by Peter James
‘Who have you informed of what we know, so far, sir?’ I asked Fifeshire.
‘Only the heads of the Atomic Energy authorities in the four countries. They are all instigating searches for B-marked fuel – I hope we’re right about it.’
‘So do I.’
‘They have all promised to let me know the moment they find anything – or the moment anything happens,’ he added ominously.
‘What about this country?’
Fifeshire shook his head. ‘If I tell the Home Secretary, he’ll get in one almighty flap, and rush off and tell the PM. The PM will get in a bigger flap still, summon an emergency cabinet meeting and discuss the matter for three hours. Having done that, they will then telephone me, and ask me to come and discuss it with them. I will tell them what I am doing, that in my opinion it is the only thing to do, and they will agree and tell me to continue; so there is not a lot of point in telling them in the first place. I did put everyone formally on notice back in October. You were both present at the meeting. Now I am getting on with the job. There is nothing further to tell them that will be of any use either to them or to us.’
‘If by Monday morning,’ said Quoit, ‘nothing has turned up, and there’s a westerly blowing, what are you going to do?’
‘Couldn’t all the power stations be shut down?’ I asked.
Quoit shook his head. ‘In summer, perhaps, but not in winter. Nineteen per cent of the country’s electricity comes from nuclear power. Take that away, and the conventional generating stations would not be able to cope. The whole country would be without electricity for days. Thousands of people, sick and old, would die.’
‘Even more than that would die if the country were contaminated by fall-out.’
‘I don’t think shutting down the stations would make any difference,’ said Quoit. ‘If these people have got this far, I’m certain they would have a contingency plan against the stations being shut down. If they cannot be stopped, then the only way you are going to protect the people of this country is to evacuate them.’
‘Evacuate the entire country?’ said Fifeshire. ‘Excellent idea, I’m sure, Isaac. How do you propose getting fifty-five million people off this island by Monday morning? And where exactly would you put them if we did so?’
Quoit looked at him and said nothing.
‘It’s not going to be much use shoving them into empty hotels on the Costa Brava,’ he went on, ‘if the ruddy Spaniards are going to have their reactors blown up too.’ He paused for some moments. ‘And if we did evacuate, how long before everyone could come back? It wouldn’t be a few days would it? It would be a year for the lucky ones, ten years for some less lucky, and several centuries for the less luckier still.’
‘I agree with you, it’s a major problem.’ said Quoit. ‘We’ve always been aware of it. We have plans for minor accidents – and major accidents – but not for a sabotage of this nature. This comes under the category of war – nuclear war, if you like, if they’re going to use nuclear explosives. That’s a different ball-game entirely. You’ve either got to get the people into fall-out shelters, or out of the downwind path. Until you know which are the target power stations, almost any area in the country could be in jeopardy, and by the time the reactors blow, it will be too late for evacuation.’
‘Evacuation is impossible,’ said Fifeshire, ‘completely impossible. It’s been discussed many times.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘You cannot see radioactive fall-out, you cannot smell it, you cannot feel it; unless you have a Geiger counter, you wouldn’t know it was present, neither in massive doses, nor in tiny doses. Correct?’
Quoit nodded.
‘So how would the public know if they were subjected to a massive dose?’
‘How would they know? It depends how the reactor is blown up, and how close they are. If a nuclear device is used, the people up to about fifty miles downwind would be dropping dead like flies, that’s how they’d know.’
‘Literally dropping dead? Maybe the ones very close to the power station would die immediately or very quickly, but further downwind – say fifty to one hundred miles – surely not? If a power station blows up fifty miles from London and the wind blows the stuff over London, the Londoners aren’t all going to drop dead on the spot are they?’
‘No. A few would die fairly quickly – within a couple of weeks probably – the rest, during the next five to fifteen years. And of course there would be a horrendous incidence of deformed children born.’
‘Would everyone in London be affected?’
‘No – probably about fifty per cent.’
