"You can't tell her, Basil. She just might do it all on her own."

"She might indeed, and that would let out the little secret, mightn't it?" Dinner arrived, and they had to wait again.

"It wasn't just me. You know that, Charlie Alden did a lot of good work. So did Talbot, Bunker, Scott Adler, a bunch of others."

"Your modesty is as comprehensive as ever, Dr Ryan."

"Does that mean "stupid," Bas?" Ryan got a smile instead of an answer. The Brits were good at that.

Fromm would never have believed it. They'd made five stainless-steel blanks to duplicate the size and configuration of the plutonium. Ghosn had made all the necessary explosive blocks. They'd tested the explosives on all five blanks, and in every case the explosives had done their job. This was one very talented young man. Of course he'd had exact plans to follow, and Fromm had generated them with the help of a fine computer, but even so, getting something so difficult right the first time was hardly the norm in engineering.

The plutonium was now through the first part of the machining process. It actually looked rather good, like a high-quality steel forging machined to be part of an automotive engine. That was a good beginning. The robot arm of the milling machine removed the plutonium from its spindle and set it in an enclosed box. The box was, of course, filled with argon gas. The arm sealed it and moved it to a door, then Fromm removed it from the machine enclosure and walked over to the air-bearing lathe. The process was reverse-duplicated. He slid the box into the enclosure. Vacuum pumps were activated and while the air was sucked out the top of the enclosure, argon gas was added at the bottom. When the internal atmosphere was totally inert, the robot arm of this tool opened the box, and extracted the plutonium. The next programmed set of movements set it precisely on a new spindle. The degree of precision was hugely important. Under Fromm's supervision, the spindle was activated, building its speed up slowly to fifteen thousand RPM.

"It would appear that - no!" Fromm swore. He'd thought he'd gotten it perfect. The spindle slowed back down, and a tiny adjustment was made. Fromm took his time checking the balance, then powered it up again. This time it was perfect. He took the RPMs all the way to twenty-five thousand and there was no jitter at all.

"You men did the first machining very nicely," Fromm said over his shoulder.

"How much mass did we lose?" Ghosn asked.

"Eighteen-point-five-two-seven grams." Fromm switched the spindle off and stood. "I can scarcely praise our workers enough. I suggest that we wait until tomorrow to begin final polishing. It is foolish to rush about. We're all tired, and I think dinner is called for."

"As you say, Herr Fromm."

"Manfred," the German said, surprising the younger man. "Ibrahim, we must talk."

"Outside?" Ghosn led the German out the door. Night was falling.