BLACK ALERT by Alan White Granada Publishing Limited 8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA Published by Granada Publishing 1985 Copyright Alan White 1985 Library Cataloguing in Publication Data White, Alan, 1924 Black alert .1. Title 823'. 914[F] PR6073. H49 ISBN 0246113944 Typeset by Columns, Reading Printed in Great Britain by Billing & Sons Limited, Worcester and London All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. BLACK ALERT BOOK ONE The Flight of the Medusa Chapter One. Master: Confirm location. Slave: Location confirmed. Master: Identify location by parts. Slave: Location identified by six parts. Master: Verify targets. Slave: Targets verified. Master: Identify targets Figures One and Figures Two by name. Slave: Wait. Figures One equals Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA. Figures Two equals Sucatan, Nevada, USA. Master: Out. It was so much easier when computer spoke to computer, Alexei thought as he scanned the printout of the independent dialogue. No need for those distracting human touches, no need for politeness or time-wasting civilities. He chuckled, however, and acting on impulse typed a series of bytes, pressed a button and brought them into the computer's data base memory and operation. "Good night, and thanks." The master replied immediately. Master: Message not understood. NOVOSIBIRSK - USSR. The long, high room, too brightly lit for comfort by banks of neon that washed colour from faces, shadowing features like parchment-covered skulls, was filled with the hushed whisper of the banks of computer readers that lined three of its walls. Grigor Talchenko glanced at his console and saw the perpetually changing display reading the passing time in 9 thousandths of a second, ignored the last whirling digits and said to Aleksandr, the shift leader, "Time for lunch, comrade." Aleksandr stopped on his way past Grigor's console, ostentatiously produced the cheap tin watch on its leather thong from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it, despite the time display consoles that surrounded him. Time could neatly be divided, in Aleksandr's precise mind, between the mathematical factors on permanent demonstration all about him, used as one of the many control dimensions for their missile work, and time as revealed to him by his tin watch by which men, not missiles, regulated their activities. "It lacks two minutes to the hour, Comrade Grigor," he said chidingly. Grigor smiled thinly. It would never matter to Aleksandr that the consoles were governed by the most accurate method of time keeping known to man; he wound his watch each morning and regulated his entire existence by what it told him. It was a good timekeeper; his father had taken it from a dead German's pocket during the war and had bequeathed it to his son. It was regularly two minutes slow but nothing would induce Aleksandr to adjust it. Aleksandr was a man of fixed habits and routines Grigor was relying on that. When they went together for lunch in two minutes' time, Aleksandr would lead the way into the airlock and stand there until thirty seconds had elapsed. When they left the airlock together, Aleksandr would lead the way into the security room. He would watch Grigor while he undressed. He would watch the monitor while Grigor sat on the anal search probe, the mouth, ear, and nostril probe, the scalp scan. He would personally check between the toes of Grigor's feet, ask him to lift his arms for the armpit inspection. "Right," he'd say after the total of thirty seconds these searches would take, 'we can go to lunch." And they'd go to lunch. The first part of Grigor's mission would have been accomplished. He felt sick as he punched the buttons that would transfer command of his console to his relief, already sitting in Complex B behind the glass window. His relief acknowledged receipt of the command with a wave. Grigor stood up to go to lunch. "It's still not too late," he told himself. "You can still withdraw." But he knew that, for him, it was too late. During the long agonizing weeks he'd thought of nothing else. And finally, at the meeting yesterday, he'd made up his mind. He would become a spy. He arrived in the outer office of the section commander, Colonel Dmitri Karpanov, precisely at two o'clock and, after a two minutes' protocol wait, was admitted. He stood more or less at attention in front of the colonel's desk. The colonel didn't look up at him but shuffled the papers, drawing Grigor Talchenko's application in front of him. "Ah, yes," he said listlessly, "Talchenko. Reason for journey?" The full details were written in the appropriate section of the Application for Temporary Leave of Absence from Duty, but Grigor repeated them. "End of tour of duty, Colonel." The colonel snorted. "Damned civilians," he said. "We military never end our tours of duty. We're on duty all the time, day and night." He lifted his head and fixed Grigor with a hard stare in which his impotence showed. Grigor was a highly trained specialist and so far had avoided induction into the military. He'd been posted on temporary assignment to Novosibirsk from his work at Akhtubinsk where he'd been in charge of the team testing the radar-guided AA-X-9 missile successful in acquiring, tracking and firing against target drones in ground cluster. Now the AA-X-9 and the Mig-25 Foxbat were both operational and it was rumoured that Talchenko, after his spell in Novosibirsk, was heading for the top of the civilian list in the space programme. The colonel's 'information assistants' had given him a partial report of Talchenko's meeting the previous day with Georgi Barankov, the head of the KGB. It had been partial only because Talchenko had been smart enough to avoid the parabolic microphones Karpanov hoped would pick up their conversation as they walked about the grounds of the Space Station's living quarters, smart enough to discover and deactivate the bugs that had been planted in his quarters. "Going back to the KGB, I suppose?" he said sourly. "That would be difficult, Comrade Colonel, since I've never been a member of the KGB." The colonel sneered with disbelief but signed the card attached to the bottom of Talchenko's papers before flinging it contemptuously across the surface of the large desk. Grigor felt like saluting as a gesture, and would have done s^ had he felt confident of controlling the trembling of his arm. As it was, his hand was still trembling as he showed them the pass and they let him through the gate to climb aboard the communal Moscow bus. He put the pass carefully into the centre of his worn leather wallet as the bus pulled away, his thoughts many thousands of miles from the countryside rolling past the window. LONDON UK. Jenkins presided at the meeting himself and they were all dismayed. "I don't know that it goes this high," Daniels said. "It's only a preliminary." "It could be big," Jenkins said. "I like to be in on the ground floor." Daniels shrugged his shoulders and fiddled with his notes. Damn it, Jenkins was reputed to have risen to head of station because of the infinite pains he took with details, but all the section heads would describe it differently. Jenkins could be a pain in the arse, probing into all the details of an operation that by definition of duties and the age-old principle of 'need to know' didn't concern him. Any meeting chaired by the head of station inevitably took twice as long as a working committee of section heads, who got on with the business at hand, extracted what was relevant to them and their particular duties, and left the others to do the same. This was Daniels's baby, but with Jenkins around, he could lose it. Like so many promising operations, it could be lost in the fog of sheer tedious administration. Billy Temple had seated himself opposite Daniels. Well, he'd be good for support in the scrum: Billy was a fanatic about keeping his own section strictly under his own thumb. "I suggest we might start?" Jenkins said in that cold precise sing-song Welsh voice of his. "I think the ball is rightly in your court, Daniels, since you called the meeting." Daniels looked at the six men sitting round the table. Too bloody many, too bloody many for a matter as sensitive as this could be. "We found a reluctant virgin," he said. "In, of all places, Novosibirsk! And what he's offering could be very good." "How do you know he's reluctant?" Jenkins asked, and Daniels sighed. The interpretation of the mental state of defectors was a highly complex matter no way he could sum it up in a couple of sentences. "That would be too complicated to go into right now," he said. "He wants to give us one piece of information. He doesn't want pay, he doesn't want us to bring him out. We have no contact with him other than we receive a one- shot and then forget about him. He's a classic, reluctant, voice of conscience. If it had been three hundred miles further west I'd have thought it could be germ warfare research, genetic engineering, something like that, but from Novosibirsk it has to be space programme. And control at that." "Classic interpretation," Billy said. "How do we get him?" "That's why I called the meeting," Daniels said, grateful for the direct question. "It's a low level transmission. We have to pick it up." "Where?" "Moscow." "How?" "Straight radio. We tape it. Technical stuff. It contains its own interpretation code that will only be understandable by a boffin. He's even named the boffin - Professor Walter MacKlin, Nuclear Physics, London University." "He'll have to be cleared, of course," Jenkins said quickly. "Of course. That's Frank's department." "I can get on to that straight away," Frank said. Though nominally librarian, Frank Cosgrove had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the men and women who inhabit the clandestine world of spying. "Does your reluctant virgin have a name?" Jenkins asked quietly. "If he gave me a name I wouldn't touch him!" Daniels said. Bloody fool Jenkins, didn't he know, hadn't he learned anything about the technicalities? Virgins giving names! "And he didn't give us a fucking address, either." Jenkins's nose curled at the coarseness. Really, if Daniels weren't just about the best case officer they had. "How did you get him?" Jenkins asked and realized immediately the mistake he'd made. You should never ask that one: it was like asking a journalist to reveal his sources, a policeman to give you the name of his snout, his grass, his informer. "He sent me a picture postcard," Daniels said, then laughed. Nobody would believe him. Nobody would realize he was telling the truth. Well, how the hell, he asked himself, could an ordinary citizen with knowledge of espionage, no contacts in the half-world of spying, make a contact with somebody in another country's espionage services? Peter Thompson, the doyen of British Moscow correspondents, had been in a party shown the low-level security work at Novosibirsk, as part of the pseudo detente, intercontinental space co-operation programme. When he'd arrived back in his hotel he'd opened the envelope he'd found hidden in the inner pocket of his anorak. It had contained a note and a postcard. The note said, in Russian, "This is not a joke. Give the attached postcard to someone in Intelligence at your Embassy." Thompson, with his newsman's reluctance to ignore any possible lead to a potential story, had brought it in personally and had given it to Head of Station, Moscow, who'd flown it out in the diplomatic bag, low-level priority, for Daniels. He'd touted it round all the technical boys. It seemed to be an ordinary postcard but they'd quickly discovered it had been split, and a magnetic oxide card had been slotted in the centre, like the metal thread in a banknote. When the card had been inserted into an IBM Mag-card typewriter, it had printed out the following message. SOON I WILL BE IN POSSESSION OF RUSSIAN SPACE INFORMATION I WISH FOR PERSONAL REASONS TO DISCLOSE TO WALTER MACK LING LONDON UNIVERSITY. WILL BE TRANSMITTED ON 110:00 MHZ AT 21:00 GMT ON 15 APRIL IN SIGHT LINK 10 WATTS OUTPUT TO BRITISH EMBASSY MOSCOW. IF YOU WILL BE WAITING FOR THIS TRANSMISSION INSTRUCT PETER THOMPSON TO CABLE TO NOVOSIBIRSK ASKING IF HIS GOLD CIGARETTE LIGHTER WAS LOST THERE. I REQUIRE NO PAYMENT FOR THIS INFORMATION AND INSTRUCT YOU NOT TO MAKE ANY REPEAT ANY ATTEMPT TO UNCOVER ME. Daniels chuckled when he remembered how the man had signed himself Still a Patriot. "No need to make jokes and then laugh at them yourself," Jenkins said waspishly. "What do you propose we do?" "I propose we listen to the radio on the fifteenth, and record anything we might hear at twenty-one hundred hours on a hundred and ten megahertz," Daniels said blandly. "What we do subsequently will depend on what we get. But, in the meanwhile, I suggest we turn this Walter MacKlin inside out to decide if we can give the recording to him for interpretation. Since our reluctant virgin will be broadcasting in FM on a sight-to-sight transmission, I suggest we help him by posting a number of other transmitters round Moscow from, say, twenty-fifty hours, to give the interceptors something else to think about. I suggest we send in one of Billy's men to hand carry the tape out." "Not transmit it immediately to London?" Jenkins asked but Daniels gave a groan of exasperation. "Show me the transmitter ex-Moscow that isn't fully monitored, and we might use it. Until then I suggest we need the best man available to bring it out. Look, the virgin is handing us something on a plate. We owe him the responsibility of protecting it with everything we've got." "You'll let me have a go at it?" Tommy Beckwich asked hurriedly. "Of course," Daniels said. "We'll need it analysed by your section to see if it's a plant, a phoney. The last thing we need right now is disinformation about the satellite programme." "How will you go about finding the identity of your reluctant virgin?" Jenkins asked. "It would be quite a coup for you if you could locate and recruit him. There must be a lot of useful material in Novosibirsk. Just think of the cooperation we could buy from the Americans! I imagine you'll be giving that to one of your best men?" Daniels's hand crashed down on the table. "There will be no attempt by my section to locate and/ or recruit him," he said hotly. "The chap came to us of his own free will. If we honour our side of this particular agreement, he may come back again with more and better stuff. Then would be the time, perhaps, to locate and recruit." "That might turn out to be a head of station decision," Jenkins said softly, knowing he was on dangerous ground. Since the most recent 'mole' scandals, much of the authority had been taken from heads of station and each section could claim much more autonomy than ever before. Thus it became increasingly difficult for an administrator to gather together all the details of an operation to sell to the Russians. "With the greatest possible lack of respect," Daniels said, 'bullshit! Those days are over, thank God! Sunk like a cunt in a punt on the Cam." "No need to be totally offensive," Jenkins said mildly. Jenkins let the phone ring three times, hung up, and dialled again. This time the phone was picked up after four rings. "Is that Williams Catering Service?" he asked. "I think you have the wrong number. Don't worry, we get it all the time. Williams Catering Service is 444-2169. This is 4432169." "Thank you very much," Jenkins said. "Sorry to trouble you." "No trouble." Sastrovich hung up then turned to his political assistant. "That was our mole," he said. "There's a dead letter drop for us in the Park." MOSCOW USSR. He sat at the window of the apartment, looking across the square towards the British Embassy. All day the squads had searched everyone who went in; all day everyone who came out had been given an obvious tail. He looked at his watch again and fiddled with the dial of the radio he'd built from parts, coupled to the cheap tape recorder he'd adapted. It was the best equipment he could find that would attract no suspicion to him; his knowledge of radio electronics and circuitry had made it child's play to convert the apparatus into a 10-watt transmitter capable of being tuned to a thousandth of a megahertz. As he fiddled he heard the increased activity around his frequency as voices came on in English, American, French, German. Some of them had the base accents of men from the satellite countries. Three times he heard a Russian voice of non-professional quality and he smiled as he realized what the British were doing, blanketing the frequencies around his with illegal transmissions, most probably from moving vehicles. The hands moved slowly towards the hour of nine o'clock. He tuned and returned his transmitter though the meter showed him with precision when he reached 110:00 megahertz exactly. The KGB would work out, of course, who'd given the information, and they'd come looking for him. According to Barankov, the head of KGB, whom he'd actually met for the first and only time that day in Novosibirsk, he was the only man who had the complete picture, the one man Barankov had trusted. But what Barankov had suggested had been far too monstrous for him even to contemplate. Nine o'clock had arrived. He switched the button of the tape recorder to play, and pressed the transmit switch on the radio. At that identical moment the door crashed in under the impact of heavy boots, and a Kalashnikov chattered. Foolishly, they aimed at the man first, killing him outright before they shot the radio to pieces. They were too late. The transmission had lasted only three seconds. LONDON UK Daniels was sitting in the office of Walter MacKlin FRS, Professor of Nuclear Physics at London University. On the desk between them lay a conventional tape cassette. Daniels had been surprised the first time he'd met MacKlin. He'd been expecting some long-haired boffin, a Cambridge type similar to Jenkins, a cross between Einstein and Epstein. MacKlin had met him in corduroy jeans, wearing a crew necked sweater and canvas shoes. He was forty, Daniels knew from the 'deep' biography Frank's section had given him, and might have seemed a middle-aged trendy if he hadn't come on so strongly as being totally sincere, totally uninterested in trends and fashions, or the image he himself projected. He was six feet one and a half inches tall, weighed sixteen stone most of which was hard muscle, played squash four times a week well enough to be in any team, ate junk food in hamburger bars because food held no interest for him, had a succession of girl-friends, all of whom, apparently, adored him, but none of whom could hold his interest for more than a month. He was totally apolitical, totally amoral. In fact, Daniels reflected, total was probably the best word to describe MacKlin. He would be a total friend, a total enemy, totally likeable, or a total bastard. Just now he was being a total boffin. "The first thing I looked for was acceleration," he said. "From what you told me, I guessed the man transmitting would have little time to spare. He got his message across in three seconds, and here's a remarkable achievement, by accelerating the signal no less than five thousand times. In those three seconds he gave us fifteen thousand seconds of material. That's four point one six recurring hours of computer-readable characters which print out at nine hundred characters to the minute." Daniels wasn't interested in the mathematical details. "Do we know what it is?" he asked impatiently. "Yes, / we do. And that is rather puzzling. I've had it from another source not in such detail of course." "What the hell is it, Professor?" Daniels persisted. "It's the mathematical background to the facilities visit given to Western scientists as part of the International Information Exchange when we were all invited to Novosibirsk. I went myself and they let me make copious notes. It's the complete launch program for the Medusa, now orbiting the earth, a do-it-yourself guide to launching and orbiting a non-military satellite. It's the sort of material they publish in Computer Design Weekly, which anyone can buy on any bookstall." The head waiter in Locketts instantly recognized the man who came in at the door, and ignoring the bar, turned left towards the restaurant. "Good morning, Mr. Graham," he said effusively. "So nice to have you back with us again!" They didn't get too many ministers these days, though back bench MPS usually thronged the place at lunchtime. "Mrs. Graham is already here and asked to be shown to the table. I've taken the liberty of giving her a Campari and soda." "Quite right, Potter," Paul Graham said, shrugging his shoulders like a boxer who's just heard a bell and is about to shuffle into the fray against a heavier opponent. One look at Helen's face told him it was going to be another no-win contest. "Sorry I'm late, darling," he said as his lips brushed her cheek. "I see they gave you a drink." "I hate to be pedantic, but they've given me three drinks," she said. "One in the bar, until I grew bored of hearing people mutter "Isn't that Graham's wife; I wonder what she's doing in here on her own" , and two more here!" "The PM collared me," he said. "Damned defence estimates again. He knows we'll never get them through and is looking for face-saving cuts he can offer them on a plate." She held up her hand, like a traffic warden halting children at the far side of a busy road. "Please," she said, 'don't waste your breath and my time. I have a specimen incubating and need to be back in the lab by three. I've ordered but you'd better ask what they can do quickly if you don't want to sit here eating after I've gone. And have all these Opposition MPS saying your wife has walked out on you." "You're still seeing that journalist fellow, Bill Tilsen?" "And you're still sleeping with Angela Steadman? I really want that divorce, Paul. I've been patient long enough. If you deny me, I'm prepared to fight you for it. And you know how messy that will be." "You'd name Angela?" "If you force me, yes, I will." The rest of what Helen had been about to say was lost as Potter came to the side of Paul's elbow, and gave one of those discreet half coughs for which head waiters are famed. "Telephone call, Minister," he said. "In the manager's office." Helen exclaimed with annoyance. "Just like the old days, Paul," she said bitterly, as she gathered her handbag and prepared to depart. "You have a week to think about things. Now, goodbye and thank you for lunch, what there was of it!" Paul shrugged and made his way across the crowded restaurant, aware that half the eyes watched his progress with envy. The feeling of political power was heavy in him; was he being entirely sincere, he asked himself as he threaded his way between the tables, when he said he wanted to accept one of the private industry jobs that had been offered to him? He knew for certain that he would be infinitely wealthier out of government but he wouldn't have the power, the political weight he now commanded that was meat and drink to him. He picked up the telephone. "Sorry to intrude on your lunch, Paul," Angela said, unable to keep the trace of a laugh out of her voice. "I'll bet you are. I'll bet you've been sitting there reading despatches praying for one that would justify the call. Who wants me? The PM again?" "No. It's an odd thing. I'd like you to see it before you go back to the House. Could you come back to your office?" "The Estimates debate is due to start at three." "Yes, but it's only Wagstaff first, and he'll be on for an hour with his usual "Need for Unilateral Disarmament" rubbish. No, this is something odd I think you should look at. I've made a tentative appointment for Walter MacKlin to see you at three-fifteen." "Walter MacKlin? Professor MacKlin?" "Yes. I think you should try to be here." Paul Graham was still intrigued as he went up in the private elevator to his office. He trusted Angela's intuition perfectly she was the best personal assistant he'd ever had, a graduate of thirty who'd risen like a meteor in the Civil Service as an administrator until she'd volunteered to leave the mainstream of promotion to come to work for him. It was the first time he'd had a female personal assistant and at first he'd been doubtful that a woman could handle the complex ramifications of the workload. Finally he'd agreed to accept her as a sop in the ever more militant women's libbers and been pleased and surprised by the results. When he was seated at his desk he pressed the buzzer, though he knew Wilkins, his secretary, would have told Angela he was in. Angela came in immediately from her office on the other side of the secretary's and perched herself in the chair beside his desk. "Good lunch?" she asked. "I don't go to Locketts to eat lunch," he said sourly. "What's this MacKlin business?" She looked quizzically at him. "Bad, was it?" "Bloody awful. But let's talk about that tonight, eh?" Immediately she became businesslike again. "Remember the story that man Daniels brought into the Security Committee?" "Had a funny name for it, yes, the reluctant virgin?" "That's it," she said, surprised once again at his encyclopaedic memory. One small item from the many thousands that filled his day, one man from the vast number he saw every day, and yet the remembered name opened up the whole file. "There was a report in this morning's han dover from the Committee that a message had been received and decoded, but that it contained nothing very exciting. They decided it was some sort of disinformation caper when Walter MacKlin told them the material could be found in the comic papers!" As Minister of Defence, Paul Graham sat on the watchdog committee that overlooked security procedures. He remembered the flicker of excitement that had run through the men from Harwell when they'd learned they had a source of information in top-secret Novosibirsk. At last, they hoped, they'd be able to see behind the curtain of low level information the Russians had already released. "And now you want me to see Walter MacKlin, so my guess is that he must have changed his mind. Or that what he put in his official report was not the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth. Shall we have him in? We can't keep the good professor waiting." Walter MacKlin came in with his usual springy step. He and Paul had been at Christ's College together and friends ever since. Paul had risen from behind his desk and waved Walter to the corner of the room where there were comfortable armchairs and a low table. "I've seen the background, Walter. Let me summarize what I know. A message was received, from a source code named by Daniels the reluctant virgin, that information was available ex-Novosibirsk. Arrangements were made to collect the information, it was passed to you, and turned out, in your opinion which I value highly, to be low-level stuff of no real interest." "You understand, Minister," Walter said, that I made my first assessment quickly with your lad Daniels breathing down my neck. Now I've had a chance to go through the material again, and it turns out to be not what it seemed at first. It is, as I said, a complete programming for a launch and control system of the Soviet Medusa satellite, now in orbit, but there's something wrong with it!" Paul's interest quickened. His political ability was founded on his susceptibility to nuances, and he could feel a strong undercurrent of worry in Walter MacKlin's manner. "Is it something you can explain to a layman?" he asked. "Not in detail. It boils down to this, in laymen's terms. The information reveals that the Medusa is not what it is supposed to be. "Then what is it?" "I can't tell that exactly, not yet. I need at least twenty- four hours more computer time before I'll know. But this much I can tell you. The Medusa is carrying a detachable payload." "Detachable?" "The payload can be discharged from the Medusa by ground control, or by local Medusa control; there exists a complete programming for that, independent of all the normal launching and flight controls." "The Medusa was supposed to be an advanced weather satellite, manned, with space laboratory capability?" "Yes, it was. But that can't be the full story." "Why not? Because of the detachable payload?" "Because the detachable payload is in fact a set of payloads, each of which, I calculate, is nuclear in content. The innocent manned weather satellite and space laboratory the Russians are orbiting around the earth is, in fact, a flying nuclear bomb! And at this moment, if my calculations are correct, it's in orbit somewhere over America." NOVOSIBIRSK - USSR. All eyes in the Space Centre were focused on the large monitor on the north wall, on which was being projected the output from the television camera mounted on the side of the Minotaur, the code-name for the space vehicle that had ferried the team of two cosmonauts from the launch site to within docking distance of the orbiting Medusa. The six hydraulic probes were slowly extending from the Minotaur towards the Medusa, aimed with pin-point accuracy at the six slots into which they'd penetrate, twist, and lock, securing the two craft together as one. Already the two were being controlled by the same flight plan program. The picture seen on the ground was duplicated in the Minotaur itself; the cosmonauts Anna Firdova and Sergei Bustovsky, both majors in rank, had brought the space shuttle to this point by manual control; now they were waiting to see if the ground forces could complete a successful space coupling. In a sense they were a stand-by; the plan of the Medusa operation was that it should be possible to send the Minotaur anywhere in space and lock it securely by ground control alone. If this could be achieved, then the vessel could be used to bring a payload of people from space orbit back down to earth. The air was empty of the voices usually associated with an American space project. Voices, with their time delay and fallibility, had been replaced entirely by the electronic pulses of the computer which could give a thousand understandable commands in a microsecond, then verify they had all been carried out correctly. The two spacecraft drew closer and closer together. Barankov sat in the position of honour at the centre of the command console, though Wilkovsky, with his equivalent rank of senior colonel, was actually running the operation from a position below him. Apart from Barankov, there were no outsiders to watch the operation, and the television pictures were not being broadcast to the nation. Part of the work of the computer was to scramble the signals it was sending and receiving, so that no one outside the station in Novosibirsk could know it was happening. The Americans, the British, and the French were monitoring what they thought were the Medusa patterns as part of their regular surveillance, but the extra Minotaur commands were undetectable, suppressed beneath an output of seemingly innocent Medusa service messages. Barankov was risking everything on this one throw. Every man in the Space Centre Control Team had been selected by him, his loyalty to Barankov double-checked. Barankov ruefully admitted he had made one mistake, but that had been rectified when they caught up with Talchenko and shot him before he'd had a chance to pass his information to the British. With Talchenko, Barankov had committed a grave tactical error. He'd overestimated the power of ambition when he'd assumed that Talchenko would be so anxious to secure his promotion that he would accept loyalty to Barankov and his ideals as the price. Those ideals, Barankov knew, would put him at the very top by assuring his succession to Chemenko. The Russian political machine had been permitted to grow rusty during these years of detente. As dedicated Communists they had continually failed in their duty to world Communism. One only had to look at the way they'd stopped on the borders of Afghanistan, instead of sweeping down into Pakistan, Iran, and eventually India. One only had to see the way they'd failed to take over Yugoslavia after Tito's death. With Yugoslavia in their hands, who could have denied them Albania? Their work in South America and the Caribbean was soft at the centre, being too dependent on Castro's Cuba. By now they should have had oil-rich Venezuela, the northern lands of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. On the west coast of South America it should have been easy to establish a stronger Politburo in Chile, after Allende, and be moving up into Peru. The Russians needed a man they could respect, a young, healthy, strong man, not the elderly Chemenko. They needed a man prepared to show his strength internationally, a man who could beat the already tottering Americans. And he was convinced that General Georgi Barankov, holder of the Order of Lenin and head of the KGB, was that strong man. The Medusa project would be his flaming sword, the weapon with which he would start his total subjugation of the capitalist countries of the West. The six probes entered the six slots, twisted and locked. There was an audible sigh of relief through the space control room, though no one had doubted they would do it. Barankov rapped his hand forcefully on the desk top, and said, "Well done, well done." His was the only voice. The airlock sleeve began to slide across from the Minotaur to the Medusa; a ring of red lights showed when it was in position, sealed against space's non-atmosphere. Transferring the two cosmonauts from the Minotaur to the Medusa would be as simple as stepping out of a taxi into a hotel foyer. The two cosmonauts already in the Medusa would leave and enter the Minotaur for their journey back to earth. That they would never arrive was a fact known only to Barankov, and to Senior Colonel Wilkovsky who had written the computer program that was their death sentence. Once the Minotaur and the Medusa were locked together, the whole room relaxed. For six hours the cosmonauts would . ^ move between the two spacecraft as one crew briefed the Verity Pringle admitted she'd had a similar fear. I put a \ spare pair? of teeth in my drawer," she said, 'and a couple of tubes of those fizzy tablets you get at Boots." The thought of being without her teeth had terrified her more than anything else. Sir Rupert smiled as he heard her words. Even he had had his fears but he'd done nothing so practical about them. Unless you could call leaving a copy of the Old Testament in his drawer practical. The journey took only ten minutes since the train had been designed to reach a top speed of 180m. p. h. They disembarked quickly and in good order, still not all entirely convinced that this was not yet another time-wasting practice run. The driver walked quickly to the other end of the train where there was a duplicate set of controls. He took his place, slid the doors silently closed, and drove quickly back towards the centre of London. There was confusion at the south gate of the complex of buildings known as the Kremlin when the police rushed on to the road to halt traffic while the Zil carrying Assistant Chairman Kaiko came out. Two cars had been travelling along the roadway close together; one of them appeared to have difficulty with his brakes and, as the policeman jumped hastily to one side, realizing the car could not stop, he saw the plates of a Chevrolet of the foreign press corps. The driver of the Chevrolet was leaning out of his window, shouting as he tried to manoeuvre the car through the traffic; he bounced off the front of one car, then scraped sideways along another before coming finally to rest with a high metallic screech against the front wing of the Zil carrying Comrade Kalko. The air was filled with the shouts of astonished passersby, the whistle of the policeman, the shouts of the plainclothes KGB men who dashed forward anticipating an incident. The second car, a Rolls-Royce with its black paintwork polished like a mirror, the pennant of the British Ambassador limp above the bonnet, drew to a dignified halt; the British Ambassador leaped out and crossed to Kalko's car. "My dear Comrade Kalko," he said, his voice pitched high and loud so that all could hear. "What a misfortune! Were you on your way to the ballet performance? If so, may I offer you a lift in my car?" A ring of tight-faced KGB men had closed round the Assistant Chairman. Sir Cuthbert King, his aristocratic features resembling those of a much-put-upon basset-hound, long-suffering but patient, fixed one of them with his round-eyed stare. "Out of the way, there's a dear chap," he said loudly in the sort of voice that once had quelled warring tribesmen on the Empire's frontiers. "Let the Assistant Chairman come past, there's a dear fellow!" Despite his orders that Kaiko be held totally incommunicado, the KGB man found himself stepping aside. Kaiko moved swiftly and, almost before the KGB detachment leader knew what had happened, was sitting on the back seat next to Sir Cuthbert when the Rolls moved smoothly away. "Well done, Kaiko," Sir Cuthbert said. "I reckon we have two minutes before Barankov orders you to be dragged out of here, by force if necessary." It only took one of those two minutes for Sir Cuthbert to tell Kaiko what had happened to the Medusa. "We knew nothing of the Medusa officially," Kaiko said earnestly. "We all believe that, my dear chap," Sir Cuthbert said: "We all see it for what it undoubtedly was, a power play by your greatest rival. The question is, what are you going to do about it?" They turned the corner. Barankov had moved fast and the road was completely blocked by a Red Army tank. Helen Graham had been surprised the previous evening to see nothing of her husband on television, though she'd kept the set going in the corner with the sound turned off while she was working at home. Bill had telephoned. "Look, Helen, I was an awful fool at lunch today," he said. "You wanted to say something to me and I didn't give you the chance. Shall I come round and we can talk about it now?" She'd pleaded fatigue, had said she was planning an early night. She knew the announcement she'd been expecting had not been given to the press, or Bill would certainly have mentioned it. When she went to bed at midnight she lay there disgruntled. "The bastard," she said, 'the bastard has reneged on me. He hasn't resigned! " She had a strong inclination to ring him to tell him what she thought of him, but the chance that he might be with Angela Steadman prevented her. After a fitful night, she didn't go to the laboratory. She had brought home enough theoretical work the previous evening; she spent the morning poring over equations, examining the slides she'd prepared from the cultures she'd made. Her doorbell rang at one o'clock and she used the Ansaphone. She heard Bill's voice distorted by the inefficient microphone built into the lobby wall. "I've been calling you in the lab all morning, but you weren't there. I came round to see if you were all right." She pressed the buzzer to let him in and stood in the hallway of her flat with the door open while the lift came up to the seventh floor. He came into the flat with a large bunch of flowers in his hand. She could see roses, carnations and feathery greenery. "By way of an apology," he said. "I was so damned insensitive yesterday." She let him kiss her, but couldn't bring herself to respond with any warmth. He held her at arm's length. "How are you?" he asked. She nodded. "I'm okay," she said. "I've been working hard all morning. My head's going round and round with chemical formulae." "No more of that," he said. He produced a paper bag from behind his back. It contained a cold bottle of white wine, and several plastic cartons. "Chicken in aspic," he said as he produced the first one. "Shrimps in avocado sauce. Smoked salmon. Strawberries, and cream! I thought we could have a picnic. On your sofa." She laughed. What an irrational man he was, and how wonderfully unpredictable. She felt her spirits rise and reached out to hug him. "I'm a bitch sometimes," she said. "Not all the time. And I'm a blundering fool sometimes." "Not all the time." She led the way into the sitting-room and swept her papers from the long low table in front of the sofa with its deep comfortable cushions. The first time Bill and she had made love there, it had seemed an act of treachery to Paul, since they had bought the sofa together in Maples when they had set up house for the express purpose of lovemaking. Perhaps she had used Bill and the sofa to push those memories of Paul from her mind. She was in no mood for introspection. She brought knives and forks and glasses, despite Bill's protests that they could, and should, eat with their fingers and drink from the neck of the bottle to get the real picnic feeling. They had finished eating; the time was eleven minutes past two. Bill had taken off her blouse and her brassiere and she was lying back in the euphoria of good food and wine, and the heavy expectation of sex, when she felt her skin begin to throb. At first she didn't recognize it and shifted uneasily. She felt the throb again and this time identified the regular beat of it. Da dit dit. Da dit dit. Da dit dit. She clenched her hand and it was still there beneath the slim strap of her watch. Da dit dit. She moved beneath Bill's hand fondling her nipple. "Not yet," he said, his voice husky with desire. "We have all the time in the world. Just relax." "I have to go to the bathroom," she said. He lay back on the sofa, the languorous look of contented pleasure on his face. "Hurry," he said. She was in a semi-trance as she went through to the bathroom, rinsed her face with cold water, combed her hair and rubbed her wrists with cologne. She went into the bedroom and put on a fresh brassiere. She stripped off her skirt and pants, put on fresh pants and corduroy trousers, a vest and her heavy fisherman's smock, woollen socks and the light boots she used for walking. An anorak and a Basque beret completed her outfit. She reached into the wardrobe and drew out her small rucksack. She didn't need to check it. She would have made it through the front door if Bill hadn't had an erection and had come to the bathroom looking for her. He'd stripped and looked ludicrous with his penis standing proud before him. How often the sight of his manhood had aroused her, now, with all thoughts of sex gone from her mind, it looked revoltingly bestial. "You're dressed?" he said incredulously. "You're going out? Leaving me? What did I do wrong?" She couldn't explain it, not to him of all people, not to a journalist. They'd emphasized over and over again that, in the initial phase, there would be a great need for secrecy. Especially from the press. "I have to go out, Bill. It's something I can't explain. You must please trust me. Go back to your office. If I can, I'll ring you to explain." He was totally astounded. "What do you mean, if you can you'll ring me to explain? What's gone wrong, Helen? What did I do or say wrong? You owe me some sort of explanation, surely? One minute we're lying on the sofa together, next minute you're dressed up for a hike over the moors saying you'll ring me if you can." "You've got to trust me, Bill." "Trust goes two ways, Helen. Why can't you trust me and tell me what's gone wrong between us?" "Because I can't, Bill, I can't," she said, her voice anguished. The anger showed on his face. "Bloody hell," he shouted. "I thought you were supposed to be the rational one. Scientific objectivity and all that crap. Yet, when the chips are down, you're just as stupidly irrational as the rest of them. Helen, if that's what you want, bugger off! But don't expect me to be hanging around like a lap-dog when you get back!" He turned and went back into the sitting-room, his rejected manhood hanging limp and outraged from him. Helen wanted to go after him, wanted to tell him, to give him that much of a start. But she couldn't. Scientifically and objectively, she knew she couldn't. No doubt that was one of the reasons she'd been picked. The Northwood complex had been built within a vast bunker, located directly beneath a reinforced reservoir since a solid mass of water, it was calculated, would have a stronger buttressing effect than its equivalent of concrete, which would crack and shatter. The water, being flexible, would contain the effects of an atomic blast much more effectively than any solid. The main bunker led, by a system of zigzag corridors each carrying a two-feet-thick steel bulkhead, to a number of other complexes, each organized as a separate arm of government. The Royal Corps of Signals had deployed its best technicians; it was hoped that the Northwood Complex, as it was officially named, would be able to remain in communication with the Ministry of Survival in London, and with other centres. The Prime Minister knew the Regional Controllers would already have been told, and would be carrying out the existing plans to give each section of the country a localized autonomy. The man appointed Scottish Controller, the Earl of Clachan, a fervent Scottish Nationalist, had prayed the Russians would threaten to bomb as quickly as possible. His fervour hadn't extended to them actually dropping it. Wales would be ruled from Caemarfon; Yorkshire from York; the Midlands from Northampton; Lancashire from Lancaster since it was reckoned that Manchester and Leeds would become immediate ICBM targets in the event of nuclear war. Each arm of government had a set of contingency plans; Paul had retained the best brains and had eaten computer time to plot logical paths following all the valid assumptions that could be made. Each 'program', however, had an unsatisfactory and incomplete end-point: there would never be sufficient medical help, sufficient medicine, food, or water, to cope with the survivors, many of whom would be horribly maimed. They, and not the dead ones, would be the final victims of the nuclear holocaust. The Prime Minister seated himself at the functional desk in his office, only because he didn't know where else to sit. The air-conditioning was working and he smelled the faint odour of antiseptic the atmosphere contained. He swivelled his chair and saw the formica-covered cupboard behind him. He got up and opened the door, then stripped off his jacket, tie and shirt and put on the roll- necked sweater with the leather patched elbows he'd hung there. The feel of the old wool seemed to comfort him again, as it had so many times in the past. Mildred, his wife, had called this his crisis sweater. They'd argued, of course. He'd said a man could carry out his responsibilities better if he had the comfort of his wife beside him, but had been voted down. Wives, especially old ones beyond the breeding age, were expendable, that insufferable prig of a professor they'd co-opted on to the Planning Committee as a population specialist had said. Men can continue to breed until an advanced age; women end their breeding potential with the menopause. It was factual, logical, correct. But he cried when he thought of Mildred, lying alone in their bedroom in Number 10, with yet another of her headaches. What a bastard it had all been, and how repulsively revolting, the way they'd had to discuss human beings in such clinical terms. That was where Paul had proved himself so effectively. He'd been a wonderful bridge between the cold dehumanized logic of the geneticists and biologists, and the humanity of the social specialists. Paul would look out for Mildred, the Prime Minister thought. He'd do what he could, when the time came. If Paul himself survived. They'd accepted the need to split the responsibilities into two quite separate entities. One man, with the powers of a dictator, had to be responsible for ensuring the maximum number of survivors, for getting the best trained, the most knowledgeable of those survivors into safety. Whoever took the task, he'd have to forget his own safety. If London was to be the target of any nuclear attack, no building in London, no shelter however deep, could be considered impregnable. Many of the magazines had published details of home shelters, and many had been constructed. The Government had built a limited number of them. Paul had formed a team of fifty professionals, but this present crisis had caught them all training on Snowdonia. Paul would have to go with the amateurs, all of whom had been implanted. Some would stay to help Paul, some would come into the comparative safety of the second part of the operation to be controlled by the Prime Minister and the Privy Council from the guaranteed safety of the Northwood Complex. After the bomb had landed. After London had been devastated, the Prime Minister would have to pick up the reins of government again, to try to see that as much of England as possible would survive. They knew the Russians might launch other missiles; they might attack with land forces, to try to make territorial acquisitions in England. After the bomb had landed. Chapter Six. Kenneth Birdwood looked up and saw the Chief Warder standing before him. "Arthur Binns is asking to see you, Sir," the Chief said. "I told him you have fixed times for interviews, and he should put in an application, in writing on the usual form, but he was very cocky and told me to say one word to you. I don't quite understand it, so I thought I'd better do as he asked." Kenneth Birdwood had been Governor of Wandsworth Prison for twenty years, the Chief had been the Chief for twenty-five and each understood the other perfectly. "What's the word, Chief?" he asked quietly. "Can't understand it, Sir. He said, I've to say to you, Salvation! Does it make any sense?" "Yes, it does, Chief," the Governor said. "Bring Arthur Binns up here, as fast as you can." When the Chief had left his office, Kenneth Birdwood opened the centre drawer of his desk and took out the envelope that had lain there for two years. The word Salvation had been written across it in bold black letters, obviously with a large felt tip pen. He turned the envelope over and saw the red waxed seal and the red ribbon were still intact. He put his letter opener under the flap of the envelope and slit it across. The single sheet of paper inside had been signed by the Minister of Defence, Paul Graham, and the Home Secretary, the Rt Hon. Whittaker Jones. He knew Whittaker Jones's signature well. The letter was brief and to the point. "To the Governor of H.M. Prison, Wandsworth. On reading this letter, you will immediately release Prisoner Number 12576, Binns, Arthur, from custody and provide him with such transport and facilities as he may required Arthur Binns had earnedhimself a prison reputation as a cocky devil, cheeky but co-operative. His dossier revealed only two convictions, one of which had attracted a prison sentence. A handwritten note in his file warned anyone having custody of Arthur Binns to take special care, since there was not a lock known to man he couldn't eventually open. He was acknowledged to be possibly the best safebreaker and door-lock opener in the country, so good in fact, that when a particularly difficult job had been pulled, the Yard had automatically brought him in on suspicion. When he came into the Governor's office he was much quieter than his usual ebullient self. The Governor dismissed the Chief Warder. "It looks as though you're leaving us, Binns," he said. "Looks like it, don't it?" Binns, the Governor noticed, was scratching his inner wrist. "Care to tell me anything about it?" Binns looked uncomfortable. "I'd like to go along with you. Governor, honest I would, but this time, I can't. Orders is orders, eh, Governor?" "I suppose you're right, Binns. Orders are orders. Is your wrist bothering you? Would you like the doctor to look at it before you leave?" "No, Governor, it'll be okay. If I could just have the use of one of the vans and a driver? I reckon, after a couple of years, I'll be a bit rusty behind the wheel." "Anything else you need? Any money, clothing?" Binns was wearing the grey shirt and grey denim trousers that were standard issue for his job in the prison. "Na, Governor. Clothes and money wouldn't be no use to me, I reckon, where I'm going." The Chief Rabbi was coming from the synagogue behind Marble Arch when Peter Salaman approached him, a troubled expression on his face. "I'm afraid I will not be able to keep our appointment this afternoon, Rabbi," he said. The Chief Rabbi knew Peter was a busy man. As one of the directors of the merchant bank of Lazarus, Morgenstem and Rothschild, he had a particularly heavy workload. With the great success of his book, New Economies, he was also in much demand as a consultant to the emerging countries, and as a speaker on basic economy for the BBC and the commercial television networks. The Chief Rabbi had been hoping to spend most of this afternoon in consultation with him, to try to get him to devote more of his time to the economic problems of Israel. "I understand, Peter," he said." But let's fix another appointment soon, as soon as you can." "Yes, Rabbi," Peter said. The Chief Rabbi had never seen Peter Salaman so distracted; he looked as if he were daydreaming. "Nothing wrong, Peter, is there?" he asked solicitously, "No, Rabbi, nothing is wrong." The Chief Rabbi didn't believe him, but didn't question him further. Peter was still a young man and would, one day, learn to ask for help when help was needed, the first sign of maturity in a man. "Is something wrong with your wrist, Peter?" he asked. Peter obviously hadn't known he'd been scratching it. He drew his hand away guiltily. "No, Rabbi, nothing wrong." As well as his cadre of fifty highly trained professional specialists, Paul Graham had needed some means of instant communication with a number of people selected for their abilities and knowledge. They were very special people, chosen without reference, necessarily, to previous achievement or social position, but to future possibilities. Peter Salaman's book. New Economies, had brought him immediately to Paul's attention. Designed primarily for non- economists who were having to build a country, often from the ruins left by a thieving dictator who'd siphoned the country's wealth into numbered Swiss bank accounts, it gave Ae layman a step-by-step account of the priorities, avoiding ^1 the mistakes the Arab countries had made with the giidden acquisition of oil wealth. It called for the construction of no expensive airports or prestige buildings, no elaborate hospitals with air-conditioned private patient luxury suites, no massive three-lane motorways. It emphasized the use of naturally occurring materials, the re-establishment of basic farming methods, the rehabilitation of the soil and the appetites of the people who would need to live off it. It called for changing life-styles, for freedom from refrigerators, television sets, electric appliances. It outlined simple building methods for primitive shelters which reverted to the one-usable room concept of native kraals, Eastern long houses, primitive huts. It dispensed with the keeping of ^piroals, as a most wasteful means of converting the goodness that lay in the ground into edible proteins; the human body can do that just as effectively without the intervention of cows, chickens, sheep and goats, if the human appetite and taste can be reeducated. When Paul had assembled his list of people like Peter gal aman he'd tackled the problem of how to communicate with them at any time in an emergency. He couldn't rely on being able to find them by telephone, or to depend on them hearing a BBC broadcast. He had to have some means that would be effective twenty-four hours of every day. The idea had been given to him by the Editor of the pfev Scientist, a man who dabbled in sci-fi. "Plant a radio receiver under a person's skin, geared to an unused Very igh Frequency. When you transmit on that frequency, the radio receiver will throb, the person will feel a subcutaneous itch. If you transmit the signal in a simple memorable pattern, that person will know it is an authentic message and can do whatever you've previously told them to do. You could reinforce it by hypnosis, to make the reaction automatic, but that would fail in the case of people who can't be hypnotized." Paul had ruled out hypnosis as an unnecessary intrusion into people's privacy and freedom of choice, and had concentrated on building the best list possible. It had cost him many long, sleepless nights. How do you arbitrarily decide who will survive, who will go hopeful into a new world, and who will not? He knew that, certainly, he would have to ignore the old prejudices. People would not be chosen because of rank, achievement or service to the existing community. They would be scrutinized according to what they had demonstrated they could do in maintaining some sort of life, reestablishing some sort of community. The choice would have to cover all aspects of human existence, with great emphasis on practical matters, but without excluding spiritual and psychological forces. Paul's first problem was to decide what weight he would ascribe to religious matters. Would the survivors believe in a God, in the God the world knew now, whether Catholic, Protestant or Jewish? Could he, a fallible human being, decide that in the post-nuclear age there would be no God, and eliminate that aspect of human life from his deliberations and planning? If he decided, and the decision was entirely his as Minister of Survival and virtual dictator, that the post-nuclear people would need a God? Could he afford three places on his necessarily curtailed survival list, for three leaders of three separate faiths? Should he choose the Archbishop of Canterbury, an elderly waspish man? The Chief Rabbi of England, known to be suffering from a failing heart? Dr. Smithers, the leader of the Wesleyan Church, who had cancer of the stomach? He'd asked himself ruefully, if the Pope happened to be in England at the time, would he, Paul, nominate the Bishop of Christ as a survivor? The choice was firmly his under the Emergency Powers Act of 1978. His final decision had been to plant a radio receiver under the skin of the wrist of James Wratton. "James Wratton?" Angela Steadman had asked. "Who's he?" Paul had known nothing of James Wratton but had obtained the name from a meeting he'd held with a number of religious thinkers, including the Abbot of Downside, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Moortown, Leeds, Evan Thomas, the lay-preacher of the Baptist Community of Aberavon, Wales, and Dr. MacKenzie of the Church of Scotland in Corby, a community of steelworkers grafted on to the pastoral countryside of Northamptonshire. "Who has worked the hardest, studied the deepest, knows most about the problems of oecumenicity?" he'd asked. "I don't mean some professor of religious studies beavering