P. Deutermann - The Last Man

Ellerstein told Gulder about the cylinders. “That is why you killed Dov Ressner, isn’t it? There was no radiation accident, and it wasn’t because he was talking to antinuclear dissidents. He’d figured this place out, hadn’t he? He saw the geothermal plant down there and realized there had to be a storage point, a very big storage point.”

“What is this heavy water?” Judith asked, looking first to Gulder and then to Ellerstein. Then she looked to David and asked it again, in English.

“It’s the key to making really big nuclear weapons,” David said. “Or making smaller ones much more powerful. You can derive tritium from heavy water, and you can make plutonium in a heavy water reactor. That’s why nonproliferation agencies track it — it’s a marker. Large quantities of heavy water usually indicate a nuclear weapons program.”

“But make deuterium oxide?” Ellerstein asked again. “How? The expense — it would be astronomical. There is no way—”

“Yes, there is,” David interrupted. “Deuterium oxide occurs in nature, but in very dilute form, as little as one molecule in ten million in seawater, for instance.” He pointed with his chin to the Dead Sea below them. “Like that seawater.”

Ellerstein lifted his hands in a gesture of consternation.

“The key was that geothermal plume down there,” David said. “If you had to pay for the energy to boil down millions of gallons of saltwater to get heavy water, you’d never do it — but this energy was free, wasn’t it, Colonel Skuratov? All you had to do was fill the cistern with freshwater, distilled from the Dead Sea, then recycle all that water through a second distiller down in that plant, concentrating the deuterium oxide on each pass. Over and over again, for months on end, until the millions of gallons became, what, twenty gallons? At a ten percent concentration?”

“Thirty,” Skuratov whispered proudly. “Thirty percent concentration.”

David straightened up. “So you guys never did buy heavy water from Norway way back then, did you? That was all cover and deception. You were already making it right here in Israel.”

Skuratov gave him a wintry smile. “The Norway diversion — something for all you sanctimonious nonproliferators to chase after.”

“Then you’d concentrate it at Dimona?”

Skuratov sniffed and looked away without answering.

There was a moment of silence. Gulder broke it, switching back to Hebrew. “There is something missing here,” he said. “Our nuclear program is an open secret. What required extreme measures?”

“Because that is not what you wanted heavy water for, was it, Colonel Zealot?” asked Ellerstein, remembering from his days at Dimona the other use of heavy water.

Skuratov frowned at the use of the word “Zealot” but then seemed to relax, as if there were no longer any reason to pretend. “No, it was not,” he agreed quietly.

“What other use?” Gulder asked. Ellerstein told him.

Gulder, obviously excited now, moved closer to the colonel, forcing him to crane his neck up at him. “We’ve searched this area, everywhere around Dimona, ever since you stuck your nose in when the American came. We’ve even overflown the fortress with radiation monitors. Monitoring trucks up and down the roads at night. There was nothing.”

“First of all, heavy water is not radioactive,” Skuratov said. “Second, you were looking for weapons or weapons materials. There weren’t any.”

“So what are those cylinders for?”

“When the water level in the cistern is reduced to a few feet and the maximum concentration has been achieved, we command the cylinders to open and fill with the product.”

“The product.”

“Yes, the product.”

Gulder bent down to get in Skuratov’s face. “A product is something you sell, Colonel.”

“Just so, Mr. Gulder.”

“To whom?”

“To whom do you think, Mr. Very Important Assistant? Who in this region desperately needs heavy water?”

Gulder straightened up, his face frozen in shock. “You sold heavy water to the Persians ?”

“Yes, we did.”

“Are you insane?”

“We are angry, not mad. Nor crazy, you stupid bureaucrat. The quicker the Persians get the bomb, the sooner Israel will have to strike them first. A preemptive strike, it is called. We are more like the Kanna’im than you people ever imagined, Mr. Gulder. They were the ones who started the rebellion in A.D. 67, remember?”

“And brought the destruction of Israel down on their heads when they did,” Ellerstein pointed out.

“If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes,” Skuratov said. “If you strike Iran, you will have to strike all the Arabs. Then and only then will we have a final solution.”

Ellerstein shook his head in wonder. “He is mad, Gulder. Stark, raving mad. No word of this calamity can leave this mountain.”

“Oh, yes, that is absolutely correct, Yossi,” Gulder said softly. He looked over at Judith Ressner and the American. Ellerstein suddenly knew what that look might mean. Then Judith stepped in and slapped Skuratov in the face.

“What about Dov?” she asked in a cold voice. In his excitement over discovering what had been going on here, Ellerstein had forgotten all about Dov Ressner. Judith had not.

“Your husband was a traitor,” Skuratov said, rubbing his face where she’d slapped him. “He found out about the plant. We don’t know how. We assumed he’d come here to expose the heavy water process. My people caught him in the big cistern. I gave the order to seal him in it, and I’m glad I did.”

“You absolute swine,” Judith said. “Then you came to my house, you, with your crocodile tears.”

“Swine, is it?” Skuratov growled, finally standing up. “These were vital secrets. Vital to the survival of all Israel. Your peacenik husband, madam, who promised to safeguard these vital secrets, was ready to sell it out for his precious ideals. Well, let me remind you of something, Dr. Yehudit Ressner. You are standing on the fortress of Metsadá. Those Jews, two thousand years ago? They also had ideals, but they chose death to protect their ideals, didn’t they? Your weakling husband ended up in good company here, yes?”

“You trapped him like an animal, and then you drowned him in your precious heavy water,” she said. Shapiro saw that her fingers were opening and closing and that she appeared to be ready to physically attack Skuratov. He moved even closer to her, ready to restrain her.

“Yes, I did those things,” Skuratov announced, pointing a finger at his own chest, “and I would do them again. Someone must, because there are very few patriots anymore in this country.” He shot a defiant look at Gulder, which was when Judith made her move. First she screamed, a long ear-piercing shriek that froze everyone. Colonel Shapiro moved to grab her, but she was way ahead of him. As he raised his arms, she snatched his pistol out of his hip holster and then pushed him away so suddenly that he tripped backward and sat down abruptly. Judith swept the gun in Gulder’s direction, then in Ellerstein’s, motioning them to get back.

“Jesus, Judith, what are you doing?” David asked, reaching out a hand.

“This bastard killed my husband,” she said in English. “He’s been making this heavy water business down here for a long time and now admits to selling some. To the goddamned Iranians.”

“What?”

“Don’t involve yourself in this, David,” Judith said. She turned to Skuratov and put the gun right in his face.

“All right, then, Zealot, ” she said, mimicking Ellerstein. “You have committed at least one murder to protect your insane scheme, not including what you did to us. We were looking for the Zealots’ secret, the real Zealots’, not yours. Now I’ll give you a choice: You admire the Kanna’im? Here’s your chance. Do what they did, or I’ll do it for you.”