Rules of Vengeance (49 page)

   Jonathan clutched the safety webbing as the Aérospatiale helicopter dipped its nose and plummeted toward the Normandy coast. Staring out the window, he had a clear view of the La Reine nuclear complex. To the casual eye, the area appeared calm, as if nothing were out of the ordinary, and purposely so. It was paramount that no word of the threat leaked to the general public. The mildest panic would have long-lasting consequences. Only after looking closely did he spot the unmarked cars blocking the entry road, and the armored personnel carriers stationed near the guardhouses, and the large black vans belonging to the GIGN— the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale, the elite force trained to deal with threats to the country’s nuclear infrastructure— parked adjacent to the main administration building. In the sky above, he caught a glimmer of metal in the morning sun. It was the Mirage jets from the French Air Force, executing a box holding pattern to freeze air traffic above the target area.

Throughout the fifty-minute flight they had maintained an open channel of communication with La Reine. A running update of events delivered in urgent telegraphese.

“She tampered with the closed-circuit video feeds so we wouldn’t be able to see her,” the plant manager had reported soon after takeoff. “M. Royale discovered what she’d done and is going to try to find her. He spotted her in the warehouse, but she could be anywhere.”

“Is that warehouse also called W-4?” asked Kate, referencing Jonathan’s information.

“Yes, it is.”

“What do you keep there?”

“Pipes, equipment, maintenance supplies.”

“A lead pipe might conceal a high explosive from any detection system,” said Graves. “She may have gone to the warehouse to pick up the bomb.”

Kate nodded, then asked, “Who is Royale?”

“He’s the deputy security director. He met with Mrs. Scholl because M. Grégoire, our chief of security, didn’t come in today.”

“Have you spoken with Grégoire?” asked Graves.

“He isn’t answering his phone.”

At which point Graves asked the pilot to radio the police and instruct them to send a car to Grégoire’s home as quickly as possible. Then, to the plant manager: “Contact M. Royale and ask him if he’s found Mrs. Scholl yet.”

The minutes ticked past and the news grew more frantic.

“Royale isn’t answering,” said the plant manager. “He always has his phone with him. Something’s wrong.”

“Go find him,” ordered Kate in a drill sergeant’s tone, which made everyone look at her with trepidation.

Ten minutes passed. The first to report back was not the plant manager but a local policeman sent to rouse Grégoire. “I found him and his family in their house, tied up in their beds. The wife had a broken nose, and Grégoire, he is in shock. He said it was a woman who did it. She Tasered them.”

“And the children?” asked Kate.

“Fine.”

Another two minutes passed before the plant manager finally reported back. “We located Royale. He was in the warehouse. He is unconscious and his jaw is broken. What shall we do?”

Seated behind the pilot, sunglasses hiding his tired eyes, headphones clamped firmly over his ears, Jonathan was privy to it all.

The helicopter flared, nose up, and landed with a jolt. Graves slid back the door and leaped to the ground. Jonathan followed, with Kate Ford and several representatives of the French DST behind him.

Waiting nearby was the plant manager, his face damp with sweat. “She’s inside the reactor building,” he said, leading them into the administration building. “I saw her on the monitor myself.”

“Is she alone?” asked Graves.

“Yes, she’s carrying a large purse, that’s all.”

“Can she get into the control room?”

“Never. The room is locked from the inside. My men have orders to stay where they are.”

A few feet away, the rear doors of the vans stood open. GIGN troops clad in black assault gear sat with their backs to the walls, machine guns resting on their laps, looking very much like sticks of paratroopers readying for a jump.

Graves introduced himself to the chief of the counterterrorism squad, who joined them as they filed into the manager’s office. A map of the plant hung on the wall. Every building was marked with initials, with a legend in the lower left-hand corner.

“Any of this look familiar?” asked Graves. “Time to sing for your supper.”

Jonathan pointed to the main reactor complex, a grouping of four buildings inside a fenced perimeter. “Where is the containment building?”

“Right here,” said the manager, pointing to the largest building of the four.

“Do you store fuel there?”

