The Silent Man jw-3 Page 4

  “Evening,” said Grigory. “How are you?”

  “As usual, thanks. Yourself?”

  “This beastly cold. Looking forward to spring.”

  “Already?”

  “Today and every day,” Grigory said. He remembered Mikhail and stifled a shiver. He’d condemned his neighbor to a frightful death with the same four words.

  Grigory had arrived for his shift early, as always. He busied himself with paperwork for a few minutes before walking down the hall to the office of Garry Pliakov, the deputy manager of operations. Pliakov oversaw the handling of all special nuclear material — the phrase that both Russians and Americans used for plutonium-239 and uranium- 235, the two atoms that formed the core of nuclear weapons.

  The Russian nuclear bureaucracy still hadn’t gone completely digital; Pliakov’s office was thick with personnel reports, orders from Rosatom’s headquarters, details of convoys arriving and departing, the papers neatly organized in folders on the shelves around his desk.

  “Wasn’t a convoy due today? I don’t see the paperwork,” Grigory said.

  “Those bastards are late.”

  Yusuf had kept his promise. Grigory wasn’t surprised. “What, they stopped for a drink?”

  “They say an accident blocked the highway. They’re hoping to arrive by ten o’clock. You know what that means. A cold night for you, unless Oleg”—the night manager at the plant—“decides to stay sober.”

  Pliakov smiled. He was a decent man who invited Grigory to his apartment for a drink once a year or so. For a moment, Grigory’s resolve wavered. Could he really betray all these men he’d worked with for years? Then he remembered the way that Yusuf had torn apart the orange.

  “No need for Oleg,” Grigory said. “I’ll do it.”

  “Of course. Check the cucumber crates and then into the north warehouse.”

  The special area had two storage depots. The north one was a low concrete building that held a couple hundred warheads that were still in active service but had been brought to Mayak for repair. The south warehouse was larger and dug deep belowground. It provided permanent storage for decommissioned and obsolete warheads. Though if the new cold war really got hot, they could always be put back into service.

  “I know the procedure. I signed one in a couple of years ago.”

  “Good. I’ll send over the codes in a few minutes, before I go.” In yet another security precaution, the codes to open the cucumber crates — Russian jargon for the boxes that held the warheads — were not carried on the weapons convoys. Instead, they were sent to Mayak over the secure private network that linked Russia’s nuclear facilities. Even if terrorists attacked the convoy and stole the boxes, they wouldn’t be able to unlock them and would have to cut them open to get to the warheads inside.

  “All right. See you tomorrow, Garry.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  NO NIGHT HAD EVER PASSED so slowly. Over and over, Grigory’s eyes migrated upward, to the clock over his desk. Each time they did, he was shocked at how slowly its hands had moved. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Two minutes. Through his narrow window, he saw that snow had begun to fall.

  At nine o’clock he wandered down the hall to check on Oleg. The night manager lay on the couch in his office, a bottle of vodka half hidden under a cushion, his shirt untucked and pants unbuttoned, his potbelly rising and falling with each breath. When Grigory walked in, his eyes fluttered open and he treated Grigory to the patronizing smile he’d given Grigory a thousand times before. The smile that said, maybe vodka has turned my liver to rot, but I’ve got a wife and family waiting for me and you go home every morning to nothing but your own empty hand. Or maybe Grigory was projecting. Maybe Oleg was just thinking of his next drink. Even so, Grigory wouldn’t miss that smile.

  Oleg mumbled something.

  “Yes?”

  “The lights,” Oleg said. “Make yourself useful for a change. Turn them off. And close the door. I don’t want you looking at me. What if you get hungry?”

  “Of course, boss.”

  Grigory turned off the lights and went back to his office. When he checked again a few minutes later, he heard Oleg’s heavy snores. No, Oleg wouldn’t be a problem.

  Ten o’clock. Weren’t they supposed to arrive by now? Where were they? He walked over to the security center, a windowless room where guards monitored the plant’s alarms and cameras.

