"But that's a lie!"

"He was very convincing," Ryan replied. "I almost believed it myself. The President and Dr Elliot did believe it, and that's why things got so bad on us. I'll gladly hang this bastard out to dry, but it's betraying a confidence remember our conversation in my office, Sergey? If you want that name, you have to pay."

"That man we will shoot," Golovko promised.

"No, you can't."

"What do you mean?"

"We've cut him off, and all I said was that he lied to us. He gave us stuff that wasn't true, even in your country it does not constitute espionage, does it? Better not to kill him. You'll understand, if we can make this deal."

The First Deputy Chairman considered that for a moment. "You can have Lyalin - three days. You have my word, Jack."

"Our man has the codename of SPINNAKER. Oleg Kirilovich -"

"Kadishev? Kadishev?"

"You think you're disappointed? You ought to see it from my side."

"This is the truth - no games now, Ryan?"

"On that, sir, you have my word of honor. I wouldn't mind seeing him shot, but he's a politician, and in this case he really didn't commit espionage, did he? Do something creative with him. Make him dogcatcher somewhere," Jack suggested.

Golovko nodded. "It will be done."

"A pleasure doing business with you, Sergey. A shame about Lyalin."

"What do you mean?" Golovko asked.

"The stuff he was giving us - both of us - it's really too valuable to lose "

"We do not do business to that degree, Ryan, but I admire your sense of humor."

Dr Lowell emerged from the structure just then, carrying a lead bucket.

"What's in there?"

"I think it's some plutonium. Want to take a closer look? You could end up like our friend in Damascus." Lowell handed the bucket to a soldier, and to the engineer-commander he said, "Move everything out, box it, ship it. I want to examine everything. Make sure you move everything out."

"Yes, sir," the colonel said. "And the sample?"

Four hours later, they were in Dimona, the Israeli nuclear 'research' facility, where there was another gamma-ray spectrometer. While technicians ran the test, Lowell went over the plans again, shaking his head. To Ryan, the drawings looked like the diagram of a computer chip or something similarly incomprehensible.

"It's big, clunky. Ours are less than a quarter this size but you know how long it took us to build something of this size and yield?" Lowell looked up. "Ten years.

"They did it in a cave in five months. How's that for progress, Dr Ryan?"

"I didn't know. We always figured a terrorist's device - but what went wrong?"

"Probably something with the tritium. We had two fizzles back in the fifties, helium contamination. Not too many people know about that. That's my best guess. The design needs some further looking at - we'll computer-model it - but on gross examination, it looks like a fairly competent - oh, thank you." Lowell took the spectrometry print-out from the Israeli technician. He shook his head and spoke very softly: