‘Nothing’s happening,’ said Fagin. ‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘Then Harry must have found him!’ Villiers said.
‘I don’t think so,’ Fagin answered. ‘Look.’
He was pointing towards the screen. Numerical sequences were appearing, rows and rows of numbers.
‘What are those?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Fagin simply. ‘Perhaps he’s trying to confuse us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Fagin explained, ‘maybe he’s using these to throw us off the scent of what he’s really doing.’
‘You mean you don’t know? I thought you were supposed to be an expert?’
‘In some things, yes. But when it comes to hacking, I think Martin Hepton might just have the edge.’ Fagin’s smile had a hint of pride about it. Villiers grabbed him and shook him.
‘So shut it down,’ he yelled. ‘Close the whole thing down.’
Fagin did not resist. Instead he waited until Villiers had stopped shaking him. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘All we can do is wait for him to make his move — his real move.’ Then he sat down in front of the screen, a grandmaster awaiting his opponent’s opening gambit.
The room was empty now, with the exception of two live bodies and one very cold one. Hepton was in a chair on castors. Once Nick had tapped into the television satellite, he used this chair to wheel himself quickly between the two computer terminals — his own, locked into the Argos satellite and, consequently, into Zephyr; and the TV satellite. He worked fast and expertly, so that even Nick Christopher had trouble deciding what he was doing. Hepton was happy to explain.
‘I’m going to marry these two bastards,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take over the TV satellite and lock it into Zephyr, then disconnect Zephyr from Argos. Resulting in...’
Nick Christopher saw it all now, and broke into a wide, devilish grin. ‘You can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Do you know—’
‘Of course I know. I know what it’ll do. What’s more,’ smiling too, he turned to glance at his friend, ‘I really think I can do it.’
‘What’s happening now?’ Villiers was frantic. What had happened to Harry? Why hadn’t she disposed of Hepton?
Fagin rubbed his temples. He was too old for this, too old for Hepton’s tricks. ‘He’s doing something,’ he said. ‘But I don’t quite know what...’ His fingers worked slowly, methodically, on the keyboard, trying to cancel whatever Hepton was doing. Then it dawned on him. His voice became a whisper. ‘He’s using two terminals.’
‘What?’
‘He’s using two terminals at the same time.’
‘So open a second terminal! Now!’ Villiers pushed Fagin against the console. Fagin reached to a second computer and started coding in. ‘Perhaps there’s still time,’ Villiers said.
‘Yes, perhaps,’ agreed Fagin.
Jilly, however, saw what they could not. One of the monitor screens had burst into life. And instead of the aerial views she had become used to, she was watching a nature programme. The scene looked very much like Africa. Parched earth, creatures gathering around a drying pool of water. Then a voice.
‘Quickly, the animals learn that old enmities must be put aside, for now at least. Water is necessary for their survival, so they gather around, forgetting that they are enemies, knowing only that life is their priority. Hunters and hunted sip side by side...’
Villiers and Fagin turned slowly, disbelievingly, towards the TV monitor. For that was, unmistakably, where the sound was coming from. Stuck to the top of it was a large piece of Dymo tape, on which was printed ZEPHYR: LIVE PICTURES.
Fagin began to laugh. ‘I see what he’s done now!’ he roared hysterically. ‘I see!’
‘What?’ screeched Villiers. ‘What?’
‘Look,’ said Fagin, pointing to the screen. The wildlife programme had vanished, to be replaced by sharply focused pictures of Buchan, the camera homing in on the building work, the underground silos, the tips of the missiles themselves. Villiers opened his mouth in horror.
There was a deferential cough at the open door.
‘Good evening, Villiers,’ said Parfit, his gun extremely steady in his hand.
39
The screens began to jump around 8.15. Hepton’s intention was always to wreck the interface, not merely snip the connection. The estimated viewing figures of seven and a half million, however, came as a bonus. For in linking up the satellites, he had projected the shots of what was really happening in Buchan to a Europe-wide audience. While two video tapes, one master, one backup, ran, capturing the moment for posterity, satellite receiver dishes across most of Europe started to pick up a new station. Early-evening quiz shows, old movies and wildlife programmes crackled and faded and were replaced by pictures of nobody quite knew what. Some pirate station, people assumed, and many of them settled back, waiting to see if there would be any pornography on display, as the tabloid newspapers had been warning and promising. But all they got until nightfall was pictures of a building site. At least, they mostly assumed it was a building site. Except that one repeated shot showed what looked to be a large and ugly missile, resting nose up in its near-finished silo...
The plug had been well and truly pulled on COFFIN.
Villiers and Fagin were easily subdued, and Jilly was released. But Dreyfuss was in a bad way. Parfit felt an uncomfortable moment of sentiment: one second the pleasure of terminating Harry; the next the grief of seeing the blood-soaked shirt and feeling the fading pulse. How many lives could a man have? Dreyfuss had used up a fair quota already, but Parfit was grimly determined that he deserved yet another. He staunched the wound as best he could and waited for the ambulance.
Jilly buried her face in Hepton’s shoulder and let the tears come. They were tears of frustration rather than relief. Hepton, his work finished, didn’t know what his own tears were. But he let them fall all the same.
40
General Colin Mathieson-Briggs was sitting in his office when the men from Special Branch arrived. He knew why they had come, and had prepared himself for the moment, his tie knotted tightly so that his head remained erect.
General Jack Holliday was not, however, to be found in his office. Like Mathieson-Briggs, he had been on site at Binbrook the day they had infiltrated Zephyr. He had timed the whole process. From initial interference to complete locking-on had taken just under four minutes. Not long enough for anyone to notice any mischief, surely? There had been risks, of course, but they were not so great as the risk of leaving Britain defenceless and dependent on unreliable European allies for future safety...
His wife found him dead in the woods near their country estate. Holliday had gone shooting with his dog, a young Weimaraner. She discovered him slumped against a tree, his head taken clean off, the dog anxiously licking and cajoling the corpse’s hands and neck, its whiskers shiny crimson.
In France, Germany, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Finland, arrests were happening. And in the United States, too. Parfit had called Frank Stewart and given him the go-ahead to move in on General Ben Esterhazy and others, including, at the Pentagon, General William Colt. But without any apparent fuss or urgency: it had been decreed that the whole COFFIN affair was to be kept hidden from the world at large. In London, an anxious Home Secretary signed more D-notices in the space of an evening than in the rest of his term of office put together. It was all for the best.