The Fail Safe

by Jack Heath

  And if she were here, perched on top of this fence with two guns pointed at her, Fero felt sure that she wouldn’t surrender.

  Fero threw himself off the fence towards the alley.

  A volley of gunshots rang out. The steel fence clanged.

  Fero was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  CHAIN REACTION

  The first sign read: RESTRICTED AREA. Further up the corridor, another read: CAUTION – RADIATION. And right next to the final door: HAZMAT SUITS MUST BE WORN.

  Noelein didn’t come down here often. Even knowing that the bombs couldn’t go off without DNA-verified instructions from the president, and that the lead-lined hazmat suit repelled gamma rays, this place gave her the creeps. The corridor was narrow and gloomy, surrounded by a kilometre of concrete in every direction. This must be what an ant felt like in the darkest depths of its nest.

  And somewhere behind those massive metal doors lay six W90 thermonuclear warheads. Inside the peanut-shaped radiation case of each was a plutonium-239 core, ready to be compressed by the layer of high explosives surrounding it. This compression would start a chain reaction, spilling more and more neutrons until the bomb blew apart with the same force as 600,000 tons of TNT. Enough to turn a whole country – hopefully Besmar – to ash.

  Her phone was ringing. She was amazed that it could get a signal down here. It definitely wouldn’t once she was beyond those doors.

  Her air filter had a built-in speaker and microphone. She held her phone in front of it and pressed the button with a gloved hand. ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s Wolf. I’m at the safe house in Premiovaya.’

  To her credit, the operative didn’t sugar-coat the bad news. ‘I had to remote-detonate the explosive,’ Wolf continued. ‘Vartaniev was injured. I followed his ambulance to the hospital, but his ward is well-protected. I couldn’t get in to finish him off, nor ascertain his status. We have to assume the mission is a failure.’

  Noelein shut her eyes. It had been a long shot. ‘And Maschenov?’

  ‘He activated the thermite a few minutes after the explosion, so I know he survived. I’ve tracked him to Tus.’

  ‘Okay. Go there, find him and kill him.’

  ‘Understood. And then?’

  Noelein was slightly frightened of Wolf. She suspected there was no order she could give that Wolf wouldn’t obey. It was like giving commands to a computer, which wouldn’t check if they made sense before executing them. So Noelein always chose her words carefully.

  ‘After that,’ she said, ‘go back to the hospital and wait. If you see an opportunity to kill Vartaniev without getting captured, take it. If they discharge him, let me know and see where he goes.’

  ‘Okay.’ Wolf hung up.

  Noelein suppressed a shudder. How had she gotten herself into this? It seemed like only yesterday that she was an idealistic young cadet, trying on her shiny new boots and ready to make her country proud. But the further up the ranks she had risen, the less proud of her country she became. Now she was at the top, and she no longer believed in anything. The decisions didn’t feel like opportunities anymore. She just did whatever would prevent the apocalypse – and protect her job – for one more day. Then she would drive home with the radio up loud so she couldn’t hear herself think about the things people were doing on her orders.

  She pushed the red button beside the giant door. A pre-recorded voice said, ‘Griffin, master, trade.’

  The gloves and faceplates made fingerprint or retinal scanners impractical, so there were several rotating pass-phrases, each with an authorised response. Noelein had memorised them. ‘North, slave, moon,’ she said.

  The door clanked several times and rolled sideways. The room within was startlingly bright, the walls painted with stark white particle-repellent paint, the floor gleaming under the rows of fluorescent lights above. The warheads were sealed in a lead-lined vault behind another enormous door at the back of the room.

  Several people sat in chairs at the far end of the room watching readouts flicker on LED screens. The hazmat suits made it impossible to determine their age or sex, but the woman in charge had a green helmet rather than yellow. She turned to look at Noelein as she entered. ‘Ma’am,’ she said.

  ‘Ms Xin.’ Noelein beckoned.

