Overkill (68 page)

‘We can do this all day’ Baker said cheerfully, and leaned back in his chair.

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

Trushenko had just entered the twelfth – and correct – digit of Code Ten when the hotel room door burst open. Three men stood there with drawn pistols.
‘Minister Trushenko,’ Captain Kabanov said, ‘please step away from the computer.’

Dmitri Trushenko stood up to face them, and smiled. ‘You are,’ he said, ‘too late. Much too late.’ He turned away from the table, but then span back and hit the
‘Enter’ key.

Kabanov fired immediately. The first bullet hit Trushenko on his right arm, was deflected by the bone of his elbow, and shattered the screen of the laptop. The second shot entered
Trushenko’s left eye, killing him instantly. As he fell, his arm caught the telephone cord and tore the plug out of the modem, breaking the connection a little under one hundredth of a second
before the transmission of Code Ten was completed.

Thursday
Hammersmith, London

‘He’s gone,’ Baker said.

‘Where?’ Richter asked.

‘No idea. The connection’s been dropped. Right, with friend Trushenko out of the way, let’s tidy this lot up.’ Baker accessed the Username Table, selected ‘Modin,
General Nicolai’, and changed the ‘
Pripiska
’ password to ‘3tY&8$@Wq2#9’, which he then carefully wrote down, checking it twice. ‘They’ll take
weeks to crack that,’ he said, ‘if they ever do.’ Baker checked Current Log Ins again, and found that the two other users had logged off the system. ‘That’s
handy,’ he said. ‘It saves us having to wait until they’ve finished their day’s work. They can’t get back in because of the changes I’ve made. So, let’s
see what we can do.’

He selected the Network Control module and looked at the screen. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘A schematic diagram of the whole network. The satellite uplink is at Pechora, and the
network has only two permanent connections, to Yazenevo and a Moscow number.’

‘Can you do anything about the permanent connection?’

‘I already have done,’ Baker said. ‘The connections are only permanent in that the telephone lines link the Krutaya computer directly with those locations, rather than having
to route through any exchanges. Anybody wanting to use the computer would still have to input a valid username and password and log in just as we did. As I’ve changed the passwords of all the
listed users,’ he added, ‘they can’t get into the system at all.’

Baker turned his attention to the Weapon Control module. He accessed the menu, and Richter translated the sub-menu choices for him. ‘OK,’ Baker said. ‘What do you
want?’

‘Disarm them all, starting with Europe, except that one,’ Richter pointed at the screen.

‘The London weapon. OK, if that’s what you want.’ Baker concentrated on the screen while he navigated through the available options. He chose the Paris weapon, then looked at
the options. ‘Here we are. What do these mean?’

‘This is Disable Sequence and that’s Abort Sequence.’

Baker selected the Disable Sequence, pressed the ‘Enter’ key and looked at the screen. ‘Another message. Can you translate it, please?’

Richter leaned over his shoulder. ‘It says “Paris Device. Activation of the Disable Sequence will temporarily disarm this weapon. Are you sure you want to proceed?”
That’s not what we want,’ Richter said. ‘Try the Abort Sequence.’

Baker selected the other option, and they looked at the screen. ‘OK,’ Richter said. ‘The message reads ‘Paris Device. Activation of the Abort Sequence will permanently
disarm this weapon. Are you sure you want to proceed?’ I’d say yes, if I were you. In Cyrillic script that’s “DA” – “
”,’ Richter added, ‘so it’s “D”, not “Y”.’

Baker nodded, pressed the ‘D’ key and then the ‘Enter’ key. The screen cleared, and another message appeared.

‘Oh, shit,’ Richter muttered.

‘What?’

‘It’s saying “Operation failed. You require Administrator or System Designer access to modify the status of any weapon”.’

The Walnut Room, the Kremlin, Krasnaya ploshchad, Moscow

‘It’s over, Comrade President,’ Yuri Baratov said, smiling. ‘Trushenko was found in Port-Khorly near Odessa. We believe he was in the act of
attempting to detonate a weapon. The SVR officer in charge opened fire, and the Minister did not survive the encounter.’

The Russian President smiled. ‘Probably the best way, really. It saves any trial or embarrassment for us.’ He nodded. ‘Thank you, Yuri. Now I really do have something to tell
the Americans.’

Hammersmith, London

‘So now what?’ Baker asked, sitting back in his chair.

‘I don’t know,’ Richter replied. ‘You’re the computer expert, not me. First, and most important, can anyone else get into the system and detonate the
weapons?’

Baker shook his head decisively. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘I’ve changed all the passwords.’

‘OK. So the only person in the system, or who can get into the system, is you?’

‘I just said that.’

‘I know,’ Richter said. ‘I just wanted to be sure because this is too important to cock up. OK, the system’s secure so there’s no immediate need to worry. If you
can’t get in and disable the weapons through the satellite, that can always be done on site – General Modin told me that the weapons can be deactivated locally. What we need is the
precise location of each weapon, so we can advise the Americans and everyone else. Can you do that using Modin’s access to the system?’

‘Probably,’ Baker replied, looking at the menu choices. ‘Yes, here we are, I think.’

‘“Weapon Locations (Europe)”,’ Richter read. ‘Yes, print that, please.’ A thought struck him, ‘Can you also save the information on disk?’

Baker nodded, stuck a floppy disk into the drive and pressed a sequence of keys. The drive light illuminated and went out a few seconds later. Baker extracted the disk, wrote ‘Weapons
– Europe’ on it and handed it to Richter.