‘No one would be able to prove anything would they? Not conclusively? A high incidence of deformed children, and of cancer five years later. That’s a long time; people forget. What could the people do anyway?’
Quoit stared at Fifeshire. A look of horror was on his face. ‘Do you mean, Charles, that you are suggesting nothing would be done to protect the public should these power stations be blown up?’
‘Yes, I am. There isn’t anything we could do, and if we tried to do anything at all, let the cat out of the bag about what had happened, it would cause blind nationwide panic. We would have to put the country onto full nuclear alert and stop all movement throughout the country. No one would be any the better off for knowing.’
There was a silence in the room while Fifeshire’s words sank in.
‘What about protecting the services?’ said Quoit.
‘Yes, of course we would do that. We would mount Operation Midwicket – which is what we call the soft nuclear alert, as opposed to Operation Longstop, which is the full-scale nuclear alert. In Midwicket, certain key ministers and military personnel and civil servants quietly move into nuclear shelters – without their families. The whole operation is carried out as if it were an exercise only, to avoid panic, and these people would never know it was anything more than an exercise. The Atomic Energy Authority, if questioned about its detonated reactors, would categorically deny any leak of radiation whatsoever.’
‘Well, I think it’s disgraceful,’ said Quoit.
‘Let’s hope we can find our elements,’ said Fifeshire, ‘and maybe it won’t come to that.’
‘They would need a truck,’ said Quoit suddenly. ‘They would have rented it. They must have had one to transport the bundles from Shoreham! Surely there can’t be many people who have rented trucks at this time of year? What if you called all the truck-hire people and asked them for descriptions of all the people who had hired trucks during the last week?’
As a nuclear energy expert, Quoit might have been brilliant. As a fledgling detective, he wasn’t quite so hot.
‘Assuming that we did that, Sir Isaac – and I am sure you are right that not many people hire vans at this time of year, even so I am sure you would find it runs into several thousands; it would take us months to get around to everyone. It is Saturday today, and half of the van hire firms in England are probably shut. Even if we got a description – say of Whalley or of Tsenong – what would that tell us that we don’t already know?’
Quoit thought for some moments. Fifeshire put his hand to his mouth to hide a smirk.
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Sherlock Holmes. ‘It wouldn’t tell us much.’
‘I think our only chance,’ I said, ‘is to search the fuel stores of every power station. As we cannot tell or trust anyone, I’ll do it myself. I’ve got the rest of today and the whole of tomorrow. I’ll make an order of priority and work through the power stations one by one.’
‘An order of priority?’ queried Quoit.
‘Yes. I’ll assume first that London is the target. I’ll go to all the stations that, if blown up in a westerly wind, could contaminate London. If those don’t pan out, I’ll move northward.’
‘You’ll never get round them all in time.’
‘Yes, I will – I’ll use a helicopter. It can’t take that long to check the fuel stores, surely? I’ll inform
them I’m doing a spot inventory check; they’re used to spot checks. Unless you can think of something better?’
Quoit couldn’t.
At half past three on the following afternoon, the first of the B-marked fuel bundles turned up in the stacking line at the fuel store at Trawsfynydd in Wales; behind it sat another thirty-five. Either Ogomo had lied about the wind, or London was not the target – a westerly from here would have blown the stuff over Liverpool and Manchester.
At a quarter to two in the morning, with my eyeballs hanging out on their stalks from tiredness, I found the second thirty-six, stacked and ready to go in the morning into the reactor at Calder Hall. If this one had blown, it would have taken out Newcastle.
For the second time in twelve hours, I instructed an army CO to place a nuclear power station under arrest. I instructed warrants to be issued for the arrest of Whalley, Tsenong and Patrick Cleary, whoever he was. Then I telephoned London and left a message for Fifeshire. Then the jet lag, and the three nights without any real sleep finally caught up with me, and feeling not a little pleased with myself, I leaned my head forward onto the desk in front of me, and was about to fall into a deep sleep, when the phone rang. It was Fifeshire, and he was not a happy man.
