There was nothing more Richter could do with the laptop, so he removed the data cable, switched off Abbas’ mobile phone, and put the computer, phone and cable into the Samsonite case. Then he walked back to where Abbas was sitting groaning against the wall. He pushed the muzzle of the Glock under Abbas’ chin and forced the Arab’s head up.
‘You’re Dernowi, I presume. I’ve got a couple of questions for you. First, what’s your backdoor code for the Russian computer?’
Abbas opened his eyes slowly and looked at Richter, then very deliberately he spat in his face. At first Richter didn’t react at all, then he brought his left hand up, wiped the spittle from his cheek, then moved the Glock down and fired a bullet through Abbas’ right thigh.
‘Let’s try that again, shall we?’ he said, raising his voice over the Arab’s screams. ‘What’s the backdoor code?’ Abbas shook his head, still howling.
‘You’re going to die here,’ Richter said, ‘but it’s up to you how. Tell us what we want and it will be a single bullet, then oblivion. Carry on like this and I’ll just keep shooting bits off you until you pass out. Fun for me, but definitely not for you. So, what’s your backdoor code?’
The Arab shook his head again. ‘I will never tell you,’ he murmured, his voice low and cultured, with a pronounced Home Counties English accent. Looking at him, Richter suddenly realized that he wouldn’t, that he was looking at a committed martyr. ‘OK, then why choose “Dernowi”? Why a Yiddish name for an Arab, and why “The Prophet”?’
Abbas almost smiled. ‘It was an old joke,’ he said. ‘That was all.’
‘And why all this? Why were you trying to detonate weapons the Russians had planted in America?’
Abbas was losing blood quickly from his multiple wounds, and Richter knew he had only minutes before the Arab lost consciousness for the last time. ‘To start a war, of course,’ Abbas said, his voice barely audible. ‘The Russians were stupid. They knew nothing of our plan. They thought we just wanted to humiliate America, to threaten them with the bombs. We wanted America destroyed, but for Russia to be blamed and destroyed in her turn. At a stroke, we would eliminate the world’s two superpowers, and allow the full blossoming of the Arab world. The Arab nations would arise as the new world leaders and we would finally fulfil our destiny. That is why we conceived this plan, and that is why we paid for everything, why we bought the Russians.’
Richter sat back, hardly believing what he had heard. ‘So you and your camel-shit-eating masters were going to sacrifice the populations of America and Russia, and probably most of Western Europe, just so that a bunch of flea-ridden sand Arabs could rule the world?’
Abbas nodded. ‘And we will make a much better job of it than you have,’ he spat. ‘It is our destiny. We will bring the word of Mohammed to the godless masses, if not now then later.’ And then he added something which chilled Richter even more than Baker’s news. ‘I am not the only one who knows the backdoor code,’ he said.
‘Who else?’ Richter demanded, but Abbas just smiled slightly and shook his head.
‘I will not tell you,’ he said. ‘You will find out, and he will finish what I began. Your time is at an end.’
Richter nodded, decision made. ‘And so is your time,’ he said, and raised the Glock.
‘You would not dare,’ Abbas said. ‘This is France, a civilized country. You cannot just execute me. I expect medical treatment. I want to talk to my Embassy in France.’
‘Expect away,’ Richter said, and shot Abbas twice in the stomach. The Arab’s eyes widened with the sudden searing pain, and he began a keening, wailing sound as he toppled sideways, clutching his belly.
‘One for Abilene, one for Albany,’ Richter said, stood up and turned away.
‘You want me to finish him?’ Dekker asked.
‘No,’ Richter shook his head firmly, picked up the Samsonite computer case and walked out of the ruined building. ‘Leave him there. Let him die slowly. It’ll give him time to make his peace with Mohammed.’
Buraydah, Saudi Arabia
Sadoun Khamil looked at the television set with a broad smile on his face. The satellite receiver was tuned to CNN, and already the first still picture – shot from a safe distance, probably several miles away – of the characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud over what was left of Abilene was more or less a fixture on the screen. The correspondents were visibly appalled, and trying desperately to make any kind of sense of what they and the world were seeing.
