigger device, but twelve kilotons was the limit of these miniaturized devices that were designed to be small, relatively light, self-contained, and easily transported—like a steamer trunk, perfect to take aboard a ship or plane. Petrov smiled.

Suddenly a set of underwater lights came on, creating a dramatic effect that excited the ladies, and one of them exclaimed, “Just like in a James Bond movie!”

Yes, Petrov thought, just like in a James Bond movie, and the second act would be even more dramatic.

A deckhand tossed a line to the crewman in the amphibious craft, and he secured the boat as the shell door was closing, keeping out the sea.

The ladies, carrying their beach bags, were helped onto the polished wood dock. They seemed happy and excited as they looked around the well-appointed reception area that opened onto the stern, where a swimming platform was located behind plate-glass doors.

One of the ladies called out, “Viktor! Give us our phones so we can take photos!”

Gorsky tapped his overnight bag, which contained not their phones—he had dropped them overboard—but his weapons, which the ladies would see soon enough. He replied, “There will be time enough to take photos—if you behave!”

“You are a hard man, Viktor.”

Indeed.

Petrov, Gorsky, and Urmanov stepped onto the dock unassisted, carrying their bags, and Petrov looked again at the empty dock across the flooded garage. The lifeboat that would arrive from the Russian fishing trawler would be driven by
The Hana
’s new captain, known to Petrov only as Gleb. Gleb had studied the plans and operational specifications of
The Hana
, and he had actually spent a few hours aboard the Saudi yacht in Monte Carlo some months before at the kind invitation of
The Hana
’s captain, an Englishman named Wells, who didn’t know that his Russian guest would one day take his place as captain of the prince’s yacht.

Petrov had never met Gleb, and Gleb wasn’t an SVR agent—he was a former cargo ship officer. But he had worked for the SVR before and Moscow said he could be trusted to do what he was told and to keep his mouth shut. Otherwise, Captain Gleb would share the same fate as Dr. Urmanov, who would not be leaving this ship.

Gleb had assured his SVR employers in Moscow that he could sail
The Hana
by himself, and that he could navigate into New York Harbor without a pilot and anchor off the tip of Manhattan Island. Once they were anchored, sometime before dawn, as the clock was ticking on the nuclear device, Petrov and Gorsky, with Gleb at the helm, would sail
The Hana
’s amphibious craft—which had no markings to connect it to
The Hana
—to a pier in Brooklyn that was unused while it was being rebuilt. On an adjacent city street was a parked Ford Mustang—
the horse waits
—to which Petrov had the keys. He,
Gorsky, and Gleb would drive to Kennedy Airport and, using false passports, they would board a private jet—
the bird will fly
—that would take them to Moscow. And while they were all having breakfast aboard the aircraft, at 8:46
A.M.
—the same time as the first hijacked aircraft had hit the North Tower on September 11—the southern tip of Manhattan Island would be engulfed in a nuclear fireball whose source would be the Saudi prince’s yacht.

Yes, Petrov thought, it was a very good plan, and though he wished the kilotonnage was larger, it was large enough to kill a few hundred thousand people and cause a multitrillion-dollar crash on Wall Street. He thought of something his father had said to him: “Victory is measured not by the number killed, but by the number frightened.” And that number would be three hundred million people.

Petrov watched as a deckhand standing on a catwalk that connected the two docks hit a switch and the water in the flooded garage began to drop. He had been told that
The Hana
’s high-powered pumps could empty seven thousand liters of water a minute from the garage compartment. More importantly,
The Hana
was rated as seaworthy even with the garage compartment flooded, which it would be as it sailed to New York Harbor with the nuclear device submerged in a hundred thousand liters of water.

The water in the garage compartment was nearly gone and the amphibious craft settled into its hull chocks. Sailing
The Hana
’s amphibious craft out of this garage without the assistance of deckhands, Petrov knew, would be a bit more difficult than arriving. But Gleb had assured the planners in Moscow that this would not be a problem. And Petrov hoped that was true—he didn’t want to be trapped onboard
The Hana
as the clock ticked down.

Suicide missions, he knew, were much more likely to succeed than missions that included an escape. This was not a suicide mission, though it could become one. The important thing was that the nuclear device detonate in New York Harbor, destroying not only Lower Manhattan but also destroying all evidence of Russian involvement in the attack, which was obviously perpetrated by the Saudi prince.

Petrov looked at Gorsky, who he knew was also thinking about
some of this. Gorsky was good at two things—killing people and living to kill another day. Petrov was glad he had chosen his former Chechen War assassin for this mission.

Petrov and Gorsky exchanged nods, then turned their attention to their surroundings. Two staircases, port and starboard, rose to the upper decks, and two deckhands were leading the ladies up the stairs.

A gray-bearded man in full white uniform appeared and said to the three Russians in British-accented English, “Welcome aboard The Hana, gentlemen. I am Captain Wells and I bring you greetings from His Highness.”

Petrov replied, “Thank you, Captain.”

“The prince will welcome you himself, in the salon, within the half hour. Meanwhile, a steward will show you to your staterooms, where you can freshen up.” Captain Wells looked at his new arrivals, expecting perhaps that being Russian they’d been drinking, and he advised them, “Please be punctual.”

Petrov replied, “We will not keep the prince waiting.”

Captain Wells nodded and motioned to a steward to take the overnight bags, but Petrov said, “We will take these directly to the salon.” He explained, “They contain gifts for the prince.”

“As you wish.”

Captain Wells was about to take his leave of the Russians, but he felt he should further advise the prince’s guests, “You are responsible for the conduct of your ladies.”

It was Gorsky who replied curtly, “And you, Captain, are not.”

Petrov admonished in Russian, “Be courteous, Viktor.” He wanted to remind Gorsky that he needed to gain the captain’s trust and goodwill so he could easily kill him later—but Dr. Urmanov would not want to hear that, so Petrov said to his assassin, “Save your rudeness for later.”

Gorsky smiled.

Captain Wells stared at Viktor Gorsky and thought to himself that the man looked like a thug, though he supposed that all Russian oil men looked like thugs.

Captain Wells said, “Good day,” turned and left.

The steward said he would show them to their staterooms, but
Petrov told him to lead them directly to the salon and that they would carry their own bags.

On the way up the staircase to the salon deck, Petrov remarked to Gorsky and Urmanov, in Russian, “I think we are in the wrong business, gentlemen. The real money is in oil, not nuclear energy.”

Gorsky laughed.

Urmanov did not.