26
A van drove swiftly through the thick fog that shrouded Shropshire. It was a real pea-souper, and the van was going swifter than a van should in these conditions. But its driver was well trained, damned well trained, at driving in conditions such as these; he almost preferred conditions such as these to plain clear daylight. All the usual dashboard instruments were to one side; the centre of the dash was occupied by a large radar screen. The screen told the driver that the road ahead was clear. Next to the driver sat another man, with an identical screen in front of him; like the driver, he too was glued to the screen.
The exterior of the van was painted a rather dreary brown colour, and was in need of a good polish; emblazoned along each side, and along the rear doors, were the words Harris the Bakers.
The interior of the van, sealed off from the driver and his mate, was altogether a different matter. It had six seats, in two rows of three, facing each other, all covered in Connolly hide, and there was an elegant mahogany table in the centre. There were no windows in the back, but at the touch of a button the occupants could see any direction outside that they wished, on the large television monitor attached to the top of the table. To the left of the monitor was a radiotelephone that could connect directly into the telephone system of almost any country in the world.
The air inside the back could be set to any temperature the occupants desired, and, if necessary, the outside air could be shut off completely and they could switch to the van’s own ten-hour supply. The equipment also included a refrigerator, well stocked with food and milk, and an equally well stocked cabinet of soft drinks, including a large quantity of Malvern water.
Behind the seats was a padded space which had been especially designed to accommodate a quantity of small dogs, and it was currently occupied by several puzzled corgis. The six seats also were occupied by six no less puzzled adults. They were the Queen, Prince Philip, the Queen Mother, the Prince and Princess of Wales with their baby in a carry-cot, and Prince Andrew. Two similar vans, a short way behind, one marked Latin’s Poultry and the other marked Brights for Fish, contained other members of the Royal Family, and an assortment of ladies-in-waiting and secretaries.
The bread van turned into what looked like the driveway to an old manor house, and indeed once had been, and headed up the twisting mile-long drive. The van drove past outbuildings which had once housed farm machinery, but now barracked special members of the Coldstream Guards, and pulled up outside what looked like a timbered Elizabethan manor.
The interior of the house was not exactly classic Elizabethan. There was a dome of reinforced concrete, a battery of TV monitors, and a massive descending stairwell. A silver-haired man in his late fifties, wearing the battle-dress uniform of a Brigadier, led the Royal group into the building and down the stairwell. On the first level down, they walked through a rounded doorway which had a massive, two-foot-thick steel door with a rotating plate in the centre, and a large dial, not unlike the door to a bank vault. The door was open, and secured back.
The party went down to the second level and through a second, identical doorway, then down to the third level and through yet another identical doorway. They came into a very large and brightly lit operations room of open-plan design. There were over one hundred desks in the room; each desk had two telephones and one computer terminal.
The Queen then parted company with the rest of her family who were taken on down into their living quarters, and she was led through the back of the operations room, down a short corridor, and into a room hung completely with maps and charts. In the centre of the room was a huge rosewood table, of elongated oval shape, around which sat the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, and a battery of advisors.
In an office further down the same corridor, Fifeshire sat, shrouding himself in cigar smoke and firing his words through the cloud. I wondered if, perhaps, he was trying to simulate giving orders in battle conditions.
‘Did you have a good journey?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘flying in choppers through thick fog is not my scene.’
‘Nor mine. Damned foolish. Did you notice the wind getting up?’
I nodded. ‘Westerly.’
A massive cloud of Havana smoke appeared in front of my eyes, and his voice boomed through it. ‘You’re wondering what the devil is going on, so I’ll tell you everything first, and then you can ask questions.’
As the smoke lifted, I half-expected that he might have disappeared, but he was still there.
