"That means someone's been down it. If access is that easy, how do we know that the KGB or some other security organisation isn't sitting in there, waiting for us to arrive?"
"The suggestion is that, once you've got Apple in position, you should block the tunnel on the river side of it by dropping the roof, as if there had been a natural fall."
"Not that easy if it's concrete."
"I didn't say it was concrete." A hint of irritation edged into the Scot voice.
"The tunnel is lined with brick, and it's not in the best of condition."
I nodded in token conciliation.
"Even if you do drop the roof, it is recommended that you brick the device into the tunnel wall."
"Hard to camouflage new mortar."
"That'll be up to you. I imagine there may be dust or mud that you can smear around."
Next Whinger came up with, "How do we get the devices on site?"
The CO looked at Laidlaw, as if asking permission to intervene, and said, "They'll travel out with you on the Here, sealed in Lacon boxes. They can be marked the same as ammunition. The weight will be about right. At the other end it'll be up to you to devise ways of moving them to their final positions."
"What if the Here goes down with the devices on board?" asked Pavarotti.
"What's the chance of a premature detonation?"
"None," said Laidlaw.
"Even when the two halves of each device are united, nothing can happen until the control box has been interrogated and primed by satellite signal. You need have no worries on that score.
Thanks, I thought, feeling crushed with a sudden terrific weight of responsibility. The boss was going on again about the paramount need for security; but although I could hear what he was saying I was wondering how the hell I could carry out the training mission with this knowledge in my mind. Every day we'd be dealing man-to-man with our students, instructing and encouraging them, and at the same time, behind their backs, we'd be plotting to annihilate them.
As the main briefing was coming to an end, the CO drew me aside and said, "One thing to remember, Geordie: whatever happens, don't let yourselves get involved in any live operation, like you did in Colombia."
"That was different, Boss," I protested.
"When Peter lifted, we had to do something about it."
"I know. But what I'm saying is that we don't want any repetition. Even if the Russians beg you to take on a job for them, refuse."
"Will do."
From the briefing we went into a close-up study of the two sites.
Laidlaw produced large-scale drawings with much detail on them.
"All this information is on compact discs, which you can obviously take with you," he said.
"The discs are programmed so that if anyone tries to get into one without using the correct password, the contents are automatically destroyed. Nevertheless, you obviously want to handle the discs with the greatest care.
As soon as the brass had dispersed, I called the team together for a Chinese parliament. We got a brew on, and sat round discussing this amazing turn of events.
Rick remembered that, a few months ago, there'd been reports of the Russians losing a whole load of such devices.
"There was something on the Internet that I down loaded on to our Russian file," he said.
"Wait one, and I'll pull off a copy."
While he went to make a search, Whinger and I filled in the other guys on the layout of the Kremlin and the British Embassy, which had suddenly become of critical importance. I felt instinctively that because the Orange site was out in open country, we'd be able to hack it without too much trouble: it was Apple, right under the walls of the Kremlin, that made my neck crawl.
In a few minutes Rick returned with a couple of pages printed off his lap-top.
"Listen to this," he began, reading out his transcript. '"A respected Russian scientist and former adviser to President Yeltsin said on Thursday that during the 1970s, under orders from the KGB, Moscow had secretly developed suitcase nuclear bombs. The devices had an explosive capacity of one kiloton the equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. They could be activated by one person, and could kill 100,000 people. The bombs were designed for terrorist purposes. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, at least 100 such devices have remained unaccounted for."
Rick broke off, looked up and said, "Guess what this respected Russian scientist is called." When nobody answered,
he said, "Yablokov. We all know what that means.
Somebody gave a groan. Yabloko was one of the first words we'd learnt on our Russian course. It means 'apple'.
"Either it's a fluke," I said, 'or someone's having a laugh."
"Maybe someone nicked a couple of suitcases from the KGB, and we're just taking them back," Pavarotti suggested.
"There's a worse possibility than that," said Pete.
"If we're doing this to the Russkies, who's to say they haven't done it to us already? What if there's a CND nicely placed in the wall of the Thames, under the House of Commons terrace?"
"Yeah," Whinger agreed, 'and another under the guardroom, right here in camp.
"It's no bloody joke," I told him.
"Don't you remember that time in the seventies when the Finns stopped an articulated truck and found it contained the roof for a Mexi stay-behind shelter, destined for England? If the bastards were getting dug in in the UK then, why should they have stopped now?"
"Here's something else off the Net," Rick went on, scanning his second sheet. Again he read: '"Russia is regarded as an increasingly unreliable partner on international issues, because of the power of corrupt officials, crooked businessmen and organised crime, a US public policy research group declared on Monday. A panel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that the criminalisation of Russia's economy, if left unchecked, would make normal state-to-state relations with the country un viable It will become impossible for the United States to have traditional, satisfactory dealings with an emergent Russian criminal state"' He lowered the paper and said, "What about that?"
"That's it, exactly," I said.
"The stupid bastards in the Pentagon have got the wind up. They're bobbing like the shit-house fly, and want us to do their dirty work for them."
Once in Russia, we were going to need several days for site recces. Obviously we'd have to get the training course up and running; so no matter how fast we moved there was no way we could install Apple and Orange immediately. That in turn meant that the devices would have to be stored somewhere secure for the time being.
The idea of having them with us in that decrepit barrack block at Balashika seemed impossible, and I rapidly came to the conclusion that we must get them into the cellar at the British Embassy at the first possible moment. There, apart from other considerations, Apple would be practically on-site anyway, only a few hundred yards from its ultimate destination. The trouble was, the devices would travel into Russia with us on the Here and be off-loaded on the strip at Balashika. How could we account for the fact that we needed to transport heavy boxes into the centre of Moscow?
"Tell the Russians we've shipped in some new com ms equipment, at the Embassy's request," Whinger suggested.
"OK," I agreed, 'but what do we say to the Embassy?"
"That it's some of our own stuff. The security in the Russian barracks is shite, and the equipment's so sensitive that we don't want to leave it lying around while we're out working all day.
You pretty well told the Charge that already."
"All right," I persisted.
"Let's think about transport, then.
That's going to be a bugger. It looks to me as though we're going to have to whip in to the Embassy pretty often. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves by using a military truck or a Brit car. I hope Anna turns up trumps with those Russian vehicles she promised."