away in the seclusion of some university, but a practical man who knows what is needed to pull all religions, all the believers in God, together." Many names had been suggested, discussed and rejected, before finally they'd all agreed on James Wratton, the producer of religious programmes for the BBC. A devout but simple man, Wratton lived with a conviction that all beliefs should and could be made cohesive, that each had something to offer, that the world was drifting into a state of non-belief only because no one religion could be all- embracing. He'd written a book which had enjoyed little success since the Establishment of all the churches had seen it as dangerous, even heretical. He'd called his book The New Religion, and it was now out of print. "Why me?" James Wratton had asked modestly, when Paul interviewed him. Paul had been impressed by the forty-year- old man, with his vigorous shock of ginger hair, his open expression, his bright-eyed enthusiasm. "If you need to ask that question sincerely," Paul had suggested, 'then you are, in fact, the wrong man." * * The radio signal continued to throb from the high-powered transmitter on top of the Post Office Tower. Da dit dit. Da dit dit, the Morse code sign for the letter D. Company Sergeant-Major Fawkes of the Anti-terrorist Squad of the Special Air Service, a physical training instructor of considerable reputation, was teaching his men how to abseil through a closed glass window when he felt the twitch in his wrist. He dropped the thirty feet off the rope, landed, rolled, came upright and set off in a shambling run towards his quarters. He passed two officers without saluting and ignored their shouts. His company commander, Major Prothers, barred his progress at the main door of the barracks. "What the hell is going on, Sergeant-Major?" Major Prothers asked, his voice bewildered. "Salvation, Major," CSM Fawkes said as he came to a halt. "Salvation? Oh, Salvation. Well, Sergeant-Major, you'd better carry on." The Major's orders had come from the General himself. It had seemed a daft sort of way to run an army at the time, but orders are orders and meant to be obeyed. Wilfred Tothill sniffed the air and looked suspiciously at Number Seven Incinerator in the sewage works in Seven Sisters Road. "Alf," he said authoritatively, "I'd thought that'd fixed that Number Seven bin? I can smell it from here. Tha's got a leakage in the inflow pipe, like I told thee!" "It means taking it all down, Mr. Tothill," the plant foreman said, glancing at his assistant. Really, this damned Yorkshireman thought he could smell escaping shit a mile off. And, let's face it, he could, too! "Then take it all down. Take it out of commission." Wilfred suddenly felt the twitch in his wrist, held up his hand and looked at it in confusion. Bloody hell, what was that all about? He'd forgotten the damned thing's existence. Da dit dit. Bloody hell. "Right, lads, I'm off." He turned abruptly and headed towards the sewage works' main gate. "Don't ever fancy to be a genius," the plant foreman said to his assistant. "It takes them in all sorts of funny ways." Kaiko didn't attend the Senegalese Ballet performance at "the State Theatre. He insisted on being taken back to the Kremlin, where he walked the corridors purposefully until he came to the quarters of Chemenko, still the General Secretary of the Party. Feodor fluttered but Kaiko insisted on seeing the Chairman. He had taken Borodin with him; the Surgeon-General gave Chemenko an injection which opened the Chairman's eyes slowly then kept him awake and almost fully conscious long enough to sign the paper Kaiko had written. Borodin and Feodor witnessed Chemenko's signature. Kaiko took the paper to Colonel Selintov, the Commanding Officer of the Kremlin detachment of the Red Army. Selintov's eyes narrowed when he read it, but he acted immediately. Barankov was sitting in his office, his head bowed in his hands when Kaiko arrived with Colonel Selintov, who was wearing his full uniform and carrying his dress sword as befitted an officer about to arrest a member of the Politburo and the head of the KGB. "I wondered how long it would take for you to arrive, Comrade Kaiko," Barankov said with a flash of his old spirit. "Once I knew you'd spent five minutes alone with the British Ambassador!" "You are a fool, Barankov," Kaiko said. "You could have destroyed us all." "And now Lubyanka, eh?" "You deserve nothing better." Barankov raised the handkerchief on his desk to his lips but Colonel Selintov had anticipated him and moved quickly. The capsule the handkerchief had contained clattered to the top of the desk. "I pride myself, Comrade Barankov, on never having lost a prisoner," Selintov said. "I'm too old to start now." Angela Steadman felt the twitch under the skin of her wrist and went immediately to the basement room where Paul was seated behind his desk. "You ought not to be here," he said the moment he saw her. "I had to come." "You, of all people, should have learned to obey the instruction. Angela, you're the one who most knows what is in my mind. You're going to be needed in Northwood to keep the whole system going the way we've planned it. We've planned it, Angela, you and I." There were tears in her eyes. "I can't go, Paul, honestly, I can't go. You know I've never agreed with that. I've never agreed that you should stay and I should go." He got up from behind the desk. "Angela, my love," he said as he walked with her out of the planning room away from the eyes and ears of the staff he'd assembled. "You've got to do it. We've tried to build something together, you and I, for the future. Not for our personal future, not selfishly for us, but for the survival of so many things we believe in. You know how many battles we've had to fight against the Establishment, against old-fashioned methods of thinking. Remember how Lord Deakin wanted the whole of the House of Lords to be survivors, so that they could, in his words, carry on the strain of blue blood that has made England great and famous. We knew that was bullshit, Angela, and we fought it, you and I. If you're not there to exert some kind of influence ' " I can't go, Paul," she said. "Truly, I can't bring myself to leave you. I love you, Paul, and I want to be with you. I helped you plan it all, but not for the great ideals you thought. Because I loved you and wanted to be with you and part of what you were doing. And I want to remain part of it." Without her noticing he'd walked with his arms round her waist, maneuvering her close to the SAS sergeant who was guarding the corridor that led to his command centre. He put his arms round her and hugged her. She mistook his gesture for one of love and didn't realize he'd effectively imprisoned her arms beside her body. "Sergeant," he said. "I'm giving you one instruction and one responsibility. Take Miss. Steadman to the Northwood train and make certain she gets on it. That is your only responsibility, understand. If necessary, you are to use minimum force." "I understand, Minister," the sergeant said. He moved forward and deftly gripped Angela's wrists. "I don't want to hurt you, Miss., but you heard what the Minister said. If I let go of one of your wrists, will you promise to walk quietly beside me? It would be embarrassing for both of us if I had to knock you out and carry you." Angela was crying, her face running with tears of love, rage, frustration and impotence. "You bastard," she said to Paul, 'you bastard." "Come along now, Miss.," the sergeant said kindly. "I'm sure we don't mean that, do we?" Paul stood and watched them go down the corridor, ostensibly hand in hand, though he knew Angela's wrist would be clamped in an unbreakable iron grasp. Some things you can plan, rehearse and practise until you're word and movement perfect; but you can't anticipate the stray emotion you can't control when it comes to the real thing, when you know you are no longer playing games. He loved Angela, and had wanted to make his life with her; but now it was too late. He hurried back into the control room and tapped the button that would dial Professor MacKlin, yet another non- survivor. "Cahail and I did our job too well, Paul," Walker MacKlin said gravely. "We blew out the communication and guidance system of the Medusa so effectively that there seems no way we can take control of it again. My previous forecast must still stand. The damned thing will definitely hit London at eight o'clock tonight." "And may the Lord have mercy on our miserable souls." "Amen to that. But we'll keep on trying human possibilities in the interim," "Honest, dear, I don't know," Morgan Beyton said to his wife. They'd been sitting on the sofa, drinking a cup of tea after lunch, when the twitching began. He'd known his wife wouldn't understand. "All I know, dear, is that two years ago just before I retired from Marks and Spencer's they sent for me. They asked me a lot of questions and I answered them as best I could." "But who are theyy Sylvia Beyton asked crossly. "You keep on saying they." "I also keep on telling you, I don't know. It was in the Ministry of Defence. They sent a car for me with a chauffeur. I went there altogether three times." "And never told me." She pressed her lips together, assumed the hurt look he knew so well. "They said I mustn't tell anyone. Not even you." "They, whoever they are, they've no right to come between a man and his wife like that. Who do they think they are, anyway? A man and his wife should never have secrets from each other. Especially not after they've been married forty-one years, as we have. Or did you forget?" "I didn't forget, Sylvia. But they were most particular. They made me sign the Official Secrets Act. And then, the third time, they took me to Charing Cross Hospital and put me to sleep. When I woke, ten minutes later, I had this plaster on my arm. You remember, I told you I'd cut my wrist at work on a piece of broken glass." "You lied to me," she said. "After all these years, you lied to me!" "It was only because of signing that paper, that Official Secrets Act," he said desperately. "I can't think of anything that would make me lie to you," she said. "But then, I suppose it's different for a woman. She doesn't have the same temptations, the same opportunities a man has." "I have to go, Sylvia," he said, knowing that unless he interrupted her she'd begin her tirade against businessmen with pretty secretaries, with lust and evil in their hearts. God, couldn't she realize he'd put all that behind him thirty years ago. For thirty years, he hadn't had a single lustful desire, especially not for his wife. "And you're still not telling me what it's all about?" "I can't," he wailed, 'can't you get that through your thick stupid head?" He suddenly realized what he'd said, the monstrous words he'd uttered. He felt no remorse, no regret, only an immense liberation. "All I know is that they see something important in me, in my method of bookkeeping that Marks and Spencer's gave me a bonus for inventing and putting into operation. Somebody somewhere sees something in me, in me, you stupid cow. And now they need me. And I'm going." He didn't even wait to hear her outraged reply. Elsie Layton looked round the home she and Albert had put together in the years since university. Okay, she told herself, it wasn't much. Neither one of them had ever earned big money and what they'd had they'd spent on enjoying themselves, 'while they were young' as Albert put it. But it was theirs. At least, it would be when they'd paid off the mortgage, paid the Electricity Board for the fridge and deep-freeze, the Gas Board for the cooker and the central heating. Albert was slumped on the sofa, five pounds at a country house sale outside Luton, reading Tolstoy, listening to Saint-Saens on the music centre under a hire-purchase agreement that still had a year to run. "Albert," she said, 'turn the music off and put the book down. I've something to tell you." He reached out his arm and turned down the volume, leaving the record running. He folded back the corner of his page before putting it on the table next to the music centre. She grinned fiercely at him, but it was only her way to work up the courage to begin. "It's been all right, hasn't it?" she asked. "What's been all right? The Saint-Saens? The Tolstoy? The pizza we had for our lunch?" "No, being together." "Oh, that! Elsie, you worry too much. I keep telling you. If it wasn't all right, neither of us would stick it, would we? We're both free to come and go, aren't we? If it wasn't all right, I'd split, wouldn't I? And you the same, presumably." "No, I don't think I could, any more. I mean, there's all the things." "What things?" "Oh, you know, the things. Like that sofa. The hi-fi. All that. I wouldn't go, normally, because we'd have all that ghastly business about dividing it between us." "Half a fridge for you, half for me?" "No, Albert, be serious." "I don't feel like being serious. Let's have a smoke if you're feeling miserable." "No. I don't want to get blown away. I've something to tell you." "Okay, well, tell me. Then I can get back to my book." "Albert, they picked me." "What do you mean, they picked you?" "No, don't interrupt. I meant, they picked me. I had to go to see this man in the Ministry of Defence." "Don't tell me, you're joining the Army." "Sort of." He sat upright on the sofa and looked intently at her. "Do you know, Elsie," he said softly, "I think you're serious. Hadn't you better tell me what it's all about?" "That's what I'm trying to do, you berk! If only you'd let me get on with it in my own way. Some people will survive, some won't. They've picked me to be one of the survivors. I've got this thing in my arm and it's started twitching." She sat on the sofa beside him. "It seemed sort of logical when they told me, that certain people would be needed. This work I've been doing on synthesizing proteins." "Can't have been all that important, or they'd have paid you more." "It isn't important now that we have all the protein we need. But if proteins were ever scarce, it would be. I'm supposed to report at the Ministry of Defence as soon as this thing in my wrist starts to throb. It's started." "Let's have a look." He held her hand and turned it over. "I can't see nothing," he said. She touched her skin near the large ligament. "It's in there," she said. "I can't feel anything." "It's very small, and planted deep inside, so they told me." He looked at the wrist. "You mean to tell me that all this time, you've been carrying that around with you. And you never told me." "They said it was secret." "That's what they always say. Well, what's supposed to happen now? Bloody hell, Elsie, I feel bad about you having that thing there all this time and never saying anything about it. I mean, like, it's a gross invasion of privacy, isn't it? That bloody thing could have been broadcasting to the fuzz all this time, couldn't it? I mean, you don't know." "No, I don't know," she said. "They told me it was only to be used in a situation of real emergency." "Bullshit." "Like a nuclear attack." "Bullshit." He got up from the sofa. "That's a real facer, Elsie," he said. "I'm going out, to walk around a bit, think about it. You needn't bother to come with me." "I wasn't going to," she said quietly. "I told you, I've got to report to the Ministry of Defence. I may not be back, Albert." "Well, like we said, that's your privilege, isn't it?" He put on his jacket and hunched his shoulders into it as he turned at the door. "Seems a weird contradiction to me," he said bitterly. "We're trying to get it all together and you're carrying some kind of bug you let some guy in the Ministry of Defence plant under your skin. That gets right up my nostrils, Elsie." She watched him go. It had seemed such a good idea. Future of mankind, all that stuff. "What the hell," she said and went into the bathroom, opened the cistern and took out the plastic bag in which they kept their joints. The plastic bag had leaked. "Oh, shit," she said, as she sorted through them to find one that was dry enough to smoke. The second run of the train from the Ministry of Survival to Northwood was different in atmosphere from the first. The people who assembled for the most part didn't recognize each other. One or two asked themselves, isn't that Roger Thesiger, the mountaineer/ sailor the man who'd climbed Everest, single-handed a twenty-eight footer twice round the world, and established a school of fitness in the Cairngorms? But who could know a small Jewish man of retirement age who specialized in the charivari of administrative methods, or a boffin from the School of Pathology of Leeds University who specialized in virus infections, or a Major of the Royal Army Service Corps who looked like a cartoon of a bookie but knew more about the Army's emergency stockpiles throughout the country than any other man? For most of them it was a voyage of adventure and discovery; they were exhilarated by knowing they were a band of chosen people destined to lead the rest of the country out of the wilderness of a nuclear disaster. Quietly and discreetly, fumbling their way forward, they began to question their immediate neighbours. "What do you do? What's your line? Who have you left behind you?" Long before the train departed they had already begun to establish relationships, form likes and dislikes and make subjective value judgements. Paul Graham had been quite arbitrary in his selections. He'd asked a number of people, as an intellectual exercise, to draw up a blueprint of a meritocracy, a minimum number of specialists who could most adequately ensure the survival of the people who weren't killed outright. The lists had all been long and varied, though some specialists featured on all. Everybody agreed there'd be a need for a nutrition specialist, a super-farmer, a super-builder. But nobody had suggested, though Paul Graham had included, four ballet dancers and a choreographer, four singers and two composers, a music teacher and the leading instrumentalists drawn from several orchestras. Paul didn't see any reason why the survivors should be culturally deprived. He'd had to balance his list carefully between men and women, drawing on the statistical knowledge of the insurance companies; though he hadn't told them so, several men and women in different age groups had been selected on the basis of their good health and excellent physical condition as statistical make-weights, or to balance the blood groupings. The train was almost full when the last man walked easily along the platform with the assurance of a trained performer. There were gasps as he was instantly recognized by most of the people there. "Isn't that ... ?" "Yes, it is!" "No, it can't be." "I saw his Hamlet at Stratford." "He was on television only last night." He'd left his showbiz retinue behind him. He looked along the compartment as he got in, saw the eager faces, sensed the holiday atmosphere. Okay, he'd played Bradford on a wet Thursday afternoon, Glasgow with only a handful of drunks in the audience. He'd been in three Royal Command Performances, and right now he'd walked off a film set that was costing a hundred thousand pounds an hour. The show must go on. "Hi," he said to Morgan Beyton, taking the vacant seat next to him. "A funny thing happened to me on the way to the train." Chapter Seven. Major Anna Firdova and Major Sergei Bustovsky couldn't look at each other since they were locked into position side by side, each with vision tunnelled to the bank of instruments that should be telling them about the flight. None of the instruments was registering. They'd tried each emergency procedure successively, and each had failed. They'd interchanged components, but that hadn't worked. They'd brought in the new modules from the reserve bank. They had failed. The Medusa had power, light and internal communication. The devices meant to monitor its internal working were all functioning correctly; they had artificial earth gravity, stability correction, mode correction, even radio signal reception. But without the computer and its data base to unscramble the earth communications, they couldn't read them. "What do you think, Anna?" Sergei asked over the intercom. "We've shifted orbit." "Yes, I know that. But what has gone wrong?" Anna thought for a while without speaking, analysing the possibilities. She knew their instrumentation was as efficient as man could make it, but it did depend on manmade components and anything man could make, man could destroy. Nothing was invulnerable. The Medusa derived its energy, its source of base power, from the solar panels built into its skin. Those solar panels were functional, they had the heat and light, all the power they needed to maintain themselves. The other aspects of the spacecraft, however, depended on man-made power emanating from nuclear energy cells the Medusa carried; those cells needed a system of communication to cause them to function. They had no system of communication capable of 'talking' with those cells. They couldn't, therefore, use the nuclear energy to change their direction, to re-orbit the Medusa along its previous path. Anyway, without the computer they couldn't work out where that previous path lay. Without the computer they couldn't communicate with the ground to get them to re-orbit the Medusa. One thing, however, they could still do. It was a manual operation requiring no computer, no artificial aids. "I think we have been hit by outside forces," she said. "I do not know what those forces could be. But I think we should put out our nuclear shield. Knocking out our communication and guidance system could be the prelude to direct attack." "Nuclear shield going out now," Sergei said, as he pulled the lever. Sixty-four separate capsules were mechanically discharged from their pockets in the skin of the Medusa. Each capsule carried its own gyro, its own magnetic adhesion- and-repulsion system. The capsules floated out from the Medusa, each taking its optimum position between attraction to the Medusa, and repulsion from its neighbours. Within a minute the capsules were evenly spaced around the Medusa, each at a distance of two miles from it, each locked on to it by invisible magnetic forces. Each capsule contained a proximity sensor and, at a fixed range of three miles, would explode any armed warhead that approached it and the Medusa. The Medusa was now safe from physical attack. "So what do we do now, Anna?" Sergei asked. "We go back to basic principles, Comrade. If you wanted to knock out a spacecraft's navigation system by means of coded electronics, how would you do it?" "That's a difficult question." "Take your time. Comrade. I suspect we have all the time in the world." Sergei chuckled. "Out of the world, you mean, Comrade Anna." Paul's plan was quite explicit on one point. No publicity would be given to the possibility of nuclear attack until the necessary steps had been taken for survival. Each of the people implanted had been sworn to secrecy only after the psychiatrist who had sat on Paul's interviewing panel had indicated that the people were stable, and would keep the secret. The last thing Paul wanted was a media barrage that would have resulted in immediate panic among the population. He wanted no repeat of the tragedy following Orson Welles' radio play which panic-stricken New Yorkers mistook for a news bulletin reporting that a man from Mars had landed. He neglected to take into account the extrasensory perception of Fleet Street news editors. In the course of a normal day there is much traffic between journalists and members of the Government. It took only a few cancelled appointments, a few spokesmen who were suddenly 'not available', for the Street to start one of its buzzes. At such a time overt rivalry vanishes as the news editor club starts going. The news editor of the Daily Mail telephoned the news editor of the Mirror. "Have you heard anything from Whitehall, Fred?" "No, but I've got a buzz." "So have I. One of my lads had an appointment with Holdinger for two. Cancelled without a reason except the usual, had to go somewhere on hush-hush business. Yet one of my lads said he was lunching with Paul Graham in his club. He was driving past as they came out, walking along Pall Mall calm as you please." "One of our lads is preparing a backgrounder on the defence cuts. Supposed to talk to the PM but suddenly put off." "If you hear anything, Fred, remember blood is thicker than water." "And ink is thicker than both." Bill Tilsen's editor sent for him. "You're thick with the lads in Defence, Bill, There seems to be something going on: Frobisher just called in to say he's seen no less than six members of the Privy Council going in there. I've told him to hang about. Could you get on to it? Take the Defence angle, eh?" Bill was not normally under the jurisdiction of the news editor since his appointment was with features, not hard news, but his reporter's nose got an immediate sniff. "They had a special meeting yesterday," he said quickly. "The Downing Street Mafia." "What about?" "I couldn't find out. My sources knew nothing, or so they said!" "Right. I've put Tom on Home Office; you take Defence. The rest of them can scatter about." "Police and Army?" Bill said quickly. While the news editor had been talking, the phones had been ringing constantly. "Take Frobisher on five," he said to Bill. Bill punched the button. "Bill, there definitely is something odd. I went round the back of the Ministry. I've got in there a couple of times when one of my contacts is on the door. I was just in time to see a busload of SAS going in there. Normal gear, no riot stuff. Hand-guns. And two more Privy Councillors, Verity Pringle and Fred Foxham. I sneaked a pie." "Don't let the Union hear that." "Funny thing. Both Foxham and Verity Pringle were carrying bags, Foxham a rucksack and Verity a case just about big enough for her nightie." "What's so funny about that?" Bill said. "Could be they're off to Brighton together." "Hang about, Bill. The rest of them were all carrying something. Even his High Pomposity the Lord Chancellor Beakin had a plastic bag." "Have you tried the front door?" "Yes. Big Freeze." "What? Whatever happened to rat-faced Frobisher, the lad who boasted he could get into anywhere including some of the most exclusive knickers in the land?" "I'm not joking. The muscle on that door would rate a full-page spread in Playgirl." "Okay," Bill said. "Call in every five minutes, will you, and tell them to break in on me." Bill sat at the nearest typewriter and clacked out Min. Def. Privy Councillors. Suitcases, rucksacks, why? Heavy security, why? SAS, WHY? He handed the paper to the news editor who was taking a phone call; he covered the mouthpiece to whisper, "Call gone out for Mobiles, Mobile Control, Parliament Square south side, Whitehall, Horseguards Parade." Bill Tilsen sat at the adjacent desk and dialled the Ministry of Defence pro's personal private number. Sam answered immediately. "Bill Tilsen, Sam." "Yes, Bill, what can I do for you? If it's the defence cuts, I'm preparing a release that'll be on the wires in half an hour, but I don't mind telling you personally and privately that it's going to be the Argonaut. We're chopping it. Estimated saving, two hundred million immediately, two thousand million ultimately. And you can tell your labour correspondent there'll be no loss of jobs, they're all being absorbed for retraining." "Thanks, Sam," Bill said. "Look I'd like to talk to you about something. Could I pop round right away? I'll be with you in five minutes." He heard the pause at the other end of the line and knew Sam well enough to sense that the next thing he said would be a lie, an evasion, a PR coverup. "I'd love to, Bill, but you caught me leaving the office." "Could we meet outside somewhere?" "Look, Bill, I'll have to ring you. The chopper's coming to take me to Pompey on this Argonaut deal. We can't keep the Royal Chopper waiting, can we?" "Ah, that would explain it," Bill said smoothly. "We wondered what the change in the Royals' programme could be. According to our daily sheet they were supposed to be spending the afternoon on R and R in the Palace. But we were told the chopper took off from the Palace a few minutes ago." "Could be Andrew, going for a bit of nooky?" Sam said. "Is that a quote?" "Come off it, Bill. Look, sorry to appear rude, but I have to go. I'll give you a ring from Pompey and we'll fix a bite together. There's this new place I'm told, in Chelsea. Topless waitresses, all transvestites." "Sounds fabulous," Bill said as he hung up. The news editor was looking at him. "Deep freeze," Bill said. "I think some kind of balloon's going up." The news editor held a piece of paper. "Just came through on the wire. Editors Only meeting, Min. of Defence, in half an hour." "A D-notice job?" "Could be. Look, Bill, if you weren't around, I couldn't give you any orders, could I? We'll be hearing from the heavies, I guess; it might be better if you and I couldn't make contact. Then I wouldn't need to blush when I told them I hadn't spoken to you, would I?" "Message received," Bill said, and headed for the cashier's office. On a job like this you needed bribery money, lots of it, in your pocket. He'd drawn a thousand pounds in twenty-pound notes and was about to leave the building when the commissionaire handed him a note. "This has just come down from the News Desk, Mr. Tilsen," the commissionaire said. Bill read it quickly. "Albert Dones, 11 Kensington Park Gardens, Top Flat. Min. of Def. skin plants for radio commun." Albert Dones was waiting in the flat when Bill Tilsen arrived. Bill could sum him up easily: an over-age trendy clinging to a mixture of left-wing and liberal concepts, a big mouth on all issues but too self-indulgent to be an activist. The sort of guy who joined hunger marches from Wales when they finally reached the end of Whitehall and walked, without realizing it, with a sympathetic limp. "We pay for information," Bill said. "I don't want your bread, man. I want freedom and justice." Elsie Layton was sitting on the sofa, her knees spread wide apart, her hands hanging limply in her lap and a lost expression on her face; her shoulders slumped forward as if someone had thrown her there and she was sitting where and how she'd landed. The remains of a pizza were on a paper plate on the table in the corner of the room, scrubbed pine, doubtless from Heal's, Bill thought. A mobile decoration over the table swayed purposelessly. An unframed picture almost covered one wall; most of the canvas had been daubed with different shades of dirty white, but in the top right-hand corner was a smear of black semichinese characters. The music centre was playing loudly. Bill couldn't identify the music but it sounded Russian, probably Prokofiev, he thought, or Stravinsky. "Could we turn it down a notch?" he said. It came to a merciful end at that moment and the arm lifted. Albert Dones pushed a button. "It happened about two years ago," he said. "Fucking Ministry of Defence, some gook sends for Elsie, chats her up about the research she'd been doing on protein synthesis. Wouldn't believe, looking at that heap of zonked-out flesh, she had a brain, would you?" Bill had to admit it was unlikely. "Proteins from grass, anybody else would have given her ten grand a year. She gets four and a half, would you believe it? This gook from the Min. takes her to Charing Cross Hospital, they put her under, and when she wakes up, they've planted a bug in her arm. Show him where they put your bug, Elsie." She giggled and held up her arm like an obedient child. "Mind if I take a look?" Bill said. He examined the inside of Elsie's wrist and could see nothing; the scar had healed perfectly. "Like, it's an invasion of privacy, eh, man?" Albert said. "People like you ought to expose the bastards!" "Why Elsie?" Bill asked quickly. "Because of the protein research?" "Yes. Seems like some people would be needed afterwards." "After what?" "After a nuke, man. Or maybe one of these fucking power- stations." "What happens to the implant?" "Like, it throbs, man. Sends a signal. Then Elsie's supposed to drop everything and go to the Min." "And it has throbbed?" "Yes. It throbbed at ten past two." Bill glanced at his watch .2:40. He looked across at Elsie. "Could you tell me exactly what happened at the Ministry of Defence? Could you name names for me? Who you saw, what they said to you. You understand," he said to Albert, 'it makes a more definitive story if we can name names." Albert shook his head. "She's like, gone, man. There's only one thing she's good for, right now. She smoked a joint, went on to sniffing. Right now she's in Paradise." Bill hid his impatience. "When does she get back from Paradise?" he asked. "Who knows? Couple of hours? Three?" "I'll be back," Bill said. He scribbled on a piece of paper. "If she comes round before then, ring this number, will you? I think you've latched on to a good story." "Freedom, man, freedom and justice. That's all we can look for in this fucked-up world of ours." Bill found a telephone box outside the pub on the corner that had not been vandalized. He didn't announce his name when the news editor came on the line. "It's big," he said. "It could be nuclear. Power station most likely, on a malfunction." "Which one?" "I don't know. One fascinating aspect. What about a team of specialists, all forewarned and prepared?" "Nothing strange in that." "But with a skin implant that receives emergency radio signals?" "Now you're talking, that's news." "One aspect that Itaffles me, who chooses the experts?" "They choose themselves, I would have thought." "Including a girl doing low-level research into protein synthesis?" "That's real survival stuff." "You seem to be missing the point! If somebody chooses the experts, he chooses the people who survive. And, if he does that, he chooses the people who don't survive. He has to make that decision. Apparently, the survivors feel a throbbing in their wrist; is your wrist throbbing?" "No. Is yours?" "No, it isn't. We've both been dismissed as non-survivors, that's why. This is bigger than Hitler, and it's happening now, right now, in the Ministry of Defence." "So what are you going to do next?" "I'm going to get in there, somehow. I'm going to talk to Paul Graham." There was a pause. "Bill," the news editor said, 'just one word. You wouldn't let your feelings for the fellow's wife influence you, would you?" "You know better than that," Bill said stiffly. "Your name isn't on this list," the commissionaire said. "It isn't?" Bill said, sounding surprised. "Let's have a look at it." "Can't let you in, Mr. Tilsen, if your name isn't on the list." The commissionaire turned the list round. "If your name isn't on that list Mr. Tilsen, no matter how well I know you, you can't go in." "Ah, well," Bill said, 'never mind. I wonder if you could do something else for me. A personal favour. You see, lots of people about these days think nothing of picking a man's pocket. I happen to be carrying a wad of notes, must be at least a thousand quid." "That's a foolish thing to do these days," the commissionaire said gravely. "You ought to let somebody look after that for you." "That's what I was wondering. Do you think you could possibly look after it for me. Put it in your locker somewhere?" "Yes, I think I could do that, for you, Mr. Tilsen," the commissionaire said. Bill handed him the envelope; the commissionaire bent below the ledge in his cubicle to put the packet away. Bill took out his pen and quickly wrote his name between two others on the list. When the commissionaire came upright again, the list was facing him. "Oh my God', he said. "I must be going blind in my old age, Mr. Tilsen. Your name's there on the list after all. I'll give you your pass and then you can go right in." Bill nodded and took his pass. Thank God the commissionaire wasn't British Legion, he thought, or he'd never have dared to bribe him. Paul Graham looked up from his desk, where he was preparing his statement to the combined editors of the press. He sorely missed not having Angela by his side and realized how closely they had worked together since she had sorted out his drinking and whoring. Of course, he admitted to himself, his love had influenced him when he had chosen her as a survivor. It wouldn't matter to him if his work was continued after his death; he didn't believe there was anything especially brilliant or unique in the plan he'd put together. It could have been done equally well by any good administrator. He also had to admit to himself that emotion had played no part in his decision to make Helen a survivor; her knowledge of radiation and its effects on the human body automatically secured that position for her. "This meeting was supposed to be for editors only, Bill. Don't tell me they've made you an editor?" Bill smiled crookedly as he let himself into a chair. "That would be nothing to the promotion I hear they've given you, Paul. I hear they've made you God!" "Don't make yourself too comfortable, Bill," Paul said. "I'm going to have you thrown out in a minute. I'm not being rude, but I do have an important meeting in five minutes and, no matter what you may think and print, Ministers do like to give some thought to what they say, some advance thought, on these important occasions." "Do you deny you've been given the right to decide who will and who will not survive in the event of a nuclear disaster such as the explosion of a power station? Is it true that we are in such a position at this moment and as yet you've said nothing to the press about it, nor to the general public who have a right to know, but have activated electronic means to draw your personally selected survivors together, somewhere in this building, presumably in a deep radiation-proof shelter that has secretly been constructed in one of the subbasements?" "Bill, you're losing your touch. So many questions all at once, and none I could possibly answer without giving you an immediate D-notice. Sorry, Bill, it's a total no-comment. Now, you'll have to excuse me." Bill stood up but instead of leaving the office he walked quickly to Paul's desk. "Who gave you the right to play God!" he said, his anger showing through his journalist's mask. "Who the hell gave you the right to decide who will survive and who won't? There are millions of people out there with every bit as much right to survive as you have." "Assuming," Paul said drily, 'that I would put my own name on any list of survivors, as you call them, I might whimsically create." "Of course you would," Bill said contemptuously. He was struck by a sudden thought. Pieces fell into position in his mind .2:10, Albert had said Elsie received the signal, and wanted to leave immediately. Helen had dressed herself in warm clothing, including the only boots in which she said she felt comfortable. She'd carried a bag. Verity Pringle had carried a bag. Fred Foxham a rucksack. "Helen," he said, 'you've put Helen on the list. She was carrying one of your damned bugs all the time. You pressed the signal at around ten minutes past two today, and now you've got her safe somewhere. Okay, what about me? Why aren't I a survivor? What gives you the right to sit there and condemn me, to condemn anybody, without a trial?" "No comment^ Bill," Paul said, his mouth tightlipped. "I'll make you comment, you bastard," Bill shouted. "I still have my contacts in IRN, in the BBC. I can walk into LBC or the BBC, and have a story on the air in five minutes." "Not even you would be so irresponsible," Paul said. He had no love for Bill Tilsen's type of cheque-book and keyhole journalism. If anyone was trying to play God in the modem world, he privately thought, it was the so-called investigative journalists most of whom, he believed, were motivated by the financial success of the men who'd broken the Nixon tapes story. He believed all arms of government should be answerable, ultimately, to the general public but he was also rational enough to realize that much of what had to be done in the Ministries could not be irresponsibly disclosed. "Sit down, Bill," he said. "But I warn you I can only give you two minutes. I'll try to answer your questions as honestly as I can." As he spoke he put both hands on the desk top. Paul was a planner and had planned against an emergency such as this. Built into the desk top and flush with it were two buttons. He pressed them in turn, pressed them again, in the signal that would bring the sergeant of the Special Branch running. "But I have to tell you, Bill," he said playing for time, 'that some questions I cannot, and will not answer." Bill was too experienced a journalist to be caught out. He detected something in Paul's voice, was suspicious of the invitation to sit down and sensed an atmosphere of complacency. He turned and bolted for the door. The Special Branch sergeant had his hand on the doorknob to open it when Bill wrenched it open, catching him off balance. Bill reacted instinctively, kicked forward, and slammed the sergeant's head sideways. As his feet were swept from him, the sergeant's head hit the door and he went down. Bill leaped over him and ran along the corridor. He'd been in this building many times and knew where the staircases were. The sergeant sprang to his feet and said ruefully, "Sorry, Minister. I'm afraid he caught me off balance." "He caught us both off balance," Paul said. The sergeant had picked up the internal telephone and had already dialled a number. "His name, Minister?" "Bill Tilsen, a journalist." "Bill Tilsen," the sergeant said into the telephone. Probably back staircase." He covered the mouthpiece." What action, Minister." "Detain him in solitary confinement. He mustn't speak to anybody." He uncovered the mouthpiece. "It's a two zero," he said, 'with a two five." When he hung up the telephone he turned to Paul. "I don't think he'll get out, Minister," he said. "They've already closed the exits." "Find out who let him in," Paul said, 'and get him off the door at once. Put your own men on the door, tight as a barrel, okay?" "Yes, Minister." The phone rang. The editors had arrived. Now, Paul thought wryly, comes the moment of truth. It had become an almost automatic statement. "Gentlemen, I have the sad task of informing you that the Russian Medusa satellite now in orbit will crash on London at twenty- hundred hours this evening. We have only five hours left. The Medusa is armed with nuclear warheads and it's been estimated the initial wipe-out will stretch for fifteen to twenty miles. There'll also be a secondary zone, and fallout cloud, but the extent of them will depend entirely on the wind-force and direction. The Met. boys tell us they estimate a wind velocity of ten knots by eight o'clock tonight, and the wind direction could vary between north, west and east, or any combination of all three." The men in the room were stunned. The editor of the Telegraph was the first to recover. He wetted his lips and swallowed before he asked, "Is this the start of a nuclear war, Minister?" Paul shook his head from side to side. "Alas, it's the thing we've all dreaded. A mistake, a damned stupid mistake!" "Is there any restriction on this, Minister?" the editor of The Times asked. "Yes, I'm afraid there is. We have certain things to do first, to ensure the survival of as many people as possible. We cannot, alas, concern ourselves with the centre of the landing zone." "With London, you mean." "With London. We must consider the secondary zone, and the fall-out zone. We must do everything in our power to ensure survival for as many people as possible within those zones. Therefore I am placing a complete embargo on what I am now telling you. As soon as is possible, the tapes I've already recorded, including videotapes for all television channels, will be broadcast." "When will that be, Minister?" "I can't give you a time." "Shouldn't you, in all conscience, Minister, go on the air and on television immediately to give as many people as possible a chance of getting the hell out?" the editor of Bill Tilsen's newspaper asked angrily. The paper was well- known for fighting liberal causes; it carried the logo . ef a Crusader at its mast-head and, people said, fire in its Fleet Street belly. ' "We must be realistic," Paul said. "Within one minute of that broadcast being made, the streets out of London will be jammed. The whole system will grind to a halt. Every street, every road, every motorway will be like the Ml on a Friday night. When the cars are jammed, people will set off on foot, across the fields. There's no way they can make it out of the danger zone. If I make the broadcast now, no one will escape. If I delay it until all the survival preparations have been completed, then at least a few hundred thousand of the people on the periphery of the area will be able to get out." "You seem to be taking a lot on yourself, Mr. Graham," the editor of the Guardian said quietly. "So far you haven't mentioned Parliament, the elected Government or the democratic process." Paul passed around a number of folders. "In there," he said sombrely, 'you'll find an authority, granted to me under the Emergency Powers Act of 1978, to take over and run this country. You'll find a statement about the Medusa satellite, and also a summary of my program for Salvation, the code name we have given to our plan for the survival of the majority. As of two o'clock today this country has been in a state of Black Alert. The Queen, Prince Charles and his sons have already left these shores and are on their way to a destination I will not disclose. The Prime Minister is already ensconced in what we hope will be a secure place from which to re-establish Parliament and the rule of the country by an elected government through the democratic process." "After the bomb has exploded?" the editor of The Times said quietly. "Yes, after the bomb has exploded." "And you, Mr. Graham, where will you be?" "I'll be here in this building," Paul said, 'at least, in what's left' of this building." Helen Graham walked briskly along the subterranean corridor, deep beneath the rural surroundings of North- wood, to the room they'd "The Operations Centre'. Across one wall was a large back-lighted plastic sheet on which maps of the whole, or part of, the country could be projected. The display had been built by one of the advertising agencies; a girl stood behind it translating the messages she received from Professor MacKlin into visual form. Helen saw that central London had been coloured crimson; a second shape, almost circular in form, covered outer London, while the third, yellow area was pear-shaped and extended northwards as far as Birmingham. One edge of the pear, she observed grimly, touched Cambridge. The other touched Oxford. The number display at the top of the board read the time in hours, minutes, and seconds. As she" watched, the whole board changed and the word PROJECTION appeared in green in a box at the top centre. The time display changed to read 2000 hrs, the deadline for the arrival of the Medusa. Now the pear thinned, and both Cambridge and Oxford were excluded. The long thin shape extended ten miles beyond Birmingham's northernmost suburb. As Helen watched, the man from the Meteorological Office 'read' a magnetized card into the data base, then switched its contents into the computer. After only a microsecond, the computer fed the digested information to the visual printout console, from which it was projected as a grey area on to the large wall display. The clock began to read off the time in fifteen-second intervals beginning with 2000hrs. The grey area advanced northwards from Birmingham, spreading laterally as well, until by 2100 hrs it engulfed the whole of Lancashire and most of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Inside the grey area, radiation fall-out pollution would be strong enough to bring ghastly sores to the skin of anyone it touched, to destroy his flesh and, after days of agonizing illness, to kill him. Nothing the grey cloud had touched could be handled with impunity since the Medusa, Helen had been informed, was a 'dirty' bomb that would foul the soil, the rivers and the vegetation of Britain for years to come. She passed through the Operations Centre into the Medical Centre. Dr. Walton, a senior official at the Ministry of Health, sat at the console on which were a number of switches and above which hung a microphone. He too was watching, on the closed-circuit TV, the spread of the grey cloud. He turned when he saw Helen approach. "It's impossible, Dr. Graham," he said. "We only have facilities for less than one-ten-thousandth of the population. We can start a massive evacuation, but we couldn't get a significant percentage of the people away in time. We never allowed for the spread of the pollution being this great and this swift." "We couldn't plan for a Medusa," Helen said, 'with its multiple nuclear warheads and its re-entry velocity." The medical decisions had been the hardest ones to take, since none of the equations would balance once you introduced the human factor. Did you try to save as many people as possible, knowing that the sheer volume of people to be saved would result in many being hopelessly maimed, polluted beyond hope of survival but surviving as living corpses? Or did you try to save a few people, keeping them wholly healthy, wholly protected? The effects of radiation, Helen knew from her researches, lasted into many generations, perverting the genetic strains by wiping out whole sections of the DNA, causing ghastly mutants that would bear little resemblance to human beings. Quantity of survivors, or quality of survival, which did you aim for? The moralists held that all life is sacred and that one should unhesitatingly try for the maximum number of survivors. They'd scorned the scientists who'd talked about nuclear radiation bringing mutants; they'd rattled all the old bones of the anti-abortionists' arguments, of the anti- euthanasia advocates, and of the people who said that doctors ought to exercise the prerogative of stifling all subhuman offspring at birth, before the mother could see them. The same people had removed the very weapon scientists like Helen had been hoping to use when they'd banned research into the DNA structure that could result in the laboratory construction of clones. Helen knew that with generations being perverted by radiation effects, they'd need to be able to work on the DNA, to repair the damage radiation had done to it, if they were to hope to prevent the birth of the most unbelievably ghastly mutants. With such widespread radiation fall-out, the technique would need to be built into every maternity clinic; every woman giving birth to a baby after the bomb went off would need to be examined, the foetus would need to be inspected, to see what damage had been done. In many cases, of course, the DNA damage would be so great, the results of birth so inhuman, that the pregnancy would have to be terminated instantly. In less serious cases there would be hope of a DNA repair, first knocking out the damaged sections of the spiral and then grafting on new instructions derived from the parents. But to do that on such a widespread scale would be absolutely impossible. History had shown that, in the last hours before the explosion of the bomb, once the existence of the bomb became known, a number of babies would be conceived. The simple matter of an electricity failure in New York had brought about its population explosion nine months later. In the early stages of their existence those sperms, Helen knew, would be at their most vulnerable to radiation perversion. The results could be truly monstrous. "We'll have to go with the A-plan," she said. Walton nodded gravely. The A-plan meant the abandonment of any people who couldn't be housed in the principal shelters they'd constructed, most of them beneath large teaching hospitals in the principal cities. He pressed the A-switch forward and a number of lights on his console began to blink. He waited until they were all steady, then pressed his speak button, knowing that, in each of the nominated hospitals, the registrar, the chief surgeon, or the selected person in hospitals which had neither resident registrars nor chief surgeons would be listening on a private telephone. "This is Walton from the Ministry of Health," he said quietly. "The code-word is Salvation. We will adopt Plan A. I will repeat that. The code-word is Salvation and we will adopt Plan A. And may the Grace of God be with us all, His Kindness, and His mercy." He couldn't hear the replies nor the fervent Amens. That line was not equipped for talk-back. Chapter Eight. They hadn't caught Bill Tilsen. He'd heard the footsteps clattering up the back staircase and knew they'd have sealed the building by this time. He'd doubled back along the corridor and had gone into the third door on the right which he'd thought was Paul Graham's private cloakroom and toilet. By mistake, he'd gone into Angela Steadman's office and would have come out again if he hadn't heard the greeting Paul Graham gave the editors, through the partly open door. He'd stayed in the office, waiting behind the door, expecting someone to come in at any moment, but determined to stay as long as possible, especially when he heard Paul Graham's announcement and the gasp that followed it. Fortunately, he'd brought his pocket recorder with him; it picked up Paul Graham's voice adequately through the partly open door. He heard the editors' question-and-answer session, the buzz of shocked astonishment when they realized the Emergency Powers Act of 1978 gave Paul Graham the status of a dictator, as the editor of the Sun put it. He recorded Paul Graham protesting that the Act was merely an interim measure, and so designed that it could be revoked by the Privy Council once a new Government had been established after the bomb had landed. He heard that no attempts would be made to contact foreign governments to get them to bring fleets or airliners into the country to evacuate as many people as possible. "That would be a small drop in the bucket," Paul Graham said, 'but the panic the announcement would make would kill more people than all the foreign airliners could take away. Imagine that panic, gentlemen." No one had been able to frame an adequate reply to that\ "What about the West Country?" the editor of The Times asked. He kept a palatial country home beyond Salisbury where his wife lived most of the time with his daughter and their three grandchildren. "You've told us you expect the pollution cloud to go north, surely the West Country will remain unspoiled?" "Did you ever hear a Met. forecast you could trust absolutely?" Paul asked grimly. "The present prediction for twenty-hundred hours indicates a wind blowing to the north. But that's only a prediction. It could easily be blowing west, or east, or any combination of all three." The editor of The Times glanced at the umbrella he'd brought with him, despite the weather forecast of a sunny day. Three umbrellas hung behind three chairs. "Point taken," he said. "South?" the editor of the Mirror asked. He had a flat on the sea front in Have. "We're working on estimated strengths," Paul said. "Professor MacKlin was in direct contact with the Medusa before its signals were knocked out, and collected a mass of data he's trying to read via his computers. His last words to me were that it was like trying to solve a crossword puzzle without clues, and without the blackened squares to guide you. But I will keep you informed if the pattern changes significantly. Now, gentlemen, before you leave I would ask you all to sign the Official Secrets Act." "Bit of an empty gesture, wouldn't you say," the editor of the Telegraph grumbled, 'since you've just finished telling us we're all going to be blown to Kingdom-come within a few hours?" Bill Tilsen realized this was the time to leave. He picked up the Uher, slipped it into his pocket, and cautiously opened the door into the corridor, which was empty. He went to the head of the back stairs and heard the searcher on the floor below say, "Well, that's this floor. Only one more left." Bill hurried down to the half-landing on which a statue of Gladstone stood on its plinth in the corner. He squeezed himself behind it, praying the deep shadow would hide him. The two policemen came up the stairs, but neither looked in Bill's direction. He held his breath until they'd gone past, waiting to see if any more came the same way. He'd noted the Webley Service .38s they'd been carrying in their hands; he wasn't surprised in view of the announcement he'd just heard Paul Graham make. He slipped swiftly and silently down the back stairs, then into the ground-floor corridor. At the far end were the double swing-doors that led to the lobby in which the commissionaire sat in his glass-enclosed splendour. From the double doors to the main front door, which was always left open during the Ministry working hours was, his memory told him, about twenty paces. Would the commissionaire be in or out of his box? If he were out of the box would he, too, be carrying a Webley . 