The Fail Safe Read online

  Xin had worried that she wouldn’t be able to do this. She had never thought of herself as brave. Smart, yes. Patient, most of the time. But not brave. She usually lacked the courage even to start a conversation with a stranger on the bus, when the worst that could happen was embarrassment. Here, the consequences of failure were disastrous.

  Maybe this wasn’t bravery. Maybe it was fear. She was more scared of nuclear war than she was of Noelein.

  Xin placed the plutonium ring on top of the others in the lead-lined toolbox. The silvery sheen was already starting to darken and tarnish, now that it had been exposed to oxygen. Then, with a shaking hand, she took the depleted uranium duplicate out of the toolbox and placed it inside the warhead. It was radioactive, but not enough to create a thermonuclear explosion. This warhead was now little more than a pipe bomb.

  She screwed the panel shut and replaced the false bottom in her toolbox, concealing the six plutonium cores from view. Then she tossed all the tools on top. The box would weigh thirty-five kilograms. It was going to be tough to get it out.

  The computer virus that had frozen the camera feeds would delete itself in less than a minute. But there was no way to hide the elevated radiation levels in the room. Warning lights were blinking on screens all around her. All she could do was fake an emergency.

  She pulled the alarm switch.

  A siren shrieked. The massive door locked with several loud clanks. A dozen sprinklers exploded into life in the ceiling, showering her hazmat suit and rinsing off any radioactive particles. An extractor fan sucked the air out of the room while another pumped clean air back in. Xin watched the measurements on the screen of her Geiger counter. 48 mSv of radiation. 43 mSv of radiation. 34 mSv of radiation.

  ‘Xin!’ The other technician’s voice crackled through the intercom. ‘What’s going on in there?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Xin said. The radio in her helmet transmitted her voice to the comms network automatically. ‘I bumped the alarm by accident. Nothing happened. No fire, no radiation. You can tell the security team to unlock the door.’

  ‘You know the protocol. They have to check the atmospheric readings first.’

  ‘I know. Just tell them to make it quick. I want to get back to work.’

  There was silence. Presumably the other technician was radioing upstairs.

  Xin dragged the box over to the door and heaved it up onto her equipment trolley. The faster she could get it out of here, the better. Cormanenko planned to sink it in the deepest part of the Chernov River. Water was an excellent insulator – no one would ever get close enough to detect the radiation, and the box was sturdy enough to stop particles from escaping and contaminating the river.

  The door clanked and whooshed open.

  ‘That was quick—’ Xin began.

  The security team stormed in and grabbed her. Five men, all with guns.

  ‘Hey!’ she cried. ‘What is this?’

  Noelein walked in. She didn’t look angry – just resigned. Almost sad. Her gaze went straight to the toolbox on the trolley. ‘No one open that,’ she said.

  Xin’s heart rate shot up. ‘Boss,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but—’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ Noelein said. ‘I’ve been watching you for weeks.’ She motioned to her colleagues. ‘Take her to Velechnya.’

  THROUGH AND THROUGH

  Fero had hoped that Wolf would have some useful equipment with her. An electromagnetic pulse device, perhaps, which would fry all the nearby cameras. Or a getaway helicopter. But no. She had the handgun, the rifle, a mobile phone and a couple of flashbangs – grenades which were theoretically non-lethal, designed to disorient the enemy with light and sound. That was it.

  This was the best plan he’d been able to come up with, and it was highly risky. If he screwed up, everyone across the border was dead. The only surviving Kamauan might be Wolf, who was lying on a rooftop four hundred metres away from him, her eye pressed to the scope of the SV-98.

  She had promised Fero that she was a good shot. It was a windless night, and the rifle had an effective range of a kilometre. But she would only get one chance. As soon as she pulled the trigger, she would have to disassemble the rifle and flee. Cameras were bound to pick up the muzzle flash, and the Bank would be on her in minutes.

  Fero could only hope she was as good as she said, otherwise she could easily hit him by mistake.

