The Secret of Excalibur

The white-haired man handed the folder to the man seated behind the desk and stepped back respectfully. ‘That’s everything we’ve got so far, sir.’

‘The ship?’

‘Based on the GPS track of its last known position, it’s approximately eight thousand feet down in the Norwegian Basin, just inside the Arctic Circle. Reachable, given time, but there’s no way to tell how much would be recoverable.’

‘What about the sword?’

‘According to Dr Wilde and Chase, it went down with the ship. Whether that’s true or not is another matter, but considering her public profile right now, rendering them for interrogation might be a problem.’

‘Damn it. Mitchell should have had the superconductor analysed and duplicated before testing the weapon. He rushed it, and we lost everything!’

‘With respect, sir,’ the white-haired man said, ‘he was acting under your orders. He wanted to take advantage of the stand-off with the Russians, and you personally authorised him to sink the Enterprise as a false flag—’

‘I know what I authorised!’ A fist banged on the desk. ‘We would have eliminated the Russians as a competitor for polar resources for a decade, but now all that’s gone because of some - some archaeologist and her Limey boyfriend!’ He flicked through the pages inside the folder, stopping at a pair of photographs: Nina and Chase. He threw the folder down on his desk with a slap. ‘All right, Mr Callum. You can go.’

‘Yes, Mr President.’ The white-haired man nodded, then marched crisply from the Oval Office.

President Victor Dalton turned to look out across the White House’s rose garden beyond the high armoured windows. Jack Mitchell had known that failure would see him castigated as a rogue agent misusing DARPA’s black budget for his own ends. Like a true patriot, he had accepted the risk and taken that responsibility in order to protect the man whose orders he was actually obeying. There would be no link to the White House . . . but that didn’t change the fact that the operation had failed. The earth energy weapon had been destroyed, and Dalton’s long-term plans had been derailed.

He scowled at the photographs of Nina and Chase. ‘I won’t forget this,’ he promised them.