Alex Berenson - The Silent Man

Grigory had arrived for his shift early, as always. He busied himself with paperwork for a few minutes before walking down the hall to the office of Garry Pliakov, the deputy manager of operations. Pliakov oversaw the handling of all special nuclear material — the phrase that both Russians and Americans used for plutonium-239 and uranium- 235, the two atoms that formed the core of nuclear weapons.

The Russian nuclear bureaucracy still hadn’t gone completely digital; Pliakov’s office was thick with personnel reports, orders from Rosatom’s headquarters, details of convoys arriving and departing, the papers neatly organized in folders on the shelves around his desk.

“Wasn’t a convoy due today? I don’t see the paperwork,” Grigory said.

“Those bastards are late.”

Yusuf had kept his promise. Grigory wasn’t surprised. “What, they stopped for a drink?”

“They say an accident blocked the highway. They’re hoping to arrive by ten o’clock. You know what that means. A cold night for you, unless Oleg”—the night manager at the plant—“decides to stay sober.”

Pliakov smiled. He was a decent man who invited Grigory to his apartment for a drink once a year or so. For a moment, Grigory’s resolve wavered. Could he really betray all these men he’d worked with for years? Then he remembered the way that Yusuf had torn apart the orange.

“No need for Oleg,” Grigory said. “I’ll do it.”

“Of course. Check the cucumber crates and then into the north warehouse.”

The special area had two storage depots. The north one was a low concrete building that held a couple hundred warheads that were still in active service but had been brought to Mayak for repair. The south warehouse was larger and dug deep belowground. It provided permanent storage for decommissioned and obsolete warheads. Though if the new cold war really got hot, they could always be put back into service.

“I know the procedure. I signed one in a couple of years ago.”

“Good. I’ll send over the codes in a few minutes, before I go.” In yet another security precaution, the codes to open the cucumber crates — Russian jargon for the boxes that held the warheads — were not carried on the weapons convoys. Instead, they were sent to Mayak over the secure private network that linked Russia’s nuclear facilities. Even if terrorists attacked the convoy and stole the boxes, they wouldn’t be able to unlock them and would have to cut them open to get to the warheads inside.

“All right. See you tomorrow, Garry.”

“Tomorrow.”

NO NIGHT HAD EVER PASSED so slowly. Over and over, Grigory’s eyes migrated upward, to the clock over his desk. Each time they did, he was shocked at how slowly its hands had moved. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Two minutes. Through his narrow window, he saw that snow had begun to fall.

At nine o’clock he wandered down the hall to check on Oleg. The night manager lay on the couch in his office, a bottle of vodka half hidden under a cushion, his shirt untucked and pants unbuttoned, his potbelly rising and falling with each breath. When Grigory walked in, his eyes fluttered open and he treated Grigory to the patronizing smile he’d given Grigory a thousand times before. The smile that said, maybe vodka has turned my liver to rot, but I’ve got a wife and family waiting for me and you go home every morning to nothing but your own empty hand. Or maybe Grigory was projecting. Maybe Oleg was just thinking of his next drink. Even so, Grigory wouldn’t miss that smile.

Oleg mumbled something.

“Yes?”

“The lights,” Oleg said. “Make yourself useful for a change. Turn them off. And close the door. I don’t want you looking at me. What if you get hungry?”

“Of course, boss.”

Grigory turned off the lights and went back to his office. When he checked again a few minutes later, he heard Oleg’s heavy snores. No, Oleg wouldn’t be a problem.

Ten o’clock. Weren’t they supposed to arrive by now? Where were they? He walked over to the security center, a windowless room where guards monitored the plant’s alarms and cameras.

Tajid nodded as Grigory walked in. He was fiddling with a screen that had gone dark. Monitors broke all the time, but the failure of this particular screen was no accident. It was one of three that watched the north weapons depot. Without it, the men in here would be partly blinded to what was happening in the warehouse.

“Hello, cousin,” Tajid said. He looked perfectly normal. The room looked perfectly normal. Another endless night at Mayak. Grigory still couldn’t quite believe what he was about to do. He pointed to the darkened monitor.

“You broke it watching pornos?”

“We don’t need pornos,” said Arkady Merin, the senior night security officer. “We use our imagination. And sometimes Tatu.”

Against all regulations, a fat black tabby lurked in the security office. Two winters before, a guard had found the cat in the special area during a blizzard. In her search for shelter, she’d somehow gotten through the electrified fences. She wasn’t wearing a tag, and she ought to have been put down. But Arkady had taken a shine to her and made her the mascot for the guards. He named her Tatu, after a pair of Russian lesbian singers popular a few years back.

“Anything happening?”

“Quiet as a virgin in a whorehouse,” Arkady said. The perimeter and inner gates were staffed around the clock, but the operations center emptied out at night. This evening, only three men were on duty — Arkady, Tajid, and Marat, a fifty-something guard with a gritty, phlegmy smoker’s cough that for the last few weeks had gotten worse.

“When’s that dammed convoy due?”

“Eleven, they’re saying.”

“Another delay?”

“One of the BTRs had engine trouble.”

“They’re cursed. And such a night for it.”

“Could be worse. Could be February.” Arkady turned back to his monitors.

“Call me when they arrive,” Grigory said. “Our esteemed boss is dreaming up new and better ways to manage and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“Dreaming up? Such wit, Grigory,” Arkady smiled.

Grigory left. Hanging around wouldn’t look natural. He needed to look natural. But back in his office, he couldn’t work. He gave up trying and sat at his desk, watching the second hand tick. He knew what he was about to do was wrong, beyond wrong, and yet he couldn’t stop himself. He never would have guessed he could break the rules so easily. Perhaps every man carried a beast inside him.

A few years back, a serial killer had worked his way through Chelyabinsk, killing dozens of prostitutes before one escaped from his truck and called the police. The killer — Grigory couldn’t recall his name, but he was an electrician, he’d strangled his victims with thick black cords — grinned his way through his trial, and when the judge asked him if he had anything to say, any apologies to offer, he shook his head. “You’re lucky you caught me, for I would have gone on forever,” he said. “You can’t imagine how it feels.”

At this moment, Grigory thought he could.

THE PHONE RANG. “They’re here. At the main gate.”

“Thanks, Arkady.”

Grigory grabbed his coat and the paperwork he would need, including the single sheet of paper that held the codes to unlock the warhead boxes. Easy, he told himself. No rush. The delivery was a minor break from routine, nothing more. He walked slowly to the security office. “Come on, Tajid. Enough pornos tonight. Let’s greet our visitors.”

The first test. If Arkady raised a stink about the fact that Grigory had asked his cousin to be his partner on the delivery, they’d fail right away. But Grigory didn’t expect Arkady to object. He wouldn’t want to go himself, and sending old Marat into the cold would be callous. Sure enough, Arkady was feeding Tatu and hardly looked up.