Crocodile Tears

much the same. The exit wouldn’t open until the entrance had closed. It was all part of the need for total containment. The five men were dressed identically, with safety helmets and goggles. All of them were carrying toolboxes. For the rest of the day they would carry out a series of tasks, some of them as ordinary as oiling a valve or changing a lightbulb. Even the most advanced technology needs occasional maintenance.
    As they emerged from the air lock into the reactor chamber, they seemed almost to vanish, so tiny were they in these vast surroundings, dwarfed by the gantries and walkways—bright yellow—overhead, by electric hoists and cables, soaring banks of machinery, fuel rod transportation canisters, generators. Arc lamps shone down from the edges of the dome, and in the middle of it all, surrounded by ladders and platforms, what looked like an empty swimming pool plunged twelve yards down, with stainless steel plates on all four sides. This was the reactor. Underneath a 150-ton steel cap, millions of uranium atoms were splitting again and again, producing unimaginable heat.

    Four metal towers stood guard in the chamber. If they were shaped a little like rockets, they were rockets that would never fly. Each one was locked in its own steel cage and connected to the rest of the machinery by a network of massive pipes. These were the reactor coolant pumps, keeping the water rushing around on its vital journey. Inside each metal casing, a 50-ton motor was spinning at the rate of 1,500 revs per minute.
    The pumps were labeled north, south, east, and west. The south pump was going to be Ravi’s primary target.
    But first of all he crossed to the other side of the reactor chamber, to a door marked EMERGENCY
    EXIT ONLY. The two men had explained everything very carefully to him. There was no point attacking the reactor cap. Nothing could penetrate it. Nor was there any point in sabotaging the reactor chamber, not while it was locked down. Any blast, any radiation leak would be contained. To achieve their aims, an exit had to be found. The power of the nuclear reactor had to be set free.
    And there it was on the blueprint they had shown him. The emergency air lock was the Achilles’ heel in the fortification of Jowada. It should never have been built. There was no need for it and it had never been used. The idea of a passageway between the reactor chamber and the back of the turbine hall, where it opened onto a patch of wasteland close to the perimeter fence, was to reassure workers that there was a fast way out should one ever be needed. But what it also provided was a single pathway from the reactor to the outside world. It was, in one sense, the barrel of a gun. All it needed was to be unblocked.

    Nobody noticed Ravi as he strolled over to the emergency door, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have remarked on it. Everyone had their own worksheet. They would assume he was just following his.
    He opened the inner door—a solid metal plate—and let himself into the corridor. This was identical to the one he had used to enter, the same size and shape as a passageway in an underground train station—
    only without the advertisements. About halfway along, there was a control panel fixed high up in the wall. Standing on tiptoe, Ravi unscrewed it, using one of the few real tools he had brought with him.
    Inside, there was a complicated mass of circuitry, but he knew exactly what to do. He cut two wires, took one of them, and attached it to a third. It was quite easy, really. The exit door slid open in front of him, revealing a patch of blue sky on the other side of another wire fence. He felt the sluggish air roll in. Somewhere, perhaps in the control room, someone would notice what had happened. Even now a light might be blinking on one of the consoles. But it would take a while before anyone came to investigate and by then it would be too late.
    Ravi went back into the reactor chamber and over to the nearest of the four reactor coolant pumps. This was the only way that wide-scale sabotage was possible. What he was aiming for was known in the nuclear industry as a LOCA—a Loss of Coolant Accident. It was a LOCA that had caused the catastrophe at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union and had almost done the same at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. The pump was locked in its cage, but Ravi had the key. That was one of the reasons he had been chosen for this job. The right man in the right place.
    He