Overkill (69 page)

‘The first is easy. He’s using identity “Dernowi”, but that doesn’t sound like a Russian name to me.’

Richter shook his head. ‘It doesn’t sound Russian because it isn’t, as far as I know. Could it be a nickname?’

‘Almost certainly, but that doesn’t help. And the bad news is that because user Dernowi is using a backdoor code, I can’t delete him, change the code or stop him getting into
the system again. And the really bad news is he can definitely eliminate us if he wants to.’

‘So what are you doing?’

‘At the moment, absolutely nothing. I’m still logged on as Modin – which Dernowi has checked, by the way, so he knows we’re here and also knows that we’re calling
from London – but I’m doing nothing else. I’m hoping he’ll know Modin is an authorized user and he won’t even think of altering his password or deleting his
username.’

Richter sat silently for a moment, staring at the screen. ‘The identity he’s using,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t sound like a contraction of a Russian word to me. Can you
check it somehow?’

‘I’m way ahead of you,’ Baker said. ‘I’ve been running a dictionary program for the last five minutes on my laptop.’ He got up and walked across to the small
desk in the corner. ‘It’s finished,’ he announced, ‘but I don’t think it helps much. There’s no exact match to “Dernowi”, but the closest is in
Yiddish, believe it or not, and it translates as “The Prophet”.’

‘Yiddish?’ Richter said. ‘That makes no sense. The Russians would never work with the Jews. This has to be someone’s idea of a joke. OK, you said Dernowi had checked
where Modin was calling from – can you do the same with him?’

Baker nodded. ‘Probably. I’ll visit some pages at random and include the network utilities section.’ Two minutes later Baker passed Richter a post-it note on which he’d
written an eleven digit number, starting with ‘33’. Richter looked at it then gave it to Simpson.

‘France?’ Simpson asked. ‘He’s calling from France? Southern France?’

‘How do you know it’s southern France?’ Richter asked.

‘The third digit,’ Simpson replied. ‘It identifies the region – I have a friend with a house in the Gers. You’re sure of this, Baker?’

Baker shrugged. ‘That’s what the system’s reporting. He’s using a server in America – in Arizona, in fact – to bounce his call, but his actual origin is
France.’

‘This makes no sense,’ Richter muttered, repeating himself. ‘A new user, with backdoor access to a Russian weapon control system, with a Yiddish username and ringing from the
South of France? What’s he doing on the system?’

‘No idea.’

‘No, I meant what is he actually doing now?’

‘Oh, OK. He’s been checking the weapon readiness, but he hasn’t moved off this page for a couple of minutes.’

‘And what page is that?’

‘The one for the Gibraltar demonstration weapon,’ Baker replied. ‘Which,’ he added, ‘shows that the device has already been detonated.’

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

Abbas had been staring at the screen for what seemed like ten minutes, because what he was looking at simply didn’t make sense. According to the Krutaya computer,
the Gibraltar weapon had already been detonated. But it obviously hadn’t been, Abbas knew, because if it had there was no way that he wouldn’t have known about it. The detonation of a
nuclear weapon in a major population centre was something that simply couldn’t be kept secret.

Abbas opened a new window in his browser and typed ‘www.cnn.com’ into the address field. The CNN news site loaded almost immediately, and he scanned the headlines. Nothing, or rather
nothing about Gibraltar. Despite what the Krutaya computer had reported, the Gibraltar weapon had obviously not exploded.

That meant, Abbas realized, that there were only two possibilities – either the weapon had misfired, which meant that the whole system, weapons and firing mechanism, might be faulty, or
somebody, somehow, had managed to disable the weapon at Gibraltar before the detonation sequence had been completed. The successful test-firing of the weapon on the tundra had proved the system
worked, so on balance the second possibility had to be the more likely. And that cast a whole new light on the lack of communication from Dmitri Trushenko.

With almost frantic haste, Abbas opened the word processor and began composing an email to Sadoun Khamil in Saudi Arabia.

47 Squadron Royal Air Force Special Forces Flight C–130 Hercules

The Hercules was virtually overhead Le Havre when the radio message was received from Mazout Radar. The SAS troops had been delayed for some time at the Rock because the
aircraft had developed a minor fault in one of its generators, and it was evening before the aircraft captain had announced that they were ready to depart.

