It occurred to Morgan, as he stared at the white tile floor, that this was the inchworm’s problem. Constance Burns was gradually but steadily becoming a liability. She remained useful to the Antarctica enterprise—but for how long? He did not think he could trust her if pressure were applied. If, by some far-fetched chance, things went wrong in a manner he had not foreseen, could she be relied on? Would she crumble before a hard-pressing investigator from Her Majesty’s Ministry? If she were confronted, would she give Morgan up to save her skin?

It occurred to Morgan that she might. It also occurred to him that he would not allow her the chance to do so. And perhaps this Scottish business allowed him to construct one of his elaborate escape hatches. Certain gestures might be made that allowed, if things were to reach a difficult juncture, the blame to be placed on her for a range of activities. And in that case, the more murders that could be laid at her door the better.

Morgan also had an idea that his favorite international corporation might add its credibility to the operation. Not that, strictly speaking, this was necessary, but there was a certain symmetry that made it all the more attractive—the Bordeaux that tweaked a neighbor’s nose.

“Await further instructions,” he thumbed in response to the message.

The rest of the notes were, thankfully, mere gibberish. He clicked the T, Z, and K together, then shut the device. As the programs in the servers ten thousand miles away went to work erasing the electronic path he had taken into the e-mail system, he went to the sink and washed his hands.

FIVE - ROSS ICE SHELF, ANTARCTICA (70°00’ S, 30°42’ W) MARCH 4, 2002

FIVE

ROSS ICE SHELF, ANTARCTICA (70°00’ S, 30°42’ W) MARCH 4, 2002

THE DOCUMENTS WERE SCRUPULOUSLY FABRICATED, which was how they were able to execute the whole unscrupulous and illegal operation without interference.

On paper the four shielded casks, essentially welded steel-and-lead sarcophagi, each contained ten fifty-five-gallon drums of spent fuel assemblages generated by the Turm nuclear power facility in Austria, a landlocked country dependent on foreign ports for its international marine transport.

The fact of the matter was that the radioactive waste had originated at Fels-Hauden, a state-run power plant in central Switzerland.

On paper the casks were brought by freight train to Trieste in northeastern Italy via the Österreichische Bundesbahn, or Austrian Federal Railway, which interlocked with the European Transfer Express Freight Train System, to be forwarded to the Port of Naples on the Mediterranean coast.

The fact was that the Swiss rail system, Schweizerische Bundesbahn, had picked up the casks at a departure station in Berne. In Naples, they cleared customs within hours for transshipment aboard the German-flagged tanker Valkyrie.