  Tajid nodded as Grigory walked in. He was fiddling with a screen that had gone dark. Monitors broke all the time, but the failure of this particular screen was no accident. It was one of three that watched the north weapons depot. Without it, the men in here would be partly blinded to what was happening in the warehouse.

  “Hello, cousin,” Tajid said. He looked perfectly normal. The room looked perfectly normal. Another endless night at Mayak. Grigory still couldn’t quite believe what he was about to do. He pointed to the darkened monitor.

  “You broke it watching pornos?”

  “We don’t need pornos,” said Arkady Merin, the senior night security officer. “We use our imagination. And sometimes Tatu.”

  Against all regulations, a fat black tabby lurked in the security office. Two winters before, a guard had found the cat in the special area during a blizzard. In her search for shelter, she’d somehow gotten through the electrified fences. She wasn’t wearing a tag, and she ought to have been put down. But Arkady had taken a shine to her and made her the mascot for the guards. He named her Tatu, after a pair of Russian lesbian singers popular a few years back.

  “Anything happening?”

  “Quiet as a virgin in a whorehouse,” Arkady said. The perimeter and inner gates were staffed around the clock, but the operations center emptied out at night. This evening, only three men were on duty — Arkady, Tajid, and Marat, a fifty-something guard with a gritty, phlegmy smoker’s cough that for the last few weeks had gotten worse.

  “When’s that dammed convoy due?”

  “Eleven, they’re saying.”

  “Another delay?”

  “One of the BTRs had engine trouble.”

  “They’re cursed. And such a night for it.”

  “Could be worse. Could be February.” Arkady turned back to his monitors.

  “Call me when they arrive,” Grigory said. “Our esteemed boss is dreaming up new and better ways to manage and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Dreaming up? Such wit, Grigory,” Arkady smiled.

  Grigory left. Hanging around wouldn’t look natural. He needed to look natural. But back in his office, he couldn’t work. He gave up trying and sat at his desk, watching the second hand tick. He knew what he was about to do was wrong, beyond wrong, and yet he couldn’t stop himself. He never would have guessed he could break the rules so easily. Perhaps every man carried a beast inside him.

  A few years back, a serial killer had worked his way through Chelyabinsk, killing dozens of prostitutes before one escaped from his truck and called the police. The killer — Grigory couldn’t recall his name, but he was an electrician, he’d strangled his victims with thick black cords — grinned his way through his trial, and when the judge asked him if he had anything to say, any apologies to offer, he shook his head. “You’re lucky you caught me, for I would have gone on forever,” he said. “You can’t imagine how it feels.”

  At this moment, Grigory thought he could.

  THE PHONE RANG. “They’re here. At the main gate.”

  “Thanks, Arkady.”

  Grigory grabbed his coat and the paperwork he would need, including the single sheet of paper that held the codes to unlock the warhead boxes. Easy, he told himself. No rush. The delivery was a minor break from routine, nothing more. He walked slowly to the security office. “Come on, Tajid. Enough pornos tonight. Let’s greet our visitors.”

  The first test. If Arkady raised a stink about the fact that Grigory had asked his cousin to be his partner on the delivery, they’d fail right away. But Grigory didn’t expect Arkady to object. He
wouldn’t want to go himself, and sending old Marat into the cold would be callous. Sure enough, Arkady was feeding Tatu and hardly looked up.

  “Have fun, Tajid,” he said.

  “A real humanitarian, you are.” Tajid grabbed his coat and gloves and followed his cousin out.

  First test passed.

  OUTSIDE, the freezing wind hit Grigory full in the face. The snow was still falling, lightly now, covering the ground with a thin white rime.

  Grigory was wearing a heavy down jacket and a sweater and woolen gloves, but he hadn’t bothered with proper boots or a hat tonight, and the wind found his feet and face and attacked them. Human beings weren’t meant to live this way. Maybe for a year or two, but not decade after decade. Not their whole lives.

  Fortunately, the Volga started easily. Grigory had replaced the battery a few weeks before. Tajid and Grigory sat in silence for a moment, blowing on their hands, their breath filling the car. “No second thoughts, cousin?” Grigory said.

