Total Blackout Read online

  *

  The Mini Cooper S tore along the coast road, its speed and handling not consistent with its age. Tate knew that part of the sensation of speed was an illusion because they were almost sitting on the road, but he enjoyed it nevertheless.

  ‘Your son—’

  Donoghue interrupted him: ‘—is a product of my wife’s first marriage.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He’s a waste of space, just like his father was.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Sure, he was the high school jock. I was always second best, and that’s part of the reason why I enlisted – to be the best.’

  From Donoghue’s bearing, it had been immediately obvious to Tate that he was ex-military. ‘What were you?’

  ‘MP. Except when I mustered out I walked right into the job here. Camden was so quiet it was almost like an active retirement.’

  ‘And then this happened.’

  ‘Yep.’

  Tate saw a figure ahead and slowed. It was a man in uniform waving at them.

  ‘That’s Brian Kent!’ Donoghue said with relief. ‘He should have been back at the station by now.’

  As they drew nearer, Tate recognised the officer who had stopped him for speeding. Tate brought the Mini to a halt next to him. Kent put his hand on the roof of the small car and bent down to the window. ‘Chief, Mr Tate, what are you doing in Sara’s car?’

  Donoghue ignored his officer’s question. ‘Brian, have you seen any other vehicles this morning?’

  ‘Just one, a black Tahoe.’

  Donoghue and Tate exchanged glances. Tate spoke. ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. I dunno, my watch is busted, but he was in a hell of a hurry. Damn near ran me over! He was heading north. Chief, can you tell me what’s going on? My Vic just stopped, the cut-out is dead, and my radio is down.’

  ‘Brian, we’ve been attacked by some sort of bomb that stops electronics from working. It’s called an EMP.’

  ‘An EMP? Yeah, that’s a good one, Chief; I’ve watched The Matrix too.’

  ‘No, Kent, it’s true,’ Tate stated.

  ‘What?’ Kent was confused.

  ‘Brian, stay with your car – that’s an order.’

  Without waiting for Kent to reply, Tate floored the accelerator pedal. The Mini squealed north, leaving a bemused police officer and two lines of rubber in its wake.

  College Park Airport, Washington, DC

  Maksim Oleniuk blew a smoke ring and watched it lazily drift apart before he spoke. ‘You have done well, Tatiana.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Terri replied.

  Oleniuk smiled. ‘I have to hand it to you: your American English is flawless. It is only your cheekbones that betray your Russian roots.’

  ‘Thank you again.’

  ‘To be able to open one’s mouth and converse in a foreign language, as though it were one’s own, without a trace of an accent, is a rare gift. Would you believe that after four years at my English boarding school and a further three at Oxford, I was still called “the Russian”? I could never escape my lineage. You have. Bravo. But practice can make perfect, which is why, whenever I can I like to speak in the language of Shakespeare.’ Oleniuk shifted his bulk behind the utilitarian metal desk and his left hand subconsciously fingered his neck. ‘And Hunter does not suspect a thing. This is correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Oleniuk could see the woman was uneasy. Simon Hunter was unconscious, on a military cot in a partitioned area of the hangar. Her part of the mission was over, or so she had believed.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked.

  Oleniuk remained silent as he inhaled deeply on his cigarette. ‘They call this a civilised country, yet I am not allowed to enjoy a smoke after a delicious meal? That is the height of incivility, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I have never smoked.’

  ‘Not even after sex?’ He raised an eyebrow, suggestively. Terri didn’t reply. Oleniuk stabbed his cigarette out into an overflowing ashtray. ‘What happens now is that America crumbles.’

  ‘I meant what happens to me?’

  ‘I know.’ Oleniuk leaned back in his seat and let his eyes undress her. ‘You, of course, will be reassigned. There is no benefit to Blackline in having you in Washington at this time. It is the perfect opportunity for you to disappear. Terri Bowser will be consigned to history, one of the many who vanished when the United States went to pot.’