  Xin stood up. ‘Double-check the coolant levels on unit three,’ she told the other workers. ‘I want the tolerances brought down to less than two per cent.’ The workers nodded.

  Xin walked over to Noelein. ‘I didn’t know you were coming. What can I do for you?’

  ‘If anyone asks why I’m down here,’ Noelein said quietly, ‘you tell them the president has asked for random checks on all our departments. And then you call me and tell me who asked.’

  ‘Understood.’ Xin glanced back at the workers. ‘You think we have some kind of . . . staffing problem?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Noelein said. ‘One of the Cataloguers picked up some chatter. Certain keywords – nuclear, infiltrate.’

  There had been no chatter. But Noelein made a point of lying to everyone, especially those who appeared to be her own people. Misinformation weakened her enemies, and sometimes the echoes of it came back through unexpected sources. The lies were like cats, sneaking out at night and returning with dead animals.

  Xin nodded slowly. ‘Okay. What are your orders?’

  ‘Implement a two-person security protocol so no one person is ever alone with the warheads.’

  ‘We already have that. I can increase it to three?’

  Noelein frowned. She should have known that. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do that. But wait until tomorrow, and say the new protocol was recommended after the random check.’

  ‘Understood,’ Xin said. ‘I’ll stay with the warheads between now and then.’

  ‘Good work. Has anyone been behaving suspiciously?’

  ‘No. If a Besmari agent is here, they have nerves of steel.’

  ‘They may not be from Besmar. Never make the mistake of assuming we have only one enemy.’

  Noelein turned to walk out, but the door had locked itself behind her. It wasn’t like a fire door, designed to open in case of an emergency. If something went wrong with the nukes, the door would be permanently sealed. The staff were expected to die here.

  Noelein felt the weight of all the concrete and dirt above her head. Xin punched some numbers into a keypad. The door unlocked and rolled open. Noelein walked out. When she heard the door close again behind her, she broke into a run. Her hazmat suit felt heavy and airless. Her heart was racing. She had to get out of here.

  She made it to the lift and forced herself to keep her helmet on until the doors slid closed. Then she popped the clips and tore off the visor, taking deep sucking breaths as the lift carried her up towards the surface.

  Dessa Cormanenko clung to the transmission tower, the wind blowing her hair into her face. She should have tied it back.

  She looked down. It wasn’t the highest she had ever climbed without a safety rope, but it was close. The sun had risen high enough to illuminate the top of the tower, but not the bottom. The shadowed trees looked like cauliflower down below. The base of the tower was surrounded by ice and rubble. If she fell, she would be pulverised. But if she didn’t replace the batteries in the signal broadcaster, she risked being caught by the Library. She would rather plummet to her death.

  She fought down a wave of vertigo and climbed a few more rungs, the metal cold even through her gloves. The higher the transmitter, the further its range. This tower was sixty metres high, and her transmitter was at the very top.

  The Library had taught her that spying on the population was easier than ever before. People willingly surveilled themselves and each other. Ninety-six per cent of citizens carried microphones and trackers in their pockets, in the form of mobile phones. They uploaded data to the internet about where they were, who they saw and what they were thinking. Sometimes they knew the whole world could see it; other times they thought only their friends had acc
ess. The Library simply had to request all the data from all the internet service providers, and then they knew almost everything about almost everyone.

  The few who didn’t participate in this voluntary mass surveillance were still easy to keep track of. They showed up in other people’s photos and videos. They were referred to in phone calls and text messages. And they couldn’t do much harm, since without phones or the internet they could barely communicate with one another.

  But there was a blind spot in the system. Gripping the rail with one hand, Cormanenko cracked open the transmitter – a grey box bristling with antennas – pulled out the dying batteries and pocketed them. She slipped the new batteries into the box and tightened the straps securing it to the struts.

  The blind spot was that the Library only requested data from the internet service providers they knew about. Setting up her own network of battery-operated transmitters had been tough, and it was only a matter of time before the Library noticed the calls coming from numbers they had no record of and emails going to addresses that didn’t officially exist. But for the first time since she was a teenager, she felt almost free.

