Skeleton Key

THE NUCLEAR DUSTBIN

At seven o’clock that evening, the door of Alex’s cell opened and Conrad stood there, wearing a suit and tie. The smart clothes made his half-bald head, ruined face and red, twitching eye even uglier than usual. He reminded Alex of an expensive Guy Fawkes on bonfire night.

“You are invited to dinner,” Conrad said.

“No thanks, Conrad,” Alex replied. “I’m not hungry.”

“The invitation is not one you may refuse.” He tilted a hand to look at his watch. The hand had been inaccurately joined to the wrist. He had to move it a long way to see the watch face. “You have five minutes,” he said. “You are expected to dress formally.”

“I’m afraid I left my dinner jacket in England.”

Conrad ignored him and closed the door.

Alex swung his legs off the bunk where he had been lying. He had been in the cell ever since his capture at the gate, vaguely wondering what was going to happen next. An invitation to dinner had been the last thing he’d expected. There had been no sign of Juan when he got back. Presumably the young guard had been reprimanded for his failure to watch over Alex and sent home. Or shot. Alex was beginning to realize that the people at the Casa de Oro meant business. He had no idea what Sarov had in mind for him this evening but he knew that the last time they had met, Alex had only just managed to escape with his life. He resembled the sixteen-year-old Vladimir, Sarov’s lost son. Sarov must still have some fantasy about adopting him. Otherwise, he would now be dead.

He decided that, all in all, it would be wise to play along with this invitation to dinner. At the very least it might allow him to find out a little more about what was going on. Would the meal be filmed, he wondered? And if so, to what use would the film be put? Alex pulled a clean shirt and a pair of black Evisu trousers out of his case. He remembered that the mad headmaster, Dr Grief, had used hidden cameras at the Point Blanc academy to spy on the boys who were there. But this was different. The film that he had seen in the editing suite was being cut, pieced together, manipulated. It was going to be used for something. But what?

Conrad returned exactly five minutes later. Alex was ready for him. Once again he was escorted out of the slave house and up the steps to the main house. Inside, he heard the sound of classical music. He reached the courtyard and saw a trio-two elderly violinists and a plump lady with a cello-playing what sounded like Bach, the fountain tinkling softly behind them. There were about a dozen people gathered there, drinking champagne and eating canapes which were being carried round on silver trays by white-aproned waitresses. The four bodyguards were standing together in a tight, watchful circle. Another six men from the Russian delegation were chatting to the girls from the swimming pool, who glittered in sequins and jewellery.

The president himself was talking to Sarov, a glass in one hand and a huge cigar in the other. Sarov said something and he laughed out loud, smoke billowing from his lips. Sarov noticed Alex arrive and smiled.

“Ah, Alex! There you are! What will you have to drink?”

It seemed that the events of the afternoon had been forgotten. At least, they weren’t to be mentioned again. Alex asked for a fresh orange juice and it was brought at once.

“I’m glad you’re here, Alex,” Sarov said. “I didn’t want to start without you.”

Alex remembered something Sarov had said at the swimming pool. Something about a surprise. He was beginning to have bad feelings about this dinner, but without knowing why.

The trio finished a piece of music and there was a light smattering of applause. Then a gong sounded and the guests moved into the dining room. This was the same room where Alex and Sarov had eaten breakfast, but it had been transformed for the banquet. The glasses were crystal, the plates brilliant white porcelain, the knives and forks polished till they gleamed. The tablecloth, also white, looked brand new. There were thirteen places for dinner-six on each side and one at the head. Alex noted the number with a further sense of unease. Thirteen for dinner. Unlucky.

Everyone took their places at the table. Sarov had placed himself at the head, with Alex on one side of him, Kiriyenko on the other. The doors opened and the waitresses came back in, this time with bowls brimming over with tiny black eggs which Alex recognized as caviar. Presumably Sarov had it directly imported from the Black Sea -it must have been worth many thousands of pounds. Russians traditionally drink vodka with caviar, and as the bowls were positioned around the table, the guests were each given a small tumbler filled to the brim.

Then Sarov stood up.

“My friends,” he began. “I hope you will forgive me if I address you in English. There is unfortunately one guest at this table who has yet to learn our glorious language.”

There were smiles around the table and a few heads nodded in Alex’s direction. Alex looked down at the tablecloth, unsure how to respond.

“This is for me a night of great significance. What can I tell you about Boris Nikita Kiriyenko? He has been my closest and dearest friend for more than fifty years! It is strange to think that I can still remember him as a child who teased animals, who cried when there was a fight, and who never told the truth.” Alex glanced at Kiriyenko. The president was frowning. Sarov was presumably joking, but the joke had failed to amuse his guest. “It is even harder to believe this is the same man who has been entrusted with the privilege, the sacred honour, of leading our great country in these difficult times. Well, Boris has come here for a holiday. I’m sure he needs one after so much hard work. And that is the toast that I wish to make tonight. To his holiday! I hope that it will be longer and more memorable than he ever expected.”

