Yuri stood with his arms crossed as he gazed at the shiny steel objects. He felt a buzz of contentment ring through his chest. They would work. He knew without a doubt that the bombs would work. A simple collection of exotic materials fashioned in perfect harmony. He had transformed them into one of the most powerful forces on earth. To find a party who would pay a hundred million for the smaller device would not be so difficult. Yuri had thought of little else in the last six months, and with the completion of the project at hand, the pressure he felt to make a decision seemed unbearable.

The skimpy salary Russia had driveled his way for so many years would be tip money. Socialism had its price, he had decided. Not even the Politburo should expect to breed the world’s most brilliant nuclear scientists without rewarding them adequately. And now it was time to pay up. He smiled at the thought.

A fly took flight from the overhead light and buzzed past Yuri’s ear before settling on the larger sphere.

For him the phone call almost seven years ago had been the voice of an angel. Why the Russian Mafia had chosen him he hadn’t cared to ask. All he knew was that they had offered one hundred thousand dollars up front, in cash, an additional ten thousand each month, with a million-dollar bonus upon the completion of the project. That and the small detail that the project was for the Brotherhood, a militant Islamic group. Others had talked of getting jobs in the free world, but no other nuclear scientist could hope to make even one-hundredth of the offer. He had accepted unreservedly.

Securing the basic elements had taken three years, years during which, in all honesty, Yuri felt more like a captive than a scientist. But filling his shopping list, as he referred to it, took time in the new world.

Although their timing was right; if the Brotherhood had waited until after Bush had gone after Al qaeda and clamped down on proliferation as his administration had, the task would have been much more difficult. The Clinton years had been the right time.

The list was simple enough: Krytron triggering devices, high-grade detonators, high-yield explosives, uranium, plutonium, beryllium, and polonium. Along with scores of hardware items, of course.

Clinton years or not, one didn’t walk into a hardware store and pick up initiators filled with beryllium and polonium. Weapons inspectors’ discovery of Iraq’s extensive nuclear program had brought about the tightening of the reporting required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And it wasn’t just the plutonium and uranium that were carefully guarded, it was any component required for a nuclear device.