Chapter 12: A Horror from the Cold War

"Holy Mother! You can't be serious?!"

Pietor stared at his Chief of Intelligence. He was horrified at the very thought of what the man had just told him, but unable to discount the truth of it. Pietor had come to trust the man's careful devotion to his work, his habits of double- and triple-checking every scrap of information before accepting it as true, and the man's unswerving dedication and loyalty to their cause.

Still, what he'd just heard was absolutely fantastic and almost impossible to believe.

"Please! Give me a moment to absorb the implications! My mind is screaming at me that such a thing is not possible—not only not possible, but so far from the realm of reality, that such a thing could not be imagined!

"You tell me that there is a Russian nuclear device hidden in a desert cache, somewhere in the American southwest; that it has been there for many years, but despite that, it can be made operational within a short time; and that both its existence and its location are known to American intelligence?

"And you also have reason to believe that the American president has instructed a shadow group to take this device to an American city and detonate it?"

The grim-faced man did not speak. He simply nodded affirmation to each of Pietor's questions.

"You do not know his motives for certain, but credible analysis suggests that the American president, Albert Stinson, intends to commit this horrific betrayal as a political strike, so that he may become the military ruler of America? And then, he intends to unleash a firestorm of nuclear retaliation against Russia to disguise his crime?"

The intelligence chief nodded, again, his face ashen and unsmiling. He despaired at delivering this horrible knowledge to his leader, but there was nothing else to do. Pietor must know the truth, no matter how terrible the burden.

Both men remained silent. The office was absolutely still. No sound intruded. Pietor finally sighed, rolled his head back against the headrest of his padded leather office chair, and stared at the ceiling. Again he sat unmoving for a very long time.

"The man is beyond madness! But that is obvious. Please, Andrei, forgive my asking—for I know the answer already—but say it to help me accept the unacceptable. You are absolutely certain that what you tell me is credible? It is real?"

"Da! Yes, my good friend. It is real."

Andrei Gulichov had worked for Viktor, the beloved old leader, for many years. He'd joined Nikogda Snova as a very young graduate, just out of University. He had never left Viktor's service. His loyalties shifted to Pietor, instantly, upon Viktor's death. His respect for Pietor was nearly as great as his love for his departed leader. When Pietor told him of Viktor's charge—that he'd been given a vision of a nuclear horror that they must intercept and prevent, Andrei nodded. He asked only one question: "What is the limit of the resources I have available to me?"

"No limit. Exhaust all we possess, if necessary," Pietor responded.

Andrei nodded again, and began to work.

His intelligence teams quickly but not surprisingly—given the counsel of the spirit woman's words—eliminated any sources or threats within the Middle East. Upon later reflection, he realized the probable reason for that. If such a device were available, it would have fallen into extremist Islamic hands for use against Israel. Despite the nearly impregnable Israeli home security, the short distance to deliver such a device made Israel vulnerable.

It would be far, far more problematic to attack the United States homeland. There was too great a risk of losing their only nuclear device to discovery and interception, if they had one. So the target would be Israel.

Most likely it would have immediately been used. The risk of detection was too great. No one makes threats with such a device. Israeli forces would erupt outward to turn the Middle East into a charnel house, before allowing such a device to be used against them. Thus no warning would be given, no threats made. If an extreme Muslim faction had such a device, they would use it at the first opportunity.

Far more time was spent scouring all possible leads and clues within and without the former nuclear-armed satellite states of the Soviet Union. This task seemed impossible, given the long years, the many layers of military and political authority that both concealed and controlled the weapons. No one could be certain of the accounting, the disposition, or even the whereabouts of every single one of the thousands upon thousands of the deadly warheads of all shapes and sizes that had been the primary product of the insane Cold War years. Both Pietor and Andrei endured long, sleepless nights of despair. Several times Pietor cried out to Raven Woman for reassurance that his was not a hopeless and fruitless quest. Always, she calmed his fears and spurred him on with new hope.

In time, one of Andrei's staff members recalled a bizarre story that had been broadcast years before on American television. It had even been told in testimony to the American congress.

The Soviet Union, during the years of Cold War madness, had succeeded in developing what came to be called a "suitcase nuke," a compact device that could be carried on the back of a strong soldier. Although that particular application was ludicrous to the extreme, the small size and exceptional portability of the device was not impractical at all. It was in real terms a terrifyingly workable concept.

A defecting Russian general had told the American television networks, and the American Congress, that some one hundred such devices had gone "missing." He also claimed that many had been hidden away in various locations for possible use against enemy leaders ... an assassination device of last resort.

Russian authorities denied all such claims as reckless myths, but the Swiss were convinced of the truth of it when they found a cache of suitcase nukes in their country. They accidently exploded one cache of them in the woods near Bern. Fortunately, only the trigger explosives detonated and the fissionable material did not. Other caches were found and removed.

The Americans were reportedly informed of cache locations inside U.S. borders, but misdirected searches by local law enforcement agencies failed to find them. The concerned agencies denied the veracity of the reports and declared them to be so much Cold War nonsense.

Andrei concluded, after his agents uncovered more whispered information from sources deep in the American intelligence community, that the existence of several caches was well known to the Americans. They had gone so far as to have one of the devices taken for study. Illogically, the agencies put little importance on the situation. Weapons experts condemned the Russian technology as hopelessly obsolete and inferior to similar weapons developed by the American side. Someone decided to leave the aging and well-concealed weapons caches alone and undisturbed. It was a bizarre twist of secret agency logic: it was better to leave the secret unrevealed, than to uncover the devices and risk exposing the fact of Russian nuclear bombs on American soil, thereby raising the specter of endlessly embarrassing questions.

It was an incongruous pair that sat at a small table in the gloom of a murky bar in a Washington D.C. neighborhood. The old man sat hunched over, his face scowling under heavy white eyebrows. He sat with a young man, hardly into his late 30s, who nursed a glass of pale beer. The younger man was delighted to be there, meeting for the first time, his dead father's respected enemy.