The Abigail Affair (33 page)

“Yes, I made Smithers level with me.”

“He’s MI6, not Naval Intelligence, I suppose you guessed? He just hops around on the Navy ships and they give him a uniform so as not to alert the crew.”

“That all fits.”

“So everyone’s happy for a while, except Mendeshev and his cronies, who have high-maintenance wives, girlfriends, mistresses and whores to support. But they scaled back, made do on a few million less.”

“How do you know all this?” Toby asked.

“Most of it Ivan Krigov told me himself.”

Toby was getting more confused by the minute. “He confessed? Why didn’t you send in a squad and lift him and haul his ass back to jail? Or get him extradited at least?”

“Because by then he was a CIA agent and informant himself.”

Toby’s head started to spin a little. He picked up his water glass and crossed to the porthole. He peered out. The sun shimmered on the water and nearby boats swung lazily. A normal-looking afternoon in the balmy West Indies. He drained his glass. “Let me get this clear. You and Krigov are both working covertly for the CIA. On what?”

“Rogue nuclear material. The biggest threat to world security since the Cold War. Tsazakhstan is one of the world’s leading producers of uranium. And thanks to Krigov, we know the country has been working for four years on enrichment to produce weapons-grade isotopes. They have been using an old technology originally developed in South Africa called vortex separation. This process is crude but effective. It works a bit like those orange bagless vacuum cleaners that you love in Britain. It produces enormous amounts of waste heat and uses tons of energy. Neither of these are problems in Tsazakhstan. There are plenty of industrial wastelands with so many smoking factories, and so much pollution that the vortex plants could be hidden in plain sight.

“Unfortunately, all that time, we were running around worrying about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and looking for thousands of gas centrifuges in that country. We never guessed that a little-known Eurasian state could get in on the act with an old-fashioned sledgehammer technique. Rather one-track, the good old US of A, I’m afraid. I sometimes think we can only focus on one big threat at a time.”

“I’m starting to see the South African connection now. I wondered why Scott and then this Haase were South Africans on board a Russian yacht.”

“Krigov did all the deals. He set up the people from the South African end. He had the perfect cover with this yacht. He could hang around Cape Town for weeks and no one had a clue what he was up to. Of course, it was also a good place to recruit crew, although I’m sure neither Scott nor Haase had any inkling of this. They’re just hired hands. Scott’s not even a good first mate. And Haase, as we now know, is just a thug—an enforcer.”

Toby was starting to see, if only dimly. He had been catapulted into a shadowy world where governments did dirty deals with dirty criminals and everyone double-crossed everyone else. “So then Krigov fell out with the Tsazakhstanis?” he prompted.

“My lip’s hurting more. Am I bleeding?

Toby bent close to Julia. She looked a mess. “You’ve just opened up the cut on that lip. From talking to me.” He went to the shower room, tore off a wad of toilet paper, dampened it under the tap and was back in seconds. “Here. Hold a bit of this over the cut for a mo.’”

After a minute, she said, “OK, it’s only superficial. We have bigger problems than my fat lip. Where was I?”

“Krigov hits a problem because his oil concession brokerage business in the States is trashed by well-meaning Democrats objecting to US energy companies paying billions to an unpleasant, dangerously corrupt president in a central Eurasian country no one has even heard of. He gets into heroin, starts to fall out with his political sponsors in Tsazakhstan, and also does deals to recruit South African dudes with old, dirty technology to set up a nuclear enrichment programme in Tsazakhstan.”

“Toby, you’re quicker on the uptake than you look.”

“You’re the second person who’s said that to me today. Don’t patronise me, Julia. Carry on.”

“OK. Sorry. The FBI, by now, was back on Krigov’s case. Having put paid to his oil scams, they started to put the heat on his drug business, too. That’s when he cut a deal with us.”

“Which was?”

“To sacrifice the nuclear programme. Which we had no idea about. To give it up and let us have it. In the process, he would get his own back on the Tsazakhstanis—sweet revenge. They would no longer be the best friends of the West. They would be down in the pariah’s gutter with North Korea.”

“And in return?”

