Numbered Account

CHAPTER 56

General Dimitri Marchenko arrived at the gates to Ali Mevlevi’s compound at ten o’clock Sunday morning. The sky was a magnificent royal blue. Hints of cedar danced in the air. Spring was practically here. He stood in his jeep and signaled the line of trucks behind him to halt. A uniformed sentry fired off a crisp salute and opened the gate. Another sentry jumped onto the running board of his command jeep, pointing the way forward with an outstretched arm.

The convoy thundered into the compound, climbing a gentle incline that paralleled a playing field. The trucks crossed an asphalt parade ground and stopped in front of two large doors cut into the face of a hundred-foot cliff. Marchenko stared at the two enormous hangars, impressed by the feat of engineering. Inside the hangar to his right sat two helicopters: a Sukhoi Attack Model II and a Hind Assault. He had sold them to Mevlevi three months ago. The sentry directed the jeep toward the helicopters, then dropped his arm, indicating they should stop.

Colonel Hammid jogged to Marchenko’s jeep. He pointed into the hangar. “Order the truck carrying the ‘communications gear’ to go there. Then you must advise us which chopper is better suited to carrying such sensitive ‘eavesdropping equipment.’ “

Marchenko grunted. Evidently, Hammid knew the true nature of the cargo being transported. It figured. No one could keep a secret in this part of the world. “The Sukhoi. It is faster and more maneuverable. The pilot will need to climb sharply after deploying the weapon.”

The Syrian commander offered his oiliest smile. “You do not know Al-Mevlevi’s troops. The pilot will not return. He will set the bird down and then detonate the weapon. This way there will be no failure.”

Marchenko simply nodded and climbed out of the jeep. He had never understood the roots of fanaticism. He walked to the driver of the truck that carried the Kopinskaya IV and said a few words to him in Kazakh. The driver nodded brusquely and when Marchenko stepped back, drove the truck into the hangar, stopping it near the sleek Sukhoi helicopter. Marchenko marched to the next truck in line and ordered his soldiers into the hangar. Twenty men poured from its bay and marched at double time toward the helicopter.

Marchenko wanted to attach the Kopinskaya IV to the helicopter as soon as possible. If there was any problem with the device, he wanted to know now, while time remained to remedy it. There was little risk of a renegade stealing the chopper with the bomb attached. Hammid clearly had orders to protect the weapon at all costs. Marchenko had given his soldiers the same instructions. To be safe he would order the hangar doors closed until five minutes prior to the helicopter’s departure.

Marchenko supervised the unloading of the Kopinskaya IV device. After the crates filled with outdated radio equipment had been removed, he climbed into the bay and deactivated the explosive antitampering device. He took a set of keys out of his pocket and, selecting one, inserted it into a lock drilled into the chassis of the truck. He turned the key sharply to the right, withdrew it, then pulled open the container’s door. A wooden crate no different from the others littering the hangar floor sat inside it. He yelled for his men to take it out and set it down near the chopper.

Marchenko found a crowbar in the back of the truck and opened the crate. He peered inside. A stainless steel canister three feet high and two feet in diameter rested in a bed of foam rubber. He slipped a hand under one end and eased it from its housing. The canister weighed just thirty pounds. He grunted as he lifted it from the crate and set it down on the smooth hangar floor.

The bomb itself was not much to look at. Marchenko thought it resembled a large tear gas canister with one end domed and the other flat. Height: twenty-eight inches. Diameter: nine inches. Weight: eleven pounds. Its casing was made from unpolished high-tensile steel. It was an altogether unimpressive-looking object.

But it could kill.

The Kopinskaya IV carried four hundred grams of enriched plutonium 238 that when detonated had the explosive force of two thousand tons of high-grade TNT. A measly throw weight in terms of the big birds, but devastating nonetheless to any object, either living or inert, within a one-mile radius of ground zero. Anything within five hundred yards would be instantly vaporized. Inside of a thousand yards the bomb achieved a ninety-five-percent kill rate at detonation. The other five percent would die within two hours from a lethal dose of gamma radiation. The kill rate tapered off dramatically at a mile out. At three thousand yards, only twenty percent would be killed by the detonation, and those mostly by the debris blown outward from the epicenter: shards of glass, splinters of wood, chunks of concrete all propelled through the air at speeds over a thousand miles an hour. A city provided its own shrapnel.

Three latches held the canister closed. He opened them one at a time, then carefully removed the lid. He gave it to a soldier, then returned his attention to the bomb. The plutonium core was housed in a titanium casing. A chain reaction necessary to detonate the fissionable material could be initiated only when the firing rod had been inserted into the plutonium core, and the firing rod could be inserted only after the proper code had been entered in the bomb’s central processing unit. Marchenko would not enter the proper code until he had received acknowledgment that Mr. Ali Mevlevi had transferred eight hundred million Swiss francs to his account at the First Kazakhi Bank in Alma-Ata.

Until then the bomb was worthless scrap.

He took the bomb in his hand and turned it upside down. The soldier assisting him removed six screws at the base of the weapon. Marchenko put the screws in his pocket, then lifted off the inferior lid. He was pleased to see a small dot at the bottom right-hand corner of a red liquid crystal display winking at him. Below the LCD was a keypad with nine digits. He entered in the number 1111 and waited as the unit performed its self-diagnostics. Five seconds later, a green light lit up in the center of the keypad. The bomb was functioning perfectly. All he needed to do now was program the detonation altitude and key in the seven-digit code that would activate the device.

Marchenko replaced the inferior lid, carefully screwing in each of the six titanium screws. He closed the device and set it down in its foam-rubber casing. He stopped his work and listened. It was quiet here. Almost serene. He looked over his shoulder, suddenly expecting to hear the shrill whistle of a squadron of Israeli F-16s swooping in to obliterate the compound. His soldiers stood casually around him, their weapons hanging loosely on their chests. Colonel Hammid loitered a few paces away, his gaze held by the dull metallic weapon sitting on the hangar floor. He laughed at his paranoia, then turned his thoughts down more promising avenues.

Marchenko imagined his portrait hanging in every government office in Kazakhstan. He reminded himself that in less than twenty-four hour she would have brought his country a princely sum in hard currency. And himself a small one percent commission—eight million Swiss francs. Maybe this is what the Americans meant when they said “rags to riches.”