"It is not a bomb, Excellency. Not a weapon. It is a device. A large and cumbersome device."

Dehesh waved a hand through the cool air. "Very well, are you ready to assemble the device?"

"Payment arrived in Islamabad the day before I landed, Excellency. They gave me the fuel we need for the secondaries, and I returned with it this afternoon. The Russian primary you sent to Bandar Abbas yesterday. Besides that, all things are being finished in the Natanz factory and the aluminum casing is at the site in Israel." He looked up from his lap. "But I still must make some calculations. I will be ready to go to the target—to Israel, by the time the primary, the sparkplugs, and the secondaries are delivered."

"Excellent. You are certain everything will be ready in time for air shipment out of Bandar Abbas?"

"Yes, Excellency. Natanz staff got your orders and put the primary in a lead-lined container. When we finish making the sparkplugs and the secondaries, they will join it. Ready for shipment." His eyes returned to his hands, busy creasing the sheet of paper.

Natanz

"Everything is ready, doctor? Everything you need?"

"Yes, Excellency." Khan's pupils were dilated, his eyes fathomless.

"Show me."

Khan moved to a long stainless steel table that flanked a wall of the underground lab. He motioned two technicians to step aside.

"Here are two secondary units, Excellency. They are cylinders made of depleted uranium—don't step away, sir, they are not radioactive. The cylinder is called a tamper, or pusher. It is the source of power for the final fission process. We can call it the tertiary. You see there a cover, a shield on one end with a hole in it. That hole faces the primary, the small Russian fission weapon. The cylinder is filled with lithium-deuteride that surrounds a hollow rod of enriched uranium we call the sparkplug. There will be two such secondaries next to the primary. When the primary detonates, its radiation—"

"I do not need the technical—" Dehesh's interruption did not faze Khan, who droned on as if he were lecturing a university classroom.

"Radiation floods the cylinder through the polyurethane filler that is between it and the aluminum casing around the primary and secondaries. The plastic becomes very hot ion plasma. Lithium-deuteride fuel and the hollow sparkplugs in the centers of the two uranium cylinders are crushed. The radiation also hits each sparkplug through the hole in the shields. A chain reaction starts, superheating the lithium-deuteride and producing fast neutrons and tritium atoms. The heat and pressure make the tritium and deuterium atoms fuse instead of bouncing around. They fuse into helium atoms. This fusion reaction—the same reaction that powers the sun—explodes outward and then finally ends."

Khan's eyes were deep black buttons—shark eyes. Emotionless, they regarded Dehesh, then looked away to some invisible horizon as he resumed his dreamy lecture. "The temperature is then six hundred million degrees Fahrenheit. Twenty times the temperature in the center of the sun. The radiation and temperature impacts that uranium cylinder you see on the bench. It fissions and explodes, doubling the energy output." Khan paused before adding, "All these amazing things happen in one twenty-millionth of a second."

"Are you finished?"

"Yes, Excellency."

"Will it work?"

"I believe so, Excellency."

"You believe so!" Dehesh's voice cracked. "You only believe? I thought you were sure."

"I believe because in sixteen weeks the Soviets built the biggest H-bomb the world ever saw. I am not Sakharov, so I am not sure. But I do now just as he did then. So I believe."

"How big was their bomb?"

"The Tsar Bomba was almost sixty megatons. It was equal to almost sixty million tons of TNT."

"Tsar Bomba?"

"King bomb, Excellency. The father of all bombs."

"We are not the Soviets, Doctor Khan."

"No, Excellency. But as I explained, the hardest part to construct is the match, the primary, and we have that in the Russian fission bomb you bought. All the rest are simply add-ons. We can build a thermonuclear device of any yield you wish. It is just a matter of more add-ons. We use only two secondaries in this case because we must ship them and assemble them in... in a distant place." He waved the technicians back to the workbench. Dehesh thought of that distant place and sixty million tons of TNT.

"How big will our weapon be?"

"It is not a weapon, Excellency."

"Please do not try my patience, Khan."

"I believe the device will yield thirty megatons. We used almost half of the lithium-deuteride Pakistan sold us, so the yield may be even greater. Perhaps almost equal to the Tsar Bomba."

Dehesh looked closely at Khan's tranquil face. He hoped he was not overdoing the white powder. "At the moment when the device is supposed to explode, you will be with me, you and Azartash." He swallowed. "I mean, you and Karan." He gestured over his shoulder at the silent figure that followed him everywhere. "You should know that Karan means 'warrior,' and this particular warrior does anything I command. Anything." Dehesh looked at the laboratory walls as if he could see through them to the terrible events that had taken place in Tehran.

If Khan understood the thinly veiled threat, he gave no sign and simply answered, "Of course, Excellency. You and Karan. Until then, is there anything else you wish to know?" Khan's question pushed into Dehesh’s bloody reverie.

"Yes." It took a full minute for Dehesh to recover his composure before he could continue. "Yes, I do have one question. Can you make another bomb—device?"

"Of course, Excellency."

"Could it be built in another distant land?"

"Where?"

"In America. In Washington."

Khan's empty eyes swiveled to Dehesh, then to the technicians at the workbench. Behind his placid features, thoughts raced and collated.

"We have another primary?"

"I have two more Russian warheads, Khan."

"Then it is simply a matter of casting another aluminum casing and machining the interior to accept the secondaries. The casing could be sent to a mosque in Northern Virginia as a part of an air conditioning system. It is not suspicious. Secondaries and sparkplugs we build here. The only problem then is how to get them and the primary into America. They are somewhat radioactive."

"I've been thinking," Dehesh replied. "The Russian bomb and those secondary things are not huge. They could be sent to America or Mexico in a shipping container, perhaps surrounded by objects that shield radioactivity. A few bribes and the container will disappear. The question we face then is—how to get it over the border?"

"Perhaps, Excellency, it's best to send the container directly to the Baltimore or Philadelphia harbor. They are very busy, and if the documents with it are believable, the container will not even be opened."

"Excellent, dear doctor! I have people in both cities, and they will know how to deal with our container." Dehesh wished he had a glass of wine. "Give orders to construct the necessary parts for two more devices. When you return from Israel, you will shortly be on your way to America."

© 2008, Chet Nagle. All rights reserved.