Rules of Vengeance (31 page)

Reaching the far side of the perimeter, she was afforded her best view of the complex yet. In the moonlight, the domes atop the containment buildings glimmered like ancient temples. La Reine was a post-9/11 plant, meaning it had been built to the most stringent security specifications. The domes were actually two hulls of one-meter-thick steel-reinforced concrete—one inside the other, designed to withstand the direct impact of a fully fueled passenger jet traveling at over 700 miles per hour. Inside these domes was the reactor vessel, molded from a single slab of the strongest reinforced stainless steel in the world. Only one company in the world was able to manufacture steel of this strength: the Japan Steel Company of Hokkaido, formerly makers of the world’s finest samurai swords. For all intents and purposes, the plant was indestructible.

At least from the outside.

Nuclear power plants operated on a simple proposition. Steam turned turbines and turbines powered generators. All you needed was lots of steam. That’s where the nuclear part came in. The fuel needed to make the steam was uranium 235, and this isotope of uranium was fissile, meaning it emitted blazingly hot, lightning-fast atoms if given the correct environment to create a nuclear chain reaction. Put uranium in water, and pretty soon the water would start boiling like crazy and producing all kinds of steam. The steam then drove the turbine generator, which generated electricity.

It was as easy, or as monstrously complex, as that.

Uranium 235 was therefore the counterpart of coal, gas, or oil-fired boilers used to power the traditional smoke-belching fossil-fueled plants. And these days uranium was in large supply, and therefore cheap. Far cheaper than oil. That’s why so many nuclear power plants were suddenly being built all over the world.

Not everyone thought that was a good idea.

In fact, there were some who would kill to prevent it.

From her pocket Emma pulled a handheld instrument—metal, heavy, colored yellow, with a viewfinder on one side and a lens on the other. The instrument was a portable theodolite, and it measured a chosen object’s relative height above sea level. Putting the viewfinder to her eye, she focused on two separate points, one at the far side of the reactor building and the other at a point on the spent-fuel building approximately 15 meters away from it.

The fuel used to power the reactor took the form of long, slim rods of uranium (actually, hundreds of uranium pellets stacked on top of each other). The rods measured 16 feet in length and an inch in diameter, the width of a tube of Chanel lipstick or a Panatela cigar. They were grouped in square bunches, seventeen by seventeen, into a single fuel assembly unit. The rods stayed “hot” or “fissile” for four years. After that they were removed from the reactor vessel and transported a short distance aboard a miniature rail car through a tunnel into the spent-fuel building, where they were lowered into a pool of cold water and kept there until most of the radiation and heat had been bled out of them.

Emma checked the height readings from the two points and performed a calculation inside her head. The result pleased her. The plan was going to work.

Her task completed, she retraced her steps through the field and climbed the steep hillock. Her car was where she had left it, parked in a copse of ground oaks, covered by a profusion of branches. She cleared the foliage, threw her bag into a false compartment in the trunk, then climbed into the car. In a moment she was speeding down the highway toward Paris. The entire reconnaissance had taken her forty-five minutes.

Getting in was the easy part
.

   The director general of MI5 was Sir Anthony Allam. Allam was a career officer, a graduate of Leeds University who’d joined the Security Service directly after completing his studies. He’d done stints in all the major branches during his time: Northern Ireland, capital crimes, extremist groups, and most recently counterterrorism. He was a slight, unprepossessing man, with neatly trimmed gray hair, unfailing manners, and an ill-fitting suit. One of the meek who had little chance of inheriting the earth, no matter what the good book might say.

But looks were deceiving. One didn’t rise to be head of Five without superior intelligence and more than a little of what his Welsh mother had called moxie. Behind the furtive blue eyes and the deferential smile hid a volcanic temper. Word round Thames House was that when Sir Tony, as he was known, was angry, you could hear him all the way to Timbuktu.

“You mean to suggest that Igor Ivanov was not the target?” said Sir Tony as he peered at Charles Graves.

“The bomb was a diversion. It was meant to precipitate the evacuation of the ministry building in order to steal some laptop computers that the visiting IAEA team had brought with them.”

“You’re certain?”

Graves looked at Kate. They nodded. “We are,” she said.

