Overkill (44 page)

‘Your information is out-of-date, Mr Beatty. We ceased production of these weapons in 1986, and that is not a secret.’

‘Agreed, Colonel. But France didn’t destroy her existing stocks, did she? Nor did the Americans, who still hold in excess of seven hundred neutron warheads, all of tactical, not
strategic, size. The latest information we have suggests that China, Israel and South Africa, at the very least, all have stockpiles of neutron weapons of various sizes and yields.’

The DST men seemed to be keeping up with Richter, but Tony Herron looked moderately confused. Richter smiled at him. ‘That’s the history, and most of the background. There are just a
couple of other things you need to know. First, since
glasnost
, America has been paying billions of dollars to the Russians in exchange for plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. They
had the best of motives – if the USA could buy all their plutonium, then the Russians wouldn’t need to sell it on the black market with the risk of it ending up in the hands of
terrorists. Unfortunately, all the expert independent evidence shows that the Russians have actually been handing over material produced in their nuclear power plants, and not weapons-grade
plutonium. That suggests very strongly that the Russians, contrary to their public statements, have not been dismantling any of their nuclear weapons.

‘Second, it’s well known that to construct a fission bomb you need uranium-235, but to build a fusion weapon or a neutron bomb you have to have access to plutonium. That’s a
well-known fact, and it’s completely wrong.’ Richter paused and looked at Colonel Lacomte. ‘Have you ever heard of red mercury?’ he asked.

National Military Command Center, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

By five fifteen a.m., local time, the last of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their aides had assembled in the National Military Command Center – a suite of offices on
the third floor of the Pentagon. The noisiest section of the NMCC is the office which handles the raw data, because of the rows of clattering telex machines that bring in reports and information
from sources worldwide. It has a bank of clocks set for a variety of world time zones and a permanent display of maps showing the dispersal of strategic assets and troops of all major national
armed forces. Quiet by comparison, the Emergency Conference Room is next door.

The ECR is a split-level room. On the lower level, the duty officers, known as the Battle Staff, sit on both sides of the ‘leg’ of a vast T-shaped table, collating data. Four
Emergency Action officers sit at purpose-built consoles along the top of the ‘T’, each with communication links to American forces around the world. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the
President’s military advice team, sit on a raised platform slightly above and to the left of the table used by the Battle Staff. On the opposite side of the room, and in front of the Joint
Chiefs, are six huge colour screens on which can be displayed maps of any area of the world, as well as plans, charts, surveillance and other photographs, details of troop concentrations and any
other type of graphic which would help to clarify a developing situation.

The NMCC, like the White House Situation Room and the hardened facilities at Cheyenne Mountain, the Underground Complex at Offutt, and Raven Rock, forms part of a single vast command structure,
linked by telephones, faxes and telex machines, satellites, radios and computers. Although the briefing was being delivered in the Pentagon, staff at the other linked locations would be able to
hear every word that was said.

An army general was the Senior Duty Battle Staff Officer, and would normally have conducted the briefing of the Joint Chiefs. The situation, however, was not normal.

‘Gentlemen,’ the general began without preamble, ‘we have an unfolding situation possibly involving disaffected elements within the former Soviet Union. A definite threat, not
involving overt troop or conventional military manoeuvres, has been made against both the United States and Western Europe. This briefing will be in two parts. First, Mr Walter Hicks, the Central
Intelligence Agency’s Clandestine Services Director of Operations, and currently the acting DCI, will brief you on the history and substance of the threat. When he has concluded and answered
any questions you may have, I will advise you of the White House’s response to the situation, and what the President intends to do next.’

The general looked up, glanced to his left and nodded. Walter Hicks stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray by his left arm, got to his feet and walked over to the lectern.

American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London

The internal telephone on Roger Abrahams’ desk rang at nine fifty. He put down the file he had been studying and picked up the handset. ‘Abrahams.’

‘This is the switchboard, sir, and I have a call holding for you. The caller won’t identify himself, but says it’s urgent and a personal matter,’ the Embassy operator
announced.

‘What nationality?’ Abrahams asked.

‘British, sir, definitely.’