  She switched the transmitter back on. A light blinked. Time to test it – if it wasn’t working, she didn’t want to have to climb back up here. She pulled out her phone and punched in a memorised number.

  Xin picked up after twenty seconds. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Just testing the transmitter,’ Cormanenko said. The wind blew her words away. She hoped Xin could hear her. ‘Are we on schedule?’

  ‘I’m on schedule,’ Xin said. ‘But we are not. There’s still no word from the team in Besmar.’

  Cormanenko shared her anxiety. She had expected to hear from Bear before now. ‘They already have one set of launch codes. They will have the other set soon.’

  ‘And if they get caught?’

  Cormanenko looked at the sickening drop. The tower seemed to be swaying slightly. ‘I can’t discuss this right now.’

  ‘You know what the definition of irony is? It’s when you try to prevent a nuclear apocalypse – and end up causing one.’

  ‘What do you want me to say, Xin? I’m doing everything I can.’

  ‘You should have sent someone else with them.’

  I should have done a lot of things, Cormanenko thought. ‘Did you get the duplicates into the lab, or not?’

  ‘I did,’ Xin said.

  ‘Then leave the rest to me.’ Cormanenko hung up, slipped the phone back into her pocket and began the long climb back down.

  By the time she reached the bottom, she was wondering how to contact Troy Maschenov.

  MARCHING ORDERS

  I care about you. You know that, right?

  ‘Mum?’ Fero mumbled.

  The only sound was the moaning of the wind.

  It wasn’t his mother’s voice. It was Zuri – the woman who had pretended to care about him. And she wasn’t really here.

  Fero’s sleepy brain lit up, neuron by neuron. He was cold. Freezing, in fact. His lips were crusty and his fingers and toes numb. If he didn’t get somewhere warm soon, he would die. Soft plastic tickled his face. He was lying in a cluster of garbage bags which smelled like petrol and vomit. The sun was up. Fero had been here all night. He pushed the bags aside and cautiously stood up, wondering how he could possibly be alive and uncaptured.

  It took him a minute to guess what must have happened. After he fell off the fence into the bags beside the alley, the Tellers must have seen the delivery truck go by. Assuming that he was inside, they would have jumped over the fence and chased it down. When they eventually got a look inside and realised he wasn’t there, they would have started searching the surrounding streets. No one would have guessed that he was buried in garbage right where he fell, unconscious.

  It was hard to feel grateful for this stroke of luck. His only living relative had turned her back on him, twice. She had given him up to an army he no longer felt any loyalty to. He was completely alone.

  He was tempted to go back to Jeel’s house. Part of him still wanted to believe that this was just a misunderstanding, and that she would take him in if only he could explain what he had been through.

  But Fero was smart enough to resist this urge. Instead he walked to the nearest park, where there would was plenty of cover from the satellites and cameras. The Bank would be scouring the area for him. He huddled behind a big tree, sheltered from the cutting wind. The sunlight seemed too bright and he found it hard to balance. He wasn’t sure if this was an after-effect of his mother’s drugs, or if frostbite was setting in. His neck ached from sleeping on the concrete.

  It wasn’t just the Tellers he needed to watch out for. Wolf would be after him, if he was right about the tracker in his glasses. He should have discarded them earlier, before he left Premiovaya. Stupid. He needed to plant them somewhere crowded, where it would take her a while to realise that he had left them behind.

  He also needed to contact Dessa Cormanenko. She had ordered Bear to steal the Besmari prime minister’s nuclear briefcase, but now Bear was dead. If she went ahead with the plan and disarmed Kamau, Besmar would wipe it off the map. Yesterday Fero couldn’t imagine his country committing such an evil act. Today he couldn’t imagine them not doing it when presented with the opportunity.

  He needed a phone and some clothes. He could break into one of the houses around here, but that would be risky, so close to where the Tellers last saw him.