American government buildings were already under siege from the news media, but there had been no announcements of any sort from any officials. Experts from various disciplines were being dragged into studios, or just stood in front of camera crews, and asked for their comments and conclusions, but the quite unmistakable fact was that nobody in America had any idea of what had happened or why. The best guess on the part of the CNN anchor was that it was just a terrible mistake – an American nuclear weapon had been accidentally detonated, with appalling loss of life and wholesale destruction.
Khamil smiled again as he heard this. ‘There will be a few more such accidents,’ he prophesied, and laughed out loud.
10 Downing Street, London
Sir Michael Geraghty sat down heavily in the leather chair opposite the mahogany desk in the Prime Minister’s private office, and looked across at the grey-haired man who’d been roused from sleep by his staff minutes earlier when the news from Texas broke. His hair was tousled, and he was still in pyjamas, a mauve dressing gown wrapped tightly around him. Geraghty was uncomfortably aware that he didn’t look much better himself, though he was fully dressed.
‘This is appalling, simply appalling.’
‘I can only agree with you, Prime Minister. You know that we in SIS did everything we could, and I have already congratulated Simpson on the performance of his people. The presence of this Arab—’ he almost spat the word ‘—with a backdoor code into the Russian computer was completely unexpected, and something nobody could possibly have foreseen.’
‘And what now?’ the Prime Minister asked. ‘After Abilene, what will the Americans do? The weapon was Russian in design, construction and placement. The fact that it was triggered by an Arab is probably, in this context, irrelevant. At the very least we can expect them to demand substantial reparation from Russia, and at worst they might decide on a surgical strike, to visit upon the Russian people the same sort of losses they have experienced.’
‘That, Prime Minister, is why I’m here,’ Geraghty said. ‘Simpson has informed me that the SAS and his man successfully stopped the Arab terrorist from detonating any further weapons, although he was trying to do just that when they caught up with him. As far as we are aware, there is no further danger from any of the weapons that the Russians positioned on American soil. It would be a tragedy if America struck at Russia now, and precipitated any kind of a nuclear exchange. May I recommend, in the strongest possible terms, that you discuss the matter immediately with the American President and suggest that, for the moment, he does nothing precipitate.
‘It may help if you advise him that we have evidence which definitely links al-Qaeda with the Abilene bombing. It was not, in the final analysis, the Russians who pulled the trigger, and any retaliation should probably not be directed towards them.’
Camp David, Maryland
‘I hear what you say,’ the President said, the secure telephone pressed close to his ear, ‘and your views are not too dissimilar from my own. Of course, the hawks will want to strike back immediately, and I’ll no doubt face a lot of criticism if I take no military action, but we have to think of the long-term consequences. And, as you rightly put it, the Russians didn’t actually pull the trigger.’
St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France
Three of the troopers had been sent down the lane back to the village, and had returned with the three Renault Espaces.
They swiftly moved the bodies of the two dead SAS troopers into one of the vehicles, then Richte
r and Ross supervised the removal of almost everything portable in the house, from the computer in the back bedroom to the prayer mats in the lounge, taking anything and everything that could provide clues to the identity of the four dead Arabs. They stripped the bodies, collected their clothes, personal possessions, weapons and ammunition, and all the spent cartridge cases they could find. Everything went into the cavernous boots of the Espaces.
They photographed each of them, several times, full face and profile, even Ibrahim, who nobody, not even his own mother, would recognize. They worked quickly, aware that the noise they had created in assaulting the house would certainly have been heard by someone, and that quite possibly the gendarmes were already en route to the village. Confrontation with French law-enforcement officers would not be a problem, because one call by Richter to Lacomte should sort it out, but he and Ross had agreed that a swift and silent exit from the scene was by far the best option.
