“Just be right still now. Got this gun onya. Don’t you move none or you won’t never get outta this crick bottom alive.”
The mountain characters in the movie Deliverance crossed Warfield’s mind. He calculated the movement he would have to make in order to disarm the gunman in a single continuous thrust. Since he was lying on his right arm, he had to rotate 180 degrees before he could make contact. The blanket would slow him down. It was risky, but Warfield decided it was the lesser of risks. He figured this man to be a farmer or rancher, who likely would hesitate before shooting another human being, but Fleming in her nakedness would be tempting to any perpetrator. He cursed himself for getting into such a compromising position. No weapon, completely undressed even. And out in the open. The only thing he had going for him was surprise, if he moved quickly enough.
He gave Fleming a silent shush in the muted light that filtered through the blanket and waited for the gun barrel to touch him again for position, in case the gunman had moved. It had been no more than five seconds since the gunman first spoke when the gun poked Warfield again in the same spot. His muscles flexed into the ready position.
“That somebody in there with you?”
That was Warfield’s cue. He spun and catapulted himself sideways to the position he calculated the gunman occupied. His arm caught and deflected a long gun barrel and he kicked the man, who reeled backwards. First thing he saw was the shotgun hitting the ground, then the startled gunman a few feet away — on his back and scrambling to reach it. Warfield beat him to it and rammed the gun against the gunman’s throat.
It was only then that Warfield realized he was an old man, perhaps in his eighties. He wore overalls and a baseball cap bearing a Skoal logo.
Before Warfield could say anything he heard Fleming’s voice from the rock behind him. “Mr. Whitney? Oh my God! Is that you, Mr. Whitney?”
Whitney had wasted no time leaving the area but Warfield was disgusted with himself for getting into such a vulnerable position. He finished dressing and looked at Fleming.
“What the hell’s he doing here, Fleming?”
Despite her embarrassment Fleming hadn’t stopped laughing and was still fastening the last snap on her shirt. “He used to own this land. Nine hundred acres in all. My husband bought most of it from him before we married, but Mr. Whitney still has his home and a few acres across the creek. Since Tom died, Mr. Whitney sort of takes it on himself to investigate any unusual happenings on my property that he sees.”
Warfield grudgingly smiled. “So he thinks that’s unusual — you naked on that flat rock?”
“Au contraire, colonel. I think it was you dressed out in nothing but socks that turned him on.”
A few days later Warfield’s cell phone rang as he exited the parking lot at the Pentagon. He had met with Lieutenant General Robert T. Hendricks, the army’s principal military advisor to Lone Elm. One of Hendricks’ responsibilities was to keep Lone Elm stocked with a ready supply of people to train, which meant his staff had to track and maintain the files of the recruits designated for Lone Elm training as they processed through State Department and other filters up the line. Hendricks had approved the required number of candidates for the next Lone Elm class, which would begin in a month, and invited Warfield in to review them. They discussed the latest military scuttlebutt for an hour over lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon going through the files. Warfield got fidgety at long lunches, but such was the lubricant that kept the machines working.
It was Macc Macclenny calling from Lone Elm. “Got a recruit here says he works for a general over in Russia you’re supposed to know. General Antonov? Sent you a message.”
“Speak English?”
“With an accent!”
“Maybe because he’s Russian, Macc! Put him on.”
“It’s a letter. Says his orders are to deliver it personally.”
As Warfield drove west toward Lone Elm he thought of the nuclear assessment conference in Moscow where he’d met Antonov. It was one of many meetings with the goal of containing former Soviet nukes during the years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most of the Western nations were represented there. The U.S. team included a CIA rep, someone from State, and military brass including Warfield, a young officer with high hopes at the time.
At an official dinner, Warfield happened to be seated next to Aleksei Antonov, a Russian general in his early forties. At first there was no serious conversation but toward the end of the evening Antonov, speaking quietly in English amid loud toasts, cigar smoke and war stories all around, told Warfield he’d heard of him in KGB briefings before the breakup. The general was concerned about the nuclear material stashed around the Soviet Union. It was an easy target. Russia had too many pressing problems to focus on any one of them in particular, even nukes, and they had lost control of the other Soviet bloc nations who also had nuclear stockpiles. None of that was news to Warfield even twenty years ago, but he had a gut feeling Antonov had more than the official bureaucratic interest in the problem. It was personal.
“Retiring one of these years,” Antonov had told Warfield, “and then I will be in a better position to work on this problem. I can be more effective than the clumsy politicians and apparatchiks.”
Warfield had let it drop that night. He had no authority to pursue anything like that off the record but he invited Antonov to notify him of any development the general thought he should know about. Warfield discussed it with his army superiors as they flew back to the U.S. but they dismissed it as the voice of Russian vodka. Nothing more had come of it since that night years ago.
When Warfield got to Lone Elm, the Russian — tall, blond, about twenty-eight — stood tall and stiff as he shoved a giant hand out to the American. “Lieutenant Aleksandr Nosenko, sir.”
“Lieutenant.”
“General Aleksei Antonov sends you this message. He had it delivered to me at the airport in Moscow before I boarded my flight.”
Warfield took the gray envelope from Nosenko. “You work with the general?” He peeled open the envelope as he spoke and looked for some sign of authenticity on the stationery.
“Indirectly.”
“He sent you here?”
“The general is retired from the military but his opinion is given much weight. It was his request to the army that I come here for training.”
“So you didn’t want to come?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
Warfield smiled and elbowed his shoulder. “You’ll like it at Lone Elm, Lieutenant. Sergeant Macclenny here will see to that.”
Warfield took the letter to his office. It was hand-written in English on expensive-looking paper. He closed the door and read it standing by the window.
It was dated yesterday. “Colonel Warfield. I have learned one of our physicists has been recruited to transfer quantity of bomb-grade uranium to foreign agents in the Middle East. If my source is accurate, as I suspect, the quantity of uranium exceeds that used in the Hiroshima bomb. This physicist has not been identified, but is believed to have worked at Kremlyov. I am quite sure the Russian authorities will not deal with this quickly enough. Will inform you as the situation develops.” Antonov’s signature and email address followed.
Kremlyov! Warfield had studied the ultra-secretive Soviet installation formerly known as Arzamas-16 during the Cold War. It was the Russians’ first and most important nuclear design center, built in 1946 on the site of a 200-year-old monastery in the city of Sarov, which then disappeared from all official maps. It was Arzamas-60 in the beginning, which by Russian postal designation meant it was sixty kilometers from the city of Arzamas. In their demand for secrecy the Russians changed its designation to Arzamas–16. They sent their top physics graduates there to work.