Frederick Forsyth - The Fourth Protocol

“And what are its uses, Doctor?”

“Well, it is occasionally—only very occasionally, mind—used in curative medicine.

Was your man in Glasgow on his way to a medical conference or exhibition?”

“No,” said Preston firmly, “he was in no way heading for a medical conference.”

“Well, that would have accounted for a ten-percent possibility of what it was intended for—before you relieved him of his burden. Since he wasn’t going to a medical conference, I’m afraid that leaves the ninety-percent likelihood. Apart from these two functions, polonium has no known use on this planet.”

“And the other use?”

“Well, a disk of polonium this size will do nothing on its own. But if it is placed in close juxtaposition with a disk of another metal called lithium, the two combine to form an initiator.”

“A what?”

“An initiator.”

“And what the hell, pray, is that?”

“On July first, 1968,” said Professor Krilov, “the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed by the three (then) nuclear powers of the world, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union.

“By that treaty the three signatory nations pledged themselves not to impart the technology or the matériel capable of enabling the construction of a nuclear weapon to any nation not then in possession of such technology or matériel. Do you recall that?”

“Yes,” said Karpov, “I remember that much.”

“Well, the signing ceremonies in Washington, London, and Moscow were attended by huge and worldwide publicity. A complete absence of publicity surrounded the later signing of four secret protocols to that treaty.

“Each of the protocols foresaw the development of a possible future hazard, which was not then technically possible but which, it was then estimated, might one day become technically possible.

“Over the years, the first three protocols passed into history, either because the hazard was established to be quite impossible or because an antidote was discovered as fast as the threat became reality. But by the early 1980s the Fourth Protocol, the most secret of them all, had become a living nightmare.”

“What, exactly, did the Fourth Protocol envisage?” asked Karpov.

Krilov sighed. “We relied on Dr. Rogov for this information. As you know, he is a nuclear physicist; that is his branch of science. The Fourth Protocol foresaw techno-logical advances in the manufacture of nuclear bombs, mainly in the areas of miniaturization and simplification. This, apparently, is what has happened. In one area, the weapons have become infinitely more powerful, but more complex to construct and larger in size. Another branch of the science has gone the other way. The basic atomic bomb, which required a huge bomber for its delivery to Japan in 1945, can now be made small enough to go in a suitcase and simple enough to be assembled from a dozen prefabricated, milled and threaded components, like a child’s construction kit.”

“And that is what the Fourth Protocol banned?”

Krilov shook his head. “It went further. It forbade any of the signatory nations to introduce onto the territory of any nation a device in assembled or unassembled form by covert means, for detonation in, say, a rented house or flat in the heart of a city.”

“No four-minute warning,” mused Karpov, “no radar detection of an incoming missile, no counter strike, no identification of the perpetrator. Just a megaton explosion from a basement bedsitter.”

The professor nodded. “That’s right. That’s why I called it a living nightmare. The open societies of the West are more vulnerable, but we are none of us immune from smuggled artifacts. If the Fourth Protocol is ever breached, all those ranks of rockets and electronic countermeasures, indeed most of the military-industrial complex, become irrelevant.”

“And that was what Plan Aurora had in mind.”

Krilov nodded again. He seemed to clam up.

“But since,” pursued Karpov, “it was all stopped and prohibited, the whole plan has become what, in the service, we call ‘archival.’ ”

Krilov seemed to grasp at the word. “That’s right. It’s just archival now.”

“But tell me what it would have meant,” Karpov pressed.

“Well, the plan was to infiltrate into Britain a top-class Soviet agent who would act as the executive officer of Aurora. To him, using a variety of couriers, would have been smuggled the ten or so component parts of a small atomic bomb of about one-and-a-half-kilotons power.”

“So small? The Hiroshima bomb was ten kilotons.”

“It was not intended to cause huge damage. That would have canceled the general election. It was intended to create a supposed nuclear accident and panic the ten-percent

‘floating vote’ into supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament and voting at the polls for the only party pledged to unilateralism, the Labour Party.”

“I’m sorry,” said Karpov. “Please go on.”

“The device would have been detonated six days before polling day,” said the professor. “The place was vitally important. The one selected was the United States Air Force base at Bentwaters in Suffolk. Apparently, F-5 strike planes are based there and they carry small tactical nuclear devices for use against our massed tank divisions in the event of our invading Western Europe.”

Karpov nodded. He knew Bentwaters, and the information was correct.

“The executive officer,” Professor Krilov went on, “would have been ordered to take the assembled device by car to the very perimeter wire of the base in the small hours of the morning. The whole base, it seems, is in the heart of Rendlesham Forest. He would have set off the explosion just before dawn.

“Because of the smallness of the device, damage would have been limited to the airbase itself, which would have been vaporized, along with Rendlesham Forest, three hamlets, a village, the foreshore, and a bird sanctuary. Since the base is right next to the Suffolk coast, the cloud of radioactive dust thrown up would have drifted on the prevailing west wind out over the North Sea. By the time it had reached the coast of Holland, ninety-five percent of it would have become inert or fallen into the sea. The intent was not to cause an ecological catastrophe but to provoke fear and a violent wave of hatred of America.”

“They might not have believed it,” said Karpov. “A lot of things could have gone wrong. The executive officer could have been caught alive.”

Professor Krilov shook his head. “Rogov had thought of all that. He had worked it out like a chess game. The officer in question would have been told that after pressing the button he had two hours on the timer to drive as far as he could. In fact the timer would have been a sealed unit, set for instant detonation.”

Poor Petrofsky, thought Karpov. “And the credibility angle?” he asked.

“On the evening of the same day as the explosion,” said Krilov, “a man, who is apparently a covert Soviet agent, would have flown to Prague and held an international press conference. That man is Dr. Nahum Wisser, an Israeli nuclear physicist. It seems he works for us.”

General Karpov preserved his deadpan expression. “You amaze me,” he said. He was acquainted with Dr. Wisser’s file. The scientist had had a son on whom he doted. The youth had been a soldier in the Israeli Army, stationed in Beirut in 1982. When the Phalangists had devastated the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, the young Lieutenant Wisser had tried to intervene. He had been cut down by a bullet. Carefully constructed evidence had been presented to the grieving father, already a committed opponent of the Likud Party, that it had been an Israeli bullet that had killed his son. In his bitterness and rage, Dr. Wisser had swung a little further left and agreed to work for Russia.