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  Webster was confused. ‘Why have you not informed ISAF before? Are you a member of the Taliban, Mr Mikhail, or perhaps Al-Qaeda?’

  ‘I am a Muslim. These people of Afghanistan are now my people. I had no reason to believe that the device would be discovered.’

  Webster pursed his lips. The idea that the bomb existed was wild enough, but the idea that, if it did, Mikhail could have at any time prevented its being taken or alerted ISAF but didn’t was beyond him. But he couldn’t waste any time on this now. What he had to do was report back to London just in case there was a shred of truth in what the Russian was telling him. ‘Tell me everything about this weapon.’

  ‘This of course I am happy to tell you, but in return I want safe passage out of Afghanistan.’

  ‘Back to Russia?’

  ‘No. I want to go to the UK.’

  So that was his angle, the real reason why the Russian was sitting opposite him. He wanted to escape Afghanistan? ‘I don’t know if that’s possible.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Mikhail said slowly. ‘There is a bomb heading for Europe and I know who has it. What information do you need from me to confirm that I am telling you the truth?’

  Webster rattled off a stream of questions. ‘I need your full name, the location of where you say the device was stored, the names of the men who took it, the names of the men who now have it, the name of your unit and where it was based, the name of your commanding officer, the name that was given to your operation, your…’

  ‘OK.’ Mikhail held up his hand and Webster stopped mid-sentence. ‘Pick up your pen.’ The Russian reeled off his answers and Webster noted them down. ‘So now what happens?’ Mikhail asked when Webster had finished.

  ‘I need to check the information you have provided me with.’

  ‘How long will this take?’

  Webster had no idea. ‘A few hours.’

  ‘I shall stay here.’

  Webster opened his mouth to disagree, then simply said, ‘Very well.’

  Webster left the room, giving the guards instructions not to let the Russian leave, and hurried back to his office. It seemed an improbable story and yet… and yet he now heard a voice inside his head telling him it was real.

  *

  Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (COBRA), Whitehall, London, UK

  Abigail Knight, Director General of the Secret Intelligence Service, stirred her strong coffee as she mentally prepared for the emergency early-morning meeting. Her boss, the Foreign Secretary, Robert Holmcroft, sat next to her. Malcolm Wibly, the Home Secretary, was seated opposite with Ewan Burstow, Head of MI5, the Intelligence Service, by his side. The four did not attempt to make conversation. If the others knew the reason for the meeting they were remaining tight-lipped. In the early hours of the morning Knight had received an urgent message from GCHQ. The US’s Echelon monitoring programme also fed GCHQ, and the same keywords – Al-Qaeda… nuclear device… detonate… Western city… Hand of Allah – that had the NSA worried had also alarmed the British.

  Knight had immediately called Holmcroft and a matter of three hours later they were awaiting the arrival of the PM. It was almost 5 a.m. and the capital’s streets were still dark and foreboding. Holmcroft turned his wrist to study his Rolex and tutted. Holmcroft was smug, happy to have been in the loop while his counterparts were not. He was, however, both impatient and pompous. He had been the candidate in the Conservative leadership contest against the PM; he was the man who should, in his own mind, now be king but was not. The door opened abruptly and Daniels entered. Even at this early hour he was in his customary shirt sleeves. As Knight looked on with red-rimmed eyes she had to admit that Daniels had an energy she’d rarely seen in a politician, but she put this down to his relative youth and exercise regime. He had become the most popular PM in decades. The opposition had been responsible for this when their attempt to lower the government’s popularity by calling them ‘the party of fat cats’ had backfired. Daniels had caused outrage in the House of Commons by simply lifting his shirt and displaying his flat stomach to the chubby opposition leader. At the time Knight had found it amusing and the PM had been placed second in a UK women’s magazine’s ‘fit list’, beaten only by Daniel Craig. Today, however, there was no amusement to be had. The tone was one of urgent solemnity. A second man, wearing full RAF dress uniform, was at the PM’s heels.

  ‘Thank you for your prompt attendance.’ Wibly half-smiled, while Holmcroft crossed his arms. Daniels continued. ‘You all know Air Marshal Christopher Naylor, the Chief of Defence Intelligence?’ There were nods and muted acknowledgements. ‘This meeting will be classified as “No Eyes”. Is that understood?’

