57

The first helicopter landed just after midnight. The seats behind the pilot were occupied by newly woken men and women, jeans and suits side by side, stares fixed on design drawings and circuit diagrams and compendia. Ahead of them lay Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station, nestled like a cuckoo chick on the sleepy coastline. Great cubes of steel and concrete stood surrounding a huge white reactor dome, drilled into the dunes like a giant golf ball by an equally large water hazard just between the sea and the moors.

Nothing showed from the outside. The off-white walls gave no more away than did the black waves lapping on the rocky shore, or the seabirds scared by the helicopters and flocking off along the coast. On the inside, though, the atomic particles were spinning in a dance that kept going faster.

As the helicopters landed, their passengers knew it was only a matter of time before a meltdown occurred. They ducked under chopping rotors, rushed into control rooms and data halls, past the staff in white overalls and name badges, one of which identified Liv McKenna.

She stood there watching as the technicians spread throughout the building, communicating via headsets and walkie-talkies, fighting to restart the systems and regain control of the processes. All she could do was daydream herself away to musical notes, to tender cello fingers and silly student revues, and to friends who she only now realised how much she missed. To a time when it had all been so simple, when everyone stood on the threshold of life, with the future ahead of them.

Now she wondered whether there would even be a future.

Mark Winslow had never seen Defence Secretary Anthony Higgs in anything other than suit and tie. Standing by the window of his large office, the man now was wearing a pair of shapeless jeans. His shirt was crumpled, as though he’d slept in it. His hair was all over the place, like a panic-stricken crowd being evacuated from a marketplace. He looked, quite simply, like a human, and Winslow wasn’t used to that.

‘I asked a question,’ Higgs said without looking up. ‘I have a room full of journalists waiting down there. They want information. Shall I go and tell them that I don’t have the foggiest what’s going on?’

‘No one knows a thing,’ Winslow said. ‘I just spoke to Sedgwick—’

‘And why doesn’t Sedgwick know? Isn’t that the whole point of all this business? Isn’t that what I just approved?’

‘I only know what he told me,’ Winslow replied. ‘The only thing they’ve been able to establish is that the attacks look identical to previous ones. All over the world, completely simultaneous. And then a few seconds later’–he nodded at the TV: the black night, the illuminated globe that was Sizewell B’s reactor, just an hour’s drive away–‘well, you know what happened.’

Higgs gave Winslow a long stare.

‘You do realise what this is, don’t you?’

‘Is?’

‘We didn’t back down. They warned us, time and time again they warned us, and we wouldn’t budge. And now–now here we are.’ He elaborated through clenched teeth. ‘This is blackmail. That’s what this is about. And the biggest irony of all is that we can’t trace who is doing it.’

‘Technically it’s hardly blackmail if we haven’t received any demands.’

‘We already know what they want. Why would they issue demands?’

He turned around with his back to the windowsill and threw his hands up.

‘The very second we activate Floodgate. At that exact same second, this happens. Could it be any clearer?’ He answered his own question with a shake of the head. ‘They want to force us to retreat. Whoever they are. And they’re not going to give up until we do.’

They stood in silence for a couple of seconds. Watched the TV, saw the helicopters hover around the power stations.

‘Higgs?’ said Winslow. ‘What if we actually did?’

‘Did what?’

‘What if we actually backed down?’

Higgs blinked slowly.

‘And your proposal is–what, exactly? That we dismantle the most important intelligence tool that we have ever developed?’ He tipped his head towards the window, his voice now soft and tired and with no fight left in it. ‘Is that what you want me to say on television? That I’m acceding to the terrorists’ demands?’

‘You won’t be acceding to anything,’ Winslow said calmly. ‘Because what you are dismantling has never even existed. There is no documentation that acknowledges Floodgate’s existence. Since day one, it’s been a top-secret project. Throughout the planning phase, development, even the construction process. The fact that it was then mothballed so as not to offend public opinion, and that we then continued with it anyway, is something that you know, I know, and Sedgwick knows. And who else?’

‘What are you trying to say, Winslow?’

‘I’m saying you can cancel it whenever you like. Right now. No one is going to accuse you of giving in–because no one is going to find out that there was ever anything to dismantle.’

Higgs’s voice became brittle.

‘You’ve forgotten why we are doing this.’

He ran one hand through his hair, unaware that this just made it look even more unruly, and raised his other hand towards the window, all the dots of light outside.

‘Do you see that out there? Do you know what that is? That is society. Millions of people who go to work every day, pick the kids up from school, go to the theatre, get the tube. People who want to keep on doing all that, without having to defend themselves. Without ever having to think about how fantastic it actually is that all of those things are possible.’ Winslow nodded. It was a speech he’d heard before, and of course there were no comebacks. ‘All it takes is for one little group to want to destroy all that. A single little group, and then we’re left with a society that cannot be healed. Floodgate exists to find those people. Not to read Granny’s emails, not to see what sites you look at in your spare time. It exists to make the world a safer place.’

‘And how do you think that’s working out?’ Winslow looked demonstratively towards the television.

Higgs answered with a sigh. ‘Your advice then, is to give in to the terrorists?’

‘No. But my opinion is that if we have the chance to get them to release the nuclear power stations, then we should take it.’

‘Okay,’ said Higgs. ‘Thank you for that.’ He moved away from the windowsill, stopped with his hand on the door handle.

‘That is not the course of action we will be taking. But thank you.’