A SIGN BELOW THE WINDOW PROHIBITS PHOTOS. THE FEMALE officer stamps the papers and hands them back. The guard passes them to the driver. They exchange words. The barrier swings up.
Vasiliy guns the engine. We pull up next to the booth.
Right beside the checkpoint is a three-man watchtower.
One of the guards leans over the parapet, a rifle on his shoulder, scanning the traffic going in. Sergeyev winds down his window. Smog and snow swirl in our headlights.
Sergeyev hands over our papers to the guard, who carries them to the officer in the booth. We watch her glance from one document to the next, then pick up the phone.
Ignoring the guard’s barked instructions, Sergeyev gets out of the car, walks over to the booth and raps on the window. The officer looks up sharply and puts down her handset. The guard joins in the discussion. I can’t hear what’s being said. Sergeyev taps the top of his holster and points in our direction.
The guard starts walking toward Vasiliy’s side of the BMW. He winds down the window.
The guard leans in. ‘Dobry vyecher, Polkovnik.’ He’s looking at me.
I know polkovnik means colonel. But that’s all I know.
He says it again, followed by a bunch of stuff I don’t understand at all. He’s so close I can smell the meal he just ate.
I see Sergeyev making his way back.
He has our documents in his hand.
‘Neudobnyy,’ I say.
His face goes a shade paler, and he takes a step back.
Sergeyev gets into the passenger seat.
The barrier swings up.
‘Da vai,’ Sergeyev says softly to Vasiliy.
We drive. I’m still holding my breath. Then Vasiliy says something and Sergeyev starts laughing.
‘Did you see the look on his face? I thought he was going to shit himself.’ He slaps his thigh. ‘The guard asks, slightly anxiously, what the 12th Chief Directorate thinks of their security arrangements. And you tell him they’re inconvenient.’
Vasiliy joins in the laughter. I’m laughing too.
‘Inconvenient. God, Joshua,’ Sergeyev says, ‘your talents are many and various, but I never had you down as a comedian.’
The sulfurous wind carries in more snow, sleet and hail from the east, and makes the glow of the monastery lights even more welcoming.
Sergeyev told the FSB guards at the checkpoint that any attempt to inform anybody, in any facility across the city, that we’re on our way in, would be tantamount to treason; and that I, as the officer in charge, would relay this to the head of Strategic Rocket Forces on my return to Moscow. He’s hopeful this will do the trick.
We’ll see. He parks a member of his team among the trees, so he can monitor any calls on a scanner.
Two black-clad priests appear as we enter the courtyard.
We duck beneath an arch. Sergeyev shows them ID and they direct us toward a door at the base of a tower.
Sergeyev’s phone buzzes as we reach the first floor. He listens for a moment. ‘One of those priests is calling the abbot to alert him to a visit by state officials.’
Sergeyev listens again. ‘They are still talking. Yefim is pinpointing the recipient.’
The cloister stretches ahead of us. A burst of hail drums on the roof tiles above our heads like machine-gun fire. A gust of wind through the arches rattles a row of pictures on the wall to our left.
Sergeyev pauses at the second to last of a series of doors, turns the handle and pushes.
The abbot discards his cellphone and struggles to his feet. Judging by the burst capillaries that crisscross his nose and cheeks, he’s enjoyed the few earthly pleasures his Spartan surroundings have to offer.
Sergeyev gestures for him to sit. Two of his men file in and take up position either side of the desk.
After fifteen minutes, he leads me back into the hallway.
The abbot knows of no payments made by the Ilitch Foundation.
There’s been no restoration work in the decade he has been here.
Nor has the name Ilitch ever been mentioned in any exchanges with officials at the Sarov episcopacy.
The name, in fact, appears to be completely unknown to him.
‘You think he’s telling the truth?’
‘From a brief search of his files, they’ve found no evidence to the contrary. But without applying any more pressure, it is hard to be sure.’
He heads back inside and closes the door.
I raise the collar of my jacket and walk far enough along the hallway not to hear whatever exchange Vasiliy is about to have with the abbot, and then find myself drawn toward a chink of light on the far side of the cobbled yard. Steps down to a basement. I follow the aroma of incense.
The snow swiftly eradicates my footprints.
At the bottom of the stairwell there’s another archway, and beyond it, a small crypt with three simple wooden pews and a stone altar. Two candles on it, which glimmer on the icon screens to their left and right.
A black-robed figure kneels to the left of the entrance, eyes closed, praying. I take a step back, but she hears me and looks up. I place my hand over my heart.