‘OK,’ Abrahams said. ‘Make sure the tape’s running and put him through.’

There was a click and a brief silence. ‘Hullo,’ Abrahams said.

‘Good morning, Roger,’ the familiar voice said, and Abrahams could detect the urgency behind the casual drawl. ‘I presume you’re taping this, so I won’t bother
repeating myself.’ The voice paused, then spoke three words. ‘Anatidae. Ten ten.’

The line went dead, but Abrahams had completely understood what the caller meant. He looked at his watch, then pressed the speed-dial code for the motor pool’s number. ‘This is
Abrahams. I need a car, now.’

Le Moulin au Pouchon
, St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

‘Excellent,’ Hassan Abbas murmured, reading the decrypted email message from Dmitri Trushenko for the third time.

In fact, there had been two messages from the Russian. The first had simply confirmed that he had reached his secure location but did not, of course, reveal where that location was. When Abbas
had read that, he’d heaved a sigh of relief. Obviously the comparatively long silence from the Russian had been caused by nothing more sinister than Trushenko’s journey from his
apartment in Moscow to wherever he had chosen to hide whilst the final stages of
Podstava
were played out. Abbas suspected privately that Trushenko might even have left the Confederation of
Independent States, maybe gone to Greece or Turkey. But it didn’t matter where he was, as long as the Russian authorities couldn’t find him.

The second message contained the specifics of the positioning of the last two weapons. The Russian coaster was exactly on schedule for its planned arrival in Gibraltar, and the convoy carrying
the London device should, according to the latest mobile telephone message from the escort, arrive in Germany that morning. Unless something totally unforeseen occurred, both weapons would be
positioned precisely on time.

Abbas rubbed his hands together, opened up his word processor and began preparing the text of the message he would sent to Sadoun Khamil in Saudi Arabia.

French Ministry of the Interior, rue des Saussaies, Paris

The colonel sat straighter in his chair. ‘What, exactly, is red mercury?’

‘Red mercury was the substance that frightened Sam Cohen most. It’s a mercury compound which has been subjected to massive irradiation in a nuclear reactor, and which when exploded
creates tremendous heat and pressure. Exactly the same kind of heat and pressure that’s needed to trigger a fusion weapon. So you no longer need access to weapons-grade plutonium, or any
plutonium at all, in fact. And red mercury is cheap, especially by comparison with the cost of plutonium.’

‘And?’ Lacomte asked.

‘And the Russians have been making it and selling it on the black market for years, although all sales stopped about four years ago. One of their biggest customers was Iraq, which is
enough to make most people lose some sleep straight away.’

Lacomte looked puzzled. ‘I hear what you’re saying, Mr Beatty, but I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with us. Why are you here? What, exactly, is the nature
of any threat to us in Western Europe?’

Richter nodded. ‘I’ll explain that in a moment. That’s the end of the history lesson. Last week a USAF SR–71A Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft was pulled out of
retirement at Beale Air Force Base in the States and made a totally illegal over-flight of a section of territory in north-west Russia. We believe that the Blackbird encountered opposition fighters
during its flight and had to take evasive action. Precisely what happened we don’t know, but certainly it suffered battle damage and there was virtually no fuel left in its tanks when the
aircraft landed at an Air Force base in Scotland. The Americans were very reluctant to explain the aircraft’s mission, but we finally discovered that the Blackbird had been sent to photograph
a hill that wasn’t there any more.’

Tony Herron still looked puzzled, and the DST men looked totally confused. ‘Hill? What hill, Mr Beatty?’ one asked.

‘Just a hill,’ Richter said, ‘deep in the Tundra. Let me explain. The Americans were puzzled, because the hill had been destroyed by a nuclear detonation of an unusual sort.
The Blackbird flew to photograph the hole where the hill had been, but its principal mission was to take radiation measurements of the area. After that they had to sit down and think it out.’
Richter poured water into a glass and resumed the story. ‘We got involved after a man called Newman disappeared from the British Embassy in Moscow. He had apparently been killed in a road
accident, but when we examined the body it was immediately apparent that it wasn’t Newman’s. That was significant enough, but when added to the fact that Newman was the SIS Head of
Station in Moscow, it became obvious that something was going on. We surmised that he had been snatched by the SVR for terminal questioning.

