James Barrington - Overkill

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?’

‘The first is easy. He’s using identity “Dernowi”, but that doesn’t sound like a Russian name to me.’

Richter shook his head. ‘It doesn’t sound Russian because it isn’t, as far as I know. Could it be a nickname?’

‘Almost certainly, but that doesn’t help. And the bad news is that because user Dernowi is using a backdoor code, I can’t delete him, change the code or stop him getting into the system again. And the really bad news is he can definitely eliminate us if he wants to.’

‘So what are you doing?’

‘At the moment, absolutely nothing. I’m still logged on as Modin – which Dernowi has checked, by the way, so he knows we’re here and also knows that we’re calling from London – but I’m doing nothing else. I’m hoping he’ll know Modin is an authorized user and he won’t even think of altering his password or deleting his username.’

Richter sat silently for a moment, staring at the screen. ‘The identity he’s using,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t sound like a contraction of a Russian word to me. Can you check it somehow?’

‘I’m way ahead of you,’ Baker said. ‘I’ve been running a dictionary program for the last five minutes on my laptop.’ He got up and walked across to the small desk in the corner. ‘It’s finished,’ he announced, ‘but I don’t think it helps much. There’s no exact match to “Dernowi”, but the closest is in Yiddish, believe it or not, and it translates as “The Prophet”.’

‘Yiddish?’ Richter said. ‘That makes no sense. The Russians would never work with the Jews. This has to be someone’s idea of a joke. OK, you said Dernowi had checked where Modin was calling from – can you do the same with him?’

Baker nodded. ‘Probably. I’ll visit some pages at random and include the network utilities section.’ Two minutes later Baker passed Richter a post-it note on which he’d written an eleven digit number, starting with ‘33’. Richter looked at it then gave it to Simpson.

‘France?’ Simpson asked. ‘He’s calling from France? Southern France?’