  Or deliberately. He didn’t want to think about that.

  He was on a park bench about fifty metres from the bunker. He had been sitting here for hours, watching the traffic on Memorial Avenue while eating the fruit and nuts he had purchased at Hulow’s shop. It was cold. He had nearly discarded the big coat from the charity bin when he bought his new jacket – now he was glad he hadn’t. One of Wolf’s flashbangs was in his pocket, along with Cormanenko’s mobile phone. He had no other weapons or protection.

  The prime minister was due in Parliament at 8 am. Wolf had told him that according to the Library’s intelligence, he usually arrived at about six-thirty and breakfasted with some of his colleagues. It was currently 6.14 am.

  Fero’s greatest fear wasn’t that he would mess up, but that someone at Parliament House had already discovered that the codes were duds. Maybe they had put an extra layer of security around the prime minister’s set.

  With so many things that could go wrong, he wondered what the odds were that he would live to see another sunset. One in five? One in twenty? Lower?

  There was no more time to think about it. The prime minister was here.

  Fero watched the four limousines turn the corner and trundle up the road towards Parliament House. It was impossible to tell which one the prime minister – and therefore the suitcase, which was supposed to be within his reach – was riding in. Fero’s heart pumped faster and faster, getting his frozen limbs ready to explode into motion. He hoped Wolf was paying attention and had seen the cars.

  The limousines slowed down as they approached the bunker, where the bodyguard with the briefcase would remain while the prime minister was in Parliament. Fero stood up and stretched his legs. His feet tingled in his new running shoes. He reached into his pocket and wrapped one hand around the flashbang.

  The four limousines stopped. Three bodyguards got out of the second one along. The middle bodyguard was shortish, with curly hair and small ears. He wore a black suit and tie, with shiny shoes and a silver wristwatch. A security cable was fastened around his other arm, trailing down to a black briefcase with a brown handle and silver edges. This was the guy. Fero felt bad for what was about to happen to him.

  When the man with the briefcase took his first step towards the entrance to the bunker, Fero was already walking towards him. In his pocket, he pulled the pin on the flashbang and started counting the seconds. Six.

  The briefcase man was almost halfway between the road and the bunker. Five. The limousines were already pulling away from the kerb and resuming their journey to Parliament. Four. Fero was only a few metres away from the three bodyguards. Three. He tossed the flashbang over their heads and blocked his ears with his fingers. Two. It bounced once on the path on the other side of them. One. They turned to look—

  Bang! Fero’s eyes were shut, but the light was dazzling even through his closed lids. A civilian would be in shock, but the bodyguards would react quickly.

  He opened his eyes and started running just in time to see the security cable snap in half as a sniper bullet sheared through it and drilled into the concrete beyond. The distant pop of the rifle arrived a fraction of a second later. The man was still holding the briefcase by the handle, but it was no longer chained to him. He was spinning and blinking, blinded by the flashbang.

  Fero crashed into him, knocking him off his feet. As the man fell, Fero wrestled the briefcase from his grip and then kept running down Memorial Avenue, away from Parliament House. The road was slightly sloped, so he leaned back on the wheels in his shoes and rolled down the hill, faster and fast
er. He had hoped the bodyguards would dive for cover, afraid of being shot by the sniper. But no, they were already stumbling after him, dazzled and deaf.

  He reached the end of Memorial Avenue, jumped off the wheels and ran to his right into a narrow lane between a museum and an apartment building, breaking their line of sight. The duplicate briefcase was still where he’d left it earlier, lying on the asphalt in the middle of the lane.

  The obvious place to hide was behind or inside one of the garbage bins up ahead. So he didn’t hide there. Instead he sprinted straight at the wall of the apartment building, jumped, and grabbed a drainpipe bolted to the side. He climbed awkwardly up the slick, icy metal, the real briefcase clutched under one arm and his feet braced against the concrete wall.

