As Tom Martin approached Clenston Mews from Seymour Place, his Danger Meter stirred. He had learned to rely upon it, an essential organ for someone in his line of work. While he was never eager to enter a blind alley, today he was certain he was being observed. Vasily would want to ensure that his visitor – he knew Tom as Edgar Wilson – came alone. Why else had the Russian chosen a flat at the end of the long mews, with its sole access fifty yards distant? Given the nature of their business, Vasily had reason to be careful. He would be especially nervous now, the moment he was most vulnerable to betrayal.

Tom passed along the row of flats converted from garages, or maybe stables, chafing at each exposed step as he felt eyes boring in on him. Arriving simultaneously at the end of the mews and the height of a foul mood, he rang the bell at Number Eighteen, an unwelcoming black metal street door beside an equally unwelcoming black metal garage door. It began to rain.

“Open the fecking door, will ye?” he muttered, leering at the fisheye security camera. Working out of CIA’s London Station, he found himself slipping into a lazy, indeterminate British accent while adopting some of the more expressive local usage. But, fecking? When had he begun cursing in Irish?

The lock clicked, allowing Tom to push into the miniscule landing. Wiping his feet on a filthy dishtowel left as an excuse for a floor mat, he noted a door to his right. The garage. Coat hooks sprouted from the wall to his left. A short, steep staircase beckoned straight ahead. Looking up, he muttered fecking hell and began the climb. This is turning into a bloody marathon. The scuffed wooden treads creaked underfoot. He paused halfway up, then again near the top, breathing heavily. This was more exercise than he had experienced in a month. Damp from rain and sweat, he summited the stairs in need of a drink.

The flat had seen better days, but then, so had Tom. An efficiency kitchen unit occupied the far wall. Installed by someone with limited culinary ambitions, it could have been the galley of a modest American RV. A small wooden table with three lime green plastic chairs waited before it. Nearby, a sofa and two club chairs, their leather seats dry and cracked with age, rested upon a worn carpet. In one corner, a masonry fireplace sporting a gas hob produced only negligible heat.

“Glad you could make to join me,” Vasily told him, in just decipherable English. The Russian stood before the kitchen unit. He indicated the sofa with his glass, raising a bottle of Redbreast in his other hand like a boozy Lady Liberty lifting her torch beside the welcoming shores of Irish whiskey.

“Three fingers,” Tom told him. Thank god.

“Three Russian fingers,” Vasily replied, spilling into a tall glass a quantity of whiskey more appropriate to a serving of iced tea. Vasily was of average height, nearly bald, his bare pate and face a sickly gray. He was thin, bony, almost gaunt, with the grizzled, sunken cheeks and wild eyes of a gulag prisoner. Tom could not come close to guessing his age. Russian men often emerged into adulthood from their unforgiving motherland in an early state of decay. And the women? From beauty to babushka in ten years, someone had once told him in a Moscow bar.

“I thought you only drank vodka,” Tom commented when Vasily presented his drink. “Thank God I was wrong.” He sank into the nearest club chair, sipping off the top lest he spill a precious drop, before setting the glass on a side table.

“When home, drink wodka, da,” Vasily confirmed. “This,” he said, indicating his own glass, “is cover.” He took a sip of whiskey then perched uneasily on the arm of the sofa, fidgeting as he faced his guest.

“And good cover it is,” Tom said. “You blend right in. English as kidney pie.” He knew from experience that sarcasm was wasted on Vasily.

“My English is so good as King?”

“Hell no, but half the bloody city’s Russkie, so who’s to say?” Tom said.

“Is true, this. And other half is Arab, Chinese, African. Fucking English have sold they birthright, have not?” After a long pull on his whiskey, he suggested, “Before we talk. . .”

An enormous crewcut man packed into a too-small dark suit that emphasized a bulge beneath his left armpit came in from what must have been the bedroom. It was his vacant eyes Tom had felt tracking his approach along the mews. Vasily spoke to the giant in Russian, then motioned for Tom to stand, spreading his arms to indicate a pat down.

