Assassin's Silence: A David Slaton Novel (34 page)

Cruz dropped his head on his pillow and heaved a sigh. “Tell me what you want.”

*   *   *

The slightly built physicist looked at Slaton through heavy round spectacles, his eyes darting left and right. “What do you want?”

“Why do you think I want something?” Slaton replied.

“You followed me here from my office.”

Slaton could have argued otherwise, or manufactured a swift and convincing lie. He let it go. “I shouldn’t bother you,” he said. “Not when you’re with your family.”

Nassoor’s posture straightened, bucking up—the way any man did when flight was not an option. Just then, a group of three nurses vacated the nearest picnic table. It was the physicist who gestured toward it and nodded. Slaton glanced at Nassoor’s family—they seemed oblivious.

At the table they took opposing seats.

“Who are you?” Nassoor asked.

Slaton’s response was quick, and loosely based on the truth. “I’m Benjamin Grossman’s representative.”

Nassoor’s steady demeanor disintegrated. “I have given you what you wanted!” he said in a harsh whisper. “Can’t you leave me alone?” His English was almost without accent, and Slaton imagined he had studied abroad.

“I think you’ve made a mistake, Doctor.”

“How so?”

Feeling he was on the right track, Slaton gambled with, “It has to do with the other man who came to see you—when was it, yesterday?”

The Lebanese nodded.

“That man never met Benjamin Grossman in his life.”

Nassoor’s face went ashen. “But if you are with Grossman and the other man was not…”

“Then you just sold something very dangerous to a complete stranger.” Having already made a number of correct assumptions, Slaton took the final leap. “And when I say dangerous, let’s be up-front. We are talking about nuclear material. A potential weapon of mass destruction.”

A speechless Nassoor cast a glance at his family.

Slaton wished he had done this differently, but his hand was now forced. “You’ve dug a very, very deep hole for yourself, Moses. I should tell you that I represent a certain government to the south, one that Monsieur Grossman worked with closely.” For a Lebanese,
south
had but one meaning. Nassoor did not appear surprised. “I think,” Slaton said, “that both of us would benefit if you began by telling me everything you know.”

Nassoor looked at him thoughtfully, yet Slaton couldn’t read what he was thinking. It wasn’t because he was dealing with a man trained in deception. Quite the opposite. He was dealing with an amateur, a man whose linear world had gone dreadfully askew.

For reasons Slaton would not understand until later, Nassoor relented. “It began two summers ago…”

FORTY-NINE

Moses Nassoor found himself in very deep and dark water. To his credit, he recognized his dilemma and did not hold back.

“It began nearly two years ago. I had traveled to a clinic in Aadra in order to repair their X-ray machine. I am one of but two medical physicists in all of Lebanon. Our facilities here are not advanced, at least not by Western standards, yet the need is great. During my visit to the clinic I had a discussion with the doctor who ran the facility. He told me they were facing a strange epidemic, one that he could not place. Dozens of patients had arrived with gastrointestinal issues, ocular bleeding, kidney failure. The doctor was trained in infectious diseases, so that was naturally where his thoughts went. I immediately recognized these symptoms as radiation sickness.”

“Did you tell him this?”

Nassoor paused. “I couldn’t be certain, not without testing, so I asked him to let me see one of the more severely ill patients. He agreed, but didn’t have the time to accompany me—he was a very busy man. The patient was a woman, perhaps fifty years old. At her bedside I used a scintillation counter to scan a burn on her arm. The results were conclusive for gamma radiation. A very high level.”

Nassoor watched his family as he spoke. His wife glanced at him, but she didn’t seem concerned, clearly thinking her husband was addressing hospital business.

The physicist pulled out a pack of Marlboros, more out of anxiety, Slaton guessed, than anything else. He bumped one out and offered it, but Slaton politely declined. After lighting up and taking a shaky draw, he said, “I should have told the doctor then that I knew what the problem was. But I was curious. I wanted to know where the contamination had come from. I asked a nurse for more information, and quickly learned that all the patients had come from the same neighborhood, and that many knew each other. I drove there and began asking questions. It didn’t take long to discover what had happened. Some boys scavenging metal had come across a cache of cesium-137 chloride encased in canisters.”

