“No it’s not the Germans, they are our friends now. You had German friends too when we were in Fallingbostel, do you remember?” Jimmy had only been three at the time the battalion had last been stationed in Germany and his memories were hazy.
“Ian Wiggins says his Dad can’t get out the army now because there’s going to be a war.”
All movement out of the armed forces had been halted three days before. Colin felt slightly sorry for Pete Wiggins, a sergeant in the battalions signals platoon, he had a good job with an IT firm all lined up, no doubt the vacancy would have been filled by someone else before all the sabre rattling was done with.
Colin didn’t want to talk about the possibility of war; he did not need to look at his wife to know she felt the same way. Janet changed the subject with practised ease, enquiring about the quality of both offspring’s homework. It distracted as desired and breakfast was finished in near pleasant silence.
Janet drove, dropping the kids off early with friends whom they would walk the rest of the way to school with and then dropping Colin off in Petty France. They sat for several minutes looking at each other; finally he kissed her, hard, before leaving the car and striding towards the guardroom at the entrance to Wellington Barracks. She returned his wave when he turned briefly, before disappearing from view into the bowels of the barracks.
There was hollowness in her stomach when she let out the clutch and joined the early morning traffic, heading east towards her workplace.
Constantine was lying on their hotel bed watching television when Svetlana returned from the local newsagents. He turned to smile at her before he returned his attention to the trio of middle aged men discussing cars before an audience of adoring fans who apparently found even inane comments hilarious.
Shaking her head at the antics Svetlana had lain on her side of the bed with her back to the TV. As she had already scanned the pages of the Times for anything of interest she turned her attention to the crossword. Its completion took her a full fifteen minutes. With a snort of contempt she disposed of the clues one by one. 7 across had been ‘Emperor Constantine’, it made her smile as the Constantine next to her was anything but regal in bed, rampant yes, regal no.
9 across was ‘Carlisle’, and the coincidence gave her pause.
On completing the crossword she wrote in the margin of the paper and obstructed Constantine’s view of a celebrity guest spinning off a track in a reasonably priced car by holding the paper folded with the words and crossword in view.
“Is it me or is someone trying to tell us something?”
“I can see my rightful name and the name of a town that matches your previous name, but I do not understand the significance of the remainder?” he answered.
Svetlana explained about the three remaining words.
After a quick call to directory enquiries they collecting the car they had bought on Svetlana’s gold card in Southampton and headed for the M50 motorway.
The thing about ‘pay as you go’ cellular phones in the UK is that if you choose not to register them, not to claim the ten minutes free ‘talk-time’, no one can trace the users details. You can be though if someone has the facilities to triangulate from where a call is being made. Making a call at 70mph makes that triangulation more difficult though.
Once at the motorway Constantine headed north, passing two junctions before Svetlana made the call.
“Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard, can I help you?”
“Yes please, my name is Carlisle and I would like to speak to the Commissioner,” she told the police operator.
Looking at the notice on her console the operator followed its instructions.
“May I ask what it is in connection with?”
“Emperor Constantine, was his alliance with Licinius in AD312 really necessary or could he have defeated Maxentius on his own?”
“What… pardon?” the operator stammered.
Constantine nudged Svetlana in the ribs to stop her toying with the baffled operator.
“Just tell the Commissioner that Constantine is returning his call, please.”
“Hold the line please.” She was told.
After a few moments a male voice came online.
“Do I call you Christina?”
“Christina will be fine although I am impressed that you know that, and of your method of contacting us.”
Ignoring the pleasantries the commissioner cut to the chase.
“Mr President, the debugging of our system is making progress inasmuch as we know what areas are free of interference. I am not able to put a time reference on how long it will be until it is purged,” the NSA reported.
“How about Alaska, what went wrong at the Bering Straits?”
“Sir, it seems that there is increased traffic through the Straits, the reduction in the Polar ice caps is not limited to the Antarctic so best guess is that Kuznetsov came through during bad weather with a bunch of large merchies sir. We are still investigating however to ensure there are no bad apples.”
The president just nodded.
“Similar thing happened to the Brits with the Scharnhorst in the last war, right in their own backyard” offered General Shaw; the telephone in front of him rang.
“Excuse me, Mr President.” Henry masked the mouthpiece of the telephone to reduce anything the caller could hear in the background during their conversation. It was just simple operational security
“Ben.” Said the president. “You’re up, so how are we doing with running down the stray devices?”
“Sir, with the exception of the Muslim extremist groups whose asses we have been chasing for over six months, we have concluded that home grown terror groups are also involved. We have a lead on one particular bunch of white supremacists, and something big is in the wind with lots of email traffic. I have… or I had… an agent close to the leadership of Fascists of America. I pushed too hard Mr President and she took a chance too many.” Ben Dupre was looking at his hands as he spoke.
“What happened, Ben?” asked the president.
“Let’s just say she was found dead this morning and leave it at that please, at least for today sir,” Ben took a breath and continued.
“We and the ATF plan to hit all the groups we know of on the day before we know the devices are to be set off. We figure they will keep them close until the last minute for security reasons. All the targets are on high alert and road checks are still in place of course. If they think there’s no chance of getting through without being searched, Geiger counters waved over their stuff, they may back off and wait until another day. Gives us more time to track the things down”
“Sounds good, let me see the plan soonest please Ben,” after a second the chief executive asked his FBI Director, “I would like the deceased agents details too, please?”
Ben nodded, “Yes sir.”
General Shaw replaced his receiver.
“Mr President?”
The president nodded at the general.
“Something happening Henry?” The relationship between the president and the military had changed over several days; he no longer tolerated them as a necessary nuisance.
“Sir, there has been no contact with the submarine we sent to investigate the Chinese carrier for over 24hrs, that in itself would not be too great a cause for concern, she may not have been in a position to transmit for tactical or technical reasons. However, 7th Fleet and the Royal Navy Headquarters on Whale Island, Portsmouth, received a transmission from HMS Hood along with a recording she had uploaded. Hood’s sonar department heard activity from approximately where we would have expected the USS Commanche to be. Between 0121hrs and 0147hrs yesterday morning they recorded a surface vessel; a Krivak class destroyer performing high-speed dashes and reversing course. At 0145hrs there is the sound of two torpedoes being launched from a submerged submarine on a different bearing from that of the surface warship, this is immediately followed by the sound of a second submarine and she had her screw suddenly at high turn rate. Just under two minutes later there are two underwater explosions and the sounds of a submarine breaking up at depth.” After letting those present absorb what he had just said the general added.