38? Would there be other police in the lobby? Would the outside doors be open or closed? As he stood waiting indecisively, the double door opened and three men he didn't recognize came in. One of them was scratching his wrist. They came along the corridor past him and nodded civilly to him before turning right into a door. He didn't wait; in the brief flash while the door had been open he'd seen a man in the commissionaire's box, and the open front door. He walked swiftly down the corridor, stood by the swing- doors, pumping air into his lungs. He opened the door a crack and saw two women standing by the box, showing the guard a card. He slammed the door open and barrelled across the entrance, down the three stairs, across the mosaic marble floor, over the rubber mat and down the short flight of stairs into the street. He was astounded to see people walking quite normally, buses rumbling past, taxis, cars. Somehow, while he'd been in there listening to Paul Graham, he'd believed all life outside must have come to a halt, that surely news as bad as this, as final, must permeate the walls of any building in which it is being kept secret. Certain events, he knew, don't need an announcement. How do people manage to gather outside a palace when a beloved monarch is dying within its walls? Tragedy is its own harbinger. But out here, in the cold sunlight, life was proceeding as usual. He saw the amber light of a taxi and waved at it. The taxi halted and he ran to leap into it. As he slammed the door and the taxi moved off, he saw the guard who had been in the box of the Ministry running down the steps. As soon as he saw that Bill had gained the temporary sanctuary of a taxi, he turned and ran back up the stairs. "Stop right here, will you?" Bill asked breathlessly. He knew the number of that taxi would be on the air to the mobiles within a minute. He thrust a pound note through the window opening at the astonished driver, then ran across the road in front of the oncoming traffic with horns blaring at him. He stopped a taxi going in the opposite direction and climbed into it. As the taxi reached Parliament Square he saw the first of the police cars racing round the corner with its siren blaring full blast. He smiled grimly. They'd collar the other cab in Trafalgar Square by boxing him in. Bill would be well away by that time. "MBC," he said to the driver, 'fast as you can. I'm due on the air." "Thought I recognized your voice," the driver said as he swung the cab around and headed into the Park. Simon Marriott was on the air when Bill went into the MBC Newsroom. Bill was well-known to them all since he often did stringer pieces for them as a freelance. "May I use a machine?" he asked the news editor, who motioned to an Underwood on a table across from the central desk. Bill sat at it with the earphone of the Uher in his ear, and typed out his story. "Paul Graham, the Minister of Defence, made this announcement to the editors of Britain's leading newspapers at 1500 hrs today. In his own words ..." Bill listened to the tape he'd made of Paul Graham's voice. With the volume boosted it became quite comprehensible. He made a note of the opening and closing words. Later, he'd dub that extract on a cartridge, to play live on the air after his own voiced introduction. His story was a mixture of naivety and outrage that the people of Britain, the mass of ordinary people, should have been entirely ignored in the decision-making of what he called this latter-day Hitler, this appointed dictator. He said that certain people had been selected, other people ignored. He suggested that anyone who had been ignored would like to know that a safe place existed beneath the Ministry of Defence, that he, Bill Tilsen, had personally seen a number of survivors going into the Ministry, and into the third door on the left along the ground-floor corridor. Anyone who didn't agree with the arbitrary approach of Paul Graham, the Dictator of England, should proceed with all haste to the Ministry, to demand his rights forthwith. Meanwhile, stay tuned to Metro Broadcasting. "What have you got for us, Bill?" the news editor asked. "I liked your union management collusion piece, though the Father of the Union Chapel here didn't go a bundle on it. And nor did the managing editor. What have you got this time?" "Hang on a minute," Bill said. "I just want to make one phone call then I'll give you the lot." He went to the far corner of the room, behind the bank of scriptwriters, and picked up the telephone. The voice on the other end said "Minister's Office," and he recognized Wilkins. "Is the boss there, Wilkins?" Bill asked affably. "Bill Tilsen." Wilkins gasped. "Hang on, Mr. Tilsen," he said. "I'll try to find the Minister for you." Bill listened to the clatter of Wilkins' phone on his desk then punched the button that would sever the connection. He knew there would have been a tracer on that line within seconds. He waited three minutes, then dialled again. This time Paul Graham himself answered. "We were cut off, Bill," he said. "Where are you?" "That doesn't matter," Bill said. "Just listen to this." He fed the recording he had made of Paul's announcement down the line then pressed the button and disconnected himself. When he dialled again, Paul's voice came on immediately. "You're playing games with me, Bill," Paul said wearily. "If you heard that announcement, you'll know I don't have time to play games. So, just tell me what you want, and I'll see what I can do." "I want to go on your special list of survivors," Bill said. He hadn't meant to ask for that when he'd made the tape recording. He'd been burning with the crusading feeling which reporters often use for logic. Damn Paul Graham, it was right he should be exposed. The British public has a right to know! No man has the right to set himself up as a dictator. The thought of becoming a survivor had only just occurred to Bill Tilsen. He didn't want to die. Even if he went to his death with the truth on his lips, brandishing the banner of press freedom, trumpeting the rights of the common man. He wanted to live. "Okay," Paul said, 'what is your ultimatum? I presume you are going to give me an ultimatum? Either I put you on the list of survivors, or else? What is the "or" , Bill?" Though Bill couldn't know it, the number Paul Graham had given to selected people over the years as his private line was connected to a special outlet in the telephone exchange so that it couldn't be tapped but could be traced instantly. Wilkins wrote on Paul Graham's desk pad. "Metro Broadcasting Co." Paul was holding a pencil in his hand. "Task Force One," he scribbled. Wilkins' eyebrows were raised in astonishment as he hastened back to his own office. Task Force One was the SAS elite squad who'd earned the nickname of "The Gangbusters'. "Or I will broadcast the tape you just heard," Bill said. "I can imagine the way the country will react when they hear you've secretly been made dictator." "You're a fool," Paul said, 'if you imagine anybody will broadcast your rubbish." Keeping Bill talking and playing for time, he added," You're also a fool if you think you can blackmail me." "We'll see who's the fool," Bill said savagely as he broke the telephone connection. Bill went back to the news editor and handed him the cartridge on which he'd recorded his own words and the words of Paul Graham. He'd also typed a two-line introduction. "We interrupt this programme to bring you a special news flash from our roving correspondent, Bill Tilsen," it said. "What is it, Bill?" the news editor asked. He knew Bill had been too long in the game to offer them any rubbish. "Minister of Defence, setting himself up to be God. I've just discovered an Act of Parliament, the Emergency Powers Act of nineteen-seventy-eight, that makes him a national dictator, in effect. It's all in here, including a quote from the Minister himself. But I warn you, if they don't get it on the air right away, you'll get a phone call telling you it's a D-notice." The news editor needed no more. He took the tape and the announcement and gave it to one of the reporters sitting at the desk. "Give this to Happy Harry," he said, 'and tell him to drop it in after the Japanese car imports story." As the reporter scuttled into the studio complex, the news editor's phone began to ring. "That could be the D-notice," Bill said. "I'm on my way out, the back way." "Keep us posted, eh?" the news editor said. "We interrupt this news broadcast to bring you a special news exclusive from our roving correspondent, Bill Tilsen," the announcer said. "Few people know the extent to which the Government has seized power over our lives," the broadcast began. "Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1978 the Minister of Defence, Paul Graham, was given the power to decide which of us will live or die. Yes, that's right, live or die. At this moment, a satellite launched by the Russians three weeks ago is in orbit over the earth heading for London. That satellite will hit London with its deadly cargo of five nuclear bombs in five hours and a bit from now. The Government of Paul Graham, former Minister of Defence, was not going to tell you, the general public, but I am. This is not a joke, not a scare broadcast. This is the truth. Anyone who hears this broadcast should leave London immediately and head for the West Country, where you should be safe from nuclear fall-out, or for the mountains of Wales, Cumberland or Scotland. I repeat, this is not a joke." The news editor had been listening with a puzzled face, waiting for a journalistic punch-line that would reveal this was a joke, a dramatic way of introducing the real subject of Graham's ultra-right-wing appointment. The phone rang and he answered it automatically. "You blithering idiot," he heard his managing editor say. "I just got a D-notice on that subject." "You never told me," the news editor said defensively. "Well, I'm telling you now. Pull out the damn plug. Get it off the air, now!" But Bill Tilsen knew the value of brevity, his broadcast had already ended. The news editor looked around him, realizing his loudspeaker was broadcasting no music, no further news items. The news announcer was striding out of the studio and, in some sort of slow motion fantasy, he realized that everybody in the room had started to get to his or her feet, to congregate round his desk. "Is it true, for God's sake?" Mavis Mellor, his copy taster shrieked. Her abrasive voice cut through the silence like a rasp and the room exploded with shouts. "My God, an atom bomb heading for London?" "Is it true?" "What the hell's happening?" "Why is no one being told?" They pushed their way forward until they occupied a tight ring round the news editor's desk. "You put it on the air, Sam! Is it some kind of joke?" The news editor nodded his head. "It must be true," he said. "They laugh at jokes, not slap D-notices on them. And I notice none of you is laughing." Helen Graham was waiting on the platform when the train arrived from Whitehall carrying its third cargo of people nominated as survivors. She noticed the faces, saw how alert they all looked, ready to tackle the job that lay ahead. No one paid any attention to her as she stepped into the last compartment minutes before the door closed and the train headed back for the centre of London. The man who now was Director of Medical Services, the former Administrator of Charing Cross Hospital, had been puzzled when Helen went to him. "I think I'm in the wrong place, Arnold," she'd said. She'd seen the way everything was slotting into place in the Northwood Complex. The first cadre had already assumed its controls; hospitals had been alerted and the emergency procedures were already beginning. "I'm a specialist in the effects of radiation," she'd said. "Under Plan A, the people who can make it into the hospital shelters should be shielded from any immediate effects. But the people up there, the people we've had to abandon, will get the full blast of it. They won't all be killed outright, Arnold. Perhaps, up there, I can help a few of them?" "And be blasted yourself, Helen?" he'd asked gently. He knew the decision had been hard for all of them to take. Many would like to be up there doing something instead of safe in the Northwood Complex. "The greatest good for the greatest number of people, Helen?" he said, reminding her of her own words at one of their planning meetings. "I know I'm being irrational," she said, 'but I simply cannot stay down here. My work isn't down here any more, Arnold. I may have contributed something in the planning stages." "You contributed a great deal, Helen," he said. "Then you must understand that I can't stay." "I think I do," he said. "You realize I can't give you permission to leave?" Paul Graham had been insistent. Once the final plans had been made, there could be no changes. Much would depend on everyone knowing the exact disposition of resources. If any local changes took place, the result could only lead to confusion. "No, but you can look the other way." Helen was sitting on a seat at the back of the car; she heard the door beside her click open but couldn't see beyond it into the small lobby in which the lavatories had been built, since the door opened in her direction. She watched as Angela Steadman came into the car. Angela gave a gasp as she closed the door and recognized Helen Graham. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "The same as I imagine you are. Disobeying my husband," Helen smiled and patted the seat opposite her. "Sit down," she said. "At the speed this train travels, we don't have much time." Angela sat down warily. They knew each other, of course. In the early days of Angela's appointment they'd met frequently at diplomatic receptions. They hadn't met, however, since Paul moved into his house in Smith Street from the Portland Place flat he'd occupied with Helen. She knew she'd find it difficult to diagnose her feelings about Paul's wife. Paul had made it quite clear to her that Helen hadn't failed him; they had found a mutual incompatibility that had grown with the years. Since they'd separated, Helen had made no demands on Paul's interest or his time. The communications they'd had together had been about the possibility of a divorce, which Helen seemed desperately to want, or about financial matters. Whenever Angela had picked up Paul's phone and had heard Helen's voice she'd handed her over without comment and had promptly left the room so as not to be forced to overhear. "I guess Paul fixed one of his damned transmitters in your wrist, too?" Helen asked sympathetically. Angela nodded. "He thought I could carry on the good work out at Northwood. The Gospel according to Saint Paul." "It doesn't work that easily, does it?" Helen said quietly. "Typical male thinking. They imagine they can decide everything on a basis of logic and forget there's always an emotional factor in the equation. Why are you defecting?" "To help Paul. To be with him," Angela said defiantly. Helen held out her hand and touched Angela's knee. "You don't have to justify that to me," she said. "I loved him once in the same way. Would you believe it that I even thought of giving up my career, just to be able to be with him more often? He's a very lovable man . the bastard!" "Why the bastard " Because . oh well, I suppose it's because I wish I was still in love with him. It was very good when we were together, in the early days. I suppose it's because I'm envious of you, even jealous." "But you don't still want him?" "No, I don't. I'm wiser now. I realize it could never work for Paul and me. And, to tell you the truth, I'm happy he found someone like you to straighten him out. Like all lovable men, Paul needs someone he can love in return. He couldn't possibly have stayed in love with me, with all my cold, hard, factual logic, my scientist's approach to life. Paul needs someone who can be spontaneous, I never could be." "Yet you're on this train, heading back?" Helen smiled ruefully. "Probably the only truly spontaneous thing I've done in years," she said. "And I'm doing it for all the wrong reasons. I should be back there, waiting until I'm needed. We've planned the entire procedure, as you know. But, when it comes to it, I have no patience to sit and wait, knowing that millions of people are going to be blasted. I have no idea what I'm going to do to help them, but somehow, I know I must try. Crazy, illogical." "Spontaneous?" "Feminine! I'm not a libber." "Neither am I." "If you were, you wouldn't be rushing back to stand beside the one you love. You see, I read romantic fiction, too!" "Just pray the sergeant who practically frog marched me on to the train has left when we get back. He doesn't read romantic fiction, I'm certain." The sergeant had gone back to his post in the basement of the Ministry. Angela knew the back corridors of the new construction, and avoided him easily. Though the newspapers, the broadcasting and TV stations, the Press Association and Reuters had all received the D- notice, they'd heard the broadcast and the Ministry of Defence was inundated by phone calls. Paul had anticipated something like this might happen; anyone who dialled the many official and private numbers of the telephones within the Ministry tapped into an endless tape that carried a recorded announcement. The Ministry of Defence is closed. Please try later. The Ministry of Defence is closed. Please try later. Now the switchboards of all the press offices were jammed as people began to call in. "We've just heard a broadcast over MBC. It's a joke, isn't it?" The voices were cautious, timid. The news was too monstrous to believe. Some were angry. I think it's time you stopped these damned radio people, with their constant mindless pop music, from broadcasting this kind of tripe. You never know, someone might just believe them." The slow onslaught began to extend to other ministries when people couldn't get through to Defence. Every police station was inundated with calls, and gave the official answer. "We don't know. We're investigating." The police themselves began to call Area and Divisional Commands and they were answered more frankly. "We don't know. We haven't been told anything officially!" Only two policemen knew the answers to the questions, and they weren't talking. All too well, they knew the problems of crowd control when panic strikes. The Commissioner called the Assistant Commissioner into his office. "So, Harry, it's finally happened," he said. "It would appear so, Sir William." Sir William looked at his assistant. One way and the other, they'd been together a long time since those days when he was appointed Chief Constable of Bradford, and had taken his chief detective superintendent with him. Harry, he knew, was fifty-six. He was born to be an assistant headmaster, an assistant chief constable. He was the steady rock on which others could build. "How's your missis, Harry?" "Fine, Sir William. Looking forward to our daughter coming this weekend with the kids." "How many grandchildren have you, Harry?" "Only the three. My lad hasn't started producing yet. He says he's in no hurry. He wants to make Chief Inspector first." Sir William shuffled the blotting paper on the green leather desk set they'd given him all those years ago; he liked the paper to be thick, and green, to match the leather. But he liked it to sit straight in its corners. "Look, Harry," he said diffidently. "There's no need for both of us to hang about. Why don't you take the afternoon off. Take your missis for a run in the country, pick up your daughter and the kids. They'd love a bit of fresh air." "I've too much paperwork on my desk, Sir William," Harry said. "Why don't you take a run in the fresh air. You know the doctor said you've got to get out more." Sir William Glaseby had had his first coronary the previous year and was dreading a second. "Leave the paperwork, Harry," he said. "Get yourself off into the country." "The West Country?" "Somewhere like that. You could make it to Salisbury by I mean, in time for supper." He picked up the phone and barked into it, "Bring my car round to the side door. Make sure it's full of petrol." The Commissioner's car was an S-Type Jaguar. "You understand," he said apologetically, "I can't let you take the helicopter on non-official business." The Commissioner's ethics were known throughout the Force, his rigid code of personal morality, his dedication to duty, honour, the total integrity of the British police force. It was typical of him that he offered his private car and that the petrol in it would have been invoiced to him personally. "I understand. Sir William." The Commissioner held out his hands. "They've been good years, Harry," he said, 'and I'll never forget how much I owe to you and your undeviating loyalty." He coughed with embarrassment as Harry gripped his hand firmly. "You know I've never told you this, but I recommended you for the Northwood Complex, but the powers-that-be thought otherwise." The man who'd been selected to organize and lead whatever police force might be necessary after the debacle was twenty years younger than Harry, and had already achieved the rank of chief superintendent. He was one of the 'new' cops; he already had a degree in law to add to a B. A. in social studies. "I was the one who suggested they look at Watkinson," Harry said smiling. "I'm glad he got the job. They'll need younger men for something like that; lads with a bit more education than I ever had." "You underestimate yourself, Harry," Sir William said. Harry looked at his Chief. "It's been a privilege to work with you, Sir William," he said, but then a smile took the solemn look from his face. "Though I still think Jimbo MacTavish was guilty, all those years ago." "We couldn't prove it," Sir William said. "I knew he was guilty too, but if we couldn't prove it ... Anyway, Jimbo MacTavish is dead, and you're still alive, so, away with you. The car should be here by now." He relinquished Harry's hand, walked to the window with his back to the room and looked down on the crowds scurrying along the street. "They do a very nice roast pork in the Pheasant in Salisbury, Harry," he said quietly. "Lovely apple sauce." "I'll try it," Harry said, "I'll try it when I get there." Paul couldn't stand the claustrophobia of the underground Command Centre, though he knew he'd have to go down there soon to take charge. In the meanwhile, they were preparing as much as they could in advance, maintaining constant touch with the Command Centre at the Northwood Complex. Paul sat in his office and he, too, was looking out of the window, watching the crowds walking along totally oblivious of the cataclysmic events taking place within the walls of this building, the fevered preparations of a plan that had been formulated over two years of consultation and agonizing decision. Had Paul been right to make the final decision not to inform the general public, not to go on television and the radio to tell everyone to rush for safety? Everyone had argued with him, some logically, but most emotionally. People have a right to survive as best they can, they'd said. He'd put the whole situation into the computers many times, using different programs, but each time the computers had brought out the same answer. If he went on television and radio and notified the people, there would be instant panic. There would be a sudden rush of suicides. The arteries out of London, the roads, railways, canals, the airports, would all be clogged within minutes. No major city in the world is geared to handle such a mammoth exodus. Hundreds of thousands of people would be trampled underfoot, trapped in tube stations, run down by vehicles. All the services would come to an end as people left their posts in power stations, in signalling boxes, in the cabs of tube trains. The failures would only add to the panic and more people would be killed. It had been very tempting to listen to the humanists, to say that everybody has the right of final decision, the right to be given an equal chance, and broadcast the news at once so that everyone would have an equal chance of finding his own salvation. But the computers and the men who operated them, had been insistent. The death-toll of a general panic, which would extend far beyond the greatest possible blast zone of any bomb, that would spread like a virulent epidemic throughout the whole country, would be far greater than the actual death-toll of the bomb itself. He picked up his telephone. "What on earth is happening to Task Force One?" he asked testily. "They should have been in there by now." "They're just going in, Minister," Wilkins said. * # At one moment the newsroom at MBC was a melee of people all gathered round the news editor's position on the horseshoe, all demanding to know if Bill Tilsen's broadcast had been a joke, and the next minute the door had burst open and the air was loud with the explosion of stun grenades and the chatter of machine-gun fire. The entire news staff dropped to the floor instantly, voices screaming in panic and fright. Five SAS men, wearing jumping jackets, berets, commando boots, thick serge trousers, and carrying short stubby machine-guns in their hands, lined the walls on each side of the door. A man came swiftly through them, also clad in SAS uniform. He grabbed the shoulder of Mavis Mellor who happened to be lying nearest to him. Tilsen," he said, 'where's Bill Tilsen?" Mavis gulped in terror and could hardly speak. "Tilsen, Bill Tilsen?" "He's gone," she wailed. "Where?" "Out of the back door." "What in bloody hell," the news editor, the first to regain his voice, was shouting. "What in bloody hell's happening?" The SAS men ran through the newsroom and out of the back door, and people slowly sat up, the effects of the stun grenades a ringing buzz in their ears. Mavis Mellor looked at the floor where the SAS man had fired his automatic; the concrete was chipped, the rubber surface pitted by fragments. "Oh my God," she said, 'that could have been me." She held her hand to her mouth and ran, gulping, towards the lavatories. "Who says we don't live in a police state?" the news editor shouted. He picked up his phone and tried to dial but he was so angry his fingers couldn't frame the digits correctly and he swore and dialled again. "Herd of fucking elephants, just came through the newsroom, what the fucking hell is going on, Jesus Christ, the fucking SAS," he yelled incoherently down the mouthpiece. "What, off the air? Of course we're off the air." He held his hand over the mouthpiece. "Will somebody get back in there," he shouted, 'and put something on. Anything, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, any fucking thing. This is supposed to be a broadcasting station, not the monkey house at the zoo." Jane Grierson looked at the petrol gauge of the Datsun: damn, Peter had forgotten to fill it again. She debated whether she should take the Datsun, and risk a delay getting it filled, or use her own Mini. Damn it, the Mini was supposed to be going in to have that fourth cylinder looked at, the one Peter said was rattling. Her bag was heavy on the seat beside her as she drove out of the street and turned left into the Finchley Road. Traffic was heavy, but it seemed normal for that time of afternoon. The Mini stalled as she nervously tried to pull away in too high a gear. "Shit," she said, and turned the key to start the engine again. The damned thing never liked to start after a stall. She heard the starter motor turning over. "Shit," she said again. "You were in third gear," Maurice said complacently, despite the lump in his throat. Thank God for the lump, she'd thought when Peter had telephoned, or Maurice would be in school. Had Peter gone out of his mind? Ringing her at three o'clock and saying, "Look, Jane, please don't argue with me . but for once, just do as I say. Please put Maurice into the car, gather all your money and all the credit cards, the bank books, the cheque books, and drive along the Finchley Road to the North Circular. Then go round the Circular until you come to the M4 and drive west." "You had another boozy lunch?" she'd asked derisively. "You ought to try taking solids with it." "Jane," he'd said, 'this is no time for messing about. I haven't had any lunch. I mean what I say and I honestly don't have time to argue with you. If you love me, and if you love our son, get him into that car as soon as you can, and drive as fast as you can and as far as you can into the West Country!" The tone of his voice had been unmistakable. Her remark about lunch had been a joke, no more. Peter never had a liquid lunch, never got drunk, never made jokes, never played the fool. In many ways she thought he was too steady, too predictable, a husband. "Can't you at least give me a hint," she said. "Yes, I can, but no more. I think something might happen in London. Something bad. I want to get you out of London if I can, with Maurice. Now, no more questions because I have no more time. Get into the car, will you. Book yourselves into that hotel we stayed at in Brixham, the Royal, wasn't it, then ring me." "At work? At home?" "Try both." "I'll do it, Peter, but I haven't a clue what it's all about." "Just do it, eh? And remember, I love you." "I love you too, Peter, but it'd be a lot easier if I knew what was going on." "I know I was in third gear," she said. "And you're supposed to have your mouth covered with your scarf." She turned the key again and the Mini engine started. This time she started in second gear and the car kangaroo-hopped forward. "Ain't yer never learned to drive?" a cab driver called derisively as he trundled past her, grinning. Maurice leaned forward. "You started off in second," he said with the superior smirk of an eleven-year-old who can identify any make of car on sight and therefore is an authority on all things automotive. "Cover your mouth with your scarf and shut up!" Jane said angrily. She didn't like not knowing what was going on, didn't like interruptions in her normal routines, liked life to flow along in its placid well-ordered manner. It had been bad enough having Maurice lying on the sofa all morning with his sore throat, insisting on uncovering his mouth and trying to talk in his hoarse rasping voice while she tried to get on with the housework. Something might happen in London. What could that possibly mean? God knows London had had its share of events recently, what with people rioting outside embassies, and unions marching down Park Lane. People planting bombs under Arabs' cars in Mayfair, not that they didn't deserve it after what they were trying to do to Israel. Hostages in Knightsbridge. Whoever heard of such a thing in London? Well, Peter was right, as usual. They'd be better off out of it, and perhaps the sea air would do Maurice some good; he'd been looking very peaky recently. "North Circular turn-off coming up," Maurice said cheekily. "I know, I know!" "Then why are you in the wrong lane?" "Scarf. I shan't tell you again!" Was it her imagination, or was there more traffic about than usual? Or had other people's husbands taken the time to ring them, to tell them to get out of London? Peter had always been good about that, and had always telephoned when his work at the Ministry of Defence kept him late. Thank God her mother and father were well out of the way in their house in the Birmingham suburb of Solihull. "North Circular, right?" she said defiantly to Maurice. "No, North Circular left, if we're going down to the West Country." "I can't win with you, can I?" she said. "Wait till I see your father and tell him how cheeky you've been!" "Where are they all coming from?" the constable on duty at 10 Downing Street said as he walked slowly along the pavement past his colleague. One by one, the people had come into the street, slowly, silently, gazing across at the house in which the Prime Minister lived and had his office. Barriers along the road prevented them approaching the house itself, but now the barriers were lined three and four thick. The sergeant came along the street, eyeing the crowd. "Anything happening?" he asked. "Nothing we know about, Sarge. Maybe something on the radio about a Cabinet meeting?" "I haven't heard a radio for an hour, but I know the PM isn't inside." As the sergeant gazed over the crowd, his eye briefly caught that of the plain-clothes men who mingled among them. Somewhere, he knew, would be a couple of Special Branch men, or perhaps a Special Branch man and woman, but he wouldn't recognize them. The sergeant used his lapel microphone to talk to headquarters. "We seem to be building a crowd here," he said quietly so that no one nearby could hear him. "Anything known? I reckon we have upwards of two hundred." The faint voice came back to him. He'd turned the volume down too low and quickly adjusted it. "Thirty-seven. Some joker's been on radio with one of those Orson Welles gags, you know, the Martians have landed. Rubbish of course, but you'll probably get the usual. We're sending down a few plain-clothes people, just in case you start getting the nutters." "We've got one now," the sergeant said. A young man had just run into the street past the double barriers. "It's all over," he was screeching. "It's coming down." Two men and a woman moved in rapidly. The woman tripped him and the two men held him down. Two uniformed men approached. "Everybody back," they ordered quickly, 'everybody stand back. He's having an epileptic fit." How many men and women were accused unjustly, each year, of having an epileptic fit? It always seemed to be the one thing any crowd understood and feared, as if epilepsy were contagious. "Stick a pencil between his teeth," a man shouted, 'else he'll bite out his tongue." No one had seen the Special Branch man squeeze the young man's pressure points. They picked him up unconscious and carried him through the archway into the courtyard beyond. The sergeant was back on his radio; within a couple of minutes a police car would come round the back and the young man would be taken to Bow Street and dumped into a cell for the night. In the morning a kindly sergeant would explain that he could either go home quietly, or they'd bring him up in court, charge him with disturbing the peace and remand him for a medical report. All but the most militant usually took the former option and left quietly, since a medical report could take three weeks and people on remand were often taken to Wandsworth Prison. The young man's outburst seemed to have lighted a slow fuse under the crowd, which now came closer together and seemed to begin to coalesce into a whole. The sergeant knew the signs all too well. A number of reinforcements were available to him on permanent stand-by, but too strong a show of force too soon could be as dangerous as too little. He went through the archway into the courtyard and used his radio to talk with his senior officer, an inspector. When he returned to Downing Street the signs had already become unmistakable: members of the crowd had started talking to each other, looking from face to face, pouring out words, clutching at coats, looking at the policemen on duty as if they were aliens from another world. The air of latent hostility had begun to coagulate into the first stirrings of menace. The inspector came down the street from Whitehall only moments later. "Thank God," the sergeant thought, 'he's wearing civilians." The sight of an inspector's uniform could be more provocative than any constable. The inspector stood on the fringe of the crowd, assessing it by being part of it, listening to those about him, judging the tone of voices, the clear articulation that marked the professional agitator, the mumbled confusion of the diffident amateur, the strident illogical rantings of the so-called manin-the-street. He heard American voices, and European accents, quickly distinguished the genuine tourists from worried locals. He saw Arabs and Iranians, Indians and Pakistanis, Japanese and Scandinavians. The sergeant, watching him all the time, saw the inspector scratch his head with his thumb-nail while holding his first and second fingers in a V shape. The sergeant caught the eye of the plain-clothes man, and nodded twice. The plain-clothes man turned to his neighbour. "What time is it?" he asked in a loud voice. "About three-fifteen," his neighbour said. "The (Queen's coming along Whitehall in the royal coach for the State Opening in two minutes," he said as he turned and started to bustle out of Downing Street. "Who are you pushing, mate?" one of the louder voiced men asked. "Sorry, pal. The Queen's coming along Whitehall. In the coach." The words ran like quicksilver through the crowd. "The Queen. Coming along Whitehall. In the state coach." People checked their cameras for film as they started to follow-my-leader along the pavement and out of Downing Street. The uniformed policemen added their voices: "Come along now, if you want a photograph of the Queen." It took three minutes to clear Downing Street, to erect the barrier across its mouth. "Well done, lads," the inspector quietly said. "I'd like to murder whoever made that broadcast." "Wouldn't we all," the sergeant said. A lady approached the barrier. She had all the calm dignity of a lady, though she carried a string bag and a small transistor radio from which the voice of Elvis Presley could be heard declaring that he was nut ting but a harndahg'. "Excuse me," she said. "Yes love, what is it?" the sergeant asked, relieved to have someone normal to deal with for a change. "Where's this place they said on the radio we had to go to, if we wanted to be saved?" "Oh my God. It's all a joke, love. Somebody's been having you on! Take yourself off home, put your feet up, and make yourself a cup of tea." "Can't hardly make myself nothing if I've got my feet up. It's cost me seven pence to get here on the bus. Who'll pay me that, I wonder? They shouldn't allow it." "Yes, lady, it's a crime," the sergeant said. "Now off you get home. I think it's going to rain before long and you'll get them onions wet!" The sergeant looked up Whitehall, watching the lady walk towards the bus stop across the road, floating through the traffic as only a Londoner can. "Lots of people about for the time of day, Inspector," he said. "Too many. We're going to have trouble." "They ought to put that bastard back on the radio, make him say it was all a stupid joke!" The inspector looked at him. "Ah, but was it. Sergeant? Was it?" "What do you mean, Inspector? You're the one should know." "There's lots of buzzes going around. And the brass is saying nothing. Closed ranks. Makes you think a bit, doesn't it?" One of the reasons for Walter MacKlin's success in the esoteric world of higher mathematics and computers was his ability to think of abstract, abstruse problems in comprehensible human terms. The task that faced him defied such basic rationalization and most computer scientists would have accepted it as insoluble. Walter himself wondered if, for the first time in his life, he'd have to accept defeat and the prospect spurred him to even greater efforts. His mother would have recognized all the signs if she could have seen him at this moment, the intense concentration, the furrowed brow, the frequent exclamations of disgust, the lightning flashes of anger. He was the third son of a wealthy family that had settled in Aberdeenshire in the early nineteenth century and had never thought of itself as Scottish, despite the intensive farmland holding, herds of cattle and vast flocks of sheep. Walter had come south for his education, spoke English with no trace of a Scottish accent and disdained all nationalism, especially Scottish. His father had early suggested there was enough land for the oldest son and Walter to manage between them but Walter's mother, noting the persistence with which he studied, seeing the determination in the boy's eyes, the lust for knowledge, had firmly vetoed any suggestion the boy be confined to the land as a way of life. In the event, she had turned out to be right. Walter had been brilliant at Oundle where he had laid the foundations of a career in science. He'd won a scholarship to Christ's College without difficulty, had taken a brilliant degree and had gone on to two years' research into subjects so recondite his mother had pleaded with him not even to try to explain them to her. Successively a Master of Arts, a Doctor of Philosophy, a Doctor of Science, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, he could have taken any available chair of mathematics at any university. He could not be content, however, in pure abstract thought; he needed a discipline with its real applications. The higher realms of computer science seemed made for him, and he accepted a chair at London University which allowed him to divide his time between the theoretical science of computer mathematics, and the practical applications of the uses to which computers and their attendant data banks could be put. He saw the problem which now faced him as basically simple. How could he communicate with a distant source whose principal means of communication had been destroyed? He knew the Medusa still possessed some means of communication within itself, or it would have gone into a spinning orbit that would have carried it somewhere out in the remote galaxies. Some communication system was keeping it on this elliptical orbit that would in such a short time bring it to London. But how could he tap into that communications system? Assuming he could 'speak' to the Medusa, how could he tell it what to do? Had he been talking to someone like his mother about the problem, he would have asked her to imagine a castle, all the outer doors and windows of which have been locked by keys that have subsequently been thrown away. In the very centre of the castle is someone you want to speak to. You are a long distance away. You can shout, but your voice does not have an ywlimited volume. You can aim your voice with pinpoint accuracy, even penetrate walls, doors, windows with it. But, this is the final problem, the person inside the castle speaks and understands only one language. And you don't know which one. If you try the wrong language, you could damage the hearing of the person inside the castle for ever. He frowned, and scowled at the printout sheets he'd just received by line from Novosibirsk. Now that Kaiko was back in the chair, and Giorgio Barankov reputedly confined in Lubyanka prison, the Russians were co-operating as much as they could. They'd given him a feed of all the information they possessed on the launch of the Medusa and its progress. He now had the program for the Minotaur coupling and decoupling. If only the Russians had another Minotaur ready on the launch pad, they could perhaps have used it to intercept the Medusa at low angle before it re-entered the earth's atmosphere. The next Minotaur wouldn't be ready for at least two weeks, by which time its entire program could be academic. Walter MacKlin could only guess at the high level diplomatic exchanges taking place between the Russians and anybody who would listen to them, as they sought to reassure the world's leaders that the Medusa orbit was accidental, caused by the Americans, and not intended to start World War Three. He could not have hoped for greater co-operation from the Russian scientists as every detail of the Medusa program was laid bare for him, much of the information he was receiving was an over-reaction and he could guess at the glee with which the Americans would be receiving the simultaneous feeds of classified data. But none of it could help him communicate with the person in the inner room of that damned castle. He pushed the button on the console which was virtually his working desk, to speak to the data base library. Most of the information the library contained, on tape spools, could be called up electronically and mechanically. Other seldom- used tapes, however, had to be racked manually before he could have access to them. "Charlie," he said, knowing the console microphone would pick up his voice, 'could you rack up 7c/T/1500 for me?" 7c/T/1500 was a data base Walter had created one afternoon when he had tried stabilizing communication paths in a diminished atmosphere, 'fixing' them in a three dimensional movement pattern. There was no reply. "Charlie?" he said again, more urgently, impatiently. Again, no reply. The departmental rule said that the data bank should never be left unmanned. If Charlie wanted to go to the lavatory, he was supposed to call in a temporary replacement. Walter went impatiently into the general office, in which his secretary, his personal assistant Dr. Lighthouse, and two typists should have been working. The room was empty. He went quickly through that floor of the building. All the offices had been abandoned. In one of them he found the smoking remains of a cigarette and stubbed it out. He stood at one end of the corridor, looking along it. Normally a couple of people would have come from the offices on each side of the corridor while he was standing there. There would have been half-smiles, a word exchanged, a greeting. He knew most of them stood in awe of him, and that created a distance between him and his staff that he had never wanted. He knew he was not very observant of human needs. If he was preoccupied with something, he was quite capable of walking along the corridor without his mind actually registering that he was seeing people. He could never remember names, but had total recall of people's faces and shapes. Sometimes, he knew, he was impatient of people's human foibles. He expected people to do what they were paid to do, what they were trusted to do, without human error, without human considerations of any kind. If you had a toothache, you got on with what you had to do, ignored the pain, and then went somewhere after work and had the tooth pulled out. You didn't spend all day disrupting the important work of the office by soliciting sympathy from everyone you met. At that moment, Walter MacKlin had a pain. A pain in the region of his heart. He knew his staff had abandoned him. For the first time he realized that what he'd been contemplating as an academic exercise, without thought for himself, was a reality. The Medusa was going to hit London in five hours' time. Its nuclear warheads were going to explode. Millions of people were going to be killed. And he was one of them, if he didn't do as his staff had done, and use his foreknowledge to enable him to escape as far into the West Country as possible. If he didn't follow his staff and flee by any means possible, he was going to die in five hours. He walked back along the silent corridor, opened the door of his own room and went in. He walked slowly across to his console and sat down on the swivel chair. If his staff had come to him, if young Willie Lighthouse had come in and had said, we all want to go, he would have said, certainly. That was their prerogative. But just to sneak away! Not even to ask him was such a blow to his pride. Had he been such a total bastard they wouldn't even ask him, wouldn't even tell him what they were doing? He realized he'd been gazing blindly at the blinking red light that should have told him his last request for a manual racking had been completed, and that the data base he'd requested was in the machine and ready to be used. "Charlie?" he asked. The voice came back flat. "No, Professor, Peggy. Dr. Kershaw. Charlie's just gone out for a minute." Peggy Kershaw was one of the department lecturers in programming science. "What are you doing down here, Dr. Kershaw?" "I knew you'd need full access to the data bank." "You knew. They have all left, I think." "Yes, Professor, they've left. But you still have full access. I'll stay here as long as you need me. I'll be at the console if you want cross-chatter." The library was air-conditioned, sound-proofed, fully sealed. It contained all the data base tapes they possessed, a mine of information on a hundred subjects. Sometimes the information, billions of bytes of it, had to be pre-sorted, preselected in the process known as cross-chatter. To have someone available for cross-chatter would relieve the burden of his calculations enormously and speed his work. "Why, Peggy, why are you staying when all the rest have gone?" He realized it was the first time he'd used her Christian name, and the first time he'd asked a member of staff such a personal, such a human question. He heard the disembodied chuckle on the speaker built into his console. "I don't believe for one moment that you'd understand, Professor. Let's just say I can be as stubborn as you can. That I'd rather do my bit to help you stop the damned thing, than run away with my tail between my legs." "You have so much faith we can stop it?" "On the contrary, Professor. I'm a realist. I've studied the programs and I don't believe we have a hope in hell. But I'm game to help you try." Freddie Baker scratched his wrist. Perhaps, later, he could have the damn thing removed by surgery. He'd never liked the idea of an implant under his skin anyway: it had seemed such an invasion of his personal privacy. Okay, so he was a reconstruction expert. So, he had worked for Wimpey all over the world as a trouble-shooter, throwing bridges across the Orinoco, pipelines across the Andes, erecting better than shanty-towns in Brazil's northern territories. Okay, so he had invented his own scheme of instant plumbing, water supply, waste disposal. He'd even built his own wind- generator that time in Nigeria, to get the pumps going, to drain the swamp site. Freddie Baker had become a very rich man in the process. He'd left the staff years ago after all, what the hell, who wants to go on working for wages and had started his own consultancy. Okay, so he'd made a lot of bread. Good investments in schemes he'd learned about early on. Buying land on which they were thinking of building a hotel. Buying iron rod and shipping it privately so that, when it was needed for reinforcing, he had it close enough to be able to ask a premium for it. Freddie had a guilty conscience. It had seemed a great idea when the Ministry of Defence had interviewed him, asked him to be a survivor, help get the old country back on its feet after a bomb hit. But, what the hell, why run the risk when he didn't need to any more? When he had the Lear jet standing by at London Airport, gassed up and ready to go. Christ, in the Lear jet he could be in nowhere by the time anything happened. When his wrist had started to itch he'd been in the middle of achieving one of his dearest ambitions. Freddie Baker had been born in the slums of Manchester. He had fought his way out of there, but would never lose the knowledge he was basically a self-made man. Now he had the lot, the Lear jet, the convertible white Rolls, the villa in Cannes, the fifty-foot Whisperer in the harbour that would do twenty-five knots on full throttle. But he still had the accent of a lad from Manchester. What had Laura said, a self-made man who'd never completed the job! That was the moment he'd conceived his greatest ambition ever. To get Laura, Lady Altrincham, naked across his bed. And, in Mancunian words, to give her one. He'd been doing just that when the itch began in his wrist. He'd ignored it at first. He'd had to; Lady Altrincham had given him the biggest lust and the hardest erection he'd ever known. Thank God it had happened that way; if he'd answered the call immediately, he would probably not have heard the broadcast. The itching in his wrist didn't tell him that kind of disaster was about to happen. He'd always imagined it would be something like London Bridge falling down and hundreds to be rescued from the wreckage. Or, like they'd had in America, a nuclear station leak. According to the lad on the radio a satellite had gone rogue and was heading for London. In which case, fuck 'em! Freddie Baker was heading out of it. He could make Cannes in his Lear jet, or rather Nice Airport, where he could gas up again. If there seemed any problem in France, he could head further south. He had half a million invested in South Africa, he could live comfortably off that. For quick spenders he had a hundred thousand in various currencies and Krugerrands built into the Lear jet's belly section, what he'd always called his mad money. And now, he had Lady Altrincham. The Right Horrible but Very Available Laura. He reckoned she'd do him for a month at least, before he wore her out and abandoned her. "We'll be able to pick up a few things in Cannes?" she asked. "What few things? I've got a few spare hankies on the Whisperer. That's all you're likely to be needing for the next few weeks." "Clothes, you silly man." "You won't have time to put any on." "You, Freddie, are so deliciously vulgar," she said. "And so unpredictably impulsive. Thank God none of my friends knows you! Then we really would have a scandal. I mean, my husband would never forgive me if I ran away with anybody who wasn't presentable. Is your pilot very pretty?" "I don't have a pilot. I can fly the damned thing myself." She snuggled closer to him on the seat of the Rolls, surrendering herself to what she regarded as the total vulgarity of this man of impetuous action. "Thank God you have me, and flying is the only thing you have to do for yourself!" The story had become too big to kill and the international wires were humming with it as the Russians charged the Americans with responsibility, and the Americans countered by reminding everyone the Russians had put the Medusa up in the stratosphere, armed with nuclear warheads. The Russians had said the nuclear material was merely to be used for research, but no one believed them. The leaders of the European community immediately began to make preparations to help in what they believed would be a mammoth evacuation of London but were aghast when Paul Graham took over as spokesman for the Prime Minister, and said it couldn't be done. Paul's Command Centre had just started to receive the traffic reports; all westbound roads were reported to have twice the normal traffic density on them. He hadn't dared hope the news could be kept secret, but he'd prayed for a few more hours' grace before the exodus began. The reports came in from all over the area that would be affected. So far, only the people who'd been listening to Metro Broadcasting appeared to have done anything about it. Northbound traffic on the Ml that connected London with Birmingham was reported normal, and roads out of Birmingham were 'quiet'. Fortunately, the broadcast had included no reference to the extent of the fall-out pollution, but enough had been written in the newspapers in the past for people to realize, eventually, that the effects of the blast would not be confined to the Metropolitan area of London. Paul looked at his watch; 3:30 already, only four and a half hours to go. He felt at a disadvantage; none of their forward planning had assumed they would have so much but so little time. The predictions had always been that they would have no time at all, in which case no plans would have had any purpose, or that their intelligence sources would give them anywhere between half an hour and two hours. The third printout of possibilities indicated they would have a number of days or even weeks, when their political analyses showed the Russians and the Americans were headed on a collision course that must inevitably result in nuclear warfare. He admitted ruefully that Barankov had caught them all napping with the Medusa double-bluff. They'd all gone to Novosibirsk looking for deceptions and had never realized the major one was in the stratosphere above them, not in the ground laboratories. He looked up when his door opened; Angela Steadman stood hesitantly in the doorway. Though he knew the question was unnecessary, he still asked, "What are you doing here?" "I couldn't go to Northwood," she said. She came across the room hurriedly, stood by his desk like a child expecting to be reproached, but hoping that mercy will prevail. "I couldn't!" He got up from his desk and clasped her in his arms. "You're a fool," he said. "The Command Complex isn't deep enough for a thing like the Medusae he added quietly, 'not with its five nuclear warheads. I don't rate our chances of survival very highly." "Then we'll have to put our faith in Walter MacKlin," she said. "I've just been talking to him. He's going to keep on trying, but he holds out no hope. Apparently, all his people have left except one, who's helping him. You can't blame them for trying to save their skins, especially if they do it quietly and don't start a panic." "Does it matter, Paul?" she asked. "If people are going to die, what does it matter how? Chucking yourself out of a window is a death a lot of people might prefer to waiting for an atomic blast!" He shook his head. "No matter how small a chance Walter MacKlin might have, it's still one chance. The odds against him succeeding are a million to one, but there is still the one. If the news gets out, if people start to panic, we know that hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, will be killed. What would we then say if Walter MacKlin pulled off that million-to-one chance, and stopped the bomb? So long as there is any hope at all, I shall do everything I can to prevent a panic. I couldn't live with myself with all those deaths on my hands." * Are you ready, Sir Leonard?" the station director asked. "Yes. Just give me a green light or a hand-sign, and I'll go." Sir Leonard Westwood looked at the transcript of the broadcast Bill Tilsen had made. "Damned irresponsible fool," he thought. He looked at the script that had been written for him, his experienced actor's eye already scanning the lines for effective vocal emphasis. Well, it wasn't Shakespeare, but it would have to do. The music came to an end. Happy Harry, probably the best known of the London disc jockeys, flipped the key that activated the cartridges for station identification, for a jingle advertising a disc jockey who'd come on the air at eight o'clock, and three successive advertisements. Happy Harry's face belied his nickname; it could only be described as green. He looked through the window at the almost empty suites. Most of the staff, believing the Bill Tilsen broadcast, had already left. He knew he should have left too but, what the hell, the show goes on, eh? The advertisements ended; he flipped forward his on-air key, and said, "Surprise, surprise, all you Happy Harry listeners. We really caught you out, eh, really caught you out. Hands up all of you who believed Bill Tilsen; and if any of you is in a car heading for the West Country, you get two black marks and go to the bottom of the class. Now, you'll never guess, I kid you not, but sitting right beside me, basking in that beautiful Happy Harry radiance, is none other than, go on, missis, guess, and I bet you'll get it wrong! You thought it was Eiton John, didn't you? Well, it isn't. It's none other than ... wait for it ... Sir Leonard Westwood. No joking, he's here, in person! Sir Leonard?" The veteran actor knew he had never had a harder audience to convince. "This is Sir Leonard Westwood," he said. "This evening I've been asked to be chairman of a programme here on MBC that will discuss the freedom of the press. Many people believe that the newspapers and radio and television news programmes take too many liberties. That too many people are wrongly swayed by what the press says. How often have you heard the expression, it must be true, it's in the papers? Tonight we're going to interview a number of people, some of whom believed the broadcast Bill Tilsen, that well known journalist, made from this station only a short while ago, and some of whom didn't. Was the broadcast true or false? Is what you will read in the newspapers tomorrow true or falser Tune in to MBC at eight o'clock tonight and y'll find the answer to those questions!" " Happy Harry dropped the record on the spieiiiing table. Anthony Newley, "What kind of fool' am I?" He was asking himself that question as he watched Sir Leonard being conducted from the studio, scratching delicately and gently at the inside of his left wrist. Chapter Nine /. Major Anna Firdova"* was not easily frightened. The psychological tests they had conducted on her during her cosmonaut training had constantly shown she had an equable temperament. She knew that her co-cosmonaut, Major Bustovsky, was motivated by an almost fanatical belief in the Soviet system but she herself had no such conviction. She listened during all the fervent discussions of the rightness of Communism, the evils of capitalism, but none of it ever had meant much to her. She had so accepted the principles of equal opportunity for everyone, sharing whatever one had with other people, the dignity of work, that she couldn't fully accept that there existed other people on this earth who didn't feel the same way as she did. She had approached the Medusa programme because it intrigued her, because the scientific problems of flying the Medusa, in view of its special characteristics, had intrigued her. And now, they couldn't fly it. And they couldn't talk to Novosibirsk to find out why. She knew the Medusa was flying itself, obeying a program it had somehow been given, without reference to anything she or Sergei could do. Where was the Medusa heading? When would it get there? Who was effectively controlling its orbit? Assuming any one person was in command, and not the data base and program of some inanimate computer. A thought had been growing in her that she was reluctant to accept; could it be that General Barankov, whom they had trusted and supported, had devised a fate for them similar to that of the two cosmonauts they had replaced, the two cosmonauts she had exploded in the unwanted Minotaur? "What do you think, Sergei?" she asked. He had just completed the checks of all the inboard computer mechanisms to discover what computer capability was left to them. "That damned automatic replacement circuitry," he grumbled. "You know how I protested against it and Colonel Wilkovsky overrode me. We receive'd a signal from somewhere I don't believe it was from Novosibirsk - and that signal knocked out all our primaries. The secondaries came in automatically, and the signal knocked them out too. And the tertiaries. If only the replacement had been manual and not automatic, I could have waited until after the signal had ended." He was lost in his technical world of circuitries, computer systems, steering mechanisms. "I didn't mean that, Sergei," she said quietly. "I meant General Barankov. Do you think he has abandoned us, the way he abandoned the Minotaur^ She saw Sergei glance sideways at her and realized she'd only thought about Barankov, not spoken about him previously. "General Barankov? What does this have to do with General Barankov?" Sergei asked testily. "It has to do with the idiots in Novosibirsk, the technical idiots who've landed us with a fallible system!" "And there's nothing we can do to repair it?" she asked, thrusting thoughts of General Barankov's possible treachery out of her mind. "I don't know, yet," he said. She could see he was preoccupied by the technical problem and didn't want conversation to distract him, but nevertheless she had to speak. "Do you think we are orbiting?" she asked. "Of course we are. What else could we be doing?" The tone of his voice expressed his annoyance at being disturbed, at having his thoughts pulled from the technical problem he faced. "We could be heading towards a target," she said. "A target of General Barankov's choosing." He stared at her. "A target ... Barankov's choosing ... I don't ..." He snapped his mouth shut, thinking hard. Facts leaped out at him. They were on a controlled path, they were being sent somewhere by the message that had been locked into the computer, they were incapable of altering their present flight path. He had assumed that their orbit had been changed by an equipment malfunction, but Anna was right, it could have been a specific signal, sent without their knowledge by General Barankov. The radio silence would be an inevitable corollary. "That bastard," he said, 'that crazy bastard." Herman Nagelheim went into the call box and dialled the overseas code for Hamburg followed by the six digits of his home number. "Have you been listening to the radio?" he asked lisa, knowing she usually had it on during the afternoon while she sat and sewed. "Yes." "Have you heard anything?" "Ja. Would you believe it, they've been playing Tauber records. 