Pinnacle Event

21

As the disappearance of Malaysia flight 370 in 2014 had proved, the Indian Ocean is vast, largely empty, and infrequently traveled. Even on some of its island nations, the world seldom took note of what happened and, in truth, little ever did happen.

The test of whether the South African bombs would still work had been a detonation on August ninth in a part of the Indian Ocean almost never transited by ship or plane. The MV Octavius had vaporized almost three thousand miles east of the South African coast, almost twenty-five hundred miles from either India or Australia. Most spots in the Indian Ocean are like that, a long way from anything.

Yet, immediately off the coast of Africa, the Indian Ocean is filled with small island nations and one very large one. Less than three hundred miles from the African coastal nation of Mozambique is the island of Madagascar, a nation as large as Texas, but with nothing like that state’s big cities. Scattered around Madagascar are several of the smallest and most beautiful islands in the world. Some, like the Seychelles, the Maldives, and Mauritius are nation states. Some, like Reunion, Tromelin, and Glorioso are territories of France. One, Diego Garcia, is owned by Britain and rented to the Pentagon.

It was in the isolation of Madagascar that the South African Trustees had stored their bombs for over twenty years without anyone noticing. From there, the test bomb had sailed east in July on the MV Octavius. Also from there, after the test, the remaining bombs had been flown out immediately by their new owners. The bombs had been flown back toward the African coast, to a cluster of islands in the Mozambique channel, almost halfway between the African coast and the giant island of Madagascar. That island cluster, once owned by France, is now the nation of Comoros, where three quarter of a million people eked out a living by farming and fishing. Comoros has a million people if you count Mayotte, the one island in the cluster that France had retained.

Shortly after midnight on October 27, on one of the islands in the Comoros, they inserted the tritium bottles into the bombs. That was the last step in getting the weapons ready to be placed on the ships. For two months they had been slowly and carefully replacing the wiring and the batteries. Although the weapons were over twenty-five years old, with the new tritium, wires, and batteries, they were as good as new. The key part of the weapons, the highly enriched uranium, was as good as when it had been first made. HEU took over a thousand years to decay.

The Pakistani-designed tritium container was smaller than the old South African bottle it replaced, but it rode securely in the larger cavity designed for the original booster. The consensus was that it would work well, giving a forty-kiloton yield, maybe more. Even if the gas was defective, the HEU would provide an explosion larger than any conventional weapon. And they had seen with their own eyes what that looked like on August 9. It was a sight like nothing they had ever seen.

Even from the aircraft so many miles away, it had seemed immense and threatening, but also oddly beautiful, almost like something natural, perhaps the way the Big Bang appeared in the first nanoseconds of the birth of this universe. When the next five went off, it would, the men who now owned the bombs assured each other, also be the beginning of a new era.

A half hour after the sun had set, the thirty-four-foot twin outboard left the marina near the cluster of high-rise hotels and moved slowly toward the opening in the seawall. It was a cloudless night, but the lights from the town drowned out most of the stars. When the boat passed the break wall, the young Israeli at the helm increased the speed and turned east.

Ray Bowman smiled, feeling the cool breeze on his face as the boat sped up and the wind blowing his hair around. He was glad to be wearing a warm leather jacket, courtesy of the Mossad office in the town. The sound of the engines was loud and steady, as the boat bounced over the perfectly flat sea, passed the King Herod and then the Dan Hotel.

His escort from the local office was chatting on a mobile phone, in Arabic. “There they are,” he said in Hebrew and pointed for the boat’s driver. The boat moved out farther away from the shore toward a set of small, blue lights.

As they approached the blue lights, Ray made out the speedboat laying still in the water. The running lights on Ray Bowman’s boat blinked twice and then went out. The driver cut the engine back and the two boats coasted together. The Mossad man threw a rope to the only man on the other boat and called out “As-salamu alaykum.”

“Shalom,” came the response. The two boats pulled together side by side. The Mossad man helped Bowman step from the Israeli outboard to the slightly larger Jordanian craft. He passed Bowman his two small bags.

Abdullah al Shahwan grabbed Bowman, as he jumped down to the deck. The two men embraced. “Welcome back to Jordan, Raymond,” Abdullah said in English.

“You shouldn’t have come out on the water yourself,” Bowman replied.

“It’s my boat. I almost never get to take it out. The King doesn’t come to Aqaba as much anymore, but tonight he’s in the palace here so I am here.” Behind them, the Israeli boat opened up, heading back to Eilat. Ray noticed the red and green running lights were back on. “I used to fish at night for hammour. Now I fish at night for al Qaeda and ISIS.”

“I’d rather have the grouper, the hammour, tonight. I am famished,” Ray said, sitting down in the chair next to the helm.

“The Israelis didn’t feed you? And they almost get you killed by a car bomb? We’ll treat you better.” He pulled back on the control for the big inboard diesel and the boat almost stood up as it headed toward the shore where a giant Jordanian flag, fluttering in the spotlight, flew above the port once liberated by Lawrence of Arabia.

“It’s an old Hawker, but trust me it’s all new on the inside. New engines, glass cockpit, like a new plane it is,” Danny Avidar was making small talk while he waited plane side with Mbali and Rachel. “From Cyprus, you will be on a charter. A Falcon. French, very nice. Bigger than my Hawker and owned by Greeks. Really. No one in Dubai will ever know you started from a small airstrip south of Tel Aviv.

“You will spend the day in Dubai, Rachel, on the South African passport, while Mbali drives to Abu Dhabi to get on an Etihad flight to Hong Kong,”

Mbali picked up the story. “I will actually arrive a day before you. You fly out the next day to Hong Kong on Emirates from Dubai.”

Rachel looked concerned. “You are worried, don’t be worried,” Danny Avidar assured her. “You’re looking at the big smoke tower at the end of the runway? No one has ever hit it.”

Rachel smiled. “It’s the first time that I have left the girls overnight with my mother since, since Dawid,” she said.

“I told you, I have my people watching the house, watching the girls. They will be fine until you get back. And Mbali will be around the corner from you all the time in Hong Kong to make sure you get back.”

Mbali pulled Rachel close. “And it won’t just be me. Danny’s people will be helping me. And I have some other friends who will be in town working with me. You go to Hong Kong, have the meeting with the new Trustees, and be back here in four days. Don’t worry.”

Rachel looked at Danny Avidar. “I consider myself to be Israeli. This is the only country I have ever really known. There is no other home. Nowhere else to go where I would feel safe. I may not practice, but I am a Jew, as are the girls. If there is any chance that a nuclear bomb might come here…”

Avidar reached out his hand to her. “You are doing your duty. You may be able to help us find the bombs and the bombers.”

“I just can’t believe that Dawid would have knowingly been part of a plot to sell a nuclear device to anyone,” she said to Avidar.

“I’m sure he didn’t know all of the details,” Avidar assured her, “but that’s what we need you to find out, the details. And I know you will, dear, I know it.” He escorted the two women to the plane, a Zulu who stood just over six feet tall in flat shoes, and a young Israeli mother who was five foot eight in heels. He had sent odd-looking teams undercover before, including men dressed as women, but he had trained those teams well. This mission was more important than any of those, but this one was being put together as they went along.

He stood by his car on the apron and watched the Hawker take off and bank west, the taillights blinking as it passed the power plant smoke tower.