Independence Day (32 page)
In essence, it meant two bombs could be created from one. At a time when the Soviet Union and the United States were at war, a Cold War, racing to amass nuclear weapons, Vargarin’s idea was revolutionary. A country could double its existing stockpile of nukes without the need for more radioactive material. It was an idea big enough for America to kill for.
When the Americans killed Anuslav Vargarin and stole the formula, they also killed Poldark’s hope of a scientific career as celebrated as Vargarin’s. He would have been part of the team that designed it. In the Soviet Union, such accomplishments were handsomely rewarded, its scientists treated like rock stars. America had robbed him of his future.
Nearly thirty years later, Vargarin’s Theorem was no longer innovative or, for that matter, used.
But all that was secondary to Poldark. All that mattered to him was that it worked.
* * *
After carefully removing the bomb’s component parts, Poldark took two of the eight uranium rings and placed them in a steel case beneath the table. He reassembled the original physics package. He drilled a small hole through its cap and then welded the cap back on.
Next he went to the duffel and removed a shiny steel cylinder that was longer and wider than the original. Over the next several hours, he replicated the design of the original bomb. Once the gun assembly was done, he welded a similar end cap to it, though this one had a slight modification. At the center was a small threaded hole.
Poldark went to the duffel and removed what was the most important part of the process. It was a large thermos, filled with a liquid, radiogenic isotope of bismuth. It looked like water. Using a plastic funnel, he poured the contents of the thermos into the second device.
From the black tool case, he removed two specially designed copper bolts. At the head of each bolt, three small screws stuck out like small antennae. He screwed a bolt into each of the caps, threading them tightly into the holes at the end of each bomb.
Poldark removed two small, similar-looking devices from the duffel bag. They resembled cell phones except that both had wires dangling out. These were the triggers. He attached the wires from each trigger to the copper bolts atop the two bombs, wrapping them around the screws, then fastening them tight. He wrapped several strips of duct tape over the end of each bomb.
Finally, he removed two detonators from the tool case. These were thin, square boxes the size of television remotes, made of white plastic. On one side of each detonator was a square blue cap that stuck out. Poldark placed each detonator on the table, then lifted up the caps. Beneath were switches, like light switches. They glowed dull red. He closed the covers and wrapped duct tape around them, ensuring no one accidentally flipped either of them before they were in place and ready to be detonated. He marked each detonator with a number so that the right detonator went with the bomb it had been programmed to.
Poldark stepped back from the table. He placed his hands behind his back, leaned against the wall, and slowly slid down and sat on the floor. He pulled the SCBA, self contained breathing apparatus, from over his head. Beneath, he was wet with perspiration, his skin a pale, ashen gray. Poldark crossed his legs. He sat and stared at the two bombs for more than ten minutes.
He looked up at a clock on the wall. He’d been working for twelve hours. His eyes returned to the bombs.
Would Anuslav be proud of him now? he wondered. Would he be proud of him for implementing his vision? For helping his son exact vengeance on those who’d killed his mother and father as he watched, an innocent five-year-old, sentenced to life as an orphan, crippled by a memory that could not be erased? Would Anuslav share the sense of justice when the bombs tore through life and limb of countrymen who’d taken his very life? Who’d stolen his life’s work, sacrificing one of the Soviet Union’s greatest scientific minds, all for a few sheets of paper filled with letters and numbers? Would the great professor be proud of him now?
Poldark knew the answer.
GRAMERCY PARK HOTEL
NEW YORK CITY
Igor heard his phone beeping through a fog of Patr
ó
n and extremely expensive marijuana, grown in a laboratory in Oregon and designed for a mild prep school high intermingled with a Viagra-like sexual potency. The beeping was accompanied by a nudge from the foot that was approximately half an inch from his face, a foot that was tan and smooth, with red toenail polish and a heel that looked as if it had never done a hard day’s work in its life, despite the fact that it belonged to a runway model, at least, that’s what Igor thought she’d said. His left eye opened. He was now staring at the foot. It was a beautiful foot, he thought.