“We promised to give him back his US visa. And we also had something in the USA that he very much wanted and needed. It was easy for us to promise it. In turn, I would be placed aboard the
Amelia
to work a sting on the eventual customers of the enriched nuclear material. You see, we needed to know who the potential buyers of this stuff were. We didn’t want weapons-grade uranium floating around the world, as easy to get hold of as if it were on eBay. We had to discover the buyers. Get evidence. Catch them. And punish them.”

“So—who are these buyers? Doesn’t Krigov know?”

“No. He was out of the loop by then. The plants were under direct control of Tsazakhstani government henchmen. His role was just to provide the transport. Or so he said.”

“I guess that’s where mystery man Spiegl comes in,” Toby said.

“Yes. The man who calls himself Walther Spiegl was presented to me as the go-between. That’s why he is on the yacht. We were due to meet up with the buyer, or buyers, on board here, or at least their agents, people we could then identify, follow and trace back to the final buyer—a rogue state, a terrorist cell, who knows?

“But what I didn’t know until today is that there are actual, finished nuclear devices—they must have been aboard the
Amelia
all the time—and now one has been detonated just a mile off the shore of a tiny Caribbean island state. Krigov has double-crossed the lot of us. And used me as cover—perfect protection. You see, everyone knew I was aboard. The Brits thought I was DEA and so left the
Amelia
well alone. Apart from the little charade with you and the search party—which, if anything, made Krigov feel more secure.”

“What’s his idea in setting off the bomb?”

“God only knows. A demonstration for Spiegl’s customers is my best bet. I’m guessing the buyers are here on Antilla, as planned all along, and he had secretly promised them proof of working bomb technology. If so, they got it, and in a big way. But actual finished devices! Even a small, crude, nuclear bomb is a major engineering feat. And they’re really heavy, and can’t be transported without fear of detection, even on a ship. I can’t believe it. There’s something I’ve missed.”

“What’s the stuff in the secret hold? Is it actually enriched uranium? How did it get aboard? Could the bomb or bombs have been loaded at the same time?”

“The cargo is uranium enriched to 25%. Not far off what you need to make an A-bomb. There are 360 billets of it. Each one is encased in depleted uranium as a screen. It’s a bit like soap in a mould. Then the DU is itself encased in a thin layer of cadmium. Then there are the wooden outer boxes.”

“God almighty! So the CIA knowingly allowed this material to be loaded aboard the
Amelia?”

“Yes. It came aboard in Aden, in the Red Sea. The ship was refitted there and the compartment converted while the crew were on vacation. I was there. We wanted the Uranium 235 out of Tsazakhstan without alerting the government there. The Tsazakhstanis planned all along to ship it out on the
Amelia.
So we brokered the deal with Ivan. We would do the sting, then take the uranium to a safe storage destination in the USA.”

“So you’ve been sailing across the Atlantic and around the Caribbean with a lethal cargo of weapons-grade uranium, waiting for the buyers to show up here at Christmas?”

“Yes. It sounds irresponsible, but the material is not actually dangerous in the form it’s in. The DU moulds shield the enriched billets. Neither is very radioactive. Depleted uranium is used in industry. The 747 that brought you across the Atlantic probably had DU counterweights in the wing aerofoils. It’s just a very heavy, dense metal. The cadmium skin provides a further level of safety. Even if the
Amelia
had a fire, or collision, or sank, there wouldn’t be any danger or environmental risk. At least, that was the calculation my people made.”

“The plan has backfired big time, hasn’t it?”

“Looks that way, Toby. Unless we can alert someone, the uranium will be transferred to the buyers. But I don’t understand about the bomb demonstration, if that’s what it was. And how in God’s name does Ivan expect to get away with this? I really thought he was on our side.”

“You’re Yulia Belova, aren’t you?” Toby said.

“Smithers told you that? I didn’t know he knew.”

“No, I found your dosimeter. You’re half-Russian, aren’t you?”

“Yes, my natural father was Russian and my mother is American. My stepfather is American. An admiral in the US Navy.”

Let’s just say I am a citizen of the world,
she had said.