  Knight hid her surprise. ‘No Eyes’ was the highest security level in the UK and rarely invoked. So rare, in fact, that the general public were unaware of its existence. No notes would be taken, no record kept, and no documents distributed for the purpose of the meeting would leave the room. This was only the second such meeting Knight had attended.

  The PM nervously pushed back a lock of his dark, dyed hair as he sat. ‘We have had, over the last twenty-four hours, two pieces of intelligence which point to the existence of a rogue nuclear device.’

  The shock was apparent on the faces of both Wibly and Burstow. It was the scenario security services the world over feared. It was the elephant in the room, a question of when, rather than if, it would happen.

  ‘Two pieces of intelligence?’ Holmcroft’s tone expressed annoyance.

  ‘That is correct. Ms Knight, please start by presenting your intelligence.’

  ‘Very well, Prime Minister.’ Knight looked at each of the men in turn before taking a deep breath and explaining the intercept from Echelon.

  As soon as she had finished Daniels spoke. ‘Home Secretary, Mr Burstow, I am sorry that you were not made aware of this sooner, but I decided it pertinent that we disseminate the information here. Since Ms Knight made me aware of this intercept I’ve received a further piece of intel that explains why I have asked the Air Marshal to attend. Air Marshal, over to you.’

  Holmcroft folded his arms, his expression changing to one of indignation. He should have been informed.

  Naylor cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, Prime Minister. Yesterday an officer stationed at Camp Bastion received a piece of intel purporting that Al-Qaeda was in possession of a portable atomic weapon. A device often referred to as a “suitcase nuke”.’

  ‘Do such things actually exist?’ Wibly asked.

  ‘During the Cold War the US and the USSR were actively developing such devices. The smallest confirmed weapon was American and the size of a large rucksack. This device is believed to be Soviet.’

  ‘Soviet? So you’re saying Al-Qaeda has an old Russian bomb?’ Holmcroft questioned.

  ‘That is correct, Foreign Secretary; furthermore, we have been informed that this weapon was part of a Soviet programme and, as such, taken into Afghanistan in the late Eighties.’

  ‘Programme? The Russians had more of them? What do the Americans think?’ Holmcroft addressed the PM, who had become uncharacte‌ristically quiet.

  ‘Nothing yet. They don’t know.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Robert, I haven’t told the President about our piece of intel, and won’t until we have positive verification that a real threat exists. We don’t know if these two pieces of intel are related.’

  Holmcroft all but threw up his arms. ‘Prime Minister, with respect, if we’re taking this matter seriously, we cannot for one moment longer pretend they are separate pieces of random intel that have just happened our way at the same time. We cannot and must not keep our allies in the dark.’

  Daniels sighed. This wasn’t the time for egos, but again the man was attempting to undermine his authority. ‘Foreign Secretary, I thank you for your opinion. The purpose of this meeting is to decide how to move forward. This will undoubtedly involve our American allies. Air Marshal, do we have any idea where this suitcase nuke may be and, furthermo
re, who has it?’

  ‘We believe the case to be in the possession of a man named as Mohammed Tariq. He is believed to be a member of the Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan.’

  Holmcroft did little to hide his anger. ‘Believe? Believed, Air Marshal? We believe that he has a nuclear weapon?’

  Wibly cut in before Holmcroft could continue. ‘I’m confused. Are you saying the Taliban has the weapon, or Al-Qaeda?’

  ‘The Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan has aligned itself to Al-Qaeda, Home Secretary.’

  ‘Forgive me for not being up to speed, but can you tell me a bit more about this group?’ The PM furrowed his brow.

  Holmcroft grinned, without sincerity. ‘Prime Minister, they are the group that claimed responsibility for the 2009 attack on the CIA’s Camp Chapman and the 2010 attempted bombing in Times Square.’

  Daniels was embarrassed; he should have remembered. He cleared his throat. ‘Thank you, I see. So we’re saying that, for all intents and purposes, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are the same? What do we know about this Mohammed Tariq?’