'dos Land des Lachelns' among other things. I cried so." "You always cry at Tauber. Nothing about England in the news?" "About England? In the news? Something about cutting the budget for defence spending, but it's all meaningless to me. How is it going for you? Are you getting good orders?" "Yes," he said, "I'm doing very well. I just rang to say I may be home early. I may be home today, if I can get on the plane." "You must have done very well if you can come home today. I shall be happy to see you, Herzlein." "And I shall be happy to see you, believe me." "You sound as if you really mean that." "I do, I do." When he left the call box, he climbed into the hired car. He knew he could cut across country from where he was in Hertfordshire. With luck, he'd make the airport in an hour, assuming the usual busy roads. He glanced at the petrol gauge: damn, he'd need to fill up at the next petrol pump. Half a mile down the road he saw the first petrol station sign. There was a queue of ten cars waiting to be served at the two pumps. He knew that further along the road he'd find a self-service station. When he arrived there, each of the six pumps had its own queue of five cars. He noticed some of the people were filling cans as well as their cars. About a mile down the road, he saw another petrol station sign. The red warning light had been steady on the hired car for some distance; he knew he daren't risk driving past this one. This had five pumps. The queue on each pump extended to the end of the long forecourt. He cursed as he joined the second queue, which seemed one car less than the others. He could see into the boot of the car of the man at the pump. He had four large plastic containers which he was filling in turn. That was the moment at which Herman began to wonder if the funny story he'd heard on the English radio, about a Soviet satellite, could be true and not, as he'd previously thought, one of those silly English jokes he could never understand. The English always make jokes, he told himself reassuringly. Surely, the Norddeutscher Rundfunk would be carrying such a story in its news programme, yet his wife had heard nothing. But why, why, were there so many cars on the road? And people filling plastic containers with petrol? "You are dumb," he told himself. "It must be because they have announced another big increase in petrol prices. People always panic with an increase in petrol costs!" Well, he didn't care if the price went up, or down. He never had to pay for his own petrol; he always used the company's American Express card for all his expenses. Immediately following the Sir Leonard Westwood broadcast, a number of cars left the westbound lanes of the M3 and M4, turned across the fly overs and headed back east towards London. Many of them pulled into the previously deserted motorway cafes, which began doing record business. The staff couldn't understand the gaiety that filled the air as people started chatting happily to each other across the tables. "Yes, we believed it," most of them seemed to be saying and the girl on the tea machine who was now rushed off her feet had barely time to ask herself what they had believed. Many of them seemed to be angry beneath the gaiety and she heard lots of people saying things like 'been taken for a ride," 'ought not to be allowed," 'have a word with my MP," 'write to the station about this, you bet!" Really, if she lived here yet another three years, she'd never understand the English! The platform was full when the Plymouth train came along it from the sheds. "Blimey," Ernie Watson said to the fireman, 'where's all this lot come from? " The guard neither knew nor cared. "So long as they've all got tickets," he said in his slow West Country burr, "I don't mind how many we get. Though I had thought I might get my head down a bit later on." "It's all right for some," the driver, a cockney, said. "There's no sleeping up here on the foot plate The minute the train slowed and even before the carriages had stopped rolling, people were pulling them open to jump in. "Here, watch it," the guard shouted as he saw a middle-aged woman swept off her feet, being pulled along by the door handle of the still moving carriage. The train stopped a couple of yards further down. If it had kept moving, the guard knew, the woman would have been dragged off the platform, most probably have fallen off the edge and have been crushed by one of the wheels. And there'd have been hell to pay! He raced along and pushed his way through the throng of people. "You ought not to open the door of a moving carriage, missis. The railway wouldn't have been liable, you know!" His words were lost in the tide of people pushing past him. The woman, who'd secured a seat in the corner of the compartment, smiled out at him. "I'm all right," she said, 'just laddered me stocking a bit." God, he'd never seen anything like it since the last time he'd had the misfortune to be assigned to a Cup Final Special. He looked at his watch and saw they had only a minute to go. He blew his first whistle as he walked along towards his station at the rear of the train. Still they were streaming through the barrier carrying suitcases, dashing desperately along the platform looking for a seat. He knew that soon they'd be standing in the corridors. Though he was five seconds early he blew his second whistle and saw the ticket collector start to close the door of the barrier. More people were arriving; he saw a man jam himself into the closing barrier door and force it open for his wife and his kid. Damn it, that was going too far! He saw the ticket collector, a Jamaican by the look of him, come through the barrier and force it across in the faces of the people trying to come through it. He heard the yells, "Open up, you black bastard!" Now, that was really going too far! Though he was now ten seconds early, he blew the final whistle. The despatcher pressed the button that would light the green for the driver. They already had the signal and the train started to move. The people behind the barrier were shouting loudly now, and he saw the Jamaican, who must have been a hell of a runner, come racing down the platform after the train, past the guard's van, until he was level with the last carriage. He swung open the door and, despite all railway regulations, jumped on board the moving train. He wasn't the only one. The guard saw with total astonishment that the despatcher had done a similar thing and had leaped into the second compartment of the fourth carriage. By now the train had picked up speed and went scooting along past the end of the platform. The guard closed his door with a sigh of relief, sat down, and opened his copy of the Western Mail. He knew that all would be revealed to him in the fullness of time, that nothing remains a mystery if you sit patiently and wait for the solution to offer itself. But it did all seem a bit strange. "The ways of the Londoner are truly ^comprehensible," he said to himself. How he longed for the return of the good old days of the Great Western. Now, there was a railway company a man could be proud of. He turned on his battery radio and heard the voice of Sir Leonard Westwood. Now there was a voice to be proud of, too. The duty officer at London Air Transport Control Centre, the establishment outside the airport that controls the flights of all planes in British air-space before handing them on to the receiving airports, looked at the slips that were accumulating on his desk, brought over by the messenger boy now almost running between the various desks at which the duty operators sat, staring into the dimmed radar screens, watching the blips which identified the aircraft within their zone. The slips on the duty officer's desk were requests for positions in the landing pattern. A plane from Air France, another from Lufthansa, a Kim jumbo, a DC-10 that should normally be going to Ibiza to pick up charter passengers, another from Air France, one from SAS, what the hell was going on? It seemed that every plane in Europe was trying to get a landing in Heathrow. Shit, plane movements are planned weeks, months, ahead. Schedules are published, and landing/ take-off patterns worked out in advance. You don't just call up LATCC and ask for permission to take your jumbo into Heathrow unless it's an emergency, and none of these requests bore any trace of emergency. He picked up his phone, called the office of the controller. "I'm being inundated with landing requests," he said. "Have you any idea what's going on?" The controller automatically received copies of the documents; he'd already been on to the Airports Authority, and had been referred to the Ministry of Defence where he'd been switched into the recorded announcement. He'd rung the Airports Authority again and this time had blasted his way further up the ladder of responsibilities. "What the devil is going on," he asked waspishly, 'and, if it's something important, why haven't we been informed?" The man in the Airports Authority was deliberately noncommittal. He'd been given a piece of paper signed by the Minister of Defence himself. It was brief and quite specific. If you receive any requests of information from whatever source you will say nothing. You will not speculate. "I don't know if anything is going on," he said. "So far as I am aware, you are receiving normal landing requests, though they appear to be arriving at an abnormal rate. You must handle them as normal requests and use the designated procedures to deal with them." "Designated procedures? What the hell does that mean?" "That, my dear fellow, is for you to decide. You have the authority." "And the subsequent responsibility. I'm going to turn them all round, divert them to Elmwood, Glasgow, East Midlands, Manchester until I can cope with them. At the moment I've put them all on hold; the skies over London are full of the bastards!" The duty controller put down the telephone, and looked blankly at the piece of paper the duty runner had placed on his table. It was folded and sealed and the outside of it bore the legend TOP SECRET. Duty Controller ONLY. He opened it. Occasionally they were handed such messages if there was a military flap, if a military situation developed that required 'eyes only' handling. LATCC had its own military section which worked closely with the civilian department; sometimes their territories overlapped and the military would inform the civilians on a restricted basis. CHECK PROCEDURES FOR GROUNDING ALL PLANES IN BRITISH AIRSPACE OR DIVERTING ALL THOSE ABOUT TO ENTER. VERIFY PROCEDURES ARE UP TO DATE AND CAN BE INSTANTLY IMPLEMENTED ON RECEIPT OF A SIGNAL FROM THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE WHICH WILL BE CODED SALVATION. AWAIT RECEIPT OF SUCH SIGNAL BY TELEPHONE, TELEX, LETTER BEFORE REPEAT BEFORE GOING AHEAD. The controller immediately dialled the Ministry of Defence number and heard the recorded announcement. "What the hell is going on?" he asked himself, feeling a sudden chill of fear. Grounding all civilian planes over British airspace could mean only one thing, that the skies were being left clear for military use. "Bring me the Manual of Standing Instructions," he said to his assistant. "Which one?" "All three of them." The golden state coach came out of the Royal Mews drawn by four gleaming black horses. The detachment of Life Guards rode before it, another behind it. An officer rode beside it with his sword drawn and held exactly vertical. Two policemen on chestnut mares rode before the Life Guards. A policeman and a policewoman rode behind the following Life Guards. The procession moved slowly, with infinite pomp and dignity, along Birdcage Walk and through George Street into Parliament Square. By the time it reached the end of Parliament Street and turned left, the streets were thronged with Londoners and tourists. The cameras were levelled, long lenses seeking a shot of the coach interior for a more intimate portrait of the Queen. They caught pictures of a waving hand, the royal benediction, the well-known formal smile. "You're doing nicely, Sylvia," the Prince said. "Just keep your head moving all the time so that any views of your features will be blurred." Sylvia Cottersham smiled at him. "Thank you, Your Highness," she said. Really, what a ridiculous life she'd led during the past fifteen years. She'd been perfectly happy in her small house in Ware, Hertfordshire. She'd never been a very social sort of person, and was always embarrassed when the few friends she allowed herself said how like the Queen she looked sometimes. She'd done everything she could to disguise the fact. She'd always done her hair in a style as remote as possible from the royal style, and had tried to mask her face as much as possible. When the royal equerry had visited her house, of course she hadn't known who he was. And when he'd asked her to go to London with him she'd been amused and interested. Recently widowed, she'd been at a loss what to do with herself most of the time; she'd agreed to go to London and had been astounded to be driven into Buckingham Palace. She'd met a number of formally-dressed men, a number of tweedy ladies, all of whom had studied her. She'd shrugged off their enquiries into her parentage, her birth, her affiliations, not overawed by them and enjoying what she thought of as her afternoon out enormously. It was all, in her favourite expression, a bit of a laugh! And you mustn't take yourself too seriously, she'd reminded herself. When Prince Philip had walked into the room after she'd agreed to have her hair re-dressed and to wear clothes they'd provided, she'd trembled with excitement. The photographer had circled round both of them, taking picture after picture. Prince Philip had talked easily with her, asking about her life, her interests. She remembered they'd somehow got on to the subject of greenhouses and greenhouse pests and she'd been enormously impressed by his knowledge. Three weeks later the equerry had called for her again, and she'd returned to the Palace, and this time she'd taken tea with the Queen herself and the Queen Mother, always one of her favourites in the Royal Family. After tea, she'd been taken into a study where she'd waited ten minutes with one of the Queen's ladies-in- waiting. And then the Royal Chamberlain had come in with Prince Philip and had offered her the job. Would she, from time to time, impersonate the Queen? Would she attend functions, sometimes on her own, sometimes with Prince Philip or other members of the Royal Family? There would be danger, of course. There would be excruciating boredom. There would be acute discomfort. She would need enormous personal discipline: queens cannot scratch their noses in public, cannot stand or sit carelessly, cannot make any spontaneous gesture lest one of the long-lensed photographers who abound on any royal occasion and poke their lenses through windows, out of trees, over walls, should capture a picture of a momentarily embarrassing pose or revelation. She was shown a catalogue of such pictures, mostly of lesser European royalty. Many were merely amusing; some would be disgusting no matter who the subjects were. During the last five years, Sylvia Cottersham had been invited to impersonate the Queen with increasing frequency as terrorism and violence had grown in the streets of London. "You're doing very well, my dear," Prince Philip said as the royal coach drove past the end of Downing Street, flashbulbs exploding along the pavement as tourists jostled each other for a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Lady Maud, sitting opposite them in the coach, agreed. "Extremely well, Your Royal Highness," she said, remembering her instructions never to use any but the royal title on these occasions. But really, she thought, one's blood did run cold when one realized the impersonation was always taking place for a specific frightful purpose: to save the Queen's life. She couldn't have been more wrong on this occasion. The sight of the Queen, riding the streets of London, would do more to dispel the fears Bill Tilsen had introduced with his broadcast than any official rebuttal or denial. Some time ago the Ecology Party, disagreeing with government policy on nuclear survival, had obtained copies of information Paul Graham had distributed on the basis of 'need to know' - Home Office circulars restricted to senior local authority officers and had published them in a booklet, How to Survive the Nuclear Age. Helen Graham had read the booklet; it was the best publication so far, the most helpful. Unfortunately it carried with it none of the wealth of authority nor the urgency of a government edict and Helen knew few people had acted on its recommendation that each household should make preparations of a simple but effective sort. She knew there could be little organized help in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear bombardment; in all probability the essential services, water, power, sanitation, would immediately fail. Nuclear fall-out would come later. Most of the bodies of people killed in the nuclear blast would necessarily be left where they were, and the rotting corpses would add to the risks of secondary infections and epidemics. If people could put some form of shielding between themselves and the source of the radiation, they could greatly reduce its effect. Sixteen inches of brickwork, two feet of tightly packed earth, five inches of steel, or three inches of lead would stop ninety-nine per cent of the radiation. She went to the Ministry of Works, produced the authority she had carried in her handbag for the past two years, and was shown into the office of Gerald Mitchell, the senior provisioning officer. She'd noticed all the offices were busy as she walked through the corridors; obviously few of them ever listened to MBC during working hours and, on Paul Graham's need- to-know basis, they wouldn't yet have been informed of the Medusa's existence. "What can I do for you, Dr. Graham?" he asked politely. "I see you have the same name as the man who signed your authority, the Minister of Defence." "My husband," Helen said, 'but that's not important. You'll see the authority asks that I be given any possible help." "An impressive document, Dr. Graham. We shall just have to see what's involved, shan't we?" Gerald Mitchell had served too long in the Civil Service to make advance promises. He did rather question the validity of such an open-ended document, but he'd wait to see what the Minister's wife wanted. Probably equipment for a charity garden-party, a marquee, benches, trestle tables, urns. Or perhaps she was aiming higher up his provisions scale to the champagne coolers, the silver table decorations, the cut-glass goblets. "I want you to beg, borrow, or steal every lorry you can get your hands on. I want you to look at a map of London, find the nearest large subterranean space close to each population area, and commandeer all the sheets of steel plate, all the sheets of lead, all the bricks, all the bags of cement you can find in all the builders' merchants and suppliers throughout London." "You want to build nuclear fall-out shelters?" "Right first time, Mr. Mitchell. All over London. And I want to start it now. I will have all the labour available that you can use. I've already been to see the Army, and they are holding squads of troops ready the minute you tell them where to go." Gerald Mitchell looked at her in amazement. "You are serious, Dr. Graham," he said incredulously. "Totally and utterly serious, Mr. Mitchell." He thought for a long moment. Either this Dr. Graham was a madwoman, moving about on forged credentials, with enough knowledge of government procedures presumably acquired from her husband, assuming the Minister of Defence was her husband, to be able to get where she wanted. Or she had some information he needed. "Look," he said. "I need to know more. I can either waste a lot of time checking your credentials, finding out a little bit more about you, or you can tell me what this is all about and I can judge for myself. Which would you suggest?" "What I have to say to you mustn't be repeated," Helen said urgently. "I don't even have the authority to inform you, but I'm certain my husband would give me clearance if I asked him." "We could give your husband a quick ring, perhaps? We have a direct line to Defence, you know." Helen told him about the Medusa. About the eight o'clock deadline. About her husband's decision not to inform the public. "The forward planning never envisioned we'd have six hours," Helen said. "It would either be instantaneous, in which case those of us who were still alive would try to pick up the pieces, or we'd have enough time to evacuate the most populated areas and to provide some sort of deep protection for the people who couldn't go. This six hours' warning has caught us between two concepts. My husband is determined not to cause excessive bloodshed by broadcasting information that would only throw people into a six-hour panic. If we prepare as many shelters as we can we shall, at least, be able to help a few people when the news leaks out as inevitably it must. Already one journalist has broadcast it, though my husband is trying to counteract the effects of that stupidity." Helen had been astounded when she'd learned of Bill Tilsen's stupidity; she would not have believed him capable of such a ridiculous and irresponsible act. When Angela, with whom she'd remained in telephone contact, had told her the SAS task force had been sent into MBC, she'd been almost relieved. She knew this could only be the first of the many ruthless acts that would be committed between now and eight o'clock: the death of one individual, even someone as close to her as Bill had been, somehow seemed irrelevant, now that her worst nightmare of hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered and maimed in a nuclear holocaust had become a possible reality. "What is your plan, exactly?" Gerald Mitchell asked her quietly. Helen smiled at him. "The first part of my plan is a try to get you to stay and help us," she said. "My authority doesn't extend to keeping you here in London now that you know what is going to happen. Perhaps you will feel, and I wouldn't blame you, that your first responsibility is to your depend ants "Thank you for saying that," he said, 'but my sole dependant is in America at this moment." He didn't need to tell her that Victor had left him in a sulk nearly two weeks ago, and had gone to California to try to patch things up with his former lover, a well-known American actor. Gerald had known for a long time that he had no hope of keeping the young boy, who was hopelessly stage-struck. Gerald had sent him some money; he knew Victor would be back if he couldn't make a go of it in California. Or, he suddenly realized with a shock, he would have been back, if it hadn't been for the Medusa. What a particularly appropriate name for a multi-headed monster of destruction. "I'll be here," he said, 'as long as I can do anything useful. Though I might suggest, from what you said, that we'd be better in the basement. It has steel doors, you know and certainly sixteen inches of brickwork." The basement had been turned into the most elaborate Aladdin's Cave; it contained many priceless pictures in sealed air-conditioned vaults, at least sixty thousand bottles of wine in a temperature controlled wine cellar, used for government entertaining. It had thousands of cases of tins of the most exotic food and an entire frozen food section. There were rooms filled by crockery, a Wedgwood set to serve a hundred, a Spode for two hundred and fifty, a set of silver cutlery worth at least sixty-five thousand pounds. One room was practically empty. "We had the Queen Anne set in here," he said. "We've loaned it to Lancaster House for the Commonwealth Ministers' Conference!" He did manage to find two chairs that had not been removed, and a Queen Anne table. "This should do us," he said as he placed his large scribble pad in front of him. "Now, how are we going to go about it?" "Soldiers in lorries, bricks, cement, lead sheets, steel plates, in lorries, distributed round inner London first of all. If anyone asks, it's a Civil Defence exercise." "There won't be time for the cement to set, you know." "I know. But the bags stacked one on top of each other will provide ready made sandbags. Cement is very dense material." Helen Graham described her plan quickly to him while he took notes. Once he saw the direction in which her thoughts had led her, he was able to make spontaneous suggestions. He forgot the fear he'd felt when he'd learned about the Medusa heading for London; he derived much of his pleasure from the sheer logistics of provisioning, whether he was arranging a Buckingham Palace garden-party, or providing the material for building a stand for the Trooping of the Colour. He called for an enormous detailed map of London and its suburbs. He seemed to have an intimate knowledge of all the locations. Quickly he isolated all the dumps in which the Ministry stored its materials. He identified all the military establishments and ringed them. He also ringed his normal sources of transport. It took longer, and the use of a classified telephone directory, to find the builders' merchants. He'd asked, and Helen had agreed, if he could bring his personal staff into the basement to help. Helen had forbidden him to tell them why they were working; he'd explained that it was a government exercise; they'd worked with him long enough to accept that and threw themselves into the task with great gusto. It was inevitable that the energy generated in that huge basement room should communicate itself to the rest of the staff above. Someone needed a typist; it was easier to establish the typist and her machine in the basement rather than keep sending the material up to the typing pool. Someone needed the copier: hoist it on to a trolley and bring it down. Within fifteen minutes, half the staff in the building seemed to be congregated in there, each performing some vital element of the mammoth task, with Gerald Mitchell still sitting at the central Queen Anne table with his scribbling block in front of him, dashing off sheets of rapidly handwritten instructions. Though the room was in pandemonium, it had all the disciplined flow of a large orchestra playing a symphony, with Gerald Mitchell as its conductor keeping all the instruments working in harmony. Like all good captains, he fed and watered his troops, and the coffee machine was one of the first to appear, with mountains of biscuits. Everyone knew they were working towards a deadline of eight o'clock; though no word had been said in confirmation, all realized this was no government exercise but the real thing, with nuclear holocaust no longer a spectre of the imagination, but a tangible real horror heading inexorably towards them. It was as if the preparations they were making could, somehow, divert the horror, not merely reduce its effect. Inside each of them the conviction grew that if they could succeed in completing their preparation in time, the horror itself would be defeated. It was inevitable that one of the speakers in Hyde Park, standing at the corner on an improvised platform, should be told about the Bill Tilsen broadcast. He'd been haranguing the crowd with his usual speech though, since this wasn't the tourist Sunday morning social occasion, there were few to hear him. He'd just come to the bit where he told the Government of their mistake in not realizing that black people all breed like rabbits and that within a few years the towns of England would be all black with the few whites living in ghettos, when a bored-looking ginger-haired man wearing the tweeds of a retired army officer shouted, "What about this broadcast on MBC, that an atom bomb is heading for London, and will be here tonight!" "Rubbish," a woman shouted, "Leonard Westwood said it was. It's all a stunt." "A stunt today, a reality tomorrow, my friends," Brian Bradbury shouted from the platform. "We're all being manipulated, that's what it is. Blacks today, atom bombs tomorrow. I don't care, let 'em drop as many atom bombs as they like, because the only thing you'll hit in London is blacks, and the sooner we wipe them out the better!" The young police constable standing quietly a few yards away, maintaining a 'low profile' as the books he read on political theory said, wondered if he should do anything. This was his first duty at Speaker's Corner. "They can say anything they like," the sergeant had said when he'd briefed him, 'just so long as they don't incite anyone to commit a crime or a felony. He drew out his radio. "Fellow here's talking about an atom bomb going to be dropped on London in a few hours, sergeant," he said. "Something about a broadcast on MBC?" "It was all a hoax," the sergeant's voice said. "Some programme they're doing tonight with Leonard Westwood about freedom of the press. Keep your eyes open for pickpockets. That's why you're there, lad!" A group of people had split themselves from the speaker and were talking angrily among themselves. The constable moved closer to try to overhear what they were saying. He caught the phrase, "We should go down to Whitehall, see what's happening." "It could be true, you never know!" "They never tell us anything, my usual bus was cancelled today, without a word of apology." The constable saw them start moving as a crowd, heading down the pathway through the Park. Inciting a riot? Causing an affray? He moved towards the stragglers. "Come along, now," he said severely, 'break it up, come along, break it up. " The crowd that had been moving slowly, each person thinking and walking independently, suddenly coalesced into a solid whole. Us against them. Police are them. The common man, us! "Free country, mate," a woman said. "We can walk down to Whitehall if we've a mind, see for ourselves what's going on." "Go on, tell him, missis, that it's still not a police state!" Brian Bradbury called from the platform. "Tell him he'd do better spending his time in Netting Hill Gate, instead of harassing us all down here!" He jumped off the platform. Time he was getting home for his tea, anyway, before the office crowds left. He might as well walk down that way, and go across Westminster Bridge. He looked at his watch, a quarter to four. Just nice time to get home, have his tea, watch the television for an hour or two then out to the pub. "Come on," he shouted, 'let's get down to Whitehall and see what's happening. Stir them up a bit in their offices." None of his listeners had anything better to do. What had started as an innocent enquiry had suddenly become a freedom march! The retired major looked about him. Oh, my dear! He hadn't intended anything like this when he'd asked about the broadcast, he'd merely been bored by the speaker going on and on about blacks, though he agreed with his diagnosis that they were ruining the country and should all be sent back whence they came. He turned guildly, and began to saunter northwards. The policeman had reacted to the speaker's last sentence. Stir them up a bit in their offices. That was definitely inciting a riot, wasn't it? He moved in towards the speaker whose eyes gleamed when he saw him coming. The young copper was going to feel his collar, would you believe it? Well, that'd be a bit of a giggle, wouldn't it? "Look," he shouted, 'the copper's coming at me. I tell you, it's a police state! Get down there to Whitehall, tell 'em I've been brutalized by a police thug!" The policeman realized he was making a mistake but now he was committed. He felt himself being jostled. Oh God, they'd got behind him. He reached behind to draw his truncheon, and someone yelled, "Watch it, the copper's got a gun!" He felt someone kick the back of his knee and stumbled forwards, half-falling. He clutched at the shoulders of the man in front of him, and the man turned angrily. Now someone had kicked him in the other knee and he was definitely going down. Don't let them kick my face, he prayed as he felt himself sprawling towards the concrete. He heard the speaker shout, "Leave him. Let's get down to Whitehall." Above all, he didn't want to be late for his tea. He looked around and saw that the phenomenon peculiar to central London had happened once again. The gathering seemed to have swelled by some strange osmosis of people to twice its former size, and what had been a vague and disinterested group of people had turned into a crowd, an entity, a body without a head. "Come on," he said, '/'// lead the way." The Project Director of the Bobcat missile looked round the long oval table at which his team sat, scratch pads in front of them. The room was underground, lined with white formica-covered walls; he liked to think of it as their 'think- tank', since it contained nothing to distract the eye, to set the mind wandering over familiar subjects. Even the lighting was concealed, its soft glow diffused across the deliberately white surfaces of the chairs and the table. The scratch pads and the colour of people's clothing provided the only differences in texture; if he'd had his way they'd have worn identical white jump-suits and have used white paper. But that, perhaps, would be pushing them too far. Les Regan ran his fingers through the stubble of his bristly, crew-cut hair and adjusted the steel-rimmed glasses on his nose. "That's the deal, then. We boost the fuel input by two hundred per cent, reduce the payload accordingly. We use orbit interlock, and go chasing. Now, I'd like to hear a few opinions." He had devised a radical solution to the Medusa problem. Triple the fuel in a Bobcat missile by reducing its explosive content, and then fire it at the Medusa along the orbit they'd received from London. The Bobcat was an intercontinental ballistic missile, racked in Nebraska and ready to fire within two minutes. Theoretically, it should catch the Medusa within one hour, over the Pacific Ocean. Minnie was the first to speak, as always. "Jeez, Chief, I mean, like it would be wrong to think we can extrapolate just like that. That three times the fuel means twice the distance plus twice the speed. We'd have to feed that into Big Sam, see what he says." Big Sam was their almost-human computer, fed with every scrap of information they had about the Bobcat missile. Big Sam could ingest information at a rate of millions of bytes a second, could take in a question, and try every possible answer before you could blink an eye. "I already gave it to Big Sam," Les Regan told her curtly. "You don't think I'd come in here half-assed with a thing like this. Taking a strike-time of now plus sixty zero zero, we'd need to send the Bobcat twice its Nebraska-Moscow distance. And it would need an acceleration potential of 205 per cent, I have a printout of the optimum flight path." Don Passimore was shaking his head. He was technical controller and his expression clearly showed his opinion. "With that fuel load, Les, we'd be lucky to get a launch. My best guess is that the lateral thrust at take-off minus point two would blow the launch-pad to hell." "Big Sam says otherwise," Les Regan said firmly. He'd known he was going to have a hell of a job to push this thing through. Okay, so he was shaving a few corners, but he just had to get that damned Bobcat up into the sky, to chase the Medusa. With the President threatening to cut off the Bobcat Programme, to replace it with augmented Minutemen, he just had to have a Bobcat success. Dammit, this was his first project, his first shot at the directorial big-time. He had to make that Bobcat such a fucking hero missile they'd never dare abandon it. "Look, Don, despite the expense we gave you a two hundred per cent average on all your building specs. Big Sam says you'll only use a tenth of your ultimate reserve." He turned to look at Chester, the navigation expert. "Chester, you can chase that goddam Medusa, can't you? With the program we've taken from MacKlin in London." "Assuming the Medusa is staying in that elliptical orbit, we can program the Bobcat to it in five minutes," Chester said. "When would you go into orbit interlock?" At that phase, the Bobcat would lock itself on to the Medusa's orbit, and would require no more steering from the Bobcat team; it would become the most deadly form of missile, a selfhoming counter-strike bomb capable of reducing the Medusa to fragments when its proximity-fuse exploded its warhead. "We'd leave that to Big Sam. When the signal strength bouncing back from the Medusa became stronger than our signal strength from home base, we'd let it take over. No problems." Les Regan had deliberately left Chester to last; he knew Chester was always optimistic, his no problems had become his catch-phrase signature. "So that's it, you guys," Les said. "Like Chester says, no problems. So let's get at it, huh?" They left the think-tank and went along the corridor to the Bobcat Command Centre, a smaller version of the film- set for Star Wars though they had no Sir Alee Guinness with laser beam swords. Les put himself on line to Washington. "We've put the Bobcat through Big Sam," he said, 'and there's no reason it shouldn't work as I told you when I phoned. So, we're gonna do it. I'd figure strike-time to be sixty-five zero zero minutes from now." The camouflage covers rolled smoothly back on the top of the Bobcat underground pit. The service engineer, wearing his aluminium-coated asbestos uniform moved forward with the fuel feed pipeline of corrugated stainless steel, and locked it into position on the side of the missile's projector base. When the pipe was locked home, the service manager, sitting at his mini-console within sight of the missile's base, but protected from it by a three-feet-thick screen of specially toughened plastic-and-glass biscuit, waited until the engineer was out of the pit then tested the fuel connection. It gave him a red light which changed to green when he pressed a button. "We have fuel connection," he said. The fuel fed through the pipeline was a mixture of liquid oxygen, inert liquid helium to control bum-rate, and liquefied stabilized tri ammonium per chlorate the combustible material that would provide the air expansion to give the mammoth thrust when, mixed with the oxygen and helium, it passed across the network of heated platinum wires that acted as instant catalyst to the chemical reaction. The base of the Bobcat's propulsor, that would be ejected once the Bobcat had left the earth's atmosphere, began to mist over as the refrigerated liquefied gases cooled the aluminium skin to minus 150 degrees centigrade, despite the insulation they'd installed. A service engineer at the top of the gantry, working behind a lead screen and using artificial tongs as deftly as if they were his own fingers, slowly inserted the rods of fission material into the nose-cone, before screwing back the thick lead/ osmium plugs. He watched what he was doing through a closed-circuit television camera, knowing the picture was also being seen in the Bobcat Command Centre. A nuclear reaction needs three components: it needs a bulk of fissionable material, a set of neutron-generating energizers, and a detonator, to incite the energizers. He fed in the energizers, again in the form of cast rods, each less than a pencil in thickness. The detonator, a wafer less than a sixteenth of an inch thick, and an inch in diameter, went into its designed slot last of all. He always thought this part of the operation was like slipping a coin into a juke box to get your favourite tune. "All systems go," Les Regan said quietly when the wafer had gone in and the cover had been locked into position. The Bobcat was ready to fly, ready to explode when it arrived within a hundred yards of its target, ready to blast the Medusa baby to hell. Cahail was on line and had watched everything on his own console in Washington. The President was on line, though he could only hear what was being said. There hadn't been time to connect him visually. The British Prime Minister was on line, and heard the flat American voice. The Privy Council had gathered round him. "It's all systems go," he said quietly, covering the mouthpiece of the telephone with his hand. "All we can do now," he said, 'is pray." * * * Paul had gone to London University and was sitting with Walter MacKlin and Peggy Kershaw in the underground library annex. The computers were silent, their lights flickering only fitfully as they stirred like slumbering giants. Walter MacKlin had put the line feed on to a loudspeaker; they could hear the American, Les Regan, breathing against a background of quieter voices all feeding launch information into the system. Chairman Chemenko and Assistant Chairman Kaiko were also on line, receiving a feed from the Command Control at Novosibirsk. "What are we going to do with Barankov, Kaiko?" Chernenko asked. "I don't know, Comrade Chairman," Kaiko said, impatient with the old man for breaking into his thoughts at such a moment. All of them heard the voice of the President of the United States. "You have my permission to start, Mr. Regan," he said, 'and may God be with you and watch over all your endeavours." Les Regan swallowed deeply. Sure, he'd cut a few corners . He'd falsified a few of Big Sam's answers, stretched a point here and there. But the Bobcat should still work, would still work. "Come home, you mother," he said under his breath and then muttered his favourite gambling incantation. "Baby needs new shoes." He pressed the button that signified the start of the program, the beginning of countdown for the launch of the Bobcat missile that was going to smash the Medusa out of the sky and Les Regan into the top job he so desperately wanted. "All systems go," he said, though no one was listening to him any more. They were all concerned with getting that monstrous object off the ground. Ground launch system, go. They all heard the initial rumble, saw the beginning of the vapour cloud from the base of the capsule at the bottom of the missile itself. They all felt the rumble as the capsule exerted all its thrust energies upwards. Don Passimore felt the sweat break out on his forehead despite the air-conditioning. This part of the operation was his responsibility, and he knew damned well, no matter what Big Sam and Les Regan told him, that the Bobcat was over fuelled He knew damned well that the base of the launch pad didn't, couldn't, contain the kind of strengthening needed for a shot like that. They all watched the side supports begin to fall away, and now the missile was held vertical only by the thinnest aluminium rods that would shear the minute lift-off began under the lateral cutting charge built into them. Lift-off should have come, they all knew that. It hadn't. The explosive force being generated inside that pit was mounting rapidly. No concrete on earth, however thick, however reinforced, could stand such a pressure. "It's going to blow," Don Passimore said, the pitch of his voice rising. "I know damned well it's going to blow." The quiet voice of the man reading off the thrust parameters was an obbligato behind the hysteria. The force beneath that projector, the sheer propulsive power, was already 150 per cent more than it should have been and yet the Bobcat stayed there, the excessive weight of its extra fuel the final straw that could break the camel's back. "It's going to blow!" Don Passimore shrieked, completely losing his self-possession. Les Regan leaned forward. The abort decision was his and his alone. He'd need to disarm the Bobcat completely; if it blew with its present armament, the whole complex would be devastated, blasted and corrupted by fission material, laid waste by nuclear fallout. He watched one feedback panel intently. Distortion factor. The minute the Bobcat itself began to distort, he'd abort the mission. It was holding stable. The force had now reached 170 per cent more than it should have been, and the warning lights had all clicked on. "Abort, for chris sake abort," Don Passimore shrieked, but his wasn't the voice they were listening for, and Les Regan was silent. per cent over, Big Sam had predicted before Les Regan had muzzled him. Les watched the figure creep up, maintaining an eye on the distortion factor, seeing it was still okay. "Come on, you mother," Les Regan said silently. ^Baby needs new shoes." Big Sam was on the button. The Bobcat launched at exactly 195. "It's a go-er, it's okay, we have lift-off," Les Regan said, flipping on his external microphone. Thank God nobody had heard Don Passimore shrieking. Shit, Les was going to get rid of Don just as soon as he could, let the mother-fucker go. "Gentlemen, we have lift-off," he said. "The flight looks good. We have an ETA of five nine zero five seconds, fifty- nine point zero five minutes, to contact." "Well done," the President of the United States said. The Prime Minister said, "Lift-off," to the Privy Council members. They all began to clap. Paul looked at Walter MacKlin. "No smiling face, Walter?" he asked. Walker shook his head. "I'll start to cheer when it hits the Medusa," he said. Task Force One of the SAS searched each office of MBC, causing outrage and pandemonium, but could find no trace of Bill Tilsen. The leader of the detachment, Major Rodney Plaistow ME, finally had to admit defeat, and withdraw his men. They mounted their powerful BMW 500ccs twin motorbikes, two to a machine, and roared away along the Marylebone Road to await their next assignment in the building in the Edgware Road, thought by most passersby to be a fire-station. "Next time," he said to Wilkins to whom he reported, 'try to give us more notice. I gather we missed this fellow Tilsen by only a minute." The Director General of the BBC Sir Waltham Amies, the Chairman of ITN, Lord Firken, and the Chairman of Independent Radio News, Rex Strutton, were shown into Paul Graham's Ministry of Defence office. He felt happier now that Angela Steadman was with him again, more competent to face such a barrage of talent. All the three men across from him had been concerned with broadcasting. Waltham Amies had been one of the powerful interrogators of the late sixties news magazine programmes and had reduced many an interviewee to apoplexy and near tears. His verbal battles with the more avaricious business tycoons who had taken strangleholds on the catering and convenience foods industries, on property development and hotel ownership, were famous in the annals of broadcasting. Lord Firken, as Richard Washington, had been politer, suaver, more civilized, but just as deadly. Rex Strutton had been a hard-hitting reporter who had brought North Country directness to his programmes. His speciality had been that somehow he could induce people in the face of his seeming innocence to say things they had no intention of saying, to reveal things about themselves they thought they wanted to keep secret. He was perhaps most remembered for his interview with the foot baller who had swaggered into the studio with his new multimillion pound contract saying British football was dead, and left the studio in tears, after revealing a history of alcoholism and sexual inadequacy far different from the Superman macho image he had so successfully projected over the years. Sir Waltham Amies was the first to speak. "I've been asked to open the batting," he said. "Frankly, we're not very happy with your decision not to permit us to broadcast the news of the Medusa satellite thing, and wonder if, perhaps, there might not be room for discussion and negotiation?" "This Emergency Powers Act of 1978," Rex Strutton said bluntly. "Just how legal is it?" "We hate to bring up that old chestnut, duty to the public," Lord Firken said, 'but we're not merely concerned with informing people for information's sake. We're thinking of saving a large number of human lives." They'd laid it out along a broad front deliberately. Legality of the Emergency Powers Act, saving lives, discussion and negotiation. Rex Strutton expanded the subject even further. "Some of us are wondering just what penalties you could impose if we were to ignore the Act? If the story of the Medusa is true, you could hardly clap us in gaol, could you, since we would most likely empty the gaols when the news was known. If we were to go ahead and broadcast the story, so that the maximum number of people would have the chance of getting out of the immediate danger area, what could you do?" The answer was, of course, nothing and they all knew it. Paul looked at each one of them in turn, trying to fix a relationship with each one of them as individuals. "Let me answer your last point first," he said. "If you were to broadcast the news I could, as you say, do nothing. There are many things I could have done, but I chose not to do them. The Emergency Powers Act, which I assure you is totally legal, gives me the authority to take over the running of all broadcasting media in the country, by armed force if necessary. I could have sent troops into each of your stations to take them over; I could have seized your transmitters. But I chose to do none of these things. I wanted broadcasting to continue quite normally during this interim period. Gentlemen, there is much to be done and we have teams of people doing it right now, up and down the country. The problem is twofold. We have to protect as many people as we can but not on a random basis. We have to protect the people who will best be able to help get this country on its feet again after the bomb explodes." "Your survivor elite?" Rex Strutton said. "We know you've nominated certain people as survivors." "Yes, my elite. But, I assure you, only mine in the sense that someone had to make decisions and I was the man entrusted with the task and empowered to do it. Believe me, I didn't enjoy it. How could I when I knew that every one I didn't choose was being condemned possibly to death?" "I think we're prepared to concede the need of a survivor elite, as Rex put it," Lord Firken said. "It must have been a rotten job and I'm sure we all sympathize with you. I trust you have them all safely tucked away somewhere underground?" "Yes," Paul said. "Good! Now we can get down to the matter in hand!" Paul saw at once what Lord Firken had done in his urbane way. He'd taken Paul's principal point, about the eventual survival of the country, and had demolished it neatly in one. Now that Paul had succeeded in getting his survivor elite safely out of the way, now that the eventual survival of the country seemed to have been assured, it was perhaps time to consider the plight of the non-elite, the ordinary man-in the-street? "You do concede that point?" Lord Firken said. "We must try, in all humanity, to do something for the ordinary chaps and their families." This one thought had given Paul nightmares over the last two years. "If you can devise any feasible plan," he said, 'to move the population of London into a safe place within the few hours that remain to us, I would be more than happy to use all the resources at my disposal to put it into operation. We have many examples of what happens if a large crowd of people tries to move too quickly. I need hardly remind you of the football stand disaster, of the scenes in Saigon when they were trying to take out the remaining people in the face of the oncoming enemy. Twelve million people are living within the first blast area. Imagine what will happen when those twelve million people try to leave that area, all at once\ Do you think you could use your facilities to persuade the man-in-the-street to wait his turn?" "I think that would greatly overestimate the power of broadcasting," Sir Waltham Amies said. "But surely we have a duty to try?" "Knowing for certain that you will kill possibly half the people?" Paul said. "Imagine the scenes, gentlemen. Imagine the riots, imagine all the weak and elderly, all the innocent children who will inevitably be trampled beneath the feet of the mob. If you try to persuade the people to leave London in some sort of organized, orderly manner, you'll be assuring only the survival of the strongest, the craftiest, the most violent and vicious. Is that the sort of " survivor" you want to create? The man who can club his way on to the train, who can batter the weaker people around him to secure a seat in a bus, who can kill anyone who stands between him and lifesaving transport?" They were silent, since none of them lacked imagination. All of them had witnessed such scenes at one time or another. They remembered the rule of the mob in American riots, in French student scenes, in Italy, in black Africa and the Caribbean. "I still think it might be possible to make it work," Rex Strutton said slowly. "It would take a lot of careful thought, careful programming." They all knew it wouldn't work, that not all the careful programming in the world will succeed if the listener is no longer listening, if the viewer is no longer viewing, but fighting his way on to a bus, a train, a car, a lorry, anything to carry him safely away from the descending horror of death. "Gentlemen, I have many other things to do," Paul said quietly. "Thank you for coming to see me. I hope you will all be able to make your way to safety." He shook hands with each of them in turn. "You're a brave man, Minister," Rex Strutton said as they left. Sergei Bustovsky had completed his second series of checks and turned to Anna Firdova, who had quietly been supervising the maintenance of the life-support systems within the Medusa, monitoring heartbeats, pulse rates and blood pressure. She'd noted that both of them were beginning to show small levels of protein in their urine output, but they were not yet of dangerous proportions and she knew they could medically be reduced to normal. She strove desperately to keep her mind filled with her routine monitoring tasks while Sergei did his calculations; she knew she could not support much thinking about their present dilemma and the uncertainty about their destination, if any. "I have to tell you the truth, Anna," he said. "Without a point of reference and a computer program with which to develop our variations from it, I can't tell you what our course might be. We could be in a circular orbit around the earth; we could be heading on a random ellipse; I just can't tell." His face crooked into a smile. "One thing I can guarantee, Anna, if it's any help to you. We aren't heading for the moon!" "I don't want to die," Anna said quietly. "I know we take risks in the space programme, but I could only have agreed to take part in it if I truly believed the risks had