  ‘And what will happen to Simon?’

  ‘Hunter.’ Oleniuk noted she was referring to the prisoner by his first name. It had to be nipped in the bud. He had not and would not tell anyone the true reason why Terri had been assigned to Simon Hunter. ‘Hunter will be taken to a specialist facility where he will be interrogated. He is a valuable operational British asset who unfortunately vanished, with his American girlfriend, on the day of the attack. We have not captured a real British spy for a decade. I am sure he has many secrets to spill about the operations and inner workings of British Intelligence.’

  There was a sharp knock on the thin steel door. One of the large Russians who had taken Terri from Simon’s townhouse now stood behind her. ‘He is awake.’

  ‘Then we had better say good morning to him.’ Oleniuk pointed at Terri. ‘Bind her hands. Terri, I feel our best course of action is if you keep up your pretence a little longer.’

  With neither word nor warning, the commando took Terri by the shoulders and lifted her up from the chair. He took a new pair of plastic ties from his pocket and bound her wrists together. Oleniuk stood, took a step forward, and slapped her hard across the face. Terri cried out, the sound amplified within the steel shell of the hangar. Her eyes tightened with resentment. Oleniuk’s mouth turned up to form a narrow smile.

  He led them out of the small office and into the main hangar room. At the back of the hangar and on either side sat prefabricated cabins used as detention cells by Oleniuk. In between these and facing the rear doors stood a white Bell 407. Nearer the middle of the hangar and to one side was a rest area. It contained several military cots and was watched over by the other man who had snatched the pair. Oleniuk clenched his fists as he battled the inner fury he felt at finally being in the same room as the man he despised: Simon Hunter. Oleniuk had to hold himself back, like a great reef holding the power of the ocean at bay. Those before him must see only calm, still waters and not the tumultuous, raging white horses.

  He violently and suddenly shoved Terri forward so that she fell on top of Hunter. ‘Good morning, Simon. Did you sleep well?’

  *

  Head thick with sedatives, Hunter’s stomach lurched at the sight of Terri. They had taken her too! He held her, his face becoming a mask of anger as he took in the red welt on her cheek. Looking up, his expression changed as he battled to keep the signs of recognition from his face. Even though they had never met, he knew Oleniuk and knew he’d officially died five years ago in Mariupol. ‘If you’ve done anything to her, there will be hell to pay!’

  ‘I have done nothing yet, and that is how it will stay as long as you cooperate.’

  ‘Under whose authority are you holding me here? I am a member of Her Majesty’s diplomatic mission to the United States of America. I demand that you release us this instant!’

  ‘It is very un-British to make demands, old boy. Don’t you think?’

  Hunter caressed Terri’s face; the fear in her eyes made his stomach knot. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘What do you think I know?’

  ‘We shall start with something easy. What is the location of your ambassador?’ Hunter shook his head slowly and a wry smile split the man’s lips. ‘Well?’

  ‘You’ve asked me the one question I cannot answer.’

  ‘Oh? Cannot or will not, Simon?’

  ‘Cannot, Mister …’

  ‘You may call me Max.’

  That confirmed it. The Russian was Oleniuk, but how and why
was he here? ‘I cannot answer that question, Max. I do not know where the British Ambassador is. No one does. We filed a missing person report with the Metro Police early this morning.’

  Oleniuk’s eyes narrowed. ‘You did?’

  ‘We have not been able to contact him since Saturday morning, and of course now the power is out.’

  *

  ‘Suka!’ Oleniuk’s frustration had him subconsciously switch back to Russian. He addressed the guard in the same language as he stalked away across the hangar: ‘Put them in the cell!’

  His hit list was almost complete; Akulov had taken out targets across Maine and now Washington, but two more remained, and Anthony Tudor, the British Ambassador to the United States of America, was one of them.