  Naylor shook his head. ‘Very little. JSOC has been targeting the known TTP commanders with drone attacks. It’s possible Tariq is a foot soldier who was promoted in the field, or someone who’s been keeping a low profile. Whatever the reason, his name doesn’t appear on any watch list.’

  ‘Do we have any idea where he is?’

  ‘No, but our informer last saw him two days ago.’

  ‘Who is our informer?’

  ‘He claims to be the man who brought the device into Afghanistan in 1989.’

  ‘Russian?’ Holmcroft’s eyes went wide. ‘The intel from Echelon originates from Russia and our informer is Russian? Now to me this seems more than coincidental.’

  Naylor was about to speak but the PM held up his hand. He pushed his chair away from the table and stood. It was his sign that he wanted a moment’s pause. Burstow had been quiet throughout; Knight saw her own concern reflected in his face. He smiled thinly before looking down and knotting his fingers.

  The PM held on to the back of his chair. ‘Air Marshal, when can we expect to have our intelligence verified?’

  ‘End of today. A team is already working on it.’

  ‘Inform me immediately when you have any news, anything at all. Then, if needed, we shall locate and acquire the device.’

  ‘With the support of JSOC,’ Holmcroft insisted.

  ‘I am well aware, Robert, of the role that the Americans’ Joint Special Operations Command must play in this.’

  ‘Again with respect, Prime Minister, we categorically cannot let this continue any further without involving the Americans.’

  ‘I agree.’ Daniels nodded. ‘Ms Knight, Mr Burstow, I don’t need to tell either of you how to run your organisations. All I ask is that we do not communicate this intelligence to our allies at this time.’

  ‘Understood, Prime Minister.’ Knight nodded slowly, while Burstow stayed motionless.

  Chapter 4

  Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine

  Yuriy Kozalov bit into his black bread and gazed out into the frost-covered trees. His small house was directly opposite the edge of the forest that led to the Karachunivs’ke reservoir and his terrace offered a spectacular view. Depending upon the time of year he would see the odd eagle or hear the tapping of woodpeckers. The occasional wild boar had been reported by locals who, infused with vodka, imagined other exotic creatures too. Over twenty years after the USSR had finally stopped stripping Ukraine of its will to live, the country had started to regenerate, even here on the edge of a classified former weapons research facility. Kozalov was not a patriot; such things had been actively discouraged by both the Party and his former employer, which amounted to the same entity. What had been encouraged had been an unconditional love of and belief in the Soviet Union. He had not been a Ukrainian; he had been ‘Soviet’. Kozalov finished his bread and washed it down with sweet black tea. He had seen on television that in the West many added milk to their tea, but to him this was a nonsense; it would be as unthinkable as adding fizzy Coca-Cola to Vodka.

  Kozalov stood and stretched. His years of working as a physicist and weapons designer at the plant had left him drained and stiff. Others, although he hadn’t liked to stay in touch with his old colleagues, had died of cancer – a hushed-up hazard of the job. He, however, was just tired. Tired and bitter, since his employer had cast him aside and his wife had left him. Although he still kept his apartment in the centre of town, he now spent more and more of his time at the dacha. Both properties had been given to him by the Party due to his status within the directorate. The old German clock in his living room announced, in its reliable and curt manner, that it was time for him to leave. He collected his breakfast things, washed them quickly in cold water, and headed for his boxy Lada Niva. In winter it was a ten-minute drive to the Gastronom he frequented. The fact that there was now a branch of the Austrian supermarket chain Billa four minutes further on made no difference to him; it was used by the New Ukrainians – those with more money than sense and cars as large as Soviet tanks. Not the type of people he wanted to mix with. At the Gastronom, with his battered Lada and fur hat, he was just another grey man, or he had been until he met Eliso.

  He swung the 4x4 into the kerb, as near as he could get to the shop, and gingerly stepped out. Overnight, unseasonably early snow had fallen, melted, and then frozen as the temperature had dropped. Here the ice had been left to form large, glistening rivers to catch the unwary. So far it had been a very odd autumn. As he approached the pavement a trio of local Mafiosi looked on. Dressed in ill-fitting leather jackets over tracksuits and driving dated BMWs, they ‘owned’ the neighbourhood.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Kozalov muttered to himself. ‘To see an old man fall over?’