‘Prasteetye.’
Sorry. It’s all I know to say.
I retreat.
‘Wait.’ A soft command.
I turn. The nun is under five foot tall, in her late seventies perhaps, or early eighties, and wears the Orthodox headgear that’s now familiar to me.
‘English?’
I shake my head. ‘American.’
‘You are a very long way from home.’
‘It sure feels that way.’
‘Please.’ She gestures to the pew beside her. ‘You came to pray?’
I think better of lying, and say nothing.
‘Stay.’
I look at her. It isn’t just the word, but the way she says it.
She gestures again toward the pew. ‘Just for a moment.’
I sit.
‘What is your name?’
‘Joshua.’
‘Why are you here, Joshua?’
‘We are looking for someone.’
‘Who?’
‘A Muslim. An engineer, maybe. We know very little about him, except that he has black hair and blue, blue eyes.’
‘This is a Christian monastery, Joshua. There are no engineers here. And no Muslims.’
I nod and get to my feet. ‘I’m very sorry for disturbing you.’
I’m back at the arch before she calls to me again.
‘When hope is lost, Joshua, faith can still be found.’
I turn once more.
‘Ask the abbot about this man.’
‘My colleagues, they—’
‘No,’ she interrupts me. Her eyes burn brightly. ‘You ask him.’
I cross the courtyard. As I turn into the cloister, I feel broken glass underfoot. The wind has lifted a picture from the wall and smashed it to pieces.
I kneel beside the wrecked frame. Two photographs. The top one is of a group of monks outside the walls. Some writing. 1911. I’m guessing it commemorates the year the order was founded. Below it is another of maybe thirty priests in two rows, one seated, one standing, in the exact same spot, a century later.
I recognize the abbot, center front, leaner than he is now.
Then my gaze is drawn to the man on his right.
I turn and run to the abbot’s quarters. When I enter, Vasiliy has his pistol drawn. The abbot looks terrified.
I put the photo down on his desk.
‘Ask him who this is.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Just ask him.’
Sergeyev turns to the abbot. There’s a brief exchange.
‘OK, he remembers this man.’
‘He’s no longer here?’
‘He left, maybe eight or nine years ago.’ Sergeyev pauses. ‘He uses a word to describe him that’s quite hard to translate.’
‘Try me.’
‘Osobyy. It means—’
The abbot starts to speak again.
Sergeyev talks over him. ‘His name was Danilovsky. From Dagestan, in the Caucasus. One of our southern Muslim republics.’
‘Muslim?’
‘Yes. Before he was orphaned, the boy’s given name was Magommed.’
By now, the abbot is babbling and won’t stop.
Sergeyev translates.
‘Soon after he was placed in the care of the monastery, the boy converted to Christianity. Maybe the monks forced him, maybe not. The abbot doesn’t know. This was before his time. In any case, as a young man, Magommed Danilovsky trained here.’
‘As what?’
‘As a priest. He had a reputation for curing the sick.’
‘Osobyy,’ I say to Sergeyev. ‘What does it mean?’
He thinks for a moment. ‘Special, I guess.’
‘So, he trained as a priest and a doctor?’
The abbot shakes his head.
‘Nye doktor. Inzheneer.’
As we’re heading back across the moat, Sergeyev’s cell goes. He stops, listens, puts it back in his pocket. His men are waiting for us in the cars. As a precaution, the abbot is coming with us.
‘Moscow,’ he says. ‘They think they’re onto something. A pattern in the traffic between the Ilitch Foundation and the Orthodox compound in Jerusalem.’
‘What kind of a pattern?’
‘Around six months ago, for three weeks, blocks of text were transmitted from a single desktop to an office used by the foundation to coordinate its restoration works. It’s impossible for us to decrypt it without a key, but all the blocks begin with a G and comprise letters and numbers that never exceed 256 characters. This pattern is characteristic of digital data converted into a 3D model and consistent with programming language that’s used only in computer-aided design.’
‘What does it mean?’
Sergeyev shakes his head. ‘This I don’t know.’
As I follow him to the cars, I remember Yuri at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. He invited me to study the fiberglass mold in the ceiling, high above the altar. The angel’s head.
Everybody has agreed that it’s impossible to smuggle a piece of kit as sophisticated as a nuclear trigger into Jerusalem, because the Needle Eye system will pick it up miles before it gets to the city.
But an intuitive doesn’t need explosives. He needs a small, perfectly built sphere he can rapidly collapse – a ballotechnic – which delivers enough heat and pressure to kickstart a tritium and deuterium chain reaction.