What he described in the ensuing three or four hours—with Edelweiss, time in some way acquired another consistency—was at first sight a defensive assignment. Our team should stay close to the President and his own security detail during state visits and other official public duties. Should become a sort of floating security layer, flexible and adaptable, ready for any conceivable situation.
In short, it was meant to be what one now calls “hybrid warfare”. To combat hidden sabotage, digital attacks, advanced psychological warfare, political destabilization, ever more ingenious assaults on our infrastructure. And be able to strike back—using the same weapons.
In the case of serious crisis, the strategy was turned on its head. The Team could then be transformed into a raw strike force, focused on the enemy’s weakest points, with methods at least as unthinkable as their own. Its nature could be altered, as Edelweiss expressed it in one of his elaborate yet precise metaphors, in the same way that an amphibious vehicle operates both on land and water.
When the global security threat stood at its highest level—LILAC—reserved for the one thing that could destroy the world at a few minutes notice: a nuclear threat from another state or from terrorists—the President himself should be placed under protection. Until the threat was neutralized, the Team would take over covert command of the whole military apparatus. Including the nuclear weapons system.
“You have to be ready for every conceivable attack on the country’s security. And more than that—for every inconceivable one too,” Edelweiss said.
“First and foremost, this requires our imaginations to be greater than the enemy’s. Which is what we will have to work on, our creative ability, our impulsive intelligence. Each one of you is an exceptional agent already. But once we’ve been through this together, you should see yourselves more as artists.”
He ran his hand over his chins.
“But what distinguishes our assignment is that it’s to do with nuclear weapons. Things which you can’t compare with anything else throughout military or even human history, because by their nature they were so far outside our experience. The only meaningful difference between them and other fantasies, say the lightsabers in ‘Star Wars’ or Superman’s X-ray vision, is that nuclear weapons became reality.”
Another pause for effect, as Edelweiss peered around him in the half darkness.
“There has never yet been a full-scale war using battlefield nuclear weapons. Nobody knows how that might affect us, how we would all turn out in a situation like that. That’s also what we are going to explore together, my little lambs, under more or less controlled conditions.”
The extent of our authority under those conditions seemed astonishing, even to me. The briefcase would of course be the jewel in the piece. Our innermost and outermost secret, our last resort, the chained beast. First, the thing we were most of all tasked to protect, then our ultimate offensive weapon.
“The most important object in the world,” Edelweiss called it—before handing it to me at the end of that first meeting. With this small gesture turning me into both savior and destroyer. The center not just of the Team, his NUCLEUS, but of the universe.
From that point on he called me the Carrier. As if it were some sort of virus.
Around me were the few others: at a respectful yet inquisitive distance. Zafirah, who tried to persuade me of the blessings of ultra-violence. Her interest in everything that had sufficient striking power, as she put it, was pathological. According to her own account, it had started with heavyweight boxing, the never-ending shows night after night with her father in Bahrain, and had then just escalated. Martial arts, M.M.A., military close combat. She was the one whom Edelweiss always sent into the thick of things during training. Often alone and unarmed against a number of opponents.
To see her at a distance, that compact little woman with her shimmering headscarves, one could never guess what Zafirah was capable of. What she and I had done together to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq, deep inside hostile territory. That is how it is with genuine specialist skills. There is no need to advertise them—until there is no alternative.
Apart from us two, the Team’s operational core consisted only of two identical security guards, whom we alternately called Kurt and John. They looked after everything to do with personal protection, both in theory and in practice, as well as most of our technical equipment. Always surrounding me, of course, bedding in the Carrier with their mighty bodies, exuding latent violence. Committed to laying down their lives for me at any moment. Or rather for the briefcase.
Behind the scenes, however, the apparatus was larger. All of those we never or seldom got to see: strategists, observers, technicians, psychologists, medical staff and other support functions. And in addition doubles, decoys and substitutes. These strange functionaries who together make up the security world’s extras.
We were not permitted to mix with any others in NUCLEUS outside work. We were instead encouraged to refine our civilian identities, to lead a full double life, the preference was for a family. Edelweiss spoke about having been inspired by none other than Kim Philby. He said we would increase our operative capability, keep on our toes, be ever ready, by forever manipulating our surroundings in that way. Besides, not being stationed together would reduce our exposure to elimination at a single stroke.
So after almost twelve years I still knew nothing about the others in their civilian lives: had no knowledge of their “real” or “alternate” existences, no idea who they were, these camouflaged people handpicked for our camouflaged assignments. Not Edelweiss, nor Zafirah, John or Kurt.
And least of all Alpha.
None of us knew who or what that was, even whether man or machine, some sort of digital function. Edelweiss himself after all these years claimed that he had no idea. That he got his orders from this mysterious signature in the form of double-encrypted messages on his screen: protection assignments, transfers, the scope for our next training scenario. Nothing had persuaded him that Alpha was a living individual. Many of our training maneuvers also seemed so haphazard, in terms of both objective and significance, that they might as well have been generated at random.
Yet it was the training which tested and hardened our team, fused us together like glass in the heat of the moment, transformed us into artists. Early on in our history we took part in two regular military invasions. Afghanistan was first—November 13, 2001, nine days after we had met in that windowless headquarters below ground—and then came Iraq, on March 20, 2003.
But it was in situations during training that we could be confronted with the most extreme challenges. The sorts of thing that we had been created for.
Not least a simulated full-scale nuclear attack based on our strategy document “Global Strike and Deterrence”. The gravest threat to the survival not only of the nation but of the whole world, the extinction of mankind, Ragnarök. The sort of moment in history which a paleontologist alone can grasp.
And so now we were sitting there at the walnut table in the conference room inside Air Force One, going through the routines for the official visit to Stockholm from September 4–5, 2013. After all our years in the Team, the challenges posed by our assignments were still a paradox. Building the same state of high alert, being prepared for anything to happen, at any time, required us to act with extreme precision, to follow our training without deviation. Every little routine had to stand out like some sort of prelude to Doomsday.
Edelweiss had his way of going about it, always getting us to pay full attention, to sit bolt upright in our chairs. Just his way of opening with “Good morning, my little lambs” chilled us to the core. After his first few lectures in West Point’s sealed wing, I had nightmares for weeks. So when he now opened his eyes and fixed his look at the projection screen in the conference room, we all did the same, as if spellbound.