The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“What’s a SADM?” Fernando Lopez interrupted.

“Nuclear suitcase,” Sieno said. “The Russians call them ‘Special Atomic Demolition Munitions.’”

“Okay, let’s go to basics,” Castillo said. “What does a SADM look like?”

“The Pu-239 looks like a suitcase,” Sieno said. “It’s about two feet wide, sixteen inches high, and eight inches deep. A small suitcase, but larger than a briefcase.” He demonstrated with his hands, then went on: “There’s another one—I forget the nomenclature—that comes in two pieces, each about the size of a footlocker. It produces a ten-to twenty-kiloton explosion. The little one probably has a three-to five-kiloton bang.”

“And the agency believes this guy hid these weapons in the States?” Torine asked.

“He didn’t say he hid them, Colonel,” Sieno said. “He’s a slippery bastard. he said he’d, quote, been assigned to find drops for them, unquote. Some people in the agency believe that.”

“Does anybody at the agency believe that nukes are hidden in the States?” Castillo asked.

“Some do,” Sieno said.

“Where is this guy now?” Castillo asked. “I think I’d like to talk to him.”

“Probably in Moscow,” Sieno said. “The agency went through the whole business of getting him a new identity—he became a Latvian, teaching Eastern European history at Grinnell—then, one bright early spring day in 2000, he and his family disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Castillo asked. “Weren’t they sitting on him?”

“Not tight enough, apparently,” Sieno said.

“Perhaps,” Kocian said, “on hearing that his dear friend Vladimir was about to become president of Russia, he was overcome with nostalgia for Mother Russia and simply had to go home.”

“He knew Putin?” Castillo asked.

Kocian nodded. “They were stationed in Dresden in the KGB together. And Putin was sworn in on 7 May 2000.”

“What else do you know about this guy, Billy?” Castillo asked.

“Know? I don’t know enough to print anything. But I do know that Colonel Sunev—not under that name, of course—was in Paris, Vienna, Budapest, and Baghdad, and some other places, starting right after Mr. Sieno tells us he disappeared, and as recently as six months ago. And that he knew Mr. Lorimer of the UN, which I find fascinating. And is a good friend—I told you—of Pevsner.”

“What was he doing in the States, testifying before a congressional committee?”

“I’m only a simple journalist, not an intelligence officer,” Kocian said, “but I think they call that ‘disinformation.’”

“To what end, Billy?” Castillo asked.

“You will recall, Karlchen, that at that time there was a great deal of concern about Soviet nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands? That they would be stolen from depots because there was no more money to pay the guards?”

“I remember that,” Torine said. “It scared me.”

“Nothing personal, of course, Colonel, but if it wasn’t so dangerous, I would be amused by American naïveté,” Kocian said.

“Watch it, Billy!” Castillo snapped.

Kocian shook his head and went on: “This loss of ex-Soviet, now Russian Federation, nuclear weapons could be prevented if the United States came up with the money—this is a simplification, of course—to bring the guards back on the payroll. I think you actually gave them several billions of dollars to do just that.

“To convince your Congress of the danger, Russian ‘defectors’—Sunev was one of maybe two dozen—‘escaped’ to the United States and ‘told all.’ Russia was no longer the enemy. Russia was now a friend. The Muslims were the enemy. They were liable to detonate nuclear weapons stolen—”

“Or bought with drug money,” Sieno said, sarcastically.

“Right,” Kocian said.

“What?” Castillo asked.

Sieno said, “There were stories—widely circulated—that the Russian Mafia bought a bunch of nukes from former KGB guys in Chechnya. Or at least bought KGB connivance, depending on which story you were listening to, so the Mafia could steal them themselves and then sold them to bin Laden for thirty million U.S., cash, and two tons of high-grade heroin from his laboratories in Afghanistan…worth seven hundred million on the street.”