  “None. You?”

  “I’m not thinking at all.”

  “Probably that’s best.”

  Grigory put the Volga into gear and drove down the deserted avenue to the main gate. The convoy sat in a parking lot just inside the guard posts, the Ural trucks glowing under neon arc lights. The Volga looked like a toy beside the BTRs and Urals. Grigory parked beside the convoy and stepped out. A trim man wearing the single silver star of a major greeted him. Despite the cold, he wore only a thin wool coat and a hat with fur earflaps. He extended a hand.

  “Major Yuri Akilev.”

  “Grigory Farzadov. You’ve had a long trip.” Grigory’s heart was pounding, but his voice sounded normal.

  “The cards turn ugly and the bottles go dry,” Akilev said. “No reason to expect anything else.”

  “A man after my own heart,” Grigory said. “That’s it. A thousand years of history right there.”

  “Even so, I’d like to get my men inside.”

  Grigory pointed down the security fence at a squat two-story concrete building a few hundred yards away. “Our overflow barracks. You can send the BTRs and Tigers there while we unload.”

  “Is there food?”

  This major was a good commander, concerned about the welfare of his men, Grigory thought. “Not at this hour, but they’ll have hot showers and warm beds.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “But make sure you bring a couple of extra men with you to unload the crates.”

  Akilev passed along the order to his sergeant. A moment later, the armored personnel carriers and three of the Tigers rumbled off, leaving just Grigory’s Volga, the commander’s Tiger, and the four Urals that held the bombs.

  “Follow me.”

  Grigory stopped the Volga at the guard post that protected the entrance to the special area. The post hut was made of thick concrete blocks, hardly bigger than a tollbooth, and had entrances on both sides of the restricted zone. The guards inside the hut theoretically would be the last line of defense in case of an all-out assault on the plant. In reality, the hut was the most boring place to work at Mayak, especially at night, when the special area was locked down and empty. Between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m., the post was staffed by a single guard, who slept most of the shift.

  Through the thick window of the guardhouse, Grigory saw cheap black boots resting on a desk.

  “Who’s on duty tonight?” he said to Tajid.

  “Roster said Boris Hiterov.”

  “With the hair.”

  “Yes.”

  Boris Hiterov. A lifer. No better or worse than the average guard. With any luck, he’d have taken a couple of shots of vodka to help him sleep. Grigory cranked down his window. The second test was about to begin.

  BEEP! Grigory leaned on the Volga’s horn. Inside the hut, the boots kicked up with almost comic speed. Hiterov opened the window, just a crack. He was a big man, though not as big as Grigory, with dark brown hair that he wore up in a sort of pompadour. He was very proud of his hair.

  “Boris!” Grigory yelled. “We’re here.”

  A puzzled look settled on Hiterov’s face. “Who’s that?”

  “The convoy! Let us in, you damned fool!” The insults were key here. Grigory wanted to remind Hiterov of his place in the plant’s hierarchy.

  “Yes. But Grigory, you know the rule.”

  Indeed Grigory did. Even if he hadn’t, the black-lettered sign in front of him was clear. No private automobiles. Official vehicles only.

  “If you think I’m leaving this car and walking, you’ve drunk away the last of your brains.” The north warehouse was about three hundred yards away, not really a long walk, but the cold night was working to Grigory’s advantage.

  “Why don’t you ride with the convoy?”

  “The commander’s Tiger is full. Maybe you’d like me to sit on his lap.”

  “But if anyone finds out—”

  “No one will. Open the gate and go back to sleep, you wretch.”

  Hiterov slammed the window shut. The electrified gate slowly rolled back, its wheels screeching in the cold.

  Second test passed.

  TO KEEP AMERICAN SPY SATELLITES from seeing their exact locations, both the north and south warehouses had been concealed under metal sheds as big as airplane hangars. Grigory drove into the north shed now, followed by Akilev’s convoy. Inside, the shed was bright as a sunny afternoon, thanks to arc lights mounted high on its girders.

