To Free a Spy

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Boris Petrevich looked at his hands as he held them in front of him. No tremor. Better than his insides as he watched the seconds tick down on his digital watch, which was synchronized precisely with another digital timepiece three thousand feet from there. No matter his months of preparation, his maplike brainshot of the Sarov compound, his familiarity with the security safeguards, his encyclopedic knowledge of bomb-grade nuclear materials — all of those factors combined held no guarantee that his plan that night and the following days would succeed. He’d weighed whether the stakes were worth the risk but there was no turning back now.

To the extent possible Petrevich had calculated the risks his plan for that night presented. The first would occur when time zero arrived minutes from now. There’d be no problem moving around within Sarov but the guards manning the checkpoint inspected every car leaving the sealed city for radiation. Petrevich had used the most emission-secure travel container available to him in the nuclear lab but the lab’s Geiger-counter still reported miniscule leakage. He shielded the radiation exposure within his car as much as he could with the only remaining lead-lined blanket to be found. While there was no assurance he would get past this first hurdle unscathed he was not totally unprepared. Stuck under his belt in the small of his back was the World War II-vintage Russian TT-33 7.62 mm semi-automatic pistol he’d been issued years ago. The model had its flaws, such as no safety latch, but it was what he had. He had not fired it in years, saving up his ration of ammunition, and had never had the occasion to use it in a hostile situation.

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