Twenty-eight minutes after Richter had shot Abbas in the stomach, the three vehicles began the descent down the hill into St Médard.
The Walnut Room, the Kremlin, Krasnaya ploshchad, Moscow
‘This is appalling,’ the Russian President said, unconsciously echoing the words the British Prime Minister had used just minutes earlier and almost two thousand miles away. ‘You are absolutely certain of the facts?’
‘Yes, Comrade President,’ Yuri Baratov said, his familiar smile for once completely absent. ‘A low-yield nuclear weapon was detonated in the American south-central region approximately one hour ago. Our initial estimate based on technical analysis and seismograph data suggests that ground zero was Abilene in Texas and this has been confirmed by the American news media. CNN, in particular.’
The President rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I am not familiar with American centres of population. What size city is Abilene?’
‘The population of the city is around one hundred and twenty thousand,’ Baratov said, ‘and about a further one hundred and seventy thousand people live in the surrounding area.’
‘And the weapon? What size device was used?’
‘Again, Comrade President, we do not yet have accurate data, but we believe the weapon to be very low-yield, probably thirty kilotons or less.’
‘So what sort of damage are we talking about? What casualties?’
Yuri Baratov spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘We can’t begin to estimate it. The worst-case scenario would place the weapon in or near the centre of the city. That could produce a death toll of anything from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand people. That’s most of the population, but by American standards it’s a small city. If the weapon was detonated some distance outside the city, perhaps half of those figures.’
‘So many?’ the President murmured, his voice shaking with emotion. ‘But you said it was a low-yield weapon.’
‘That is what we believe,’ Baratov replied. ‘But you must remember, Comrade President, that the weapon the Americans dropped on Hiroshima only had a yield of twenty kilotons, and that killed about one hundred thousand people.’
‘And the question the Americans will want us to answer, no doubt, is why a Russian nuclear weapon was detonated in an American city. And I too want that question answered. There is no possibility that this was some kind of a terrorist attack, and nothing to do with that idiot Trushenko’s Podstava, I suppose?’
Baratov shook his head. ‘I have already talked with General Sokolov, and he has confirmed that Abilene was one of the cities targeted by Trushenko, though he does not know either the calculated yield of the weapon or where it was located. But I do not believe in coincidence. This weapon was certainly one of the Podstava devices.’
‘Which of course raises yet another question,’ the President growled. ‘Modin and Bykov have just been placed under armed guard at the Embassy in London. Sokolov is here in Moscow in a cell in the Lubyanka and Trushenko is dead, killed in the Ukraine, so who fired the weapon?’
Again Baratov spread his hands wide. ‘I have no idea,’ he said.
‘Well, one thing is quite certain,’ the President said, getting to his feet. ‘I will have to go and talk to the Americans. Immediately.’
Vic-Fézensac, Midi-Pyrénées, France
‘There’s a phone box – stop the car,’ Richter called, and Dekker obediently hauled the Espace into the side of the road. Richter had been checking his mobile phone for the last eight minutes, ever since the idea had come to him, but the signal strength had stayed obstinately at zero. The box in Vic-Fézensac was the first public telephone he’d seen on the road since they’d left St Médard. He jumped out of the Espace, ran back to the phone box and lifted the receiver, feeding Euros into the slot as he did so. The phone rang only twice before Baker answered.
‘It’s Richter. The Arab who was calling himself “The Prophet”. It’s just occurred to me that perhaps his backdoor code could be the same, but in a different language. His screen name or whatever you call it was Yiddish, not Farsi or Pashto, which we would have expected of an Arab. Maybe he ransacked the languages of the world, using obscure words in dialects spoken by only a handful of people. He seemed to think the name “The Prophet” was some kind of a joke, so it’s possible he thought it was so funny he used it twice, if you see what I mean.’
‘Yes, maybe,’ Baker said doubtfully. ‘I’ve already tried accessing the system using “Dernowi”, but that didn’t work. I’ll run the word “prophet” through the dictionary program and see what it comes up with. I’ll call you.’
