Overkill

‘Well, the system itself may help us. A lot of very powerful computer networks actually provide help screens so that a new user can work out how to use the system. I think it’s unlikely, at best, that the Krutaya computer will have a facility like that. Assuming that it hasn’t, we’re back to trial and error – we just try every username and password that we can think of. That’s standard practice for computer hackers. There are a few tricks of the trade that we can try, but unlike most hackers we do have one big advantage – we know a lot of the names associated with this project. Modin, Bykov, Trushenko and so on. One of the almost infallible rules of computer science is that if you tell anyone to think of a password, they invariably use a name or a date or a place known to them. All we have to do is find which name, date or place they selected. And that,’ he added, looking across at Richter, ‘is where you come in.’

10 Downing Street, London

‘I understand what you are saying, Mr Prime Minister,’ Mikhail Viktorovich Sharov, the Russian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Court of St James, said, somewhat petulantly, ‘but the whole tale sounds to me like a work of fiction. Certainly I have no knowledge of any of the matters you have talked about.’

Sharov had been summoned, peremptorily, from his official residence at Harrington House in Kensington Palace Gardens, and was not in the best of tempers. His mood was matched by that of the Prime Minister, who had concluded an interview with Sir Michael Geraghty, the Secret Intelligence Service chief, some fifty minutes earlier.

‘This is not fiction, Mr Ambassador,’ the Prime Minister said, his voice hard and cold, ‘this is fact. The proof was found in the back of a Russian lorry we had stopped in France. We can show you the device itself, if you wish, together with photographs of the alleged Russian diplomats who were accompanying it.’

‘Photographs can be faked,’ Sharov said, with a faint smile.

‘Of course they can,’ the Prime Minister snapped, ‘but the nuclear device cannot.’

Sharov shook his head. ‘A deception operation, Mr Prime Minister,’ he said. ‘It is a crude ploy by the American CIA to discredit us.’

The Englishman leaned forward. ‘It would have to have been a very clever deception operation by the Americans, Mr Ambassador, to have also planted an identical nuclear weapon in the locked hold of a Russian cargo ship.’

Sharov looked shocked. ‘What Russian cargo ship?’

‘The Anton Kirov, Mr Ambassador, which we seized in Gibraltar Harbour a few hours ago. This weapon was to be detonated at Gibraltar as a demonstration of the power of these new nuclear devices your scientists have developed, and to encourage the rest of Europe to fall into line.’ The Prime Minister lowered his voice. ‘You may also be interested to learn that we disarmed this weapon a matter of seconds before an attempt was made to detonate it.’ He paused, and looked straight into Sharov’s eyes. ‘If the weapon had been successfully detonated,’ he said, ‘we believe that virtually the entire population of Gibraltar, and most of the Spanish living in La Linea and Algeciras, would have been annihilated.

‘What you should also know,’ the Prime Minister went on, his voice like steel, ‘is that these deaths – these needless deaths of completely innocent people – would not have been the last. Most of the population of Moscow, St Petersburg and Gor’kiy would have shared their fate within minutes.’

‘I am not certain I follow you, Mr Prime Minister,’ Sharov said.

‘It’s quite simple, Mr Ambassador,’ the Prime Minister said, a slight, and completely mirthless, smile on his face. ‘I have issued most specific orders to my nuclear commanders. The moment any nuclear weapon is detonated anywhere in Europe, the entire ballistic missile inventory of the two British nuclear submarines – Vanguard and Victorious – will be launched without delay and without warning.’

‘You cannot do that, Mr Prime Minister,’ Sharov said, rising to his feet, red-faced and almost shouting.

‘I can, and I have. I suggest that you convey this information to your masters in Moscow immediately. You can also tell them that all the Trident missiles in both submarines have been re-targeted. No military installations have been included, only Moscow, St Petersburg and Gor’kiy. We are aiming for the total destruction of these three cities and the maximum possible loss of life.’ There was a short, appalled silence before the Prime Minister continued. ‘Your masters should also be informed that both these submarines have been ordered to patrol areas very close to the coast of the Confederation of Independent States. The missile flight time, I have been told, will only be a few minutes, perhaps five minutes at the most.

‘You have my most solemn assurance,’ the Englishman added, ‘that the three principal cities in Russia will cease to exist no later than ten minutes after any of the devices your agents have planted in Europe is detonated. Russia,’ he concluded, ‘is not the only country that can play at nuclear blackmail.’

Hammersmith, London

Richter had never been into the Computer Suite before, and Baker gave him a swift guided tour. ‘You noticed the door as you came in?’ he asked.

‘Not particularly,’ Richter replied.

‘It’s sheathed with copper,’ Baker said, ‘with bonding strips on the hinge side to ensure a good contact. The entire room – walls, floor and ceiling – are also lined with copper. Basically, you’re inside a huge Faraday Cage.’

‘I read Classics,’ Richter said. ‘What exactly is a Faraday Cage?’

Baker looked at him with something approaching despair. ‘In simple terms—’

‘They’re the best kind,’ Richter murmured.

‘In simple terms, it’s an electronic shield. It stops any of the emanations from the computers being detected outside the building – in fact, outside this suite. We’re going to sheath the entire building later this year, and then every office will be fitted with its own terminal.’ He paused. ‘Have you ever heard of TEMPEST?’

‘No,’ Richter replied.

‘OK, it’s a programme initiated by the Pentagon in the 1980s which covered electronic products used by government and defence agencies. It specifies things like radio frequency shielding, power-filtering on lines and so on. It’s now been adopted by most other Western nations, and it’s been fully implemented here.’

They walked through double doors into a very large room. The noise struck Richter first – a quiet, but quite distinct humming and chattering sound – and then Baker moved his arm in an expansive gesture. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is my baby.’

Richter looked at the machine. Tall, dark blue cabinets, flashing red lights. It was huge, and he’d never seen anything like it before. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Baker gave a very poor imitation of Clint Eastwood playing Dirty Harry. ‘This is the most powerful supercomputer in the world,’ he said. ‘This is a Cray–2.’

‘OK,’ Richter said. ‘I’m impressed. What’s a Cray–2?’

His ignorance was beginning to tell on Baker, and he shook his head sadly. ‘In the 1950s,’ he said, ‘an American computer expert called Seymour Cray designed the world’s first super-computer, which he called the Cray–1, and in 1976 he sold the first machine to a production plant in Chippewa Falls, Minnesota. The Cray–1 occupied only seventy square feet of floor space, but it weighed over five tons and contained two hundred thousand integrated circuits, nearly three and a half thousand printed circuit boards and sixty miles of wire. But what made the Cray–1 different from every other computer available then was its speed. It ran over one hundred times faster than the quickest IBM machine, and performed its calculations at the rate of two hundred and fifty mips.’

‘Hold it,’ Richter said. ‘You’re starting to lose me – again. What’s a mip?’

‘There’s no singular form – it’s a plural acronym that stands for a Million Instructions Per Second. To put that into everyday terms, that means the Cray–1 could transfer about three hundred and twenty million words – that’s the text of about two and a half thousand average-size novels – every second. And that,’ he added, ‘was back in 1976.’

‘I am impressed,’ Richter said, and this time he actually was.

‘You should be. But this machine is the next generation. The Cray–2 operates at three thousand mips – that’s twelve times faster than the Cray–1. You need government – American government – approval to order one, and it costs a bloody fortune to buy, but it’s the best there is, and it’s the only machine capable of doing some