The block of wood sat on the writing desk in Zhilev’s room with the instruction booklet lying open beside it. Zhilev’s gnarled finger moved down the page and when he reached the end of the paragraph, he studied the diagram pertaining to it. He took the knife off the coffee table that came with the complementary bowl of fruit and placed the tip of the blade into a thin slot barely visible in a knot in the wood. He pushed it down exactly a centimetre and levered it slowly to one side. A small section of the bark popped open on a cloth hinge to reveal a small panel of coloured buttons and a numeric pad.
Zhilev turned to the next page of the booklet detailing how to adjust a timer that could be set in increments of fifteen minutes up to thirty hours. He had already calculated three hours would give him ample time to get a taxi out of the city and on the road to Haifa.That was the minimum time he needed to get away from the danger area, allowing for unforeseen delays and without leaving the device alone too long and risking it being found. He chose Haifa because it was a seaport, a boat being his best bet out of the country since he did not have an entry visa and could therefore not use the airport. He did not know precisely how he was going to manage that but he was confident, after achieving so much, that he would find a way. The second and more important reason for heading towards Haifa was because it was in the north. The prevailing winds in the region blew from the north-west and any nuclear fallout after the explosion would head south-east.
After setting the timer he studied the next paragraph which explained the arming sequence. He had the option of pre-arming or arming on site, and he chose the latter simply as a precaution. He would have plenty of time to carry out that phase when he reached the target. Satisfied with the procedure so far, he turned to the last chapter in the book which dealt with the safety protocols. This was the part that had bothered him most throughout the mission. None of Russia’s nuclear devices could be detonated without the permission of the Kremlin. This was in the form of a special code transmitted only with the consent of the head of state and, combined with the operator’s own code, allowed the activation of the arming mechanism. This rule applied to every nuclear device in Russia’s arsenal, except those hidden in secret caches abroad and used by the Spetsnaz for international sabotage. A bypass had been built into the bomb’s arming sequence so it could be detonated in the event the chairman and his immediate subordinates were killed in an unexpected nuclear assault by the West. In those circumstances all Spetsnaz in operational areas had orders to continue with their assignments regardless, and to achieve that end they needed to be able to remove all safety protocols so they could initiate their bombs manually. Needless to say, overcoming the protocols was crucial to Zhilev’s entire mission.
Zhilev read the instructions carefully, as he had many times before, but this time he actually pressed the buttons on the numeric pad in the order stated. A small LED screen reacted favourably to each button pressed, and when he got to the end he expected the procedure to be complete, but, to his horror, a message came up on the LED strip stating: ENTER 6-DIGIT CODE.
Zhilev stared at it in disbelief. The book had said nothing about any code. He hurriedly searched the document once more in case he had missed something, but knowing he could not have read anything as important as that and not noticed. He started from the beginning, this time focusing on any numbers that could be interpreted as a code, but as he reached the end of the book without any obvious six numbers, panic set in.
He placed the booklet on the desk and stepped back, rigid with frustration and anger. Suddenly the room seemed to shrink to the size of a prison cell and he felt claustrophobic.
He had no code.
He grabbed his straggly hair wanting to pull it out. Without the code the bomb could not be detonated. The device was too sophisticated to be tampered with, and he would not have a clue what he was doing anyway. How could he be so stupid?
His mind flew back to the cache, scanning his memory for any hint of a code. He wondered if it had been written on the box somewhere, or if he had left some crucial part of the instruction papers in the packaging. He contemplated going back to England and the cache to look for it but he wrenched the thought from his mind as ridiculous. He had failed. The entire journey had been wasted. The only other way he could detonate the bomb was with the consent of the President of the Republic of Russia and there was not much chance of gaining that.
Zhilev wanted to bang his head against a wall to punish himself for being such a useless fool. He clenched his fists, shook them and let out a scream. He had not only failed himself, his heritage and the Spetsnaz, but his brother too.
He crossed the room and raised a fist to slam it through the wardrobe then looked back at the bomb and decided to take it out on that. He walked back to the desk raising his hand, and brought it down on to the block with great force in a momentary suicidal hope of detonating it and putting him out of his misery, but all he managed to do was break the panel cover and send it spinning across the room in pieces. He raised his hand to hit it once again but was stopped in mid-strike by a thought flashing across his head. This system had been designed for field conditions in the event of an all-out war. Every weapon built for the Spetsnaz took into consideration the worst conditions a soldier could operate in, including physical disablement due to health or battle. In other words, it was designed to be simple. But this had not been simple. Had he been an operative in a war situation he would have failed due to a code he did not have. It did not make sense.
He lowered his hand to think about that in more detail.The people who designed the operating procedures must have considered a scenario where an operative would have to grab the device and the instruction book and hurry to a target to set it up for detonation. Designing the device was one thing, but the people whose job it was to think of the practical applications were professional soldiers like Zhilev. It was precisely the kind of job he might have had if they had kept him in the Spetsnaz instead of forcibly retiring him.
He picked up the booklet to feel the pages. As he had discovered on the boat, it was not made of paper but a thin material, hard to tear and which could suffer soaking and soiling without the ink running. Both the bomb and the booklet were made of relatively indestructible materials because they were the two essential elements to success. The key had to be in them somewhere.
He studied the instruction sheet with a new eye, looking for any kind of pattern, but not until he reached the back page did he find a clue. All the main headings were placed in rectangular boxes, and on the back of the booklet there was a pattern of different-sized rectangles made up of lines of varying thicknesses, but the one at the bottom-right corner of the page was the same size and design as the ones used for the headings.
He needed to think in practical terms, which was not difficult for him. If something was written on the page that was normally invisible, it had to be activated, and if that was the case the catalyst had to be something the operative carried on him all the time, even when things became desperate. Water was an obvious one, but the booklet had gotten wet many times while at sea and nothing appeared different about it. Blood was something the operative would always have, and urine. Zhilev went for the easy option first and spat on the rectangle. He rubbed it in and almost immediately the area began to darken. It was changing, that was for sure. Something in his spittle, a hormone perhaps, was reacting with a chemical in the paper. Zhilev spat on it again and rubbed it in further. The area began to turn black and numbers appeared in white on the dark background, six of them. He could hardly believe it.
Zhilev tapped in the numbers, slowly and methodically, not wanting to make a mistake. As he hit the last number the LED bar went blank and a second later a word appeared: ARMED.
He had done it.
He was frozen to the spot, staring at the device, his heart thumping with excitement. He had overcome the security protocols. All he had to do now was press the three trigger switches, one after the other, and the device would detonate three hours later.
Zhilev realised he was short of breath and his joints were tingling with the adrenaline that had surged through them when the code appeared on the page.
He slumped into the chair to unwind and pull himself together. He now had all the time in the world for the last phase. Jerusalem was his for the taking, and he was going to destroy it. He was not a God-fearing man but if there was such a being, then Zhilev had surely been given his blessing.
He checked his watch. Breakfast was still being served in the restaurant downstairs. He would put on his new clothes, have a hearty meal and head for the old city. He would not bother to check out.What was the point? By lunchtime the hotel would not exist.
