As the meeting adjourned the participants left the conference room with a heavy load on their minds. Thomas, the British member of the ITF, was charged with informing the intelligence organs of the Western European countries, Vassilly the Russian said he would make sure the former USSR European republics were informed, and Eugene was asked to enlist the assets of the US and its closest allies. The French member, Nicolas, would serve as the contact with Interpol presenting a legend that the blond man was suspected of being involved in large scale criminal activities without any mention of nuclear or radiation devices. David was to maintain close contact with the Italian police since Italy was the epicenter of the current activity, and with the Spanish police due to the involvement of Professor Modena and possible connections with the Catalan separatists.
Chapter 10
David was surprised to see that the head of Mossad and all the senior staff were already gathered in Shimony's office where the meeting was to be held. After hearing David's update about the futile operation of Umberto's people in Italy and the decisions of the ITF meeting in Vienna, the Mossad head asked David to speak frankly. Without further prompting David expressed his fears that the device would be used and that there might be far-reaching consequences resulting from its deployment, well beyond the immediate loss of life and damage to property. He also said that if it were simply to be used for blackmail purposes then it would be only a matter of time before it was discovered and possibly rendered safe and neutralized. He added that the perpetrators would also be aware of this and therefore would make sure that it would be detonated one way or the other. Shimony then asked all the participants if this device posed a threat to Israel's security, directly or indirectly. His question was met by a long silence, broken only by the humming of the air conditioner. No one could give a logical evidence-based answer. Gideon, the representative of the Israeli Security Agency who had also been invited to the meeting said that they all had to make an operational assumption that Israel may be targeted, although his gut feeling was that it was mainly an internal European problem. David strongly objected saying that eventually almost everything concerned Israel, one way or the other, so they should increase the security measures in all three ports, Haifa and Ashdod on the Mediterranean coast and even Eilat on the shores of the Red Sea.
The Mossad chief directed the division heads to concentrate their efforts on finding any of the people that had worked on the Astraea project in Padova and interrogate them,starting with the two known scientists, Professor Modena and Dr. Smalley, and therefore the Mossad's assets in Spain and the UK should be enlisted for the task. David decided that he himself would go to Barcelona to try to trace the professor through his contact with Ramona and requested that the local Mossad agents be available to help him. He also proposed to make a stopover in Rome to discuss with Umberto further steps toward locating the container, or at least getting a better description of it that may help in tracking it.
David landed at Fiumicino-Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome and was escorted by a plain clothes policeman to a private VIP room at the airport. Umberto Scalopini and Piero Adriano welcomed him and offered him some refreshments that he declined saying that he had had his share of airline food. The Italians informed him that there was no trace of the container or the blond man and they were quite sure that both were no longer in Italy. They had had a small breakthrough with the description of the container as the same person who witnessed the truck with the crane leaving the warehouse recalled under hypnosis that the container was painted brown and appeared to be quite rusty. He also remembered that the word "machinery" was written on the container. Despite this helpful information the container had not been found in any of the ports in northern Italia. Umberto excitedly said that the body of the Viking had been identified by the Swedish police as being that of Andreas Harald Nordholm, also known as the "head cracker", who was the leader of a notorious racist Stockholm street gang. David suggested that Umberto contact his colleagues in the Stockholm police and ask them to carry out a full investigation of Andreas and his buddies in order to try to find out the identity of the mysterious blond man who was the key person to the whole operation and probably responsible for the murder of Andreas. He also asked Umberto to make an introduction to the Swedish police in anticipation of his own visit to Stockholm. David forwarded all the new data to the ITF members in Vienna and to Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv.
David called Ramona and arranged to meet her for dinner at a Brazilian restaurant near the Girona metro station and close to her apartment. The restaurant was quite crowded so they relaxed, had a couple of chilled glasses of Caipirinha as an aperitif and enjoyed the assortment of grilled meats consumed with good wine. Ramona told him that seeing him every two months suited her as she did not want to commit to a long term relationship and was quite satisfied with his undemanding presence. He agreed that this arrangement suited him as well. They returned to her apartment and simply enjoyed each other's body, first with great passion and urgency and then in a more relaxed and patient mode. David gingerly brought up the subject of progress with her doctoral research work and asked her if her advisor, Professor Modena, had returned to the university. She told him that he was officially still on a leave absence so she had switched to another advisor and changed the subject of her thesis so was not too seriously affected by his absence. David asked her if she knew where he had gone and whether he had a taken up a different academic position and Ramona said that she had not seen him since he had left the previous summer. She only heard from him once when he said that he was in Padova to prove to the world that his theory and experimental work could be validated. She had no idea where he intended to do this and if he had succeeded. David asked her if she knew anything about Modena's personal life and she said that he was divorced with no children and was now something of a recluse. Once again she did not admit that she had had an affair with him and refused to share with David any intimate details about her relationship with the professor, but he was quite convinced that their relationship was beyond the regular student-advisor affair.
David flew from Barcelona to the meeting in Vienna for purely business reasons and from Ramona to Orna for a combination of business and pleasure. At the meeting with the ITF members the general feeling was that a pattern was emerging from the connections of the nationalistic racist movements, as personified by Dr. Smalley in Britain and Andreas in Sweden, and the separatist movements represented by Professor Modena and the north Italian separatists' involvement exemplified by the fact that the laboratory was established at the heart of the Veneto separatists stronghold in north Italy. To most ITF members this indicated that the target would be in a major European city. Nicolas speculated that Brussels or Strasburg would be the preferred targets as they were the seat of major institutions of the European Community. Thomas suggested that the City of London or Buckingham Palace could be targets because of the involvement of Dr. Smalley in the production of the device. Eugene and Vassilly believed that their countries were relatively safe but raised their fear that Madrid may have been selected by Professor Modena. David expressed his view that they needed solid evidence before making such assumptions and suggested that they follow the best lead they had — the connection of Andreas with the project. He also emphasized that the manhunt for the mysterious blond man should be intensified and that it was time to appeal to the public for help. The rogue improvised nuclear device was a clear and present threat to normal life not only in Europe as racists may seek to use it in other places, such as Asian and African countries from which the immigrants came to Europe, as a deterrent and punishment. He informed them that he would be leaving for Stockholm in the evening to follow up on any information about Andreas. Orna was disappointed to learn that he wouldn't be spending the night with her but he promised he would be back in Vienna in a week or so. Upon arrival in Stockholm David checked into a hotel in the city center and arranged to meet the chief of police the next morning.