‘No.’ I disappointed him. ‘I did read everything as best I could, but I didn’t speak any of the languages...’ I picked absent-mindedly at my fingers, but I was certain about what I said: ‘One of the languages was Russian.’
John Rupert, sitting on a corner of the desk and swinging a leg, interestedly asked, ‘So why was it Russian? And how did you know?’
I explained, ‘There’s a letter and a number combination that jumps off the page at anyone with the slightest bit of scientific knowledge, and it is U-235. On one of those foreign language pages, that combination was written Y-235, and that symbol Y is Russian for uranium.’
I drew Y-235 to show them and said, ‘That sort of uranium has been enriched and condensed from U-238 by a process called sieving or gas diffusion. Pu-239 is enriched plutonium Pu-24O. They are the materials for nuclear weapons.’
They asked with frowns for more.
‘Starting from U-235 as a fact,’ I smiled faintly, ‘either that same letter and numbers combination, or that of Pu-235, reappeared somewhere in different scripts on every page of the folder. If I could guess at understanding, I’d say that what I’ve thought of as correspondence were definitely also lists. Lists in Greek and German and Arabic and Russian, and probably Hebrew. As for the others... I didn’t know enough, but some of the other numbers had different appearances and might have been dates or prices.’
‘Lists? Lists of what, exactly?’
‘Lists of ingredients of nuclear explosive devices. They are, aren’t they, the ultra-sensitive package you were talking about?’
They were unready to commit themselves.
I said, ‘As far as I could understand those pages, I could see they were a sort of shopping list. Some of them stated that fissile material was available, and where. And some of them stated what was wanted. If those pages are lists of goods wanted and goods for sale, it means the Unified Trading Company are in essence middlemen.’
There was a short silence. Neither Ghost nor John Rupert ridiculed the notion, so I went on. ‘There’s a world shortage of many types of fissile material — that is the wherewithal for making nuclear bombs. And there’s a world glut of legitimate sovereign states and general brutish terrorists who know how to make them. They’re not extraordinarily difficult to construct. Only there’s — thank God — not enough enriched uranium and plutonium to go round. There’s a world shortage,’ as I said.
‘Those letters in that package, I’m as sure as one can be, are notes of what’s now out on the market. A high proportion of the world’s bomb-making capacity has been locked up in Russia since the end of the cold war. The old Soviet bloc don’t want the dangerous makings scattered about any more than we do, and they guard them carefully, but there are thieves and schemers everywhere. I’d guess if anyone like you managed to put the Unified Trading Company out of business there would soon be someone else taking their place.’
‘One less is always significant,’ Ghost said primly.
He had pale grey eyes reflecting grey threatening cloud from the skylight. He hadn’t the vigour, I reckoned, to write a bounce-you-out-of-your-seat book about storms.
‘Are you saying,’ John Rupert enquired, ‘that you believe there will be uncountable outfits similar to the Unified Trading Company, acting as middlemen, and I suppose raking off a huge commission?’
‘I’ve no idea how many,’ I said. ‘I forecast the weather. I got involved in the uranium business by accident, and I want out.’
My protest fell on stony ground and was ignored.
‘All those letters in the folder will soon be out of date,’ I pointed out. ‘If they were inventories, if they were putting people who had access to U-235 in touch with people who could afford it... well, things will change in six months’ time.’
Ghost thinly smiled. ‘We are satisfied you saw the prime up-to-date collection of — shall we say — goods available. I think, although we usually operate on the “need to know” principle, we sometimes don’t tell people things it turns out they vitally did need to know, so what I am going to ask you, and perhaps tell you, may or may not be of help to you. Am I clear?’
As mud, I thought. I looked at my watch. Buses were erratic anyway on busy shopping mornings, and it was raining. I would just run, I thought. Poor old feet.
‘Don’t worry about the time,’ John Rupert said. ‘I’ll send you back to the BBC in a car.’
Ghost said, ‘Think. Please concentrate. What we quite urgently need most from that package are the names of those who want and those who have. Can you remember any of them?’
I was afraid I could remember only part of one.
Anything, it seemed, would be better than nothing.
‘Then,’ I said, ‘one of the headings contained the word Hippostat.’ I spelled it for them. ‘It might mean racecourse, and it might not.’
‘It might,’ Ghost nodded. ‘Have you any idea where that whole package is now?’
Clear and bright in my memory was an image of Michael Ford walking back from the second thick-walled hut carrying the Geiger counter in one hand and the folder in the other. He had taken them into the aircraft, and there they stayed.
Equally sharp was the awareness of the care Michael Ford had taken not to put an early end to my days. Or maybe it had been Amy, who’d kept me alive with the bandages. Or maybe even Robin, the round one with brains.
I was behaving ambivalently when I answered Ghost truthfully, and felt guilty for it.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘where the package is now.’
I had some sort of fumbling idea of persuading the group members to give up their habit — a bit like smoking — just more deadly. I hadn’t thought everything through beyond my own salvation.
John Rupert, vaguely disappointed with what he rightly judged, I saw, to be a last-minute withdrawal of whole-heartedness, kept his own promise and beckoned up a car and driver to return me to Wood Lane.
In between afternoon forecasts I got through to him on the phone and found him polite but minus his earlier zeal.
He said, ‘Ghost believes you changed sides in mid-stream. I’d like to know why.’
‘Some of the Traders could easily have put me in a coffin. I remembered that they didn’t.’
‘It’s an old dilemma,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘If you believe in a cause, do you kill your friend who doesn’t?’
I said slowly, ‘No.’
‘Remember our man from Mexico. Remember the alligators. He got no mercy. When you’re ready, phone me again... and don’t leave it too late.’
‘I’ll tell you now...’ I began, stopped, began again, ‘if you’re interested yet... about the radioactivity. The alpha particles on Trox Island.’
His voice came to life a bit. He said, ‘I did ask my children about that yesterday evening and, of course, you were right, they had studied radioactivity in school.’
‘Mm,’ I said, ‘but the thirty or so people who lived on Trox Island didn’t know you can safely make a Geiger counter sound as if it’s busting its guts. They heard the frantically fast clicks and they were told the appropriate story... panic, everyone, those fancy mushrooms are radioactive and there’s radon gas pouring out of the ground beneath the houses, but we, your benefactors, the Unified Trading Company, will guarantee you won’t be contaminated yourselves by radiation, only the actual buildings and the mushrooms, and we will send an excellent boat to take you all to safety.’
‘Do you mean the Trading Company deliberately persuaded everyone into leaving the island?’
I smiled. ‘They couldn’t leave fast enough. Radioactivity is scary because you can’t see it or feel it. That’s why people tend to think it’s more dangerous than it really is. But they all in the end will be reassured, as none of them will show any signs of radiation sickness.’