  The central business district of Tus was about an hour away on foot. He ran, trying to remember the phone number from the slip of paper Cormanenko had given him.

  On his way, he passed a supermarket. He dropped the glasses into the bottom of an empty shopping trolley out front. When the store got busier, the signal would start moving around, weaving between the bustling shoppers. But Wolf was well trained, and Fero knew this wouldn’t fool her for long.

  Enrico scanned the hotel lobby again. Still deserted. The computers hummed pleasantly. Moths flitted around the plastic chandelier. He turned his back to the camera in case his boss was watching the feed, dug out his smart-phone and checked the time.

  It was 10.54. Less than five minutes since he had last checked. How was that even possible? Time seemed to move differently in this place. It was as though the reception desk was a black hole, its massive gravity slowing everything down to a crawl.

  Enrico sighed and resumed his work unloading suitcases from the trolley and dragging them behind the reception desk. He was still young – twenty-two next December – but knew that someday he wouldn’t be. Already he sometimes felt puffed when he ran for the bus. A minor virus could incapacitate him for three days instead of just one. Every passing second was one he couldn’t get back, and he was spending them here, in this ruin of a hotel in this ruin of a town in this ruin of a country. He fantasised about escaping to Hungary, or Moldova, or—

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Enrico jumped. The boy had moved so quietly across the cheap brown carpet that he might as well have appeared out of thin air. He wore dirty oversized clothes and had a bruised cheekbone. Frederico held back a grimace – shooing off homeless people was his least favourite part of the job. He felt guilty, with all those empty beds in the building. But he couldn’t afford to get fired.

  ‘My name is Tomasz Sier,’ the boy said. ‘I have a reservation for two nights.’

  Enrico blinked. Really? ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘One moment, Mr Sier.’

  He went behind the reception desk, woke a sleeping computer and brought up the check-in database. He scrolled through but couldn’t see the name. Maybe the kid had given him the name of the person who made the reservation. Or maybe the boy was homeless, and this was some kind of ruse.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Enrico said diplomatically, ‘but could you spell your surname for me?’

  The boy looked around, as though wondering if this was a hidden camera prank. ‘S-I-E-R,’ he said.

  Enrico checked the database again. There was nothing even r
emotely similar to the boy’s name. He looked at tomorrow’s scheduled check-ins, and yesterday’s. Nothing. It was a small hotel – they had only fifteen guests at any given time.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ‘but I can’t find your reservation. May I ask if you used a travel agent?’

  ‘A friend.’ The boy sighed. ‘Do you mind if I give her a call?’

  ‘By all means.’

  The boy held out his hand. ‘My phone is dead,’ he explained.

  Enrico picked up the hotel landline, dialled zero, and handed him the receiver.

  The half of the conversation he heard didn’t make much sense. ‘Helping out with the big move . . . I’m in South Tus . . . The other one didn’t make it.’ There was a long pause, and then: ‘A hotel phone. Yes . . . Your nephew?’ The boy glanced at Enrico, who wondered – absurdly – if the boy was talking to his aunt Cynthuja.

  ‘Okay,’ the boy said. ‘I understand.’

  He hung up without saying goodbye, and smiled apologetically at Enrico. ‘How embarrassing,’ he said. ‘I’m at the wrong hotel. Very sorry.’

  Enrico bowed. ‘I completely understand,’ he said. ‘It happens more often than you would think.’

  ‘I’ll definitely stay here next time. See you then.’ The boy waved and dragged his suitcase back out the door. Had he had a suitcase when he walked in? Enrico must not have noticed it.

  He checked his phone again. Only 10.58. Seriously?

  If the Bank or the Library had been listening in on the call, neither would have been able to decipher Cormanenko’s statement. But Fero got it immediately. I know a nice guy who would gladly do a favour for my nephew. He has a phone you can use.

  They had once bought some supplies at a grocery store in South Tus. Cormanenko had introduced Fero to the old shopkeeper, Hulow, as her nephew. He wondered why Cormanenko thought Hulow’s phone line would be secure.