The Silent Man Read online

  “Fine,” Yusuf said. When the game began, Yusuf pummeled him with an opening Nasiji had never seen before. After only an hour, Nasiji had no choice but to concede. Yusuf put the board away with a satisfied smirk.

  “Don’t we need to go upstairs, talk to the captain?” In fact it was only 10:15.

  “Sayyid, you promised.”

  “Where do you want me to start?”

  “How do we blow them up, Sayyid? We don’t have the codes.”

  “Strange,” Nasiji said. “Everyone’s obsessed with the codes. Not just you. The Russians would have told the whole world what we’d done if they thought we had them. Every police, every customs agent, every soldier from Moscow to Washington would be looking for us. Instead they’re keeping quiet. It’s our biggest advantage.”

  “So do we have the codes?”

  “We don’t have the codes. We have something more important.”

  “What could be more important than the codes?”

  “The bombs. What’s the hardest part of building a nuclear weapon, Yusuf?”

  Yusuf paused, seeming to wonder if Nasiji was asking a trick question. Finally he said, “Getting the stuff, the nuclear material.”

  “Correct. The design is easy. The uranium is the hard part. But these bombs have all the uranium we need.”

  “So we put our own explosives around the bombs and set them off?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.” Now that Yusuf had made him open up, Nasiji was enjoying the chance to explain what he’d worked out for himself and kept secret for so long. “You understand the basics of how these bombs work?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Inside, they have uranium and plutonium. Those are atoms, heavy ones, and unstable. If they break up, they release little particles called neutrons. Then those neutrons hit other atoms and split them up, too. That releases more neutrons. It’s a chain reaction. And all along, the splitting up of the atoms is releasing energy, too. That makes the explosion.”

  Yusuf looked at the crates. “But they don’t go off on their own?”

  “No. To start the chain reaction, you need to smash the bomb together.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated, but when you push the bomb together you increase the chances that the neutrons will crash into atoms and split them apart. Everything happens very quickly. After just a few cycles of splitting, so many neutrons are loose that the reaction is uncontrollable. It doesn’t stop until the power of the explosion tears apart the uranium at the core and the bomb destroys itself.”

  “And this takes a few seconds?”

  “No, much faster. More quickly than you can imagine, a fraction of a second. But in that time we release tremendous energy and radiation. The equivalent of thousands of tons of explosive, millions of kilograms, much bigger than any conventional bomb.”

  “Millions of kilograms?”

  “Just so. Imagine one truck filled with regular bombs. One of these bombs is like a thousand of those. And that would be a small one.”

  Yusuf’s head swiveled between Nasiji and the crates in the corner. “And we have the material. So we can make our own bomb.”

  “Correct. There should be more than enough uranium in these two bombs to make one of our own.”

  “But I thought you said these are hard to make.”

  “Some bombs are easier than others. These bombs, it’s complicated and I’ll explain more to you when it’s time to disassemble them, they actually each have two bombs inside. Conventional explosive, plastic, sets off the first bomb. Then the first bomb sets off the second. It’s very elegant, this design, and efficient. All the bombs today use it. But the explosive charges on the first bomb have to be placed perfectly and blown up in precise order. Or else the nuclear explosion won’t happen. The bomb will fizzle.” Nasiji said the last word in English.

  “Fizzle?”

  “The pieces don’t come together quickly enough. And then it splits apart before the chain reaction can really take off. It still blows up, but with much less power. Our bomb will be a different design, what’s called a gun type. Instead of a single ball of uranium surrounded by explosives, we split uranium into two pieces—”

  “In half?”

  “Not exactly. The two sides have different shapes. One is a hollow cylinder, like a piston in a car engine. The other is the right size to fill the cylinder exactly.”

  Yusuf smirked. “Male and female.”

  “Sure. We put the two sides about two meters apart. We fire one side at the other with the Spear. They smash together. The chain reaction takes over. And—boom.”

  “No fizzle.”

