David told Umberto that he had to urgently inform the international task force of these findings so the two of them left the basement and ascended the stairs to the street level. Meanwhile, Piero had put his team to the task of searching for documents and papers that could help identify the people who had worked in the facility. They did not find anything specific but the food products in the kitchen implied that the workforce came from several nationalities, or at least had a varied taste for food and drinks. Piero also said that there were many plastic bags with the name of one of the major local supermarket chains and that he had already sent one of his agents to the closest store to try and enquire who did the shopping for feeding a dozen people. Umberto asked Piero to seal the warehouse and place guards outside until a scientific survey could be carried out. David said that he would ask the members of the ITF for assistance from their most advanced nuclear forensics analysts to evaluate the quality of the improvised nuclear device on the basis of the forensic evidence that could be gathered in the warehouse. He called Eugene, Vassilly and Thomas and without going into too many details on the unsecure phone line set an appointment for an urgent meeting in Vienna.
Piero followed the money trail and tried to find out who had rented the warehouse and within minutes got the name of a local firm that belonged to a prominent businessman with known ties to the separatist party that was also recognized as a racist stronghold. The businessman said that he had been asked to rent the warehouse as a personal favor by a local politician and claimed that he had no idea what the warehouse was used for. An interrogation of the politician quickly led to the Italian delegate who participated in the Corfu meeting, but he was forewarned and by the time Piero's agents got to his home they were informed that he had gone on vacation to an undisclosed location. Umberto and David were extremely aggravated since this was their strongest and most direct lead to the organization that was behind the project.
It was obvious to all of them that the device had been moved from the warehouse recently and that the top priority was to locate and neutralize it. This could be done if they could determine the target by finding the key people and the organization that had built the device. Umberto wanted to immediately post the photos of Modena, Smalley and the blond man on all the media channels and appeal to the public to help in locating these dangerous "drug dealers". David asked him to wait a little longer until he consulted his colleagues in the international task force. He was particularly concerned that panic would spread if word got out that an improvised nuclear device had been produced by a group of fanatics and was now at large somewhere in Europe. They already knew that Dr. Jason Smalley was a racist who believed in expelling all foreigners of inferior races from England and that Professor Modena was a Catalan separatist. They did not know who the blond man was and what connection he had to the others but after he had been seen in London with Smalley and in Padova with Modena and Smalley they suspected that he may be one of the major players in the project. Umberto suggested that they focus on identifying the mysterious blond man and proposed that they circulate his photo image through all the airports around Padova in the hope that someone would remember him.
In the morning David flew back to Vienna and was met by Orna Cohen at the airport. The ITF members were already gathered in one of the conference rooms of the IAEA headquarters and received David's report about the events and findings in Padova with ashen faces.
The American delegate, Eugene, was the first to recover from the shocking news, and said that they should discuss the ways and means needed to transport the device from the warehouse to the target area. Assuming that the device indeed consisted of a U-233 fissile material core and was not manufactured by a fully equipped advanced workshop it would probably be quite cumbersome as it would have to be a primitive implosion type device. He speculated that it may be as large and as heavy as the "fat man" plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of Second World War and would therefore require a crane to lift it and a truck to carry it. He suggested that they first look for trucks and cranes in the Padova area that may have been used to transport the device.
Vassilly interjected that if an expert such as Dr. Smalley was involved then perhaps they could do with a much smaller and lighter design. He also emphasized that the Nagasaki atomic bomb had to be transported and dropped by an airplane, requiring an additional protective shell of heavy metal while the improvised nuclear device would be transported on land, and perhaps by sea, and would not need this heavy shell.
The British member of the task force, Thomas, said that he had closely examined Smalley's qualifications and found that he had no access to anything but quite primitive designs so that Eugene's assumption that the device would be large and heavy was probably correct though Vassilly's point was also valid.
David added that if a truck was used to transport the device it could be hundreds of kilometers from Padova as at least 12 hours, and possibly 24 hours, have passed since the device left the warehouse. He then excused himself, left the conference room and called Umberto with the new information and speculations asking him to find all companies in the Padova area that had cranes, trucks and especially flat bed trucks equipped with cranes. He asked him to look into sales and rentals of such equipment and then returned to the conference room.
The discussion now focused on the wisdom of contacting Interpol about these developments and the consensus was that it would only cause panic all over Europe if news of an unsupervised nuclear device got out. They then talked about involving the Secretary General and the IAEA and decided to wait before alerting the agency because of the same reasons. They agreed that regardless of the exact location of the target they had to alert the friendly intelligence agencies of the European countries, especially those in which strong racist and separatist movements were active and strengthen the radiation monitoring network on the major highways and in ports in case its target was a large harbor town.
Just after noon time David received a phone call from Umberto telling him that his people had located a local car rental agency in Padova that had rented a truck with a crane to an exceptionally big person who looked like a Viking. There was no written record of the rental but after a short questioning one of the employees admitted that he had carried out the transaction but had not had time to complete the forms as the truck was returned the same afternoon and the large Viking exchanged it for a regular passenger car. The employee said that this deal was also done without a rental agreement for the same reason. When asked if he had made a photocopy of the Viking's driver's license the employee said that the copying machine had a malfunction so a copy was not available. Piero's agent was a very sharp person and wanted to see the truck and record the mileage that it had done. The employee now became very cooperative and remembered that he was surprised to see that the truck had done less than 100 km and he asked the Viking if he was not satisfied with the truck. The Viking rudely told him to mind his own business and pulled out a 100 Euro note which silenced the employee. The agent asked about the passenger car and was told that it was a Jeep Renegade four wheel drive and got its license plate number. The car rental employee was summoned to the police station and asked to work with a police artist to create an image of the Viking which he was doing at that very moment.