“Yes, we need to put this on lockdown,” said Delorme, obviously enjoying using that phrase perhaps for the first time in his career.

“I can understand keeping the Supergun confidential for now, but why has the information on Gerald Bull been kept a secret?” asked Isabelle Lacoste, taking a forkful of her warm duck salad. “The man’s long dead.”

“I don’t really know,” said Mary Fraser. It seemed she’d never asked herself that question. Her job, after all, was to analyze the files, not question the content.

“You’ve obviously read the files,” Lacoste pressed. “You’re probably more familiar with Gerald Bull than anyone else in the world. What do those files say?”

“They say he was a common arms dealer, probably a sociopath,” said Mary Fraser. She was talking about Gerald Bull, but continued to look at Rosenblatt. “He didn’t care who he sold his weapons to, or how they’d be used.”

“All Dr. Bull wanted was boatloads of money and the chance to prove his theories right,” said Delorme. “And if, in the process, hundreds of thousands of people died, it wasn’t his concern.”

“If he’d succeeded, God knows what would’ve happened in the region,” said Mary Fraser, turning back to look at Lacoste.

“Then his client really was Saddam?” asked Lacoste.

“The field agents believed it,” said Mary Fraser.

“But even if they were wrong and he sold to the Israelis or the Saudis, it would still be a goddamn mess,” said Delorme.

“Armageddon,” said Mary Fraser. Somehow she managed to say it without making it sound ridiculous, even in this most peaceful of places.

“How did you know about the etching on the gun?” Lacoste asked. “The Whore of Babylon.”

Sean Delorme leaned across the table with enthusiasm. “It’s all part of the legend. That’s what’s so amazing. Our job is to collect information and file it.”

“We’d come across stories about the etching in some field agent reports from the late eighties,” said Mary Fraser. “The agents were trying to keep track of Dr. Bull. While they were pretty sure his client was Saddam Hussein, they couldn’t pin it down.”

“There were all sorts of wild rumors,” said Delorme. “Makes for entertaining reading but not useful intelligence.”

“One rumor that kept coming up was that Bull had commissioned a drawing for the side of the Supergun,” said Fraser. “The Whore of Babylon. From the Book of Revelation.”

“Satan. Armageddon,” said Delorme.

“Pure Bull,” said Mary Fraser, shaking her head.

“Did you mean to say that?” Delorme turned to her. “Very clever.”

Lacoste, watching these two, thought the play on Dr. Bull’s name was more obvious than clever, but the CSIS agents seemed amused.

“What I meant was that Dr. Bull was famous for these grand gestures,” said Mary Fraser. “But they were always empty. The more extravagant the claim, the emptier the bubble.”