BACK AT HIS hotel, Stag tried to figure out what had happened. But nothing made sense. Had he somehow, someway acquired a guardian angel? It was hard to believe Portier could fit that role, but if Portier wanted him dead, he’d be dead. Since Portier wanted him alive for now, he was going to be protected.
So who the hell was the Kiwi working for? NATO? He doubted it. They weren’t in the business of assassination, nor would they want him dead with that bomb out there for anyone to find. No, the only conclusion he could come to was there were players in this game he didn’t know yet, but he had no doubt he would meet again. The notion didn’t set well. He had enough to worry about.
Shrugging off the stress, he decided to keep working. After he booked a flight back to Berlin, he messaged Jake to see if he was finally set up on WhatsApp.
When Jake called, Stag was sitting beneath the palm-thatched over-water lanai, still enjoying the sunset.
“Stag?” Jake’s voice came through. The fuzzy video grew crisp. “Wow! Look at that!” the older man exclaimed.
“How are you, Jake? See what technology can do for you?”
“There’s three feet of snow here and there you are, being a beach bum. That water behind you—is that the South China Sea?”
“Beautiful. Just beautiful.” Jake took a moment to appreciate the picture, then he looked down at something. “I’ve got that research for you.”
Stag could hear the trepidation in Jake’s voice. But right now, he couldn’t comfort him.
“Okay. There were three WWII-era atomic bombs: Trinity, Little Boy, and Fat Man. They all used uranium 235, but if the Germans had a nuclear device, it most likely involved a gun-type bomb like the one that took out Hiroshima.”
“Why is that?”
“Because, unlike the other two, Little Boy didn’t require plutonium. Plutonium is man-made. It needs a cyclotron and a good bit of work to make it. And that’s a lot of people who might know about what they’re up to. If Heydrich had the Katanga deposit of U-235, that’s all that would be needed to make a Hiroshima-type device.”
“Then he really could have kept the lid on it.”
“Yes,” Jake answered. “With his unexpected death, information got lost perhaps and buried or bombed, and now we don’t know what the hell he had or where it might be.”
“How big would this thing be? What would it look like?”
“I would venture to say it would be smaller than Little Boy, but not much. Less than ten feet long. A bit less than 9000 lbs. Aluminum casing.”
It was horrifyingly small. Stag could hardly get his head around the fact that it could take out a city. The world’s nuclear arsenal was thousands of times stronger than Little Boy, but its use was deterrent only. A rogue bomb could change all that forever.
“There’s one very unsettling aspect about this type of bomb, Stag. Being a gun-type, Little Boy used one firing mechanism, while Trinity and the Nagasaki bomb used implosion from several coordinated blasts surrounding the atomic core—much more complicated.”
Stag gnawed on the inside of his cheek. “I’m not following you. Sorry. This whole nuclear stuff is Greek to me.”
“Let me explain the whole thing in a nutshell. Nuclear material in and of itself isn’t explosive. The blast of an atom bomb is set off by traditional explosives. They, in turn, force the nuclear material into a collision with itself. That, in turn, creates the chain reaction that causes the immense scale of an atomic detonation.”
“Okay. I get it.”
“The trouble with this gun-type lying around decaying somewhere isn’t in the nuclear material. A leak of nuclear material isn’t great for the environment but it’s not Hiroshima. No, the problem is that a gun-type bomb takes much less sophistication and luck to detonate it. It doesn’t require a coordination of several explosives as in the Nagasaki bomb. That was an implosion device. No, a gun-type, only requires one. There’s a very high level of chance that it could detonate on its own. A fall could do it. Static electricity from lightning could do it.”
Stag’s stomach knotted. “Jesus.”
Jake continued. “I took a lot of comfort in the fact that the early bombs the USA had were very high maintenance. The trigger mechanism used a battery that only lasted about a month before the entire device had to be disassembled and the battery recharged.” He paused. “I was thinking this gave it a good chance of being a dud, with the battery dead.”
“Yes, that is good news.”
“Uh, well, not really. My research definitely points to Heydrich having the intelligence network to make a ‘wooden bomb’.”
“A wooden bomb? Why the fuck would they make a nuke out of wood?”
“It’s not made of wood. It’s a term they started using in the fifties when the US desired less high-maintenance atomic bombs. The military wanted bombs that could sit on a shelf for years; decades even, like a plank of wood, inert and ready to go. Sandia Laboratory couldn’t figure how to make bombs with a shelf life of more than thirty days because their batteries died.” Jake frowned. “So Sandia began to study the war interrogations of the German scientists that made the V-2 rockets for the Nazis.”
“What’d they find?” Stag hated to even ask. He sure as fuck knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
“Georg Otto Erb. During his interrogation, he revealed how the molten salt battery works. It can’t be recharged or reused, but you don’t really need that on an atomic device. You only need to use it once.”
“How long’s the shelf life of this battery?”
“Conceivably, centuries. Until the salts completely evaporate, which, as you know, takes a damn long time.”
Stag was speechless. Heydrich might not have gotten his hands on this kind of technology early enough to make use of it. But then again, he might have. His fingers were in every pie in the Reich. Walter Schellenberg, Head of Foreign Intelligence of the Third Reich, described Heydrich as “the hidden pivot around which the Nazi régime revolved.” Himmler wrote Heydrich about Heisenberg, the lead scientist of the German nuclear weapon project, telling him not to lose or silence Heisenberg. There was no doubt Heydrich knew everything.
In which case, there was a bomb out there, armed and ready to go. “Wooden.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this, Stag, but I think you’re going to have to go to the authorities with this information. This thing needs to be in the hands of those who can disarm it.”
“I still don’t know where it is.” He didn’t mention the fact that he still didn’t know who to trust. Especially after the Kiwi.
“What do you think happened to it?”
“I think Heydrich was having it moved somewhere. For his own personal leverage, frankly. The guy wasn’t selfless, and he wasn’t stupid. If he thought this weapon could be brought under his sole control, he would do everything he could to make sure that happened.”
“But where could he hide it? Salt mine?”
“I have a map. At least, I think that’s what it is. The references are to diamonds, though. Not a bomb. Frankly, I don’t know if it pertains to this at all.”
“Industrial diamonds, perhaps? Used for making the bomb fittings?”
“Maybe. I’ve thought of that. I’ve got to get back to Germany.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
Stag let out a long breath of air. “I have to tell you, Jake, I’m not making any friends with this. It’s dangerous.”
“You need some help. And I’m the only one old enough to keep his mouth shut.”
Stag snorted. “You’re not making this easy.”
“I’ll beat you to Berlin.”
“You probably will.” Stag paused. “Thanks, Jake.”
“If this really is what we fear it is, we’re going to need a lot of help. God save us.”