Warren Murphy: Rain of Terror

This lack of retaliation bothered Major General Gunnar Rolfe, but he was enjoying his newfound acclaim too much to dwell on it. Even six months after the Battle of Stockholm Harbor, he was still receiving decorations; presents, and the favors of high-school girls. His apartment overlooking the Kungstadgarden, whose marigolds had been in bloom a century before Columbus, overflowed with them.

Had he known that at that very moment a Scandinavian Airlines jet was carrying the representative of a tradition far older than Sweden's neutrality, with several grisly methods of dealing with him in mind, Major General Gunnar Rolfe would have immediately fled his beloved Sweden for asylum in a safer country.

Even if that country was Soviet Russia.

* * *

Lord Guy Phillston pulled his elegant black Citroen into the spot reserved for him in front of Ten Downing Street and noticed that his pipe had gone out during the drive from his office at Britain's supersecret counterintelligence agency, the Source.

"Oh, drat!" he exclaimed. He pulled the pipe, which was a meerschaum with a bowl carved in the semblence of Anne Boleyn's head, and applied a freshly struck wooden match. The rich Dunheap tobacco caught slowly and Lord Guy inhaled a good stiff draft to steel himself for the interview.

Puffing furiously, he walked up to the simple door with the gold number ten on it and rapped the brass knocker politely.

A male secretary answered.

"She is expecting you," the secretary said. "Do come in."

The secretary waved him to a velvet-cushioned seat in the foyer and Lord Guy took it gratefully. Ordinarily he detested waiting, but a few additional minutes meant a few more bracing puffs of the pipe.

When the secretary finally emerged from the study to inform him the Prime Minister would see him, Lord Guy hastily snuffed out the pipe and slipped it into his jacket pocket. It wouldn't do to appear before the Prime Minister with poor Anne Boleyn's face sticking out of his mouth. Might offend the sensibilities and all that. Privately, Lord Guy doubted that this woman who controlled the destiny of the Commonwealth, who was known by friend and foe alike as the Iron Lady, had sensibilities of any sort. But he knew that she was not above pretending to take offense if she thought it gave her psychological leverage.

The Prime Minister greeted him cordially, with that smile that was more a polite baring of teeth than a smile. It was completely empty of warmth, like a barracuda's smile.

"Good of you to come," she said, waving him to a seat. "I have your report on my desk." She looked at the report, removed her reading glasses, and still smiling emptily, added, "Rather fanciful, isn't it?"

"Ah, Madam Prime Minister, I realize the ... er ...unorthodox nature of the matter. But I stand behind every...ah ...word."

"I see." She adjusted her glasses again and flipped through the report-or pretended to. The head of the Source was suddenly struck by the thought of how much like a schoolmistress she seemed with her too-matronly brown hair and condescending manner. She wasn't reading a jot, he knew. She just wanted to make him as uncomfortable as possible.

When he refused to fill the dead air with an apology or qualification, the Prime Minister spoke again.

"You are absolutely sure of your facts, then, Lord Guy?"

"Quite."

The Prime Minister dropped the Source report and leaned back in her high-backed chair. The room was dim and somehow homey, like the parlor of some grandmotherly sort from Dorset, Lord Guy thought.

"Let's review, then," she said. "There has been the extraordinary coincidence of two separate meteor falls in the area of the American capital. Our spies in the States report that for several days after the first fall, the central government virtually shut down. The President disappeared, and when he resurfaced he spoke vaguely of a crisis of some sort that he was in the process of putting down. We can find no evidence of any crisis except that the American Joint Chiefs of Staff also went into hiding and their NORAD system went to the highest state of alert short of total war. And now a small section of New York City has been destroyed, and this is blamed, of all things, on a gas-main explosion."

"It is rather lame," Lord Guy admitted.

"Now, what does this suggest to you?" asked the Prime Minister, tapping the edge of her desk with a pencil.

"The Americans have been attacked."

"So your report suggests. But by whom? There, you see, I find your report curiously lacking."

"We can discount the Soviets. And the Red Chinese, one would think."

"And on what, my dear man, do you base eliminating from consideration America's principal enemies in the Communist world?"

"They would not risk retaliation. Further, our information is that neither country is on alert at this time. Hardly prudent behavior by an aggressor."

"That is sound reasoning, perhaps."

"Further, Madam Prime Minister, we are clearly dealing with a rogue element. No sane national leader would undertake such a foolhardy thing as this."

"Yes, I agree. And that brings me to my next question. What precisely is this? What are the Americans facing here?"

"A nonnuclear missile of some kind. I would guess from that fact alone that they are dealing with one of the Central or South American nations who are antagonistic to them. It is the only possibility. Otherwise the Yanks would have struck back by now. They have not. Therefore, the perpetrator is too close to their sovereign borders to chance their own fallout being blown back into their faces."

"Well-spoken. I am inclined to agree with you. But which?"

"I will endeavor to find out, if Madam Prime Minister will authorize."

"Good. And I will lay before you another task. We must locate that weapon. Anything so powerful that it would send the American military seeking shelter like a frightened bunch of pubescent public-school boys should be in our hands."

Lord Guy winced. He was public-school. Proud of it too. He cleared his throat.

"If we can lay our hands on this weapon," Prime Minister went on crisply, "the balance of power would clearly shift to England. Where it belongs."

"Ah," said Lord Guy. "A return to the glory days of the Empire, eh?"

"Oh, spare me the Kiplingesque rubbish," the Prime Minister said testily. "I am speaking of the survival of Europe. For as long as we are forced to exist under the shadow of the nuclear stockpiles of the two superpowers, we can never feel safe. All of Europe is clamoring for disarmament, but it is simply unachievable by treaty. But if this weapon, whatever it may be, is so bloody fearsome that it has frightened the Americans half out of their wits, then with it we might force global disarmament."

"But I am under the impression that you favor the nuclear deterrent."

"I do. Until something better comes along. And I think it has."

The Prime Minister smiled her barracuda smile.

Lord Guy Philliston smiled back. She made sense. She made perfect sense.

"I quite understand," he said simply as he rose to his feet. The Prime Minister came out from behind her desk, and after smoothing her grayish skirts, offered her hand.

"I will handle this personally," he said, squeezing the hand. It felt cool to the touch.

"Do so."

He was very glad, once he got outside, to relight his pipe and suck the fragrant smoke into his lungs.

As he got into the car, he remembered that he had forgotten something. He had intended to tell the Prime Minister that the Lobynian news agency, TANA, had issued another of its frequent calls for reprisals against Great Britain. Colonel Intifadah obviously still smarted from the closing down of his London People's Bureau and the ousting of Lobynian diplomatic personnel caught trying to kill dissident Lobynians.