been minimized by scientific and technical planning." "None of us wants to die, Anna," he said. "But if I had the option, I'd prefer to go in one big bang, rather than linger, for example, for years with cancer." "I don't want to die," Anna repeated determinedly. "Get us out of here, somehow, Sergei. You're the computer and navigation expert. Somehow, get us out of here." "I'll try, Anna," he promised as he turned back to the limp and lifeless computer on which both their lives depended. Chapter Ten. Arthur Altaian tried to soothe his nervous wife who was sitting in the back seat with the twins. "We'll never make it, Arthur," she said. "We'll make it, Molly', he said. "Once we fill up with petrol." The queue at the petrol station extended for twenty yards, bumper to bumper. Each time a car was filled, the others moved grimly forward, leaving no space between them for queue jumpers. Arthur looked at the gauge; the car was a quarter-full, if the gauge could be relied on, but sometimes, he knew, it registered too much and a couple of times he'd run out. "I wish you'd let me bring some more things," Molly said sorrowfully. "I've left so much stuff behind." "You won't be bothered about things when the Medusa comes down." "If it comes down. You heard what Sir Leonard Westwood said. It's all a stunt to get you to listen to the radio tonight. You know they're always doing stunts like that." "Molly, we've gone over this again and again. All right, it might be a stunt, but you know I had a word with Alt and his son works there, and Alf says it isn't a stunt. Else why would Alf be on a train at this very moment?" "It's all right for him, a pensioner." "I don't see what difference that makes," Arthur said impatiently. "Look at that bugger, in the Fiesta." A silver-grey Fiesta had driven along the edge of the pavement, past the line of waiting cars. Everyone was hooting horns at him but he took no notice. When the car at the pump moved off, he rammed the Fiesta in gear, revved like a racing driver and shot his nose in front of the next car in line. He leaped from the car. "Nay, you'll have to take your turn," the attendant said, 'like the rest of them." The Fiesta driver, a young man heavily-built and aggressive, reached into his pocket and produced a wad of notes an inch or more thick. He peeled a half a dozen or so off without looking at them, and stuck them into the attendant's top pocket "Give us a fill!" he said. "Come on." One look at his face and the attendant was in no condition to refuse, money or not. He put the hose pipe into the Fiesta's petrol tank. The man next in line howled angrily and leaped from his car. "Here," he said, 'take your turn like the rest of us. Some of us have been waiting forty minutes!" He dashed to the back of the Fiesta and tried to pull the hose pipe from the car, despite the fact that it was gushing petrol. The Fiesta owner grabbed his wrist and twisted and he let out an anguished howl of pain as he staggered back. "Piss off!" the Fiesta owner said quietly, such menace in his voice that no one wanted to tangle with him. "Oh come on, Arthur," Mollie said, 'let's get out of here. We can always get petrol later on." Bobbie, one of the twins, chose at that moment to set up a howl. "Want to go home," he said, 'want to get my teddy." "Oh, shut up, the pair of you," Arthur said savagely as he engaged the gear and turned the car out of the queue, on to the road. He had to wait five minutes before he could nose out into the thickened stream of traffic. "We ought to have sent Mum a telegram," Molly said. "We can't just dump ourselves and the kids on her without sending a telegram or something. You know how much she likes a warning." "She'll just have to bloody lump it," Arthur said, crawling along the road at around ten miles an hour, braking and accelerating to keep in the line of cars edging along the Goldhawk Road. He'd gone about half a mile when the Fiesta came roaring past, squeezing through the centre of the lanes of cars, dodging and edging its way through in the expert hands of its driver. As it flashed past, Arthur saw two elderly people cowering down on the back seat, obviously scared to watch the traffic. In some curious way he forgave the driver all his aggression. "He's taking his mum and dad out of it," he said. "Good luck to him!" A large van was parked at the side of the road, and the cars had to take turns to get into single file to pass it. Arthur, not the aggressive sort, waved the car on his left through the gap; other cars followed, taking their chances and Arthur was stranded half in and half out, with the line of cars behind him all blowing their horns, waving at him to push out the nose of his car, cut the stream off, and get going. He saw the minuscule gap and edged his nose into it so that he blocked the path of the traffic that was trying to stream by. Then he accelerated to put himself past the lorry, and his engine cut. He'd run out of petrol. "Damn!" he said, 'damn, damn, damn. We're out of petrol. You should have let me stop back there, Molly." "Go on!" she said, 'blame me. It's always my fault, isn't it?" Hearing the angry note in their voices the twins started to cry. "You can bloody well shut up!" he said, but their howls and sobs grew louder. The cars behind were blowing their horns at him since he was blocking two streams of traffic. A man about ten cars behind, seeing there was a stalled car ahead, pulled his nose out, went the wrong way round a bollard, and came racing up the wrong side of the road. Another car followed him. A man stepped off the pavement to see what was going wrong and the racing car hit him, throwing him like a bowling ball along the ground. The racing driver braked; the car behind ran into him and pushed him along the road into the side of Arthur's car, which smashed against the back corner of the lorry. A car that had been heading in the opposite direction coming towards them, saw the body of the man sprawling along the ground and he, too, braked and tried to swerve. A light van, running along behind him, couldn't brake in time and smashed into the back of him, driving him forward into the front of the parked van. Arthur dimly heard the smashing metal, the screams of brakes, the shouts and yells all about him. He managed to open one eye and saw the bloodied form of his wife half hanging over the back of the passenger seat with blood running out of her mouth. He heard the men yelling, "Get him out, get him out', but he fell unconscious again before they could open the door. Now people were running in all directions and the road was completely blocked from side to side. One car, trying to avoid the mass of jammed metal, had mounted the pavement and had run into a shop window. When the explosion of petrol came, it did so with devastating force, shattering every window for thirty yards. People were sprayed with burning petrol, with jagged-edged pieces of metal. A second car caught fire, and then blew a giant puff-ball of searing yellow and red flame. "Get down," people were shouting, 'get back, get down." The people jammed in the cars were helpless since the cars were so close together they couldn't open the door to get out. The explosion caused a chain reaction as flaming petrol vapour ran along the ground, igniting oil spills and vapour from other tanks. The first shock-wave was followed by others, by the horrible cries of people being incinerated alive in burning cars, hammering at windows and doors to try to get out. A shop interior caught fire suddenly, and billowing smoke enveloped the street outside, making it impossible to see the still-burning corpses lying on the side of the road in grotesque attitudes of violent death. The first police car arrived at the edges of the scene within a minute; the driver took one look and put out an all- stations, all-assistance alarm that would bring fire engines, ambulances, the heavy recovery squad, the gas and electricity emergency squads, the salvage teams. Goldhawk Road, one of the two main arteries from Shepherd's Bush Green heading west, was effectively blocked. It would take hours of intensive and heavy labour to clear it. The twenty-two immediate casualties included Arthur Altman, his wife, Molly, and their twins, Bobbie and Francie. The potential future victims could run into hundreds of thousands. "What do you mean, Government orders?" the storekeeper said. He'd been sitting in his box waiting for Haverford to come back with the lorry load of Heinz beans when the door at the top of the ramp had opened and this troop of soldiers had come in. The officer, a pipsqueak second lieutenant I've shit better, the storekeeper told himself had come poncing down the side of the ramp. "My man, we're bringing some materials in here," he'd said. "You're doing what?" the storekeeper had said. "I'm waiting for a load of beans, don't tell me they're sending 'em under Army escort." "Government orders," the second lieutenant had said. The storekeeper picked up his telephone, opened a well- thumbed notebook and found a number. "We'll have to see what Mr. Preston says about your Government orders," he said ponderously. "Nothing and nobody comes into here, nor goes out, without Mr. Preston's say-so!" He'd put the phone to his ear while he thumbed through the book. "I'm trying to get a line, Miss.," he said into it. "Ah, sorry, Mr. Preston. Funny, I was just trying to ring you. Army? Yes, they're here now. If you say so, Mr. Preston, yes, you're the boss, Mr. Preston." He put down the telephone. "That," he said slowly, 'was Mr. Preston. Apparently your people have already been having a word. It is all right for you to proceed." He scratched his head. Really, what was the world coming to, when the Army could go anywhere they pleased, when even Mr. Preston had to bow down to them? He hobbled up the ramp. "Did my share," he said, 'but you had to be a man to be in the Army in them days. Afore you were born , I reckon. When we were fighting a war. None of this peacetime cushy number! Twice wounded, I was." "They didn't hit your tongue, apparently," the second lieutenant said. He was used to wartime old soldiers telling their deeds of bravery. To hear them talk they'd all been front-line commandos. The store man sniffed, reached up and grabbed the knot on the end of a rope. When he pulled it, the heavy steel door rolled upwards on its counterweights. "Blimey!" he said. There were three army lorries outside, and two civilian Bedfords. Twenty soldiers were lined up neatly in twos. A sergeant sprang to attention when he saw the officer, and saluted. "All present and correct, Sir," he shouted. The officer returned his salute. "Right, Sergeant," he said, 'fall them out and get them off the road in here while I go down and make a recce." The officer walked down the ramp with the store man into the large basement storehouse beneath the vast supermarket in City Road. He noticed the reinforced concrete pillars which had to support the five-storey building above them. Half the area was filled with stacks of boxes on pallets, each box doubtless containing tins and packets of food and other grocery items. There was a cage at the far end of the vast underground room. "What's in there?" he asked. "Cigarettes and booze. Only me and Mr. Preston has the key to that store." The officer saw the pallet trucks that were being driven about the concrete floor. At the far end, next to the cage, was a lift with a floor area fifteen feet by ten. The pallet truck drivers were going in and out of the lift with their burdens, while a man standing beside the lift, wearing a brown coat, was checking from a list he carried on a clipboard. "Day and night," the storekeeper said. "Stacking the shelves. You'd be surprised how much people are spending, too much money about, if you ask me." "I didn't," the officer said, distracted by the store man constant chatter. He turned and went rapidly back outside. "The lorries can drive straight in, Sergeant," he said, 'and we can off load down there. I saw three pallet trucks; there may be more." The vast storeroom had been well designed, with wide corridors between the stacks of boxes so that the pallet trucks had ample room to turn with their loads. The officer saw that the store man had gone to the far end and was talking with the checker by the lift. Good, that would save him time in explanation. The three pallet truck drivers had gathered round them, and they too were being told that the Army were coming in with the consent of God, Mr. Preston, in his office above. The lift started to rise and the officer beckoned to the pallet truck drivers. They walked across the floor towards him while he looked around, assessing the task. When they arrived, they stood in an arc in front of him, waiting for him to speak. "I'm here with Government sanction," he said, 'to do a specific job. I'd like you to help me if you will, but if you'd prefer for any reason not to, then I'll understand. We shall simply take over your trucks." "What's it all about. Lieutenant?" one of them asked. "I'm not at liberty to tell you that," he said. "We're going to construct a shelter down here, as quickly as we can. You can think of it as an exercise. Were any of you in the forces?" "We all were," the same man said. "I was in Korea. These two were in Germany. All Army. I was a corporal in REME." "Good. Well, think of this as an Army scheme; you all went on schemes, I suppose?" "Yes." "Well, the objective of this scheme is to build a shelter in here as quickly as we can to house as many people as possible. It has to be bomb and blast "Christ, don't tell me the Russians have started World War Three, Lieutenant," the second driver said. "I always said they were barmy ever since I did guard duty at Spandau." "No, they haven't started World War Three. It's just a scheme," the lieutenant said, smiling, 'but I'd like you to treat it as seriously as if the Russians had started World War Three." "It'll make a change from humping baked beans about," he said. "Just tell us what you want us to do. By the way, I'm Claude, would you believe it, he's Frederick but we call him Freddie, and this is Lloyd." Acting on instinct, the lieutenant held out his hand and each shook it solemnly in turn. "I think we're going to get on all right," he said. "Just one thing, if we run over your normal hours, I'd be pleased if you could go on working until we've finished. You'll get double time for any overtime." "The union says time and a quarter," Lloyd said. "That'll do for me." "You can always call it danger money," Claude said, smiling. "You know how cack-handed some of these squad dies are." Danny Probert walked across to Paul's desk, a sheet of paper in his hand. "Goldhawk Road is closed," he said, 'and I've drawn up a traffic density chart for all the other roads heading west." "What is the latest figure on the Goldhawk Road casualties?" Paul asked grimly. "Twenty-five dead, another seventeen burned or maimed beyond hope, and thirty-one being admitted to hospital. We've already choked the casualty effort of three hospitals. We've had to bring some of them back into Central London for treatment." Thanks, Danny," Paul said. "Keep me informed, will you?" Paul was thinking hard. It was inevitable that they would have many casualties on the road, and that the hospitals, even if the staff remained on duty, would not be able to cope with even a small fraction of them. He'd expected there would be many problems as soon as people took to the road in vast quantities; emergency plans called for the roads to be cleared as quickly as possible, and all casualties left somewhere nearby, but he knew that to invoke what would seem to many to be such an inhuman procedure too early would inevitably add to the great panic. He was like a man watching the dam begin to burst, knowing the sheer weight of the water behind it would inundate everything that lay in its path. He'd already ordered police and Army helicopters into the air and was receiving minute-by-minute checks on the state of the roads leading out of London to the west, while Danny Probert was receiving ground reports. He'd received reports that the railway stations were slowly being strangled by the numbers of people in them, even Euston and King's Cross that fed the north. Victoria Coach Station, apparently, was a shambles. Every stop of the Green Line buses was jammed by people waiting for the normal service buses to arrive. He saw Danny Probert coming again. Danny could easily communicate with him by telephone, but the look on his face meant he had news he felt he ought to deliver personally. "I've just received this from Paddington station," he said. The replacement ticket collector on the barrier at Paddington Station used his intercom to talk to the station manager. His Indian voice was shrill and excited, and the station manager couldn't at first understand him. "You've got to send me some more help, Master. More help I am needing." The station manager put down his cup of tea and went out into the concourse, staggered by what he saw. Four o'clock on a mid-week day, and the station was already full. And not a holiday, either. How could that be? He made his way through the throng towards the Bristol platform, where All Masoor was working, and immediately saw the reason for his panic. The crowd outside the gate was absolutely solid. All had drawn the barrier part way across and had secured it with the chain, so that only one person could go through at a time. Each person seemed to be carrying at least two suitcases, plus bags, rucksacks, perambulators, push chairs One person was even wheeling a home-made wooden cart about four feet long and a couple of feet deep, piled high with luggage. "You can't bring that thing through here," All was saying. "No, sir, not permitted to bring it on the train without a ticket of permission." The cart had blocked the entrance and people were muttering loudly and angrily. The station master forced his way through until he reached the front. He could see the platform was already crowded; all those people couldn't possibly ride on the Bristol eight-coacher. "Shut the gate, All," he said. Now the muttering turned into a menacing growl. The station master looked round at the angry faces, but he was not a man to be cowed easily. "You heard me!" he said decisively. "Shut the gate. The rest of you will have to wait for the five-ten. Platform thirteen. The five-ten." He looked over the heads of the crowd and saw the railway police thrusting their way across the concourse. Thank God, their uniforms would help to control the crowd, one of the ugliest he'd encountered. God, it was worse than a football excursion. He tried to reach into his pocket to bring out his radio to tell them to hold the train but at that second saw it at the end of the platform, moving slowly backwards. He knew he'd never forget the horror of the scene that followed and that he, helpless, was forced to watch. As soon as the train started along the platform, the crowd already on the platform started to push forward. Those at the edge of the platform reached in and opened doors. The doors sprang wide, and the people were pushed forward trying to scramble into the coaches. The first one fell, and was dragged by the door, his legs flailing like a scythe, chopping at the legs of other people, bringing them down. He knew people were being pushed under the coaches. The driver would already have applied the brake but the momentum would carry the train along. The people all round him were shouting, "That's the train, that's the Bristol train, we've got to get on it." Someone started a rhythmic heave, and a chanting grunt. "Huh, huh, huh." With each grunt the crowd pushed forwards. The people at the front could do nothing and were pressed against the steel of the barrier. "Huh, huh, huh." The chanting grunt went on as the solid mass of bodies pushed forward, relaxed, pushed forward again. The station master pressed himself backwards with All into the ticket collector's box, knowing he could do nothing. The police were in the outer fringes of the mob but they, too, could do nothing except heave at shoulders yanking people out, trying to pull the edges off the crowd. As they pulled, so other people rushed in to replace them and still that frightening wave of heaving power continued. Now the supports had started to go. The station master was shouting, but his words had no effect. A young boy at the front of the crowd had caught the bar across his throat and the crowd pushing from behind was throttling him. A woman's face went white and she shrieked from pain before the breath was crushed from her lungs and her ribs broke. The barrier was moving; nothing could have withstood that force and now the rhythmic movement took it a fraction of an inch further, further each time, until the station master knew it would go. He knew he was helpless to do anything effective, though both he and All were shouting with all their might trying to halt the crowd. He saw the station police were running as best they could through the crowded concourse; he saw the carnage on the platform as people fought to get on the now stationary train, clambering over bodies, grabbing people's collars to drag them back off the carriage steps. The barrier went with a loud crack and the people behind pushed forward. The ones in front stumbled over the broken tubes and rods and went down. He saw the broken end of a rod slowly being pushed through a man's chest, a woman's face being squashed into the wire mesh. "All," he said crying, "All." All was still shouting though he'd relapsed into his native tongue. The station master turned his horror-stricken eyes over the racing crowd streaming past him over the corpses on to the platform, and started to weep. But then the pain he'd been feeling in his chest suddenly exploded with an enormous violence; he felt the side of his face twitch; his eyes could no longer focus; his legs were rubber, and he felt himself falling forward into the waves of that monstrous maelstrom of people. Paul's face was ashen as he read the report. The Goldhawk Road disaster had been bad enough, but this, an interim, quoted two hundred or more dead, people lying on the line with their legs severed by the train, a barrier broken, children and women trampled. "They're all sitting on the train," Danny said, 'and refusing to get off. They found the body of the station master. A hundred policemen are in there, shoulder to shoulder, holding back the crowd. There are even people sitting on the roof of the coaches, squatting on the bumpers. The driver of the train, the shunting driver, is sitting on a bench at the end of the platform in total shock." Paul looked up. "Damn Bill Tilsen! Damn him to hell!" he said. "Now, I think we have to start the Green evacuation scheme." "Very good, Minister. I'll put it in hand immediately." Danny Probert called the headquarters of Rail Movements in the head office of British Transport. "How are your staff holding?" he said to Ivor Naughton. "We've lost one or two. This mess at Paddington, coming on top of the broadcast. We tried to keep it quiet but one of the staff went round telling everybody about it, and then skipped out. We've been trying the Ministry of Defence without avail." "So has everybody else. I'm afraid it is true, but that's for your ears alone. It hasn't gone on general release yet. Try the Green scheme, will you?" "You have a time for it, this Medusa thing, I mean?" "Twenty hundred hours." "Danny, I'll hang on as long as I can, but I'm no hero, you know." "I know, Ivor. But help us out, will you?" "As long as my nerve holds." "That's all we can ask." Ivor put down the phone and thought for a few moments. He'd had nightmares about the colour-coded plans for the mass evacuation of London. The movement of all trains is recorded automatically, and the result fed by line to the master computer board. Trains are all interdependent; it's no good trying to play with one at a time in the general movement pattern; the computer's agile brain is the only one big enough to tell instantly the effects of, for example, delaying the 5:07 into Paddington by ten minutes. At least fifty other trains would be affected throughout the whole area. Fortunately, they'd had two years in which to plan the data base and the program they would feed to the computer in the case of an emergency. They'd had to compile a list of possible emergencies since they'd had no way of knowing where and when disaster would strike. Each of the major stations had been colour-coded. Green signified "The West' and would immediately involve Paddington, Marylebone, Victoria and Charing Cross as major centres, with London Bridge, Euston and King's Cross as alternatives. All the lines of the formerly independent railways fortunately had been amalgamated by British Rail, and it was possible for any train leaving any station to be fed into the line network of any other station, provided the tracks could be cleared of other traffic. Ivor went along the corridor to the computer room, a duplicate of the one at the South Mimms centre of British Rail. Across one entire wall was a black glass screen on which tracks showed as fine coloured lines, each carrying pinpoints of light to indicate the location of individual trains on different sections. Thank God Sally Semple is on duty, he thought. She was much more open and direct, much less status-conscious than the chief of the section, who feared the number of women being brought in to Computer Operations. She looked across the room when he came in; something in his walk must have alerted her, and she came out of her moulded chair and hurried across the room towards him. He led her inconspicuously to one side where they wouldn't be immediately overheard. "You remember the colour-code programs, Sally," he said. She nodded. "Emergency?" "Yes." "That thing that was on MBC?" "Yes. Two of the relief programmers haven't turned up." "How are we for staff?" "We can manage, though I don't know how many I'll lose if we mount a colour-code data base and inaugurate a program. That'll give the game away." "It's the Green." "I didn't hear the broadcast but apparently he said London and the North would be wiped out. That means King's Cross, Euston, Broad Street, presumably Liverpool Street, Marylebone, Paddington. How long do we have?" "Eight o'clock tonight." "Well, that's a lot longer than we planned, isn't it? We reckoned we'd be lucky to get an hour." "Can you do it?" "I'll try. One of the two who hasn't turned up is Wainscott, the chief." She went back and sat at her console, a typewriter mounted in a white plastic bench top with a printout screen in front of it. She opened the book of instructions contained in the drawer, and read off a series of figures and letters which she typed on to her console. Emergency Green. She pressed a button which sent the instruction to every other printout screen in the room. The normal throb of conversation from the eight operators on duty was immediately stilled. Several turned round to look at Sally sitting at the master console. She nodded, to confirm what they'd seen looking along the line. Billy and Theresa got up and came across the platform towards her. She beckoned for them to resume their seats but they came on. "That broadcast ... it was right?" Billy asked shrilly. "Yes," Sally said. "You're not going to desert us, Billy, are you?" He wasn't much of a man but he was a damned good programmer. He'd devised most of the technical side of the Green. Now she knew he was living off the Earls Court Road, the female side of a gay pair. Poor devil wasn't much of a man, wasn't much of a human being, really. "You know, Billy, it's your program more than anybody else's." "I'm off," Theresa said. "That broadcast said that all of central London would be wiped out. They came on with that crap from Leonard Westwood; poor bugger was only speaking words they'd put into his mouth; he always was for the Establishment, anyway." If only Billy had had Theresa's aggressiveness, and if only Theresa had had Billy's delicacy, Sally thought, they could both have been a fine pair of human beings. As it was . "You'd be a big help to us, Theresa," she said. Damn it, she wasn't going to plead with anybody to get them to stay. Bert got up and joined them. Tve a missus and kids," he said. "So have Pete and Mike," Sally said gently, reminding him. "I got you this job, Bert." "Okay," he said, "I reckon I owe you an hour." "An hour would be a help." Bert sat down again, but Theresa and Billy both left, neither able to look back at the colleagues they were abandoning. Sally watched them go, then turned to look across at Sybil. Sybil had been the militant one when the colour-code program had been developed two years ago. "You don't catch me sitting around here when the Russians are going to drop a bomb," she'd said fiercely. She'd gone on to develop a program, a one-time, one-instruction, one- button instruction. "Press that," she'd said to Sally as acting Chief of Section, 'and we'll all be able to leave." It was a brilliant program but of course had no flexibility. The brilliance of Billy's program was that it needed an ever- diminishing number of operators, but still remained totally flexible until the last operator left. "I'll stay until stage four," Sybil said across the room. "Stage one, married persons with kids. Stage two, married persons without kids. Stage three, persons of breeding age. Stage four, me!" She'd had a growth in her womb a year back which, mercifully, had proved to be non-malignant. But they'd had to give her a hysterectomy to get rid of it. On their unofficial system of priorities, she'd be last to leave. Sally nodded. "Thanks," she said quietly. "I don't think I'm any braver than Billy when it comes to it." She bent her head over the console and punched the buttons that would bring the Green program into being, that would rack up the data and its attendant program. From now on, there would be no breathing space. Every train on the entire railways network would be considered, either stopped, or advanced. Every route would be altered. The trains that had been going up to Birmingham would find themselves looped round the north of London and shuffled off to the west. Trains that could make the triple journey, out of London, back into London, and out again, would be given priority. The computer would work out just how far the maximum distance station was and designate that as the last of the turn-round points. Those stations, and those sections of the line and its signalling system that could be operated electronically would receive their instructions by coded electrical signal, those that required manual operation would be given printout sheets or verbal telephone instructions. All the time the computer would be searching, calculating journey times, registering departure delays and making adjustments, opening sections of line and feeding several trains through it nose to tail, noting which trains needed time out for bunkering, for taking on fuel and water. The computer knew the location and extent of all the bunker stocks, all the rolling stock not at present being used. It would assemble units on sidings, shunt and couple them into complete trains ready to take passengers aboard. Most important, initially, it would stop all trains coming into London, bringing more people into the central danger area, holding them at safe distances, or diverting them out of the path of danger. People on trains heading down the central lines of London would suddenly find their trains diverted to the west, but stopped once they were out of the danger area and the people discharged on to platforms of strange stations. Sally could imagine the wails, "How on earth did we wind up in Didcot when we were on the Birmingham/ London train?" "Okay," she said into her console microphone, 'let's play trains. Let's put operation chaos into action." Les Regan had made his decision. "Prepare Bobcat Two," he said. "Don't let's leave anything to chance." Don Passimore immediately began to protest. "We got away with it last time, Les, but sure as hell you're not going to try the same thing twice and hope to get away with it?" Les gripped Don's arm and drew him to one side. "For chris sake grow up, Don!" he said. "You saw the way it worked last time." Don was not to be so easily convinced. "I've seen the firing pit, Les, and you haven't. I've seen the strain cracks in the concrete. Believe me, that bastard was ready to blow sideways." Minnie was eyeing them both, the questioning look on her face again. She came in close and said, "I agree with Don, Les, I really and truly agree with him this time." "We're going to do it," Les said stubbornly. "Look, the weakest part of the Bobcat is the proximity fuse gear. With two of them chasing the Medusa, we can't miss." "If we're still alive to see it," Don Passimore said gloomily. Bobcat Two was in the rack. "Okay, fuel her up," Les Regan said. They were gathered in the command room watching the procedure, each of them responsible for one aspect of the Bobcat's flight through space. Bobcat One had already reached orbit and was on a chase path that would ensure spatial coincidence over the Pacific Ocean, but so far away that none of the fallout would ever reach the earth's atmosphere. Chester was beaming with satisfaction; his new program was working perfectly. But two in orbit at the same time? They had the apparatus and the manpower to hold six in orbit simultaneously, but that was on the old prescribed program, with designated towns in Russia as the targets. Towns in Russia aren't moving through space along an elliptical path that has to be rechecked and recalculated every microsecond. Bobcats aimed at different towns follow divergent, not convergent paths. What would happen if the flight of Bobcat Two took it along the path of Bobcat One, when the proximity fuse material couldn't distinguish between a town in Russia, the Medusa satellite, or its own twin? The flight of the Bobcat was not along a straight line. It was easier to control, easier to track, easier to stabilize, if it followed a spiral, corkscrew pattern, in which the diameter of the spiral was calculated against the distance between spiral levels. Thus, in practice, the Bobcat would travel approximately three times the total distance to the Medusa at the point of impact. For all of that time it would be travelling almost at right angles to the Medusa's path, but virtually parallel with the path of any other Bobcat within the same vicinity. It could happen that, at any one time, the two Bobcats could be ignoring the Medusa and aiming almost straight at each other as they swung backwards and forwards along that corkscrew path into space. What would happen if the proximity fuse was activated by the conjunction of the flight paths, but only sufficiently to divert the Bobcat from its Medusa path? Don Passimore surreptitiously punched the buttons on his console that would give him an outside telephone call on his breast microphone and headset. Anyone watching would think he was talking with one of the Bobcat operators under his control, when in reality he was calling his former boss, Tom Grach, in Washington, knowing Tom Grach had the ear of Wally Cahail, who was in direct contact with the President. "Screw Les Regan," he thought, knowing that by talking over his head he was going for broke. A thin line of sweat trickled down his forehead. He'd seen the cracks in the launch pit and Les Regan hadn't. The overconfident bastard couldn't be bothered to go look. "Tom," he said quietly, knowing the microphone would pick up his voice okay. "Remember me, Don Passimore? I'm with the Bobcat Programme." "Sure I remember you," the voice of Tom Grach came over his headset. "You did a great job on that launch. Jeez, I reckoned a fuel load like that would blow you all to hell." "I think there's something you ought to know, Tom," Don Passimore said. "Something this paranoid screwball in charge of the Bobcat Programme hasn't bothered to take into account." Chapter Eleven. Anna Firdova made a correction to the G-factor that controlled their weightlessness, but still her feeling of nausea didn't abate. Now her medical brain told her that without doubt the cause of that nausea was psychomatic and not due to the tremendous speed with which they were hurtling through the atmosphere. Towards that unknown destination! Logic told her they couldn't be heading for the prime target built into the failsafe system. The inboard computer, which was still functioning though it couldn't pick up or interpret the signals Novosibirsk was presumably sending, was programmed so that, in the event of a total equipment failure, the Medusa would head towards its selected prime target. Washington DC, USA. But she could read the computer video output on her screen, and it was running all the life-support systems perfectly accurately. She saw the figure that told her their urine protein content had reacted to medication and they were both back to normal levels. She saw the printout of the encephelogram that told her their brains were functioning normally. Skin temperature, normal. Rate of breathing, normal. If only Sergei could find a way to tap into that closed- circuit computer program, to divert it sufficiently to accept, in addition to its life-support work, the work of returning them to Novosibirsk. If only he could find a way to amplify its output, so that it could link itself with the signal that must be emanating from Novosibirsk .. assuming Barankov, as Sergei insisted, had nothing to do with the change in their orbit, the destruction of their signal system. She slapped the side of her armrest in frustration. Who could say how many billions of roubles had gone into the design and manufacture of this damned thing and, when the crisis came, they could do nothing with it. She laughed when she saw Sergei writing on his pad. Those, she knew, were recommendations for the design team in Novosibirsk, based on the observations the cosmonauts made while in flight. She glanced at her own pad, saw her entries concerning posture fitting, a better insulin readout that wouldn't respond to other haemoglobins. She looked at the video screen, saw the computer chattering away, happily performing all its microsecond tasks like a contented housewife bustling about her domestic chores, humming happily to herself, ignoring the sounds of the world outside her windows. Who could ever know if the seemingly happy exterior concealed heartbreak and misery? In the same way, who could know if the chattering of this damned computer concealed a program Sergei could use to get them safely back down to the ground. "For Christ's sake, shut up, and listen!" she said out loud. The skipper of the Lufthansa jumbo heard the call from LATCC and couldn't believe his ears. "What do they think we're flying up here?" he asked Wolfgang, his second pilot. "A Piper Comanche?" This was the third time LATCC had put them on a holding pattern that swung them wide over the Home Counties. A jumbo gulps fuel every second it is in the air; they had a safe margin, of course, but it wouldn't last long at the present rate of consumption, flying at 10,000 feet below the economic working height. He'd been on the ground in Orly, waiting to take a charter party to New York when he'd received the message from Lufthansa Headquarters, to proceed at once to London Heathrow. He'd been given an immediate clearance and had taken off within fifteen minutes, no small achievement with a plane that size. It usually took the French air controllers a half an hour to get off their arses, but this time they'd handled him quickly and skilfully. Now he was cooling his heels over London, already waiting twice as long as the Orly-Heathrow leg of the flight had taken him. "Talk to Germany," he said to his radio operator on the intercom, 'and see if you can get any more information about why we've been diverted to Heathrow. Tell them we don't seem able to get in, that the skies here are full of planes, and see if they can come up with anything. Maybe they can get on the phone for us." He wasn't really surprised by the landing delay. Looking through the cockpit's windows he could see many other planes, all keeping station in a multi-level holding pattern, each separated by the minimum air regulation height. He felt nervous in such a crowd; he knew the ground controllers would have them all clearly in sight on the radar screens, with each plane sending down its automatic transponder blip to identify it instantly, but there must be at least ten large passenger planes, all buzzing round. If one of them had pilot error, or a malfunction on its altimeter, or trouble with its radio gear, or . the list of things that could go wrong was endless. He reckoned they could last another eight minutes before he would need to consider his alternative landings. Or he could announce fuel shortage and get an immediate clearance. The thought was tempting, but the un professionalism of such an action went against his careful North German attitudes and training. He'd plugged himself into the ground-to-air transmissions; the ether was alive with a continuous babble of instructions, requests for landings, refusals. He heard the excited voluble voices of Frenchmen from Air France, the slower more phlegmatic tones of the Kim pilot whose plane was stacked one below him. His current lap took him on a looping run over Oxford; if he could get the time this trip he'd like to go there again, possibly spend a night. The towers and spires reminded him so much of Gottingen that he always felt at home when he went there. The military transport came from behind them, violating airspace. He heard the outbreak of angry chatter as the plane came in through other people's airspace loops, heading straight for Northolt in direct violation of all flying procedures. The distance between the military transport and the Lufthansa jumbo couldn't have been greater than a mind-chilling five hundred feet at its nearest point. He heard other planes come on to the air-waves protesting as the transport screamed past them. "What is that bloody fool doing?" the British Airways pilot stacked two below the Lufthansa plane yelled. The transport had missed him by an even smaller distance than the five hundred feet. "What is happening, Horst?" Wolfgang asked hurriedly, ignoring cabin protocol in his anxiety. "Weiss es night\ But I don't like it." "I've talked to Germany," Willie the radio operator said. "It's definitely Heathrow and we may not divert." "Do they say why?" "No explanation. They were very strange. They said they'll try to help us in and out.^ " And out! What do you suppose that means?" It's a pilot's responsibility to fly the plane. How and when he gets in and out depends on the ground staff. Why should the people in Germany be so concerned he get out that they would think of using pressure on the ground staff? "I don't like the sound of this job, Skipper," Willie said, but Horst glared at him. It wasn't up to Willie to like or dislike any flight they might be given. "Nor me, Horst," Wolfgang added. Horst didn't like being called by his forename in the cockpit. Flying a plane demands rigid discipline at all times. Okay, away from the plane it was different and they could all relax, but not in the air, when success depended on speed of reaction along a well-defined chain of command. "My God, what's that?" They all heard the sudden outbreak of babble on the radio, a melee of confused orders, commands, threats, shrieks of near panic. "Able Fox One Niner abort abort ..." "What is your call sign, Lear jet George Able Baker Charlie? What is your call sign and frequency? Turn immediately a hundred and eighty degrees, turn immediately a hundred and eighty degrees. Able Fox One Niner, climb immediately to one thousand feet, climb immediately to one thousand feet and abort landing procedures." They were too late. Freddie Baker had climbed into the Lear jet, had fired the engines and, despite instructions from the ground control, had run up to the end of runway five. Freddie had seen the planes in the sky above, and knew he'd have to wait for ever for take-off clearance. He'd switched off his radio. A quick dash to the end of the runway, a rapid takeoff. Fly low out of it beneath all the big commercial boys. No problems. He'd make Nice in time for an early supper. Laura, Lady Altrincham, was sitting in the copilot's jump seat beside him, her lips parted slightly, the tip of her tongue showing. Strange how all the birds had that look on their faces when he took them up in the Lear; it was the biggest switch-on ever, even better than creaming the Rolls round a corner at ninety. With the radio switched off he hadn't heard the ground control movements officer ordering him back to the parking zone. He'd seen they were using runways seven, nine, and eleven for the big international boys; five was empty. He could make it out on runway five. He reached the end of the runway and could already see the airport police Jag streaming across the grass towards him. Fuck 'em! He was not going to stand in line. "Hold tight, Laura," he said over the headset of the intercom. He saw her mouth open wider in anticipation and her tongue protruding even further. He'd give her a snatch take-off that would wet her pants. Throttles open. Pause, wind the engines up to screaming pitch, blotting out the noise of the police siren. Okay, baby, this is it. Brakes off, instruments checked and right, moving right, going already like a rocket down the runway, inboard calculator working nicely to give lift-off at the right revs. All systems go, fucking go! They'd decided to open runway five and were landing an Air France 727 on it when the Lear jet appeared as if out of nowhere, ran to the end of the runway and, without clearance, without communication of any sort and in total defiance of all regulations, raced down the runway for a take-off, up and under the giant belly of the Air France 727, Able Fox One Niner. AF19 lifted its nose in a futile attempt to gain height and abort its landing. The Lear jet was aimed at the Air France plane like a dart going for treble twenty. Freddie Baker was watching Laura's lush moist mouth as it opened wider, as her tongue protruded more and more until it was suddenly taken back in. "That's it, baby," he exulted, 'scream, scream! Wet your pants!" He wasn't even looking forward when the Lear jet hammered itself into the underbelly of the Air France 727. Both planes exploded into a giant puff-ball of flame. The Lear jet simply disappeared into a million shreds of metal and plastic. The explosion cracked the 727 across its middle, and entire rows of seats fell out with screaming people strapped into them. The forward section of the 727 catapulted through the air turning over and over; the entire rear section dropped straight down in one solid piece that hit the edge of the runway and smashed its way into the concrete crust in an ear-shattering hammering of tangled jangling metal. One of the engines, blown free of the bodywork, looped forward in an arc with its support pipes trailing behind it, flaring like the tail of a giant rocket. It hit the end of runway nine and bounced. It hit and bounced again, tearing giant slivers from the concrete apron with each of its lurching bounces. When the remainder of the forward section hit, it exploded instantly, scattering flaming pieces of metal, wood, plastic, parts of bodies, boxes which burst open on impact, food and drink, across an area a quarter of a mile in radius, littering four runways. The only people on board had been a relief crew, but neither they nor any of the regular crew had any hope of survival. The salvage and rescue vehicles streamed out from the airport buildings, but all knew they were on a futile mission with no possibility of any life being saved. Horst was expecting the call in the Lufthansa plane. It came within a minute. "Divert, divert." His new destination, the only airport he could reach with his limited stocks of fuel, was Elmwood, outside Birmingham. "If only we could listen to the damn thing," Walter MacKlin said. "We know it must be chattering away up there." "On very limited volume. Very restricted range," Peggy Kershaw said. They were beaming the best signal they could get from Goonhilly Down and from the Manchester system directly into his computer, a pair of giant ears focused with infinite precision on the Medusa out in space. Walter knew the Medusa would be issuing and receiving computer-readable signals to keep itself in its present immaculate orbit. "Damn it," he said, 'that orbit isn't varying by one micro degree from the course Cahail pumped into it. If it's still obeying the commands, it must have an internal system capable of storing the command in a readable form, and equally capable of continuing to reproduce it." "But, presumably, they wouldn't waste power by making it a. strong transmission; they wouldn't need any strength for a purely internal communication, would they?" Peggy was right, of course. Cahail had pumped a single command into the computer aboard the Medusa and then had broken outside communication. The Medusa would continue to obey that command for the rest of its life. Which meant until eight o'clock that evening, now only three hours away. Walter switched the system to audio and they heard the mush, a sound like frying eggs, over the twin loudspeakers which were reading the Goonhilly Downs and Manchester signals at maximum amplification. The sheer volume of the mush prevented them hearing anything logical, anything with a reproduceable pattern. Somewhere there, Walter knew, was a tiny point source of transmission, a series of digits his computer could have read as easily as he read newspaper headlines. The task, however, was akin to his trying to read headlines at a distance of a mile without benefit of binoculars. I think you ought to get out," he said. "You could still make the edges of the fallout." "If the wind doesn't change." "It won't, significantly." They'd been receiving the Met. Office reports and the weather seemed to have settled for at least three hours. There'd been a consistent wind blowing at eight knots along a 330 degree path. "I'd try Dover if I were you; I guess they're in a mess going westwards." "And you?" "I'll keep on trying. I don't like being bested. There must be some way I can read that damned signal. I know it's there." "Then I'll stay and help you," she said firmly. He knew he couldn't change her mind. Heathrow Airport was a complete shambles, with no movement possible in or out. Three runways had actually been damaged by the wreckage of the plane; three more were completely unusable since they were littered with metal debris that would tear to shreds the tyres of any plane that tried to run through it. The airport controller immediately ordered a massive grade one emergency, with all the salvage and recovery vehicles working on the usable but debris-littered concrete aprons; the other undamaged and un littered runways were examined carefully for suspected litter. The terminals were all jammed with regular travellers and the innumerable people who had arrived in the hopes of getting on a plane, any plane, going anywhere. Every flight out was now fully booked. For the past half-hour the airport controller had been pleading with anyone and everyone in the Ministry of Aviation and the Airports Authority for information but nobody could, or would, give him any. He had threatened to resign several times, to walk out of the job, but knew he couldn't. Whatever the emergency turned out to be, he knew the airport would need every scrap of help it could be given. Now there were disquieting rumours. At first people arriving had been tight-lipped, and had booked their flights out, paid for their tickets usually with Diners' Club or American Express Cards, and had waited quietly and peacefully until the flight was called. They'd managed to service forty flights on schedule, with none being late on takeoff. When the later arrivals had found flights fully booked, they'd become angry and threatening, often running crazily across the concourse from company to company, seeking any booking they could. And then the rumour had started, a rumour so incredible he couldn't believe it. They were saying that London would be hit by an atomic bomb at eight o'clock that night; that they'd heard it on the radio; that it was common knowledge. He heard of cab drivers asking, and being given, fifty pounds to bring fares out to the airport, that the new underground was jammed to capacity with people fighting to get into the carriages at the intermediate stations. Though he had no direct control of the airport police, he'd been told they were increasing the strengths of their active detachments, and that men were being asked to Stay and work overtime. Ronnie Hargreaves, his personal assistant, had disappeared and, incredibly, the controller had been told he'd taken off with the Alitalia Flight bound for Rome. In one sense only, the news of the Air France crash had come as a relief. Here at least was something for which he had a system, something he could understand, an activity into which he could fling all his energies after the worrying rumours and half-truths of the previous anxious hours. From his emergency office high up in the tower, he surveyed the airport and watched the salvage and rescue operations in progress. They'd dowsed the fire on the Air France jet, drenching it with the new powder technique that had cut the time down to seconds. He saw his men in their asbestos suits hacking their way into what was left of the fuselage, the most gruesome part of a most unpleasant job. The ambulances were racing over the tarmac, swerving wildly to avoid pieces of the wreckage. He saw the men lifting bodies from the tangled mess of metal and laying them on the stretchers ready for the mortuary wagon. He raised his glasses to his eyes and identified the scraps of uniform that told him the bodies belonged to the crew. The head of the Air France London office was in his car, caught in traffic on his way to the airport. He'd reported on his car telephone that the cars were moving at a snail's pace along the motorway, and that many were getting off it at the intersections. He picked up his telephone and dialled an internal number. "Tell Mr. Barstow to put all his energies and efforts into reopening runways one and two," he said. "We've got to get the bigger planes in just as soon as we can." With one and two operating, they'd be able to bring in one plane a minute. He saw the lorries form up and start to move slowly down the concrete, men sitting on the front bumpers with their eyes sweeping the surface, looking for the telltale glint of metal shards and glass. They'd drop off the bumpers and run forward to pick things up, throwing them on the back of the lorries without the vehicles needing to stop. He saw one man drop off and run forward; he slipped and lay sprawling in the path of the lorry doing its ten miles an hour. The lorry couldn't stop in time but the man drew in his legs and arms and the lorry rolled harmlessly over him. As soon as it had gone the man jumped up and ran forward to catch it. At that speed they'd scour the whole runway in sixteen to seventeen minutes. He thought of an idea his service manager had suggested, that they mount large heavy rubberized blades on the front of the lorries which could then scrape the runway clean at twenty or twenty-five miles an hour. If the blades were set at angles, and one lorry closely followed the one next to it, any debris would wind up at the side of the runway where it could be collected easily. He made a notation on the pad on his desk, see Farquarson re blades. Incredibly, they seemed to have found a survivor who wasn't yet dead, since they'd put him in the ambulance which was now racing over the runway from the wreckage with its light spinning, its siren screeching. They'd have notified the staff of the small airport hospital and already the intensive care unit would have been prepared to receive any survivors. Most of their cases were travellers suffering from heart attacks, but they also had special burn treatment facilities and a fully-trained medical staff. He was impatient to know what was happening. He would have loved to be down there supervising directly but knew he had other responsibilities. He couldn't prevent himself, however, from thinking of his earlier days in airports, when he had been down there among them when planes crashed on take-off or landing, when they'd fought their way into the blaze to rescue as many people as possible, often in almost impossible conditions. When his phone rang he picked it up, expecting an airport service conversation; he found himself speaking directly with Paul Graham, the Minister of Defence. "Donald Brook, Airport Controller." "Paul Graham, Minister of Defence." "Yes, Minister, what can I do for you?" Civilized, calm, efficient, showing nothing of the turmoil of questions boiling within him. "You can go to your safe, or wherever you keep it, and open the sealed envelope contained within the Salvation file. Inside that sealed envelope you'll find another. Written on the first envelope is a code-word which I shall repeat to you when you have the envelope in your hand. That will verify the authenticity of this call, and my authority." "Very good, Minister," Donald Brooks said. There was no safe; he'd put the Salvation file in his centre drawer which he always kept locked when he was not physically in this office. He drew the file from the drawer, and untied the tape. "Instructions for use in the event of an emergency code-named Salvation.