Christopher Reich - Numbered Account

Nick laid his head on the cool wooden surface. He shut his eyes. “Burki,” he said. “Caspar Burki.” Over and over he repeated the name, as if during the night he might forget it. He thought of his father and of his mother. He remembered Johnny Burke and Gunny Ortiga. He recalled the awe he felt as he mounted the steps of the United Swiss Bank eight weeks ago. He replayed his first meeting with Peter Sprecher and he laughed. Then his thoughts melted into one another and the world around him darkened. Peace was what he sought. And soon he had it.

Two hundred miles due east of Beirut at a remote military air base deep in the Syrian desert, a Tupolev-154 cargo jet touched down and taxied the length of the runway before laboring to a halt. The flight had lasted only three hours, yet all eight engines were overheated. Fresh oil had not been added for two hundred flying hours—twice the maximum allowable period. The turbine coolers responsible for maintaining a stable running temperature had worked only intermittently. In fact, somewhere over the Caucasus Mountains one engine had failed for fifteen minutes and the pilot had insisted on returning the plane to Alma-Ata. General Dimitri Sergeivitch Marchenko had been firm in his instructions to continue to the Syrian air base. The cargo could not be delayed.

The Tupolev cut its engines and lowered its rear cargo hatch. Four vehicles rumbled down the loading ramp and onto the warm concrete tarmac. Marchenko followed them, greeting the Syrian commander who waited nearby.

“Colonel Hammid, I presume.”

“General Marchenko. It is an honor. As ordered, I am happy to provide you with a platoon of our finest infantrymen for the trip to Lebanon. I understand the shipment is highly sensitive.”

“Classified electronics for the regional headquarters of the Hamas. Surveillance gear.” Marchenko had never thought highly of his Arab allies. As soldiers, they were impostors. They’d lost every war they’d fought. They should, however, pass muster as escorts for his small convoy into Lebanon. They were fearless supporters of other men’s battles.

Marchenko walked to the six-ton truck carrying his precious cargo. He was a short man, stout and heavyset around his jaw and neck. He carried his weight well, using it to add extra swagger to his step. He lifted the canvas canopy and climbed aboard, inviting his Syrian counterpart to join him. Together, they checked that straps securing the crates had been properly tightened. The crates were filled with obsolete radio transmitters, polished up and triple wrapped in plastic to make them look new. The Kopinskaya IV was packed in a reinforced steel container welded to the truck’s flatbed. A sophisticated antitampering switch had been attached to the container. If someone attempted to remove the container from the truck, or to forcibly open it, a small packet of Semtex explosive would be ignited and the bomb would be destroyed. No one would steal Little Joe.

Marchenko flopped his rump on the tail of the truck, then jumped to the ground and made his way forward to the command jeep. The idea to sell a small percentage of his nation’s conventional armaments had not been his own. The Kazakh government had embraced it early on, believing it was acting no differently than the former Soviet government. From there, talk moved naturally to another of the republic’s salable assets: her nuclear arsenal. No one had ever considered selling off one of the big birds, the SS-19s or SS-20s—missiles equipped with a twenty-megaton warhead and a six-thousand-mile flight span. At least, not seriously. The Kazakhs were a moral people. Besides, the logistics were overwhelming.

Attention had focused on how to profitably dispose of the stockpile of enriched plutonium kept in the vaults of the Lenin Atomic Research Laboratory, one of the former Soviet Union’s most secret installations, located forty kilometers outside Alma-Ata.

Until 1992, the installation had been guarded by a division of mechanized infantry. Over five hundred men patrolled the compound and the surrounding woods twenty-four hours a day. Six separate checkpoints had to be cleared before reaching the maze of buildings that made up the laboratory itself. Since that time, however, security had become considerably more lax. Today a single post stood at the compound’s entry. A smile and a flash of one’s military identification were all that was necessary to gain admittance.

Marchenko scowled, recalling events from the recent past. The Americans had also known about the Lenin Laboratory and the airtight rooms filled with lead canisters holding fissionable materials. Their covert agents had easily penetrated the compound’s porous security and had reported back that a paperboy could con his way in, fill his pockets with uranium, and pedal out again. In the summer of 1993, a joint inspection team of CIA and KGB officers landed in Alma-Ata and made directly for the Lenin Atomic Research Laboratory. The operation, code-named Sapphire, had been a complete success. Almost. The interlopers removed over two tons of enriched weapons-grade uranium-235 and plutonium from the Lenin Laboratory and shipped it west. But they had missed a few items.

Marchenko was not a stupid man. He had imagined such an event, if tardily, and had moved with haste on learning of the Americans’ plans. He and his colleagues had pinned their hopes on a small weapons manufacturer inside the grounds of the Lenin Laboratory; a factory charged with overseeing the construction of next-generation weapons prototypes. Among the items being developed for introduction into the armed forces was a highly mobile, easily launchable low-yield nuclear device. A battlefield nuclear weapon.

Hours ahead of the Americans, he had stolen his way into the laboratory and removed the existing functional prototypes. Two Kopinskaya IV concussive bombs, each possessing a two-kiloton load. His country’s true patrimony.

Marchenko climbed aboard the jeep. The deal is almost done, he said to himself. And though his face retained its veneer of stolid dissatisfaction, inside he was as giddy as a fifteen-year-old. He tapped the driver on the shoulder and ordered him to move out. Up and down the line, motors turned over as the small convoy got under way. It would be an eight-hour drive to their destination. Closing his eyes for a moment, he enjoyed the warm desert wind that tickled his face. Sure that no one could see him, he smiled.

It was time someone else suffered.

The number 10 tram lurched out of the morning mist like an arthritic serpent. Its blunt blue snout and reticulated body rattled through the curtain of dew, groaning and sighing as it drew to a halt. Doors jerked open. Passengers got off. Nick lifted a hand to help a stooped old lady whose slow descent threatened the punctuality of the entire transit system. The witch batted it away with her bent umbrella. He dodged the blow and stepped aboard. So much for starting the day on the right foot.

Nick shuttled down the aisle looking for an empty seat. Gray faces sagging with the burdens of living in the world’s wealthiest democracy greeted him. Their unsmiling countenances shoved him with a thump out of Sylvia’s bed and back into the real world. The world where he was an accessory to murder, conspirator to fraud, and prisoner of a man who might very well have had a hand in murdering his father.

Nick sat down at the rear of the tram. An elderly man in front of him was reading Blick, the country’s daily scandal sheet. He had the paper open to the second page. A photograph of Marco Cerruti slumped in a leather recliner occupied the upper left-hand corner. The headline read “Despondent Banker Takes Life.” The text was short, included so to dignify the lurid photograph. Cerruti looked peaceful enough, sleeping except for a small black crater carved into his left temple. His eyes were closed and a fluffy white pillow was propped on his stomach.