There was a brief silence. Alex could see that the guests were puzzled. Perhaps they’d had difficulty following Sarov’s English. But he suspected it was what he had said that had thrown them, not how he had said it. They had come expecting a good dinner, but Sarov seemed to be insulting the president of Russia!

“Alexei, my old friend!” the president said. Boris had decided that it was a joke. He smiled and continued in his thickly accented English. “Why do you not join us?” he asked.

“You know that I never drink spirits,” Sarov replied. “And I hope you will agree that at fourteen, my son is a little too young for vodka.”

“I drank my first vodka aged twelve!” the president muttered.

Somehow, Alex wasn’t surprised.

Kiriyenko lifted his glass. “Na zdarovie!” he said. They were about the only words of Russian that Alex understood. Your health!

“Na zdarovie!” Everyone round the table chorused the toast.

As one, they drank, throwing back the chilled vodka, as is traditional, in a single gulp.

Sarov turned to Alex. “Now it begins,” he said quietly.

One of the bodyguards was the first to react. He had been reaching out to help himself to caviar when suddenly his hands jerked, dropping his fork and plate with a crash. Every head turned towards him. A second later, at the other end of the table, one of the other men threw himself forward, head-first, onto the table, his chair capsizing underneath him. As Alex watched, his eyes wide with horror, every person at the table began to react in the same way. One of them fell backwards, dragging the tablecloth with him, glasses and cutlery cascading into his lap. Several of them simply slumped where they sat. Another of the bodyguards managed to get to his feet and was scrabbling for a gun underneath his jacket, but then his eyes glazed and he collapsed. Boris Kiriyenko was the last to go. He was standing, swaying on his feet like a wounded bull. His fist was clenched as if he knew he had been betrayed and wanted to strike out at the man who had done it. Then he sat down heavily. His chair tilted and he was thrown onto the floor.

Sarov muttered a few words in Russian.

“What have you done?” Alex gasped. “Are they…?”

“They are unconscious, not dead,” Sarov said. “They will, of course, have to be killed. But not yet.”

“What are you planning?” Alex demanded. “What is it you’re going to do?”

“We have a long journey,” Sarov said. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

The entire compound was lit up. Men-guards and macheteros-were running everywhere. Alex was still dressed in the clothes he had worn for dinner. Sarov had changed into dark green military dress, this time without his medals. One of the black limousines was waiting. Conrad had driven up at the wheel of an army truck. As Alex watched, two more guards appeared at the main entrance of the Casa de Oro and began to walk down the wide steps. They were moving forward slowly, carrying something between them. The moment they appeared, everyone around them stopped.

It was a large silver chest about the size of a school trunk. Alex could just see that the top was flat metal, but that it had a number of switches and dials as well as some sort of slot device built into the side. Sarov watched while it was carried over and loaded into the truck. All the other men did the same, as if the two guards had just come out of a church and this was an an effigy of a saint. Alex shuddered. He knew exactly what he was looking at and didn’t need the Geiger counter to confirm it.

This was the nuclear bomb.

“Alex?” Sarov was holding the car door open for him. Dazed, Alex got in. He knew that he had reached the end. Sarov had shown his hand and put into action a series of events from which there could be no going back. And yet even now, at this late stage, he had no idea what the general intended to do.

Sarov sat next to him. A driver got in and they moved off, Conrad following behind in the truck. At the very last moment, as they passed through the barrier, Sarov glanced back, very briefly. Alex saw the look in his eyes and knew that he had no intention ever to return. There were a hundred questions he wanted to ask, but he said nothing. This wasn’t the time. Sarov was sitting quietly, his hands on his knees. But even he couldn’t disguise the tension. Years of planning must have been building up to this.

They drove down darkened roads with just occasional flickers of light showing that the island was actually inhabited. No other cars came their way. After about ten minutes, they began to pass buildings. Looking out of the window, Alex saw men and women sitting in front of their houses, drinking rum, playing cards, smoking cigarettes or cigars beneath the night sky. They were on the outskirts of Santiago and suddenly they turned down a road that Alex recognized. He had taken it on the way in. They were going to the airport.

This time there was no security, no queues for passport control. Sarov didn’t even have to enter the main terminal building. Two airport guards were waiting for him at a gate which was opened to allow him to drive straight onto the runway. The truck followed. Alex looked over the driver’s shoulder and saw a plane, a Lear jet, parked on its own. They stopped.

“Out,” Sarov said.