“Where would this have come from?”

“I can’t say exactly, but it was probably manufactured in Russia—they run the largest production facility for cesium-137. It is a widely used isotope. Cancer treatment, food irradiation. The oil and construction industries use it in underground measurements. It’s a high-energy gamma emitter with a relatively long half-life of thirty years. Due to the large quantity involved, I’d guess this particular shipment was meant for food irradiation—before the war it was common practice in Syria. Then came the uprising. Whoever controlled this tranche of source material clearly lost track of it, or perhaps it was diverted when the owner tried to transfer it to a safe haven. Whatever the case, the shipment ended up in the hands of people who had no idea what they were dealing with. I found it outside a work shed in Al Qutayfah—fifty-five canisters of cesium-137 chloride stacked like cordwood.”

“Where exactly?”

“You mean the address?”

“Yes.”

Nassoor’s face crinkled as he racked his memory. “It was a dirt path off Route Five, south of town. I don’t remember the street name or number—I’m not even sure there was one. It was the second house east of a railway track.”

“All right. What else?”

“The material released on site did considerable damage, but that was only a fraction of a single container. I estimated the onsite contamination in Al Qutayfah to be roughly fifty terabecquerels—that’s a measure of radiation.”

“I’m no expert,” Slaton said. “How much is that?”

Nassoor took another long draw on his Marlboro. “You recall the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl?”

“Of course.”

“Cesium-137 was the principal source of contamination in the aftermath. Eighty-five thousand terabecquerels were released. In Al Qutayfah, I estimated that roughly five thousand grams of cesium remained encased in the fifty-five canisters—that would equate to roughly sixteen thousand TBq.”

“That’s still a lot.”

“It’s a nightmare. Two decades after Chernobyl, cesium-137 still renders more than fifteen hundred square miles either uninhabitable or unfit for agriculture. Cesium chloride is unique in the threat it presents. It is a salt, and therefore easily soluble in water. In an explosion, as happened in Chernobyl, it can be aerosolized and carried on the wind. Once on the ground, it has a particular affinity for seeping into clay substrate.”

“And so,” Slaton surmised, “if someone wanted to use this as a terror weapon?”

“It would be devastating. Once introduced into the environment, cesium is very difficult to recapture. During a much smaller release in Goiânia, Brazil, hospitals were overwhelmed by over one hundred thousand panicked people when word of the contamination was made public. In wide areas topsoil had to be scraped away, and countless buildings and homes were demolished. It took years to clean up.”

“What did you do when you realized what you’d found?” Slaton asked.

Nassoor hesitated mightily, his nerves crossbow tight. “Some would say I should have told the authorities. But you have to remember, during that time, in Syria—God only knows where this material would have ended up. I also had other considerations. Earlier that year a man had come to my home. He said he had a business opportunity for me. At the time my position at the hospital was in risk of being cut, so I listened.”

“Was it Grossman?” Slaton asked.

Nassoor nodded. “Yes. He talked about the conflict in Syria, and the spill-over into Lebanon. He said there were a great many complications, and since I was one of the few specialists in the country who dealt with nuclear materials, there was a chance I would be approached at some point to give advice. People might come across things, have crazy ideas about what to do with them. Grossman said he had the backing of a country, a major power that wanted very much to recover any such materials. I assumed it was either the United States or Israel, but it made no difference to me. No scientist can function here without remaining apolitical. He made a convincing argument—if I came across any dangerous radiological material, it could be made safe, and in the course of this I would earn a significant ‘finder’s fee.’ Those were the words he used.”

To Slaton it all made perfect sense. “So the cache of material from Al Qutayfah?”

“It was sitting outside, completely unguarded. As long as the source material remained in canisters it was secure, and the release had so far been manageable. But sixteen thousand terabecquerels … something had to be done. The owner of the property and his wife were both dead, so I talked to their relatives. I said there was a small chance that chemicals in the canisters could be responsible for making everyone sick. I was careful to avoid any definite link, and never mentioned that nuclear material was involved. They begged me to take it away. So I did. I borrowed a truck from a friend and put the material in storage.”

