ANTON VERSHININ, IN HIS OFFICE at the lab, hangs up with Mary Bellamy and takes a moment to savor the exquisite feeling of power that’s coursing through his veins. They’re going to do it. With a bomb that’s five times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, that will turn Seattle into a crater and vaporize its spoiled latte-slurping millennials. A bomb he built. Putin will curse the day he disrespected Anton Vershinin.
But as thrilling as the sensation is, he has no time to savor it. He gets up, walks out into the corridor, and heads to the stairs that will take him down into the bowels of the building, to the control room, where the buttons are. The little red buttons that will unleash a new chapter in human history.