VAN WALLER climbed into the black SUV and his three-vehicle motorcade roared off, throwing road dust on an older couple slowly making their way up the hill to Gordes. Waller sat back and studied the screen on his phone. The email was brief, which he liked, and to the point, which he liked even better.

“How long?” he called up to the driver.

“GPS says fifty minutes, Mr. Waller. Crappy roads.”

“Make it forty.”

The man punched the gas and spoke into his headset. “Roll harder.” The other two vehicles in the column immediately gunned it.

Thirty-nine minutes later the three vehicles transitioned from a two-lane to a one-lane road and eventually wound their way far back to a small stone house wedged in among a stand of leafy trees. The yard was dirt, the roof in disrepair, and the stone crumbling. It was clear no one had lived here for a long time. And there was no other house for miles.

Waller popped open the SUV’s door and stepped out, waiting only a few seconds for his men to clear the area by sight, though he already had a man posted there who had come out of the house when the trucks had arrived. Waller marched into the house, his men bringing up the rear, with two left outside on perimeter watch.

The room was small, dark, and smelled of feces and mildew. It had no effect on Waller. He’d experienced much worse. There was one narrow table in the middle of the room, seven feet long and turned on one end so it reached nearly to the low ceiling. Two of the legs had been sawn off and the table edge rested against the floor. The remaining two legs were wedged against a wall for support. A naked man with dark hair and a beard was tied spread-eagled to the tabletop. Waller looked over at Pascal, who stood in one darkened corner, his gaze on the man with no clothes.

“You did well in organizing his capture, Pascal.”

“He tried to run, Mr. Waller, but he didn’t know how to.”

Waller walked up to the captive. From the light thrown by a couple of battery-powered lanterns, he could see the ambivalence in the man’s features. This angered Waller. Either fear him or hate him, but feel something. He slapped the man across his bloodied face.

“Are you awake, Abdul-Majeed? You do not seem to be all here.”

“I am awake. I see you. So what?” Waller knew that the man’s casual attitude was meant to embolden the Muslim and deflate his own expectation, as though Waller were the captive instead of the other way around. In actuality, it probably achieved neither. Fat Anwar the accountant had been westernized. Abdul-Majeed was still hard, a man of the desert for whom extreme privation was the norm. Waller had to respect such a man, but only to a certain degree.

“Do you miss Kandahar, Abdul-Majeed? Or do you like the beauty of Provence better?”

The man shrugged. “I like this room. It is actually better than what I have in Kandahar. But, again, so what?”

Waller took a step back and smiled. He had to admire at least the man’s courage.

“I do not like to be betrayed.”

“You do not understand the ways of the Muslim world, then. It was not betrayal. It was negotiation. It was caution. And all of Islam has been betrayed by the West many times. So why should you be any different?”

“I am here on holiday and yet I have to take time away from pleasantries because you tried to cut me out of the deal.”

“It is simply business. Do not take it personally.”

“Forgive me, but I always take it personally when someone tries to blow me up.”

“Then you are too sensitive.”

“Why did you do it?”

“You lied to us,” Abdul said simply.

“I do not lie when it comes to business.”

The Muslim scoffed. “A Canadian? You have enriched uranium? I do not think so. You are most likely a spy. That is why we tried to kill you.”

“Actually, I have highly enriched uranium. It is a critical difference. And if you did not believe it, why bother to deal with me at all?”

“I meant that I did not believe it. But others of my group did. They made the mistake and I was left with the mess to clean up.”

“But they were right and you were wrong.”

“Again, so you say. The Americans own your country. Everyone knows that. Canada is a satellite of the great Satan. A dog does not leave its master’s side.”

Waller turned to his men and flicked a hand at the door. They obediently left and shut the door behind them with Pascal being the last one out. Before closing the door he pointed to a metal case sitting on the floor in one corner of the room. He and his employer exchanged a look of mutual understanding.

Waller turned back to the captive and grabbed a handful of the man’s filthy hair. “This is simply because you think I’m Canadian? Can you truly be that stupid?”

Abdul-Majeed’s eyes flashed interest for the first time. “Think you are Canadian? You mean you are not?”

“No, Abdul-Majeed, I am not.” He slipped off his jacket and pulled up his shirtsleeve, revealing a mark on the inside of his upper arm, where it could not be easily seen when his shirt was off. He held it up in front of the Muslim. “Do you see that? Do you know what it means?”

Abdul-Majeed shook his head. “I do not know of such marks.”

Waller pointed to them one by one. “They are alphabet letters.”

“That is not English,” said Abdul-Majeed. “My English is good. I don’t know what that is.”

“It is Ukrainian. It is a variation of the Cyrillic alphabet. It stands for the Fifth Chief Directorate. Tasked to provide internal security against the enemies of the Soviet Union. I loved my job. So much that I burned it into my skin.”

