Page 45 of The Collector
A seventh bomb was under construction in 1989 when South Africa voluntarily agreed to surrender its nuclear weapons program—in part because the embattled White-minority regime, its days numbered, did not wish to leave an atomic arsenal in the hands of a Black-led successor government. The six finished gun-type bombs were dismantled under international supervision, and the weapons-grade uranium was stored at the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Center west of Pretoria. The facility experienced at least three serious security breaches in the post-apartheid era, the last in 2007, which thegovernment initially dismissed as a routine attempted burglary. An independent probe of the incident, carried out by a former employee of the international investigations firm Kroll Inc., would later conclude that the raid was carried out by a disciplined team of heavily armed men who entered the facility in an attempt to locate and steal the nuclear explosives.
Among the most carefully guarded aspects of the South African nuclear program were the names of the scientists who enriched the uranium to weapons-grade strength and fashioned it into deliverable gun-type bombs. One of the scientists was a nuclear physicist named Lukas van Damme. With his life’s work abandoned, and his country ruled by Blacks, he sought an escape hatch. He found one in his father’s Durban-based shipping company, which he renamed LVD Marine Transport and moved to Nassau. Which was where, on a sun-blasted afternoon in August 1996, he met a man called Clyde Bridges, the London-based European marketing director of an obscure Canadian software firm. “Bridges” was merely a flag of convenience. His real name was Uzi Navot.
“What was the occasion?” asked Gabriel.
“Panic at King Saul Boulevard,” replied Shamron.
“Over what?”
“It turns out that Lucky Lukas wasn’t so lucky at all, especially when it came to the shipping business. He stayed afloat by turning his company into a criminal enterprise. He was also hanging out with all the wrong people.”
“Anyone in particular?”
“Representatives of countries that were seeking to duplicate South Africa’s successful nuclear program.”
“And we couldn’t have that.”
“Definitely bad for the Jews.”
“But you skipped an important part of the story,” said Gabriel. “The part about how the Office knew that Lukas van Damme, an ethically challenged shipping executive, was the brains behind South Africa’s nuclear program.”
“Van Damme? The brains behind the program?” Shamron shook his head slowly. “The South Africans never would have been able to build those bombs without our help.”
“What was the nature of Uzi’s conversation with Lucky Lukas that afternoon?”
“A friendly reminder of the perils he faced if he ever so much as considered sharing the family recipe with one of our adversaries.”
“Negative treatment?”
“It wasn’t necessary to go into specifics. Our reputation spoke for itself. Lukas practically recruited himself.”
“How did you use him?”
“With my approval, Lukas sold his services to anyone who would pay for them, which gave us access to the nuclear hopes and dreams of our most implacable enemies, including the Butcher of Baghdad and his Baathist buddy in Damascus. I also turned LVD Marine Transport of Nassau, the Bahamas, into a subsidiary of King Saul Boulevard global enterprises of Tel Aviv.”
“Brilliant.”
“Quite,” agreed Shamron. “The operation was an extraordinary success.”
“But the Office’s connections to the South Africans went far beyond a single nuclear physicist.”
Shamron regarded him through a veil of blue-gray smoke. “Myconnections to the South Africans—isn’t that what you mean?”
Gabriel was silent.
“If you are asking whether I helped the South Africans developnuclear weapons, the answer is no. The Office under my leadership was capable of many things, but not that. But was I in favor of our efforts to assist the South Africans? Did I advise a succession of prime ministers from both the left and right to continue the program? I most certainly did.”
“And when the South Africans decided to give up the nuclear weapons that we had helped them build?”
“I worked closely with my South African counterpart to ensure that there was no spillage of the weapons-grade uranium after the bombs were dismantled. I even toured the Pelindaba Nuclear Research Center.”
“And?”
“Needless to say, I was deeply concerned about security. But I was also left with a nagging suspicion that the South Africans had misled the International Atomic Energy Agency and the rest of the global community about the number of weapons they had assembled.”
“Why?”
“The assistance that we provided South Africa gave us unique visibility into the program. Our scientists were convinced that there were probablytwounfinished weapons, not one.”
