Pinnacle Event by Richard A. Clarke

old city for twenty-six years, as a senior staff member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a UN nuclear inspector. Moe had also been one of Bowman’s personal sources on the Iranian nuclear program, passing on the full results of the Agency’s inspections and sometimes carrying some extra equipment with him to Iran.
    â€œAny chance to get off that UN island in the Danube. I hate that late twentieth-century architecture, so cold, impersonal. Give me an old Viennese caf é any day. And any chance to see my good friend Raymond, who the drum signals had said was gone from government, out of the spook world. But here I see it is not so? The drums have told false tales again?”
    â€œLet’s just say that I am doing some research. Perhaps I am writing a book?” Ray responded.
    â€œWith respect, Raymond, you could no more have the patience to write a book than you could train the dancing white horses across the Platz. But I will play along. What would this book be about, Iran and its nuclear weapons program?”
    The elderly waiter brought the coffee and cake. “I will have you know that I was an accomplished horseman one summer in Montana, admittedly many years ago,” Moe asserted. The waiter departed.
    â€œNo, not Iran again. Ancient history. South Africa.”
    Moe’s eyes darted quickly up from his chocolate cake and his expression became more serious. “The double flash in August that I am not supposed to know about, that your government failed to mention to the IAEA. Finally you are taking it seriously?”
    â€œI don’t know anything about a double flash.”
    â€œOf course you do.”
    â€œI am concerned with more ancient history,” Bowman replied. “Nineteen ninety-one. The destruction of the six South African nuclear bombs. IAEA went in after they were disassembled and had a look. The records say you were on that mission.”
    Jonas Moe withdrew a pack of Marlboros and lit a cigarette. They were not in the larger smoking room of the caf é , but this room was almost empty and the waiter would not object unless some tourist complained. “You have been snooping in the records of a UN Agency again? You Americans are worse than the Chinese, hacking into everything.” He flicked an ash into his saucer. “My first field mission with the Agency. Two months in South Africa. Very pretty country and great wine, so tragic their race hatred.”
    â€œThe IAEA report said the bombs probably were destroyed. The enriched uranium from the bombs was placed under safeguard, under seal, and monitored with cameras,” Ray recalled.
    â€œHighly enriched uranium was declared by their government. We placed it under seal. We audited their production records. It seemed that we had all the HEU they had made. This is all in public documents, reports.”
    Although Ray loved cigars, the cigarette smoke was already affecting his sinuses. “But you thought the records were doctored, that they had produced much more HEU?”
    â€œYou have hacked into my brain, too? Accessed my old cerebral files?” Jonas Moe asked.
    â€œYou thought that some warheads were never destroyed, that there was extra HEU they used to make more warheads, which they kept, somewhere,” Ray asserted, bluffing.
    â€œWhen you are Russia with forty thousand nuclear weapons, half of them unsafe, you can disassemble the old ones and harvest the uranium for other uses. You Americans have also cut your own inventory in half over the last twenty years. But when you have only a few, they are very special to you. And in 1991 when the world was in flux, the Cold War ending, the Communist bloc disintegrating, Apartheid finally being abolished, and Nelson Mandela about to be freed and to take over … in this sort of world do you give up all your crown jewels? No, you doctor your books.”
    Bowman noticed that the caf é was beginning to fill up as the morning