Abdul-Majeed’s eyes widened. “You are Ukrainian?”

Waller rolled his shirtsleeve back down and put his jacket back on. “Actually, I always considered myself a Soviet citizen first and foremost. But perhaps that is simply splitting hairs. And since Ukraine was the repository for a good deal of the nuclear arsenal of the former Soviet Union, do you now understand? I still have many contacts there.”

“Why did you not tell us this?” spat out Abdul- Majeed.

Waller pulled up a chair and sat down. “It’s not my responsibility to provide you with my personal history, simply enough HEU—highly enriched uranium—to blow up a large part of a major American city. Do you even know what HEU really is, Abdul-Majeed?”

“It is Allah’s weapon.”

“No, it has nothing to do with Allah,” Waller said derisively. “Uranium is a naturally occurring mineral found all over the world in trace quantities. It took the Germans during Hitler’s reign to realize its peculiar potential through precise fission, namely to destroy people and property in vast quantities. Did you know that one can actually hold highly enriched uranium in his hand and not feel any adverse effects until years later? I have done so myself. Stupid of me, of course, but to hold that much power? The temptation was too great when I was a young and foolish man, though the toxic effects will probably kill me before my time.

“It takes fifty kilos, or nearly a hundred and ten pounds, of the substance to create a nuclear detonation. Whereas one would need nearly one ton, or twenty times that amount, of low-enriched uranium to produce a single nuclear bomb. It takes far less plutonium, about twenty pounds or so, to do the same thing. But unlike HEU, plutonium has to come from the reprocessing of nuclear material from reactors. And no country would allow terrorists to obtain that because, like a fingerprint, the device possesses the chemical signature of that country.”

“You promised enough material for a suitcase nuke,” Abdul-Majeed said.

Waller shook his head in disappointment. “You know, if you’re going to be in the nuclear terrorist business, you should take the time to really understand the science. Suitcase nukes are bullshit, the stuff of Hollywood films and paranoid politicians. It’s more like an SUV nuke. It can be done perhaps in a smaller footprint, but the smaller the device, counterintuitively perhaps, the greater its maintenance costs. And it would take a very strong man to carry around a suitcase weighing hundreds of kilos and the nuclear core would not last long. No, what I promised you was enough highly enriched uranium processed through second-generation gas centrifuge techniques to provide the core of a nuclear explosive device. That is fissile uranium containing in excess of eighty-five percent uranium 235. That means it is weapons-grade. I can also offer you, for a reduced price, weapons-usable grade, which only has twenty percent U-235. The boom will be far less, but you will still get a damn big boom with radiation fallout.”

Waller stood and moved around the room, but his gaze remained on the Muslim.

“I can also offer technical assistance. For instance, wrapping the weapon’s fissile core in a neutron reflector because it will dramatically lessen the critical mass, which is a good thing when you want as much explosive power as possible. It’s a tricky balance. A bit too much U-238 isotope and the chain reaction that gives the substance its ability to mass-fission is rendered unworkable. Then, no boom and no burn.”

For the first time Abdul-Majeed looked impressed. “You know much about this.”

“Yes, I know much about this,” mocked Waller. “I lived in Ukraine when it was one large atomic weapon waiting to be deployed. I have worked in nuclear facilities.” He added ominously, “And I have tortured scientists suspected of selling out their country to the Americans and their allies. It was a most valuable classroom for me on many levels.”

“Then we were wrong about you. We can go through with our deal.”

Waller looked amused. “Oh, you think so? After you tried to kill me?”

“Why not? You did not die. Things are explained. You will make much money.”

“Well, it’s not always about money, is it? And not everything is explained. For instance, I know you didn’t make the decision to kill me, because you aren’t important enough to do so. But I want the names of those who did.”

Abdul-Majeed smiled grimly. “That you will never know.”

“Have you ever been tortured, Abdul-Majeed? Forgive me if I refuse to use the ridiculous term ‘enhanced interrogation.’ I prefer to cut to the chase.”

The Afghan looked bored. “Sleep deprivation, waterboarding, cattle prods, loud music.”

“No, you misunderstood me. I asked if you’d been tortured, not coddled by what passes for torture these days.”

Waller walked over, opened the metal suitcase, and pulled out various instruments. “It is said that the Germans knew how to torture people, and indeed they were good at it. Today, the Israelis have the reputation of being the best interrogators, and they claim to not torture at all, but instead to use psychological means. As for me, I believe the Soviets stood alone when it came to such things. We had the best snipers and also the best interrogators. And I am old-fashioned. I have no patience for the latest technological gadgets. I use tried-and-true methods of extracting what I want based on one fact.”

“What fact?” the Muslim said in a hollow tone.

Waller turned to him. “That people are soft shits. Are you a soft shit, Abdul-Majeed? We will find out tonight, I think.”