So the explosion over Palomares had been sabotage, Arturo was the saboteur at the air base, and Gorky was his controller. It all fit, but where was Grandfather in all this?
“Think of the effect had one or all of those bombs exploded.” Gorky was staring up at the empty sky, an almost wistful tone in his voice. “Each bomb was seventy times as powerful as the bomb that obliterated Hiroshima in 1945. Think if all four had exploded that morning.” Gorky was old and frail, but his eyes gleamed with an unnatural light as he thought of the devastation that might have been wrought in the skies over Palomares. “Then the world would have had to pay attention to us.”
Gorky blinked rapidly and calmed down. “I was a fool,” he went on. “In those days, I had no idea how hard it is to trigger a nuclear explosion. Without the bombs being armed, the explosives around the plutonium core will not go off at the same time. My vision was not possible, but the explosion presented me with an opportunity that I have pursued relentlessly to this very day. An opportunity that you will help me realize.”
“What do you mean?” Laia asked. She sounded angry, and that made me nervous. I didn’t think it was a good idea to annoy this guy. “What makes you think we’ll help you?”
At that moment, I thought we were going to die. Gorky stared at us, a cold look very much like what I imagine a mouse sees before a snake strikes. Then he laughed. “Plucky—I like that. Maria was the same. I could never persuade her to do anything she did not wish to do.”
“Just as I will never help you,” Laia said defiantly. I was immensely proud of her. I didn’t have the courage to stand up to Gorky, mostly because I didn’t think it would make any difference. I was beginning to suspect what Gorky wanted from us, and the stakes were so high that I doubted he would stop at anything to get what he wanted.
“Commendable,” Gorky said with what appeared to be genuine admiration, “but I have a question for Steve.” He looked at me with his cold gaze. “How much pain can you stand?”
I couldn’t think of an answer, and it was all I could do not to collapse and plead for mercy under that relentless stare.
“A difficult question,” Gorky acknowledged, his tone suddenly conversational. “A quick blow to the face, a broken nose, cracked ribs—I imagine you could handle a beating that involved those types of injuries, but they are crude. The secret to true pain is anticipation. A sudden blow hurts, but it is soon over. There may be fear of the next blow, but that takes time to build up, and we do not have too much time.
“Anticipation increases pain tenfold. For example, do you think you could stand having a fingernail pulled off slowly with a pair of pliers? Or having a finger slowly bent until the joint dislocates and the bone breaks? Even if you can stand these things once, you know that there are nine more digits awaiting attention.”
Gorky turned to Laia. “Could you listen to Steve’s screams as one of my friends destroyed his hands?”
Laia said nothing.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Indeed, I should finish my story. I would hate you to suffer for nothing. Arturo’s act over Palomares was dramatic, but it did not have the effect I had wished for. Instead of reacting with violent horror, the world sat enthralled for three months as the Americans searched for and then worked at recovering the lost fourth bomb. They almost became the heroes of the drama.
“Even worse, from my point of view, the Americans soon discovered Arturo’s role in the incident. It was never made public, of course, but behind the scenes, immense efforts were made to discover who had employed him. I went on the run, changing my identity many times in the subsequent years and never staying in one place very long. I managed to stay one step ahead of the Americans, but my network was dismantled. Even Bob abandoned me, but through all those years of running and loneliness, there was something that kept me going.
“After I had delivered the explosives to Arturo, I did not return to France immediately. It was a dangerous thing to do, but I missed my homeland. I took the opportunity to check up on some of my sleepers. When the B-52 exploded, I knew Arturo was responsible and that it would not be long before he was discovered. I headed for the border but could not resist a brief stop in Barcelona to see Maria. She knew nothing of Arturo’s role in the explosion or that he was one of my sleepers. I took great precautions to see that each sleeper knew as few others as possible.
“Maria was horrified at the incident and angry at the Americans for putting so many lives in danger. I was about to tell her of my role—to boast, I suppose—when Maria asked me if I remembered David McLean, the young Canadian soldier with the broken ribs. I said of course, and she told me that he had visited her only the day before. I was shocked, since I knew it was as big a risk for him to come back to Spain as it was for me. I asked Maria what David was doing here and she said he had been sent to try to find a saboteur and prevent a terrorist act. He had known the area targeted, and that planes were involved, but he’d had no idea what was going to happen until the B-52 exploded over Palomares. He had been depressed at his failure to stop the explosions, but he told Maria that he had hidden a fifth bomb.
“I encouraged Maria to talk, presenting myself as someone like her, who cared deeply for my fellow man. McLean and Maria had talked long about what he should do about the bomb. She argued that since the bomb was hidden in a place where no one would ever find it and was no threat to anyone, he should keep quiet about it. That way, it would be one less bomb that could be used to kill people. She said that he agreed not to tell anyone of the bomb’s existence.
“I was thrilled when Maria told me this. I saw, in that hidden bomb, an opportunity to make the dramatic gesture that Arturo and I had dreamed of. Imagine a nuclear device detonated beneath the United Nations in New York or outside the Kremlin in Moscow or even here in Madrid! With that bomb, I could change the world. What time I had, I spent searching the world for David McLean and the hills above Palomares for the bomb. I found neither—until now. You will lead me to the bomb.”
“What makes you think we know anything about it?” I asked. Gorky’s story made sense and linked my grandfather to Palomares, but how could this old man possibly know who I was, let alone why Laia and I were here?
“I am old and not up to scrambling around the hills as I once could, but I have not totally given up hope. I have a modest apartment in Almería, and two days ago, I received an anonymous phone call identifying you two and telling me that you had the key to the bomb’s location. The rest was easy—Palomares is not a large town. Lucio has been following you since you arrived.”
“The guy on the red scooter?” Laia asked.
“Indeed. In fact, he would have followed you this morning straight to the location of the bomb—that is where you went, I assume—but he had mechanical troubles with his scooter. When he caught up with you, he phoned me, and we had to resort to this unpleasantness. But it is almost over. I have told you my story and, I hope, convinced you that I will stop at nothing to get what I want. Shall we go, or do I have to ask Lucio to begin removing fingernails?”
I shuddered at the mention of fingernails, but before I could think of anything to say, Laia spoke. “I will show you where the bomb is,” she said calmly.
“You can’t,” I blurted out. “This maniac will set it off in the middle of a city somewhere. He could kill thousands of people.”
“He might,” Laia said, looking at me, “but what is certain is that I cannot sit and watch them torture you. I would tell them sooner or later, so why subject you to all that pain?” She seemed almost frighteningly calm, and what she said made logical sense. It was quite likely that I would tell Gorky where a hundred bombs were hidden after the first couple of fingernails had been ripped off. Even the simple threat of doing that to Laia would get me talking. It was wrong, but we weren’t trained spies or secret agents. We were just a couple of scared kids. How could we be expected to stand up to torture by someone who had probably been trained by the KGB?
“Excellent decision,” Gorky said, levering himself to his feet. “Let us go and get the fifth bomb.”