Ken Kalfus - Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies

“Now look at the other papers. See, this is my pass to the Strategic Production Facility.”

“Comrade,” Shiv said sarcastically, “if you think I’m buying some fancy documents—”

“Listen to me. My unit’s principal task is the supply of the strategic weapons force. Our reactor produces Pu-239 as a fission by-product for manufacture into warheads. These operations have been curtailed, but the reactors must be kept functioning. Decommissioning them would be even more costly than maintaining them—and we can’t even do that properly.” Timofey’s voice fell to an angry whisper. “There have been many lapses in the administration of safety procedure.”

Timofey looked intently at Shiv, to see if he understood. But Shiv wasn’t listening; he didn’t like to be lectured and especially didn’t like to be told to read things, even identity papers. The world was full of men who knew more than Shiv did, and he hated each one of them. A murderous black cloud rose from the stained orange carpeting at his feet and occulted his vision. The more Timofey talked, the more Shiv wanted to hurt him. But at the same time, starting from the moment he heard the name Skotoprigonyevsk-16, Shiv gradually became aware that he was onto something big, bigger than anything he had ever done before. He was nudged by an incipient awareness that perhaps it was even too big for him.

In flat, clipped sentences, Timofey spoke: “There was an accident. I was contaminated. I have a wife and child, and nothing to leave them. This is why I’m here.”

“Don’t tell me about your wife and child. You can fuck them both to hell. I’m a businessman.”

For a moment, Timofey was shocked by the violence in the young man’s voice. But then he reminded himself that, in coming to Moscow for the first time in twentyfive years, he had entered a country where violence was the most stable and valuable currency. Maybe this was the right guy for the deal after all. There was no room for sentimentality.

He braced himself. “All right then. Here’s what you need to know. I have diverted a small quantity of fissile material. I’m here to sell it.”

Shiv removed his handkerchief again and savagely wiped his nose. He had a cold, Timofey observed. Acute radiation exposure severely compromised the immune system, commonly leading to fatal bacterial infection. He wondered if the hoodlum’s germs were the ones fated to kill him.

Timofey said, “Well, are you interested?”

To counteract any impression of weakness given by the handkerchief, Shiv tugged a mouthful of smoke from his cigarette.

“In what?”

“Are you listening to anything I’m saying? I have a little more than three hundred grams of weapons-grade plutonium. It can be used to make an atomic bomb. I want thirty thousand dollars for it.”

As a matter of principle, Shiv laughed. He always laughed when a mark named a price. But a chill seeped through him as far down as his testicles.

“It will fetch many times that on the market. Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea all have nuclear weapons programs, but they don’t have the technology to produce enriched fissile material. They’re desperate for it; there’s no price Saddam Hussein wouldn’t pay for an atomic bomb.”

“I don’t know anything about selling this stuff…”

“Don’t be a fool,” Timofey rasped. “Neither do I. That’s why I’ve come here. But you say you’re a businessman. You must have contacts, people with money, people who can get it out of the country.”

Shiv grunted. He was just playing for time now, to assemble his thoughts and devise a strategy. The word fool remained lodged in his gut like a spoiled piece of meat.

“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.”

“Make up your mind.”

“Where’s the stuff?”

“With me.”

A predatory light flicked on in the hoodlum’s eyes. But Timofey had expected that. He slowly unbuttoned his jacket. It fell away to reveal an invention of several hours’ work that, he realized only when he assembled it in the kitchen the day after the accident, he had been planning for years. At that moment of realization, his entire body had been flooded with a searing wonder at the dark soul that inhabited it. Now, under his arm, a steel canister no bigger than a coffee tin was attached to his left side by an impenetrably complex arrangement of belts, straps, hooks, and buckles.

“Do you see how I rigged the container?” he said. “There’s a right way of taking it off my body and many wrong ways. Take it off one of the wrong ways and the container opens and the material spills out. Are you aware of the radiological properties of plutonium and their effect on living organisms?”

Shiv almost laughed. He once knew a girl who wore something like this.

“Let me see it.”

“It’s plutonium. It has to be examined under controlled laboratory conditions. If even a microscopic amount of it lodges within your body, ionizing radiation will irreversibly damage body tissue and your cells’ nucleic material. A thousandth of a gram is fatal… I’ll put it to you more simply. Anything it touches dies. It’s like in a fairy tale.”

Shiv did indeed have business contacts, but he’d been burned about six months earlier, helping to move some Uzbek heroin that must have been worth more than a half million dollars. He had actually held the bags in his hands and pinched the powder through the plastic, marveling at the physics that transmuted such a trivial quantity of something into so much money. But once he made the arrangements and the businessmen had the stuff in their hands, they gave him only two thousand dollars for his trouble, little more than a tip. Across a table covered by a freshly stained tablecloth, the Don—his name was Voronenko, and he was from Tambov, but he insisted on being called the Don anyway, and being served spaghetti and meatballs for lunch—had grinned at the shattering disappointment on Shiv’s face. Shiv had wanted to protest, but he was frightened. Afterwards he was so angry that he gambled and whored the two grand away in a single night.

He said, “So, there was an accident. How do I know the stuff’s still good?”

“Do you know what a half-life is? The half-life of plutonium 239 is twenty-four thousand years.”

“That’s what you’re telling me…”

“You can look it up.”

“What am I, a fucking librarian? Listen, I know this game. It’s mixed with something.”

Timofey’s whole body was burning; he could feel each of his vital organs being singed by alpha radiation. For a moment he wished he could lie on one of the narrow beds in the room and nap. When he woke, perhaps he would be home. But he dared not imagine that he would wake to find that the accident had never happened. He said, “Yes, of course. The sample contains significant amounts of uranium and other plutonium isotopes, plus trace quantities of americium and gallium. But the Pu-239 content is 94.7 percent.”

“So you admit it’s not the first-quality stuff.”

“Anything greater than 93 percent is considered weapons-grade. Look, do you have somebody you can bring this to? Otherwise, we’re wasting my time.”

Shiv took out another cigarette from his jacket and tapped it against the back of his hand. Igniting the lighter, he kept his finger lingering on the gas feed. He passed the flame in front of his face so that it appeared to completely immolate the mark.

“Yeah, I do, but he’s in Perkhuskovo. It’s a fortyminute drive. I’ll take you to him.”

“I have a car. I’ll follow you.”

Shiv shook his head. “That won’t work. His dacha’s protected. You can’t go through the gate alone.”

“Forget it then. I’ll take the material someplace else.”