There was a breeze blowing across the airport runway, carrying with it the smell of aviation fuel. Alex stood on the tarmac, watching as the silver chest was loaded onto the plane, Conrad shouting instructions. He found it hard to believe that such an ordinary-looking thing could be capable of destruction on a massive scale. He remembered films he had seen. Flames and gale force winds rushing through whole cities, ripping them apart. Buildings crumbling. People turned to ashes in an instant. Cars and buses flicked like toys into oblivion. How could such a terrible bomb with so much power be so small? Conrad closed the cargo door himself. He turned to Sarov and nodded. Sarov gestured. Unwillingly, Alex walked forward and climbed the steps into the plane. Sarov was right behind him. Conrad and the two men who had been carrying the bomb followed. The door of the plane was closed and sealed.

Alex found himself in a luxurious compartment that was like no plane he had ever been in. There were only a dozen seats, each one upholstered in leather. The compartment was long and thickly carpeted, with a well stocked bar, a kitchen and, in front of the cockpit, a seventy centimetre plasma television screen. Alex didn’t ask what film they would be showing. He chose a window seat-but then they were all window seats. Sarov sat across the aisle from him. Conrad was one seat behind Sarov. The two guards sat at the far end of the compartment. Alex wondered why they were making the journey. To keep an eye on him?

And what journey, exactly, were they making? Were they crossing into America or travelling across the Atlantic?

Sarov must have been reading his mind. “I will explain to you in a moment,” he said. “As soon as we are in the air.”

In fact, it was about fifteen minutes before the Lear jet took off down the runway and lifted effortlessly off the ground. The cabin lights dimmed for take-off but as soon as they had reached thirty thousand feet, they came back on. The guards got up and began to serve hot tea which had been brewing in an urn in the kitchen. Sarov allowed himself a brief smile. He pressed a button in the arm of his chair and swung round so that he now faced Alex.

“You may be wondering why I decided not to kill you,” he began. “This afternoon, when I found you in the car… I came so close. Conrad is still annoyed with me. He believes I am making a mistake. He does not understand me. But I will tell you why you are still alive, Alex. You are working for British intelligence. You are a spy. And you were only doing your job. I admire that, and this is the reason why I have forgiven you. You are loyal to your country even as I am loyal to mine. My son Vladimir died for his country. I am proud that you were prepared to do the same for yours.”

Alex took this in. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“We are going to Russia. To be precise, we are going to Murmansk, which is a port on the Kola Peninsula.”

Murmansk! Alex tried to remember if he had heard the name before. It did seem familiar. Had he heard it in a news bulletin, or perhaps in a lesson at school? A port in Russia! But why would they be going there… and carrying a nuclear bomb?

“You might like to know our flight path,” Sarov continued. “We are crossing the Atlantic by the northern route. This involves flying over the Arctic Circle. In essence, we are taking a short cut, following the curvature of the earth. We will have to make two stops to refuel. One in Gander, in northern Canada. The other in the British Isles, in Edinburgh.” Sarov must have seen the hopeful expression in Alex’s eyes. He went on. “Yes. You will be home for an hour or two tomorrow. But please don’t get any ideas. You will not be permitted to leave the plane.”

“Will it really take so long to get there?” Alex asked.

“With the first stop and the time difference… yes. We may also have to engage in some diplomatic pleasantries with both the Canadian and the British authorities. This is Kiriyenko’s private plane. We have filed our flight plan with Euro Control and of course they recognized our serial number. They believe the president is onboard. I would imagine that the Canadian and the British governments might be keen to offer us hospitality.”

“Who’s flying the plane?”

“Kiriyenko’s pilot. He is, however, loyal to me. A great many ordinary Russian people believe in me, Alex. They have seen the future… my future. They prefer it to the version they have been offered by others.”

“You still haven’t told me what that future is. Why are we flying to Murmansk?”

“I will tell you now. And then we must both sleep. We have a long night ahead.”

Sarov crossed his legs. There was a light directly above him and it beamed down, casting his eyes and mouth into shadow. He seemed at that moment both very old and very young. There was no expression in his face at all.

“ Murmansk,” he began, “is home to Russia ’s northern fleet of submarines. Or it was. It is now, quite simply, the world’s biggest nuclear dustbin. The end of Russia as a world power has led to the rapid collapse of its army, air force and navy. I have already tried to explain to you what has happened to my country in the past thirty years. The way it has been allowed to fall apart, with poverty, crime and corruption sucking the people dry. Well, that process of decay can be seen most starkly in Murmansk.

“A fleet of nuclear submarines is moored there. I say ‘moored’ but I mean ‘abandoned’. One of them, the Lepse is more than forty years old and contains six hundred and forty-two bundles of fuel rods. These submarines have been left to rot and they are falling apart. Nobody cares. Nobody can find the money to do anything about them. It is a well documented fact, Alex, that these old submarines represent the single biggest threat to the world today. There are one hundred of them! I am talking about one fifth of the world’s nuclear fuel. One hundred ticking time bombs, waiting to go off. An accident waiting to happen. An accident I have decided to arrange.”