  “No fizzle. The one the United States used to blow up Hiroshima, the Little Boy, was this kind. The Americans were so confident in the design, they never tested it. They just dropped it. And it worked.”

  Yusuf was silent. He rubbed his fingers on his temples like a student grappling with algebra for the first time. “Hmm . . .” he finally said. “So we’ll take all the uranium in these two warheads, the four bombs inside, and put it together into one of our own.”

  “Yes, my friend. Just so. Our bomb won’t be as big as either of these bombs, but it will still be big enough.”

  “How big?”

  “Inshallah, as big as the one in Hiroshima. Fifteen kilotons or so. That bomb killed one hundred thousand people, vaporized a square kilometer.”

  “But . . . I still don’t get one part. We’re going to take these bombs apart, saw them open, to get to the uranium inside. What if they have, you know, traps?”

  “They might. We won’t know until we get them open. Nobody’s ever done this before. But remember, these bombs have been designed so they don’t go off even if they’re damaged in a fire or a plane crash. They’re very stable. And even if there are traps, I think I have a way to deal with them.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ll have to win another chess game.”

  Yusuf reached for the board, but Nasiji waved him off. “Not now. Let’s get to the wheelhouse.”

  NASIJI DIDN’T KNOW MUCH about ships, but even he could see that the Juno was a well-run vessel. It was twenty years old, but it looked newer. Its crew washed down its corridors and communal areas every morning. Even so, ever since the coast of Britain had disappeared behind them the previous week, Nasiji hadn’t felt comfortable. He could never quite forget the water that surrounded them.

  “Can you believe anyone would do this for pleasure?” he said to Yusuf as they climbed the stairs that led to the wheelhouse. “Sail, I mean?”

  “Why not? All those big yachts floating around. Someone must like it.”

  “Not me.”

  “I figured that out by now.” Nasiji could hear the smirk in Yusuf’s voice.

  The wheelhouse was empty when they arrived, except for the captain, Haxhi. He was Albanian, and of course Muslim, a squat man with wide legs and a thick chest. A low center of gravity came in handy on these waves, Nasiji thought.

  “Gentlemen, how are you? A bit green.”

  “Fine.” Nasiji found himself irritated that his seasickness had become a shipwide joke. “Where is everyone?”

  “Sometimes I like to be up here alone.” Haxhi showed them a map of the North Atlantic mounted on the back wall of the wheelhouse. “I have good news and bad news. First, the good news. We’re on schedule for tonight. Our current location—”

  Haxhi pointed to a spot east-southeast of Newfoundland, an L-shaped Canadian province that jutted into the Atlantic. They planned to bring the crates ashore in a cove on the southeastern coast of Newfoundland, near Trepassey, a village of nine hundred, really not much more than a few dozen houses clustered against the ocean and the big gray sky.

  “We’re about four hundred kilometers from the landing point. We should be off the coast in twelve hours. Just before midnight. After that, another ninety minutes.”

  Nasiji reached for the satellite phone in his jacket. He didn’t
like using these. They were easy for the Americans to track. But he’d bought the phone only a few weeks before and only used it twice. And as far as he knew, no one was looking for him. Anyway, this was a call he had to make. He punched in an American number with a 716 area code—upstate New York—and a few seconds later the connection clicked in.

  “Hello?”

  “Doctor?”

  “Nam.”

  “We’ll be in tonight. Around one a.m. You have the location.”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. We’ll see you tonight.”

  “Inshallah.”

  “Inshallah.”

  Nasiji ended the call and tucked away the phone. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “You forgot the bad news.”

  “What could that possibly be?”

  Haxhi motioned to the glass windows at the front of the wheelhouse. In the distance, heavy clouds, more black than gray, filled the horizon. “Those.”

  NASIJI WAS MISERABLE for the next few hours. He stayed in the wheelhouse for a while with the captain and Yusuf. Finally he staggered back to his cabin, where he filled the bucket beside his bed with vomit—twice. Haidar, the steward, came by with Dramamine, which Nasiji accepted, and Xanax, which he turned down. Better to suffer than to put himself in a haze. But when he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, his dreams were black poems, unfinished stanzas that always ended at the same place, the overpass where his family had died.

