Temple

FIFTH MACHINATION

Tuesday, January 5, 1815 hours THE MADRE DE DIOS GOLDMINE

‘Who are you?’ Odilo Ehrhardt demanded in German, slapping Renee hard across her face.

‘I told you,’ she yelled back at him. ‘My name is Renee Becker and I am a special agent with the Bundes Kriminal Amt?

The white helicopter was now flying low over the river, heading east. Race and Renee sat in the rear compartment, handcuffed. Before them sat Ehrhardt, Anistaze and Craterface. A lone pilot was up front flying the chopper.

Ehrhardt turned to face Race. ‘So who, then, are you?’

‘He’s American—’ Renee said.

Ehrhardt hit her again. Hard. ‘I wasn’t addressing you.’

He turned back to Race. ‘Now, who are you? FBI? Or are you Navy? A SEAL team, perhaps hell, you must be SEALs to take out our boats like that.’

‘We’re DARPA,’ Race said.

Ehrhardt frowned. Then he began to chuckle softly. ‘No, you’re not,’ he said, leaning forward, sticking his round fleshy face right in front of Race’s.

Race thought he was going to be sick. Ehrhardt was disgusting, vile, obese to the point of being grotesque, reeking of body odour and possessed of an evil moonlike face. A thin string of saliva smacked between his lips when he spoke and his breath smelled like horseshit.

‘I’m working with Doctor Frank Nash,’ Race said, trying desperately to remain calm. ‘He’s a retired Army colonel working with the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in conjunction with members of the United States Army.’

‘Frank Nash, eh?’ Ehrhardt said, expelling his foul, rancid breath all over Race’s face.

‘That’s right.’

‘And who, then, might you be, Little Man Trying To Be So Brave?’ he said, as he lifted Race’s Yankees cap off his head.

‘My name is William Race,’ Race said, grabbing his cap with his cuffed hands. ‘I’m a professor of ancient languages at New York University.’

‘Ah,’ Ehrhardt said, nodding. ‘So you are the one they brought along to translate the manuscript. Very good, very good. Before I have you killed, Mister William Race, professor of ancient languages at New York University, I would like to correct a certain misimpression that you appear to possess.’

‘And what is that?’

‘Frank Nash is not with DARPA.’

‘What?’ Race said, frowning.

‘And he most certainly is not a retired Army colonel, either. On the contrary, he is most active indeed. For your information, Colonel Francis K. Nash is the head of the United States Army’s Special Projects Unit.’

‘What?’ Race didn’t get it. Why would Nash say he was DARPA when in fact he wasn’t?

‘Ahha!’ Ehrhardt cackled, clapping his hands. ‘I love to see the look of betrayal on a man’s face just before he is about to die.’

Race was thoroughly confused now. He didn’t know what to think. Even if Nash wasn’t with DARPA, what did it matter? The Supernova was an Army project, and Nash was with Army Special Projects. Unless … Ehrhardt turned to Anistaze.

‘So. The American Army is here, too. What do you say about that?’

‘There must be another mole,’ Anistaze said, ignoring Race and Renee entirely.

‘In DARPA?’ Ehrhardt said.

Anistaze nodded. ‘We know of the link to the American terrorist group, but we didn’t know about this—’

‘Bah!’ Ehrhardt waved his hand dismissively. ‘It is of no importance now, because it is we who have the idol.’

‘What do you hope to achieve by all this?’ Renee asked defiantly. ‘Do you want to destroy the world?’

Ehrhardt smiled at her indulgently. ‘I do not want to destroy the world, Fraulein Becker. Far from it. I want to rebuild it. Reorder it, the way it should be.’

‘With what? One hundred billion dollars. Is that what this is all about? Money?’

‘My dear Fraulein Becker, is that the limit of your vision? Money. This is not about money. It is about what money can do. One hundred billion dollars bah it is nothing. It is but a means to an end.’

‘And what is the end?’

Ehrhardt’s eyes narrowed. ‘One hundred billion dollars will buy me a new world.’

‘A new world?’

‘Brave Fraulein Becker, what do you think I want? A new country, perhaps? To pursue the tired old Nazi goal of establishing an Aryan nation with the Herrenvolk at the head, and the Untermenschen beneath them? Bah!’

‘What is it that you want, then? How can you buy yourself a new world?’