  Oleniuk had lobbied for Tudor’s assassination during his tenure as the British Ambassador to Moscow, but at the time he had been overruled by his own chief within the GRU. Now he had the power to correct, as he saw it, a past error. It wasn’t the fact that Tudor was missing that had made his anger flare; it was the fact that it was Hunter who had told him. Hunter the man he hated more than any other man alive.

  He needed to control his rage; that would come later and with it as much psychological and physical pain as Hunter could bear. Oleniuk stepped out into the heat of the parking bay. The airport was still. He closed his eyes and listened intensely – absolute silence. It was calming. He inhaled deeply and his rage dissipated.

  He walked around the corner of the hangar and faced the airfield. There were again no signs of life. None of the small private planes and helicopters had moved. None of them could, except for his own Bell, which sat safely out of sight, and a pair of Gulfstream G650ERs in the much larger hangar next door. All three airframes had been protected by the EMP shielding affixed to the walls and ceilings of the hangars, work that had been conducted in secrecy by workers flown in from China. When the time came to leave the airport, an unexplained but severe fire would level both hangars, incinerating all evidence of the Russians and all trace of the EMP shielding. Then he and his prisoners would be away.

  Oleniuk needed some “Yankee air”, as he called it, and pulled a packet of American Marlboros from one pocket and a Zippo lighter from another. Lighting a cigarette, he pulled deeply. It was a beautiful day, and could only get better. He stared up at the white clouds drifting carelessly in the summer sky, the same sky that also stared down upon Russia yet seemed so much clearer, so much cleaner here in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave. His sat phone rang. ‘Da?’

  ‘I have him. It will be done,’ Akulov stated.

  ‘You are positive?’

  ‘One hundred per cent.’

  ‘Very well. Go ahead, then return to base.’ Oleniuk closed down and re-pocketed the sat phone. It was excellent news; soon they could evacuate. He flicked away the butt of his cigarette and tapped a new one out of his packet.

  ‘Hey! Hey you!’ A grey-haired man in blue overalls had appeared from the other side of the hangar. It was the caretaker, a man he had seen once before. The man held his arm up. ‘Can’t you read?’ Oleniuk raised his eyebrows in incomprehension as the man spoke again. ‘No smoking, son! Jeez, you want to set the place alight, is that it? Blow us all to smithereens?’

  Oleniuk was tempted to say “yes” but instead regarded the large red sign above his head. ‘I am sorry; I did not know.’

  ‘Hm, well now you do. Enough vapours around here to set it all off, and then where would we all be?’

  ‘Shuffling off our mortal coils?’ Oleniuk paraphrased Shakespeare. The old man just scowled and placed his hands on his hips.

  Chapter 15

  British Embassy, Washington, DC

  The taxi had started to attract too much attention. More and more of those out on the streets tried to stop it and now patrolmen flagged it down only to be waved off by Chang before it eventually arrived at the British Embassy. Chang attempted to drive through the security barrier but was told in no uncertain terms by the private security guard that he would have to leave it on the street, regardless of who he was. Chang squinted at the empty parking lot with bemusement before he reversed and parked in a space across the road. Chang led Tam around the barrier, through the empty lot, and into the embassy’s main entrance, the taxi driver grimacing with each step on his bad ankle. The woman manning this reception desk attempted a smile. Chang returned it, recognising her from a few hours before. ‘Any news on the ambassador?’

  Karen King sighed. ‘No, Detective. Would you like to speak with Attaché Filler?’

  ‘Please.’

  She stepped away from her station. ‘If you’ll wait there, I’ll go and see if he is free.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Chang watched her walk away.

  *

  Eric Filler was at his paper-strewn desk. ‘Yes, Karen?’

  ‘Detective Chang is here again and he’s brought someone with him.’

  ‘Right, that’s probably the second detective.’

  ‘I don’t think so. The second man is wearing a neck brace and handcuffs.’

  ‘Ah, show them in, please.’

  ‘Attaché Filler.’ Chang dipped his head at the diplomat as he entered the office.

  ‘Detective, do come in. And you are?’