  Just before nightfall, Yusuf rejoined him in the cabin. The Juno’s crew was entirely Muslim, and the call to prayer came over the ship’s intercom five times daily, as Muslim law required. At sunset, the call for the fifth and final daily prayer—the mugrib—came, and Yusuf knelt on the floor of the cabin. Nasiji watched.

  “You didn’t want to pray?” Yusuf said when he was done.

  “I didn’t want to throw up.”

  “Why do you think Allah’s chosen us for this mission, Sayyid?” Yusuf had never raised the question before. It seemed to be as close as he could come to questioning his faith, or the morality of what they were doing, Nasiji thought.

  “Because he knew we were strong enough to carry it off.” The easy answer.

  “Does he speak to you?”

  “Do I look like a prophet, Yusuf?”

  “But you’re certain.”

  “Yes. We’re his instrument.” If divine sanction would soothe Yusuf, then Nasiji would give it to him. Let Yusuf think what he wished, as long as his hands stayed steady. Nasiji didn’t need God’s voice in his ear to know why he’d undertaken this quest.

  “Do you imagine what it will be like when we set it off?”

  “Of course.”

  “Does it scare you? Killing all those people.”

  “No. Not for this life or the next.” This was true. “Never forget it was the Americans who set off the first bomb. You know the Enola Gay?”

  “What is that?”

  “The plane the Americans used to drop that first bomb on Hiroshima. The pilot who flew it was called Paul. He lived a long time, until he was more than ninety. One day I saw an interview he gave. They asked him if he felt sad about what he’d done.”

  “And was he?”

  “Not at all.” Nasiji tried to remember exactly what Paul Tibbets had said. “He said, ‘We’ve never fought a war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. That’s their tough luck for being there.’”

  AFTER NIGHTFALL the waves lessened and Nasiji slept, waking to a light tapping on their cabin door. “The captain says it’s time,” Haidar said. Nasiji’s watch read 23:30.

  When they reached the wheelhouse, Nasiji saw that the rain had stopped. But thudding clouds covered the sky and the black waves beneath them were topped with white foam. “Ready for the little boat?” Haxhi said.

  “How long will it take?”

  “Ninety minutes, maybe. It’s twenty kilometers”—twelve miles.

  “We can’t get closer?”

  “There’s not much chance the Canadians will notice us here. Closer in . . .”

  “Fine.”

  “It won’t be the most pleasant hour of your life, but you’ll be fine. Believe it or not, this is average weather for the North Atlantic in January.”

  “Who’s bringing us in?”

  “Me and Ebban”—the first mate—“I told you you’d be safe and you will. At least on the water. Land is another story.”

  “That part I’ll handle.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  The lifeboat was lashed with cables to the freighter’s port side, a high-sided steel boat, painted black, with a small outboard engine. Haxhi and his men had already pulled off the heavy green plastic tarp that covered it and laid the warhead crates inside. They were wrapped in plastic and strapped to the sides of the boat with thick ropes. As Nasiji watched, they wrapped the long SPG crate in plastic and wedged it snugly under the lifeboat’s benches. The fourth and smallest crate, the one that held the rounds, they also wrapped in plastic and tucked under the front bench.

  Nasiji stepped forward gingerly toward the lifeboat, eyeing the black waves below. He could hardly believe that this little boat, six meters long, would get them to shore. Haxhi handed him a life jacket, orange and battered. He snapped it over his windbreaker. A blast of harsh Atlantic wind cut through his gloves and sweater and settled mercilessly into his lungs.

  “Step back and keep clear,” Haxhi said.

  Nasiji stepped back and Haxhi yelled “Now!” to Ebban, the first mate, another Albanian, who stood beside a spool of cable attached to the side of the Juno’s superstructure. Ebban turned the handle on the spool. The cable, which was wound through braces attached to the side of the lifeboat, played out. Inch by inch, the lifeboat slid toward the edge of the Juno as Haxhi guided it toward a gap in the steel railing.

