James Barrington - Overkill

The reason Baker couldn’t read the second line was because it was written in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Farsi, which is spoken by about one third of the population of Afghanistan, and is used as a kind of lingua franca between speakers of different languages in that country. Baker was well versed in all the major computer languages, but was barely literate in English and he had no knowledge whatsoever of any other spoken language. In fact, the second line was only a repeat of the first, with the addition of a single word – ‘ Inshallah ’.

Baker grabbed the phone and dialled Richter’s mobile, which rang instantly. Obviously Lacomte had got the cells working again.

‘Richter.’

‘It’s Baker. I’m in.’

‘Thank God for that. What was the backdoor code?’

‘You were right. I ran the dictionary program, and this was about the thirtieth word I tried. It’s “manalagna”.’

‘What?’

Baker spelt it phonetically. ‘Just like all the others it means “The Prophet”, and the language is Ilongo, from the Philippines.’

‘OK,’ Richter said. ‘Start disabling the weapons, and be quick about it, just in case this other Arab bastard tries to get in to finish off what Dernowi started. But don’t,’ he added, ‘disable the London weapon – we’ve still got plans for that.’

Buraydah, Saudi Arabia

The hour was up, and still there had been neither word from Hassan Abbas nor any further weapon detonations in America. Khamil had even tried to telephone Abbas using both the landline number and his mobile phone; the former had resulted in a ‘number unobtainable’ message, while the mobile was apparently switched off. Four years of planning, Khamil realized, and the operation had gone wrong in a spectacular fashion at the eleventh hour. But there was one thing he could do to retrieve it. He was not a computer expert, but he was competent, and Abbas had shown him the Weapon Control program on the Russian mainframe computer. He could read enough Cyrillic script to decipher the various options, he had a copy of the firing authorization codes and, most importantly, he knew the backdoor code. If Abbas had been killed or captured, he could do it instead. El Sikkiyn would be implemented a little late, but it would be implemented.

Khamil crossed to his laptop computer and touched the space bar to remove the screen saver. He pulled a small notebook from his pocket, opened Internet Explorer and typed in the name of the Arizona sex site. When the site had loaded, Khamil moved swiftly to the link that generated the 404 error, and clicked the ‘Refresh’ button several times.

The screen went blank apart from the flashing cursor. Khamil referred again to his book, then carefully typed in ‘manalagna’ and watched the screen. The welcome message in English and Dari that he was expecting did not appear, and he stared, puzzled, at a message in Cyrillic lettering for some moments. Then he opened a drawer on his desk, extracted a small Russian-English dictionary and laboriously began to translate the message.

Four minutes later, he sat back, his face ashen. Now there could be no doubt, no doubt at all, that his gamble had failed. The message read simply: ‘Duplicate log-on attempt. This user is already registered on the system. Please check your username and password and try again.’

Hammersmith, London

At eleven thirty that morning Richter climbed wearily up the stairs, walked into Simpson’s office and sat down. He’d flown back from Toulouse in the HS-146 and there had been a car at Northolt to meet him. Simpson looked at him and closed the file he had been reading.

‘Is it done?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it’s done,’ Richter replied. ‘Baker got in using Dernowi’s backdoor code and disarmed all the American bombs, and all the strategic neutron bombs apart from the London weapon.’

‘Is that a permanent disarming procedure?’ Simpson asked.

Richter nodded. ‘I think so. According to Professor Dewar, the weapon includes a circuit to physically burn out the actuating coils in the trigger unit, and he presumed that the circuit was included as part of the abort routine. If he’s right, then the only way to arm the weapon again is to fit an entire new trigger assembly. That,’ Richter added, ‘is the case with the neutron bomb that he examined in France. We obviously haven’t had a chance to examine any of the weapons placed in America, so I don’t know if the abort sequence works the same way on those.’

‘That’s something the Americans can sort out,’ Simpson said. ‘They’ve had the details of the weapon locations since last night. And the London device?’

‘That was the last thing I asked Baker to do,’ Richter said. ‘We’ve locked out all the other users from the Russian computer, and as things stand the only people that can access it are us. No doubt they will try and get back into the system any time now.

‘As a matter of fact, Baker said that user Dernowi tried to get back on-line while he was actually disabling the weapons. And as Dernowi was dead at the time,’ Richter added, ‘either that’s definite proof of life after death or there was somebody else – probably another bloody Arab – who knew the backdoor code. Anyway, he couldn’t get in using the “manalagna” code because Baker was already logged on as Dernowi.’

‘I wonder who he was,’ Simpson mused.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Richter said. ‘The weapons are just lumps of metal and the Arab plan is defunct. Right, I don’t pretend to understand the technicalities of it, but I asked Baker to write what he called a subroutine and include it in the Russian system. What it means is that, with effect from the end of next week, the computer will accept any of the previous log ins and passwords, but the new code he’s written will divert all users away from the existing system and into Baker’s little routine.

‘His program will tell them that all the weapons but one have been disabled, and that control of the firing program, and of the satellite, have passed into Western hands. The kicker is the last section, which tells them that the London weapon is in full working order, armed and ready, and is now residing in Her Britannic Majesty’s Embassy at Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow, which is, as we all know, just across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. The access delay Baker built-in will allow plenty of time for the weapon to be physically placed in the Embassy.’

Simpson smiled – a rare and not particularly attractive sight. ‘A real cuckoo’s egg,’ he said, ‘right in the heart of Moscow, and one we can hatch any time we like. Nice to know that the Diplomatic Bag system works as well for us as for them.’

‘Will it be armed?’ Richter asked.

‘Of course not,’ Simpson replied. ‘We can’t have some simple-minded Embassy hack fiddling about with it. Dewar assures me that it can be armed in about ten minutes, if you know what you’re doing, so it’s still a viable threat.’ He paused. ‘So that’s it. The Prime Minister and “C” are waiting to hear from me, so I’d best get moving. We’ve got a couple of nuclear submarines stuffed full of missiles more or less lurking at the mouth of the Moskva River, and I think the Navy would like to get them back, or at least get them back into deep water. I take it,’ he added, looking at Richter’s red-rimmed eyes, ‘that you don’t want to come with me?’

Richter shook his head. ‘No thanks. What about Abilene? What’s the latest?’

‘The PM and the American President have agreed there’s going to be no military retaliation. In fact, it looks as if the official response will be to write it off as a tragic accident – an American nuke was accidentally detonated.’