“Interesting. Very interesting indeed.” Allam leaned back in his seat. “But if you want me to go to the PM with this, you’re going to need hard evidence. He’s got himself convinced that it was the Chechens or some group pushing for democratic reforms in Russia. Rather likes the idea, too. Feels it takes him off the hook somehow.”

“We’ve got evidence,” said Kate. “May I?” She picked up the remote control and punched the play button activating the DVD player.

Graves narrated. “This feed is from the ministry building at One Victoria Street. Third floor, corridor seven, east. The camera covers the hall directly outside the conference room where the team from the IAEA and our lads from the Safeguards Authority were holed up.”

“Is it in focus?” asked Allam as he slipped on a pair of glasses. “Half the time the lenses are fogged.”

“Crystal-clear,” said Graves. “We’ve got the woman going into the room at eleven-eighteen and coming out at eleven-twenty.”

“Two minutes. She moved fast,” said Allam.

“Yessir,” said Kate. “She knew what she was looking for.”

Onscreen a corridor appeared. It was a typical government office building: linoleum floor, message boards on the wall. The color picture was grainy but in focus, as promised. A time code ran in the upper right-hand corner. At 11:15 the camera shook violently.

“There goes the bomb,” said Graves.

Seconds later the first of the building’s occupants began to file out of their offices. The trickle grew to a flood, and by 11:18 the corridor had emptied.

“Here she comes now. Keep your eye on the bottom of the screen. Can’t miss her.”

At 11:18:45, a figure entered the screen from the bottom left, moving against the current of workers, and walked directly to conference room 3F. The figure was moving rapidly, her face ducking the camera. Still, her attire was easily identifiable. Jeans. Black T-shirt. And, of course, there was the hair.

At 11:20:15, the door to the conference room opened and the woman stepped back into the hallway. She walked toward the camera, her head kept deliberately down, her face hidden in the shadow cast by her long auburn hair. Over her shoulder she carried an overnight bag.

“She’s got the laptops in the bag,” said Kate. “It’s one of those collapsible ones that fold down to nothing when they’re empty but are extremely sturdy.”

Allam kept his fingers steepled to his chin, saying nothing.

“Now look at this.” Graves replaced the disk showing footage from the closed-circuit television at 1 Victoria Street with another containing footage from the camera at the corner of Storey’s Gate. The pictures showed a woman dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans standing at the crosswalk holding a cell phone to her ear. The lead SUV in Ivanov’s motorcade crossed the screen, then the second. The woman stepped away from the curb and turned her back. At that moment the screen blanched. For two or three seconds, all remained white as the camera struggled to correct its exposure. When the picture returned, the woman was gone.

“It’s the same woman,” said Graves. “She’s the one who stole the laptops. I’d wager on it.”

“You know her?” said Allam.

“Her name is Emma Ransom.”

“Ransom? Wife of the doctor whom you allowed to get away?”

Graves held Allam’s eye. He’d been on the receiving end of Allam’s temper twenty-four hours earlier and he’d be damned if he showed that it had fazed him. “According to her husband, she used to be in the employ of a secret United States government agency called Division. Something attached to the Pentagon. I spoke with my oppo at Langley. They deny it. Never heard of Division or Emma Ransom.”

“They would, wouldn’t they?”

“There is something else. When we first pulled in Ransom, he mentioned that his wife had thwarted some kind of attack in Switzerland back in February. I called Marcus von Daniken in Bern. Strictly off the record, he confirmed that there was some sort of dust-up involving a plot to bring down an El Al jetliner and that Ransom and his wife were up to their necks in it. No civilians involved, so they were able to keep it quiet. More than that, he wouldn’t say.”

Allam considered this. “Well, she doesn’t look like a Chechen black-arse, that’s for sure.”

Graves frowned. “Which brings us back to the first question. Why was Ivanov visiting London in the first place? Everyone’s been damned closemouthed on the issue.”

“With good reason. He came over to meet with some wallahs in our petroleum business. Wanted to get them jazzed up about restarting some old joint ventures to tap all that oil that’s still lying under the ice in Siberia, modernize their existing infrastructure, that kind of thing. It’s a sensitive topic, seeing as how the Russians chased all our firms out several years ago and pocketed their profits. The boys at the Foreign Ministry are viewing Ivanov’s approach as a major policy shift on the Russians’ part. Either their oil industry’s falling apart and they’re desperate for revenue or they’ve decided to rejoin the international community.”