  The bolts held. Just as the security team turned the corner below, Fero scampered over a parapet, out of sight.

  ‘Can you see him?’ one of the men was shouting. ‘Can anybody see him?’

  ‘Check behind those bins,’ another man ordered.

  ‘I’ve found the case,’ a third voice said.

  ‘Contents intact?’

  A rattle. ‘Can’t tell. Locked. But it looks like someone stuck a spike through it.’

  ‘Get on the radio. We need backup, and someone to check the integrity of the case.’

  ‘I’ve been trying. Something’s blocking the signal.’

  Fero didn’t give them time to work out where he had gone – or to discover Cormanenko’s signal jammer locked inside the duplicate briefcase. He walked across the parapet as silently as a drifting dandelion. At the far end, a pair of power cables connected the block of apartments to a neighbouring building. They would take his weight, and he wouldn’t be electrocuted as long as he only touched one cable at a time.

  In training, tightrope walking hadn’t been one of his strengths. But this was the fastest way out of here. He jumped down onto the power box and stepped onto the cable.

  It trembled beneath him and he wobbled, struggling to balance with the briefcase in one hand. If he fell, he would plummet several metres to the street below and probably break his neck. He took a deep breath, keeping his centre of gravity directly above his feet.

  Don’t think about it, Vartaniev had told him. Your conscious mind is too slow. If you think about trying not to fall, you will fall. Instead, simply trust your body. Let your feet do the thinking.

  Fero spread his arms wide as if he was pretending to be an aeroplane. Then he walked further out over the street.

  Things went wrong almost immediately. A hungry wind reached up to take him. The cable creaked ominously beneath his shoes. He tried to keep his feet perfectly parallel on the wire, but it was hard without looking down. The shoes worked against him too. He couldn’t rest the wheels on the wire, and there was too much support in the toes to feel the cable beneath him. He couldn’t even pivot his ankles for balance.

  Don’t think, he told himself. Just walk.

  He took step after step, his eyes focused on the building opposite. The cable had more slack than the tightwire he had trained on. He had to bounce slightly as he walked. It was like tip-toeing across a trampoline. He waited for someone below to shout, to scream, to shoot. No one did. The early morning commuters were huddled against the cold like hedgehogs. Nobody looked up.

  Suddenly Fero was above the opposite building. He could hardly believe it. He stepped off the cable and dropped down to the rooftop. One minute of tightrope walking and solid ground already felt strange beneath his feet.

  He sprinted across the roof, dodging the air-conditioning vents and lift-maintenance trapdoors. If his only goal was to hide, he would slip into one of those doors and lie on top of a lift for a while. No one would find him there. But concealing himself from the Tellers wasn’t enough. He had to destroy the codes, and tell Cormanenko the plan had succeeded.

  Two water towers stood side by side on the roof. Gas flames burned beneath them to stop the water inside from freezing. Fero hesitated. He had been planning to throw the briefcase into one of the water tanks, hopefully short-circuiting the tracker inside and eventually washing away the codes. But now that he had seen the fire, he had a better idea.

  The iron mesh around the bottom of the closest water tower had a simple gate. He pulled back the bolt, opened the gate and threw the briefcase into the whooshing flames. He had been thinking about how Wolf had found him near Parliament House. By that stage he had left all Noelein’s equipment behind, but clearly Wolf was tracking him somehow.

  He remembered the way she had fiddled with the collar of his charity-bin overcoat before she handed it to him. Clever. It was an object they’d found along the way, so she had known he would trust it. He peeled off the coat and threw it into the fire.

  He had arranged to meet Wolf at the Tus shopping centre. From there they would make their way to the new tunnel near the airfield, which Wolf had said was finished. But Fero had no intention of keeping that rendezvous. There was nothing for him in Kamau, and he knew Besmar wasn’t actually about to be destroyed. He planned to cross the border into Russia instead.