  Bang! The lifeboat cleared the side of the deck and slipped down, clanging against the side of the Juno. Holding the railing with his right hand, Haxhi reached back with his left to Nasiji. “All right, two big steps and in.”

  “Jump?”

  “You can’t miss.”

  Nasiji took Haxhi’s hand, stepped through the gap, and fell—

  Into the boat. He regained his feet and pulled himself forward to the front bench. Yusuf followed. Then Ebban and finally Haxhi.

  “Go,” Haxhi shouted back to Haidar, who had taken over the spool from Ebban. The boat lurched downward, foot by foot, into the water below. It landed with a huge splash and rocked sideways, clanging hard against the Juno. Ebban loosened the cables and freed it. In the back, Haxhi started the outboard. The engine grunted twice and then kicked into action. Haxhi pushed the motor down and steered the boat away.

  The black outline of the freighter quickly disappeared behind them. The slap of the waves and the hum of the outboard were the only sounds. After about twenty minutes Nasiji saw the first sign of land—a light, faintly visible through the clouds, tracking from right to left before him, disappearing, then returning. On each pass, the light was slightly stronger. A lighthouse. Proof they hadn’t left solid ground entirely behind.

  Nasiji was feeling almost comfortable. Then the wind picked up and the clouds thickened and the light before them disappeared. The waves rose and slapped against the side of the boat. One broke over and caught Nasiji with a flume of water so cold that for a few seconds he could hardly breathe. Snow began to blow sideways across the boat, leaving them nearly blind. Nasiji huddled low in the center of the boat, one hand on each of the crates.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “It happens. It’ll pass.” But Haxhi’s voice had a new tension. Haxhi muttered something to Ebban. The first mate moved to the front of the boat and began to chatter at Haxhi about the direction of the waves and the wind. Haxhi tacked aggressively, running the boat against the side of the waves instead of coming at them directly. With no light, he checked the GPS frequently now.

  The wind picked up more, then gusted suddenly—<
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  And a big wave, the biggest Nasiji had seen yet, swept in from the port side—

  And the boat rocked hard and Nasiji thought they might capsize—

  And the crate beside Nasiji’s left foot began to wobble—

  And as the boat swung up and bounced down again, somehow the crate came loose from its ropes—

  And Nasiji tried to steady it but he couldn’t keep hold of it and another wave crashed into the boat and knocked him down and he had to forget the crate and wrap his arms around the cold metal seat as tightly as he could to keep from being thrown out—

  And the crate tumbled, loose now, the wood crashing against the boat’s steel, and rolled sideways and perched for a fraction of a second on the gunwale of the boat—

  And then fell out as another wave knocked into them—and splashed into the water and sank—

  “NO!” Nasiji yelled—

  And as he did, he heard Ebban scream “Allah!”—

  And twisted his head forward to see Ebban clinging to the front of the boat, losing his grip—

  And falling into the water.

  JUST AS SUDDENLY as it had hit, the worst of the squall seemed to pass. The boat steadied. The waves grabbed Ebban and pulled him away. He fought, trying desperately to make his way toward them as the waves thrashed him.

  “Here!” he screamed to them. “Here!”

  Haxhi swung the tiller sideways to turn the boat. Nasiji stepped toward the back of the boat and reached for his arm.

  “What—”

  “We’ve lost one already. We can’t afford it.”

  “Help me!” Ebban’s voice was high and terrified. “Please!”

  “He’s my first mate,” Haxhi said uncertainly. “I’ve known him—”

  “He’ll freeze to death even if we can rescue him,” Nasiji said. Yusuf inched toward Haxhi, one hand on the long curved dagger that had so frightened poor Grigory Farzadov.

  Haxhi took one last glimpse at Ebban and turned away. “God forgive us, then,” Haxhi said. “All of us.” He turned the lifeboat toward shore and gunned the engine.