What the hell is her name? Alice? Allison?
The phone beeped for a fifth time.
At the other end of the bed, he felt a girl kissing his ankle, then his knee, then his thigh, and then a little higher.
Whoever’s calling, well, they’re just going to have to wait.
Suddenly, he felt a hand wrap around his chest. His eyes darted down. It was a small hand, brown, with white fingernail polish. Then he remembered the black girl.
She
was Alice. Now it was coming back to him. La Piscine. Hotel Americano. A shared joint. A limo ride back to the Gramercy. The shower.
Igor was worth more than $100 million. It wasn’t as much as Sergey Brin, one of his classmates at Stanford, but it was better than a sharp stick in the eye.
He was the best programmer in his class. If others had made more money, it didn’t seem to bother him.
Igor had made his fortune working for an American energy company, KKB. With little help or fanfare, he had designed, built, and then managed a technology colossus that controlled, in real time, all aspects of exploration, production, storage, and distribution for the largest energy company in North America and the second largest in the world.
Igor not only built it all alone, he managed it with a staff of only twelve people. The company’s executives and traders knew precisely what was occurring in all parts of the company’s massive supply chain, at all times.
Most impressive was the complex algorithm Igor had written that enabled KKB to optimize how it priced its products—electricity, oil, coal—in real time, against location. It was a mathematical piece of software genius. It helped deliver the highest profit margins of any other energy company, large or small, in the world.
KKB, in turn, had rewarded Igor handsomely. The year before, he’d made $25 million. And on New Year’s Day, Igor had walked out of KKB for the last time, retiring with enough money to live a life of pleasure and, occasionally, debauchery. Of course, all that was irrelevant at this particular moment. Money, KKB, computers, the world—none of that crossed his mind, as Alice said something in French that he didn’t understand.
The beeping started again, and this time it didn’t stop. Reluctantly, Igor pushed Alice off and reached for his cell phone.
“Who is it?” Igor asked.
“It’s Hector Calibrisi.”
Igor sat up. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to expel the hangover and dizziness from his head.
“What time is it?”
“Two o’clock,” said Calibrisi.
“Day or night?”
Calibrisi ignored the question.
“We need your help, Igor.”
“Call Geek Squad,” said Igor.
“I’m not fucking around.”
“I’m not either. I retired, Hector.”
“This concerns your adopted homeland, the United States of America. I’m assuming you still like it here?”
“Oh, man. What do you need my help with?”
“Catching a hacker.”
Igor swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. He walked toward the bathroom as the two girls curled up together and started kissing.
“What do you mean, ‘a hacker’?”
“He’s Russian. His name is Vargarin, but he goes by the name—”
“Cloud,” said Igor, stepping into the bathroom and turning the shower on—cold.
“That’s right.”
“Okay, first thing, tell your IT people not to shut anything down,” said Igor. “No sanitization, no removal of code.
Nothing.
Leave it alone.”
“Why?”
“He’s inside Langley, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Cloud came in through a path. We need to find the beginning of the path. If we can do that, we can find him.”
PARK TENISOWY OLIMPIA
POZNA
Ń
, POLAND
The bleachers were filled with fans, there to watch a second-round doubles match in Poland’s sole professional men’s tennis tournament, the Pozna
ń
Open. Beneath a warm summer evening, the point was already under way.
The French team was leading, having taken the first set over the pair of Americans. Tom Fairweather suddenly found himself in no-man’s-land, trying to get to a lob that was headed for the baseline.
Fairweather had gotten lured to the net by a drop shot, and now he had no choice. He leapt, striking the ball with the very edge of the racket. The ball sailed in a wobbly line back down the middle of the court, between the two Frenchmen.
“Watch your alley!” barked Fairweather.