Alex opened his mouth to break in, but Sarov held up a hand for silence.

“Let me explain to you what would happen if just one of those submarines were to blow up,” he continued. “First of all, a huge number of Russians in the Kola Peninsular and the north would be killed. Many more people would die in the neighbouring countries of Norway and Finland.

“Unusually for this time of year, the wind is blowing to the west, so the nuclear fallout would travel over Europe to your country. It is very possible that London would become uninhabitable. Over the years, thousands more people would fall ill and die slow, painful deaths.”

“So why do it?” Alex shouted. “Why cause the explosion? What good will it do?”

“I am, if you like, giving the world a wake-up call,” Sarov explained. “Tomorrow night I will land in Murmansk and I will place the bomb that you have seen amongst the submarines.” He reached into his top pocket and took out a small plastic card. It had a magnetic stripe down one side like a credit card. “This is the key that will detonate the bomb,” he said. “All the codes and information required are contained in the magnetic strip. All I have to do is insert the card into the bomb. At the time of the explosion itself, I will be on my way south to Moscow, out of harm’s way.

“The explosion will be felt in every country in the world. You can imagine the shock and the outrage that it will create. And nobody will know that it was caused by a bomb that was deliberately carried to Murmansk. They will believe that it was one of the submarines. The Lepse, perhaps, or one of the others. I’ve already said-it was an accident waiting to happen. And when it does happen, nobody will begin to suspect the truth.”

“Yes they will!” Alex said. “The CIA know you bought uranium. They’ll find out their agents are dead-”

“Nobody will believe the CIA. Nobody ever believes the CIA. And anyway, by the time they have assembled their evidence against me, it will be too late.”

“I don’t understand!” Alex exclaimed. “You’ve already said you’ll kill thousands of your own people. What’s the point?”

“You are young. You know nothing of my people. But listen to me, Alex, and I will explain. When this disaster happens, the whole world will unite in its condemnation of Russia. We will be hated. And the Russian people will be ashamed. If only we had been less careless, less stupid, less poor, less corrupt. If only we were still the super power we had once been. And it is at this moment that everyone-in Russia and in the world-will look to Boris Kiriyenko for leadership. The Russian president! And what will they see?”

“You made a film of him…” Alex muttered.

“We will release the film that shows him drunk beside the swimming pool. In his red shorts and flowered shirt. Playing with three half-naked women young enough to be his daughters! And we have interviewed him. We’ll release that too.”

“You’ve edited the interview!”

“Exactly.” Sarov nodded, his eyes catching the light. “Our interviewer asked him about a train strike in Moscow and Kiriyenko, who was already half drunk, replied: ‘This is my holiday. I’m too busy to deal with that.’ We will change the question. ‘What are you going to do about the accident in Murmansk?’ And Kiriyenko will reply-”

“-‘This is my holiday. I’m too busy to deal with that.’ ” Alex finished the sentence.

“The Russian people will see Kiriyenko for the weak, drunken imbecile that he is. They will very quickly blame him for the disaster at Murmansk -and with good reason. The northern fleet was once the pride of the whole nation. How could it have been allowed to become a rusting, leaking, lethal nuclear dump?”

The plane droned on. Conrad was listening intently to what Sarov was saying, his head balancing unevenly on his neck. The two guards at the back had gone to sleep.

“You said you would be in Moscow,” Alex muttered.

“It will take less than twenty-four hours for the government to be swept out of power,” Sarov replied. “There will be riots in the streets. Many Russians believe that life was better-much better-in the old days. They still believe in communism. Well, now their anger will be heard. It will be unstoppable. And I will be there to harness it, to use it to take power. I have followers who are waiting for it to happen. Before the nuclear cloud has settled, I will have total control of the country. And that is just the beginning, Alex. I will rebuild the Berlin Wall. There will be new wars. I will not rest until my kind of government, communist government, is the single dominant power in the world.”

There was a long silence.

“You’re prepared to kill millions of people to achieve this?” Alex asked.

Sarov shrugged. “Millions of people are dying in Russia right now. They can’t afford food. They can’t afford medicine-”

“And what happens to me?”

“I’ve already answered that question, Alex. I don’t believe it was a coincidence that you turned up the way you did. I believe it was meant to happen. I was never meant to do this on my own. You will be with me tomorrow and when the bomb is primed and ready, we will leave together. First Murmansk, then Moscow. Don’t you see what I’m offering you? You are not just going to be my son. You are going to have power, Alex. You are going to be one of the most powerful people in the world.”

The plane had already reached the coast of America and turned, beginning its journey north. Alex sank back in his seat, his head spinning. Absent-mindedly, he allowed his hand to slip into his trouser pocket. He had managed to bring one stick of the MI6 bubblegum with him. He also had the little figurine that was actually a stun grenade.

He closed his eyes and tried to work out what he was going to do.