Overkill (67 page)

‘Why are you so sure he’s here?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Kabanov replied. ‘But I’m assuming this man is not so stupid as to allow himself to be bottled up in the Crimea. That means he had to have an escape
route planned, and the only sensible escape method would be by boat. We know he was staying on the north-west side of the Crimea – somewhere in the vicinity of Razdolnoye or Krasnoperekopsk
– so if he had a boat, Port-Khorly would be his most likely destination.’

‘That makes sense,’ the police chief responded, ‘but finding him could take hours.’

‘We don’t have hours,’ Kabanov said. The alert message had stressed the urgency of the situation. ‘Use all available resources. Pull in all your off-duty officers, and
call all your informers and agents. Call all the hotels and check all new registrations. Finding this man has the highest possible priority, and that instruction comes straight from Moscow.’
The leading car made the right turn off the main road at Kalanchak as Kabanov terminated the call.

Hammersmith, London

Baker typed in ‘Modin’ at the prompt, and then ‘
Pripiska
’, and immediately accessed the system. As with Karelin’s log on, a welcome
message was displayed at the top, but with a much larger options menu below it.

‘That’s different,’ Richter said.

‘Damn right it is,’ Baker replied. He pointed at the screen. ‘What’s that say?’

Richter looked at the welcome message. ‘It says “Welcome, General Modin”,’ he said. ‘And the line below that translates as “Status – Principal
User”.’

Baker actually clapped his hands. ‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘This General Modin has high-level access – he’s a principal user. We’ve really got them
now.’

‘I know I’ll regret asking this,’ Richter said, ‘but what exactly is a principal user?’

Baker’s fingers were flying over the keyboard as he accessed the menu system. ‘It depends on what the administrator defined in his user categories, but it should mean he can do
pretty much whatever he likes on the system. He can change settings and specifications, maybe even detonate the weapons. He can make almost any changes he wants without reference to anybody else.
The only higher levels would be a super-user, the system designer and the administrator. I wonder,’ he said, ‘how the Americans got hold of his password?’

‘I’ll tell you later,’ Richter said, and looked at the screen. Immediately he could see the differences in the displayed menu. There were five headings, not two, and he
translated the new ones for Baker. ‘That’s Weapon Control,’ he said, ‘then there’s Network Control and the last is System Utilities.’

Baker rubbed his hands. ‘We’ll start with the network, I think,’ he said, and pressed a key. Richter always enjoyed watching an expert at work. His role was confined to that of
translator, as Baker set about trying to disable the entire system. ‘There are two stages,’ he said, almost talking to himself. ‘First we lock out the other users, then we sort
out the bombs.’ He turned to Richter. ‘Could you feed me the right words when I ask for them? It doesn’t matter much if we make mistakes now because we’re actually in the
system.’

Baker chose the Network Control menu item, looked down the list of choices and selected Current Log Ins, and watched as the screen changed. ‘Two users on the system,’ Baker said.
‘We’ll leave them until last. Now we’ll try User Records.’ That wasn’t what he was looking for, but Username Table was. Baker printed a copy of all the usernames, plus
the passwords for each one, then started to run down the list, changing each password as he went. He had barely started when a message appeared at the bottom of the screen.

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

Trushenko waited patiently, watching the screen, as the communications program logged on to the mainframe in Krutaya. Once he had connected, he instructed the computer to
let him access the Weapon Control module.

Hammersmith, London

‘What’s that say?’ Baker asked.

‘“New logon”,’ Richter translated. ‘The username is Trushenko. If that’s the same Dmitri Trushenko who orchestrated this, he’s trouble.’

‘He’s just logged on to the system,’ Baker said. ‘Maybe he’s just another technician. Let’s just see what his access level is.’

Baker scanned down the Username Table until he reached Trushenko. ‘Oops,’ Baker muttered. ‘Trushenko is listed as a super-user.’

‘Can you lock him out?’

‘I don’t know,’ Baker said. ‘I can change his password in the Username Table, which will stop him logging on again, but that won’t affect what he can do
now.’

Richter watched as Baker altered the password. ‘What’s he doing?’ Richter asked.

Their principal-user access meant that they could literally look over user Trushenko’s shoulders and see what actions he was performing. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’ Baker muttered.
‘He’s accessing the Weapon Control module.’

The Walnut Room, the Kremlin, Krasnaya ploshchad, Moscow

‘We missed him, Comrade President,’ Yuri Baratov said. ‘The local SVR officers found his mobile phone, still switched on, in a
dacha
at Razdolnoye
on the north-west coast of Crimea.’

‘What about the roadblocks?’ the President asked.

Baratov shook his head. ‘We think he left by boat. The police at Sevastopol have found records relating to the purchase of a high-speed powerboat in Trushenko’s name. They’re
combing all the Black Sea ports for it now.’ He paused. ‘We’ll find him, Comrade President,’ he said, reassuringly.

