I lost all sense of time. By the time the car stopped, I didn’t know if I’d been in there for half an hour or three hours. Becker opened the trunk and I shrank back, a sobbing, bruised wreck.

He hauled me out by the collar and thumped me down on my feet. A shockwave went up my legs and set off a violent wave of cramps: my legs hadn’t been straight in hours. I nearly fell but I was so scared that he’d hit me again that I breathed through the pain and managed to stay standing. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I looked around…

Where the hell are we?

We were at the top of a steep hill, exposed to a bitterly cold wind. The land dropped away dramatically, the slopes covered in thick, snow-dusted forest. Beyond the forest were towering blue mountains. And right in front of me, forcing me to crane my neck right back to see its top—

My brain rebelled for a second. Was I seeing things? I blinked a couple of times but it was still there.

It was a castle straight out of a fairytale, with white walls, a slate gray roof and pointed turrets that reached high into the sky. It was beautiful…and huge: it had forty or fifty windows just in one wing. How far had we driven? Was this still Germany? Switzerland? I didn’t even know which country I was in!

Becker picked up the nuke in its leather case from the passenger seat—even he grunted with effort, lifting it—and loaded it onto a two wheeled mover’s cart. Then he took the key from his pocket and attached it to the handle of the case with a zip tie. My stomach knotted. Whoever bought the thing would have everything they needed to set it off.

“Stay with me,” Becker warned. “Try to run and I’ll break a leg so you don’t try again.”

I swallowed and nodded. We walked together to a massive door, guarded by two men with machine guns around their necks. Becker handed one of them something that looked like an ice cube. He held it up to the light, examining it, while the other guy kept his gun pointed at us. Then the man nodded and spoke into a radio, and the door swung open. “She’s waiting for you in the main hall,” he told Becker in English.

We started down a long hallway hung with tapestries, our footsteps echoing. I looked around in wonder. This was where he was going to sell a nuclear bomb to terrorists?! I’d imagined those things happening in graffiti-covered, abandoned buildings. Two hundred million dollars, Vasiliy had said. “What are you going to do with the money?” I asked in a small voice. “You can’t spend it. Your bosses will ask questions.”