‘Say again, Mazout.’

‘Your operating authority has passed us a Class One mandatory diversion message. You are instructed to reroute immediately to Toulouse airport. Confirm you will comply, and advise when
ready to turn.’

The Hercules captain’s voice was weary as he acknowledged the message. ‘Mazout, Charlie Whisky Three Seven. Ready to turn, and requesting initial navigation assistance.’ The
crew were of course perfectly capable of plotting their own route to Toulouse, but it had been a long day and it looked as if it was a long way from being over.

‘Three Seven, roger. Turn left heading one seven five, and climb to and maintain Flight Level one nine zero.’

‘Roger, Mazout. Turning to one seven five and in the climb to level at one nine zero.’

As the aircraft’s left wing dropped and the turn commenced, the co-pilot picked up the public address microphone. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we have no idea why, but
we’ve been diverted to Toulouse, gateway to the Pyrenees. If we hear anything further, then I’ll let you know. Otherwise, expect to be on the ground in about ninety minutes.’

Colin Dekker had been dozing in his seat, but his eyes opened immediately the Hercules began to turn. He glanced up as the co-pilot’s announcement echoed round the cabin. ‘It’s
Richter,’ he muttered, to nobody in particular. ‘Any money you like, Richter’s behind this.’

Buraydah, Saudi Arabia

Sadoun Khamil read the email from Hassan Abbas for about the tenth time. He knew the contents by heart, and in fact had acted upon them within minutes of decrypting the
message, but until he got a reply from Pakistan, there was nothing else he could do. And he wasn’t expecting a reply soon. Arabs love to talk, and will endlessly debate even the most
innocuous and mundane matters, and the request Khamil had made to the al-Qaeda leadership was neither innocuous nor mundane.

In his opinion, and in the opinion of his man on the spot, Hassan Abbas, the Russian operation had been discovered and its architect – Trushenko – either killed or captured. As far
as he could see, the only option left to al-Qaeda was to immediately implement the final, and wholly secret, phase of the plan. That had been Khamil’s recommendation, and that was what he was
now waiting for the al-Qaeda leadership to approve.

The problem, Khamil knew, was probably not the actual implementation of the plan, but the time-scale. The idea had been to allow the Russian operation – their
Podstava
– to
run to its conclusion, with the ultimatum delivered to America and the West after the detonation of the weapon at Gibraltar. As far as the Russians were concerned, that would be the end of the
matter. Faced with the weapons already positioned in the States, and the potent threat of the strategic-yield neutron bombs located throughout Western Europe, the Americans would have no option but
to cooperate, to do whatever the Kremlin instructed.

That, Abbas had emphasized to Trushenko throughout the project, was what the Arabs wanted, was why they had been prepared to pay the millions of dollars that had been needed to fund
Podstava
. And Trushenko had believed him, had eagerly anticipated seeing an America cowed and humiliated by its impotence in the face of a brilliantly simple plot that at a stroke had
negated all of America’s military might, a country that would become the laughing-stock of the world, a superpower gone senile.

Then, and only then, would the Arabic component of the plan be implemented, the action that Sadoun and Abbas had privately labelled
El Sikkiyn
or ‘the knife’. Then the
Russians would learn why the Arabs had insisted, from the start, on having unrestricted access to the Krutaya computer, on having a backdoor code that couldn’t be blocked or changed.

The leaders of all the Arab nations would be informed that a
fatwa
had been issued by al-Qaeda against America, Russia and the West – against, in fact, the entire non-Arab world
– and that a
jihad
was about to start. Sufficient details of
Podstava
would be leaked to the West to ensure that everyone knew about the Russian plan. That would be followed by
the simultaneous detonation of all the weapons positioned in American cities, a cataclysmic Armageddon that would incinerate tens of millions of Americans and leave the country crippled for years,
possibly for centuries.

The survivors would demand revenge, would force the American President, or whoever had survived in the administration, to respond in the only way possible to the obvious aggressor. A massive
retaliatory thermonuclear attack on Russia would follow, as certainly as night follows day. Then what was left of the Russian nuclear arsenal would inevitably be launched against America and then,
probably, most of the British and French nuclear weapons would be fired at Russia.

