‘I can try,’ Richter said doubtfully.
‘It’s not a problem. I can talk you through it right now.’
‘OK,’ Richter said, and sat down on the stone floor in front of the laptop.
‘Right,’ Baker said. ‘first you access the—’
‘Oh, shit,’ Richter muttered, and looked in irritation at his phone. The battery strength was fine, but the signal strength read zero. He snatched up Abbas’ mobile and looked at that. The battery was about two-thirds exhausted and, like Richter’s Nokia, it was reading zero signal strength. Lacomte had taken his time getting the mobile phone cells switched off, but he had finally managed it.
There was nothing more Richter could do with the laptop, so he removed the data cable, switched off Abbas’ mobile phone, and put the computer, phone and cable into the Samsonite case. Then he walked back to where Abbas was sitting groaning against the wall. He pushed the muzzle of the Glock under Abbas’ chin and forced the Arab’s head up.
‘You’re Dernowi, I presume. I’ve got a couple of questions for you. First, what’s your backdoor code for the Russian computer?’
Abbas opened his eyes slowly and looked at Richter, then very deliberately he spat in his face. At first Richter didn’t react at all, then he brought his left hand up, wiped the spittle from his cheek, then moved the Glock down and fired a bullet through Abbas’ right thigh.
‘Let’s try that again, shall we?’ he said, raising his voice over the Arab’s screams. ‘What’s the backdoor code?’ Abbas shook his head, still howling.
‘You’re going to die here,’ Richter said, ‘but it’s up to you how. Tell us what we want and it will be a single bullet, then oblivion. Carry on like this and I’ll just keep shooting bits off you until you pass out. Fun for me, but definitely not for you. So, what’s your backdoor code?’
The Arab shook his head again. ‘I will never tell you,’ he murmured, his voice low and cultured, with a pronounced Home Counties English accent. Looking at him, Richter suddenly realized that he wouldn’t, that he was looking at a committed martyr. ‘OK, then why choose “Dernowi”? Why a Yiddish name for an Arab, and why “The Prophet”?’
Abbas almost smiled. ‘It was an old joke,’ he said. ‘That was all.’
‘And why all this? Why were you trying to detonate weapons the Russians had planted in America?’
Abbas was losing blood quickly from his multiple wounds, and Richter knew he had only minutes before the Arab lost consciousness for the last time. ‘To start a war, of course,’ Abbas said, his voice barely audible. ‘The Russians were stupid. They knew nothing of our plan. They thought we just wanted to humiliate America, to threaten them with the bombs. We wanted America destroyed, but for Russia to be blamed and destroyed in her turn. At a stroke, we would eliminate the world’s two superpowers, and allow the full blossoming of the Arab world. The Arab nations would arise as the new world leaders and we would finally fulfil our destiny. That is why we conceived this plan, and that is why we paid for everything, why we bought the Russians.’
Richter sat back, hardly believing what he had heard. ‘So you and your camel-shit-eating masters were going to sacrifice the populations of America and Russia, and probably most of Western Europe, just so that a bunch of flea-ridden sand Arabs could rule the world?’
Abbas nodded. ‘And we will make a much better job of it than you have,’ he spat. ‘It is our destiny. We will bring the word of Mohammed to the godless masses, if not now then later.’ And then he added something which chilled Richter even more than Baker’s news. ‘I am not the only one who knows the backdoor code,’ he said.
‘Who else?’ Richter demanded, but Abbas just smiled slightly and shook his head.
‘I will not tell you,’ he said. ‘You will find out, and he will finish what I began. Your time is at an end.’
Richter nodded, decision made. ‘And so is your time,’ he said, and raised the Glock.
‘You would not dare,’ Abbas said. ‘This is France, a civilized country. You cannot just execute me. I expect medical treatment. I want to talk to my Embassy in France.’
‘Expect away,’ Richter said, and shot Abbas twice in the stomach. The Arab’s eyes widened with the sudden searing pain, and he began a keening, wailing sound as he toppled sideways, clutching his belly.
‘One for Abilene, one for Albany,’ Richter said, stood up and turned away.
‘You want me to finish him?’ Dekker asked.
‘No,’ Richter shook his head firmly, picked up the Samsonite computer case and walked out of the ruined building. ‘Leave him there. Let him die slowly. It’ll give him time to make his peace with Mohammed.’
Sadoun Khamil looked at the television set with a broad smile on his face. The satellite receiver was tuned to CNN, and already the first still picture – shot from a safe distance, probably several miles away – of the characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud over what was left of Abilene was more or less a fixture on the screen. The correspondents were visibly appalled, and trying desperately to make any kind of sense of what they and the world were seeing.
American government buildings were already under siege from the news media, but there had been no announcements of any sort from any officials. Experts from various disciplines were being dragged into studios, or just stood in front of camera crews, and asked for their comments and conclusions, but the quite unmistakable fact was that nobody in America had any idea of what had happened or why. The best guess on the part of the CNN anchor was that it was just a terrible mistake – an American nuclear weapon had been accidentally detonated, with appalling loss of life and wholesale destruction.
Khamil smiled again as he heard this. ‘There will be a few more such accidents,’ he prophesied, and laughed out loud.
Sir Michael Geraghty sat down heavily in the leather chair opposite the mahogany desk in the Prime Minister’s private office, and looked across at the grey-haired man who’d been roused from sleep by his staff minutes earlier when the news from Texas broke. His hair was tousled, and he was still in pyjamas, a mauve dressing gown wrapped tightly around him. Geraghty was uncomfortably aware that he didn’t look much better himself, though he was fully dressed.
‘This is appalling, simply appalling.’
‘I can only agree with you, Prime Minister. You know that we in SIS did everything we could, and I have already congratulated Simpson on the performance of his people. The presence of this Arab—’ he almost spat the word ‘—with a backdoor code into the Russian computer was completely unexpected, and something nobody could possibly have foreseen.’
‘And what now?’ the Prime Minister asked. ‘After Abilene, what will the Americans do? The weapon was Russian in design, construction and placement. The fact that it was triggered by an Arab is probably, in this context, irrelevant. At the very least we can expect them to demand substantial reparation from Russia, and at worst they might decide on a surgical strike, to visit upon the Russian people the same sort of losses they have experienced.’
‘That, Prime Minister, is why I’m here,’ Geraghty said. ‘Simpson has informed me that the SAS and his man successfully stopped the Arab terrorist from detonating any further weapons, although he was trying to do just that when they caught up with him. As far as we are aware, there is no further danger from any of the weapons that the Russians positioned on American soil. It would be a tragedy if America struck at Russia now, and precipitated any kind of a nuclear exchange. May I recommend, in the strongest possible terms, that you discuss the matter immediately with the American President and suggest that, for the moment, he does nothing precipitate.
‘It may help if you advise him that we have evidence which definitely links al-Qaeda with the Abilene bombing. It was not, in the final analysis, the Russians who pulled the trigger, and any retaliation should probably not be directed towards them.’
‘I hear what you say,’ the President said, the secure telephone pressed close to his ear, ‘and your views are not too dissimilar from my own. Of course, the hawks will want to strike back immediately, and I’ll no doubt face a lot of criticism if I take no military action, but we have to think of the long-term consequences. And, as you rightly put it, the Russians didn’t actually pull the trigger.’
