“All right,” Kellner said. “We know what we’re up against. We know about Invisible Sword. The question is—
what are we going to do?”
DECISION TIME
« ^ »
You have to evacuate London.”
It was Sir Graham Adair who made the suggestion. This was the result of his swift conversation with Alan Blunt. His voice was soft and measured, but Alex could sense the tension. The permanent secretary was as brittle as ice.
“Scorpia has planned this at exactly the right moment. Four o’clock. Thousands of children will be out of school—on their way home. We have no way of knowing how far these terahertz beams can reach. There may be several dishes, mounted on buildings throughout the capital … near schools, near tube stations. No child in London will be safe. But as Dr Stephenson has just told us, provided they don’t come into contact with the beams, the poison will pass out of their systems eventually. We can keep them out of the city for as long as it takes.”
“An evacuation on that scale?” The police chief shook his head. “Do you have any idea how much organization that will take? All of this is meant to be happening at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. We couldn’t possibly arrange everything in time.”
“You could try…”
“Forgive me, Sir Graham. But what reason, exactly, are you going to give? You’ll be closing down every school in the capital. Whole families will have to move. Where are they going to go? What are you going to tell them?”
“We’ll tell them the truth.”
“I don’t think so.” Alex wasn’t surprised that the director of communications had chosen this moment to re- enter the conversation. “You tell the British public that their kiddies have all been injected with some sort of nanoparticles, you’ll start a panic that will turn into a mass stampede,” he said.
“Better that than the streets filled with corpses,” Blunt muttered.
“And how do you know that Scorpia won’t throw the switch anyway?” Kellner continued. “If you go on television and announce you’re evacuating the capital, maybe they’ll decide to go ahead with their threat a few hours early.”
“There is no alternative,” Sir Graham said. “We can’t leave the children in danger. If we do nothing…” He shook his head. “The nation would never forgive us.”
Alex glanced at the prime minister sitting at the far end of the table. He seemed to have shrunk in the last few minutes. There was even less colour in his face than there had been when the meeting started. The deputy prime minister was chewing furiously; the foreign secretary was polishing his glasses. Everyone was waiting for the three men to make a decision, but they looked completely out of their depth. The prime minister glanced from Kellner to Adair.
At last he spoke. “I think Mark is right.”
“Prime Minister…” Sir Graham began. “If we had more time, maybe we could do something. But we have just over twenty-four hours. And it’s true. If we go public, we’ll terrify people. We’ll also alert Scorpia. Thanks to
—”—the prime minister nodded briefly in Alex’s direction but seemed unwilling to mention his name—“we know what this weapon is that we’re fighting. Invisible Sword. That’s the only advantage we have. We can’t risk losing that by going on TV.”
“So what are we going to do?” the deputy prime minister demanded.
Mark Kellner turned to Dr Stephenson. There was a dull light in his eyes, magnified by his round, wire-framed glasses. Alex knew his mind was already made up. “Satellite dishes,” he said.
“Yes.” Dr Stephenson nodded.
“You said they would be quite big. Would we be able to recognize them?” Dr Stephenson thought briefly. “I suppose they could be disguised,” she said slowly. “Lots of buildings in London have satellite dishes for one reason or another. But I’m sure it would be possible to find out if they weren’t meant to be there.”
“And you think they’d have to be high up.”
“Yes, probably. I’d say about one hundred metres. But that’s only a rough guess.”
“That would make it easier.” Kellner had forgotten that only a few minutes ago he had doubted the very existence of Invisible Sword. Once again he was in control. “If you’re right, we’re looking for unauthorized satellite dishes that have been mounted on any tall structures in the last two or three months,” he announced.
“All we have to do is find them and disconnect them. At the same time, we can find out exactly who received inoculations developed by Consanto. Every single name and address. That may also give us a clue as to where these dishes are located—which areas of London.”
“Forgive me, Prime Minister.” Sir Graham was exasperated. “You say it would be difficult to evacuate London.
But what’s being suggested here—it’s impossible. A vast game of hide-and-seek, and we have no idea how many we’re looking for. If even one of these dishes remains undetected, children will still die.”
”
“We have no alternative,” Kellner insisted. “If we go public with this, the children will die anyway.”
“I can have twenty thousand officers working around the clock,” the police chief said. “The Metropolitan Police. The Home Counties. I can bring in every man and woman in the south of England.”
“We can supply troops.” This was a soldier’s contribution.
“And you think the sight of all these people climbing up and down buildings won’t panic people?” Sir Graham exclaimed.
The prime minister raised his hands for silence. “We’ll start the search at once,” he ordered. “We’ll keep it low-key; we can say it’s a terrorist alert. It doesn’t matter what we say. No one has to know.”
