"Where to this time, Doctor?" the driver asked.

"Just drive around."

"What?"

"We need to talk," Kaminiskiy said.

"About what?"

"I know you are KGB," Kaminiskiy said.

"Doctor," the driver chuckled, "I am an embassy driver."

"Your embassy medical file is signed by Dr Feodor Il'ych Gregoriyev. He is a KGB doctor. We were classmates. May I go on?"

"Have you told anyone?"

"Of course not."

The driver sighed. Well, what could one do about that? "What is it you wish to talk about?"

"You are KGB - foreign directorate?"

There was no avoiding it. "Correct. I hope this is important."

"It may be. I need someone to come down from Moscow. There's a patient I'm treating. He has a very unusual lung problem."

"Why should it interest me?"

"I've seen a similar problem before - a worker from Beloyarskiy. Industrial accident, I was called in to consult on it."

"Yes? What is at Beloyarskiy?"

"They fabricate atomic weapons there."

The driver slowed the car. "Are you serious?"

"It could be something else - but the tests I need to run now are very specific. If this represents a Syrian project, we will not get the proper cooperation. Therefore, I need some special equipment from Moscow."

"How quickly?"

"The patient isn't going anywhere, except into the ground. I'm afraid his condition is quite hopeless."

"I have to go through the rezident on this. He won't be back until Sunday."

"Fast enough."

CHAPTER 32

Closure

"Can I help?" Russell asked.

"Thank you, Marvin, but I would really prefer to do this myself, without distractions," Ghosn said.

"I understand. Yell if you need anything."

Ibrahim donned his heaviest clothing and walked out into the cold. The snow was falling quite hard. He'd seen snow in Lebanon, of course, but nothing like this. The storm had scarcely begun half an hour before and there was already more than three centimeters of it. The northerly wind was the most bitter he'd ever experienced, cutting into his very bones as he walked the sixty meters or so to the barn. Visibility was restricted to no more than two hundred meters. He could hear the traffic on the nearby highway, but could not even see the lights of the vehicles. He entered the barn through a side door and already regretted the fact that this building had no heating. Ghosn told himself very forcefully that he could not allow such things to affect him.

The cardboard box that shielded the device from casual view was not actually attached, and came off easily. What lay under that was a metal box with dials and other accoutrements for what it pretended to be, a commercial video-tape machine. The suggestion had come from Gunther Bock, and the actual body of the machine had been purchased as scrap from a Syrian TV news agency which had replaced it with a new model. The access doors built into the metal body were almost perfectly suited to Ghosn's purpose, and the ample void space held the vacuum pump, in case that was needed. Ghosn instantly saw that it was not. The gauge that was part of the bomb case showed that the body had not leaked any air at all. That hardly came as a surprise - Ghosn was just as skilled a welder as he had told the late Manfred Fromm - but it was gratifying to the young engineer. Next he checked the batteries. There were three of these, all new, all nickel-cadmium, and all, he saw, fully charged, according to the test circuit. The timing device was next to the batteries. Making sure that its firing terminals were vacant, he checked its time - it was already set on local - against his watch, and saw that either one or the other (probably his watch) was a total of three seconds off. That was close enough for his purposes. Three glasses placed inside the box to illustrate any rough handling in transit were still intact. The shippers had taken their care, as he had hoped.