“Of course, prior to inserting it into the reactor.”

“That’s it,” said Jonathan. “That’s what I read about.”

Graves spoke to the chief of the commandos. “Get your men to the containment building. She’s either carrying explosives in that bag or carrying the means to detonate devices that have been previously planted. Don’t take any chances.”

Jonathan stepped in between the two men. “Let me talk to her,” he said. “Give me a minute to reason with her.”

“Did you a lot of good in London,” said Graves. “Get out of my way.”

Jonathan placed a hand on his chest. “This is different,” he said. “Emma wouldn’t do this.” He looked at Kate Ford. “I know her. Let me try.”

“Absolutely not,” she said.

Graves knocked away Jonathan’s arm. “See that Dr. Ransom stays here until we resolve the situation. Oh, and put the cuffs back on. We don’t want any more trouble.”

   Emma Ransom was nowhere near the containment building. Two hundred meters away, she crouched beside the outer wall of the spent-fuel cooling pond. The wall was made of standard poured concrete and measured 45 centimeters thick. Unlike the containment building, which was designed not only to keep projectiles from penetrating, be they laser-guided munitions, air-to-ground missiles, or supersonic aircraft, but also to prevent radioactive gases from escaping in the event of an accident, the spent-fuel building was deemed neither a “risky environment” nor a priority target. Positioned at the southwestern corner of the building, she dug in her bag for one of the explosive devices she had retrieved from the warehouse. Ripping off a strip of adhesive backing, she affixed the bomb to the wall approximately 20 centimeters above the ground. As determined by the handheld theodolite two nights before, the spot corresponded to a point 5 meters below the surface of the giant cooling pond that lay on the other side of the wall.

Flipping open the control panel, she set the timer to ten minutes. Papi had instructed her to set it to thirty minutes, thus ensuring her enough time to escape. But plans had changed. She had no doubt that within thirty minutes the bomb would be discovered. Ten minutes left her enough time to set the second device and reach her extraction point before detonation. If, that is, she was not captured. It was the sole eventuality for which she had not planned.

Without delay, she switched the device to “run.”

The red numbers displayed on the LED clock began to run backward.

9:59

9:58

9:57

Emma checked in her bag for the second explosive, looked to her right and left, then set off for her final target.

   They put Jonathan in the manager’s office with one policeman to guard him and another to stand watch outside the door. The cuffs were too tight, but he was allowed to sit where he pleased or wander around the desk and, as was the case, study the bank of color monitors arrayed across an entire wall of the office.

With mounting unease he followed the assault team’s progress through the complex, their images moving from one monitor to the next. He watched from above their shoulders as they gathered outside the main administration building and checked their weapons, and then as they hit the reactor building at a run, hugging the wall as if Emma were about to open fire on them. The assault team turned a corner and disappeared from view, and for a few frantic seconds Jonathan thought he’d lost them. But then he spotted the black-clad troops, followed by Graves and Ford, on a monitor a few rows lower. The leader gave a signal and they entered the main reactor building, taking turns covering one another as they advanced down a corridor. And all the while Jonathan had a running commentary, courtesy of the policeman’s walkie-talkie, which blared at full volume so that he might follow his comrades’ movements step by step.

But even as Jonathan kept one eye on the assault team, he searched among the myriad other monitors for a sign of his wife. He had lied about the containment building. He had never seen a single mention of it. A sole term was imprinted on his mind: SFCB, and according to the block letters printed on the map, it corresponded to a structure abutting the cliff at ocean’s edge named the Spent-Fuel Cooling Building.

The clock on the wall showed that three minutes had passed.

On the screen, the troops stormed into a conference room and a dozen plant workers threw their hands into the air.

Jonathan couldn’t wait any longer.

Suddenly he bent over double, gave a horrifying groan, and fell to the floor.

The policeman immediately came to his aid, kneeling by his side.
“Ça va?”
he asked. “What is wrong?”

“Can’t… breathe,” said Jonathan.