  The briefcase smouldered for a while before it caught alight. Fero wanted to leave – he could feel the bodyguards closing in – but he had to stay until he was sure the codes were destroyed. He watched as the hinges glowed and the handle crumbled to ash. The leather bubbled away, revealing the metal frame beneath. Eventually the whole thing was just a blackened husk. It was done.

  Fero ran over to a fire escape and climbed back down to street level. Then he walked out onto the main street, as casually as he could.

  Fero dialled Cormanenko. The phone rang and rang.

  Finally she picked up. ‘You have two minutes.’

  ‘I did it,’ Fero said. Just saying the words gave him a rush of pride. ‘The briefcase is destroyed.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Hello?’ Fero said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘We have two problems,’ Cormanenko said. ‘The archive knows what you’ve done.’

  It took a second for Fero to figure out that she meant the Library. Wolf must have contacted Noelein. ‘So they’ll try to use their . . .’ He struggled to think of a code word for missiles.

  ‘That’s the other problem. They found my local friend.’

  Fero stopped dead in his tracks. The Library had caught Xin. Which meant . . . ‘How?’

  ‘They used us. Now they can push the button, as soon as they’ve repaired their . . . equipment.’

  Even though he knew that the missiles travelled too fast to see coming, Fero couldn’t help but look up.

  He remembered the Librarians arriving at Cormanenko’s warehouse, even though he was sure he had lost them. It seemed impossible – unless they had already known about Xin, and had followed her.

  They had arrested Fero. He was a wild card, and they didn’t want him interfering. But they had left Cormanenko’s team alone until after Besmar was disarmed.

  They had been doomed from the start. Fero had been used, yet again. Besmar was about to be swallowed by a white-hot nuclear flash. Millions dead, including him. All his fault. He felt like he might throw up.

  ‘I need you to be my fail safe,’ Cormanenko said.

  Fero had assumed that sending him to steal the briefcase was her fail safe. Apparently she had a second backup plan. ‘What should I do?’ he asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you on the phone. We have to meet.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Do you remember where I told you the truth about who you are?’

  Fero struggled to concentrate. She was talking about Wilt and Zuri’s apartment. ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you were to look out the window, you know what you’d see? A famous landmark, about three hundred metres away?’

  The Chernov River. ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s a monument. Meet me there in two hours.’

  Fero knew what she was describing – the monument to the Kamauan soldiers who had died in the Great Patriotic War. It stood on the
end of Geretsk Pier, over the river. But it was kilometres away, in another country. He would have to get to the border, find the new tunnel under the Dead Zone and then trek to Coralsk, all in the next two hours.

  ‘How am I supposed to get there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. You’ll just have to find a way.’

  The two minutes was almost up.

  ‘Listen to me. When you arrive . . .’ Cormanenko paused as if struggling to find the right words. ‘Do the right thing. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Fero said, wondering what she meant.

  The line went dead.

  From the rooftop, Wolf watched Maschenov through her sniper scope. He had lied to her. He had no intention of meeting her at the shopping centre. In fact, he seemed to be fleeing towards the Kamauan border. Presumably to escape before the bombs dropped.

  Fortunately, she had also lied to him. Noelein had ordered her to kill him, and that was what she was going to do. She had traced his bugged coat to the water tower, and from there she had spotted him running through the streets. At the moment she couldn’t risk taking a shot – he was almost a kilometre away, the wind had picked up, and her line of sight was frequently blocked by cars and buildings. But soon he would walk right into her cross-hairs. To get to the border he would have to walk down a long, straight open road that ran past a military airfield. This rooftop had a perfect view of that road, and there was no cover. That was where she would take him. If she was lucky, the wind would have died down by then.

  Her phone rang. It was Noelein.

  ‘Do you have the codes?’

  ‘Maschenov destroyed them,’ Wolf said. ‘I just watched him do it. I’m tracking him now.’

  ‘Forget Maschenov. If the codes are destroyed, he doesn’t matter anymore. Besmar is about to become a cloud of radioactive dust.’