Tom complied but hung onto his drink.

The Russians expected the mobile phone and another specialized device of about the same size, as well as a wallet, keys, and a pen. These were inspected and returned, giving Tom an opportunity for a good look at Vasily’s man. His face resembled a slab of prime beef Tom had admired the day before in a display case at Turner & George in St. John Street – red, raw, and well-marbled. The ears, oddly, were too small for his large, square head, and a ropelike carotid artery pressed against his collar. After the wordless frisk, the giant left, descending the stairs.

“My God, I haven’t been felt up like that since university.”

“He go protect street,” Vasily explained.

“Good idea, someone might try to nick it,” Tom said, putting his belongings back in their proper places, carefully clipping the pen inside his breast pocket.

“We have fun, no? While make money. Is best thing, make money, have fun with friend. Is true?” Vasily said.

“The very best,” Tom agreed, saluting Vasily with his glass. Developing Vasily over the past year, he had become Edgar Wilson, disaffected American expat, arms merchant to the nouveaux riche terrorist, no request too outrageous, too deadly, or too expensive. He nodded agreeably. “Alright, then. Shall we get on to the part where we make money?”

“You American like get down to bass tracks, yes?” Vasily enthused.

“Something like that. I can confirm my client has the sum at his disposal. All I need is the account number, the routing, and, of course, the product.”

Vasily handed him a sheet of notepaper with a handwritten series of numbers, legible but with a Cyrillic lilt. “And I have product. So, we make sale now?”

“Where is it, then? My client would want me to confirm before five million U.S. goes poof.”

“Your client man of little faith. He think maybe Vasily Alexandrovich goes to cheat him?”

Vasily might have been offended or just making conversation. Was this a problem? Tom kept his expression set to calm resignation: Clients have their quirks. What is the humble middleman to do?

“You want look now before phone client? Product is right here,” Vasily said, pointing at his crotch. It took Tom a moment to realize he meant the garage below.

“I think I’d better,” Tom allowed, as he might agree to taste a wine before the waiter pours for his guests, confident it will be acceptable. He lifted his whiskey, finished it in a single go, and set his empty glass on the side table. He had downed the equivalent of four whiskeys in the space of five minutes. That much alcohol might muddle the brain of the average man, but not Tom, for he was an intelligence professional.

He followed Vasily down the same stairs he had ascended moments earlier. At the narrow bottom landing, they stepped into the small garage. The slab-faced man stood sentinel beside an unmarked panel van, towering over it. The giant gave his boss a slight sideways head shake, confirming they were clean. The van had been backed into the tight space facing the roll-up door, ready for a quick getaway. That suited Tom fine.

Vasily led Tom around to the back, where he unlocked and opened the van’s double doors. A heavy-gauge steel crate of about a meter cubed dominated the center of the tiny cargo space, attached by steel ties to the van’s frame. Tom saw Russian military markings and read a serial number that confirmed this was the prize, the culmination of untold effort by dozens of people over years.

The giant climbed in back, noticeably stressing the small van’s suspension. He unfastened a lock, removed the crate’s steel lid, and set it on edge between the crate and the driver’s compartment, blocking internal access to the driver’s seat. Was that intentional? His task completed, he positioned himself so Tom could squeeze into the narrow space alongside. Between the low ceiling, the substantial crate, the steel ties protruding on either side, and the giant’s bulk, this was not easy. The van creaked and rocked as the men maneuvered like two hippos in a child’s wading pool. When they were settled, Vasily shoehorned in after them and the space went from cramped to claustrophobic.

With their heads inches apart, Tom could smell the giant’s breath – onions. “Let’s get on with it,” he said. From his pocket he removed the device that was not a phone, holding it out for all to see as he pressed a button, powering it up. He knelt with difficulty on the hard metal deck, leaned forward awkwardly, peered into the crate, reached in up to the elbow, set down the device, and withdrew his arm. The three men remained silent, avoiding one another’s eye as the seconds passed. When the device beeped, Tom retrieved it and considered the LED readout.

