Then he lifted the receiver of his phone.
‘Estelle,’ he said to his secretary. ‘Get me the PM, please… immediately.’
32
Ling Chi, Minister of State Security, stood at the window of his modest fourth-floor office looking out at the view. He had his hands clasped behind his ramrod-straight back and turned his head slowly left then right watching the world beyond the glass. At the foot of the monstrously oversized Ministry building beyond the patrolled security cordon lay a ribbon of neon-splashed tarmac crammed with cars. Across from this ten-lane highway stretched mile upon mile of concrete buildings lit up in the night and intercut with more tarmac.
Ling turned to face his visitor, Zhu Lo, Minister for Scientific and Technological Information, a grossly fat man in a tight suit, tie digging into the ample flesh around his neck. He had small black eyes and seemed never to blink. Ling had worked with him for seven years and he knew that Zhu had hated him for at least three of those… dating from the day he had snatched the job of Minister of State Security from under the fat man’s nose.
‘You can definitely rely on your source, minister?’ Ling asked softly and pulled himself into his chair, his back to the view. He rested his hands on the old wooden desk.
‘He comes highly recommended,’ Zhu replied.
‘And you have approved —’ Ling glanced at his iPad ‘— five million dollars?’
Zhu stared at the minister, his face totally without expression. He said nothing, forcing Ling to speak.
‘It seems rather a lot.’
‘It is not excessive if one considers what we have obtained,’ Zhu said.
Ling studied his interlinked fingers. ‘Let us assume then that this material is genuine…’
‘It is genuine, minister.’
‘Let us assume this is the case,’ Ling repeated. ‘Your people have managed to decode it and they claim it is a description of some —’ he glanced at his iPad again ‘— alternative source of atomic energy.’
‘There is more to it than that.’
‘Enlighten me.’
‘The technicalities are complex,’ Zhu commented.
‘I’m sure they are, Zhu. I’ll try to keep up.’
‘The implication is that it points the way to cold fusion.’
Ling did well to hide his surprise. ‘But that has been discredited time and time again. The British, the French, the Japanese, they have spent billions on the concept and got precisely nowhere. I’ve seen the reports from the field.’
‘It seems, minister, that this work offers an entirely different approach.’
‘And this breakthrough, as your man calls it, comes from the wreck of the Titanic?’ Ling looked incredulously at the minister. ‘You’ll have to forgive me, but this all seems rather fanciful.’
‘I understand,’ Zhu replied. ‘I will confess that my team and I have had the same doubts, but the lineage of the find is incontrovertible.’
Ling nodded and waved his iPad a few inches above his desk. ‘I know the Americans have developed the technology to walk on the ocean floor and have been down to the wreck.’
‘Yes, it is indeed hard to imagine how the radiation source and any documents detailing such advanced theoretical physics could have ended up in a century-old shipwreck, but it is… it was there. That much is not open to conjecture. We have looked into the possible author of the work. My contact Professor Newman in Virginia is a physicist. He recognized the mathematical reasoning as being that of Ernest Rutherford’s assistant, one Egbert Fortescue, who, we have learned, was travelling on the Titanic under the assumed name of John Wickins. And, as you would know, minister, the material from the wreck was taken to Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia. It included a radiation source…’
‘The source that started the whole affair, yes. I have a report that says the radiation levels have dropped off markedly since whatever was down there was retrieved.’ He looked at Zhu. ‘I have to admit, I am extremely displeased that we were not quicker off the mark. The boss is fuming.’ He spun his chair round and returned his gaze to the world of light and dark beyond the glass.
‘Minister?’ Zhu said.
Ling turned back to face the Minister for Scientific and Technological Information, reading a flash of superiority in his tiny black eyes. ‘There’s more, isn’t there?’
‘The material from my contact in Virginia is incomplete.’ Zhu saw Ling glare at him. ‘That was, of course, made clear to us right from the start. My contact is as frustrated and confused by it as you would expect. The point is, the rest of the mathematical material, theoretical work of Egbert Fortescue and perhaps other wonders might still be down there on the ocean floor.’
‘After a century?’
‘The radioactive isotope and the first batch of theoretical materials survived.’
Ling took a deep breath. ‘Go on.’
‘It is not beyond reasonable doubt that there is more to be found down there.’
‘And the Americans will be going down again… perhaps many times. Yes, I see.’ Ling fixed his colleague with a hard, unflinching look. ‘We must act,’ he said.
33
The team of six had been trained personally by Van Lee himself. They were professional mercenaries unhappy with their former employers and covetous of some serious cash. Two were ex-SEALs; two others former SAS; a fifth had been a KGB operative; the sixth had served as a commander in the Israeli army.
Now entering their twenty-fourth hour of confinement holed up in a disused one-bed flat on the edge of Richmond, they had learned everything there was to know about their target. At the same time they had got to know each other pretty well too. That’s what happens when you keep seven guys in a space the size of a truck.
They shared a mutual respect based on experience, and each of the men had proved themselves on successful jobs. They were Van Lee’s best men and they each knew the number one lesson for any clandestine operation was that you had to watch each other’s backs or else you all failed… you all wound up dead.
Through his network, Van Lee had obtained plans, operational details and codes for every aspect of the NATO mission to maintain the Exclusion Zone around REZ375. He also had encryption matrices and hundreds of hacked comms between the vessels and Operations HQ in Virginia.
After five stretches of four-hour intensive research programmes and protocol simulations, with an hour break between each one, the team knew every nut and bolt of the target, every name linked with the target, every procedure and routine undertaken inside the target. They were ready to move.
They drove away separately from the tiny one-bedder five minutes apart and took slightly different routes south-east, seventy-five miles to the prearranged meeting point close to the west-bound intersection of the 64 and Highway 17 near Hampton. Along a quiet track they found uniforms, kit bags, weapons, comms and official photo-IDs. They then boarded a registered naval bus, reference number 2989 Omega.
Van Lee took the wheel of the bus and pulled on to the freeway that took them to Interstate 64, the Hampton Roads Beltway across to Willoughby Bay. Reaching the north shore, they followed the curved five-mile stretch to Norfolk Naval Base.
The bus stopped at the main gate. The uniformed guard left his cabin and walked over. The hydraulics of the bus door hissed as it concertinaed. The guard stepped up.
‘Small team over from Annapolis,’ Van Lee said confidently. ‘Seconded for Operation Northerner.’ He showed his ID.
‘Where’re you headed?’ the guard asked, flicking a glance through the window.