^ He knew them by heart since he was the one who'd helped Paul Graham to compose them nearly two years ago. He was the one who'd brought them up to date with each new development at the airport. The sealed envelope was clipped to the inside front of the file. He tore it open and, as Paul Graham had said, he found another inside it. On the front of that was written the word, Army. He smiled, amused by the simplicity of it. Salvation Army. "Salvation Army," he heard Paul Graham say into the telephone. "That's correct. Minister." "Last take-off to be nineteen-forty hours. Ignore ticketing procedures as of now. Just get as many as you can on board and out of there." "Very good, Minister." "And good luck. Gatwick, Northolt, Southend, Luton, we shall be using them all. Plus all the private fields." The airport controller put down the telephone. No wonder there had been panic all afternoon; no one could have hoped to keep a thing like that secret. He picked up the telephone and dialled. Mercifully, Norah had got up from her usual afternoon lie-down, and answered immediately. "Norah," he said. "You remember that some time ago we talked about the possibility of an emergency arising, and we drew up a list of what we'd do if it happened." "Our atom-war-game," she said chuckling. "We drew up a list and packed a bag. The number of times I've wanted to unpack it." "Thank God you didn't," he said. "I want you to carry it out, the list of things, I mean, and then get into the car and come here. Come by the perimeter road, round the back; I doubt if you'd get through the tunnel." "It can't have ... they can't have ... I mean ..." "Norah, I can't say much more, but it can have, and they have. So, get here as fast as you can. I'm going to fly you out of here." "And yourself, Donald? What's going to happen to you? I'm not leaving without you." "I'll be with you, Norah," he said, "I'll be with you, I promise." He couldn't tell her that it looked to him most probable that, with a deadline for the last plane's take-off only twenty minutes before the final holocaust, he'd be with her in spirit only. He sat at his desk and drew a series of deep breaths. Like everyone else around, he was getting old. But, he thought as he picked up the telephone, not too old to face the greatest challenge of his life. The maximum number of people, eh? Right! He'd double their previous estimate. He dialled a number and said one word into the mouthpiece. Salvation. Tears were streaming down his face when he put down the telephone. The bastards, the stupid, crazy, bastards. He slumped in his chair with his head in his hands, doing nothing to prevent the tears from running. It had all been a game, hadn't it, a game he and Norah had played at home in the evenings to replace Scrabble and backgammon. What will we do in the event of an atomic bomb? Assuming we have time to do anything. And now the game had become the reality and he wept for the vulnerability of human beings, or ordinary mankind, people like him and Norah, to the stupidity of the politicians of this crazy, crazy world. He heard the tap on his door, straightened his shoulders, and wiped his eyes with his handkerchief before calling, "Come in." Ten thousand an hour, he told himself, that's what he would aim for! Ten thousand an hour from each of his operating runways. And one of them could be Norah! Les Regan sat tense at his command console. He could read the digits flying across the liquid crystal time display face, positive and negative, flight duration time and time to contact. Four minutes to go before Bobcat One reached its target, the Medusa satellite. Bobcat Two was flying well and on course. He'd arced both Bobcats on the flight program so that one spiralled right, one left to avoid the dangers of a spatial interface. He looked down the room to the bank of consoles below him where Delphi Lawrence was handling Don Passimore's former assignment. Fucking creep, going over his head to talk with Tom Grach in Washington! Thank God he hadn't known that Tom Grach and Les Regan had been buddy- buddy since the old MIT days when they'd played in the same basketball team, dated the same guys, drunk beer from the same can. As soon as Don had finished talking to Tom Grach, Tom had come through on the private wire. "Les," he said, 'you have a troublemaker out there. If you don't stop him soon, he'll be knocking on the White House door! Or talking to the boys down at the Washington Postv Now Don Passimore was cooling his heels in the marine brig, with a master sergeant on the door with orders to shoot to kill if necessary. Nobody fooled around with Les Regan, he told himself. "You did a beautiful launch, Delphi," he said into his breast microphone, with her button held. "Gee thanks, Les," she said. "I was scared to hell when that stress coefficient kept going up and up." "I told you it would hold." "You sure did, you sure did. And, by the way, Les, thanks for the opportunity. I never thought I'd get a desk of my own so soon." "You deserve it, honey," Les said. Three minutes to impact. The master board panel carried a grey-coloured box about an inch square at its centre. Superimposed on that grey box, and square in the centre of the crossed diagonal lines, was a brighter square a half an inch across, that turned constantly so quickly it looked like a disc. The computer was reading the correct flight path and setting it against the actual Bobcat three dimensional movement. The grey square represented target zone, the lighter small disc the Bobcat, dead on target. "Three minutes to go to impact, Mr. President," Les Regan said, feeling on top of the world. He'd figured it out and everybody, even his own team, had reckoned it was impossible to get a Bobcat off its launching pad with enough fuel to make an assignment with the Medusa. Well, shit, he'd done it. The visual display printout showed the Bobcat still had fuel in hand. All its systems were working okay despite the distance. Trouble was, most people in the goddam space programme had frozen into set ways of thinking. All the early pioneer experimentation spirit seemed to have vanished now that NASA had gone legit. So many presidents had fucked about with the space programme allocations that federal and regional directors had developed a habit of going for the totally safe option since, any kind of snafu often resulted in programme cancellation. Well, he'd shown them, hadn't he? "Thank you, Mr. Regan," the President said. Now they were feeding pictures to the President's TV and he could see the output of the forward-pointing TV camera in the Bobcat's nose. The President would see the moment of impact for himself! The Russians were on line, via Novosibirsk and the Juno communications satellite. God, would they eat crow, after this! The Brits were on line, though Les Regan had chuckled when he'd learned that it was all being kept under wraps in the UK and that the general public had not been informed by radio or TV. Jeez, think of getting away with something like that in the USA. Cahail was seeing pictures, hearing feedback talk. That's another who'd eat crow after this; he was the one who'd fucked up the Medusa programme in the first place. Now his job was up for grabs, and Les Regan intended to be in there swinging. He'd get it, for sure. They'd give him the Congressional Medal of Honour, for sure! Maybe the Brits would even make him a lord or something, Lord Les Regan! Freeman of the City of London and all that jazz! The members of the Privy Council were sitting in an arc round the radio, listening to the transmission from America, which came through as clear as a bell. The Prime Minister incongruously noticed that the Lord Chancellor was wearing crimson carpet slippers with his crest embroidered in the material; his plastic bag was beside his chair and from it he'd just drawn yet another chocolate bar. Was that his entire survival kit? A bag of chocolate bars and a pair of crested carpet slippers? Field Marshal Sir Rupert Holdinger was sitting wearing his cardigan which, the Prime Minister noted, had a hole in the left sleeve. He was amused, but embarrassed by the way his mind was straying in this moment of utter crisis. The hours they had been at the brink of death seemed to have coated his mind with, well, almost indifference. It sounded as if the Americans had pulled the fat out of the fire, with their Bobcat missile. It sounded as if, within minutes, the threat of atomic disaster would be over. Then there'd be all the political brouhaha, the meetings in that tiresome hot-air balloon, the United Nati'^is Headquarters in New York. For once the Russians would be the total underdogs. Of course, they'd make some sort of gesture with regards to Barankov and already Lord Deakin, speaking with his equivalent in the Kremlin, had suggested a public trial at the Hague. Crimes against Humanity. The lobbyists in favour of unilateral disarmament would try yet again to push the issue through as a political matter, but they'd have no effect. When the great mass of people learned of the dangers they'd survived without even knowing for the most part that they existed, there would be such an outcry. One thing was certain, they'd have to do something, make some gesture, towards the American chap who'd thought up the Bobcat action. The least they could do was make him a Companion of Honour, something like that. Verity Pringle had tied her legs in knots again. One knee crossed over the other and her left wrapped round her right leg rather like a clematis up a pole. Her eyes were glued to the radio, as if she could actually see the source of the words. When they heard the American voice say, "Two minutes to impact, Mr. President," the Prime Minister thought Verity Pringle would faint. She turned to look at Whittaker Jones sitting next to her, caught him picking his nose. "Ahhhhh," she said. Fred Foxham lit his next cigarette from the stub of his previous one, a disgusting habit, the PM privately thought. They were going to ban smoking here in the Northwood Underground Complex, but there had been such an outcry against it. Tense faces all around him. The human mind cannot accept life or death situations, but escapes into irrelevancy, often into idiocy, the PM thought. Look at Verity Pringle, she seemed to him to be on the verge of madness. Lord Deakin, on the verge of senile idiocy. Sir Rupert appeared to have died already since his face, set in the pattern of a half- smile, had drained of colour. His eyes looked lifelessly at the green-painted wall, his long, slender, aristocratic fingers were folded into his lap, frozen for all time like the Diirer hands in silent supplication. Or was it indifferent repose? The trouble was, the PM thought, that he personally didn't have any confidence in the Bobcat missile. He couldn't believe that the evil Russian genius of a man like Barankov and his team of experts would go so far with the Medusa and still permit it to be shot down by an American missile, almost like a bird being knocked out of the sky by a poacher's home-made gun. Walter MacKlin was thinking similar thoughts to those of the Prime Minister as he listened to the radio feed from the USA in the computer room next to the library in the basement of London University. Peggy Kershaw had come from the library with a cart laden with a series of programs he intended to try. She stopped the cart and came to sit at the console beside him. Despite their hours down there together, she seemed as fresh as when they started, though he was feeling decidedly rumpled. He turned his chair sideways so that he could look at her. "There's still time for you to get out of it," he said softly. "When the Americans are about to shoot it out of the sky?" "Or so they think. You've got to admire the blind confidence. It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that a man as fiendishly clever as Barankov would have thought of all the angles. Including the fact that someone might fire a Bobcat at his brainchild. Whoever put that alternative program together for the Medusa was no fool, Peggy! He had to be a brilliant man! And from the way they sacrificed the Minotaur, with its two cosmonauts on board, we know just how ruthless they are." "How obedient to Barankov." "The same thing. Ruthless men can always find others to do their chores for them." Comrade Kaiko looked at Barankov who'd been brought, heavily guarded, from Lubyanka prison. Barankov was sitting in the chair across from Kalko's desk, a cigarette in his fingers and a trace of a smile on his face. Kaiko knew that look all too well; for too many years he'd watched Barankov as he rode to power on that faint smile, seeing his inner purposes had been achieved in ways his opponents would never realize until too late. "If the Bobcat missile misses, General Barankov " If it misses, Comrade Kaiko, you will go to the United Nations to explain to the Western world why the Soviets have destroyed London and a third of England with it. You'll try to say it was the fault of the Americans who tampered with the Medusa guidance system, but that won't be very convincing. You'll try all sorts of political manoeuvres, squirming like a fox in a trap, but each one will fail. The motherland, for which we have all fought and suffered for so many years, will be weakened by your endeavours. Our people will see you, and you will lose face, my dear Comrade Kalko. Once you lose face, you'll lose office. Because the majority does not support either you or the Comrade Chairman in what they see as weakness towards the Western world." He tapped his cigarette, not caring that the ash fell on the Kirghiz carpet beneath the decadent comrade's desk. "And if you are not alive to see these events?" Barankov laughed out loud. "Please don't play the fool with me, Comrade Kalko," he said, still smiling that tiger- smile. "We both know you need me more than anyone else. You'll need your exhibit A, the meat to throw to these capitalist dogs. It'll be your last desperate throw, believe me. That's if you can find enough loyalty here in the Kremlin to keep me imprisoned. Personally, I wouldn't give you a kopek for your chances. Already, I know, you're talking with the British, that ridiculous committee of half-wits who think they will survive to lead their country into some sort of future, about a show trial in the Hague. Will you put me in a glass box, as they did in Israel? Sell the TV rights to the highest bidder?" "You would be very foolish to believe I would put you in any kind of witness box, free to speak as you thought fit." "Now you're being a realist, my dear Comrade Kalko," Barankov said. "I can be bought, you know? You will need a strong man when Britain has been hit by your Medusa. I could help you." Kalko laughed harshly. "I don't think I could afford you, General Barankov," he said. "I have great respect for you as an adversary, an enemy. You keep me on my toes. But as a friend ... ?" The forward-looking TV camera was working perfectly, sending back a constantly-spiralling picture of misty cloud unlike any cloud formation seen on earth, thinner, more wispy, like morning rising over marshland. At the point of impact, the Bobcat missile would be travelling a fantastic 112 thousand miles per hour equivalent. Impact, of course, was a relative term since the explosive power aboard the Bobcat was designed to be set off by the proximity of the Medusa, not by actual physical contact with the Medusa itself. During the last minute of its flight, the Bobcat would travel an approximate corrected distance of over eighteen thousand miles. The proximity fuse mechanism was designed to operate fully within one-ten-thousandth of a second, during which the Bobcat would travel approximately one point six miles. Les Regan knew the climax to this flight would be visually disappointing; they'd see a brilliant blinding flash that would normally be so short in duration that the optic nerve would not be able to detect it. He'd built a system, therefore, on to the receiving end of the TV picture; and what the President and all the on line observers would see would be an instant replay, slowed a million times. Then they'd hear the end of transmission from the feedback of the Bobcat, and the awesome noisy silence of the empty outer atmosphere. And then the cheering would begin and reverberate throughout the world! With Les Regan at its centre, a world hero! Delphi Lawrence to Les Regan: Les, look at the target printout. ONE MINUTE TO GO: Les had noticed the hard sharp edges of the grey square softening and had put it down to temporary atmospheric loading. Les to controllers: Sharpen that focus, for God's sake. FIFTY SECONDS TO GO: Controller to Les Regan: It won't sharpen. We're getting diffusion! Delphi Lawrence to Les Regan: Look at Big Sam, Les. Les to Delphi: I can see it, for chris sake They could all see it. Big Sam's output had gone haywire. On normal function it was printing out on a large visual display panel, scanning all the functions, giving each one an okay rating as a line across the screen. The lines were not perfectly flat because Big Sam was working on the closest possible focus, eager to detect even the slightest deviation from function, and to correct it instantly. Now the lines which should have been flat, or at worst like the tops of gentle ocean waves, were like a tangled ball of knitting. THIRTY SECONDS TO GO: Chester Morgan to Les Regan: Target diffusion over point sources with a spread of sixty miles, Les. No wonder Big Sam's going cross-eyed trying to look at them all at once. Les Regan to Chester Morgan: Diagnose, for chris sake TWENTY SECONDS TO GO: Minnie Goldmann to Les Regan: Point source objectives in circular arc around Medusa or Medusa breaking up. Chester Morgan: Correction, Les. Point source objectives, no breakup. Minnie Goldmann: Shit, Chester, look at the magnetic reading, and atomic Chester Morgan: Could be charged obstacles, atomic screen for Medusa protection. TEN SECONDS TO GO: Les Regan looked blankly at the screen. What had formerly been a target, clearly denned within the edges of that grey box, had now become a number of grey boxes of varying sizes spread across the screen, with the central grey box completely blanketed by the edges of the other. The white box of the Bobcat moved from one to the other, like one of those TV electronic games. He didn't need to be told what was happening. The Bobcat was maintaining its spiral orbit but, as it became attracted towards one of those point source objectives, whatever the hell they were, it deviated. Then it came into the attraction of another, and deviated again. What the hell was the name of that bird that went round in ever diminishing circles, until it vanished up its own arse hole FIVE SECONDS TO GO: Nothing visible on the screen showing the TV camera picture except that stinking mist. THREE SECONDS TO GO: Les could work it out for himself. Come to think of it, he'd have done the same thing if he'd been in charge of the Medusa's security system. Troops lying on the ground used to put out barbed wire; now they do the same with electronic systems. The Russians had put a fence round the Medusa. And the Bobcat wouldn't penetrate it. The Bobcat was geared to explode when it came into proximity. It would blow the nearest point source on the fence. It wouldn't touch the lousy Medusa. ONE SECOND TO GO: Les saw the flash start the instant replay, slowed down the way he'd planned. His finger going to the button that would have cut off the President's source of picture was just too late. They all 'saw' it, with the slow dreamlike quality of fixed action. The target was spherical. It carried small antennae and small mirrors, no doubt receiving its energy from the sun. Beside the mirrors were indentations similar to those on a golf-ball. It grew larger and larger, microsecond by microsecond. When it filled half the screen, it disintegrated. The sensors reading atomic material went crazy with printout. The Bobcat had 'hit' an atomic bomb, out there in space. It hadn't touched the Medusa. The bomb, appropriately, had been shaped like a ball, and painted golden. Superimposed on the gold, plainly visible in that nose-cone TV camera picture, had been two upraised fingers. Painted a vivid red. "Up yours," Minnie said when she saw the pattern. "So the Russians do have a sense of humour after all." Chapter Twelve. No one who heard the closed-circuit radio system could have failed to appreciate the agony in Les Regan's voice. "The damned Russians, they've fooled us, they've put a - fence At that point, the transmission ended as someone's finger hit the button. The members of the Privy Council sat around in stunned silence. Verity Pringle's breathing was noisy, her throat bubbling as she tried to suppress the bile that rose in her throat. She clutched her handbag, then suddenly sprang to her feet and rushed from the room. The Prime Minister beckoned towards Edith Haskins who would be working in any future social services system they might be able to install after the bomb. Edith went rapidly from the room, following Verity Pringle. Whittaker Jones was the first to speak. "It was a long shot, anyway. At least they got the Bobcat thing up there." Sir Rupert hadn't moved, but now he unfurled himself from his chair, turned and walked slowly out of the central office where they'd all gathered for the broadcast. His face wore a look of deep preoccupation as he went into the office they'd assigned him to fight a war that would already be over. He sat at his desk and took a book from his drawer. Its brown leather had been fingered over the ages and now shone as only old hand-polished leather can. He opened the book where he had placed the silk ribbon marker, and began to read in a low but clear voice. Lord what is man that thou hast taken knowledge of him! Or the son of man, that thou takest account of him! Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away. Bow thy heavens, O Lord, and come down: touch the mountains, and they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out thine arrows and destroy them. Send thine hand from above, rid me and deliver me out of great waters, from the hand of strange children; Whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood. He closed the Bible, unable to read more, and stared at the wall. He was still sitting, still staring, when he heard the report of the pistol he'd seen in Verity Pringle's bag when she'd opened it to get out her handkerchief. She knew he'd seen it, and her eyes had pleaded with him. Had he been in error? Had she pleaded with him to let her keep it as her last resort? Or had she wanted him desperately to take it away from her? Now, he realized, he'd never know. Bill Tilsen walked into the foyer of the BBC carrying a black briefcase. The commissionaire knew him and didn't bother to ask to search the briefcase as he should have done. Bill walked along the corridor into the old section of the building, over the hump past the duty officer's room, down the staircase to Studio L2. It was five o'clock. He knew they would be preparing the evening news magazine programme, taking in the reports from BBC foreign correspondents all round the world, assembling them into a half-hour programme linked by a script the duty scriptwriter would be preparing. Bill had taken part in the programme many times and knew the procedure well. He walked along the carpeted corridor until he arrived at the door of the studio; he looked through the small square glass panel and saw Mike Hartford, the duty producer, was sitting at the desk, his secretary holding a stop-watch beside him. A national reporter, Donald Crisp, was sitting in the interior studio reading from his own notes. Bill opened the door and went in. Mike looked up briefly and nodded towards a chair by the bank of disc and tape players. "Hi, Bill, with you in a minute," he said. Donald Crisp was doing the story Bill had been interested in, a story of illicit co-operation between management and union leaders. Bill listened and nodded approval. Donald, always a professional, had recorded good interviews on both sides and they were being fed into his own linking narrative. The cubicle where they were sitting was separated from the actual studio by a double glass wall and the voice of Donald Crisp came to them from a loudspeaker high on the wall. Sheila Mann was standing by the bank of machines that carried the excerpts of the recorded interviews. As Donald read the cue for each insert, she flipped the playback button and fed in the recorded tape. The whole output was being recorded separately, as a single item for that evening's programme. "I make it three twenty-five," Mike said to his secretary, who nodded agreement, busy writing on her provisional running-order. Mike pressed his panel key. "That's it, Donald," he said. "I think it's great. Will you give your script to Terry, so that he can write an intro?" "Will do." Donald was assembling his papers, standing beside the desk in the studio. Mike was starting to turn his chair. The secretary was writing. Sheila was winding back a tape, when Bill produced the gun, a Colt . 45 automatic he'd acquired during his Northern Ireland stint. "Put that bloody thing away," Mike said jokingly. "I can't stand guns. Are you on the programme? They haven't sent anything down to me." "I'm on the programme," Bill said, 'but there are a few changes!" They were all looking at him. Donald Crisp came through the double communicating door. "Hi, Bill," he said, 'you doing a piece in the ." His voice tailed away as he saw the intense look on Bill Tilsen's face. "Listen to me," Bill said. "This isn't a gag. And the gun's loaded. You're going to get on to the control room and we're going to break into the three network transmissions!" Without moving the gun which was pointed squarely at the secretary's stomach, he reached with his left hand into the briefcase and produced a sheet of paper. "You, Donald, will read this." He held out the paper and Donald leaned forward to take it. His mind was working overtime. Could he smash the gun from Bill Tilsen's hand? Would the gun go off and hit somebody? "Play it cool, Donald," Mike said, 'and let's find out what this is all about." Donald took the script and ran his professional eye quickly down it. "Is this a gag?" he asked. He passed the script to Mike, who speed read it. "It isn't a joke," Bill said grimly. "At eight o'clock tonight, the Medusa satellite is going to hit London. There are millions of people here in London who are deliberately being kept in the dark about it." "Four of us in here, for a start," Mike said. "Is it right, what Bill says?" the secretary asked, her eyes blinking behind the large spectacles she wore. "More than that, Mary," Mike said. "It's got an atomic warhead, apparently. According to this, London will be wiped out." Sheila hadn't spoken but now she grabbed the script from Mike's hand. "That's crazy," she said. "If it were true, we'd have been on the air with it already." Donald Crisp was shaking his head. "Government policy," he said. "Remember the piece I did about it? In the event of a nuclear war, millions would be left to die. I did a piece on radio, in June I think it was." "Those people have a right to live," Bill said grimly, 'and we're going to exercise that right for them by telling them about it, by blowing this damned Government security screen apart." "They'll never let us go on the air with it," Mike said. "The only reason we haven't been told must be because there's a D-nodce on it." "They will let us on the air," Bill said. "If they don't, I shall shoot each of you, one by one!" Mike lunged forward but Bill had been anticipating him and he pressed the gun into Mary's side. "Go on, Mike, try to take it from me," he said. "Mary gets hit first. A Colt .45 will blow her apart." Mike sagged back. "Okay, Okay," he said. "Nobody tries anything. Now what do you want?" "Put us on the air," Bill said. "Get into the studio, Donald, and read the script when you get a red light. And I want to hear the outside air feed, not the studio replay. You've got two minutes." "Don't be crazy, Bill," Mike said in anguish. "I can't, I can't get us on air in two minutes." "You've got five, and not a second. more In five minutes, Mary gets the first bullet. I've got nothing to lose, Paul Graham has already sent his SAS goons looking for me." The news spread through the building in seconds. A hijacker in Studio L2 wanted to be put on the air. Mike spoke to the news editor. "Tom, you won't immediately believe this but, honestly, it's not a gag. We have Bill Tilsen here in the studio with a gun stuck in Mary's side. He wants this studio made live within five minutes, feeding into all the programmes. He's got a story about the Medusa satellite landing on London in three hours. Tom, I'm not joking. Put him on the air or he'll kill each of us, one at a time. I have Sheila, Donald Crisp, as well as Mary." The news editor spoke to the Director-General's office, found he wasn't there, and was put immediately on to the Deputy, Christopher Bonham. Til ring you back," Christopher said. He dialled the internal number for L2 Studio and heard the secretary's voice. "This is the Deputy Director-General," he said, 'put me on to the producer." Mike came on the line. "It's true, Mr. Bonham," he said. "Let me speak to him." Mike handed the telephone to Bill who shook his head and handed it back. "I'll only talk through you," he said. "I've covered too many terrorist stories to be psyched out on a telephone. And you can tell them that the moment the door starts to open, I shoot your secretary." Mary was sitting tense, both hands on the broadcasting console. Sheila had moved to her other side and had placed her arm round Mary's shoulders. The poor girl, terrified out of her wits, was trembling uncontrollably. Sheila was looking steadily at Bill Tilsen, utter loathing and contempt in her eyes. Donald Crisp had gone back into the studio and was scanning the script, but only to give himself something to do to take his mind off the horror in the cubicle, the naked threat of violent death. Like Bill Tilsen himself he'd covered many terrorist stories in London and abroad, and had seen the vicious bloodshed men with the controlled crazy look that was on Bill's face had caused. "Give him what he wants," he prayed, 'and let's all get out of here alive." He had been so scared by the sight of the gun that he'd forgotten the horror of the actual story he was reading. It meant nothing to him. A Medusa satellite with an explosive atomic warhead is going to land on London tonight. For its own interests, the Government is keeping this news from you. Christopher Bonham knew he'd lost the first round if the hijacker refused to speak directly to him. He immediately alerted the four controllers of programmes, the controller of Technical Services, the duty officer, the duty nurse in the first-aid room. He issued instructions for the whole of the lower ground floor studio area to be evacuated. He rang Scotland Yard and spoke briefly to Sir William. "You must not put him on the air without speaking to Paul Graham," Sir William insisted. The Deputy Director-General knew that, in the absence of the Director-General himself, he had the sole responsibility for what went on the air. He'd used up four minutes of his time, four minutes of the lives of those four hostages. In all conscience, could he condemn them to death? Of course he knew it was government policy that stories of atomic disasters be given no publicity withovt the direct permission of the Minister of Defence. The Director-General was most explicit about that when he'd spoken with Christopher Bonham a few hours ago on the telephone. Christopher had thought he was merely reinforcing an old edict; he'd not been told that the Medusa actually existed as a danger. He felt outraged by his lack of knowledge. Obviously, the Director-General was making his way to safety at that moment, abandoning his entire London staff. Surely he, Christopher Bonham, deserved the same opportunity to save himself and his family as best he could? Surely they all deserved that same chance? Could he reinforce a policy he didn't believe in, and be responsible for the deaths of four innocent people in consequence? He spoke to the technical controller. Tut L2 on the air immediately, on all wavelengths on all channels." Then he rang Paul Graham. "Listen to the BBC," he said. "I had no other alternative with the lives of four members of my staff at stake." "You've probably just killed a hundred thousand people," Paul said, 'to save the lives of four. Not very good mathematics, is it?" This is a special announcement of interest to you all. Those of you who listen to BBC News will know my voice; I'm Donald Crisp, a BBC News reporter. At approximately one o'clock today, the Minister of Defence, Paul Graham, was handed a note which informed him, without possibility of error, that a Russian satellite in the stratosphere had gone wild and was heading for London. The time of arrival of the satellite has been estimated by Professor Walter MacKlin of London University as eight o'clock this evening. This is not an innocent spacecraft. The Medusa, as the Russians call it, carries five nuclear warheads which, Professor MacKlin states, will explode on impact. The whole of the centre of London will be destroyed, and the outer suburbs sprayed with a lethal dose of toxic fallout materials. For reasons of his own, Paul Graham, the Minister of Defence, has taken command of the Government of this country and has made a decision not to inform you, the general public, about this disaster. A number of people personally selected by Paul Graham are being taken to safety in a secret shelter, from the basement of the Ministry of Defence. You are urged at once to do one of the following things. First: Inform your family and make arrangements to gather them all together. Second: Inform any of your neighbours who may not have heard this broadcast. Third: Get out of London as fast as you can by any possible means. Fourth: If you cannot get out of London, go to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall and insist on being taken to the safe shelter. This broadcast will be repeated every fifteen minutes until Paul Graham, the Minister of Defence, comes to this studio to answer questions about this nuclear disaster put to him by two reporters. Paul Graham listened to the broadcast on the radio Wilkins had provided for him. He immediately dialled the SAS number and spoke to Major Rodney Plaistow. "He's in the BBC," he said, 'studio L2. I want him out of there. He has four hostages with him; if necessary, you'll have to take them, too." They came down Warner Road in Camberwell from the housing estates; there were only fifty or so when they started, but the number had swelled to five hundred by the time they reached the LTC Garage at the junction of Wamer Road and Camberwell New Road. They turned into the garage and the duty inspector, who'd been listening to Capitol Radio and therefore had missed the BBC broadcast, ran forward to try to stop them. "What are you doing in here," he shouted. "Get out of here, the lot of you." The leader of the mob was carrying a sledgehammer with its head resting on his shoulder. He swung it forward in a slow arc. "Get out of my way," he said. "We're taking the buses." The duty inspection was outraged. "Get out of here," he said, stepping forward, "I've never heard anything so ridiculous. Taking the buses!" The hammer swung forward in a lazy arc and connected with the side of his head, which exploded into a mass of blood, bone, gristle. The mob pressed forward over his dead body storming each of the buses, fighting to get on, all seats taken, standing people downstairs and up. The off-duty drivers and conductors came forward. "What's all this about, mate?" one of the drivers asked, eyeing the sledge-hammer apprehensively. "And you needn't swing that thing at me; I'm not giving you any aggro." "It was just on the radio. There's an atom bomb coming. We've got to get out of London." "I heard it on MBC," the driver said. "It's all a gag." "This was on the BBC; it isn't a gag," the man with the sledge-hammer said. "Now get in that bus and drive. Fast as you can, down the Old Kent Road." "Bloody hell," the driver said. He looked round at the other drivers. "What about it, Perce?" he asked. "What do you think?" The man with the sledge-hammer didn't give him time to think. "Get up in that bleeding cab, mate," he said, 'or you'll get this." The driver leaped up. The other drivers ran to the other buses and started the engines. By now the crowd was pressing in through the open doors. "Drive forward slowly," the man with the sledge-hammer said. "They'll get out of the way." He ran to the back of the bus and could barely find a foothold on the side of the platform, his hands gripping the bar. The bus inched forward and the crowd struggled to push back out of the way. The driver simply closed his eyes, hearing the crunch as the side of the bus brushed people away. One man fell and the bus ran over him, the wheel jerking as it lifted. Hands clutched at the platform in terror, and grabbed at the clothing of the people hanging there as the buses, bumper to bumper, formed a long, winding snake that inched its way out of the garage doors into the street. People were pushed back against cars as the buses turned. The man with the sledge-hammer felt an arm reach up and curl itself round his neck. He kicked backwards, punched his arm backwards, but now other hands had grabbed him, trying to tear him from the platform. He curled his arm more strongly round the bar, but the backwards pull would snap his elbow, he knew, if he didn't let go. He hung on, but then felt his arm go, felt himself falling backwards and down; he twisted, dropped head-first on to the road and saw the wheel of the next bus approach his head, moving at the inexorable slow speed so that he could see the tread on the tyre as it rolled towards his goggling eyes. He started to scream, to try to twist out of the way, but the press of feet around held him, pinned him, as the tyre and the weight of the loaded bus it was supporting squashed his head like an overripe melon. The airport buildings were full and not another person could get through the doors. Runways 1 and 2 were operating; a continuous stream of buses left the terminals and were being guided by radio to the end of the runway where the planes were being turned round after refuelling. The tunnel had been closed but people were abandoning cars and trying to make their way across the runway above the tunnel, racing like mad each time a plane had trundled past. The blast noise of engines, the shouts and screams of the people, the hooting of car horns were everywhere. The police had long since withdrawn from the airport perimeter and were now concentrating on trying to control the crowds being fed through the terminals. Donald Brooks was still in his office talking on half a dozen telephones simultaneously. He knew this was only the tip of the iceberg and that if he didn't soon do something to control the crowd in whatever way he could, they'd overrun the runways and then no planes would be able to land or take off. He kept his eye glued to the skies, his ear glued to the control tower output on Channel Seven. Suddenly he heard the signal he'd been waiting for. "This is Salvation Army requesting approach permission." The reply came back instantly. He flicked round the channels hearing the individual controllers either aborting landings or delaying takeoffs. Okay, they'd lose two minutes of time, but that could mean all the difference to the final number they would evacuate. They came in from the west, six large gunship helicopters borrowed from the US Airfbrce. Though they were taking their men out of the London area as quickly as they could, they'd accepted his pleading to borrow the choppers for a short flight. The helicopters came down on the tarmac; their doors opened before the wheels had fully settled, and the men of the Parachute Regiment leaped out and started running. Donald Brooks saw they were all armed. A jeep rolled out of each helicopter, carrying a mounted machine- gun. He saw two-inch mortars he knew they used to fire stun-gas grenades. They collected instantly into sections, each under the command of officers and NCOS, and then started to run across the tarmac towards its perimeter. He turned his channel selector to seven and heard the broadcast: "Salvation Army to Pronto, disembarking now." He picked up the stand microphone on the desk against the wall. "Pronto to Salvation Army. No change. Perimeter defence, we've got to keep people off the runways at all cost." He'd spoken to Paul Graham again and the Minister had authorized the Army. The leader of the military force, Lieutenant-General Capstan, had been briefed by Paul Graham himself. "This is an action under the Emergency Powers Act of 1978, General. You are hereby authorized and empowered to ignore all previous regulations concerning aid to a civil power. Effectively, this is a fully operational, wartime situation, and you and your troops are authorized to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent civil disorder." "None of this reading out a Proclamation, Minister?" the general asked. The law governing the use of troops in aid of civil forces was even more difficult than the problems civil police encountered with the Judges' Rules. The state of emergency, General Capstan realized, would let his men behave like soldiers. He watched as the men raced across the concrete, to take up positions; he climbed aboard one of the jeeps and began to tour the perimeter. Of course they didn't have enough chaps on the ground but a display of force was always the first deterrent. He picked up the loud-hailer. "Any man, woman or child trying to get on any runway will be shot immediately," he said, his voice passionless. "This is a state of emergency and my men have orders to shoot. Make your way peacefully along the roadways to the airport terminals and as many of you as possible will be flown to safety." He gave the loud-hailer to his aide, Colonel Cretan. "Give 'em a blast of that every few minutes," he said. "That should hold them back." He picked up the radio tuned to the military net. "This is General Capstan," he said, knowing that each section commander would be listening. "Your instructions are quite clear. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who sets foot on a runway is to be shot instantly. You will all remember the instructions; don't shoot until you have to, but when you do shoot, shoot to kill." A small crowd of people who had been approaching the perimeter from the south after broaching the perimeter wire, heard the loud-hailer announcement and stopped. The soldiers moved forward, each about thirty paces from the ones on either side. They all carried light automatic assault rifles. Behind them the jeep-mounted machine-gun swung on a menacing arc. Mortar teams squatted with the stun-gas grenades ready to drop into the barrels. The crowd wavered, muttering. A woman carrying a baby was crying. A man pushing a baby carriage that contained a suitcase held up his fist and shook it, shouting obscenities. A lad of fifteen or so wearing black leathers decorated with brass and silver metal studs, shook his fist and jeered. "They won't shoot," he said, 'that would be bloody murder. Come on, it's all a bleeding bluff." Sergeant Ackroyd squatted on one knee and took aim at the youth. "Go away," he muttered, 'go away, lad." Several of the younger people in the crowd took up the chant. "It's all a bluff, it's all a bluff." They linked arms behind the lad in leathers, and started to move forward, a line about ten yards long, young people carried away by the start of crowd hysteria. "From the left," Sergeant Ackroyd called softly. The machine-gun team heard him, and traversed the gun left. The woman with the baby was behind the centre of the line, which danced forward jeering, shouting, confident the soldiers would not shoot. "Wait for my order," Sergeant Ackroyd said. The lad in leathers still came on, two, one yard to go to the actual concrete of the runway. "Here we go," Sergeant Ackroyd said. He knew no amount of reason would now stop the lad. He took careful aim and waited. The lad took one step on to the concrete, then another. The sergeant fired, and the shot took the lad in the chest, left of centre, the perfect heart shot. He was stopped, his mouth open but no sound coming, by the impact of the bullet. Blood welled from the hole in his chest as he began to topple backwards. The people in line began to shout, and started to rush forward, waving their arms in anger. But then they saw the sprawling body at their feet, and they broke arms, turned and ran. All the people in the crowd turned and there was a mad rush away from the dead body. The only one who didn't move, and she was jostled by the crowd as she stood there, bewildered, was the woman with the baby. She looked at the dead body and then she started to scream, holding the baby with one arm, and pressing her other hand to her mouth as the screams were jerked from her. The sergeant dashed forward and the woman held out her hand to him, her eyes terrified. "Don't shoot me," she said, 'you can't shoot me. I've got my baby." She pushed feebly at his chest. "You can't shoot me. I've got my baby." He put his arm round her. "There, there," he said, trying clumsily to console her. "Nobody's going to shoot you, missis. All you've got to do is walk round the outside of the airport and join the queue. Then you'll get on a plane to take your baby to safety." Lieutenant Hargreaves jumped off the jeep and came across to them. Put her in the jeep, Sergeant," he said. "I'm going back across the runway, anyway. I'll take her with me." It was against their instructions and any senior officer who saw the woman on the jeep would give him a rocket, but what the hell? The crowds were pouring into the airport but any who attempted to get on to the runways, other than through the terminal building, were immediately deterred by the sight of the army and the occasional shots they heard being fired. Two minutes after the army arrived, Donald Brooks gave the order to resume landings. Forty-five seconds later a TWA jumbo jet touched down at the end of Runway 1 and rolled along to where the buses waited, loaded with passengers. The pilot checked his fuel situation again. He had enough to make Shannon without difficulty. "Irish stew for supper tonight," he said on the intercom to his crew. "And I thought we'd be going to Madrid, for a paella," his co-pilot said. The pilot had been scanning the crowds pressing round the terminals. "Count your blessings," he said. "Most of those poor devils won't be going anywhere." The police thronged the entrances to the terminals across which they'd erected crush barriers in interlocking rows. There was no point in trying to close doors since the crowd pressed so strongly they'd never get them open again. All they could hope to do was to funnel the people slowly inside, narrowing the stream gradually by using the crush barriers. Police Constable Sally Burton carried a stick in her hand and used it to press against the mass of people when they threatened the barrier. "One at a time," she said constantly, 'then you'll all get on." There was a continuous buzz of languages about her and she realized yet again how many foreigners London had assimilated. Inspector Dolby passed down the line of police with a brief word for each one, a friendly exhortation to any member of the pressing throng who tried to step out of line. "I wish they'd play something a bit more soothing on the Tannoy," Sally said. "This constant disco beat is driving me mad!" Dolby hadn't even heard the music playing. "You could hardly play " I'm dreaming of a White Christmas", could you? If they don't get a few more buses out there, most of these poor devils will never see Christmas again." The police, though they hoped the crowd wouldn't notice it, were being withdrawn one at a time. As each bus load of passengers went through the entrance to the tarmac, one of the police went with them. Sally had been moving down this slow line, counting. Another eleven to leave before it was her turn. She would dearly have liked to go home first, but she knew she'd never get away unless she took her chance now. She blessed her good fortune that Willie, her fiance, worked for British Airways and at this very moment would be sitting on a beach somewhere outside Sydney, Australia. "You married, Inspector?" she asked. "Yes. Two kids. Thank God they're at school in Poole, Dorset. Today's their Speech Day and their mum has gone down to be with them. When I think of the rows we've had over sending them to private school, all the money we've had to scrimp to find over the years. Their mum wanted them to go to a comprehensive and they'd have had to, if my father hadn't left me a few pounds. As it is, I've spent it all and I was going to have to pull them out next year unless I got made up to Superintendent. Here, you, All Baba or whatever your name is, get back in line. Take your turn, you heathen!" The Indian looked at him and grinned. "Try anything on, these heathens will," Inspector Dolby said with surprising good humour, considering the ugly atmosphere that was growing in the terminal. The early panic of shouting had subsided as people had realized they were being contained for their own good, that if they accepted what the police said and walked slowly but purposefully between the snake-lines of the crush barriers they would eventually reach the front. The police had deliberately kept their presence to a minimum, provoking no one by shows of force or authority. At first the people had seemed glad to be given directions and instructions, but now the constant delay was beginning to tell. People were shuffling uncomfortably, pressing against the people in front of them, being pressed, in rum, by those behind. There'd been one or two scuffles but so far the police hadn't tried to interfere. They'd even caused a bit of a laugh and a cheer when they'd frog-marched a queue jumper in a turban to the outside of the building, despite his screams of Til give you money, I'll give you gold, I'll pay, I'll pay." Now the good humour was evaporating rapidly, and the throb of voices was growing louder and more insistent. The police could sense the sour atmosphere, smell it in the air like a tang of fear. They knew it would take only one spark, one small incident before they would all explode into a howling destructive mob. "Move yourself up the line, Sally," the Inspector said. Til drop back and take your place." Helen drove into the builders' merchant's yard with the army lorry and its team of five men. The yard was empty; BBC radio could be heard coming from the yardman's hut. They'd had to drive the army lorry along the pavement to get along Praed Street since the throngs making for Paddington Station had virtually closed it to all traffic. "We need sheet lead," she said to the soldiers, 'all the sheet lead you can find. Take it to the brick store." She dashed out into the street and caught the arm of a passer-by, a wide-shouldered man in his forties, she estimated, with a woman and two children held tight beside him. She looked down Praed Street along the sea of faces that jammed the road past the hospital. "Come in here," she said. "You and a few more like you can build a shelter that will protect you from the worst of the blast and the radiation." He tried to pull his arm away. "What'ye talking about, missis," he said in quick anger. "Piss off and leave us alone." "You can build a shelter. You can be safe. You and your family, and a lot more like you. Believe me, I know." "Crazy woman, that's what she is," a man nearby said as he laughed coarsely. "Gone off her rocker." Another man touched her arm and drew out of the crowd. "What do you mean, we can be safe?" he asked. "Who are you? How do you know?" She judged him instantly to be a clerical or professional man. "My name is Dr. Graham," she said. "I'm a medical expert on survival. If you gather a group of men in here, you can dig a shelter, line it with lead sheets, and sit it out. I've got a few soldiers to help you, but you'll have to help yourselves." He looked past her shoulder and saw the soldiers carrying a large lead sheet from a store room. He straightened his back and turned towards the men in the immediate throng. "Come on, lads," he said in a persuasive voice accustomed to command. "We'll never get into Paddington, let alone on to a train. We'll never get out of London. Let's do as this doctor says, and look after ourselves." He pointed into the crowd." You," he said commandingly, 'and you, and you, and you, come in here. Let's make a stand for it." Almost hypnotized by his air of authority, the men he'd selected shuffled out of the crowd, bringing their depend ants with them. They walked like zombies into the yard and Helen walked in front of them feeling for all the world like the Pied Piper ofhamelin. "Lead and bricks, doors, sheets of hardboard, all piled together, buttressed with planks of wood!" she explained to the man. "What's your name?" she asked. "Peter," he said. "I used to be a lance-corporal in the Pay Corps. I'm an accountant by profession." She laughed. "I'd have thought you were at least a major in the Guards," she said. "See if you can find a man who understands that digger, and get him to scoop out as big a hole as he can. You'll be a lot safer if you can get down beneath the ground. Send some men over the road to that grocery store and take all the tinned food you can get; the tin should stop it becoming contaminated. See if you can find some metal containers for water. If you can't, get bottles of lemonade, anything of that sort, and bury it beneath sand; the last thing you want is glass flying about. At eight o'clock tonight, make certain everybody is lying down, jam-packed as close together as possible. And stay in there, stay in there as long as you can, or until you hear some kind of noise of people moving about. Good luck," she said. He held out his hand. "It's not much of a chance," he said, 'but at least you've given us hope. Something to do instead of just shuffling along that damn street, knowing we'll never make it in time, that we'd be caught out in the open. Thank you, Dr. Graham." "One more thing," she said. "Take that radio down there with you. When it's all over, they'll start broadcasting again." She went quickly out of the back of the yard; he watched her go then looked round and gulped. He'd only been an acting, unpaid, lance-corporal. Could he pull this lot together? "Right," he shouted in his best parade-ground imitation, 'who knows how to operate a digger?" Major Rodney Plaistow led his men into Broadcasting House, to be met inside the door by the Deputy Director- General. "Three-quarters of the staff have left," he said. "Tilsen will be lucky to find enough people managing the control room for him to make his next broadcast. I can explain all that to him perfectly easily. Apparently they can connect me into one of the loudspeakers from another studio and I can talk to him. There's no need for any violence, absolutely no need to put my staff at risk." "You're absolutely right, Sir," Major Plaistow said. "I suggest you put yourself in touch with him and we can begin a dialogue. We've always found it useful to start a dialogue in these cases." He didn't tell the DDG that the dialogue was usually only a preliminary, a softening-up for the decisive paramilitary action that came when the terrorist had been lulled into a more relaxed state. They went together along the corridor, with the six men of the SAS Detachment following, outwardly perfectly calm, but watching every doorway, every turn, with keen penetrating eyes. Three staircases led up and down. Two banks of lifts. The remainder of the detachment quickly dispersed to each staircase, each bank of lifts. They walked along the lower ground floor. "The studio is up ahead, on the right," the Deputy Director-General said. "We'll post ourselves in here." They turned into another studio in which a studio manager was already sitting. "Milner, Sir," he said. "I've been on to control room. We're in luck, the studio manger in L2, Sheila Mann, has punched the pre fade button. We can go straight through on the talk back loudspeaker and we'll pick him up on the desk mike. The volume will have to be kept low or we might get howl The DDG went into the studio and the studio manager indicated he should put on the headphones. He did so, fumbling them over the top of his head awkwardly, smoothing the fringe of his hair over his ears. "I'm going to leave your microphone live," Milner said, 'so that it will be a straight two-way conversation, just like a telephone. Are you ready?" "As ready as I'll ever be," the DDG said, looking at Major Plaistow standing beside the studio manager's desk. How do you talk to a terrorist? he asked himself. The same way you talk to a truculent union organizer? Firmly, with implied confidence? The same way you talk to a dissenting member of the board? Positively, and with absolute conviction? The way you talk to an errant lad? Strongly but with a keen edge of disappointment that he should be letting down the side? "This is the Deputy Director-General," he said, realizing too late how pompous his voice sounded. Damn him, why had the Director-General left all this to him? Why couldn't the DG himself be here to do this abominable task. "Mr. Tilsen, please believe me when I say we are very sympathetic to your point of view that the general public should be informed about the Medusa. Some of us, however, who've been thinking about this issue for a very long time, don't quite agree that the best method of informing the general public is by radio broadcast. If you care to speak, Mr. Tilsen, I shall hear you." He heard Sheila Mann's voice, at least, he assumed it was hers. "They're picking you up on the desk mike. We can't block it. If you talk, they'll hear you. Why don't you talk to them?" Silence. "For God's sake, Bill," said Donald Crisp, whose voice the DDG could recognize. "For God's sake, say something. If only to prove to them that you're not absolutely stark staring raving mad!" Silence. "Mr. Tilsen, a lot of people would agree with you that the members of the general public have a right to know exactly what is going on during times of crisis such as these and, in the normal event, one would not wish to take that right from them!" The DDG's voice came out of the loudspeaker, but he couldn't, of course, see that Bill Tilsen had scrawled on a pad the words, "GO QUIETLY INTO THE STUDIO AND LIE ON THE FLOOR'. He couldn't see Mike Hartford start to speak, or Sheila Mann clasp her hand over his mouth and beckon silently for him to shut up and do as he'd been told. Mary, the secretary, followed him, and Bill, standing up by now, saw them lying full-length, face down, against the near wall behind the door but well away from the glass window. Bill held his finger over his lips, pointed to the panel of instruments, made the sign of opening a potentiometer to activate a microphone. Sheila pointed to a button, then a sliding fader, then another one. He beckoned for her to go into the studio, to lie down on the floor. She was looking into his face, scanning his eyes. Then she held out her hand and touched his cheek. He saw her mouth move to form the words "Good Luck' and then she left him. He walked to the door leading out of the studio, opened it, and tossed out the Colt . 