“Are you sure that stuff down below isn’t dangerous? I was tooling around in that room for half an hour.”

“That’s why I told you not to. But you were a man on a mission. I repeat, the shielded uranium boxes are not that dangerous, particularly when enclosed in wooden cases. It’s best not to touch the stuff, though. I hope you didn’t have any prolonged contact with the metal.”

“I opened a box and touched one. But I had the dosimeter with me by then. Smithers said he would analyse it.”

“I lost my badge. Now I know where. But no one involved in the loading had even a marginal radiation dose. You’re going to be OK, Toby. At least from that particular peril.”

“I hope so.” Toby combed his fingers through his hair again. He was nervous about radiation. They’d poisoned that chap Alexander Litvinenko in a London sushi bar with radioactive material—just a few grains, apparently.

He had died in agony ten days later.

Minus all his hair.

Chapter 35

There was silence for a moment. Then Julia said, “Have you got the picture now? Ivan Krigov turned against his Tsazakhstani sponsors, including the president of that unholy republic, Gorgy Mendeshev. We—the CIA—did a deal with him to run a ‘sting’ and get information about the potential buyers of the enriched uranium. We loaded the stuff on in Aden, and we were all set to see what Spiegl, Mendeshev’s No. 1 henchman, was going to come up with. The ship is bugged to the gunwhales with all the cameras and mics you know about, and lots more. I was in place as Ivan’s handler, and my cabin is stuffed with comms equipment. Everything was all going along nicely until today. Now I have no idea what is going on, or why they detonated the nuke, or how it got there, or whose side Ivan Krigov is on. Not ours, for sure.”

“It’s a quandary,” Toby agreed.

“The other pressing question is why
you
were enticed back here. It can’t be to silence you—anyway, that would be too late—I’m sure you told Smithers all you knew.”

“Yes. I had a recording spy device. I took some pictures down in the chamber, but I don’t know if they came out. When Haase was toughing me up in the warehouse, he wanted to know what information I had passed on. So I guess Krigov suspected that I had compromised the secret cargo room. It may be that they then brought their plans forward. By the way, what exactly was your part in picking me up? How come you were in on that?”

“You must have been thoroughly confused, not to mention alarmed. What happened was that Krigov called in Haase and the other guys to pick you up. Haase is—was—the deputy steward on the
Amelia.
He was ashore, and we were told he had appendicitis and was in St Helen’s Hospital. That’s why you never saw him before. Clearly, the illness was faked. It was a ruse to get him off the yacht for a period, presumably to set up things on land and handle any unforeseen setbacks. Such as you.”

“So Haase was the steward and barman here before me? I’ll bet he didn’t have my charm or personality.”

“Not hardly. I often thought he was a strange choice for steward. He couldn’t mix a margarita to save his life. And even in a tux, he’s not exactly refined.”

“Or good-looking, like me.”

She gave a lopsided grin. “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts too much, Toby. But no, you raised the tone in the bar. I think that was the reason you got the job. You had exemplary cocktail credentials. And not much else, it seemed, at least on paper. They saw you as nice, but dim. Unlikely to spot anything amiss. Ivan approved your hire personally. I thought it strange at the time.”

Toby paced around the tiny cabin. “Go on. I want to get this straight. What happened after I jumped ship?”

“Scotty reported you missing. Ivan was furious. I don’t know what his plan was for you, but to let you skip off back home was not it. I got him alone, argued with him and said to let you go—you didn’t know anything much and would not compromise the sting. I was fairly sure the Brits had gotten no wind of it. They thought I was just DEA.”

“True enough.”

“Ivan was not convinced. He said you were much brighter than you looked. I thought about it, and realised that you might have picked up enough to alert the British MI6 and spoil everything. He convinced me that we needed to pick you up and watch over you.

“So, I told him you stuck a note under my door saying you would rendezvous with me at the Founder’s Bay Hotel. Krigov said, ‘Good, well, you go and pick him up and bring him back, Julia, let’s be safe.’ I explained that you were obviously hoping to elope with me and no way would you let me bring you back to the
Amelia
.