The old Russian looked at him. ‘Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ll find him,’ he replied. ‘I just hope that when you do it won’t be too late.’

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

Kabanov’s phone buzzed as his car drove through the northern outskirts of Port-Khorly. ‘Kabanov,’ he said.

‘We may have something,’ the police chief said. ‘Atall man was observed arriving here in a powerboat less than thirty minutes ago. We’re checking the boat’s
registration—’

‘Forget the boat,’ Kabanov snapped. ‘It’s the man we’re after. Where did he go?’

‘At the moment, we don’t know. Our informer thinks he drove away in a car, but can’t be sure. He was too far away to see the suspect get into a car, but he is certain that a
car was started and drove off a few minutes after the suspect reached the car-parking area.’

Kabanov absorbed the news in silence. ‘What about the hotels?’ he asked.

‘We’re checking them now. Nothing so far.’

‘Let me know the instant you have anything,’ Kabanov said. ‘We’ve just arrived in the town, but we’ll stay in the cars until I hear from you.’

Dmitri Trushenko paused, savouring the moment. Which one should he activate first? The first page of the Weapon Control module had three vertical columns. The left column
listed ten American cities in alphabetical order, the second column showed the weapon yield, and the third the anticipated loss of life. There were twenty-three pages in all, listing two hundred
and three weapons on American soil, plus fifteen in Europe. Trushenko flipped through the pages until he came to the last one. Yes, he mused, that would be a satisfactory demonstration of the
effectiveness of
Podstava
. He moved the cursor down the page until ‘Washington D.C.’ was highlighted. Then he pressed the ‘Enter’ key on his laptop and waited.

Hammersmith, London

Richter watched in horror as Dmitri Trushenko decided on the random annihilation of around a million people. ‘Stop him, for God’s sake,’ he said.

‘I don’t know if I can,’ Baker replied, and began scanning the options.

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

The screen on Trushenko’s laptop changed and the boxed message ‘Washington D.C. Weapon Enabled – Enter Authorization Code Three’ appeared in the
centre of it. Trushenko reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a slim diary. He opened it at the back page and placed the diary beside his computer.

Then he began to carefully enter on the keyboard the twelve random letters and numbers which constituted the first firing authorization code.

Hammersmith, London

Richter sat silent, because shouting wouldn’t help. Baker was looking for any menu option that would enable him to disable the weapon or somehow override
Trushenko’s instructions.

‘There’s nothing,’ Baker said, panic showing in his voice. ‘There’s no master override facility. I don’t think we can stop this.’

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

At the first ring, Kabanov snatched up his mobile phone and pressed a button. ‘Yes?’

‘He’s at the Hotel Metropole,’ the police chief said. ‘Room 25. It’s on—’

‘I know where it is,’ Kabanov said. ‘We’re on our way.’

Hammersmith, London

‘Wait,’ Richter said. ‘That code he’s inputting.’

‘Yes?’

‘There must be a copy of it in the Krutaya computer. You know, to check that the right code is being input. Forget about looking for an override command – just change the
system’s authorization codes.’

‘Brilliant,’ Baker said, ‘that’s fucking brilliant,’ and turned back to the keyboard.

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

The message on the laptop screen changed again. ‘Authorization Code Three Accepted. For Final Verification, Enter Authorization Code Six’. Trushenko referred
again to his diary and began carefully entering the letters and numbers.

Hammersmith, London

‘What code has it asked for?’ Baker demanded.

‘Six,’ Richter said.

Baker’s fingers were moving rapidly over the keyboard. ‘Got it,’ he said.

Richter looked at the screen. The computer displayed the title ‘Authorization Code List – Page One’, and underneath it twenty horizontal lines of letters and numbers. Baker
pressed the ‘Print’ button to save the original codes on paper, then swiftly moved the cursor down to Code Six. The last two digits were ‘
’, so he altered them to ‘
’ and saved the change.

Port-Khorly, Prichernomorskaya Nizmennost’ District, Ukraine

Trushenko sat back, puzzled. The laptop was displaying a message from the Krutaya mainframe – ‘Authorization Code Six Not Accepted. Enter Authorization Code
Ten’. He shook his head and referred again to his diary.

Hammersmith, London

‘What code is that?’ Baker asked.

The Cyrillic for ‘ten’ is ‘
’ – identical to ‘
’ –
‘nine’ – apart from one letter. Richter hadn’t slept in something like thirty hours, and he was beginning to feel the strain. His eyes were tired and, because of his
position slightly to one side of Baker, his view of the screen was somewhat distorted. All these factors combined into a single, dreadful mistake. Instead of the ‘Ten’ that the screen
was displaying, Richter read the number as ‘Nine’. ‘Code Nine,’ he said, and Baker obediently changed the last two digits on Code Nine.