45 before shutting the door again. The DDG's voice droned on, '. it was the same sort of thing when the story broke about the Fourth Man . " The movement along the corridor was a blur, a moving khaki-clad figure that swooped along one wall, bent, scooped up the gun, and kept on moving. As soon as the gun was lifted, Bill opened the door and stepped out with his hands up. He saw the figure at the end of the corridor with its raised automatic rifle, and wondered if he'd planned it wrongly. He'd assumed no one would fire with one of their own men in the line of fire in the corridor. "I'm unarmed," he shouted. "Don't shoot!" Had he been right? Would they run the risk of picking him off, with one of their own men four yards behind him? "Don't shoot, I'm unarmed." The man in the corridor had turned like a panther and had sprung back. Bill felt a sudden blow in his kidneys, and before he could think he was on the floor with hands patting at his pockets. "He's empty," he heard a voice say and then he was surrounded by cleated rubber-soled boots. "I want to see the Minister of Defence," he said, his voice muffled by the carpet. The air above him was full of chatter. He heard the whoosh of the door being opened, heard Sheila Mann's voice, "Is he dead? You bastards, have you killed him? He came out here to save our lives." He heard the voice of the DDG. "Oh my God, what a dreadful experience for you all. How you must have suffered." He heard Donald Crisp and Mike Hartford arguing as they went down the corridor. "He had a point ... the right message, the wrong means ... tell you, I thought I'd shit my pants ... he did have a point ..." The rest of their argument, the hubbub in the corridor, the opening and shutting of doors was all lost to him. He felt a short, sharp blow behind his ear and then was in a half- dream world in which he was picked up, still face down, and rushed along the corridor up a flight of steps. When he came to again, he was being rammed head-first into a helicopter that was hovering on the roof of Broadcasting House, or so it seemed. His hands were handcuffed together and Major Rodney Plaistow sat beside him. "You've got your wish," he said. "You're going to see the Minister of Defence. If you give me any trouble on the way, I'll open the door and chuck you out!" Chapter Thirteen. "I think it's all a storm in a teacup. I mean, if it was anything, surely somebody from the Government would have said something?" As Maud Pembury was speaking, her husband was rushing round the flat, dumping things into the two large suitcases he'd put on the dining-table, despite her protest that he'd scratch the surface. "You heard what the man said," Claude Pembury said sourly. "As usual, the damned Government is keeping it from us. Now do get a move on, Maud. We haven't got all day. There'll be quite a few people out there. I just hope that fellow hasn't parked his Mercedes in front of my garage doors again!" The Pembury family lived in a mews house in Mayfair when they were in London, which happened less and less these days. Claude couldn't stand Town any more, especially Arab-filled Mayfair. Fortunately, the silver and the paintings were in Selfridge's vault where, presumably, they'd survive any bomb blast. And Maud never brought any jewellery to Town these days except what she wore. "If we're going, I want to take my china collection," she said. "Alas, it would take too long to pack it, Maud. My first editions are much easier. I don't know why I never took them to the country. Put your fur coats in this bag. Wear all your jewellery. Leave the rest. If we get a move on, we'll make Salisbury in time for a late dinner." He flung the last of his first editions into the leather suitcase, raced into the bedroom, plucked her three best fur coats from the rack and rushed back with them. She'd managed to open her make-up box Vuiton had made it specially as an anniversary gift and was trying to decide which make-up to wear. "Come on!" he said. "We don't have time for that, my dear." She took his arm, looked into his eyes, and spoke softly to him. "Sit down, Claude," she said. "Just for a moment. Just to please me?" When she spoke like that, when she looked at him like that, he could refuse her nothing. She was twenty-five years younger than his sixty and still in the prime of her beauty. She could have been an actress, a singer, a dancer, anything. Instead, she seemed to have become a vapid, empty-headed ornament. "Come on," she urged him, 'sit down for a tiny moment, just to please me." He sat on the side sofa in the dining-room; she sat next to him and held his hand. "You've been a most wonderful person to me, Claude," she said. "You've given me everything I ever wanted. A lovely house in the country, a town house here in Mayfair, jewels, furs, an entry to society." "I've always loved you," he said gruffly. "But now, let's get a move on, shall we? I'd like to make Salisbury in time for a bite." "You've always thought me a little bit vague, I know that," she continued. "You've always been strong and sensible, made all the decisions for us and they've always been the right, sensible decisions." "I've tried to make you happy," he said. "To ask you to listen to me." "Well now it's your turn to listen to me," she said. "You're the one who isn't being very sensible. We won't be able to get out of London, Claude. The streets are already jammed outside the window; you haven't heard because, very sensibly, you had the double-glazing installed. But I've looked out of the window and the road at the end of the mews is jammed with cars. You'd never even get the Rolls out of the mews, let alone out of London!" He got up and rushed to the window, drew back the curtain and looked out. The house occupied one end of the mews; at the far end, where the mews joined Park Lane, he could see the wall of immobile vehicles. "Damn," he said, 'damnation." He turned back towards her, panic in his eyes. "Claude, we've had a wonderful life together," she said placidly. "And now it's all over. The bomb, whatever it is, will hit London at eight o'clock tonight and will kill us. Claude, I don't want to be killed out there in the street being jostled by ten thousand people. If I'm going to die, I want to do it here, in your arms, in our own bed. And I'd prefer not to be entirely sober when it happens. Do you think you might open a couple of bottles of your Margaux? There's some of that liver pate in the fridge; I can make us a plate of hot toast." There were tears in her eyes and she had never looked more vulnerable, more delicate, more lovable. "I don't want to die out there, with all those people," she said. "You've spent a lot of time and money shielding me from people. Couldn't you, please, do this for me, now?" He came quickly across the room and knelt on the carpet in front of the sofa, ignoring the rheumatic twinge he often got in his gammy knee these days. He put his arms round her knees, rested his silvered head on her lap. "I've been a fool, Maud," he said. "I never thought to turn on the damned radio. You're quite right, of course. It is already too late. Like you, I wouldn't care to be caught on the streets. It would be such an indignity. But let's do it right, eh? Let's not spoil the Margaux with that strong pate." She leaned forward and put her arms round his shoulders. "Anything you say, darling," she said. "You are always so sensible. And so right." * * Paul Graham watched them bring in Bill Tilsen. "You can take the handcuffs off, Major," he said. "The most he can do is kill me," The major unlocked the handcuffs, looked at Paul for further instructions. "I think you and your chaps should take that helicopter," Paul said, "We're all running out of time." "Rats deserting the sinking ship, eh?" Bill sneered, but Paul ignored him. "There's plenty of time for us to get out, Minister," Major Plaistow said. "We'll hang on in case you need us." He saluted, did an about-turn and left the room, the quintessential military man. "Coming to something, Paul, when you're running your own squad. Does it make you feel powerful?" Paul looked at him for a long moment then said, "Sit down. Bill, and shut up! You'll never understand the mischief you've done, but I'll waste a few of my precious moments by telling you so that, perhaps, you'll stay out of my hair. Firstly, no one could ever know, in the past, where disaster would strike and what damage it would do. No one could know how much time we would have. Therefore, we employed the best brains we could find to give us a set of plans that would be totally flexible. And you can wipe that sneer off your face, I'm not talking about myself. I was merely the co-ordinator, the one who had to make the final decisions." "The one who took absolute power to himself." Paul jumped up. "Come with me, you blithering idiot," he said. He led the way down to the emergency room in the bowels of the Ministry. The room was in a state of ordered chaos as men signalled to a board which occupied one end of the room, like the Big Board on the Stock Exchange. The Positions Board, however, was watching the movement of people and supplies, not stock and commodity prices. And it spelled out trouble. As soon as Paul arrived he was inundated with questions. "Those nurses from Paddington, stuck out at Shepherd's Bush. We wanted them on the perimeter of the blast area ready to move in. We're trying to get radiation suits to them from the store in Poplar, can't get through." "All the helicopters in use?" "Try the river boats, you'll get the doctors to Greenwich and they can get up there." "Street mob in Knightsbridge, we have lorries loaded with food but they can't get through." "Get the Army out of the barracks to force a path across the Park." Paul turned to Tilsen. "Obviously, we had to plant men and materials in different locations, ready to move if we had the time\ We did have the time. We had six hours, during which life flowed normally. We could have assembled crews of doctors, nurses, supplies of radiation-proofed food and drink, heavy construction crews to dig people out of buildings that had collapsed. You took that time away from us, Bill, with your stupid broadcast that immediately blocked every damned road, every damned street. Now we can't move the personnel or the material that's going to be vital to help people survive. Too many will die if we don't conserve all our specialized medical help and facilities to save them. And, thanks to you, we can't deploy that medical help, or the facilities on which we'd planned. Now get the hell out of here. You disgust me." He called over the sergeant who had put Angela Steadman on the train. "Get this man out of here," he said. "Throw him through the door, off the roof, out of a window, do anything you like so long as you get rid of him for once and for all!" Paul returned to Angela Steadman. "Right, Angela, it's no good crying over spilt milk," he said. "Let's look at this mess and see if we can sort any of it out. First, how are we doing on the Northwood link?" Her face was grave. "We've only got half of the people through," she said. "The trouble is that most of the remainder can't reach the terminal here to get on the train." "Whatever happens, they must get on the Northwood shuttle," he said. "Without them, without the survival of some kind of Britain, all our work, all our endeavours, will have been in vain. The present is ours, Angela, the future depends on those people in Northwood. Whatever happens, that link must be kept open and running until the very last second." There were twenty people hanging precariously on the back of the Bamford, sitting on its mudguards, clinging desperately to the arm of the grab. Other people were standing in the bucket which dangled behind it, lifted high above the crowds. The Bamford moved forward an inch, two inches. The people in the car ahead of the Bamford were terrified as they heard the bump of the enormous scoop in front of the earth-moving equipment on the boot of their car. They pushed the doors open as far as they would go in the press of traffic, and tried to squeeze out. The whole of the Old Brompton Road was a solid mass of cars, buses, lorries and people, all piled close together, so close that nothing could move. Cars had tried to get along the pavement and had become jammed against light standards and traffic signal boxes. The dead and the dying, the ones who'd been run over, hit by vehicles trying to squeeze into a hole, were lying against the buildings. People had climbed on the tops of cars and were trying to walk through that way, scrambling over roofs, down bonnets. A stench of exhaust fumes, of petrol from broken tanks, of the diesel of lorries hung everywhere. The Bamford driver lowered the blade of the scoop and engaged the hydraulic lever to slide it forward under the back wheels of the Rover in front. A man tried to jump up on the Bamford with a spanner in his hand, wanting to smash the driver, but the man standing on the Bamford's mudguards wielded his chain with its enormous links and smashed the man down to the ground, a bleeding corpse. "That's the stuff, Mick," the Bamford driver shouted. "We'll get through this lot, don't you worry." The scoop had slid under the Rover as he engaged the hydraulic lift. The scoop started to rise, bringing the back end of the Rover with it, tilting it forward. The scoop thrust forward and the Rover slid up along it, until the front end also began to lift. Once the Rover was clear of the ground, the driver swung the hydraulics over and the scoop started to tip. The people still sitting in the car at the left-hand side of where the Rover had been had watched fascinated as it had started into the air but, when they realized what was about to happen, they scrambled wildly out of their Mercedes. The scoop tipped further and further and then, with a horrible screech of torn metal that could be heard even above the noise of motors and the shouts and screams of the milling mob, the Rover dropped off the scoop and landed on top of the Mercedes. The windscreen blew out, the side windows shattered, spraying the occupants who hadn't been able to get out with tiny glass particles. The Bamford driver didn't care; with a shout of glee he drove the Bamford forward, lowering the plate of the scoop, ready to lift the next car, a Mini, out of his path, not caring that behind him he was leaving a path of unprecedented destruction. Sister Wilhemina had imposed a condition of silence on Form 1VB to control the restlessness they all seemed to be suffering this afternoon. Prep was usually boisterous but today, she'd noticed, there seemed to be some sort of malevolent spirit in the atmosphere. She questioned yet again whether it was a good idea to give the girls prep from five to seven each evening. The break for tea and prayers always seemed to have an adverse effect on their discipline in class; perhaps prep should be from six to eight, when they could go immediately into supper, then evening prayers, then bed. I She was surprised when the door opened and the Reverend Mother Superior came in. All eyes were raised and Sister Wilhemina issued a symbolic reproof. "Get on with your prep, Alice! I'm certain the Mother Superior hasn't come to see you!" Mother Superior came to her desk and, to her astonishment, sat down. "I have dreadful news for you, Sister Wilhemina," she said. "We must all be brave and put our trust in the Lord." "Amen to that, Mother Superior," Sister Wilhemina automatically said. She'd never seen Mother Superior in this state before, quite agitated, quite, well, discomposed. "Father Peter has just telephoned to tell me a most terrible thing. The Russians have sent one of their atomic devices against England. It will land on London at eight o'clock tonight. London will be destroyed." Sister Wilhemina looked at the wristwatch she wore, not, she often assured herself, from vanity, but from a constant need to know the time. It said 6:10. "We don't have much time left, Mother Superior," she said gravely. "What do you propose we do?" "We must get out of here at once." Sister Wilhemina had a practical turn of mind that came | from her many years of social work in the East End of ; London. "In the time left to us we wouldn't be able to walk very far. Mother Superior. We shall need transport. Is it your intention to hire the coaches? The man who took us to Canterbury was, as I remember, very reasonable. And quite well-behaved, considering he had few beliefs." The Mother Superior appeared even more agitated. "That's one thing that worries me," she said. "I've tried to telephone to him, and to the other firms we have used in the past. I can get no replies from any of them. Not a single one of them." Sister Wilhemina considered this strange, unaccountable ] fact. "In that case," she said finally, 'we shall have to use public transport, shan't we?" She closed the book she'd been reading, a rather provocatively written life of St. Jerome, and spoke quietly to the girls. "We are all going to close our books and listen to me," she said. They closed their books. "Now, we are going to go quietly but quickly up to the dormitory, and dress in our outside clothes. Dress as warm as we can. We shall all wear our scarves and you, Millicent, will put on your thicker stockings. When we are dressed we shall all go down to the dining-room where we shall receive a picnic to take with us." Millicent couldn't contain her joy any longer. "We're going on a midnight picnic. Sister Wilhemina?" The thought was too thrilling to contain, and all the girls began to murmur. "We will all remain silent," Sister Wilhemina said firmly, noting that the Mother Superior had left the room. "Now we will pray." The girls dutifully clasped their hands and bowed their heads, sitting quietly at their desks. Sister Wilhemina clasped her hands and bowed her head as well. "Holy Father, we beseech Thee in Thy wisdom to guard over us in this our hour of tribulation," she said. It was the shortest prayer the girls had ever heard her utter and the pause that followed it caught them all by surprise. "Amen?" Sister Wilhemina prompted. "Amen?" the girls chorused. The girls chattered as soon as they were released. What could it mean? Going on a midnight, well, it wasn't exactly midnight, more evening, picnic? But why were they getting this unexpected treat, especially since only a brief while ago Sister Wilhemina was threatening to cut off the fifteen minutes free period before bed at nine o'clock? Sister Wilhemina went to the kitchen where the evening snack was being prepared. The convent school took its main meal of the day at lunch; in the evenings they usually had a little toast or bread, with margarine and jam. The lay staff in the kitchen were buzzing with excitement. "The Mother Superior says we're all going somewhere," Mrs. Milner, who held the title of cook, said. "It makes it very difficult, Sister Wilhemina, when the instructions are changed at the last minute like that. When I asked the Mother Superior why it was happening, she said it's the will of God. Well, the will of God is all very fine and good in its place, and I'm as faithful as the next person, but you can't run a kitchen on the will of God." Sister Wilhemina tried her best to smile at the tiresome, garrulous woman. Really, if only Father Peter hadn't placed such great store by this woman's plain simple economic cooking. Her cooking was as plain as her mind. And just as dull. "It's the will of God that we get out of this place as quickly as we can, Mrs.. Milner," she said. "But it's my will that we take some sort of nourishment with us, since I don't know where we are going, or how long we'll be gone." "Saints alive," Mrs. Milner said. "And what am I supposed to do about that?" "I want you to empty the larder as much as you can," Sister Wilhemina said firmly. "Each girl will be carrying her school satchel, empty. They'll all file past you and I want you to stuff as much as you can into each one." "And why should I be doing that, Sister Wilhemina?" "Because ..." "I know, don't tell me yet again, because it's the will of God." The girls were wildly excited when they came down and paraded in the dining-room, then wove in a long snake through the forbidden territory of the kitchen, where Mrs. Milner, that much-feared dragon of a cook, pushed all manner of comestibles into their school satchels. Tins of pears, tins of powdered milk, tins of sugar, packets of raisins. "Now don't let me catch you dipping into them until you're told, missie," Mrs. Milner threatened. Some received only loaves of bread, others had jars of prunes emptied straight into the satchels. Egg powder, tins of corned beef, some weighing five pounds each, and cardboard boxes of frozen stewing beef were packed as well. "And what about the vegetables, Sister Wilhemina?" "All the greens, Mrs. Milner." Sister Gertrude had plundered the medicine cabinet and had taken all the vitamins, all the aspirins. "You won't need the senna pods," Sister Wilhemina had told her, 'nor the cascara." When the girls assembled in the Great Chapel, Sister Wilhemina stood beside the Mother Superior who seemed still to be in shock. She knew she must act decisively if they were to succeed; looking at the fifty-seven girls of ages from eight to sixteen who were in the convent's care, she knew her testing hour had come. "I want to tell you all a story," she said. "It's a story of Salvation." She was not to know that she had chosen the same keyword that Paul Graham had used, when she quickly reminded them of Moses leading his people out of the Wilderness. "Be good," she said earnestly, 'be obedient, be quiet, and put your trust in the Lord." She led the exodus, as she had begun to think of their voyage, out of the side door of the convent in Poplar. The road was full of traffic, but as yet the pavements were not jammed and they could walk east quite quickly. She saw they would have no hope of finding public transport, the few buses they saw moving slowly in the traffic were already full of people hanging on to the platform, fighting off others who tried to climb aboard. The Mother Superior was fluttering along the column, worrying the flanks unnecessarily like a too-young sheep dog. "Are you thinking of the Blackwall Tunnel, Sister?" she asked, but Sister Wilhemina shook her head. She didn't know exactly what an atomic bomb could do, but she certainly didn't want to take the girls into a tunnel beneath the river. It was extremely doubtful, even to her limited knowledge of such matters, that the tunnel would survive without being filled with water. As she walked along, her eyes looked everywhere, seeking some sign, some suggestion, some indication. It was very difficult to know what, but she had a profound belief that in some way a miracle from the Lord would manifest itself, if only she remained alert to receive it. It was very difficult to remain alert to a possible miracle with all the earthly preoccupations. "Sister Wilhemina, I've got a stone in my shoe." "Sister, it's all the excitement, I think I'm starting my period." "Sister, Poppy has started to eat the currants." "Sister, my bag is getting all wet, and cold." "Sister, I want to go back to the Convent, I want to go home." The girls buzzed with excitement when the helicopter came over low, swooping down so that it was at rooftop height. It whirled suddenly up and over a roof and disappeared from view. The road ahead was solid with traffic, and a car had jammed itself on the pavement. "Quick, we'll turn up this street," Sister Wilhemina said to Clarice, who was walking beside her and asserting her position as Head of School. The crocodile wheeled to the left heading north towards the East India Dock Road; half-way up the side-street, they saw the helicopter had landed on a patch of waste-ground to the left and from it a young officer was climbing. He stood on the patch of waste ground, looking in their direction. He had blond hair and wore no helmet; the light from the west behind him lit his hair in an aureole about his head, like a halo. "That officer," Clarice whispered, impressionable as any girl of sixteen, 'reminds me of the picture of St. Paul on the bookplate of the bible I won for English last year." Sister Wilhemina stopped, and the column shuffled to a halt behind her. "What did you say, Clarice?" "Well, I mean, it was only a thought. But he does." Clarice was confused and blushed. "I didn't mean any blasphemy." "St. Paul, you said? St. Paul?" Clarice nodded unhappily. "Stay here, all of you," Sister Wilhemina commanded, and marched across the waste- ground. "Young man," she said when she came within hailing distance of the officer. "Young man?" He turned towards her. "How many people will that vehicle hold?" "Ten, at a pinch," he said. "And how fast will it travel?" "Hundred and fifty miles per hour equivalent." Sister Wilhemina did a quick calculation. Assuming they could get twenty inside it, twice the normal load, it would need to make three journeys. Seventy-five miles? "Could we have it?" she asked. "Not for myself, you understand. To take our girls to safety. It would be an act of God's mercy for which you'd be eternally blessed." She faltered, realizing what she'd just said. "Eternity might come sooner than we all supposed, Sister," he said. "I can't let you have the helicopter, I'm afraid. We're using it to transport people and materials that will be needed to help the mass of people who can't get out." Four soldiers came across from the large store at one side of the street, carrying a heavy wooden box. With them were two nurses and a man carrying a doctor's bag. "I understand," Sister Wilhemina said quietly. The soldiers loaded the box into the helicopter and were about to return across the street when one of them stopped. "Here, Alf," he said, "I think we've just got our first customers." He went up to Sister Wilhemina. "Looking for somewhere safe, lady?" he asked. "You'd better bring the young lasses down here. We've done the best we can with blocks and lead sheets off the builder's yard. It ain't the Ritz, but at least you'll be safe from the blast and the radiation fallout." A woman whose face was drawn, who had lines of fatigue beneath her eyes, had come from the store, carrying a small suitcase which one of the nurses took from her. "Let me carry that, Dr. Graham," she said. Dr. Graham saw the line of girls. "Take them down there, Sister," she said. "You should be safe down there. Stay there until you hear something on the radio." "We'll pray for you, Doctor, and for success in your endeavours." The soldier took the sister's arm. "Right, missis, step this way with the young ladies. What's your name? What should I call you?" "Sister Wilhemina." "Right, Sister. Private Weaver at your service, but you'd better call me by my first name, Moses." Helen Graham called Paul from the helicopter. He'd been astounded and angry when he'd learned that she had disobeyed the Plan and come back from the Northwood Centre; but now, with the streets and roads of London in such a mess, he was glad of all the help he could get. "We've got the stuff from Poplar, Paul," she said. "Two nurses and Dr. Benjamin. Where do you need them?" Paul consulted the ever-changing chart. "We can't get Williams into the Westminster area," he said. "I suggest you put Dr. Benjamin and the two nurses in Westminster Town Hall basement for the time being. They have all their gear with them?" "Yes, they'll be entirely self-contained. If they survive the blast, they'll be on the streets within an hour." "Good." His crisp, businesslike voice softened. "How are you doing, Helen?" he asked. "Angela said you looked tired when she saw you in Horseguards half an hour ago." "I'll be all right," she said. "Have you decided your final location?" "I wanted to ask you. Will it be all right if I come down there? With you and Angela? I wouldn't want to be on my own." "You come down here, Helen," he said. "If you wanted, you could be on the last train to Northwood." "No, I'd rather be there, with you." The trains were stacked on the line of the underground railway between the basement of the Ministry of Defence and the Northwood Complex, but only a trickle of people came along the platform. The driver of the train went to the movements officer, who was standing at the foot of the stairs hastening people along. "We're way behind schedule, Stan," he said. "What the hell's gone wrong up there?" Stan had a walkie-talkie radio with which he was in constant touch with the control room run by Paul Graham. "Traffic build-up above ground," he said. "We can't get the people through. Wherever possible they're going straight to Northwood by any route they can, but the whole north and west of London is jammed. They're trying to helicopter them into Horseguards Parade." The driver lowered his voice and came nearer to Stan. "Bit worried about some of the lads," he said. "They're beginning to be scared they might be left behind here. We don't want to run short of drivers, do we?" "It's that damned broadcast." "Can't blame 'em, Stan, for wanting to be safe." They heard the clatter of feet on the steps. "Another helicopter-load," Stan said with relief. "They're still getting through." "Thank God they kept this place a secret," the driver said. "I'd hate to think what would happen if the general public came flooding down those steps." Brian Bradbury had never had such a good time in his whole life. He'd led his crowd from Marble Arch and Speakers' Corner , through the back streets of Mayfair, and St. James's, to Trafalgar Square. More and more people had joined them and now he estimated he had about a thousand people all moving along behind him, tame and orderly as sheep. He'd never drawn a crowd of a thousand, not even in the middle of summer when all the tourists were in London. The roads were packed with cars flowing sluggishly along, stopping and starting. Any car that broke down was being manhandled to the side and dumped up on the pavement. There were buses, taxis, lorries with crowds in the backs. Brian had laughed when he'd seen an old man moving along in the stream, with his old lady squatting among the bags he'd dumped into a street-cleaner's cart. "She's got arthritis," he said to everyone as he pushed her along. "Can't walk a step on her own." He must have been at least eighty himself, and certainly not in much better shape than his elderly wife. Brian pushed the cart for a yard or two then tired of that, handed it back to the old man, and led his people down a side-street away from the stream of traffic. When they arrived in Trafalgar Square, coming down the passage beside the National Gallery, they found at least another thousand waiting, just standing about or sitting on the parapets of the fountains, which weren't working. Brian's eyes gleamed when he saw the moody, restless throng. He made his way across to the plinth, and climbed it, standing on the ledge surveying the sea of heads lifted expectantly before him, seeking salvation. Half-formed ideas bubbled inside his head. Government, the evil Big Brother. Got to get the shopping before he went home. Rights of men. Brian Bradbury, the Saviour. The only wise man in a world of fools. The latter-day Messiah. He felt clearer in his mind this day than at any time since they'd let him out of hospital as cured. Two thousand souls, waiting for the Word, waiting to be saved. "We're living in evil times," he thundered, his voice carrying to the far edge of the crowd pressed around the base of the plinth that carried the statue of Nelson. "Evil times, my friends, mark my words well! And most of the evil comes from that street behind me, Whitehall, the seat of government, the Street of Shame! There are more prostitutes in Whitehall than ever you'll find in the streets of Soho. But, never fear, I've come to save you from them!" There was a disturbance in the crowd in front of him as a man pushed his way through, and climbed up on the plinth to stand beside Brian Bradbury. "Get off," Brian said. "This is my platform!" Bill Tilsen had left the Ministry of Defence in a blaze of hate, all of it directed against Paul Graham. How dare he set himself up as God! How dare he take decisions about who should live, and who should die? Though Bill didn't realize it, he was mortally afraid for his life and fear had totally unhinged him by distorting his reason. He could have sought shelter in any one of the places being prepared in and around central London. If he had bothered to listen to the radio, he would hear them all playing the tapes Paul had long ago prepared, telling people the best way to survive. He would have heard the broadcasts specifically prepared in consultation with the Ecology Society and Paul's other experts. It was a complete guide to what people could do for themselves, given the normal facilities of a household. It told the listeners that the most effective protection was to place some form of shielding around themselves. It told those people who had no previously constructed fall-out shelter to go into their cellars or basements, to build a lean-to of bedsprings or boards against a strong bench or table, to take doors off their hinges where possible and use those, and to pile mattresses against the ends and on top. "Select a corner away from the windows," the broadcasts said. "Make your shelter out of cupboards, chests of drawers, anything to support the floor should it fall in with the initial blast. Fill the drawers of the chest with sand, if you can find any, or soil from the garden if you have one. If you live in a block of flats, go down to the basement and join in with your neighbours to build the strongest shelter you can." The local police had been sent out into the streets, and now the alert was official. They were organizing parties of people into groups with enough young manpower to make some sort of construction, to take down enough food and water to last through the immediate fall-out period. But there were hundreds of thousands they couldn't reach, people who'd taken to the roads in their cars, who still blindly believed that they might eventually get through. Hundreds of thousands were just wandering aimlessly in the open air, in the suburban streets, in the parks, in Trafalgar Square. "There is a railway in a basement of the Ministry of Defence," Bill shouted to the crowd. "It could carry us all to safety in the special shelter the Government is reserving for its friends, for the privileged few, for their own kind. Let's all go down Whitehall to the Ministry of Defence, and get on that railway." The police on the edge of the crowd started to move in, to drag Bill Tilsen out. Brian Bradbury licked his lips. "Here comes the fuzz," he shouted. "They want to pull my friend down, to victimize him." A young policeman turned suddenly, realizing the danger he ran. He was entirely surrounded by jeering faces. He saw the sergeant and three other policemen trying to get through to him in a hard pushing wedge, but before they could even broach the edge of the crowd, he felt a knee in his balls, and something bang into his kidneys. He felt the hammer of hobnailed boots on his ankles and through a mist of pain knew he would fall. His helmet had gone and now hands were clutching at him, fists punching him. He saw an elbow approaching his eye, and ducked, but encountered a knee coming up. He felt his nose smash and saw the blood begin to pour, heard the hyena howl as the frustrated crowd saw blood, smelled its first pack victim, and started to mangle him. The inspector at the edge of the crowd called a code- word. A Special Branch sniper was climbing to the edge of the roof of the National Gallery, but before he could reach a firing position, several of the crowd, high on the drug of violence, had leaped on to the plinth platform beside Bill Tilsen and Brian Bradbury, and were mindlessly exhorting the crowd. "Kill them! Smash them! Kill them! Put the boot in!" The sniper reached his position at the edge of the parapet and levelled his rifle. His instructions had been quite clear: any attempt to incite a riot must be stamped out immediately. He took aim on Bill Tilsen, the head clear in the centre of the cross wires of the telescope. He squeezed the trigger but, at the last fraction of a second, Bill Tilsen's head moved and was replaced by the open-mouthed, screaming head of one of the rioters which took the bullet. The rifle was part-silenced but no one would have heard it anyway, so loud was the crowd's hysterical shouting. The man the bullet had hit was catapulted backwards against the column; his body spun and he fell down the side on to the heads of people gathered there. They screamed and tried to pull away but the edges of the crowd pressed in too tightly. "He's been shot," a soldier in the crowd said, but his voice was lost in the raving rant of people all about him. Chapter Fourteen. They poured down Park Lane and saw the motor bikes in the showroom window, powerful machines that would do over a hundred miles an hour along a clear road. They smashed the windows, dragged the bikes forward from the display stands. The bikes all contained a little petrol; four of them started first press, their powerful twin-engines pulsing with suppressed power. They climbed on the bikes and pointed them north along the pavement edge of Park Lane, against the sluggish stream of near-stalled traffic, their engines roaring, scattering the people trying to push their way south. When they came to Brook Gate they forced their way across the stream of southbound traffic, through the gate, across the northbound lanes and down into the underground car-park. They raced across the car-park in the semi-dark, exhilarated by power and nearness of death, a wild bunch of young renegades. At the far exit they raced out and turned into the carriageway which was also part-blocked by traffic. They shot across the sand path of the horse ride, across the grass heading for the restaurant in the centre of the park. When they arrived there one of the bikes ran out of petrol and they all stopped in a group. The restaurant was empty, the staff had fled. They kicked in the doors looking for a piece of tubing and found one attached to a barrel of beer. They cut the tubing away, leaving the beer to pour out of the barrel over the floor. The one whose bike had emptied went outside to the line of abandoned cars, found one without a lock on the petrol tank, and began to siphon the petrol from it into a tin he'd found in the restaurant. The others had smashed the grill open and were in the bar. Each of them clutched a bottle in one hand, drinking from it, while they threw the other bottles against the walls and through the windows, smashing the glass, littering the floor with wreckage. One of them opened the fridge, found a side of cooked beef and began to gnaw at it. Another found a ham-bone weighing at least eight pounds and picked it up to bite into the firm pink flesh. One found a side of smoked salmon and tore the flesh off in strips with his teeth. One found a box of frozen shrimps and tried to eat one but they were hard and tasted of rubber so he emptied them into the fish tank. While he was watching the shrimps floating down and the guppies fleeing to the far edges of the tank, another took a bottle and threw it at the fish tank, which exploded in a thousand fragments when the bottle hit. When the bikes had all been topped up with a ration of petrol from the abandoned cars they set off again, but this time they headed back into central London rather than out to the west. They streamed back into Mayfair through the traffic, down Park Street and then across to Purdy's shop. They forced their way into the shop, ignoring the jangling burglar alarm bells, and ran through looking for guns, most of which were locked in the vaults. They came out of the shop with two shot-guns and a box of shells; two of them had scooped young girls from the pavements as they rode along and the girls carried the shotguns across their laps. As they drove down Audley Street, they stopped at each shop and the girls fired the guns into the windows. A police car came screaming round the corner of Mount Street; the girls took careless aim and fired. The windscreen of the police car shattered and the driver's face exploded in a mess of blood. They turned the bikes north again and raced past the American Embassy; one of the girls aimed the shotgun at the helicopter taking off from the Embassy roof, but the range was too great. A marine standing at the door of the Chancery took careful aim with his M4 rifle and the girl dropped, dead, off the back of the motor bike. "Leave her," one of them shouted. "We'll find you another." They forced a way across Oxford Street and headed north on the continuation of Park Street, riding up and down the pavement to force their way through the cars. One of them, seeing a gap and accelerating madly through it, hit the side of a van and spun hopelessly out of control. The bike shot across a pavement and came to rest against the railings leading to a basement. The driver was catapulted over the handlebars of the bike and landed with his throat impaled by one of the spikes on top of the railings. "Leave him," they shouted. "Fuck him. Leave him!" They roared down Church Street, through the wreckage and remains of what had been the street market whose stalls were now empty and abandoned. One of them halted his bike briefly by one of the stalls, took a banana, peeled it, and gave it to the girl clinging to the pillion. Watching her eat it must have aroused him; he climbed back on the bike, turned round rapidly, and careered towards a shop at the corner of Church Street that sold beds and bedding. He kicked in the door, got back on his bike and drove inside the shop. The others stopped their bikes by the door, rested on the handlebars, and screamed obscene approval at him and the girl. "Fucking hell," one of them shouted. "This is better than the day we did Brighton!" They mustered on the parade ground; the colonel came from his quarters and stood in front of them. "This is a volunteer action," he said. "I cannot promise that any of you will get out again, though we shall keep whatever transport we can until the last minute. I'm not going to ask you to step forward but any of you who care to volunteer should go to the hangar to be kit ted out when I have dismissed you. I shall be taking you in myself. No blame attaches to those of you who prefer for personal reasons to stay beind; I take this opportunity of thanking those of you who decide to volunteer." His face cracked in his well-known wintry smile. "Especially since there may be no opportunity of thanking you later." When the parade had been dismissed, he went back into his quarters, cleared the contents of his desk into a kit bag that stood ready nearby, and sealed it with the ticket that bore his name and disposal instructions. He went outside, climbed into his jeep and drove slowly across to the barrack hangars. Over a hundred men had volunteered, out of a total of 212. His heart warmed with gratitude and he walked down the line of them, patting a shoulder here and there, mentioning a name or two. "I thought you had a wife and five children, Sergeant-major?" he said. "Yes, Colonel, that's right." "No need for you to come, you know. You did more than your share in Northern Ireland." "Yes, Colonel. But I didn't want to be left out. I trained some of these lads; I want to see if they were paying attention." The planes were ready; the engines had already been warmed. The men moved slowly into the back opening, their movements hampered by the equipment they wore, the automatic rifles and pistols they carried. Each of the planes was capable of carrying sixty-five men; as soon as they were all on board, the back doors were closed and the planes rumbled along the concrete for takeoff. Once they were airborne, the colonel briefed the men in his plane knowing that his second-in-command would be briefing those in the other plane. "It's our job to maintain some kind of order and discipline." he said. "But don't forget we are dealing with an enemy. Even the most innocentseeming members of the public can be enemies if, however inadvertently, they induce other people to riot, if they spread the fatally dangerous epidemic of panic. We want to get all the people off the streets, into basements of buildings. If they won't go, then we shall have to try to make them." It took only five minutes to fly to the target zone; the plane banked into its tight circle and the men dropped out in a triple stream, one right, one left, one central. They were all equipped with the new Delta-wing chutes and could aim themselves with considerable accuracy towards the square of red flares that marked the boundary of Horseguards Parade. The one hundred men came swiftly from the low height drop, hit the ground and gathered the chutes into tight balls before unclipping them and leaving them on the ground. They formed into sections and raced through the archway into Whitehall itself which the mounted police had cleared of crowds. The cars had been stopped at the exit from Trafalgar Square and fed into the stream going round Parliament Square. Apart from one or two people cowering by the sides of the buildings, and a group of three huddled at the base of the Cenotaph, Whitehall was an oasis of peace. The men of the Parachute Regiment spread out across the street, hearing the yelling of the mob in Trafalgar Square, knowing that the five-man-deep barrier of policemen, with the two rows of mounted police on horseback behind them, couldn't contain the crowd for ever. The angry shouting from Trafalgar Square rang down deserted Whitehall, curdling the blood of the soldiers who listened to it. They'd faced crowds before, in Belfast; they'd faced people throwing stones and bottles, firing rifles from roof-tops, planting bombs. But they'd never faced a whole sea of hysterical humanity, such vast numbers as were now slowly but inexorably pushing the policemen back into Whitehall itself. * * * Walter MacKlin scanned the printout desperately. His eyes were tired from staring at the reams of paper that kept jumping from the machine at high speed. He rubbed them and saw Peggy standing beside him with a mug of tea she'd made. "Oh, bless you for that," he said as he took it from her. She sat beside him and waited while he drank his tea. When he put the mug on the side table, she reached out her hand and touched his arm. He looked at her in surprise and she grinned at him. "I just wanted to do that," she said. "I suddenly realized we may be blown to hell in an hour and I've never even touched you. Or been touched by you." He was embarrassed but tried not to show it. "You know why I stayed, don't you?" she asked quietly but directly. "I can guess. It's a great compliment, and I just don't know what to say." "You needn't say anything. But you could consider kissing me." He opened his arms and she came forward into them. He hugged her to him not speaking, and then kissed her lips. He hardly knew how to define it to himself but he felt a great affinity with her, a great feeling of a natural attraction, a correctness. "If I had gone," she said when their faces parted, "I would never have known this most beautiful moment." He hugged her again, feeling clumsy. "You do me a great honour," he said. "And I feel somehow strengthened by it. By knowing, or thinking I know, how you feel." "It's the usual story," she said laughing though somewhat ruefully. "Young woman assistant has several love-affairs but realizes that all the time she's been in love with the big boss, the unattainable one." "Who is only a fallible human being, Peggy." "Who is, after all, a human being, and not some distant God." Their embrace was interrupted by the clatter of the highspeed machine on the other side of the room. "What on earth is that?" he asked. She kept her arms round him, her mouth in the hair by his ears. "I mounted that DNA schedule we prepared for Cambridge," she said. "It occurred to me there might be a similarity. After all, they were trying to probe something infinitesimally small, just as we are." She felt him stiffen and knew she had lost the precious moment they'd shared. She came out of the chair quickly and crossed to the printer. She stared at the paper, pressed a couple of buttons on the console and saw a continuous line of the figure 1. "Look at this," she said. "Look at it." "I can't see it from here," he said. "What is it?" "An in-phase synchronization." "I can't hear you for the noise of that damned printer," he said. "It's an in-phase synchronization," she said more loudly. He was staring at her. "That's it," he said, 'that could be it." She came to his side quite mystified by what he'd said. "I don't see the relevance of it," she said. "Okay, so we can get the DNA program in phase with our program but that doesn't mean anything. They're both based on logical progressions and so, logically, they'd have to go in-phase." "Not that!" he said, his mind racing. "Not that. I couldn't read the printout from where I was sitting, right?" "You'd need damned good eyesight to read it from across the room." "Of course. But you were close enough to read it, and you called it out to me. And when I couldn't hear it, you called it out more loudly." "I still don't get it," she said. "Bobcat Two is still up there. They don't know what to do with it. We could make it orbit the Medusa at a safe distance. But it would be near enough to listen to the Medusa!" "And then it could shout to tell us what it could hear." "That's it, that's it," he said. He picked up the telephone and dialled the overseas code for America, then the code for the Bobcat control centre. "Les Regan quickly, please," he said urgently. "This is Walter MacKlin in London." Les came on the line; his voice was dred, his manner dispirited. "Yes, Professor MacKlin, what can I do for you?" "You can stop crying into your beer," Walter MacKlin said crisply. "I think I've found a use for your Bobcat Two. Provided you haven't despatched it into outer space." They'd been having trouble all day with the cooling system of the No .3 generator at Battersea, and Phil Cowley knew it would need all their attention to prevent it overheating. He looked round the control room where the output from all the generators was registered constantly, along with the supply and demand data. They'd passed the usual evening peak quite successfully despite the difficulty with No .3; now they could settle into the long evening's quiet when all the factory loads were replaced by the smaller demands of home-cooking and television-watching. He looked at his watch. Quarter to seven. Harry was late again: he'd come in with his usual, traffic's very heavy on the South Circular, excuse. Damn it. Harry ought to get himself a place nearer the power station now that he'd been promoted to shift leader. It always looked bad when the shift leader was late. Phil looked round the control room and suddenly realized that all the on-coming shift were late. He walked across to Maurice. "What's happened to them all?" he said, tapping his watch. Maurice shook his head, looking at the output meter of No .3, constantly checking the heat absorption of the cooling systems which had occupied all their attention during the whole afternoon. "I'll bet they're in the boozer," he said, 'and have forgotten the time. I think they're going to have to close down Number Three when the demand eases off. But that's their problem, not ours!" "I think I'll give Harry's number a ring," Phil said. "I particularly didn't want to be late home tonight." He didn't tell Maurice that with his wife and family away visiting her mother in County Wexford, he'd planned an evening on the tiles with Betty Morell from the pub. He picked up the phone and dialled Harry's number in Paddock Wood. The number rang a long time and he was about to hang up when he heard the receiver lifted, and the breathless voice of Harry, who'd obviously just run into the house from the garden. "What are you doing still at home?" Phil asked. "You were supposed to relieve me ten minutes ago." "You're not still there?" Harry asked incredulously. "Of course I'm still here, waiting for you." There was a silence, then Harry said quickly, "You mean, you're still there? You haven't heard?" "Heard what?" "About the bomb?" "What bomb} What the hell are you talking about, Harry? I've heard some excuses for your being late on shift but a bomb? Harry spoke slowly and precisely. "Phil," he said, 'listen to me. Get out of there as quickly as you can. All of you. It's on the radio, man. There's a bomb, heading for London right now. They say it's going to hit at eight o'clock and it'll destroy all of central London, so get out of there, Phil, and get the rest of the lads out of there, as sharp as you can. Me, I'm getting the car ready and I'm driving down to see if I can get on a ferry. They reckon the wind is going to take the fall-out north, but I never did trust the Met. reports." "This has to be a gag, Harry?" Phil asked desperately. "I mean, you're pulling my leg aren't you?" Harry spoke precisely again, "Phil," he said, 'this isn't a gag. Turn on the radio, listen to any radio station, but for Christ's sake get out of Battersea just as fast as you can." The wind freshened as the evening began, and Brian Coates saw the dinghies out, taking advantage of it, or so he thought. As an engineer of the ferry-boat line that plied between Tower Bridge, Charing Cross, and further upriver, he was used to having to dodge these damned weekend sailors, but he'd never seen so many out during the week before. He'd finished repairing the port engine on the fifty- foot Thorneycroft at twelve o'clock and had taken the ferryboat out to test it; the job should have lasted only until one o'clock when he was due to go for lunch, but the injector had jammed and he'd needed to work on it on board. He'd tied up to the piles off Mill Wharf and had cursed all afternoon as he'd laboured to get the damned thing going again. Now he was late coming back and he knew he'd have difficulty getting them to agree overtime pay. More and more boats had sped past him as the afternoon lengthened; every time he had lifted his head over the gun whales he'd seen a host of them bobbing along. Funny thing, too: the sailors were wearing a variety of clothing. Must be some kind of fancy-dress race, or something, he'd told himself, seeing a City gent actually sailing a 470 dinghy wearing a bowler hat, with three passengers on board. He nosed the boat gently into the pier at Charing Cross, seeing the crowds waiting. My God, what the devil was happening this afternoon? There had to be more than fifty people there. With bags, suitcases, one even with a pram. As he came from the boat, he saw that the wire-mesh barrier holding them off the pier was beginning to bulge under the press of people. "No more trips tonight," he shouted. "Look at the board for the times." He turned his back on them, but wheeled round when he heard the sound of metal screeching. Bloody hell! What was happening. This mob was fighting its way over the bent angle-irons of the mesh, struggling with each other to get through the gap their pressure had forced. "Get back!" he yelled, 'there's no more trips tonight!" Still they came on and he was forced to jump back on board to avoid being swept over the edge into the murky water below. He raced along the boat into the pilot house, closed the door and slipped on the catch. "I must be going mad," he said as he watched them race on board. When the pier was empty one of the men came along the deck to the wheelhouse. He rapped on the window but Brian Coates shook his head to indicate he wouldn't open the door for anyone. The man brought up an iron bar he'd acquired somewhere and smashed the window. Brian gasped. "You gone out of your mind?" he shouted, wiping the glass off himself as best he could. "Get this boat moving," the man said, waggling the bar in Brian's face through the window. "Where do you want to go?" Brian asked fearfully. "What's this all about?" "You haven't heard the radio?" "How could I? I've been working on this thing all afternoon." "The Russians are dropping a bomb on London. It's our only chance to get as far out as we can." "You're joking?" Brian said. "It's all some kind of a gag?" "I'm not joking," the man said. "Get this bloody thing started and let's all get out of here." Brian didn't believe him but knew there was no way he could argue with that iron bar. The fellow had probably gone berserk. Escaped from a loony-bin, the lot of them. They didn't look like loonies, rather like refugees on the television news whenever an army overran a village. He switched on the engines, warmed them briefly, told the man to cast off, and made his way past the pier and into the river. It was like trying to drive a dodgem in one of the fairgrounds, he thought. No wonder there'd been so many boats on the water all afternoon, if what this fellow said was half true. "It's not a con?" he asked. "No, it's not a con. Which way is the tide running?" "Downriver." "Right, that's the way we'll go." Brian had no more time for conversation as he tried to negotiate the cumbersome craft in a river full of boats of all description, whose skippers appeared all to have gone mad. He fed the bows past a rowing-boat and the man in it stood up and tried to throw a rope at the ferry-boat, before the wash sent him bobbing away. A dinghy cut across his bows and he remembered the maxim, give way to sail, just before he hit the boat on its stern. The mast wavered over, buckled, and the boat capsized. "Leave it," the man with the bar yelled as Brian went to cut his engine to see if the dinghy sailor had been hurt. "Give us full revs." He pushed the revs up a little but didn't dare to open up the throttles too much since the ferry-boat was a bastard to steer on full throttle. "Open her up all the way," the man with the bar commanded, 'and let's get the hell out of here." "There's no chance to miss these boats at top speed," Brian said. "Who said owl about missing them? You've got a hundred people on board this boat. A hundred lives to save. And if you have to mow a few people down on the river while you're doing it, well, that's just bad luck." That was when Brian Coates began to believe that an atom bomb was going to fall on London. "Okay," he said, 'but you'd better tell them all to hold tight." It was seven o'clock in the evening. Paul scanned the latest weather prediction and saw the wind was steady. He was reading the continuous reports that poured in; outside London, people were moving in more-or-less orderly fashion out of the way of the fall-out. Traffic on roads was heavy but, thanks to the local radio stations and their continuous information service, it was being kept moving. All the local buses and trains were running smoothly, evacuating large numbers of people. There had been trouble in the centre of Birmingham but even that was being solved. His vital concern was the