“Is hot, yes?” Vasily asked.

“Very hot,” Tom agreed, showing Vasily the screen. With the Russians watching, he pressed a button. The screen went blank. Before shutting down, however, it sent the technical data to a comms team waiting in a laundry van on Hampden Gurney Street three blocks away.

“We’re on!” called a freckled comms technician huddled over her secure radio in the back of the van.

Inside London Station’s situation room, deep in the embassy’s bowels, a half dozen people began speaking into various devices. The U.S. embassy was situated across the Thames, just three miles from Clenston Mews. Proximity to the action – and the van’s lethal cargo – brought home the operation’s stakes.

Jim Sargent, chief of London Station, stood amid the controlled chaos erupting around him like a captain on the bridge of a destroyer preparing to enter battle. He knew exactly what each member of his team was doing. A ponytailed young woman in a darkened cubicle at one end of the space monitored hacked CCTV feeds from several blocks around the mews, transmitting her observations to Operations Control. A bald, middle-aged man on the telephone a few feet away used a secure line to keep Langley up to speed in real time. It was that kind of operation.

Across the room, at Operations Control, Maureen, a fortyish woman in a cable knit sweater whose school-marmish glasses trailed a silver chain around her neck, spoke with Alpha One. He led a five-man Ground Branch assault team cooling its heels in a plumber’s van, a new electric model, near Marble Arch. Beside Maureen, two older men with thick, black-framed glasses and matching bushy eyebrows, Groucho One and Groucho Two, were analyzing data from Tom’s device, relayed from the laundry van.

Sargent turned first to the pair from Scientific Services. “The real deal?” he demanded.

“That’s right, Chief,” Groucho Two replied at once.

“It’s plutonium alright,” Groucho One added. “We’re still analyzing the volume and. . .”

Lifting a palm like a traffic cop, Sargent tuned him out. He had what he needed. His gaze swiveled. “Locals?”

From her cubicle, the ponytailed young woman shook her head briskly, hair fishtailing about her shoulders, confirming there were no British policemen in the vicinity of the Mews. That was critical. The Station had neglected to inform the Cousins at MI-5 of the morning’s operation. On direct orders from Langley, Tom had developed Vasily under extraordinarily tight security, classified NOFORN: an absolute communications blackout.

The Company had devoted enormous resources to tracking down missing Russian plutonium since the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union a generation earlier, but hints only recently began trickling out that some of it was on the market. Fissile material in the hands of terrorists was the nightmare scenario. The bad guys didn’t need the advanced technology required to create a nuclear bomb, or sophisticated missiles to deliver it. They only needed to disperse highly radioactive material in the center of a major city. That was easily accomplished using conventional explosives – a dirty bomb – and that city would become uninhabitable for a very long time. Thousands of innocents would die, millions more would develop cancers, a generation of babies would be born with birth defects, and billions of dollars in economic activity – in London it might be trillions – would evaporate.

“Traffic?” Sargent asked.

“Normal comms,” a scruffy young man in a Yale sweatshirt told his Chief, returning to monitor police radio chatter.

“Maureen!” Sargent hollered to be heard over the din.

She turned sharply, letting her glasses dangle on their chain.

“Clear Alpha One to his jump. And tell the trigger-happy bastard to hold there for the go-go.”

Maureen relayed the Chief’s message to Alpha One. His team was up. Beta Team was in reserve less than a half mile away. If they were needed, the outing had turned into a shitshow.

“Vasily, you’re as good as your word,” Tom smiled. “Tell me something. Is there more where this came from? My client, you see, if this dish is good, he may want seconds.”

“My dear Edgar, so long as your client has funds, we can provide product. Mother Russia is what you call? Bottomless treasure chest?”

Was he exaggerating? Maybe, but they couldn’t bet on it. If the team could secure the crate and take Vasily alive, maybe he could lead them to more looted plutonium.

The Russian looked like a dog trying to remind his master that he had not been fed.

“Alright then. Time for you to get paid,” Tom said to Vasily’s evident relief. He reached into his pocket for his phone, but the giant stayed his hand.

