The Edge of Madness

by Michael Dobbs

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Saturday, 3.12 p.m. Castle Lorne.

  The wind had freshened, it seemed a storm might be brewing. ‘So, run something past me. How would this attack of yours work?’ Blythe Edwards asked.

  It was a question that, like the blustery currents outside, seemed to imply a new course. It indicated she was at least willing to consider the idea of an attack, but they also noticed her use of the conditional. She was still sitting on the fence, but pulses raced faster.

  Washington took up the challenge, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand as though attempting to polish it still further. ‘This is what we do,’ he began, indicating that there were no qualms on his part. ‘We act on this thing together. Everything together. Attack and Explain, our two guiding rules.’ He cast around, making sure they were paying attention. ‘So, we all have some idea where the Chinese cyber facilities are located–no, I know it’s not a comprehensive inventory, Madam President,’ he added quickly, warding off Blythe’s half-formed question, ‘but if we pool our information we’re going to be able to build a pretty accurate picture. Join up a large number of the dots. Now, as I’ve already said, these will be mostly soft targets, not buried underground or burrowed into mountains but located on university campuses and in research institutes and the like. We know how it is in our own countries. Most of these facilities have been built with kids, by kids, for kids. In military terms it’s no more of a challenge than kicking over a playpen.’

  In Russia, Shunin reflected, they’d begun to go quite a lot further than that, and he suspected the Americans had, too, as the world started to catch on to the lurid potential of cyber-struggle, but the point was fair enough. By comparison with the rest of the military game, cyber remained something of a cottage industry.

  ‘OK. So if we pool this information, we know what to target. And if we also pool our strike capabilities, we’re in business. We use nothing too big–certainly nothing they might mistake as nuclear. First thing, we hit them with every bit of kit in our cyber armoury, try to blind them in the headlights, but we’ve got to expect that they’re going to be ready for that. We can’t rely on a cyber attack working all by itself. So simultaneously we hit them physically, too. We use precision-guided munitions, JDAM bombs, that sort of thing, but since many of the Chinese facilities will be a considerable way inland we’ll have to rely extensively on cruise missiles. These attacks will also have to be at night to lessen the extent of any collateral damage.’

  ‘You mean casualties,’ Blythe said.

  ‘Correct. Make sure the university campuses and office complexes aren’t flooded with people.’

  He made himself sound almost like a humanitarian, Harry thought.

  ‘And these attacks will be launched from where?’ Blythe pressed.

  ‘Good question. We’d have trouble with the natives if we used our bases in Taiwan and South Korea without warning, and we can’t afford to consult them because they’d only go and squawk to their cousins in China. Mainly, I think, we’ll rely on the navy, use missiles based on carriers and submarines. Tomahawks. And it would be a great opportunity to try out our newest bit of kit, the Joint Strike Fighter, we have some in our Pacific Fleet. Coordinate everything with our Russian friends, of course, share out the targets. Try and get the job done in a first strike. The Chinese air defences aren’t up to much, but we wouldn’t want to go back in after they’d been alerted.’

  Shunin nodded thoughtfully and in agreement.

  ‘No warning,’ Washington continued. ‘Total surprise.’

  ‘Surely we have to give them at least a chance to back down,’ Blythe interrupted. ‘An ultimatum. Twelve hours, even. Something to cover our backs with neutrals.’

  Washington turned to the Russian. ‘How long did it take for Sosnovy Bor to go critical, Mr President?’

  ‘Not even twelve minutes,’ Shunin replied dully.

  ‘Give them any sort of warning and we hand the Chinese an opportunity to scramble all our satellite-guidance systems, maybe even the warheads,’ Washington continued. ‘The missiles might not even get there.’

  ‘But we have no idea whether the Chinese have that capability,’ Blythe persisted.

  ‘Precisely, Madam President. We don’t know. So we don’t take that chance.’

  And now, thought Harry, we are planning a war based on fear–fear of the unknown. Something like that had started World War One. But now D’Arby was intent on having his say.

