Tom Lowe - The Black Bullet

Miller was silent. His lower jaw tightening, arms locked across his shirt. He said, “Russia had paid me, they simply never took delivery-those under Stalin, the regime I was working for, they were all killed. The war ended. Japan was in ruins. So was Russia and much of Europe. The commercial market for HEU today is far greater than it was in those days. Russia was my original buyer, and they got knocked out of the game. As time went by, I didn’t want to risk digging up the stuff, storing the canisters for God knows how long, and trying to fence the merchandise for sometime in the future. So I left them there. Besides, I’d made my money. Today, of course, Iran, Iraq and a dozen other countries would love to have it. But I grew too old to care one way of the other.”

O’Brien said, “Sit!”

“You don’t order me around.”

“Sit! Or they’ll smell your body before they find it.”

Miller sat back on his leather couch. “How much do you want?”

“Is that what you asked Mike Gates when he found out?”

Miller said nothing.

“He trained under you the last two years you were a field agent. While you recruited Ivan Borshnik, his son, Boris Borshnik, later recruited Gates … told him everything his father had told his mother before his death. And guess what, Miller? The damage you did in 1945 had its ugly scab knocked off. Borshnik’s son is here. He’s got the HEU, and believes he has ownership because the motherland paid for it. Paid you for it! You give the Russians the fucking recipe for nuclear disaster, and now they have the ingredients to make the bomb. You had the German sub bombed, men who probably were going to turn themselves in anyway, like their sister U-boat did ten days earlier. Germany had surrendered, but the Soviet Union was trying to arm itself with atomic bombs. Lucky for the U.S. the Russians couldn’t get their hands on it then. ”

Miller stared at the Atlantic Ocean beyond his sixth floor balcony, the fight gone from his face, eyes softer, shoulders rounded. Defeat opening sealed pores. He turned and looked at O’Brien like he would view a body in an open casket, eyes dispassionate. “I’m an old man. They found two spots on my lungs last month. I have one kidney left. There’s nothing you can do to me. You want money?”

“I want the truth!”

“You’re the type with illusions! I had to leave that kind of baggage at the door in a covert world. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have lived long.”

“Miller, the only difference between you and Stalin is you spoke English. At one time, you may have convinced yourself that being a double agent was about the distribution of power. Although delusional, as a young college kid, you could convince yourself it’s idealistic. So, then, you get a taste of the nicer things in life, and you justify selling out your country for the money. But, in reality, it’s always been about control-you’re nothing more than a power hungry asshole.”

“You mind if I pour myself a scotch?”

“Don’t move.”

“It’s right there on the bar, in the decanter. I don’t have a gun hidden in there.”

“I’ll get it.”

“While you’re at it, have one for yourself.”

O’Brien poured about an inch of scotch in a heavy lead crystal glass and handed it to Miller. He sipped, savoring the taste for a moment, exhaled like his lungs hurt, and said, “I used Borshnik like he tried to use me. Sure, I sold him secrets from the Manhattan Project. They would have acquired them anyway. The whole damn Manhattan Project was fueled, in part, by German HEU that Robert Oppenheimer took off the U-boats. America was crawling with Russian spies. Most of them had their aliases compromised when Meredith Gardner figured out their encryption during the Venona Project. He was one smart bastard.”

“Spell Venona.”

“What?”

“Just do it?”

“V-e-n-o-n-a.”

O’Brien stared hard at Miller. “How’d you know about the U-boat?”

“Navy knew another one was out there. They’d radioed us. We told them they could surrender at Mayport near Jacksonville, but when I heard they had two Japs aboard, two who would have committed suicide had the Germans formally surrendered, I instructed them to drop off the Japanese on a remote strip of beach. They had information I needed.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were eventually executed.”

“How convenient. What about the U-235?”

“We figured they were carrying some, just like the sub that we took in Portsmouth. German Admiral Otto Heinz spoke English. I told him to off-load his cargo with the Japanese south of Fort Matanzas. Bury the stuff, and we’d take it from there.”

“Why was a German shot and buried in the hole?”

“One of Heinz’s men protested. Said he couldn’t surrender. He was silenced.”

“Why was their sub hit with depth charges?”

“Because of Billy Lawson. He saw too much. We didn’t know who he had spoken to before he was killed, but he became, as they say today, collateral damage.”

O’Brien held back his anger as he watched the old, arrogant man sip the expensive liquor, eyelids half closed.

O’Brien said, “What I do know without a doubt is, it wasn’t about the war, the one in ‘45 or the approaching Cold War. Power was your drug of choice so that you and others like you could run amuck in the world. Did J. Edgar Hoover know, or was he in on it?”

“Hoover told President Truman what he wanted Truman to hear.”

“So you drift along three decades, about ready to retire until a young agent named Mike Gates trains under you. The poetic justice comes when Borshnik’s son manages to get in the game with Gates and tips him his cards. All Gates has to do, at that point, is blackmail you. Figures a guy like you-never married, no children, probably has stashed away enough of the motherland money to live well without raising suspicion. FBI fakes your death and obit. Knowing you’re off everyone’s radar, Gates taps you for hush money. He continues his pen pal relationship with Borshnik junior, and along comes the buried treasure, the HEU when my crew stumbles across it.”

Miller swirled the scotch in the bottom of the glass. “You never told me your name. I thought you were delivering groceries, but you just delivered a death sentence.”

“Six decades too late.”

“Your name?”

“O’Brien, Sean O’Brien.”

“Mr. O’Brien, I suppose you just caught the oldest spy in our nation’s history. And I was beginning to think I’d take it to my grave. All this time, no one really knew.”

“Gates knew.”

“But he didn’t learn it on his own. As you just said, he was tipped off. You managed to discover him, too. Gates would have gotten caught, sooner or later.” Miller sipped his drink. “When you’re not delivering groceries, what do you do?”

“I fish, but I’m not very good at it.”

“Let’s see how good you are at proving all this. I won’t live long enough to be brought to trial, not that you have anything tangible. I know you’re not wearing a wire. The T-shirt, shorts. No place for it. So what you heard was the hallucinogenic ramblings of an old man taking morphine washed down with very fine scotch. Maybe you’ll have better luck with Gates. Too bad I won’t be here to see that. He’s an incompetent idiot.”

O’Brien unclipped the cell phone from the back of his belt, adjusted the speaker phone button and asked, “Dave, did you get that?”

“Loud and clear. All recorded in digital sound.”

Robert Miller stared at the cell phone. The light flickered and faded from his eyes. They became hard, the cataracts like two diffused crescent moons floating just beneath the veiled surface of a turquoise sea.