“Use his,” Vasily said. The giant offered Tom a phone.

“Relax, man,” Tom said. “I gotta use mine or he isn’t gonna know it’s me. He gets lots of annoying calls. You know? Those damn robocalls. Politicians, salesmen, charities, that Chinese lady who always phones during dinner. He won’t pick up.” He checked his watch. “He’s probably wondering what’s up. We’re already a little late.”

The giant turned his enormous head toward Vasily, who nodded reluctantly. Tom took up his phone, dialing a number from memory.

“Put him on the speaker of the phone,” Vasily demanded.

Tom complied. “You know, Vasily, you should chill. This business is stressful enough. . .”

“Yes?” The voice on the speaker sounded Middle Eastern.

“The delivery is in order, fresh and tasty,” Tom said, using the coded phrase for success.

During the plutonium inspection, Alpha Team had moved to its jump, a launch position just outside the mews. Driving into the confined space would be risky, Vasily might have it under surveillance, but the alternative was for five heavily armed men to stroll up the long, peaceful mews on foot. For the moment they had maneuvered as close as they dared, just out of sight.

Tom recited the bank routing and account numbers Vasily had given him. The Middle Eastern voice repeated those back to him, confirming. Anticipating the transfer of five million dollars into his Swiss account, Vasily squirmed like a junkie anticipating his next fix.

“I will move the money,” the Middle Eastern voice said to the relief of the men huddled in the van. But Tom’s client was not a terrorist. He was a CIA linguist seated in a soundproof booth adjacent to Sargent and the rest of the team in the Situation Room. The Company had no intention of transferring money into the Russian’s account, but it was imperative Vasily believe the transaction was underway, at least long enough for Tom to drive away with the deadly cargo. Sixty seconds, thirty in a pinch, that was all. Then Alpha Team could race in and grab Vasily.

“Transfer complete,” the Middle Eastern voice said. The connection went dead.

Vasily checked his phone. “Nyet,” he muttered “Is nothing.”

“Patience, Vasily, it can take a few minutes for that kind of money to leave one place and arrive at the next. You heard him. It’s done. Now, I see the keys in the ignition, so I’ll be saying my farewells. Pleasure doing business with you.” With the crate’s heavy steel lid between him and the driver’s seat, he would need to climb out the back of the van. He half rose, but the giant put a hand on his chest, forcing him back.

“Does your lapdog here speak, Vasily, or at least bark?” Tom said with real irritation.

“My friend Edgar,” Vasily said. “We wait here for money. Is better for you it come soon.”

“Well, it’s a bloody nice day for waiting down here,” Tom said, using the crash code and trying to clue his colleagues to his location. His phone was programmed to transmit even when turned off. Bloody nice day would inform London Station that Plan A had failed, he would not emerge with the product. They would have to come in and get him.

* * *

At a nod from Sargent, Maureen radioed the assault team leader. “OK, Alpha One, he didn’t buy it. You are cleared to go in hot. Go now. Go! Go! Go!”

Plan B, unfortunately, lacked anything resembling subtlety. Tom’s life now depended on Alpha Team riding to the rescue like the cavalry in an old Western. Sort of. Replacing the grandeur of blaring bugle and pounding hooves with a silent, battery-powered panel van, Alpha One turned into the mews and drove its length before stopping at Number Eighteen. Five men emerged carrying assault rifles, obvious as a harelip in gun-less London. They formed up on the street door, placed a breaching charge on the lock, then fell back behind their van.

Maureen had neglected to pass along a crucial point: the sale took place in the garage – Tom’s ad-libbed down here – not, as planned, in the flat above. In the after-action review she would confess she thought Alpha One was following the feed. Alpha One would respond that his only comms were with Operations Control. It was a simple mistake, but it set the stage for a catastrophe.

Alpha One did the honors: “Three, Two, One. . .” The explosion reverberated in the Situation Room over the team’s open mics. With the street door blown, the interior entry to the garage was obscured. Four Alphas raced right past, up the stairs. A fifth remained outside, ready to fend off nosy neighbors with a tale of a drug raid while giving the assault team an early warning of police. They were, after all, conducting an illegal operation while boxed into a dead-end mews.