The laser printer generated forty-five sheets, three for each weapon. Richter picked one up and scanned it. It was highly detailed and quite unambiguous, giving the precise location of the
strategic-yield neutron bomb positioned at Toulouse, together with information about the power supply back-up routines, the location of the satellite dish and receiver system, and even the serial
numbers of some of the pieces of equipment. If anyone needed documentary evidence of
Podstava
, those pages provided it.

Baker did the same for the American devices, first copying the information on to a floppy disk and then printing a hard copy. The process took longer because there were over six hundred sheets
to print, and even at the six pages a minute that the printer was capable of, it took nearly two hours. Richter slumped, dozing, in his chair, a result of his lack of sleep and the somewhat
soporific sound of the sheets of paper being fed through the laser.

At half past seven Baker leaned back wearily in his seat, then reached over and shook Richter awake. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Can I break the connection now?’

‘No,’ Richter replied. He stood up, stretching his aching limbs and picked up the disk Baker had marked ‘Weapons – America’ and the plastic tray containing the
printed sheets. ‘I’m going up to see Simpson. Make another file copy of the weapon locations for our records so we can print the information whenever we need it. Keep trying to get into
the module to disable the weapons. And when you get tired of trying to do that, there’s one other thing I’d like you to do.’

Le Moulin au Pouchon
, St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Hassan Abbas had been getting increasingly concerned. The last message he had received from Dmitri Trushenko had been a routine transmission, just a confirmation that the
last two phases of the operation were proceeding on schedule, but there had been nothing since. He had anticipated a further message when the bomb convoy reached the English Channel, and certainly
one when the London weapon had been safely delivered.

He had sent Trushenko an encrypted email by the usual route, just after six that afternoon and he had waited anxiously by the computer, his Internet connection active, for a reply. At nine,
having heard nothing from wherever Trushenko had gone to ground, Abbas decided to check the status of the Krutaya computer through the dummy sex site in Arizona.

As usual, he accessed the page containing the hidden code, waited for the 404 error to be displayed and pressed the ‘Refresh’ button three times. His Internet connection was
immediately transferred to the Krutaya mainframe, the screen cleared and the familiar winking cursor appeared in the top left-hand corner, waiting for his input. Abbas typed the single word
‘manalagna’ – the result of a private joke he had shared years earlier with Sadoun Khamil – and watched as his personal welcome message appeared on the monitor.

Hammersmith, London

Richter put the disk and plastic tray down on Simpson’s desk and slumped wearily into a chair. Simpson looked at him questioningly.

‘That’s the complete list of the weapon locations,’ Richter said. ‘Those at the top are the European sites, the ones at the bottom are the bombs across the pond, and the
floppy disk has file copies that the CIA can use.’

‘Excellent,’ Simpson said, and rang for a courier. ‘I’ll get them sent over to the Embassy right away so they can get their techies started on the disarming
process.’

‘You’ll need these as well,’ Richter said, handing over a couple of sheets of paper. ‘They’re copies of the instructions Professor Dewar gave me. If the Americans
are going to dismantle the weapons manually they’ll need to know the sequence of wires they have to cut to disable the anti-handling devices.’

Simpson picked up a couple of sheets from the plastic tray and glanced at the information printed on them. ‘Remarkably comprehensive,’ he murmured. ‘I presume you’ve told
Baker to keep a copy for our records?’

Richter nodded. ‘It’ll be in a file on the computer so we can print copies whenever we need them.’

There was a soft knock at the door and the courier entered. Simpson handed over the disk and the sheets relating to the American weapons and told him to take them straight to the American
Embassy. The door had just closed behind him when the internal phone buzzed. Simpson picked it up, listened for a few seconds, then looked over at Richter. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘I’ll send him down.’

‘What is it?’ Richter asked as Simpson replaced the handset.

‘That was Baker,’ Simpson said, ‘and we may not be out of the woods yet. He says a new user has just logged on to the Krutaya computer.’

‘What? He told me that was impossible,’ Richter said.

Simpson shrugged. ‘No idea – it’s not my field. We’d better get down there.’

Le Moulin au Pouchon
, St Médard, near Manciet, Midi-Pyrénées, France

Hassan Abbas first checked to see if there were any other users on the system, but found only one – General Modin. That puzzled him, because he had been told by
Trushenko that the general was one of the two senior Russian military officers who would be accompanying the last neutron bomb to London. The only way Modin could be connected to Krutaya would be
through a computer at the London Russian Embassy, which meant that the bomb had to have been delivered already. Unless, Abbas rationalized, Modin had gone on ahead of the convoy for some reason.
That could be it.

He checked the status of the London weapon and, as he expected, found that the system reported it as still being in transit. Then he accessed the network utilities module and checked the call
origin. Modin’s call to Krutaya had been placed from a London number, but routed through a Moscow exchange. That made sense. Obviously Modin had for some reason travelled ahead of the weapon
and was now waiting in London for its arrival and positioning.

Abbas checked the overall system readiness, and then looked at the status of several of the individual weapons in both America and Europe, a routine he had followed many times before. All
appeared to be in order, and he was about to exit from the system when something unexpected caught his eye.

Hammersmith, London

‘How the hell did this happen, and who is he?’ Richter demanded, walking into the Computer Suite two paces in front of Simpson.

Baker shrugged helplessly. ‘He’s a new user, but there’s no record of him in the username table. That means he’s got his own personal backdoor code.’

‘In English, please, Baker,’ Simpson snapped.

‘A backdoor code is a shortcut most programmers use. They incorporate a specific code-word that’s known only to them, and which will allow them back into the system at any time,
without going through the normal log on procedure. I’ve effectively deleted all the authorized users by scrambling their passwords, but this guy –’ he pointed at the screen
‘– just popped up out of nowhere, so that’s the only possible way he could have got inside.’

‘OK,’ Richter growled, sitting down. ‘Who is he and what can you do about him?’