  ‘I want to make it clear that the British will be part of this, and right behind you. We may not have much left in terms of military capability in the Far East, but whatever we can do, it will be done.’

  ‘Your most important form of support, Prime Minister, comes in the next phase, I think,’ Washington replied. ‘The propaganda war. The information offensive. I’ve already drawn up a few chapter headings.’ He spread sheets of hand-written notes across the low table in front of them.

  ‘There’s also the little matter of explaining it to ourselves, to our own people,’ a voice added quietly. It was Harry. Blythe nodded in agreement.

  ‘Together!’ D’Arby burst in. ‘That’s what makes it all work, Harry. I go to the Cabinet and say that the United States and Russia are in this with us, that we’re as one, a band of brothers, and not one of them will dare stand against such a tide. It’s the tide of history, Harry. Hell, which side are they gonna take? Western civilization or the Oriental plague?’

  ‘Seize the moment!’ Washington applauded enthusiastically. The tide was already flowing.

  Yet immediately it swept up against Blythe Edwards. She was unwilling to be moved so easily. ‘If we hit them without warning, we give them every reason for striking back.’

  ‘So what would you have us do, Madam President,’ Shunin said, ‘wait until St Petersburg has melted into a radioactive haze?’

  ‘It’ll work,’ Washington insisted. ‘These cyber facilities–they’re a little like a jigsaw puzzle. Lots of small, independent pieces that mean nothing until they’re brought together. We kick the jigsaw to bits, scatter the pieces, take half of them away, and it’ll take time for them to be put back in shape. Time that we must use. To boost our cyber defence. Embargo their markets. Kick out their students. Cut off their contacts. Sure, we make soothing noises, too, offer them the hand of peace, but until they take it we blow every single one of their goddamned satellites out of the sky. Have them looking at stardust for the next twenty years, if that’s what it takes.’

  ‘It’s feasible. If we do it together,’ Shunin said.

  ‘You’d agree to that, Sergei? Pool your cyber resources with ours?’ Blythe asked.

  His eyes stared at her across the rim of his glass, but they were no longer little chunks of permafrost. They had grown animated, had caught some new light and now sparkled. ‘You scratch my back, Madam President, and I’ll be more than happy to scratch yours.’

  Christ, thought Harry. Here they were plotting World War Three and the Russian was hitting on the President of the United States. He felt sure Franklin Roosevelt had never had that effect on Joe Stalin.

  Saturday, 3.43 p.m. Balmoral Castle.

  The shafts of responsibility for the disastrous situation of the Reuben James were flying around the world. As soon as he had become aware of the magnitude of the situation, the commander of the US 5th Fleet had alerted the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He in turn had summoned his colleagues on the JCS and alerted the Secretary of Defense. Members of the National Security Council had also been informed, although not instructed to gather. It was an August weekend, many were out of town, and the decisions that were required to salvage the situation weren’t going to hang around for their holiday plans.

  It was also a great pity, given the fraught circumstances, that both the President and her National Security Advisor were abroad. Still, it was always possible to keep them in the loop through the White House, no matter where they were. Several large fortunes had been spent over the
years on the most sophisticated communications systems in the world to make sure that was so.

  The crisis had caught up with Warren Holt shortly after lunch. Since then, his telephone had scarcely stopped ringing, and with every call his mood had grown more desperate. He now knew it had been madness on his part to let the President disappear, and the consequences for indulging her folly would be terrible. He had lied, to everyone, said she was unwell and in bed yet he had assured them that she was following every detail. It had started with a small deceit that with every successive conversation had turned into a far greater lie. God, it was like Watergate.

  He had to stop it. Perhaps there was still time. She’d said she wasn’t to be contacted for anything short of war, but this mess in the Persian Gulf might yet be as good as. She had also said he would have to decide. And so he did. He took her envelope from his breast pocket where it had stayed since the moment she had given it to him. His hands were trembling. The paper was thick, heavily woven, with a royal crest on it. He opened the envelope and extracted its single sheet of paper.

  Then he dialled.

  Dialled again.