The three men crammed into the back of the van didn’t hear the battery-powered cavalry’s approach or the sound of men preparing a breach. But no one along the entire mews missed the muffled crump. The door from the garage to the entryway shuddered. Then came the sound of men thumping up the stairs. Realizing what happened, under his breath Tom cursed the Fecking eejits.

The giant withdrew a Beretta 9mm pistol from his shoulder holster as Vasily said in Russian: “We’re betrayed.”

Tom had fluent Russian but was unsure if Vasily was speaking to him or about him. That point was soon clarified.

“Edgar, you are police!” Vasily spat in English, wild-eyed at the sound of men tromping around above.

“Christ no. Check your account, I’m sure it’s there now. And open the garage. We need to get the hell out of here!” Tom shouted, hoping for a miracle.

The Russian’s uncertainty bought Tom a few seconds. Would it make any difference? Where is the fecking assault team?

The giant, Beretta in hand, looked to Vasily for direction. Tom sighed in resignation. He had no choice. Casually, as if taken with a sudden urge to jot a note, he removed the pen from his shirt pocket, flicking off the cap. Before the giant noticed, Tom jabbed savagely, embedding the pen in his neck, aiming for the protruding carotid artery. Anywhere close would do. He depressed a pin on top, injecting a massive dose of a powerful paralytic, enough to kill a horse, he had been assured. Good call. His target had equine proportions.

With his central nervous system suddenly incapacitated, the Russian went limp. He would suffocate in minutes as his diaphragm ceased moving air in and out of his lungs. Tom freed the Beretta from a loosened grip. Vasily too produced a pistol. In the confined space, it was a classic standoff, neither man wanting to fire for fear of triggering his own death.

“Damn it, Vasily, let’s get out of here!” Tom remained cool, still muddying the waters, still buying time. Again: Where is the fecking assault team?

Vasily held one critical advantage – he was near the van’s open rear doors while Tom was trapped inside, half-buried under the giant. The Russian backed out nervously, keeping both his weapon and his eye on Tom. As soon as his feet reached the garage floor, he disappeared around the van’s side. His arm briefly reappeared, tossing something that clattered into the open crate. Then he broke off and raced for the street, hitting the wall-mounted paddle that operated the automatic garage door and attempting to slide under as it opened mere inches.

Moving quickly under the deadweight of the giant – still conscious but no longer breathing – Tom leaned over, reaching into the open crate. His fist closed around a familiar object – a fecking grenade. An explosion would disperse the plutonium, turning a portion of central London into another Chernobyl. It would kill him, Alpha Team, and everyone in the mews if not the entire neighborhood. Radiation would then disperse across the city center. It would mean Tom had failed. No, he couldn’t let that happen.

He pulled his hand from the crate and threw the grenade out the back of the van. It detonated an instant after leaving his fingers.

No radioactive material escaped. Neither did Vasily. Alpha Five, posted at the street, pressed the muzzle of his MP-5 to the Russian’s head as he slithered under the rising garage door. Quickly, he zip-tied Vasily then dragged him back inside by the ankles before lowering the door.

Alpha One came tearing down the stairs. He found Tom still seated in the van, shivering like a man with hypothermia, his right arm held out before him as if he were reaching for something. The hand was mangled beyond recognition as anything once human. Tom’s right eye was missing, the torn socket red and angry, pulsing blood down his cheek.

Alpha Two, the team’s medic, pushed past Alpha One and climbed into the van. “Call for Cas Evac,” he told his team leader, removing his first aid kit from its chest pouch. The giant was dead; his chest riddled with shrapnel from the fragmentation grenade. The Russian’s bulk lay half on top of Tom. It provided a sort of human shield and probably saving his life.

“You’re going to be OK, Pal.” Alpha One spoke softly. “You made the sale.”

“Fecking hell,” Tom gasped. “The sale.”