Traffic was monitored twenty-five miles out from the center. Sensors warned of unauthorized visitors anywhere near the compound, and multiple walls and fences patrolled by armed guards and dogs protected the buildings that housed the nuclear materials.
Kremlyov was self-sustaining. Residents’ clothing and food were produced within. Staff members were not often permitted to leave the city even for vacations. Now, years after the end of the Cold War, despite being given back its original name of Sarov, security remained high because of the sensitive materials stored there.
When the Cold War ended, fifty-thousand weapons specialists from Kremlyov and other nuclear cities went overnight from the status of Russian elite to unemployed and forgotten. Workers who hadn’t been paid in months demonstrated in the streets. A joint effort by the European Union, Japan, Russia and the U.S. helped create peacetime projects to employ them, with some success. Still, there was real concern some scientists would be lured into the lucrative black market that existed for their skills. In recent times, under Vladimir Putin, Russia had downplayed the importance of the project.
The nuclear materials remained under tight security and the scientists’ travels were monitored and limited. Any who might be tempted to sell out had to consider the possibility that their customer might kill them to protect their secret when their services were no longer needed. Yet Warfield knew there were those who would do it for the right money. Even with all the fences and dogs and elaborate security systems, some of them had the right keys and combinations to get to the nuclear material. A small package of weapons-grade uranium went a long way. The quantity equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb that killed four-hundred-thousand people would fit inside a business briefcase with room to spare.
Warfield read Antonov’s note again and thought about Joplan. Warfield now thought it not unreasonable to connect him with the smuggling from the Soviet nuke stockpile General Antonov informed him of. But with Joplan dead he would never know.
After situating Lieutenant Nosenko, Macc caught Warfield in the Lone Elm parking lot as he was leaving. “How ’bout a beer?” He nodded in the direction of the It’ll Do Lounge, across the highway from the Lone Elm entrance.
Warfield looked at his watch. Fleming was expecting him on this rare occasion that he could get home at a decent hour, and he also had to make a phone call, but the It’ll Do was tempting. For a long time Warfield was a regular at the place — country music, cold beer, Toni the sexy bartender who always had a trivia question floating around, good dance floor, single women there to meet the regulars as well as the trainees from Lone Elm — but his frequency dropped off after he met Fleming and started going to Hardscrabble after work instead of hanging out. Sometime later he reluctantly admitted to himself that the It’ll Do had become a destructive daily routine for him. Over a period of time the evenings grew into early mornings. A couple of beers grew into six or eight. Jack Daniels on the rocks replaced the beers. More than once he had woken up with a girl whose name he couldn’t remember. His daily five-mile run became hit-or-miss. Now when he looked back on those days he thanked God he pulled out of it before it ruined him. And Fleming. She didn’t cause his change — change comes from within — but in her he saw a dimension of life he had almost lost.
“Can’t go,” he told Macc.
Macc gave him a smile of pity and flapped his arms like a crowing rooster.
As Warfield drove away, he saw Macc in the rear-view mirror still laughing at his boss, whom he was classifying as henpecked.
On the drive to Hardscrabble he left a message for Earl Fullwood at the FBI to call him. Soon after he arrived at Fleming’s, FBI Deputy Director Rachel Gilbert returned his call, without explaining why Fullwood himself didn’t call. Warfield knew of her but they had never met. Gilbert said she knew who he was as well.
Warfield gave her the gist of Antonov’s letter and explained how he knew the general.
“I’m familiar with this intelligence,” Gilbert said. “It came in today.”
Warfield was impressed. “And?”
“We’re considering it.”
“What does that mean?”
“Whether it warrants any action at this time, for instance.”
Warfield paused for a moment. “Help me out here. Do you mean you’re trying to decide whether the intelligence is valid, or that you believe the intelligence but don’t know what to do about it?”
Gilbert paused. Warfield could hear her breathing pattern on the phone and knew she was not pleased. He had dared question the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“Colonel Warfield, the Bureau has this intelligence and we’re quite capable of determining the best course of action. And maybe you aren’t aware that, uh…is this a secure phone?”
“It is.”
“Maybe you don’t realize this is a dry run we’re talking about.”
“By that you mean that you believe the Russian will travel the route without the nukes, and if nobody seems to notice, he’ll do it again with the real stuff?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Well, if I’m a nuke smuggler that’s what I want the FBI to think.”
“Don’t you think this Russian believes he can figure out what we will do, and adjust his activities accordingly?” she said.
“I think he’s smart enough to convince you of what he wants you to believe.”
Gilbert seemed to think about that for a while and said, “Colonel Warfield, I’m not going to discuss this with you. I understand you have — you had—a job to do for the president, but Director Fullwood…” She stopped mid-sentence.
“Fullwood…?”
“Sorry. Nothing.”
“What about Fullwood, Ms. Gilbert?”
She paused, then said, “He’s made it clear we will have no communication with you.”
Warfield mulled over the conversation for a moment and went into the den where Fleming was catching up on medical journals. He knew she had held dinner for two hours.
“Sorry, Babe, about dinner.”
“Still warm.” She studied him. “Couldn’t avoid hearing the tone of that call. Something to drink first?”
Warfield nodded. Fleming poured herself a glass of wine and opened a bottle of Sam Adams for him. She set out chips and a “spinach thing” she had made and sat down next to him on the sofa.
“Something coming down?”
Warfield was never careless with sensitive information even if it didn’t have a security classification, but it wasn’t unusual for him to confide in Fleming. She knew the critical nature of secrecy. He told her about the note from Antonov and the conversation with Rachel Gilbert and then changed the subject. It wasn’t worth talking about, at least not until the situation developed more.
After eating dinner in virtual silence they watched TV for awhile, then at eleven-fifteen Fleming announced she was going to turn in. She kissed him on the lips. “Wake me when you come to bed.”
Warfield lowered the lights in the den and sat in silence for the next half hour. He’d spent many good evenings at the old ranch house with Fleming. Always outside in the warm months, but there had been plenty of roaring fires in the huge fireplace on snowy nights. He reclined on the sofa and looked up at the rough-hewn beams supporting the roof and wondered how many others had done the same in the lifetime of the grand old house.