Free Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) by Thomas Caplan

today, practically, but where you feel it is when you’re this close to Ukraine, because they are not only Slavs, they are our brothers and sisters. That is why we trusted them with so many of our weapons, not just because of their fortunate geographical position.”
    â€œThere are no differences so profound as those between very similar peoples,” Philip said. “Who is more like an Englishman than an Irishman or more like a Jew than an Arab?”
    Andrej laughed, but only for an instant.
    Ten minutes later, in the tiled depot, Philip kept careful watch as Andrej, witnessed by two others—one young and gaunt, high-cheeked, an officer in the Russian army, the other less erect, approaching middle age in an at-ease slouch that suggested bureaucratic rather than military training—certified the conveyance of each warhead as it rose from the cool, cavernous, stainless-steel armory one level below. Attuned to the moment he had been planning for, Philip remained silent, his emotions both hyper and subdued as the Russian and American representatives from the Nunn-Lugar task force and Nuclear Threat Initiative proceeded with their work.
    Andrej stood next to him, his high Slavic forehead spotlighted by the soft blue-white glow of his laptop’s screen. The computer was brand-new, ultrathin, as close to futureproof as any he’d ever held. He caressed it with protective pride even as it rested on the drop-down easel of his workstation. The protocol now under way was meant to be double-blind. As each crate was conveyed to him, he would check its details with the attentiveness of a librarian to its original label, then to the yellowing loose-leaf pages on which the same information had long ago been recorded by hand in fine strokes of blue-black ink. The holes of the narrowly ruled pages had been reinforced and each warhead indexed with a brightly colored transparent tab so that the inventory resembled a schoolchild’s notebook. Only once these records had been matched and rematched did he scan in the bar codes affixed to the seals applied during the recent digitization of such information. Of these there were three: for the cross-barred pinewood crate that could have contained a grand piano but was in this case merely an attention-deflecting outer shell; for the lead liner just within; and, most crucially, for the warhead that had been inserted inside the liner. Having completed this task without error (and he knew that even a single misplaced character would start the process over from the beginning), Andrej would enter the codes’ corresponding numbers by hand into his secure computer, following which, if the entries matched the computer’s database, he would be presented with yet another series of figures, an eleven-digit composite of numerals, letters and symbols, one for each independently targeted reentry vehicle. Highlighting each of these in turn, he would enter first the installation code for their point of departure, second the code for the convoy in which they were to be transported, and finally the code for the destination facility at which the weapons were to be deactivated, disassembled and destroyed.
    Twenty meters down the line, the exact process was repeated by his Russian army counterpart under the gaze of the American disarmament expert. After this each case was loaded aboard one of two trucks that—following a three-quarter-hour drive with land, air and sea escorts—would arrive at an otherwise disused rail station. There the transfer would be swift and, even as a wintry daylight lingered, floodlit. The final leg of the journey, entirely covert, would be across limitless fields still tended with scythes.
    In all, twenty-one warheads were to be transported. And when the loading and recording had been completed at every stage, twenty-one crates of exactly similar weight and dimensions shone on every copy of the manifest. Therein was the elegance of Ian’s conceit.