  ‘I’m an innocent man who is being held against my will by this police officer!’ Tam protested, his voice indignant.

  ‘Explain?’ Filler eyed his guests guardedly.

  ‘Attaché Filler—’

  ‘Eric will do.’

  Chang pushed Tam down into a chair. ‘Eric, I believe this man – Li Tam – knows something about the disappearance of Ambassador Tudor, as well as what is responsible for the blackout.’

  ‘The disappearance and the power cut?’ Filler sat, putting the desk between himself and Tam. ‘Go on.’

  Chang gave a brief overview of what had happened so far and the evidence for his theory. He placed the sat phone on Filler’s desk. ‘Here.’

  ‘This is all very cloak and dagger,’ Filler announced with forced confidence as he examined the phone with both hands. ‘It says no signal.’

  ‘Must be a blind spot.’

  Filler regarded Tam. ‘You are a Russian agent?’

  Tam, who had remained silent and impassive throughout Chang’s monologue, now raised his eyes from his feet. ‘I know my rights; I demand a lawyer.’

  ‘Technically this is not US soil.’

  Tam’s left eye twitched and a half-smile parted his lips.

  Filler addressed Chang as he attempted to comprehend the situation. ‘We’ve got one dead diplomat, a second missing, and what looks like the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the United States, utilising, you say, an electromagnetic pulse bomb?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  Filler took a swig from a glass of water – he hadn’t offered either guest one – then cleared his throat. ‘Mr Tam, are you responsible for the murder of Major General Dudley Smith?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’ Filler had noted a flicker of recognition in Tam’s eyes on hearing Smith’s name.

  ‘Me neither,’ Chang stated.

  ‘I do not care.’

  ‘Tam, you’d better tell us now, before things get uncomfortable.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘But you knew who he was?’

  Tam shrugged. ‘No.’

  Filler leaned forward. Emboldened by outrage, his Yorkshire accent became thicker. ‘As this is not US soil, I can have you transferred immediately to the UK.’

  ‘Tam, we are going to find out eventually,’ Chang said.

  Filler scowled at Tam. Tam stared resolutely ahead, past the diplomat and out of the window. There was a knock at the door. A moment later it opened and Karen appeared. She was smiling. ‘Attaché Filler, the ambassador has returned and is in his office.’

  Filler let out a sigh, relieved. ‘Well, thank the gods for that. Have you made him aware of the situation?’
>
  ‘No, he wants to see you immediately.’

  ‘I think it best if I stay here with Mr Tam, if that’s OK with you?’ Chang said.

  ‘No, I have a better idea. Karen, can you escort Detective Chang and Mr Tam to the conference room?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And can you make them some coffee?’

  ‘We have no power.’

  ‘Right.’ Filler stood, Chang copied and pulled Tam to his feet. They left the room. Filler trooped to the end of the corridor, where the ambassadorial corner office was situated.

  *

  Anthony Tudor, the British Ambassador to the United States of America, needed a cup of tea, but without any power he was restricted to water or canned pop, and he disliked Coca-Cola with a passion. The office was stuffy; he had to let more air in. Still wearing his spandex cycling outfit and red-faced, he tried to push his window a notch wider but the safety catch tugged at the frame. He sighed. It was a beautiful August day in the US capital city, and he was in an overheated box. Below, he saw a handful of cars moving on the main road, including a dark SUV. This was in blunt contrast to the usual nose-to-tail traffic he would expect.

  ‘Anthony?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  ‘You’re OK?’ Filler asked.

  ‘Just hot – this office is so stuffy. Look at this, it won’t open more than three inches! It’s “Health and Safety” gone mad! Does anyone actually believe that I could fall or would jump out? Rather than enjoying a “dangerous” natural breeze, I’m supposed to breathe in ice-cold, artificial air from a pump?’

  ‘We’ve filed a missing person’s report.’

  ‘What? For whom?’

  ‘You. I tried calling you and then even went to your house. Where have you been?’

  ‘Away. I told you.’