centre of London, and his task of getting as many technical people as possible into the Northwood Complex from which the government of the country could begin again, after the Medusa had landed. The centre of London was choked with people, with all the commuters who had come in on this normal working day, and had no hope of getting out again. All the railway stations were blocked; the majority of them had had so many casualties from people trying to force their way on to platforms that it was no longer possible to bring the trains in without crushing the people who'd overflowed on to the lines themselves. All electric rails had been switched off and in most cases the staff had evacuated the station, the trains and the signal-boxes. Their plan to use the stations as evacuation points had just not worked, thanks to the hysteria Bill Tilsen's broadcasts had generated. Some trains were coming back towards London but were being stopped by the mass of people walking up the lines towards them. In many cases, the people had clambered on board and the trains had reversed back the way they came. The computerized points system had worked for a time but couldn't hope to complete its program when faced with the illogicality of a train going the wrong way along a section of the line, in contradiction to every program the computer had stored. Donald Brooks, out at the airport, had done a marvelous job, but the few tens of thousands he had been able to fly out was a drop in the bucket; many millions still remained. Gatwick had done well but it was too far south for people to reach easily, with Victoria, Waterloo and London Bridge stations virtually at a standstill and the roads south totally jammed by vehicles. Donald Brooks had flown some of his planes to Gatwick, had offloaded them there, and had brought them back to Heathrow, operating a continuous shuttle service between the two airports. Paul saw Angela standing before the big map of London on the wall, wearing a telephonist's headset and microphone, holding a telephone in her hand, and talking into both simultaneously. God, what a tower of strength she'd been in this last insanely-hectic hour, devising ways to move people and medical supplies across the crowded face of London. At that moment, the lights flickered, went dim, then out, then came on again as bright as ever. He knew instantly what had happened; the London power stations had ceased to function, no doubt because the staff had left, and the national grid had blown. Now they were running on the emergency power of their own generator. Angela came across to his desk, trailing her telephone leads. She lifted the earphones from her ears. "That's it, Paul," she said. She took off the headset and placed it on a side desk. "It was too much to hope we could keep on going with all the London power knocked out." At first no one understood what had happened when the train stopped in the middle of the tunnel which was plunged into darkness. People began lighting cigarette lighters, striking matches, to see their neighbours. The tube train had been packed when it left Oxford Circus; each station had been a nightmare as the sealed train crawled alongside the platform where the hundreds of people had banged on windows and the doors to be let in. Not one single additional person could have fitted into the train. The people were packed so close that breathing was almost impossible and any sort of body movement out of the question. The heat was stifling, the air already foully stale, rank with body odours. "Put out the bloody matches," somebody shouted above the wailing murmur. "You'll use up what little oxygen we have left." At first the people sobbed, then a man started screaming, a horrible, thin screech that shuddered in everyone's ears. Immediately, others started screaming and wailing, and people tried to move towards the doors. Their bodies were so tightly jammed, all in contact with each other, that no individual movement was possible, only a swaying mass of bodies whose feet were locked in place, whose precarious balance was immediately lost. People fainted and couldn't fall, only slump against the tight press of other bodies that surrounded them tighter than wrapping-paper. A heavy man started to push his elbows to clear a space for himself, to try to turn and face the direction of the swaying motion; another man, hit in the face by an elbow, jabbed back. A woman standing against the vertical bar, was pressed against it, unable to move her face from it; her eyes pressed sideways; the iron post pushed into her breastbone and stopped her windpipe. She tried to press back but was unable to move the ton of flesh behind her. She tried to gulp a breath of air into her tortured lungs but couldn't as she was squeezed on to the unbending iron pole. Her eyes were pressed wide open but she could no longer see, could no longer feel the pain in her chest. She died where she stood, pinned against the rail by the struggling mass of throbbing humanity behind her. "Open the fucking doors," somebody started to yell, and the cry was taken up in desperation. "Open the doors. Open the doors." There was a sudden whoosh as the doors started to open, worked by the emergency power supply in the tube-train's cab. People immediately were pressed out of the doors and fell against the side walls of the tunnels, against the heavy steel-wire-wrapped cables, falling down the side of the immobile train, on to the rails. People scrabbled over fallen bodies, trying to move forward along the direction the train had been taking. But soon the fallen bodies jammed the space between the cars and the walls of the tunnel in which the train had been running. People scrabbled higher and higher, stamping the bodies below them into a solid mass of humanity. But then the crowd reached the top of the cars and began to jam the space between the cars and the roof. One or two crawled along, whimpering. The people in the first car had managed to get out and past the train. They ran, stumbling and sobbing, along the lines in the darkness, unable to see any light, guiding themselves as best they could along the line, heading forward into the blackness, knowing only that somewhere ahead, somewhere, must lie fresh air and safety. People clutched other people's shoulders and a snake formed, moving along the tie bars of the rails, achieving the slow, shuffling rhythm of the chain gangs clutching at each other greedy for any sort of human contact, any touch that reassured them they were not alone in the Stygian nightmare. Chapter Fifteen. It was 1930 hours when the Prime Minister rang Paul Graham from the Northwood Complex. "I just went down to meet the train coming in, Paul," he said. "There were only twenty-five on it." "I know, Prime Minister," Paul said. "All the streets are jammed solid. We're having a hell of a job getting through. We've given the Northwood Link first priority." "And the last train?" "Will leave here at nineteen-forty-five hours. That's the only way we can guarantee their safe arrival." "I want you to come on that train," the Prime Minister said. "You've done everything you can there. No man could have done more. I want you on that train, Paul, and that's an order." "I know it is, Prime Minister," Paul said softly, then hung up the telephone. When the electricity failed in Pompey Mansions, Streatham High Road, the solenoids on the gas boilers ought to have clicked shut, cutting off the supply of gas. The company who maintained the boilers, Home Bright Gas Heating Services Ltd." had neglected to check the solenoids. When the thermostat opened and demanded more heat, the gas valve opened but the automatic lighting device failed to function, since there was no electricity to cause the spark. Gas seeped through the basement of Pompey Mansions, and up the lift- shaft and stairwells. Most of the inhabitants of Pompey Mansions had either heard the broadcasts or been told about them, and the building was deserted save for one flat on the eighth floor in which Joe Cargill, a roadie who'd been travelling with the Gemini, was asleep, stoned out of his mind. Bess Maloney, who had run away from home two weeks ago and was now travelling with Joe, stirred in the bed, got out of it and crossed naked into the kitchen, grimacing at the pile of pots on the draining-board. "Shit," she said, 'what a slob!" It had been fantastic the first couple of days when Jean Paul the drummer had had her. It had been simply out-of- sight going from one to the other of the group, writing all their names with stars in the diary she'd kept. It hadn't been so much fun with Joe, the guy who helped them set up the equipment, the guy they always sent for the Chinese take-out. Joe was such a groveller, she thought, as she filled the kettle with water. She looked round the kitchen cabinet, found a spoonful of Nescafe in the bottom of a jar, all runny where somebody had used a wet spoon. She looked round the kitchen but couldn't see any matches, so she went back into the bedroom to get Joe's cigarette lighter. He was awake. "What time is it, what's-yer-name?" he asked. "My name's Bess," she said, 'and it's half-past seven." "Come back to bed," he said, eyeing the lushness of her young, naked body. "You can't even remember my name," she said, 'so I'll be buggered if I'll come back to bed!" "You'll be buggered if you don't!" he said, leering up at her. "Piss off," she said, "I want a cup of coffee." "You left the gas on, out there?" he said, sniffing. "I haven't turned it on." She picked up his lighter. "It doesn't work," he said. "I'll have to buy another." She shook it; there seemed to be very little liquid left in the transparent bottle. She put her thumb on the wheel and flicked it. It sparked but didn't ignite. "Maybe I can light the gas with the spark," she said. She went back into the kitchen and turned on the gas. God, the room stank of gas. She'd heard somebody say they put the smell in artificially now that they used North Sea gas. She flicked the lighter in the stream of gas which ignited. She put the kettle on the stove and went back into the bedroom. "Come here," he said. "What's my name, then? Tell us my name, and I'll come!" "Bess," he said triumphantly. "Black Bess." "I'm not black," she said indignantly. "No," he said, 'but your hair is. Where you daren't bleach it." "Where do you keep the milk? I couldn't find any." "He leaves it outside. Make us two cups of coffee and bring it to bed, eh, Black Bess?" She went back out of the bedroom, across the hall, and opened the door. The milk was by the head of the stairs. She noticed three bottles and took them all. She could smell the odour of gas, of cat's piss, of garbage. What a place to live. What a slob. Bugger it, tomorrow, she'd go back up to Newcastle. Her mam would cry, her dad would belt her, but what the hell, it was better than living with a slob like Joe. She'd left the door open. The leaking gas rolled into the flat and across the kitchen towards the cooker where it was ignited by the flame under the kettle. The explosion destroyed Pompey Mansions in one vast thunderclap that was heard all across South London. Most people thought the bomb had landed prematurely. Those in the vicinity of what had been Pompey Mansions thought the explosion was caused by the bomb strike, that the cloud of flame, concrete, bricks and rubble that soared three hundred feet into the air was atomic fall-out. The early strike, occurring so suddenly, took most people by surprise; they had been listening to portable radios wherever they were, many trapped in the streets, some fatalistically staying in their own homes, others in shelters that were being hastily improvised according to the instructions they were receiving on the radio, some in the basements of buildings where teams of soldiers laboured to build blast-proof walls. Hundreds of old people died instantly of heart attacks. Hundreds of people flung themselves out of the windows of high-rise buildings. The debris fell from the sky across a wide area of Streatham High Road, killing instantly hundreds of people trapped in cars, buses, or on the pavements. After the stunning blast, the whirr and whee of enormous fragments of concrete that were catapulted through the air, the agonizing screech of the torn metal of the reinforcing rods and the steel girders on which Pompey Mansions had been built, the mammoth jangle of the tens of thousands of windows that were shattered, came the screams and wails of the victims slashed by flying glass, by jagged timber ends, by sharp concrete slivers. Paul Graham heard the rumble, paused, then shook his head. "When it hits," he said to Angela, "I doubt if we'll hear it." Fred Smith had never been a very ambitious man; he'd served his time in the army, had been demob bed and had gone back to working in the shop selling men's clothing. Of course, it was all different now, with styles of clothes Westerly wouldn't have handled thirty or forty years before. Now he sold trousers so badly-made they'd come apart after three wearings, jackets made of rubbish, badly-sewn at the seams. For years he'd been talking about taking an early retirement, maybe getting some kind of part-time job, but Elsie had always told him to stick it out and go for the maximum pension. He'd left the shop when he'd heard the first broadcast on the transistor that was another innovation in the shop, playing its continuous chatter from Capital Radio, presumably to bring in the young folks and dull their perceptions while they fingered the junk that Westerly now sold. He heard the announcement of the bomb, went into the back room where he kept his jacket and raincoat not, he would have hastened to tell you, bought from Westerly but made privately for him by a lady who did their alterations and walked down the road past the parade of shops, turned right and over the hill that led to the street in which they lived in a terrace house, in Acton, three miles away. He blessed the day he'd put down a deposit on that house. It had been theirs for the last ten years. "What are you doing home at this time?" Elsie asked him immediately. "Don't tell me you've got your indigestion again? Or is Mr. Westerly doing the late turn?" He took off his raincoat and his heavy outer jacket, sat down at the kitchen table watching her make him the cup of tea he always had when he returned home. Then, slowly and carefully, he told her about the bomb. She listened, wide-eyed, but the thought never entered her head he might be joking, he might be pulling her leg. Fred never did that. Fred never spoke until he had something to say, and then you could bet the Bank of England on it, he was that careful. "They've done it, missis," he said. "After all these years, they've done it." She was nodding. "You've always said it had to come," she said. "I hoped it wouldn't be in our lifetime." "Thank God the lads are in Australia," he said. "Amen to that." She buttered a slice of bread for him, placed it on a plate beside his cup of tea, and brought the pot of jam. "What are we going to do?" she asked. It was not a plea for help, merely an indication that she was ready, as always, for instructions. Fred would decide, Fred would tell her, and they would do whatever Fred said. "There's too many people on the road," he said. "It'd be madness to try to get through. I walked home from the shop, all by the back streets." "You walked all that way?" "I had to. The buses are all jammed full of people but they aren't going anywhere. They'd all be better off at home." "Is that what we're going to do? Stay at home?" "Yes, missis," he said. "We'll stay at home, and have our tea, and then we'll see what they're doing about it on the television." That was when the lights went out. He heard her voice in the dark. "Fred," she said, "I'm frightened." "So am I, missis," he said. "Where've you got the candles?" "In the pantry." "Then go and get one, missis," he said, 'we don't want to go to meet our Maker in the dark, do we?" Light from the emergency generators of the Ministry of Defence threw shadows in the street below as paratroopers spread themselves across Whitehall in a line three-deep. Colonel Britten looked up at the rooftops and jabbed his arm; the sergeant-major despatched men to take positions up there, with snipers' rifles. The men with the smoke mortars knelt at the back of the thin lines of troops, ready to fire smoke, or stun-gas, or tear-gas on orders. They laid out their bomb canisters in neat lines, ready for action. Whitehall had now completely emptied. At the top, by the Whitehall Theatre, the police were still holding a line with men on foot at the front, mounted men behind, the Land Rover of the Command Centre with its plastic bubble behind them, its dimmed headlights illuminating the solid wall of police backs and the faces of the mob beyond them. They'd given the colonel a radio feed of the police control line. "I could lob smoke over your head?" he offered. "No, thank you," the clipped voice of the chief superintendent came back at him. "If anything happened behind them it might start them forward in a panic rush that could swamp us all!" The Ministry of Works vehicles came through Whitehall Place, alongside the Ministry of Defence on the north side. Three bulldozers, with blades a metre high and two me tres across. They spread across Whitehall as best they could but the gaps between them were conspicuously wide. The drivers parked them, with their lights on, leaped off, and ran into the front door of the Ministry to make their way down the stairs to the underground railway station. The train that waited there was pitifully empty beneath the flickering lights of the emergency electricity system; the driver was looking at his watch and staring up at the steps. One lone man clattered down wearing a green porkpie hat, glasses, and the owlish expression of a man more used to the abstract world of books than the harsh reality of catching trains. His coat was torn, and his face bruised. "I had quite a job getting through," he said. "What's your line, dad?" the train driver said, more from nervousness than an active interest. "Alternative energy sources!" "What in God's name is that?" The man's face creased in a smile. "You'll not believe this," he said in a West Country burr, 'but I run my car on the waste products of poultry." "That must be nice," the driver said, mystified. "Most people call it chicken-shit," the man said as he walked into the nearest carriage. One man had pressed his way to the front of the crowd and now stood in face-to-face confrontation. "Let me through," he said to the nearest constable, who was standing in line with his arms linked to the policemen on each side of him. The constable didn't speak. "Let me through," the man insisted. "I'm a Salvation." The policeman understood immediately, broke arms with the other two, reached forward and grabbed the man, passing him backwards. Several other people growled and tried to come through with the man but the sergeant, who'd hurried along the line, held his arm like a steel rod across the chest of the first man. "You wouldn't want to go with him," he said. "He's just escaped from a loony-bin. The axe- murderer, remember?" The man drew back into the crowd. The sergeant waited undl the arms-linked line had formed again and walked along behind the policemen, giving a word of encouragement here and there. The crowd, he judged, was like a part of water that is about to boil, but hasn't yet started to bubble. One spark, one speck of panic, and the whole lot could explode. No one was actually moving forward voluntarily, but the solid mass was being squeezed forward by the sheer pressure of people from Trafalgar Square, like toothpaste coming out of a tube. His men were falling back an inch at a time, keeping that straight line intact. They were all volunteers, but he couldn't hope to keep them once the deadline for the last train arrived; he'd only been able to get them to stay by promising that when they broke, they'd be sent out of London in that last, fast express to Northwood. They had to hold the crowd, as best they could, until they reached the entrance to the Ministry of Defence where the Army was stationed; they had to slow down that inexorable movement forward so that as many as possible of the remaining Salvation people could get on the train, the people who'd be needed after the bomb had landed. He walked along the line to where the chief inspector was standing with his walkie-talkie in his hand. "Perhaps the back line could start to filter out, Chief?" he suggested, showing the face of his watch. They'd promised the men a deadline of 7:30. Now it was barely 7:25. The chief inspector looked at his own watch as if he didn't trust the sergeant's. "Make it inconspicuous," he said. The sergeant went through to the back rank and walked along it, tapping each third shoulder. The men he indicated bent down and took off their hats so they couldn't be seen above the heads of their colleagues, then moved sideways. The men who remained linked arms, but each of them glanced anxiously over his shoulder when the sergeant came back along the line, praying it would be his turn. A helicopter came in low over the crowds who shook angry fists up at it. The pilot brought it down neatly in the centre of Whitehall between the police and the Army, and two men and a woman hurried from it and raced into the Ministry of Defence building. The pilot took off again immediately, whirling in the direction of the City of London. A man who'd worked his way through the police cordon at the bottom of Whitehall was brought up the wide street on the back of a police motor bicycle, and ran into the Ministry. Another was running up the pavement; a woman came through the Army cordon that was blocking Horseguards Parade. The chief superintendent, sitting in the bubble of the Land Rover, heard the voice of a helicopter pilot identifying himself. He spoke into the microphone. "Yes, Victor Four." "A large crowd swamping the Park, making their way towards Horseguards. It looks to me as if the leaders are carrying weapons; from up here, they look like rifles or shotguns." "Over and out," the chief superintendent said. He flicked the transmission switch and spoke quickly to Colonel Britten. Two of the mortar teams responded instantly to Colonel Britten's order and raced into the army barracks abutting Whitehall. Once through the two ornate gates where, in normal times, Horseguards paraded for the delight of tourists, they placed the mortars on the ground and aimed them upwards at an angle. One canister each of smoke at four hundred yards. The bombs whee'd skywards in a parabolic arc that landed them on the ground in the park fifty feet in front of the advancing mob. The canisters burst, and the dense cloud of grey yellow/ white smoke began to drift slowly northwards. The leaders of the crowd stopped, but were pushed forward. The police car with a Tannoy system on the roof came racing through the archway and the man with the microphone called in a steady voice, "Poison gas! Poison gas! Everybody clear the area!" It worked perfectly as a strategy; the front edges of the crowd moved sideways, north and south. The people in the centre of the crowd fought themselves to a standstill, turned and bolted back the way they had come. The group holding shot-guns, however, stood firm. "It's a trick," they shouted, 'it's a trick! It's only smoke, we can go through it. Put handkerchiefs over your mouths." Colonel Britten heard the report of the pilot of the helicopter hovering above, spotting the crowd. He gave corrections to the mortar men and both fired at the same time. The nerve gas bombs arched gently up into the air and landed within ten yards of the small nucleus of gun-toters. This time the gas was green and, as it enveloped the people, not even their handkerchiefs could help them. One lungful of that gas was sufficient to put a man out for half an hour, and even afterwards leave him physically incapable of resistance. Even a whiff of it led to immediate nausea and retching and total incapacity. The people in the crowd, men, women and children, either dropped down unconscious, or fell to their knees in an uncontrollable paroxysm of debilitating heaving. Within seconds the area was covered by the bodies of people stunned by the gas; among them were others, crouching incapable of movement, and the corpses of people trampled to death in the escaping rush. The mortar crews rushed back into Whitehall and took up their positions again behind the thin lines of soldiers by the Ministry of Defence. When he put the mortar bombs back into line on the ground, Corporal Greenhaigh squatted on his heels, his eyes sightless as his mind replayed the memory of what he'd just seen. Dammit, he told himself, he'd been in Northern Ireland. He'd seen the rule of the mob. He knew exactly what could happen if the mob took over. Whitehall and the Ministry of Defence would be swamped by the rampaging crowd. More people would be killed in the crowd itself than ever they could damage with mortar bombs. He saw Nobby turn quickly on his heels, his back heaving. "Cough it up, Nobby," he said, 'it might be a piano." Nobby looked at him, grateful for the well-tried army humour. "I think I must have got a whiff of the gas," he said as he wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jumping jacket. "Yes, I reckon." Both knew Nobby's sickness had nothing to do with gas. "They're all dead, anyway," Nobby said as he squatted by the mortar. "Trouble is, the poor bleeders don't know it. The poor bleeders still think there's some hope for them." They had Barankov naked in the chair, with the electrodes clamped to his testicles. The chair was made of metal and Barankov's own urine and faeces ensured a good electrical contact. Naragan came from Georgia and had qualified in medicine in the University of Leningrad's Medical Faculty before the printout of his aptitude and attitude tests had brought him to the attention of the head of the KGB. His medical research into the application of pain and its effects on the human nervous system had made him an ideal member of the KGB Interrogation Department; for his own part he was happy to accept the job, recognizing that it would give him unlimited access to research material of the kind he needed. He had never suspected that one day he'd have Barankov himself in his laboratory. "Interrogation can either be prolonged, or quick," he said to the watching students. "For prolonged interrogation, the use of mind-tranquilizing and mind-deranging drugs is most effective coupled with periods of disorientation that can be caused by gravity loss, failures of equilibrium, changes of body-rhythm, etcetera. "Brief quick interrogation has to resort to the cruder, but nevertheless still effective, methods of physical violence; the use of progressively more powerful electric shocks is often the best way of reducing the subject to compliance, especially when the subject is foolish enough to offer initial resistance so that he has to experience the more disturbing final stages!" Naragan's voice droned on to the three students, one female, two male, he had brought in to watch the Barankov interrogation. It was always a good plan to interrogate a certain type of male naked with a woman present; the loss of manhood, the opening of the bladder and the bowels, was always more psychologically disturbing if viewed by a desirable woman, more debasing. For this reason, Naragan had insisted the female student wear a low-cut jumper and perfume, and that her femininity be made as obvious as possible. He'd begun the interrogation by having her fondle Barankov's private parts and laugh in a disparaging way before Naragan himself had clipped on the electrodes. "Such a big man in the office," she'd said, 'such a small man in the trousers." "We believe that a method exists for communicating with the Medusa," Naragan said in his passionless voice. "And it is my duty to the motherland to cause you to tell me what that method is." "Ask Wilkovsky," Barankov snarled. "We would have done precisely that, Comrade Barankov, except for the unfortunate mischance that Comrade Wilkovsky was able to kill himself before his death could be prevented." "I don't know how to communicate with the Medusa," Barankov said. "You'll notice how the needle flicks when the subject tells an overt lie," Naragan said to the students. "Not that you'd need an oscilloscope to read the lie on the subject's face. Now we increase the voltage to two-thirds." He turned the knob on the rheostat. "Would you care to apply the electrode, Destvensky?" he asked. The student took it nervously. This was the first time he'd ever actually applied an electrode to a living human subject. He'd never forget how the dog on training had howled. He found himself looking directly into Barankov's eyes as he stood forward. "Tell them, Comrade General," he said softly, pleading. "Press it on, lad," Barankov said gruffly. "I was doing this before you were whelped." Destvensky stabbed the electrode in its plastic handle forward, but leaped back when Barankov roared and his body twitched. "Do it again," Naragan said patiently, 'but this time hold it there." Destvensky pressed the electrode forward again, holding it firm against Barankov's wrist which was manacled to the chair. Barankov's body twitched and he roared with pain as his frame shook uncontrollably. "I ... do ... not ... know ... how ... to ... communicate ... with ... the ... Medusa," he said through clenched teeth; blood seeped through the gaps between his teeth. "You see how the subject has gone into a state of controlled admission," Naragan's voice said. "He has obviously learned the key-phrase with which he hopes to be able to prevent himself giving us the information we want, even though we may render him part-conscious. Right, Destvensky, what do we do now?" Destvensky thought through the lectures. What the devil was the answer? He saw Barankov's eye open and wink. "Aversion therapy, lad," he said. "That's the answer you're looking for. You tear off a fingernail every time I start to speak my key-phrase. It has never failed. Until now." Chapter Sixteen. Sergei had completed the last of his checks, and now knew there was nothing else he could do. "Anna," he said, 'that's it. We can't take control of the Medusa again. We only have two alternatives. We can ride it down to wherever it's going, relying on the automatic ejection to clear us once we get back into the earth's atmosphere." "At twenty thousand feet," she began. "We'll have oxygen." "We could be over water." "The survival apparatus will clear with us. We'll have the dinghy," said Sergei. "We could be over mountains." "Our suits are heat-insulated. We'll have ropes, tools and a radio." "Or?" "Or we can go to our second alternative. We could hit the fail-safe button. Aim the Medusa for its prime target." "With no hope of ejection." "The velocity would be too great. We'd be dead before we left the Medusa at those speeds." "Why should we press the fail-safe that would aim the Medusa at Washington, Sergei?" "Because we are what we are, Anna. Two Soviet citizens, pledged to a war against capitalism that will never end until the whole world has the freedom and the opportunity of the Soviet system." "You make it sound so simple, Sergei." "It is simple, Anna. Us and them, but it means, us against them. That's where Chemenko and all the others were going wrong. They were soft, trying to compromise. There can never be compromise with one's principles, Anna. The East-West war will never end until America has been destroyed and rebuilt. You can fight for what you believe, for what you know is right. The Soviet system is right, Anna, you know that. You must know it or you would never have become a cosmonaut. Now we have a chance to strike such a powerful blow for that system!" "And to die for it?" "Others have died for it, Anna, without the great opportunity we've been given. We can destroy Washington, Anna. Just the two of us. We can destroy the capitalist system, just the two of us. Wouldn't that be a memorial?" "I don't want to die, Sergei," she said softly. "I don't want to die, not even to destroy Washington." The police launch came racing down river from Putney, its engine screaming at full speed. It dodged the fleet of boats that were scrambling along the waterway, the tugs that limped, the larger cargo vessels cramming every inch of power they could on to already overworked propellers. The crew of the German timber-carrying cargo vessel were throwing planks of wood off the side of the deck, trying to lighten their load to get an ounce more speed from the whining, whirring engine. The police launch ran among the planks and baulks of wood, slipping sideways, creaming a stern wave behind itself as the driver yanked the wheel over to avoid jetsam, dodging past other vessels, scraping fenders as it forced ways between boats running side by side. "You ought to have got in touch with somebody earlier," the sergeant said to their sole passenger. "I don't know if we can get you on the last train out." The wind was blowing from the south; a man in a rubber wet-suit sailed a dinghy with the wind on his beam, the weight of the six passengers he was carrying bringing the water slopping over the sides. A young boy wearing a raincoat and a woollen bobble-hat was bailing with a bright yellow plastic bucket. A gust of wind leaned the boat over perilously. "Get out, ma'am," the skipper shouted. A large lady, wearing the harness of a trapeze, gingerly rested one bare foot on the side of the dinghy and launched herself out in space, her weight bending the mast but bringing the dinghy more upright. The skirts of her coat and her dress billowed in the wind, wrapping themselves around her. As the police launch slipped past the stem, the sergeant eyed the mast of the dinghy, curved like a bow. "They'll be lucky to get that little lot to Greenwich," he said. A wind-surfer came abeam of them as they cut across the river. The man sailing it was wearing a soaking-wet business suit of striped trousers and black coat. A woman, curled around the bottom of the mast, was clutching a dog which was shivering. The wind-surfer must have been doing nine knots at least in the beam wind. A GRP cabin-cruiser came past, its wash racing across the river; it must have been doing thirty knots at one minute; the next it was stopped, drifting without controls. The skipper raced out of the wheelhouse with an electrical loud hailer in his hands. "Give us some of your diesel," he yelled, his amplified voice cutting through the noise of the river. "I'll buy it," he added. "Anything you like. Pay you in kruger rands The police launch ignored him and he turned the loud hailer towards other vessels. Now he'd begun drifting, forgetting in his anxiety to secure diesel that he had no power for maneuvering. The German timber vessel couldn't correct in time to avoid his side drift and hit him amidships. The cabin-cruiser was carried forward, disintegrating rapidly, until finally it swirled away and vanished beneath the turbulent surface of the Thames. The police launch rode into the private mooring of the Houses of Parliament from which traitors had been taken to the Tower of London. The sergeant thought of the irony of the situation that now they should be bringing one of the men on whom the survival of everything Parliament had ever stood for should rest. He looked at the man, he wasn't a commanding figure, like Churchill. He wasn't autocratic, regal, spoiled, pampered, dominating. He just looked like some shopkeeper from the suburbs, some ordinary man of the kind they were always arresting in public lavatories in Leicester Square. "What do you do?" the sergeant asked as they helped the man ashore and along the corridor that would take him to the underground passage leading from the Houses of Parliament to the Ministry of Defence and the underground railway to Northwood. "Nothing very exciting. I grow plants." "Market gardener, eh?" "Sort of." He wasn't the sort of man to aggrandize himself, to boast. He never actually thought of himself as what he was, a biological geneticist, a man who had successfully caused corn to double its yield in certain parts of Africa, who'd created new strains of vitamin-enriched greens, who had successfully isolated a strain of wheat resistant to atomic contamination, seeds of which he carried, even now, in the plastic shopping-bag in his hand. "They'll need market gardeners," the sergeant said. "Get the old cabbage-patch growing. There'll be a big demand for that." Jaime Ortonez walked into the open front door of the First National Bank of Spain in Leadenhall Street. Ever since Jaime arrived in England fifteen years ago he had done business with First National; he reckoned they owed something for the tens of thousands of pounds' worth of business he'd brought them every month with his fruit- and vegetable-importing business. The bank was empty. The door at the right-hand side leading behind the counters was open. He walked through it, turned the corner, and found himself, for the first time of his life, on the other side of the grille. He opened a drawer and saw the stacked money, the one, five, ten, and twenty-pound notes. He closed the drawer reverently; Jaime was a good Catholic and had never taken a centavo that didn't belong to him, not one peseta. He walked past the desks; Pedro had left the centre drawer of his desk open, and that only confirmed the opinion Jaime had long held about Pedro, the assistant under-manager. Look at the way he'd misplaced that draft for four million pesetas that time: sheer carelessness. All the drawers of the desk of the chiquita, Maria, were closed. He felt inclined to open one, but that would have been the same disgraceful act as peeping up her skirt. She'd become almost like a daughter to him over the years, hola, guapa\ he'd always said, pleased if she came to look after his transactions. Hola, senor, que tap. she'd always replied, never crossing the boundaries of respect and dignity. Unlike that puta, Juanita, who had the next desk and often made bad talk! He had a sudden thought and hurried back out of the bank into Leadenhall Street, which was deserted. He crossed the empty street to Manolo's shop, the door of which was open. The whole place had an eerie feeling about it; there were never less than twenty people inside Manolo's, all talking in high Mediterranean voices. Manolo was popular with all the Spaniards and Italians in the city. Jaime took one of the shopping trolleys and walked around the semi-supermarket, taking things from the shelves. It was hard to see in the darkened interior; he chose sardines in oil and in tomato, tuna fish tinned pimentos, tinned peas, sugar, various kinds of tinned fruits, a tin of chestnuts. Finally, from the shelf near the door, he took two bottles of Fundador and two of the Italian white Verdicchio. He stopped the trolley by the check-out counter and glanced at its contents with his professional eye. He picked up the biro and wrote on a piece of paper, /, Jaime Ortonez, owe you, Manolo Cesaro, the sum of twenty pounds. He signed the piece of paper and opened the till which, he saw, was empty, and placed the note inside before closing it again. He crossed himself quickly. "After all, Sainted Mary, if Manolo ever presents the bill, I will pay it at once," he said out loud as he wheeled the trolley out of the shop and back across to the bank. He went through the door into the back quarters, and pressed the button for the lift, which didn't come. He hadn't expected it to come so he seized the trolley in his bear-like arms and carried it down the stairs. The chiquilita had told him about the vaults that time they had not been able to open the lock. He found the outer grille of the door open and wheeled his trolley into it. He went through the first room, to the right of which were the safe-deposit boxes in which he kept the deeds of his export/ import business, his supply of extra money and his gold, jewelled crucifix that was too valuable to have lying about the house. Also, he reminded himself, the silver Aragon candlesticks. ' The door into the vault itself was open. He walked in and eyed the trays which lined two walls, filled with money in stacks. The chiquilita had told him that sometimes they held as much as five million pounds in the vaults. To his inexperienced eye, it looked as if there might be at least five hundred million in there just now. He heard a sound behind him, turned rapidly, saw old Vincente squatting in the corner behind the door, a look of terror on his old face. They'd kept Vincente on the payroll after his retirement; he cleaned the ashtrays in the customer area, held the door open. Everyone thought he was the bank guard; he would have died if anyone had asked him to exchange his dustpan and brush for a revolver. "Ah, it's you, Senor Ortonez," he said, his voice quavering with relief. "I thought it might be a robber." "Who would want to rob a bank at this moment, cabronv Jaime said. To call the old boy a goat and imply he was still capable of chasing the girls was their private joke. Jaime looked around, saw the twelve-inch-thick door of the vault, the reinforcement of the steel-girded ceiling. He rolled the trolley across to Vincente. "Pack that on the shelves," he said, "Move some of that money away if you have to." Vincente looked scandalized but started to do as Jaime instructed. Jaime went back upstairs and selected the manager's chair, which swivelled and tilted, and was fitted with a foam-rubber cushion. The assistant manager's chair swivelled but didn't tilt and its cushion was ordinary padding. He carried them downstairs, one by one, and installed them in the vault. Vincente's eyes opened wide. "That's the Senor's chair," he said. "I don't think the Senor would object to our borrowing it," Jaime said. "Now get all the water carafes you can find and fill them with clean water and bring them down here. Then get two buckets. You'll find a bottle of bleach powder in that trolley, and two bottles ofjeyes Fluid." Vincente did as Jaime told him. When he returned, Jaime put one bucket in the far corner , with a roll of lavatory paper beside it. He threw half the contents of one of the bottles ofjeyes in the bottom of the bucket, then covered it delicately with a roll of wrapping paper from Manolo's shop. He poured a little bleach into the other bucket and placed it next to the first one. "That's if you need only a pee," he said to the old man. "The other is if you have to do something bigger, understand?" "I understand," Vincente said solemnly. "If you want to go, Jaime, just tell me, and I'll turn my back." Jaime looked around checking the items. He glanced at his wristwatch. "Twenty-five minutes to go, Vincente," he said. "I think we'd better close the vault door in case anybody else gets the bright idea of hiding out in the bank vault." The old man swung the door shut and worked the wheel that shot the two inch bolts, sixteen of them, into the hardened steel frame. Jaime switched off the lamp from Manolo's that had supplied their only light. Immediately he heard the old man's voice through the dark. "Senor Ortonez," he pleaded. "Could we perhaps keep on the light? If only for twenty-five minutes. My mother always told me that, just before you die, you see the face of the Virgin Mary. I wouldn't want to miss such a sight in the darkness." Paul Graham heard Helen's voice on the radio loudspeaker on his desk. "Paul," she said, "I'm coming in. And good news, I have the whole of the Salvation One team with me." "How on earth did you get them?" Paul asked, excited. "I'd written them off, I thought they were still on Snowdon." Salvation One was Paul's own idea, a nucleus of fifty people, all trained specialists but, unlike the other Salvation people he'd implanted, all on permanent training and permanent alert. Three days ago they'd gone to the Ministry of Defence Survival Training School on Snowdonia and he hadn't dared hope he could get them back in time. They were his top people, his cadre of professionals covering all aspects of survival after nuclear disaster. "It so happens they were working with the Sikorsky today. They all crammed into it hoping to land it on Horseguards. It developed engine failure and had to put down in Regent's Park." "Where is your chopper? Can you bring them in with that?" "Bad news, Paul. I've lost all three of my choppers. Mobbed when they put down. The minute these crowds see a chopper they go for it, trying to fight their way on board." "Damn!" Paul said. They'd put crowd panic in their planning but had never anticipated it would be as bad as it had turned out to be. But then, they hadn't planned on Bill Tilsen's rabble-rousing broadcasts. "Where are you now?" he asked hurriedly. "St. James's Park. We can be through, I reckon, in five minutes. If only you can hold the Whitehall entrance open for us for another five minutes." "I'll do that," Paul promised. "You can rely on that." "Without the Salvation One team, Paul, the rest of the people out in Northwood are just a bunch of amateurs. We need the Salvation One team out there, Paul!" "You can rely on me, Helen," he said fervently, knowing that what she said was absolutely right. Salvation One were the professionals; it had taken him two years to make them. There'd be no cohesion without them. He looked on the TV monitors that showed him the scene in Whitehall from the cameras mounted outside the Ministry. He saw the line of policemen being pushed back, the Army still holding fast. Nerve gas, smoke, and stun grenades would only work out in the open. In the confines of a street, the tunnelled wind would dispel the gases; the first rank of people would go down but the second, third and other ranks would simply put their heads down and charge blindly forward over them. It would have taken a continuous supply of nerve gas to stop them. "I'm going out there," he said to Angela. He raced out of the underground command centre and up the stairs, outside into Whitehall, to where the sullen and implacable crowd slowly and fatefully advanced. Les Regan saw the orbit figures settle down, analysed by the computer into a steady line. Now, as the Medusa hurtled through the atmosphere, Bobcat Two maintained station at a constant distance from it, and from the protective devices surrounding it that had destroyed Bobcat One. "We're on station, Professor MacKlin," he said to his console microphone. He heard MacKlin's voice coming back from the speaker as clearly as if he'd been in the next room and not thousands of miles away in doomed London. "Retune the Bobcat surveillance frequency to point-four-five." "Roger." He didn't need to do anything; Delphi Lawrence heard the frequency and corrected instantly. Her loudspeaker had been emitting a steady pip, pip, pip, as the surveillance audio equipment on board Bobcat Two picked up the output of the protective screen. Now she was tuned to the Medusa itself. She heard chatter. "Jesus," Delphi said, "Jesus, Les, I can hear the goddam muddafugga!" The cold, clinical voice of Professor MacKlin came over the speaker from London. "I'd be awfully obliged if you'd feed the audio output to me, so that / can hear the muddafugga too." Paul Graham stood behind the line of soldiers, scanning the entrance to Horse Guards through which he prayed he would see Helen, with the Salvation One team. "Police line is awfully thin," he said to Colonel Britten. "They've been feeding them into the Ministry," the Colonel said, his voice expressing military contempt for civilian weaknesses. At the front of the crowd, in the centre, Brian Bradbury was riding high on a fruit-vendor's cart, sitting in lordly state on a fruit crate. "I have four chaps zeroed on the laddie on the cart," Colonel Britten said. "If he opens his mouth, they have instructions to hit him. The Chief Superintendent says he's a harmless laddie from Hyde Park Corner." "Can you stop them?" Paul Graham asked. "No," the Colonel said immediately. "No power on earth could stop a mob that size." "Can you delay them?" "Yes, but only for a short while. And only by killing a hell of a lot of them. You'll give the order?" Both men looked at each other. The Colonel knew he had the right to give the order; he was in charge of the military detail with clear orders from his superior officer, Lieutenant-General Capstan. Paul Graham was a civilian, a politician. Colonel Britten sought a clear directive. Were the people advancing down Whitehall to be considered an enemy in the military, or in the political, sense? Why should the poor devils be killed, merely because they wanted to come down Whitehall? The radio in Paul's hand crackled. "We're in the officers' mess now," Helen said. "The crowd is outside the window. We can't get out. If you could perhaps push them back five yards, we could break a window and make a run for it." Paul looked up Whitehall. The last of the police had been withdrawn and now the front rank of the crowd stretched across the street. They had already passed the bulldozers. Nothing stood between them and the army, the front rank kneeling with their carbines held at the ready to shoot over open sights. Behind the front rank, the three bren-guns. Behind them, the mortar crews. Paul estimated the distance: fifty yards, no more. Angela was by his side. She knew the decision he had to take would colour whatever life remained to him; and she wanted to be with him. He saw the flurry in the left-hand edge of the crowd, heard the shouts. The rest of the crowd was ominously silent. Bradbury was banging the side of his orange-crate with a stick. Boom. Boom. It was the sound that accompanied military funerals, the slow beat. The men at the left-hand front came apart, and Helen Graham came through them. She ran across the street, shouting, "Wait, wait! Stopv No one took any notice of her though her high voice was clear and audible. "I'm a doctor^ she shouted. "Don't come down here. Go into the cellars. Into the tube station. Get somewhere underground and most of you will be savedv A bottle came flying out of the centre of the crowd and hit her on the shoulder. Paul heard a whispered enquiry in the Colonel's radio. "Do we shoot?" The Colonel's soft reply: "No!" Helen, walking backwards awkwardly, still shouted her message. The first bottle was followed by another which hit Helen's chest. She tumbled, but didn't fall. Paul knew he must not dash forward immediately to try to pull her back, since any fast movement could start a wild panic. He started to go slowly forward, and now the barrage of bottles, emptied tins, stones, sticks, increased rapidly. Most of it was being lobbed over Helen's head. A bottle hit Paul's forehead and bounced away. He flinched but didn't go down. "Come back, Paul," Angela shouted, but now that he had launched himself forward, he couldn't stop. The whole scene froze before his eyes: Helen staggering backwards still shouting her message, the material flying through the air at him and at the troops behind him. He saw a stone coming and ducked in time to avoid it, but without seeing the half-full pint bottle somebody had lobbed. It hit his temple and broke. He couldn't tell if it was beer or blood that streamed down his face as he felt his knees begin to buckle. The Colonel looked at Angela. She looked at the crowd. Were they about to break, about to start a crazed dash forward now that mob violence seemed to have claimed its first victim? Paul had fallen; Helen had fallen; and the crowd was beginning a chanting mutter. Bill Tilsen leaped from the heart of the crowd on to the fruit-vendor's cart, and began to yell, "Forward, forward, let's get into the Ministry ofdefencev The men in front of the cart began to pull harder and their slow-paced walk started to be a slow jog. Brian Bradbury had stood up. "Come on, lads, let's show the bastards^ he chanted. Bill Tilsen looked contemptuously, crazily, at Angela Steadman, as if defying her to issue the one vital order that perhaps might stop them. His contempt made things easier for Angela. The Colonel and his men heard Angela Steadman's quiet command. "You've got to shoot, dammit!" Both rifle shots sounded as one; blood covered the face of Bill Tilsen, splashing on to Brian Bradbury, who'd been shot through his heart. Both were catapulted off the back of the fruit-vendor's cart into the crowd. The crowd started to run forward in blind panic, screaming. The machine-gunners aimed at the front rank of the crowd, at heart height. "Fire," Colonel Britten said, his mouth filling with bile. The gunners swallowed and then pressed the triggers. The brens began to chatter, scything through the crowd. People were thrown backwards by the force of the bullets and then catapulted forwards by the crowd's pressure behind them. "Fire," Colonel Britten said, the tears in his eyes almost blinding his vision. The second rank went down sprawling and now the people were screaming as no man there had ever heard before. The people in the third rank turned and started to claw at the people behind them. "Fire," the Colonel said, and the grenades were lobbed on a high trajectory. They fell immediately in front of the crowd, exploding with immense noise but no damaging fragmentation. The noise immediately behind them energized that frantic third rank to superhuman efforts; the fourth, fifth, and sixth ranks had turned and they all started heaving backwards up Whitehall, anywhere to get away from the dreadful carnage of bleeding bodies that lay across the street. They heaved and pushed and the crowd was compressed back up the street. Angela dashed forward and grabbed Paul Graham's shoulders; he had only been knocked out by the bottle; he began to recover as she dragged him backwards. Two soldiers had gone for Helen Graham. They looked down at her and one of them shook his head from side to side. "Bring her back, nevertheless," the Colonel ordered. The window of the officers' mess burst outwards; the Salvation One team streamed through it and bolted into the Ministry of Defence. Paul, standing there with his head in his hands, saw them go. He nodded to the Colonel, who spoke into his radio. Immediately the transport helicopters hovering over Horse- guards Parade came in and dropped down. The troops ran in and they took off, completely full, leaving Paul and Angela standing there, watching the last of the Salvation One team race into the Ministry of Defence, seeing the corpses which littered the street, the backs of the people pushing away from the corpses of others they would never know: women, children, people with whom they'd shared that devastating time of panic and death. * * * Westminster Abbey was full. The Archbishop of Canterbury stood at the altar. What was left of the choir sang the well- remembered, well-loved Psalm 23: "The Lord is my Shepherd: therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture: and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort ..." The sound soared to the roof; some people knelt with their heads in their clasped hands; others stood erect, staring blindly at the majesty of the altar, seeing nothing. Others were crying; some were babbling incoherently. Some were standing bravely and singing lustily, as if their energy could destroy evil for ever. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.. One woman screamed, then shouted, "No, no, no!" The people close beside her drew her down on to a pew and tried to comfort her in vain. They stopped her mouth and her screams became uncontrollable sobs. Walter MacKlin listened to the chatter of the Medusa, which he could hear relayed by the Bobcat circuitry. He checked the instruction sheets he'd received from the Russians. The damn thing was talking to itself. Could he teach it to listen to him? To obey a voice from outside? Fifteen minutes to go. The Medusa on course, on direct parabola orbit with London at its focus. "Listen to me, Medusae he prayed silently, 'just listen to me. And then do as I tell you." * * The Salvation One team raced down to the underground station to see the train doors closing along the empty platform. They saw the policemen inside the trains, the anxious civilian faces. The train started to move as the leader of Salvation One raced up the platform, banging on the doors as he went. The train stopped. The doors whooshed open. The Salvation One team climbed aboard, and the last train before the bomb's deadline for landing hurtled out of central London to the safety in the Northwood Complex, from where the life of a nation could begin again. Five minutes to go, but Walter MacKlin knew he could only use two of those minutes since then the Medusa would be inside the Earth's atmosphere and plunging uncontrollably to its target. He scanned the Russian fact sheet located the input code, tapped it rapidly on his computer console, fed it to America for them to speed out to the Bobcat missile. His feedback printout changed. "It can hear you," Peggy Kershaw yelled. "It can hear you!" The Medusa, both knew, was receiving them loud and clear. Peggy had fed his instructions on to a data base tape. She handed it to him. He slipped it on to the spindle of the machine, making certain it was laced. He came back to the console, which Peggy had prepared for him. He sat down. Fifteen seconds to go to the two-minute deadline. Peggy crossed her fingers and held them up. She smiled at him, radiating confidence and love. He pressed the go button. The signal went from his console, chattering away at a million characters a second, through Goonhilly Down, across to America, up into the Bobcat and across to the Medusa. Both Anna Firdova and Sergei Bustovsky heard the cheeping chatter of the signal coming in, read the projection of their orbit, saw the change. "Anna," Sergei said quietly, 'the bastards have diverted us." Anna was too busy looking at the re-activated console and realizing that now they could take command of the Medusa again and fly it safely back to earth. Anna," Sergei said, 'the bastards have diverted usv Anna didn't care; she was busy working out the coordinates for a safe return, ready to feed them into the computer that should bring them gently down. She looked up in terror when she saw Sergei's hand appear in front of her face, felt him tear the life-support mask away, saw, through a haze of oxygen deprivation the fanatic look on his face when he tore away his own lifesupport system. Both of them, she knew, would die within seconds. As the red tide rose to engulf her she saw his almost lifeless hand fall slowly, but powerfully, falling squarely on top of the fail-safe button, the device that would divert them immediately on a direct, non-orbiting path which would take only three minutes to their original prime target. Washington, DC.