The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

the planet. You could get tritium, but not plutonium.
'I have fifty grams,' Fromm announced smugly. 'Far more than we can actually
use.'
'Fifty grams!' Ghosn exclaimed. 'Fifty?'
'Our reactor complex was manufacturing special nuclear material for our own bomb
project. When the socialist government fell, it was decided to give the
plutonium to the Soviets – loyalty to the world socialist cause, you see. The
Soviets didn't see things that way. Their reaction – ' Fromm paused ' – they
called it . . . well, I will leave that to your imagination. Their reaction was
so strong that I decided to hide our tritium production. As you know it is very
valuable commercially – my insurance policy, you might call it.'
'Where?'
'In the basement of my home, concealed in some nickel-hydrogen batteries.'
Qati didn't like that, not one small bit. The Arab chieftain was not a well man,
the German could see, and that did not help him conceal his feelings.
'I need to return to Germany in any case to get the machine tools,' he said.
'You have them?'
'Five kilometers from my home is the Karl Marx Astrophysical Institute. We were
supposed to manufacture astronomical telescopes there, visual and X-ray
telescopes. Alas, it never opened. Such a fine "cover" wasted, eh? In the
machine shop, in crates marked ASTROPHYSICAL INSTRUMENTS, are six
high-precision, five-axis machines – the finest sort,' Fromm observed with a
wolfish grin. 'Cincinnati Milacron, from the United States of America. Precisely
what the Americans use at their Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats, and Pantex fabrication
plants.'
'What about operators" Ghosn asked.
'We were training twenty of them, sixteen men and four women, each with a
university degree . . . No, that would be too dangerous. It is not really
necessary in any case. The machines are "user-friendly," as they say. We could
do the work ourselves, but that would take too much time. Any skilled lensmaker
– even a master gunSmith, as a matter of fact – can operate them. What was the
business of Nobel Prize winners fifty years ago is now the work of a competent
machinist, ' Fromm said. 'Such is the nature of progress, ja?'
***
'It could be, then again it could not,' Yevgeniy said. He'd been on duty for
twenty hours straight, and only six hours of fitful sleep separated that from
yet another, longer stint.
Finding it, if that indeed was what they'd done, had taken all of Dubinin's
skill. He'd guessed that the American missile sub had headed south, and that her
cruising speed was in the order of five knots. Next came environmental
considerations. He'd had to stay close, within direct-path range, not allowing
himself to come into a sonar convergence zone. The CZs were annular – donut –
shaped areas around a vessel. Sound that went downward from a point within the
convergence zone was refracted by the water temperature and pressure, traveling
back and forth to the surface on a helical path at semi-regular intervals that
in turn depended on environmental conditions. By staying out of them, relative
to where he thought his target was, he could evade one means of detection. To do