  And again.

  Nothing. Just a recorded message to tell him the number was temporarily out of service, and that he should try again later.

  The phone slipped from his sweat-streaked fingers and started swinging giddily from the end of its wire. It reminded him of a body on a gibbet. Stiffly he bent to retrieve it. It wasn’t just his hands, his knees were unsteady, too. It took two attempts before he was able to replace the phone in its cradle. Warren Holt felt ashamed. He knew he was about to panic.

  Saturday, 4.10 p.m. British Summer Time; 11.10 p.m. in the Room of Many Miracles, Shanjing.

  ‘We have finished our first task, Minister.’

  Fu Zhang leaned back in his chair and let forth an almost post-coital sigh. Then he remained silent, staring at the screens he did not understand, wrapped in this moment of triumph. It was some while before he was able to rouse himself. ‘What is next?’

  Li Changchun tapped a few keys and a different set of views began dancing on the screens in front of them. ‘The London Flood Barrier,’ he announced. ‘It protects their capital. We will cripple the barrier, but this will not be discovered until a high tide coincides with a storm surge. At that point the control systems will go haywire. The barrier will stay down, even as the Thames starts rising.’

  ‘Do they not have an override? A manual system? Surely they cannot be so foolish.’

  ‘Oh, yes, but that requires power. And when the next hide tide meets up with a storm surge…’ Li shrugged his shoulders. ‘They will discover a major electrical malfunction. Their emergency generators will begin to vibrate until they disintegrate in a cloud of smoke and metal splinters.’

  ‘You can do that?’

  ‘You will do it, Minister. Once again you will have the privilege of taking the final step!’

  Fu Zhang’s lips were working as hard as a whore’s. ‘And what will be the consequence?’

  ‘Very simple, Minister. London will drown.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Most of the important parts of the capital lie on a flood plain. Hundreds of years ago, when the river flooded, they rowed boats through their Parliament building at Westminster. And fifty years ago, before the barrier was built, the tide rose nearly forty feet and hundreds perished. Yet they have learned nothing. They have continued building more and more of their vital facilities in the same area, thinking they are safe. The barrier for them is their Great Wall, the only thing that lies between the City of London and complete disaster.’

  ‘But–will they know the cause? Will they be able to tell it was us?’

  Li smiled. ‘We have taken temporary ownership of the computer system that runs the tax affairs of the government of Nigeria. That, in turn, has routed instructions through the command and control facilities of the Plesetsk space centre.’

  ‘Russia?’

  ‘And that is what the British will find when they climb out of the mud and start looking. The British will suspect the Russians, the Russians will blame the Africans, and they will all grow dizzy. It will be like looking for grains of sugar in a bowl of porridge. They may have their suspicions but they will never find their proof.’

  ‘They have grown old, addled, accustomed only to fighting battles on television. They will not fight with wet socks!’ Fu Zhang chortled. ‘Li Changchun, I will not forget what you have done.’

  ‘But, Minister, we have only just begun.’

  ‘More? There is more?’

  Li indicated a group of his colleagues who were gathered before a series of screens on the far side of the room. ‘The largest computer system in Britain is the one which controls their health service. The medical records of every person in the country have been captured on one central system. The expense and effort have been vast. All their most intimate details have been gathered together.’ Li’s face lit with pleasure. ‘They have built us the finest playground in the world.’

  Fu Zhang started applauding.

  ‘The system contains private, painful details they would not share with their closest friends, and certainly not their families, Minister. Did you know, for instance, that the British Foreign Secretary’s wife is being treated for a sexually transmitted disease? And that she is unable to identify for certain the lover who gave it to her?’

  ‘No, I did not!’

  ‘And neither, we suspect, does the Foreign Secretary. Not yet, at least.’

  Fu Zhang’s enthusiasm left him short of breath. ‘Think of it–sixty million secrets, scattered to the wind,’ he panted. ‘Sixty million people with every reason to resent and mistrust their government. Sixty million revolutionaries!’