The policeman came closer so that he could check Jonathan’s respiration. As Jonathan expected, he had been trained in first aid. His first action was to lift Jonathan’s head and attempt to clear his air passage. As the policeman bent lower to listen for breathing, Jonathan brought his cuffed hands around and clubbed him on the side of the head. The policeman toppled onto his side. Before he could cry out, Jonathan slugged him again, and nearly passed out himself because of the pain in his shoulder. The policeman lay still.

Jonathan found the keys to his handcuffs and, after a minute’s struggle, managed to free himself. He drew the policeman’s gun, checked that the safety was on, then grasped it by the snout and banged on the door.
“Viens vite,”
he said.
“J’ai besoin de ton aide.”
Come quickly. I need your help.

The door opened at once, and the guard stormed into the room. Jonathan struck him from behind at the base of the skull. The policeman collapsed to the ground. Jonathan looked between the men, searching for the key card necessary to get from building to building, like the ones he’d seen the plant manager hand to several of the assault troops. Digging through their pockets, he found it, marked with the initials of Électricité de France, and grasped it tightly.

Standing, Jonathan looked once more at the map, scouting out a path to the spent-fuel cooling building. Then he opened the door to the hallway and ran.

   “Stop,” he said.

Emma knelt at the far end of the pool. At her side, contrasting with the white ceramic tiles, was a black metallic box. Even from where he stood, Jonathan could see that the top of the black box was flipped open, and he knew instinctively that it was a bomb.

“Leave,” said Emma, looking at him for a brief moment before returning her attention to the box. “Get out of here. You don’t need to be here.”

“The French authorities have Shvets in custody,” said Jonathan, his voice echoing across the water and off the immense walls. “It’s finished, Emma. Give yourself up. It’s your only chance. There are police everywhere. I told them you were in the reactor building, but any minute they’re going to figure out I was lying. They have orders to shoot on sight.”

Jonathan advanced along the narrow walk bordering the pool. The spent-fuel pond was 50 meters long and half again as wide. The tank was built from stainless steel, the water as clear as glass, clearer than any water he’d ever seen. Beneath the surface lay row upon row of spent fuel rods, grouped into squares seventeen wide and seventeen across and held in place by titanium racks. The rods pulsed with a deep blue glow that danced off the walls and the ceiling and dressed the high cavernous ceiling in an eerie and menacing light.

“Is that why you came?” Emma asked. “To save me?”

“No,” said Jonathan. “It isn’t.” The words came without forethought, and he knew that his relationship with Emma was over. “I came because I’m not going to allow you to kill thousands of people.”

For the first time Emma looked up from the black box. “You have no idea what you’re doing,” she said.

“Shvets told me everything.”

“You still don’t understand.”

“Why, Emma? Why did you go back to him? I saw your file. I know what he made you do.”

“Because more than Shvets, I hate Division. I hate how they manipulate the world. How anything went as long as it was stated to be in the country’s interest. You think I’m the bad guy. You’re wrong. I just pulled the trigger. Someone much higher up chose the target, loaded the gun, and handed it to me.”

“And how is that different from what you’re doing now?”

“Now I’m helping my country. My real country.” She glanced up. “My God, is that a gun you’re carrying?”

Jonathan looked down at the pistol, then tossed it into the pond. Threats were worthless. He could not shoot his wife. “And me?”

“What about you?”

“Was it ever real?”

“No,” she answered indignantly. “It wasn’t real. You were a tool. Nothing more. You got me into places I couldn’t go to by myself. Cover, Jonathan. That’s all you’ve ever been.”

“Then why did you come to see me in London?”

“Because I like you. Because I needed a good screw. OK?”

“Tell me the truth, dammit! That’s all I ever wanted.”

Emma stared at him, her eyes narrowed. “The truth?” she said, shaking her head. “What’s that?” She flipped a switch, shut the top of the box, and stood. “Four minutes. You still have time.”

Jonathan didn’t budge. “You didn’t have to come to London just to tell me that we couldn’t see each other again. You could have done it a hundred different ways. A phone call, for one. It doesn’t fit, Emma. You broke every one of your own rules.”