The military attaché in London had learnt that Peridenko’s agents, along with an Irish terror group were believed by the UK authorities to be responsible for the murder of several policemen in London. Furthermore the attaché had been unable to contact his deputy, Air Force Major Constantine Bedonavich. He did not know if the case had been retrieved, and oh yes, there was a nuclear incident in south London.
Peridenko froze, one leg outstretched and the phone in his hand whilst fury began to grow in his chest. He was in that position when Serge rapped once, loudly on his door and stuck his head around it. Serge ignored the two naked sleeping girls.
“America and Europe just announced a nuclear terror alert, get dressed, Politburo in 30 minutes” and departed. A roar of anger awoke the alleged siblings with a start, and Peridenko’s foot sent them tumbling off the end of the bed in a jumble of squealing naked limbs.
It is fair to say that relations between Westminster and the White House had improved somewhat since 24th August 1814, when British troops had burnt down the original residence of the President of the United States of America. Tonight the president was speaking to the British prime minister over speakerphone in the White House situation room.
Attended by his hastily summoned ‘battle staff’, the president was frowning deeply as he heard the details of the now confirmed nuclear device. The device had been made safe by the nuclear incident team from Aldermaston, and they reported that had it been unarmed. Thus far the device appeared to be of pre 1990 Soviet construction, although the arming mechanism was much newer, and in fact was state of the art.
The full Aldermaston report, along with preliminary police and intelligence service reports had been received from England. Copies lay before all person’s present.
Benjamin Dupre, the first black Director of the FBI, gazing over the top of his spectacles at the president was the first to speak once the call from London ended.
“Sir, this would appear to be confirmation that nuclear bombs in suitcases are no longer an urban myth” he removed his eyeglasses to massage the bridge of his nose before continuing.
“You will recall all the speculation and scare mongering in the press after September 11 regarding Bin Laden allegedly having bought, tried to buy, built, or whatever, nuclear bombs the size of backpacks or suitcases?” The president nodded in confirmation. Ben continued. “You will be aware of the high level defector, a KGB major who was involved in the development of these alleged things. When he came over in ’61 we doubted they had the expertise. He sounded credible and knew enough of the technical side but there just wasn’t any independent evidence to back it up though”.
“Until now” said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
“Until now” Ben agreed. “However, I do not see anything before us now that convinces me Al-Qaeda is behind the London bomb”.
Terry Jones, the CIA head was also looking thoughtful.
“Why make the Brits a present of a 2 kiloton unarmed nuclear device?” he turned a page to confirm a fact. “It was doused in Vanilla essence according to the Brit labs and that stuff smells just like plastic explosives to a human nose, it was shouting for attention. No way Al-Qaeda or any other terrorist group is going to do that!”
“Unless of course… .” Said Ben “… we got a friend on their side of the fence”.
The president remained silent, listening to thoughts and theories batted about across the table for several minutes.
“Alright gentlemen, we have a nationwide alert and once again the country will be grinding to a halt as we re-erect the roadblocks and the press gets even more paranoid”. He glanced irritably at the TV news monitors that in a few hours’ would alert the citizens of the United States of a threat worse than Anthrax.
“We already have plans for this eventuality; let’s keep focused on finding any more of the damn things. The theorising can wait until then”.
“Mr President?” Ben ventured. “What if we do have a friend… and what if that friend is not within Al-Qaeda, what if he, or she, is trying to warn us of an attack from a totally unexpected quarter?”
Scott Tafler had thumbed his way through the reams of notes and computer printouts seized from O’Connor. The girl had been incensed when the accompanying agents had agreed between themselves that they had not the first clue as to what they were looking for. That had not amused her, she‘d had no choice in surrendering her work but she’d been damned if she would lift a finger to help. What had caused her to go ballistic was their clearing her office of every damn piece of hardware, software and scrap of paper. A subtle form of blackmail but one that had ensured her accompanying the seized property in a ‘company’ Lear Jet to Langley. The sooner he had all the information then the sooner she could get her life and business back.
However, she was sat before his desk now with a bottle of mineral water in hand and her Irish eye’s still giving off the occasional flash of suppressed anger.
For the past hour Scott had struggled to gain her total cooperation before realising he was never going to get it as things stood. Excusing himself he had gone to his boss, Max.
“There is no way that this girl is going to help us get what we want quickly. She thinks we are using a legalised form of industrial espionage at the behest of ‘Commerce’. I have this real bad feeling that something is about to go down and we are going to miss it, because we’re pussyfooting about here”.
“What makes you think that Comrade Peridenko hasn’t just gone entrepreneur, plenty of others have?” Max pointed out.
“I’ve been making enquiry’s since I first read the FBI report. Firstly, no one in the industry has ever heard of the company, and that just doesn’t happen, everyone knows someone who knows someone in the business. It is a pretty elite section of gaming, this virtual reality. Secondly, Commerce has pretty knowledgeable sources around the world. Not a whisper about financing for a Russian VT venture or a new company either.”
Max stretched out his legs under the table and looked fixedly at Scott.
“So what do you propose to do, I am pretty certain we are very close to infringing the young ladies civil rights here. In fact I’m surprised that she hasn’t already screamed the house down for a lawyer?”
Scott had already given it a lot of thought.
“Under that rebellious exterior I am pretty sure there lays a very patriotic soul”. He weighed up the odds of his being slapped down before continuing, “I want to show her what we have on Peridenko, I want her to cooperate because she has the same bad feeling about this as I have”.
“No way Scott, that stuff is classified.” He said with a shake of the head. “It’s all cold war stuff and still classified secret to protect the sources. As to your gut feeling, well all we have is a not very pleasant Russian who wanted virtual reality cities getting wasted, and unless no one told you, we and the Russians are buddies now”.
At that point there was a knock and a messenger handed over a bulletin. The nuclear alert had gotten them kept at their desks but they knew no real details of what had happened in London yet. So far, as far as they had known it was just a bomb scare. Until now.
“Ah, it seems the mythological suitcase bomb is now a reality”. Scott had been looking at his feet and trying to think of some angle, he suddenly stopped and looked at Max quizzically, although he already knew the answer.
“Wasn’t Peridenko named by a defector as being in charge of the KGB suitcase bomb project?” He let that sink in before adding. “And didn’t you find it strange that so far as we know from Ms O’Connor, none of her scenarios was of a Chinese or old Warsaw Pact location?”