‘The Americans, the Canadians, the French, and the Spaniards: they all found AtomSled’s fuel bundles, in position in various reactors, ready for loading into the cores. Now for the bad news: at the Chinon reactor in France, at eleven o’clock last night, four men carrying explosive charges were arrested. A Spanish reactor at Lemoniz went critical at one o’clock this morning: there were no B-marked fuel bundles at Lemoniz. According to their latest report, the reactor is now completely out of control.’ Fifeshire took the cigar away from his mouth for some moments, and I could see his face was very white. ‘Do you know what this means?’
I nodded. I knew what it meant. I said something I don’t normally say when in the presence of a superior. I said, ‘Oh shit.’
‘I don’t think I could have put it better myself,’ said Fifeshire.
‘We’ve been duped. Hook, line and sinker.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like, I’m afraid. Total red herring, the fuel business; and it’s worked a treat. God knows how many stations are going to blow up today. And where the hell do we begin?’
I sunk my head into my hands. ‘How the hell have we been so stupid?’
‘I don’t think you or I have been in the slightest bit stupid. We are gatherers of intelligence, not scientists. We can’t be expected to understand every aspect of modern science – but we are expected to use good advisors. Sir Isaac is this country’s number one expert in nuclear energy; we used his advice.’
‘Maybe we should have left him on the bloody plane. Where is he now?’
‘In with the brass. He’s trying to explain how you split an atom.’
‘This is one hell of a time for a science lesson. Maybe he should have explained it to them before the country ever built its first sodding power station. Can we get him out?’
‘Do you need him?’
‘I have a hunch,’ I said. ‘If I’m right, then I’m going to need him and a helicopter fast.’
‘What’s your hunch?’
‘A power station that’s got a black university student doing a work-study course at a nuclear power station that’s East of London. That’s what we’ve got to find. I think they’re going to do one power station only. I don’t think they have the manpower to do more. We need to speak to the hea
ds of personnel at Hinkley Point, Inswork Point, Bugle and Huntspill Head.’
Fifeshire again disappeared behind a screen of smoke. When he emerged, he was holding the telephone in his hand. He barked down it. Within ten minutes the phone rang back. Ben Tsenong was at Huntspill Head. So was Horace Whalley.
As the helicopter hurtled down across Wales, the fog thinned, then vanished behind us. We clattered over the Bristol Channel and looked down on water that was thick with white horses. The wind was whipping up – a strong Westerly. The weather conditions for Operation Angel were absolutely perfect.
Heading up the Channel, down below, was a powerful cabin cruiser. It seemed to be making for a small port on the Somerset coast. I thought it was an odd time of year for a luxury cabin cruiser to be out, but then it went from my mind as Huntspill Head nuclear power station appeared in view, hunched menacingly on the shore. It looked formidable and oppressive. Its four round domes and square vacuum chambers, in pale grey concrete, rose from the ground looking like the tomb of a Martian emperor. I wondered what was going on in there, whether it had already begun, if we were too late to do anything about it and were going down to certain death – and that didn’t worry me. What did worry me was a girl in London, a pissed-off girl whose boyfriend had stood her up for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, who had hung up on him when he’d called to apologize and tried to tell her that she had to get her ass out of London. I wasn’t going to let that crazy gorgeous girl get her lungs full of plutonium, and her thyroids full of iodine and her stomach full of gamma rays. I thought of a fanatic young black student, and a weak civil servant, and an anonymous zealot who dreamed of a free Ireland. I checked the magazine of my Beretta, took the safety catch off, switched to automatic fire, nodded to Quoit to follow me, and leapt to the ground before the skids of the chopper had even settled.
A figure came hurrying across to greet us. It was the man I had met only a few months ago, when I had come to see a nervous lecturer, Doug Yeodall, who was now dead, assure the world’s press that a nuclear power station could never blow up. Ron Tenney held out his hand. ‘Hi there, did you have a good flight?’ he said with his soft voice that had a hint of an Irish brogue.