Allam sighed. “The question remains, however, just who Mrs. Ransom is working for.”

“So far we have no clue,” said Graves.

“Tell me more about what was on those laptops,” said Allam.

Graves related Mischa Dibner’s statement that whoever possessed the laptops could theoretically access override codes that would allow them to take control of a nuclear reactor somewhere in Europe. “There seems to be a time constraint as well,” he added. “We’re looking at the possibility of an incident within the next forty-eight hours.”

“I see,” said Allam simply. “There does seem to be one connecting thread between all this.”

“What’s that?” asked Kate Ford.

“Energy,” replied Allam. “Ivanov’s in town to talk about oil. You tell me that the bomb was a ploy to steal nuclear codes that may hasten an attack on a reactor in the next forty-eight hours. I don’t think any of it is coincidence.” The director general of MI5 removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Right now, we know of only one person who can tell us what it all means. Emma Ransom. What else do we know about her?”

“Next to nothing,” admitted Graves. “Not who she works for, where she came from, or where she disappeared to. Only that she killed Lord Robert Russell and that she was here in London prior to that doing whatever she damn well pleased.”

“You reckon they’re in it together, Dr. and Mrs. Ransom?” asked Allam.

“I do,” said Graves. “DCI Ford is of another opinion.”

“Why’s that?” asked Allam.

Kate went over Ransom’s actions at the bomb scene. “He could easily have gotten away, but he stayed to assist one of the victims.”

“Saved this fellow’s life, did he?”

“No. The man died.”

Allam raised his eyebrows. “How do you know Ransom didn’t kill him? Maybe he strangled the man. After all, he shot someone else last night.” Allam consulted the papers on his desk. “Another doctor. James Meadows. Harley Street surgeon. This Ransom sounds like a cold-blooded killer, if ever was.”

“I don’t have all the answers, sir,” Kate continued. “But I’m convinced he’s not a player in the bombing or the theft of the laptops. I can’t explain why, except to say that it doesn’t make sense.”

“Doesn’t make sense for an innocent man to run away from the police either, does it, DCI Ford?” Allam asked pointedly. Small stars of red had appeared in his cheeks, and he was sitting on the edge of his chair.

“It’s my opinion that Ransom’s trying to find his wife,” she said firmly.

“Find her? I’d run in the other direction as fast as my legs would carry me.” Allam coughed and sat back in his chair, momentarily appeased. “Any reason you think she might have gone to Rome?”

“Rome?” Graves narrowed his eyes. “Our last piece of intel puts Ransom in Belgium. He rented a car near Brussels airport.”

Allam tapped his pen on a pink notepad in front of him. “I just received a call from the chief of the carabinieri. Your Dr. Ransom’s causing all manner of problems over there. Assault, kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping?” said Kate.

“Yes,” said Allam. “And the Italians don’t like it one bit.”

Graves leaned on the director’s desk. “Do they have Ransom in custody?”

Allam shook his head. “No, but they have the man he kidnapped. Another doctor. Apparently Ransom put him through the wringer, asking about that wife of his. It seems that she was in Rome, too, a few months ago, and didn’t half enjoy herself.”

“Oh?”

“I’m told she was attacked—mugged or something—and treated at a local hospital. Ransom wanted to know where exactly.”

“When did this attack on Emma Ransom take place?” asked Kate.

Allam consulted a paper on his desk. “April.”

Kate shot a glance at Graves and said, “The Semtex used in the car bombing was stolen from an Italian army barracks outside of Rome around the same time.”

“She must have nicked the BMW from Perugia then, too,” Graves added.

“Busy girl.” Allam turned his gaze on Kate. “Ever been there?” he asked. “To Rome, I mean.”

“On holiday. Years ago.”

“Pack your bags. The both of you. I’ll smooth the way diplomatically. Just remember the Italians have complete authority over the operation. It is their country, last I looked. Charles, sign a chit for one of the Hawkers. Put it on my budget.” Allam returned his attention to the dossier on his desk, a sign of dismissal. Graves and Kate walked to the door. Suddenly Allam called out. “And Charles, I do rather hope your efficiency improves. I’m going to have to go to Downing Street with this news. The PM’s going to be rather upset. No one likes more egg on his face. Especially a politician.”