The French player reached the ball and pivoted, ripping a forehand crosscourt, toward Fairweather’s alley. At full sprint, he lurched forward, racket extended, diving. The ball hit the racket in the half second before Fairweather landed chest-first on the clay, thumping hard and sliding painfully forward as gasps came from the crowd. From the ground, he watched the ball hit the top of the net, perch for a pregnant moment, then dribble over and die on the clay on the other side of the court.
Slowly, Fairweather climbed to his feet. The front of his white shirt and shorts, as well as his arms and legs, were covered in red clay.
“Nice shot,” said one of the French players, nodding at him.
“Thanks.”
Above the French player’s shoulder, he saw a woman in a white linen pantsuit standing in the entranceway, arms crossed, staring at him.
Fairweather walked across the court to his partner.
“I gotta go.”
“Can’t you hold it until the break?”
“No, I have to leave. Sorry.”
His partner took a deep breath.
“We’re in the middle of a—”
Fairweather didn’t wait to hear the end of his partner’s sentence. He ran to the court exit. In the underground passageway beneath the bleachers, he dropped his racket on the ground and fell into a full-on sprint, charging out through the central clubhouse to the street. A silver Volvo station wagon was idling.
He climbed in the back, joining the woman from the court, and the car sped away.
Panting hard, he looked at her.
“What is it?”
“Moscow,” the woman said, nodding to a white duffel bag on the seat. He unzipped it, finding a change of clothes. Beneath the clothing was money, a passport, and a plane ticket.
As the Volvo headed for the airport, Fairweather undressed.
“What do you know?” he asked as he pulled on a pair of dry boxers. He glanced up, catching her appraising his body.
“Tina, what do you know?” he repeated.
“It’s Emergency Priority,” she said, looking out the window.
Fairweather’s demeanor shifted. He stared straight ahead, watching the other cars on the road, lost in thought, a cold, blank expression on his face.
A few minutes later, the Volvo pulled into Pozna
ń
–
Ł
awica Airport. Fairweather looked at her one more time.
“Tell me what you know. I know you know something.”
“We lost five men earlier tonight.”
“In Russia?”
“Yes.”
“How good is the paper?”
She looked back from the window.
“It’s one of Mr. Coughlin’s old aliases,” she whispered. “The ones he kept in the safe. Bill insisted.”
HOTEL EUROPA
MINSK, BELARUS
Alina described to Brainard, for the second time that evening, the car accident. It had happened that afternoon, in front of her office near Victory Square. An elderly woman had been struck by a taxicab, then thrown in the air. Alina had been the first person to find her, lying facedown on the sidewalk, dead.
“
Miortvych,
” she said in Belarusian, as again tears appeared on her cheeks. “
Ja by
ŭ
biezdapamo
ž
ny, Todd.
”
Dead. I was helpless, Todd.
You get used to it,
Brainard thought to himself.
“
Jos
ć
, jos
ć
,
” he said.
There, there.
Brainard put his hand on hers, then noticed a man seated at the bar, staring at him.
“
Ja chutka viarnusi,
” he said, standing.
I’ll be right back.
At the bar, Carter, Minsk chief of station, was having a glass of wine and reading the newspaper. Beads of sweat covered his brow. Brainard stood next to him.
“Moscow,” Carter whispered. “Vernacular House. Emergency Priority.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. Bill called and told me to get you the fuck over there.”
“FSB tagged me last week,” said Brainard. “I won’t make it through Customs.”
Carter pushed a section of the paper toward him. The edge of a white envelope was visible.
“The passport’s fresh,” said Carter, “and it’s off grid.”
“How fresh?”
“Ten minutes old. Get moving.”
VERNACULAR HOUSE
MOSCOW
Christy Braga knocked on the door to the bedroom. There was no answer.
“Johnny?”
She was holding a field trauma medical kit, housed in a large stainless steel case. She opened the door.
Maybank was lying on the bed. He stared up at her. His face was bright red. He was drenched in sweat, even though the air-conditioning was cranked up.
“We need to remove the bullet,” she said.