Алистер Маклин - Death Train

‘Nothing initially, then about six months later I was contacted at the Planck University where I was working and told to apply for the vacant post of senior technician at the reprocessing plant. With my experience I was accepted after the first interview. I found out later that my predecessor had been killed under mysterious circumstances while skiing at St Anton in Austria. Make of it what you want but I am pretty sure he was murdered so they could put their own man on the inside.’

‘Did you ever see any of your blackmailers?’

‘I liaised with two of them. The senior of the two was a Machiavellian type. Totally evil. A powerfully-built man with dark black hair and hooded eyes.’

‘And his name?’

‘Hendrick, Hendricks, something like that. He was not the sort of person you asked to repeat himself.’

‘And the other man?’

‘Canadian, called himself Vanner. Blond hair, blond moustache, always wore a trilby. He used to chauffeur Hendricks around in a black Mercedes.’

Another piece of the jigsaw had fallen into place. ‘So when did the diversion start?’

Leitzig removed a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. ‘About six or seven months after I started at the plant. In the interim period I had to recruit four new technicians and although I interviewed dozens of applicants I could only take on those put up by Hendricks. They were all fully qualified so it did not arouse any unnecessary suspicion. With the five of us working together the diversion went like clockwork.’

‘I’ve been through reams of computer print-outs but I can’t find any discrepancies. You must have siphoned the plutonium off sometime during the actual reprocessing, but how did you manage it with so many other technicians around? Or were there others in on it?’

‘Apart from a few guards and drivers nobody else was involved, certainly not any of my personnel. I had my team. We did not siphon the plutonium off during reprocessing, we siphoned it off afterwards.’

‘Afterwards? But those figures are checked by several sources before being stored in the computer.’

‘Agreed, tampering with bulk figures is virtually impossible. There is an insignificant column in the stat sheets headed “Residual Figures”, you probably did not even notice it.’

‘I remember it, the figures were all pretty negligible. Karen said it was something to do with the fissile material left in the residue. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me.’

Leitzig stubbed out his cigarette. ‘As I told you when I showed you around the plant, the uranium and plutonium undergo several extraction stages to remove any lingering impurities before they separate to form uranyl nitrate and plutonium nitrate respectively. Naturally there is both uranium and plutonium left in the residue, albeit in very small amounts. That residue then goes under its own extraction stage to release the trapped uranium and plutonium. The amounts vary with each magazine, even if it is only a matter of grams. It all counts in the end.’

He lit a second cigarette. ‘I covered my tracks right at the start by going to the plant manager and expressing my dissatisfaction at the residual extraction process. He played into my hands by asking me to supervise it personally. So I had a free hand. Over a three-day shift we could siphon off eight, maybe nine grams without it affecting the stat figures. We worked over a two-year period. Six kilograms of high-enriched, “weapons-grade” plutonium.’

‘Where is it destined for?’

‘I overheard Hendricks once say it was to be shipped to a secret laboratory in Libya.’

‘Did he mention the name of the ship?’

‘That is all I heard.’

‘Did he say what it was going to be used for?’

‘Use your imagination. It could be used for nuclear warheads but it is my guess it will be converted into an atom bomb. Six kilograms is the perfect size.’

‘Libya with an atom bomb? Sweet Jesus.’ Whitlock felt his head beginning to throb harder. ‘I want the name of all your fellow conspirators. Technicians, guards, drivers, the lot.’

The doorbell chimed.

‘Can I answer it, or am I still a prisoner?’

‘You always will be,’ Whitlock replied, picking up one of the photographs on the mantelpiece.

Leitzig left the room.

Whitlock heard the door open, then the sound of a muffled cough. Most people would have put it down to some background noise but he knew exactly what it was. A gun fitted with a silencer. He dived low through the doorway and rolled across the threadbare hall carpet, the Browning fanning the area in front of him. There was no sign of the gunman. He scrambled to his feet and dashed out on to the porch just in time to see the rider in the white leathers taking off up the road on the black Suzuki,

Leitzig was slumped against the wall, blood pumping from a bullet wound in his stomach.

Whitlock slammed the front door and raced into the lounge where he rifled through the sideboard drawers for some linen napkins to stem the flow of blood. Then he collected his shoes from the kitchen and slipped the incriminating photographs under his jacket. Leitzig was semi-conscious and there was nothing more he could do. After calling an ambulance anonymously on the hall telephone he left the house.

His first stop was Karen’s place. He parked in the driveway and hurried up to the porch where he rang the doorbell. No answer. He reached through the broken pane of glass and unlocked the door.

‘Karen?’ he called out as he entered the hallway.

No reply.

He checked the kitchen and lounge before making his way up the stairs to her bedroom. The door was ajar, as he had left it earlier in the morning when he had looked in on her. He poked his head around the door. She was still asleep, her sable hair spilt out across the cream pillowcase.

He left, locking the front door again after him. As he drove to the hotel he thought back over the eventful morning, looking forward to being able to contact Philpott with a constructive report for a change. His immediate priority was a steaming hot bath and some treatment for his gashed eyebrow. Then he would have to brave the weather again to dump the Golf in one of the city’s underground car parks, and get himself another car from a different hire company. A battered, paint-scarred yellow Golf would be difficult to miss, especially when it was parked near the scene of the shooting. If the police traced it to him he might not be as lucky as Sabrina had been in Zurich.

All eyes seemed to focus on him as he entered the foyer of the Europa Hotel. He smiled ruefully and walked self-consciously across to the reception desk to ask for his room key.

When the receptionist handed it to him he glanced round quickly and leaned closer to her.

She also glanced round and leaned closer to him, turning her head slightly to catch what he was about to say.

‘You won’t believe this, but it’s raining.’

There was a bemused smile on her face as she watched him disappear into the lift.

The first thing Sabrina saw when she opened her eyes was a blurred face looking down at her. She rubbed her eyes and the face became more distinct.

‘Mike?’ she said groggily. ‘Mike, are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he replied gruffly, then put a glass to her lips. ‘Drink this.’

She took a sip of the brandy then coughed and spluttered as it burnt its way down her throat.

She pushed the glass away from her face. ‘You know I hate the stuff.’

‘People respond quickest to something they hate,’ Philpott said from the corner of the room.

She was lying on a single bed in what was obviously a hotel room. ‘Where are we?’

‘The Da Francesca Hotel in Prato,’ Philpott replied and got to his feet. ‘The American Embassy in Rome received an anonymous call to say you and Mike had been left unconscious in a small storage shed at Prato station. The caller also told the Embassy to call us. How did they know who you were working for? Mike didn’t say anything–’