The wind was driving patchy snow in at high speed over the mountains now, making it hard for Lily and Kester to walk. Their outdoor gear was of the highest quality, but they could still feel the wetness of the snow and the cold on their necks and hands. The cold was seeping in through every gap in their clothing.
It was freezing. Visibility was poor. Sometimes they could see for kilometres, sometimes metres, the mountains appearing and disappearing in waves of snow.
The storm was good news for them in other ways. The mountain top was so wild now that the Americans had holed up in the hut, forced to give up the hunt for the two children.
Approaching the hut, Kester signalled that they should go round the back, so they wouldn’t be seen as they came closer. There was little chance of this, as the small wooden door was closed and the snow was very thick. It was a tiny hut, smaller than a garage that you could drive one car into. From the back it looked more like a pile of stones, huge snowdrifts smoothing its sides.
Kester moved close to Lily and whispered in her ear, the wind obscuring his words from anyone but her.
‘Can we listen in on what they’re saying? Is there any way?’
Lily looked at the structure of the hut. It was not built like a modern building. It was more like a drystone wall. No mortar, just stones carefully placed to keep out the snow and the cold. She tried to clear her head, to ignore the weather conditions that were making it so hard for her to think. It didn’t take long to work out a solution.
Lily grabbed Kester’s head and spoke into his ear. ‘I could use a bug and feed it through some of the stones,’ she said. ‘If it got far enough into the wall, we might be able to pick up what they’re saying.’
Kester smiled. ‘Do it. Do whatever it takes, without giving ourselves away,’ he said. ‘What do you need?’
‘A piece of wire and this listening device,’ Lily said. ‘That’s all.’
After a pause, Kester grinned again. ‘I’ve got just the thing.’
It took him ten minutes. He had to take his rucksack apart, strip the canvas from it and unpick the stitching, all without gloves, his hands frozen and wet because of the driving snow. But there, after all his efforts, from the structure of the rucksack, was a thirty-centimetre piece of wire.
‘Perfect,’ Lily said, emerging from her hood, the wind and snow stinging her face.
Once she’d attached the pin-sized listening device to Kester’s wire, Lily began to feed it into the wall of the mountain hut. Kester put in an earpiece and listened to the sound of the bug as it hit stones and rubble inside the wall. He also kept an eye on the front of the hut. If this went wrong, then the Americans could be out and on to them in seconds.
‘The walls must be a half a metre thick,’ Lily spoke into Kester’s ear as the howling of the wind seemed to be picking up. ‘Can you hear anything yet?’
Kester shook his head. He’d noticed that Lily’s teeth were chattering. She was very cold. They’d been stationary for more than fifteen minutes now. Kester adjusted his earpiece to get the best sound he could. And there, at last, he heard voices. He signalled to Lily to stop. Her bug was within range. The plan had worked.
‘We need to move on. Find those kids.’ It was the second American’s voice.
‘It’s too wild out there,’ Hawk replied. ‘We have to sit this out. So do they. They won’t be going anywhere. Anyway, my worry is the device.’
Kester held his breath. The device? Was Hawk about to talk about the warhead?
‘When does it come in?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Hawk answered.
‘Is it primed?’
‘It is.’
‘And will you let it … you know …’
‘What do you think?’
‘No. I think you’re using it to set up the Russian. Make everyone think he’s trying to destabilize things.’
‘That’s true in part,’ Hawk said. ‘I want Russia blamed. And it wouldn’t just be a war between us and the Russians. It’d be the world against the Russians. And, once they were on their knees, who would get access to all their oil?’
‘We would, sir.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So when?’
‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow afternoon.’
Hawk paused. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ he said, laughing.
‘Just how powerful is this thing?’ the second American asked.
‘It’ll kill everyone in Tromsø immediately. Then most people within twenty kilometres will suffer radiation poisoning and die in a year or two.’
‘What about the heads of state? The British Prime Minister, for instance.’
‘Dead too. And it’ll be no loss. He’s weak. He even said he doesn’t like war.’
‘That’s a lot of dead,’ the second American said. ‘Men, women and children.’
‘Correct.’ Hawk chuckled. ‘Whales too. Seals. All sorts of creatures. This place will be a radioactive desert for decades. And all caused by me tip-tapping a code into this.’
‘What code?’
‘My secret code.’
‘Which is?’
‘Which is something in my head, not written down.’
There was a pause, during which Lily and Kester eyed each other in alarm at what they were hearing. Then Frank Hawk spoke again. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you’re safe. After the soccer game tomorrow, we’ll get away. I’ve got all the equipment we need to survive.’
As the two Americans spoke, Kester and Lily looked at each other in full understanding. They knew Hawk’s plan. They knew it would be the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed and that it would have knock-on effects for generations. They also knew that they had to put their lives on the line to make sure it didn’t happen.