“In your parking garage?”

Nassoor stared harshly, and Slaton recognized his mistake.

“Yes,” Slaton said, “I saw where you kept it. But what happened then? Why did Grossman not take it as planned?”

The Lebanese seemed on firmer footing, his voice increasingly charged with truth. “He sent an initial payment, ten percent.”

This meshed with what Slaton had seen in the accounts—fifty thousand dollars paid on a commitment of five hundred thousand. A hefty amount for a midlevel man on a civil servant’s salary. “But the rest never came,” he surmised.

“No,” said Nassoor. “I kept trying to contact Monsieur Grossman, through the autumn of that year, but he never responded.”

“Because he died during the summer.”

Nassoor now wore the look of surprise.

“It was cancer, all very sudden,” Slaton explained.

The Lebanese seemed suddenly unnerved. “What kind of cancer?” he asked.

“I don’t think the primary site was ever identified. I only know it advanced very rapidly, nothing to be done.”

The physicist put his hands over his face.

“What?” Slaton asked.

“It was my fault.”

“What—the cancer? How could you be responsible for—”

“It wasn’t cancer … I sent him a sample.”

“A sample?”

“Grossman was a cautious businessman. He sent the ten percent, but insisted that further payments were conditional on getting a sample of what he was securing.”

“You’re telling me you sent him radioactive cesium … through the mail?”

Nassoor nodded. “A very small amount, by overnight express. There was a chance it could have been discovered, but I am quite familiar with how our screening systems work here in Lebanon—in fact, I created them. The safeguards are rudimentary at best. There was no way to properly shield the material for transport. It would have weighed far too much and generated suspicion. I simply placed a sample of the powder in a tiny lead source container—we use them occasionally at the hospital—then inserted the container into one of the chocolates in a gift box. I sent Grossman an e-mail in advance explaining how to handle the package.”

The two men stared at one another, both seeing what had happened. Grossman had gotten a box of chocolates, one containing radioactive cesium chloride, but the warning e-mail had gone lost in cyberspace. In his years of intelligence work Slaton had seen a good share of fiascos, but this broke new ground.

Nassoor ended the silence. “The symptoms and organs that would be affected, a rapid systemic deterioration—it could easily have been mistaken for advanced-stage cancer of some unknown origin.”

“Or perhaps Grossman realized what had happened, knew his fate was sealed, and told everyone it was cancer for the sake of convenience.”

Nassoor nodded. “Tell me—Grossman worked for Israel, did he not?” When Slaton didn’t answer right away, Nassoor said, “As I told you earlier, I am not a political man. Israel keeps material like this in almost every hospital, and for a country with a hundred nuclear weapons … I know they could have no other intention than safekeeping.”

“Only now it’s not safe,” Slaton argued. “But yes, Grossman was working with Israel. Tell me what happened when you realized your deal with him had fallen through.”

Nassoor heaved a sigh. “What could I do? The material sat in my storage room like … like some kind of unexploded bomb. I contemplated getting rid of it, perhaps dropping it in the sea or burying it in the desert, but the risks seemed too high. Imagine being caught moving such a cache—I would be tortured and killed, probably my family as well. So I left it where it was, hoping for some escape. Then, two months ago, I received a phone call from a man who said he was aligned with Grossman. He told me he would come soon to collect the canisters and pay the balance of what I was owed.”

“Two months ago, you say?”

“Roughly, yes. He said he would call again to arrange payment in cash. He also asked where I kept the material.”

“And you told him?”

“No,” Nassoor said, “of course not. I was frightened, but I also wanted to finish this whole affair. I took my family away and arranged for an absence from work. We stayed with family and friends.”

“That was a good move.”

“Was it?” Nassoor heaved a sigh. “Another call came a few days ago. They were ready to make the exchange. I was to personally hand over the cesium in exchange for the money. Only I couldn’t do it … not like that. I simply told them where it was and said to leave the money in the closet. When I went home yesterday—”