Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

Katia remembered the sound. It reminded her of coconuts on concrete as their heads hit the hard tile floor. The next thing Katia knew, the three women were on their backs, sliding across the soap-covered tile as if in slow motion. They lay there for several seconds with their mouths open, dazed.

Only one of them tried to get up. It was the big Mexican, and it was a mistake. She held on to the wall to steady herself, got to her feet, and with a look of fury in her eyes, she got a bead on Daniela, lowered her shoulder, and charged.

The sleek Colombiana stepped to one side, like a toreador in a bullring. She grabbed the Mexican by the hair as she passed and redirected her head, faceup, right into the tile wall.

Katia remembered the dull thud, the vibration against the wall, and the red river of the Mexican’s blood that was flushed by the running water down the drain.

The woman lay there on the floor for more than a minute before her wide-eyed friends even stirred to help her, and when they did, they gave Daniela a wide berth in order to get there.

Katia thought the Mexican might be dead. But it didn’t even seem to faze Daniela. To her it was simply the natural order of things, the law of the jungle in jail.

Katia and Daniela had spent most of the time since the shower altercation hanging together and talking.

Daniela told Katia that she had been arrested three days earlier in San Diego on charges related to drugs. But, of course, like everyone else in the jail, she was not guilty.

Paul had told Katia not to talk about her case with anyone, and so she did not. Even when Daniela asked Katia what she was in for, Katia told her flatly that her lawyers had told her it was best not to discuss the matter. It was difficult. Katia knew that she owed her safety and her newfound sense of independence to her friend.

After lockdown in the evenings they played cards, as they did tonight on top of the small table in the cell. Daniela had taught her several new games. Tonight they were into the third hand of gin rummy and Katia was having difficulty trying to decide whether to discard a three or a five when the cart rolled up in the hallway, outside their door. Katia turned her head to look. It was clean towels for the next day.

“I’ll get it, you play,” said Daniela. She got up, walked over, and watched through the thick glass in the door as the laundry inmate outside stacked two towels. The inmate was about to put the towels on the pass-through, the metal device like a large mail slot next to the door. Then one of the male guards came down the hall. Starched uniform, sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, hair in a crew cut, he stopped at the cart and talked to the inmate. Daniela couldn’t hear what they said, but her heart nearly stopped when the guard looked at the towels, then reached into them for a quick frisk while he looked into the laundrywoman’s eyes. Guards often found drugs and other contraband this way.

He went on and the laundrywoman gave him a contemptuous sneer. Then she placed the two stacked towels into the pass-through. Daniela took them on the other side.

“Okay, I laid down the five,” said Katia.

“Just a sec.” Daniela put one towel on Katia’s bottom bunk. The other she put on her own mattress. As she did so, she slipped her hand into the inner fold of the towel to feel for the tiny raised points of the checkered plastic handle. It was not much bigger than the box the playing cards came in, but the Walther PPK.308 carried a deadly punch. It was all she would need.

Yakov Nitikin could stall no longer. Alim was growing restless. Increasingly he conferred with the technician his own government had sent. The man was not familiar with the Russian device, but he knew enough about weapons design to realize that the time for assembly had arrived.

The barrel was clean. There was no corrosion, and the few tiny traces of oxidation that appeared on the metal parts had been meticulously cleaned and removed by careful handwork using strips of emery cloth. This was followed by a bath in light machine oil to remove any residue of abrasives left by the cloth.

Nitikin supervised all of it. First he instructed Alim’s men and then he watched them as they worked. He paid particular attention to the inside bore of the gun’s smooth barrel. Yakov was looking for any signs of pitting in the metal surface, anything that might cause drag or slow the speed of the projectile as it was fired down the barrel. The muzzle velocity required was a thousand feet per second, roughly the speed of an American.45-caliber bullet.

Even though the projectile was not designed or intended to clear the muzzle, and the barrel was less than three feet long, any significant reduction in velocity would result in a premature detonation. As the two subcritical elements of uranium came in close proximity, but before they could properly be assembled under pressure to initiate a chain reaction, a small nuclear explosion would tear the device apart, what physicists had long called a fizzle. Radiation would spill out, but it would be largely confined and easily cleaned up. The device and the entire mission would be a failure.

Alim’s technician knew this. What he didn’t know was the proper order of assembly to make the weapon field ready. He had tried on several occasions to coax this information from Nitikin. But Yakov had given him sufficiently vague and confusing responses, further muddled by the need for translation between Russian, Spanish, and Farsi, that the man finally threw up his hands and said something to Alim. They gave up. Nitikin had, for the moment at least, remained indispensable. He decided that the time had come to play his hand.

Through the interpreter he told Alim that he had two demands. They were not requests. If Alim wanted his bomb, he would have to comply with both.

As the words were translated into Farsi, Yakov watched as Alim’s eyes transformed to two tiny slits and the cords in his neck protruded like steel cable.

First, for the final assembly of the device he, Yakov, would use none of Alim’s men, or his technician. In fact, they were barred from the hut where the work would take place.

Alim didn’t like it. He was furious, arguing with the translator. At one point he reached for a pistol, seemingly ready to kill the messenger.

Before Alim could calm down, Yakov delivered the second demand. Maricela, Nitikin’s daughter, was to be delivered home to her house in Costa Rica by men of the FARC whom Nitikin trusted, with assurances guaranteed by the FARC that neither she nor her family would be harmed in any way.

Alim’s face flushed with anger.

But for Nitikin, both points were nonnegotiable. The reason for not using Alim’s men was the language barrier. At least that’s what he told Alim. It was a dangerous process. One mistake, if the two portions of subcritical uranium came in contact or even close proximity, they could get a full-yield nuclear explosion, or at a minimum irradiate a good piece of the jungle. Yakov didn’t want any confusion in the room and no bystanders to get in the way.

He would do the assembly alone, with the assistance of a single FARC rebel.

Without Alim’s knowledge, Nitikin had already selected the man. He was in his early twenties and seemed to have the best hands in the camp, long, nimble fingers and what appeared to be excellent hand-to-eye coordination. Both Nitikin and the rebel spoke Spanish, the common tongue. If Alim wanted his bomb, this was the price. He left little for the Persian to bargain with.

As Alim talked furiously with his technician, Yakov slipped in a few final choice words to the translator. He told the man that he and his FARC assistant would be “tickling the tail of the dragon.”

Then he watched as the translator conveyed the message. He wasn’t looking at Alim. He was checking the expression on the technician’s face as the man’s shifting eyeballs suddenly shot in the direction of the Russian.