  The weapons depot, a windowless concrete building one hundred feet long and sixty feet wide, sat in the northeast corner of the shed. The entrance to the depot was a wide steel door with no visible locks or opening mechanism. Four surveillance cameras focused on it. A half-dozen others watched the rest of the shed. But the cameras couldn’t see everything, Grigory knew. He parked near the door to the shed, got out of his Volga, and turned to Akilev.

  “Have your trucks park here and unload the cucumber crates. I’m going to get you out of here as quickly as I can.” Grigory spoke firmly, as if he were the major’s superior officer. He had to be in control, give Akilev no room for questions. He felt sharp and strong, as if he’d burned through the first rapid-fire moves of a chess match and settled into the midgame. He’d arranged the board as he liked. Now he needed to press forward.

  “As you say.” Eager to get some sleep, Akilev’s men quickly unloaded the warhead crates. Meanwhile Grigory called to headquarters to tell Arkady that he and Tajid would be entering the warehouse. The steel door to the depot was three feet thick and could be unlocked only from headquarters — another security measure.

  Arkady picked up after five rings. “Sleeping, Arkady?”

  “Of course not. Everything on schedule?”

  “Cold as your wife’s tits. Otherwise fine.”

  “My wife has no tits,” Arkady said. “Let me know when you’ve checked the crates.”

  Grigory hung up and turned to Akilev. “Ready to be done with this?”

  “More than you know.”

  From his pocket Grigory unfolded the sheet that held the codes to unlock the warhead crates. He punched a twenty-two-digit code into the numeric keypad attached to the lid of the crate nearest him. The magnetic lock popped open and Grigory opened the crate. The warhead sat naked and sterile, a cylinder about two feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, held firm by the rubberized interior of the cucumber crate. A string of numbers and Cyrillic letters, painted in red, gave the warhead’s serial number and its specifications. Halfway up the cylinder, a control panel stuck out, a simple metal plate with three switches side by side: Armed/Not Armed; Full Yield/Half Yield/Low Yield; Airburst/Groundburst. Beside the plate, the warhead’s locking mechanism, two eight-digit combination locks and a circular keyhole. Everything about the bomb was simple and low-tech, designed for reliability and ease of use by frontline soldiers who were likely to be under attack as they readied the warhead for launch.

  “Hardly looks like it’s worth the trouble,” Grigory said to Akilev.


  “Harmless as a Gypsy curse.”

  Grigory closed the crate, which locked automatically. They moved on to the second crate, the third, and on down to the eighth. All the boxes were full.

  “Well done, Major.”

  “You thought I’d lost one?”

  Grigory grabbed the file that held his inventory receipts from the Volga. He dated and signed the papers and handed them to Akilev. “Sign here,” he said.

  “But aren’t we supposed to wait until the boxes are inside the warehouse?”

  Third test. “If you like,” Grigory said. “But me and Tajid will need at least two hours to put the crates in their proper places. I thought you and your men might want some rest. Your choice.”

  “Can we help you move the crates inside the depot?”

  “I’m afraid not. Not that I don’t trust you—” Yes, Grigory thought. Turn back the question of trust on him.

  “I understand. And you don’t mind if we leave. You’re certain.”

  “Not a bit.”

  “All right.” Akilev signed the papers and handed them back to Grigory. “Thanks for this. It’s been a very long day.” He whistled sharply to his men. They jumped into the Urals, which started with a heavy diesel thump. A minute later, the Tiger and the trucks had disappeared from the shed, leaving Grigory and his cousin alone.

  Third test passed.

  TO HIS SURPRISE, Grigory felt no excitement. He was relaxed, yet hyperaware of his surroundings. The grain of the pavement beneath his feet, the cold air against his face, the hum of the arc lights above his head — he saw and heard everything at once. This must be how God feels, he thought.

  He called Arkady. “The crates checked out.”

  “Has the convoy gone? On the monitors—”

  “I told them they could. No need to make them wait for us.”