And at a single stroke, the two superpowers would effectively eliminate each other, leaving the way clear for a unified Arab nation to arise behind the banner of al-Qaeda and impose a new world
order upon the shattered remnants of humanity. That was the plan which had been conceived by Hassan Abbas so long ago, and which offered what was probably the last great hope for the Arab
states.

All Khamil could do was hope that the leaders of al-Qaeda would see sense, would stop talking and act, before it was too late.

Royal Air Force Northolt, West London

The five Royal Air Force officers looked up as Paul Richter opened the door and walked into the aircrew briefing room. Richter hadn’t slept or shaved for the better
part of two days and was still wearing the jeans and shirt he’d pulled out of the cupboard in his office, augmented by his leather motorcycle jacket. ‘Yes? Who are you and what do you
want?’ the squadron leader pilot snapped.

‘I’m Richter – your passenger.’

The RAF officer muttered something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Good God’ under his breath but gestured to a seat at the back of the room before turning back to the other officers
and the en-route planning charts spread out in front of them. Four minutes later the squadron leader stood up, glanced at his watch and announced, ‘Briefing complete.’ Then he turned to
Richter. ‘Ready, Mr Richter?’

Richter nodded, scrambled to his feet and followed the green-clad figure out of the room, across the tarmac outside and up the stairs into the cabin of the HS146. Richter was the only passenger
so he chose the seat that offered the greatest legroom, sat down and strapped himself in. The co-pilot looked at him from the open door to the cockpit. ‘Anything you want?’ he
asked.

‘Yes,’ Richter said, nodding. ‘I want to go to sleep. Wake me up if an engine catches fire or a wing falls off, but otherwise don’t call me until we’re short
finals. Oh, you may get two-way with a Special Forces Flight Herky-bird out of Gibraltar that’s heading for the same place we are. If so, pass on my best wishes and say I’ll see them on
the ground. I don’t want to talk to them.’ Two minutes later Richter was sound asleep.

American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London

‘So what the hell does all that mean?’ John Westwood demanded.

Roger Abrahams had been called down to the Communications Suite fifteen minutes earlier, apparently to be briefed by the Secret Intelligence Service duty officer on a secure telephone link. In
fact, he’d found himself talking with – or more accurately listening to – a man called Simpson, who’d declined to state his rank or department, but who had admitted that he
was Paul Richter’s immediate superior.

‘It’s bad news,’ Abrahams replied. ‘The British managed to hack their way into the Russian mainframe controlling the satellite and the weapons and changed all the
passwords, and that should really have been the end of it. Unfortunately, just when they thought all they had left to do was locate each nuke and send in a bunch of techies to take it to pieces,
somebody else logged on to the system, using what appears to be a Yiddish user-name and calling from France.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Westwood muttered.

‘Exactly. According to this Simpson character, this new user – the name he’s using is “Dernowi”, which is close to the Yiddish for “The Prophet” –
is using some kind of a backdoor code to gain access to the system, so there’s no way of locking him out.’

‘So what do we do now?’

‘Simpson has already couriered us a disk copy of all the weapon locations in the States, and I’ve had the file sent by secure email to Langley. Apart from that, there’s not a
hell of a lot we can do. As soon as I got the message from Simpson I contacted Walter Hicks, and he’s probably on his way to see the President right now. Obviously all our assets over there
will stay at their current state of readiness, not that that will help if this Dernowi decides to nuke us all to hell.’

‘So?’

‘So the Brits have sent a team into France to locate Dernowi and take him out. It’s the only way they can be certain of stopping an attack.’

Blagnac Airport, Toulouse, south-west France

The HS146 touched down smoothly just before eleven fifty, local time, and taxied off the runway to a parking area well away from the passenger terminal. With a sense of
déjà vu
, Richter looked across the hardstanding at the bulk of the C–130 Hercules with RAF markings standing a few yards away. Ross was waiting for him at the side door
of a hangar. Richter greeted him briefly, then walked into the building. Colin Dekker was bent over a laptop computer which was hitched to a mobile telephone. ‘Colin,’ Richter said,
‘we’ve got to stop meeting like this.’