  ‘As Sun Tzu said, Minister, it is not always necessary to drop bombs in order to win wars.’

  Saturday, 4.28 p.m. Castle Lorne.

  ‘People will die. I want to know how many?’ the American President said.

  ‘Very few. An infinitesimally small part of the Chinese population,’ her security advisor replied. He was standing, looking out of the window. Dark clouds were writhing on the horizon; a storm was brewing to the west and headed their way.

  ‘Five hundred? Five thousand?’ she persisted.

  ‘You can’t put numbers on it, Madam President.’ His tone was dismissive.

  ‘Many fewer than between us we have killed in Afghanistan,’ Shunin added.

  Washington turned from the window. ‘Madam President, this is the most significant moment of your presidency. One way or another it’s what you’re going to be remembered for. Please don’t let it be dictated by cheap newspaper headlines.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘It’s omelettes and eggs. Some things have got to get broken. That’s what war is all about. Hitting them. Hurting them. But only enough to knock them to the ground. This isn’t Vietnam or Iraq, this is sweet and sharp. Just how wars ought to be fought.’

  Harry, the soldier, winced.

  ‘Ten, twenty thousand.’ Shunin wheezed, scrabbling for his nebulizer. ‘To the Chinese, that’s no more than a flea bite to a camel.’

  ‘I thought we were talking five,’ Blythe retorted sharply.

  ‘The Chinese themselves execute almost that number each year,’ Shunin replied. ‘They drag them off to some football stadium or stretch of waste ground and put a bullet in the back of their neck. So let’s not shed tears for the crocodile.’

  ‘We are not like the Chinese, Sergei. That’s the whole point. We put a different value on things.’

  ‘Which is exactly why we must do this,’ Washington said. ‘Because we put value on human life. Particularly on American lives. That’s our job.’

  ‘My job above all,’ she snapped, stung by his tone.

  ‘But we’re not talking troops on the ground,’ he countered in impatience, as if she were a freshman student who hadn’t grasped the point. ‘No American casualties, just in
and out with a few missiles, and then a media onslaught on world opinion, hand in hand with our Russian friends. Do it right and the two of you will probably end up with a Nobel Peace Prize.’

  ‘And what if they retaliate? Use their own missiles?’

  ‘They wouldn’t dare,’ he said, spreading his hands in exasperation. ‘That’s why they’re going cyber. We’ve got so many more missiles than they have. And ours work.’

  ‘I need to think,’ Blythe insisted.

  Washington slapped his thigh, his voice rising. ‘George Washington didn’t need to think, Madam President. He didn’t hesitate. He just rowed across the Delaware and…’ And beat the crap out of the British. Perhaps the comparison wasn’t entirely apt. He let the words fade away, leaving a trail of heat.

  ‘Marcus, I think you and I are going to need a little talk about respect after this.’

  ‘We get this wrong and there ain’t gonna be no “after this”!’ he exclaimed, his voice adopting the defiant drawl of a Southern slave.

  Her eyes flamed with fury at his insolence. ‘I believe you owe me an apology.’

  But he remained mute, sullen. The two of them had jumped into a fetid swamp that sucked them back through three hundred years of American history layered with injustice, slavery, sexism and guilt. She was the most powerful woman her country had ever had, he one of its most prominent blacks, and neither had made it this far by giving way.

  Their confrontation faded as they became aware that the others had been drawn to the television screen. It had been left on by D’Arby, who seemed to be addicted to it, with the volume muted. Now the pictures were demanding their attention. The Prime Minister hurried to turn the sound back on.

  The screen showed amateurish and jerky pictures of a US warship, sitting in the sun and stranded, according to the commentary, on an Iranian sandbank. Small patrol boats were circling the ship, their Iranian revolutionary flags streaming in the wind. The lens of the camera, which was clearly located on one of these boats, foreshortened the perspective to make it seem as though Iranian hornets were buzzing tight in upon the flank of the hapless American vessel. The images panned in to show the warship, its superstructure, its armaments, its flag. The caption on the screen revealed its name. The USS Reuben James.