Pinnacle Event by Richard A. Clarke Page A

wore on. He was relieved that his one-time source had snubbed out the cigarette. “So, Jonas, did they do a good job doctoring the books?”
    â€œThey tried to, but that’s all they needed to do really. Botha was meeting with Mandela. It was all about to end, peacefully. The UN was not going to call them liars about the nukes.”
    Bowman knew Jonas Moe’s concern over nuclear weapons proliferation was a driving passion, his life’s work. He found it hard to believe that a younger, even more idealistic Moe had turned a blind eye to nuclear weapons going missing. “But you wanted to make sure that the bombs did not get into the wrong hands,” Ray suggested. “How did you do that?”
    â€œMy Team Chief, an Argentine, would have whitewashed it, but I told my South African counterpart that I would not. I was young and brash. The South African, good fellow he was, was a physicist with their Atomic Energy Commission. He was pissed at ARMSCOR, the defense industry because they had taken over the program. He told me to take a good look at the HEU production numbers from the Y Plant. He hinted that they were faked.”
    Moe looked up and right into Bowman’s eyes. “I couldn’t prove it, but unless they were terribly inefficient, they probably made almost half again as much HEU as what they reported. My official submission was that there were ‘apparent inconsistencies.’”
    â€œBut your bosses here in Vienna wanted the story to go away,” Ray guessed aloud, “and so upon further analysis the inconsistencies became plausible numbers, within the statistically acceptable band.”
    Moe nodded. He looked off into the distance, remembering those days. “But, Raymond, they knew I knew. The South Africans were fully aware that I was not fooled. So months later when I was back there again, my South African counterpart had me over to his house for dinner. After the feast with the family, he took me down to his lager, his private workspace under the house.
    â€œHe showed me a video, like a secret documentary they made, of how they had made some missile warheads and then shipped them secretly to Israel in 1994, not that the Israelis needed them, but it was a way of saying thanks for the Israeli help with the Jericho missiles that would have carried the South African weapons. And in the end, the South African team that had made the warheads just could not stand to see them destroyed. So they gave them to Israel.”
    This was the part of the interview that Bowman had the most trouble planning. He did not want it to seem to Jonas Moe that this entire discussion was about him, or his possible failure a quarter century earlier. “It was credible, this video?” Bowman asked.
    â€œMy South African counterpart was. He joined IAEA and became a colleague. He worked on the Pakistan and India problems for years. Later, when he retired, he still consulted with the Agency. He was a good friend of ours, my wife and me, for many years, poor man. We miss him. We used to go hiking together in the Wienerwald.”
    â€œI take it he has passed on?” Ray asked.
    â€œThis summer. Awful, really. A tram hit him out by Grinzing, smashed into his car, split the fuel tank, horrific explosion and fire. I just hope he died quickly and did not feel the flames.”
    â€œWell, if you believed him and the documentary that the bombs went back to Israel, what do you think caused the new Indian Ocean flash,” Ray asked, “assuming there was one, of course.”
    Jonas Moe moved the last bit of Sakertorte around on his plate with his fork. He did not look at Bowman. “That’s what I have been wondering. Mainly in the wee hours of the morning, when I should be asleep. It seemed so much like the 1979 test on a ship in the middle of nowhere. But it can’t be the South Africans. Everyone who was involved in that program is either old or dead, and none of