  ‘Nearly there, Comrade,’ the nearest gangster wisecracked.

  ‘Come on, Granddad, you can make it,’ the second called.

  Kozalov ignored them and reached for the door. Inside the grocery shop a couple of the ‘real’ elderly conversed with the fat woman on the meat counter, while another leather-clad bandit leant against the drinks counter and flirted with Eliso, the pretty, raven-haired Georgian girl. Eliso broke away from one admirer and addressed her next customer. ‘What would you like?’

  Kozalov was sixty-eight but looked older. Inside he wanted the same thing as ‘Casanova’. ‘I’ll take two bottles of Kozatska Rada and one Desna.’

  ‘You planning a party, old man? Maybe I should come,’ Casanova jeered.

  ‘You are not invited, but she is.’

  ‘I doubt you could handle her,’ the young man sniggered humourlessly.

  ‘As I doubt that you could handle the drink.’

  The girl blushed, placed the bottles on the counter, and told him the total. As Kozalov retrieved his money, Casanova’s eyes narrowed at the sight of the KGB identity card which still remained on display in the ancient leather wallet. Kozalov put the exact money on the counter and placed his bottles into a crumpled plastic bag. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

  Feeling taller, he headed carefully back to his Lada. As the engine coughed into life he noted that the fourth gangster had now joined his friends outside and that they were glowering at him. He smiled to himself, satisfied that they were none the wiser. These posturing, third-class peacocks were unaware that he, a man of nearly seventy, was sleeping with the object of their desire. In fact, he had been sleeping with her for the past three months, almost since her arrival at the Gastronom. She was an immigrant from the Panski Gorge area of Georgia. He felt his heart flutter and his mouth become dry at the thought of her. He had been in love twice, once before and once after his marriage. At some point he might even have loved his wife; it had truly broken him when she left, but now his new love, Eliso, was repairing the damage. It had begun with a kind word here, a look there, and then he had met her unexpectedly near his dacha. She had been walking in the woods, collecting wild mushrooms, she said, for her mother, a woman w
ho was gravely ill in bed. He had invited her into his home where she all but collapsed in tears and into his arms. She told him her life story. Her father had been killed when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Their village destroyed, she and her mother had left Georgia shortly afterwards and eventually found themselves in Ukraine, while her two sisters had been forced to stay. Her mother had now succumbed to a rare form of cancer, he knew not which, and she desperately needed to raise the funds for her to receive treatment. With this end she had taken the only legal job she could find and started working at the Gastronom in a vain attempt to start the process, but this in no way could pay for it.

  ‘Is it money you are after?’ he had asked her bluntly, thinking her willing to sell her body to him.

  ‘Yes, but that is not why I am here. I am so lonely,’ she had replied.

  On the verge of turning prostitute for the locals, Kozalov had taken her under his wing and pledged he would do all he could. He had no children and paid nothing to his ex-wife. As a start he had given Eliso most of his savings, the money he had kept hidden in his rafters, squirrelled away over the years without his wife’s knowledge. Eliso had then come to him one evening. He had not wanted to take her; he had not wanted to feel dirty, as though he had paid for her body… but she had reassured him that this was not the case. It was him she was interested in and not the ten thousand US dollars he had given her. In the morning, as he made them both breakfast, he realised he was in love with her. She was twenty-eight, forty years his junior, yet he was in love with her. He had found a new reason to live, a new reason to be. He would do all he could to help her, to help her mother.

  In the next few months they had met up when she could get away from either the shop or her mother. Kozalov had agreed and understood that their relationship must remain secret. They had spent many evenings together at the dacha and talked about their lives. She had asked him much about his time at the plant and he had opened up. He had spoken of the secret work undertaken, words that if made public during Soviet times would have seen him sent to the gulags or shot as a traitor to the state. He spoke, too, of the equipment and parts he had taken from the facility. He realised he enjoyed talking about his past to someone who knew nothing of it, someone who had been just a child when the mighty Soviet Union had imploded. And Eliso listened. She listened like no one had before; his wife had had neither the intellect nor the interest to understand his work. It was conversation, he then understood, that he had been deprived of for all these years – conversation, compassion, understanding, and love.