The helicopters had been called off as soon as it got dark but the ground survey continued and Piero's people worked through the night going from one farmhouse to the next. It was after 10 pm when one of the teams arrived at the farmhouse near San Giorgio and although they found no one at home they opened the gate and wandered around the house and the barn. They noted that the tire marks of a heavy vehicle on the ground and in the barn and called in for assistance. Piero himself arrived with a sensitive radiation detector and they found slightly elevated radiation levels in the barn. A closer look in the barnyard showed signs of freshly dug soil and within minutes Andreas's body was discovered in the shallow grave in which Ollie had buried him. Piero immediately identified the body that fit the description of the large Viking and he called Umberto with the news that the bird has flown the coop. There were no documents on the body and all they could do was take mug shots of the face that had not been too distorted after being buried for two days. Upon hearing this Umberto almost lost his cool and murmured a juicy Italian expletive before calling David in Vienna.
After hearing Umberto's report David said that they should try to identify the Viking and suggested that the photos they had taken be sent to all European police departments and to Interpol. The description of the exceptionally large body was also attached to the post-mortem photo. David thought that there was a high likelihood that the man was from one of the Scandinavian countries and Umberto concurred and said that he would personally contact the police chiefs in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland and ask them to give top priority to the investigation.
David and Orna were just having a nightcap in her apartment when he received the phone call from Umberto. David realized that they kept getting close to finding the device and the mysterious blond man who appeared to be the moving force behind the project, yet he was always one step ahead of them. He told Umberto that now their top priority should be to find the man as he was definitely the leader of the project and that he would call for an urgent meeting of the task force for the following morning to update them that the device had been moved again and that they had to call for all the help they could get to find the blond man. He then called all the ITF members and summoned them for a nine o'clock meeting the next morning. David next called Haim Shimony, the Deputy Director of Mossad and gave him a brief update on the situation. Shimony asked David to return to Israel after his meeting in Vienna. By the time he had done this neither he nor Orna were in the mood for anything but cuddling.
In the morning Ollie went to the central mosque and asked to see the Imam. Several eyebrows were raised when the blond man asked for the Imam but he was granted an audience after the morning prayers in which he participated. In stilted Arabic Ollie told the Imam that he was a Swedish convert to Islam and was in trouble with his country's authorities and needed a new passport. The Imam was reserved and suspicious at first but when Ollie told him a little about his adventures with the Islamic State forces in Syria the atmosphere changed dramatically and the Imam offered his help and told him to return in the evening. Ollie wandered around the city and was impressed by the difference between Stockholm and Tirana, both on the same continent while appearing to be worlds apart.
In the evening he returned to the mosque and after prayers was introduced to Immad, a tall thin man who would supply him with a passport. The man looked him over, murmured that it would be difficult because of his Scandinavian features. He said that if Ollie grew a French style beard and cut his hair short and dyed it brown he would be able arrange something that would not be easily recognized as a false identity. Immad said that it would take a week to make these changes and arrange a Swedish passport as there were not many Swedish young men that were tourists in Tirana. Ollie felt that he had no alternative but to wait for the fake passport and settled down for a long stay in Tirana, not exactly his first choice for a vacation.
The members of the international task force were gathered in the conference room and anxiously followed David's summary of the events that had taken place in Italy. He started by describing the physical evidence that was found in the warehouse — the mock-up model of the core that consisted of natural uranium, the radioactivity detected in several places in the laboratories that were used to produce U-233 and purify it, the "missing" gamma radiation sources and the irradiation chamber with the reactor in its center. He asked the US and Russia to send their best forensics analysts to try and determine the implications on the predicted performance of the improvised nuclear device. They agreed and Thomas proposed to also invite the scientists from the Institute for Trans Uranium (ITU) Elements from Karlsruhe in Germany who were famous for their work tracing the origin of smuggled nuclear materials in Europe.
David expressed everyone's frustration that although they had gotten very close to finding the device and the perpetrators both had slipped out of their grasp once again. He proposed that they start a continent-wide manhunt for the blond man and alert all national police and intelligence organizations in Europe warning them about the danger that this man posed. In order to minimize the panic that would surely erupt if it were known that an improvised nuclear device had been constructed he suggested that the official reason given would be a strong suspicion that a radiation dispersion device was ready to be detonated. David also repeated his arguments against involving Interpol and the IAEA because both were rife with politics and the latter included several member-states that would even condone such an act if it were carried out in what they considered a "colonialist state". After some further discussion it was agreed that only Interpol should be informed in order to use the large database of convicted and wanted criminals to try to identify, mysterious blond man. The proposals were accepted unanimously.
Next they discussed the measures that should be taken to locate the nuclear device, assuming that it was indeed concealed inside a standard container. The problem was that at any given moment there were several thousands of containers being moved on Europe's roads to and from the main ports. Searching for a particular one, without details on it color, markings or number, would be a formidable task, not to mention the delays such a project would cause and the cost of these delays to the economy. A more practical solution would be to install radiation detection portals at each and every port from which containers were shipped, and to ascertain that each container be monitored. Several ports already had installed these portals but not all containers were examined, while many others had no such facilities and it would take months, if not years, to install the portals in those ports, even if funds for that were available. While many containers were shipped from ports there were many more that were transported from European manufacturers to clients via surface roads without any serious control and only superficial inspections that focused on documentation alone.
Finally, they discussed the possible scenarios for use of the device. Most of the participants thought that the device would not be detonated without warning, especially if only a single device was produced. They believed that it was more likely that it will be used for blackmailing for financial or political gain, or both. Another possibility would be using it to create a viable threat, without actually making any demands, in order to install public panic at a level that would disrupt normal life. According to this scenario the panic would not be limited to a single country and the economic and sociological effects would be tremendous, even if not a single life was lost. David said that he was not so sure that the device would not be detonated because the logical analysis presented by the analytically minded members of the ITF would not necessarily appeal to a group of fanatics — racists, religious or self-modeled idealists or even anti-colonialists bent on revenge. He asked them to prepare for worst-case-scenarios according to which the device would be used to precipitate an international conflict. He was particularly worried that the detonation of the device in one country might invoke retaliation in the form of conventional acts of war or even a nuclear response, against historic adversaries or new imaginary enemies.