The Hunt

66

Professor Pak Won Kangjon wandered into the strongroom where they stored the weapons-grade uranium.

He eyed the wooden crate lying before him on the room’s bare concrete floor. It was fresh in from Moldova, a former Soviet state gone to rack and ruin, or so he’d heard. At least the uranium, being former Soviet stock, should be near one hundred per cent pure.

He felt a thrill of excitement at the thought of dealing with such a potent source of raw power. He signalled to his assistants – fellow North Koreans who were also here on false papers, and likewise at Kammler’s mercy – to break open the crate.

They worked quickly and in silence, levering apart the planking.

Once it was removed, the professor set them to dismantling the lead shield. It was a simple enough affair: six slabs of metal, each covering one face of the HEU cube, joined at the edges by pressure bolts.

When they were done, he picked up a Geiger counter. He approached the small pile of dull silver metal – atrociously expensive; impossibly heavy – and ran the device over it.

Not a sniff of a reading.

Which didn’t mean much. Contrary to popular belief, HEU could be famously un-radioactive, at least before it went fissile. He didn’t understand why they made such a fuss about lead shields. It was only a few curies of radiation, and it was never going to kill. In North Korea they’d been far more relaxed about the whole thing.

He ran his gaze over the pile of bars. They were strapped down with tough plastic straps designed to hold them firmly in place inside the lead sarcophagus. As he eyed the cube of metal ingots, something struck him as being a little odd.

This was supposed to be 100 kilos of HEU – enough for two power-plant-busting INDs, with a few ingots to spare. But it didn’t look like 100 kilos’ worth to his practised eye. It looked to be around twice that amount.

He’d read a report recently stating that hundreds of tonnes of Soviet-era weapons-grade uranium was unaccounted for. Maybe they’d got lucky. Maybe the Moldovans had messed up. But surely they weren’t so stupid as to have miscalculated the weight?

Either way, this was a chance to ingratiate himself with Kammler. If he could verify his discovery – that the shipment was twice what they’d paid for – maybe he could redeem himself in his boss’s eyes. Perhaps even earn himself a bonus.

He ordered his assistants to lift the cube of HEU onto a nearby workbench. Before he made any announcement, he would need to be one hundred per cent certain. He couldn’t afford another screw-up.

He feared his next mistake might very well prove a life-ending one.

He took a seat at the bench and examined the block. One of the ingots had shifted about a little in transit, leaving a square hole large enough for him to poke one of his pudgy fingers through. The metal felt cold to the touch; cold and incredibly dense. He could almost sense its raw power.

He pulled a Maglite from his pocket and shone the flashlight through the hole, focusing the beam so that it illuminated the interior. He expected to see HEU all the way through, confirming that there was more here than they had been anticipating.

Suddenly Professor Pak Won Kangjon stopped and stared.

His torch beam had caught upon something yellowish-brown in colour lying at the centre of the cube. It looked to him like a lump of… plasticine. But what was a lump of plasticine doing crammed into the centre of a cube of weapons-grade uranium?

Moments later, he felt his blood run cold. As he moved the beam around, it glinted upon a wire. He dropped the torch and backed away from the bench. Surely to God it couldn’t be…?

Somehow he found his voice. He barked an order, then turned and stumbled from the room. As he hurried ashen-faced down the corridor, his assistants swung closed the heavy steel door that secured the strongroom, and locked and barred it.

The last thing the professor wanted was to be the bearer of bad news, and this surely would be the worst kind imaginable. Kammler, he knew, was not beyond shooting the messenger. But if he didn’t raise the alarm, he feared he was dead in any case.

He stopped at his desk, and dialled his boss’s number. A voice barked an answer.

‘Mr Kraft, I have been inspecting the new shipment,’ Professor Kangjon stuttered. ‘I am afraid there is something not quite right with it. You see, inside the uranium someone seems to have placed what looks like an explosive charge.’

There was an outburst of expletives on the other end of the line.

The professor visibly cringed. ‘Yes, Mr Kraft. Please come see. Right away.’

As he replaced the receiver, his hand was shaking.

How on God’s earth could this be happening?