‘Right,’ Richter said. ‘You’d better make that your first priority – the Arab said that somebody else knew the backdoor code to the Krutaya mainframe, and I don’t think he was joking about that. Oh, and ask somebody there to get Lacomte to re-activate the mobile phone cells down here as soon as he can.’
‘Right. Is that it?’
‘No. Is Simpson there? I need to brief him on what we got out of the Arab. Some of what he said will certainly interest him, and I’m sure the Americans will be fascinated.’
Buraydah, Saudi Arabia
Sadoun Khamil was still sitting in front of the television set, but his smile had vanished and he was puzzled. The screen now showed long-distance television pictures of the ruins of Abilene, taken from a news chopper that was keeping some miles back from the devastation, presumably because of the danger from the fallout. That wasn’t what was puzzling him. By now, he had expected there to be news of other detonations, from all across the United States, but it was beginning to look as if the Abilene weapon was an isolated incident.
He would, he decided, wait only a further hour, and then he would have to contact al-Qaeda. In the meantime, he strode across to his computer to compose an urgent email, sent direct and this time in clear, to Hassan Abbas.
The Walnut Room, the Kremlin, Krasnaya ploshchad, Moscow
‘An Arab?’ Yuri Baratov could not keep the incredulity out of his voice. ‘Why would some fucking raghead have access to a Russian weapons computer?’
‘According to the American President, because the fucking ragheads, as you describe them, actually paid for it to be built. If the Americans are to be believed,’ the Russian President continued, ‘the Arabs – and by that the President actually means the al-Qaeda group – conceived the Podstava operation, behind which their own plan was hidden, and they also paid for the construction and placement of all the weapons, here in Europe as well as in America. That bastard Trushenko was the recipient of the funds, and no doubt he had a nice little nest-egg salted away somewhere. Your people can no doubt find out exactly where he chose and recover the funds for us.’
Baratov nodded, then shook his head. ‘I still don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘Well, the Americans do, and so do the British, who actually stopped the al-Qaeda operation. The Arabs’ intention, according to the President, was to detonate over two hundred nuclear weapons in America at the same moment. This, they believed, would be certain to initiate a ma
ssive retaliatory attack on us, and to which we would respond with whatever weapons we had left. In a little over twenty-four hours both Russia and America would have been effectively destroyed. The only good thing, if you can call it that, is that Trushenko and the others involved apparently had no idea what the Arabs actually had planned.’
Baratov was noticeably pale in the face, and his voice shook slightly as he replied. ‘But why? Why would the Arabs do that?’
‘Again according to the Americans, because that would provide the Arab world with the opportunity to arise as the new world leaders, to bring the word of Mohammed to the godless East, and the far-too Christian West.’
‘And now?’ Baratov asked. ‘What will the Americans do about the bomb that detonated in Texas?’
‘Nothing,’ The Russian President said, with a smile of relief. ‘At least, no military action, though we will certainly have to make financial and other reparations – it was, after all, a Russian weapon. That, I have assured the President, we will be more than happy to do.’
Hammersmith, London
Fifty-three minutes after he’d received the call from Richter, and thirty-eight minutes after the dictionary program had delivered the results of its worldwide language search, Baker leaned back from the screen of his computer. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ he muttered.
He had just tried yet again to log on to the Krutaya mainframe, and the word he had tried this time from the printout in front of him produced results. The screen display showed two lines of text, but only one of them was comprehensible to Baker. The first line read, in English, ‘Welcome, Prophet. I await your commands.’
The reason Baker couldn’t read the second line was because it was written in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Farsi, which is spoken by about one third of the population of Afghanistan, and is used as a kind of lingua franca between speakers of different languages in that country. Baker was well versed in all the major computer languages, but was barely literate in English and he had no knowledge whatsoever of any other spoken language. In fact, the second line was only a repeat of the first, with the addition of a single word – ‘Inshallah’.
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