Eugene returned to his hotel on the beachfront and the next day went over to the nearby US embassy and filed a report about his informal contact with Mossad agents. David filed a similar report about his own informal contact with an NNSA employee. Both reports were put on file and no action was taken.
David received the short e-mail message from Eugene with the name of the ex-Palestinian scientist from Los Alamos — Dr. Nagib Jaber. The name rang a bell so he called his father who instantly recollected that he had been on the examination panel in front of which Nagib defended his doctoral thesis. Dr. Benny Avivi recalled that he had been impressed by Nagib's defense and by his maturity that by far superseded that usually shown by American doctoral candidates who were generally very knowledgeable about their specific subject but without a wider viewpoint. Benny also remembered that when asked about his future plans Nagib had said that he wished to become a US citizen and work in one of the National Laboratories, preferably in New Mexico. David thought this piece of information was important enough to pass on to the Israeli Security Agency, the ISA, and perhaps get them to do a background check on Dr. Nagib Jaber, so he called his friend, "The Fish" who was now in a senior position at the ISA and told him the whole story. "The Fish", who earned his nickname for staying cool under fire like his cold blooded namesake, said he would look into it and get back to David if there was anything interesting to report.
The wedding ceremony was very modest and held in the City Hall of Santa Fe in the presence of less than 20 guests. None of Nagib's relatives attended and from Alia's family only her parents were present. They invited some of their colleagues from the Lab who were mostly very conservative church-going types, so they were genuinely glad to see the young couple getting a formal "stamp of approval" and would no longer "live in sin". At Nagib's specific request, Professor Jack Chen was the guest of honor and informally even filled the role of the groom's father. The professor was getting ready to collect his retirement pension from NMSU and was looking forward to move to the Pacific coast and continue life as a consultant without any teaching responsibilities. Chen called for a toast honoring the young couple and wished good health, a happy life together and prosperity. He proudly mentioned the fact that although Nagib was originally a Palestinian and he himself had been an Israeli both were now loyal US citizens and living proof that there could be a chance for peace between their two nations. Although some cynics thought that moving millions of Israelis and Palestinians to the United States was not a practical solution, the small crowd applauded and Nagib's face lit up with a big smile, but inwardly he felt uncomfortable for the planned betrayal of his mentor.
After the wedding ceremony Alia and Nagib travelled to Honolulu for a short honeymoon. Nagib felt that he could fully trust Alia with his real objective, knowing full well that as his wife she could not testify against him, even if she wanted to do so. He was not surprised at her subdued reaction — she said that she now knew him well enough to realize that he was after something really big, not just promotion to a managerial position in the Lab. She emphasized that she would not do anything against the United States that gave her parents financial and physical security and a chance to a better life but would willingly participate in a plan that would hurt Israel that had been so bad for the Palestinian people and humiliated her personally. She said that she thought that he would be indebted to Professor Chen who did so much for him during his studies at NMSU and helped get a good job after his graduation. Nagib said that he worked very hard for his Ph. D. and that Chen benefited from his efforts no less than he did, and in any case Chen no longer lived in Israel or even considered himself as an Israeli patriot, so he had no qualms about inflicting destruction on Israel. Alia realized that he was really agitated and told him that he could confide in her.
Nagib then told her about his turning point with regard to how he felt about the United States. He said that as a Muslim, not a religious fanatic just someone who was born as a simple Sunni Muslim, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 allegedly to disarm Iraq of atomic, biological and chemical weapons was an insult to Islam. But what really offended him deeply was the treatment Saddam Hussein received after he was captured, especially when a US paramedic wearing latex gloves probed his mouth with a flashlight — and this degrading scene was recorded on camera and displayed repeatedly on global television and all networks. He said that even the worst serial murderers were not treated like this, as long as they were not Arabs. That was the moment he understood that he will never be considered as an equal in the US and vowed to avenge this affront to his people and co-religionists. He told her that he had secretly named his plan Adrestia. When Alia asked him for the meaning of this word he said that in Greek mythology Adrestia was the goddess of revolt, just retribution, equilibrium and balance between good and evil and often portrayed as handmaiden of Nemesis, the famous goddess of revenge. He added that the presence of foreign non-Muslim forces, he used the term modern Crusaders, on sacred Arab soil like Saudi Arabia with its holy places, and Jewish control of Jerusalem (Al Quds, he said) was unacceptable.
When Nagib laid out his plan to intercept a warhead during transport to or from the Lab she told him that there was no chance he could get away with it without a large armed force to back him up with the heist and then to smuggle the warhead out of the US and ship it to Israel. They discussed the matter and eventually came up with a few alternative plans. One plan called for obtaining a compact nuclear weapon from a US storage site in Europe. This would be viable if Nagib could get a proper security clearance and a pretext to visit the facilities in Europe as an expert in analytical chemistry and learn about the security arrangements and devise a way to steal or highjack a suitable item. This too, required the military and financial support of an organization not an act an individual could carry out. Another option was to purchase such a weapon from one of the republics of the former Soviet Union, but this had been attempted unsuccessfully by much better connected and well funded terrorist groups and allegedly even by some sovereign states.
After a few sleepless nights and numerous daytime discussions Nagib and Alia hit upon a new idea. This held a much lower physical risk to them and no use of armed force — get hold of classified designs for the most advanced nuclear weapons in the Lab and use them to barter with a state that already had primitive nuclear devices or even inefficient weapons. They would hand over the advanced designs in return for a primitive device, even for an improvised nuclear device (IND). They could even make a demand that the IND would be delivered in an innocuous form in Israel, or at a site from which it could easily be shipped there. In order to this they needed to gain access to the highly classified advanced designs and copy them.