‘We checked our files, and found that Newman’s deputy had acted as a translator, and had accompanied a party of Western businessmen on a tour in northwestern Russia, a tour which
took them to within a mere hundred miles or so of the site of the hill. Then a CIA source advised us that the radiation analysis didn’t make sense. The Blackbird flew a fairly short time
after the explosion, but the aircraft detectors registered no significant radiation.

‘Finally, there was the short and turbulent history of the neutron bomb, the evidence that the Russians demonstrably weren’t decommissioning their arsenal of nuclear weapons, and the
fact that black-market sales of red mercury by Russia stopped about four years ago. We put all that lot together, and we came up with a theory.’

The Gold Room, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

The Joint Chiefs had left the Emergency Conference Room as soon as Walter Hicks and General Rogers had completed the briefing. Despite its name, the ECR was not designed
for conferences, only for briefings, and the Joint Chiefs had immediately moved into the so-called ‘Gold Room’ conference suite, also on the third floor of the Pentagon.

The Secretary of Defense had not been present at the Kentucky Rose briefing, because he had been closeted in the White House Situation Room with the President, but by mid-morning he, too, was in
the Gold Room. After a lengthy telephone conversation between the Secretary of Defense and the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff elected to upgrade the alert status of the US forces immediately
to DEFCON THREE.

Because of the time zone differences between Moscow and the east coast of America – eight hours – and because source RAVEN had specified the eleventh of the month as the actual date
of implementation, the Joint Chiefs also instituted a formal countdown. It began at 0600 Eastern Standard Time on the ninth, and assumed that implementation of the assault would take place at
midnight Moscow time – sixteen hundred EST – on the eleventh. That was designated H-Hour, and it was exactly thirty-four hours away. The clock was running.

Regents Park, London

The black Mercedes surged away from the traffic lights, drove rapidly down Park Road and stopped with a squeal of tyres at the western end of Hanover Gardens.

‘Wait, please,’ Abrahams said to the driver, and strode off briskly through Hanover Gardens towards Regents Park. He was a few metres from the second footbridge when he saw the slim
figure beside The Holme. Piers Taylor wasn’t feeding the ducks. He was pacing up and down beside the Boating Lake and when Westwood stepped off the footbridge he strode forward to meet
him.

‘Good morning, Piers,’ Roger Abrahams said.

‘It isn’t, actually,’ Taylor replied. ‘Thank you for coming. You had no trouble with my simple little code?’

Abrahams shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘“Anatidae” – family name of the class of swimming birds normally known as ducks. Besides, I recognized your
voice.’

Taylor grinned, briefly.

‘So,’ Abrahams asked, ‘what’s up?’

Piers Taylor looked round, checking that nobody else was within earshot. ‘That matter we talked about with your American colleague,’ he began. ‘Now we think we know what
it’s all about.’

French Ministry of the Interior, rue des Saussaies, Paris

Richter had the undivided attention of everyone in the room. ‘About four years ago, something happened in Russia. What, we don’t know, but whatever it was
caused the stoppage of all external sales of red mercury. The obvious conclusion is that the entire production of the substance was diverted into a new project, a project that we’re seeing
the results of now. What we think is that the Russians for some reason had a sudden need to manufacture a large number of strategic-yield neutron bombs, but didn’t want to use weapons-grade
plutonium, either because they would have had to pull it out of existing nuclear weapons or because the refining process would have taken too long, or attracted too much attention. They needed the
plutonium for something else, which I’ll get to in a moment.

‘The vaporization of the hill showed clearly enough that the neutron weapon would work, but we are moderately certain that that was just the last in a series of tests, but the first which
the Russians had conducted above ground. The yield of the weapon was calculated to be at least five megatons, which makes it far and away the biggest neutron bomb ever detonated, and classifies it
firmly as a strategic weapon. But that still left two questions unanswered. First, if the Russians had perfected a strategic-yield neutron bomb, how did that help them? It would have a higher yield
than any ERWs in our inventory, but we couldn’t see how the weapon would benefit them if they went to war with the West.