‘By dumping one hundred billion US dollars on world financial markets at the bargain price of one cent apiece.’

‘What?’ Renee said.

‘The American economy is in a most precarious situation, the most precarious situation it has found itself in fifty years. Accumulated foreign debt stands at approximately eight hundred and thirty billion dollars, gross budget deficits occur annually. But what the United States depends on through all of this is a robust currency with which it will repay its debts in the future. ‘But if the value of that currency were to fall dramatically, say, to levels one quarter of its current strength, then the United States would be unable to repay those debts. ‘It would be bankrupt, its dollar worthless. What I intend to do with my hundred billion dollars is cripple the American economy.’

Ehrhardt’s eyes gleamed as he raved. ‘Since the Second World War this world has been an American world, has been force fed American culture, made to endure American trade dominance and the ruthless policy of economic slavery conducted and condoned by the American government. I have determined that the dumping of one hundred billion US dollars on world markets would be enough to cripple the American dollar beyond recoverable limits. American corporations will be worth nothing. The American people will not have the purchasing power to buy anything, because their currency will not be worth the paper it’s written on. The United States will become the world’s beggar and the world will start anew. That is what I am doing, Fraulein Becker. I am buying myself a new world.’

Race couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘You can’t possibly be serious—’ he said.

‘No?’ Ehrhardt said. ‘Look at George Soros. In 1997, the Prime Minister of Malaysia publicly blamed Soros for causing the Asian economic crisis by dumping vast sums of Asian currencies. And this was one man, one man, and he didn’t even have a tenth of the wealth that I am willing to utilize. But then, of course, I am going after a much bigger fish.’

‘What if they won’t give you the money?’ Renee said.

‘They will. Because I am the only man on earth who possesses an operational Supernova.’

‘But what if they don’t?’

‘Then I will detonate the device,’ Ehrhardt said simply.

The Nazi general turned in his seat and peered out through the forward windscreen of the chopper. Race and Renee followed his gaze. A truly spectacular sight met them. They saw the Amazon rainforest stretching away to the horizon, a vast blanket of limitless unending green. In the near distance, however, there was a break in the blanket of green an enormous brown coneshaped crater buried in the earth. It was situated right on the river, and it was massive, at least half a mile in diameter. Long gently sloping trucktrails wound their way down to the bottom of the gigantic earthen crater. Huge floodlights stood on its rim, illuminating it like a football stadium in the dim early evening light. In the centre of the crater, suspended high above it by a web of tightly stretched cables, was a large white boxshaped cabin, a control booth of some sort, possessed of wide oblong windows on all four of its sides. The only route of access to the control booth was via two long drooping suspension bridges that spanned the crater from opposite ends from the north and the south. Each bridge was at least four hundred yards long and constructed of thick steel cables. It was the goldmine. The Madre de Dios goldmine.

The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter landed on a pontoon mounted helipad that floated on the river’s surface not far from the edge of the massive open cut mine. The mine itself lay directly to the south of the Alto Purus River, and it was connected to it by a collection of decrepit old buildings three hulking warehouse like structures that were dreadfully worn with age. The largest jutted out over the river, resting on stilts. A series of wide garage style doors lined its length, enabling boats and seaplanes to be stored inside it. In years gone by, Race guessed, this must have been where the mining company’s boats and planes had come to be loaded up with gold. Today, however, it performed a different task. It allowed the Nazis to hide their armada of boats, helicopters and seaplanes from the prying eyes of America’s spy satellites. No sooner had the chopper landed on the floating helipad than the pilot hit a switch. Immediately, the rusty garage door to the helicopter’s left opened, and the square pontoon on which the chopper sat began to be pulled across the water towards it by some underwater cable mechanism. Race looked up as the chopper was pulled slowly inside the big warehouse.

A second later the sky above him abruptly disappeared, replaced by the interior of the warehouse’s roof, a complex latticework of rusting steel girders and dark wooden crossbeams.

Race stared at the warehouse all around him. It was positively huge an enormous enclosed space, about the size of an aeroplane hangar, the whole cavernous space illuminated by coneshaped halogen lights that were attached to the ceiling’s girders. The ‘floor’ of the warehouse, however, was quite unusual. It was the river’s surface. A long fingerlike deck way stretched out over the water, branching out at about a dozen intervals into smaller decks that ran at right angles to it mooring slots for the boats and planes that came to the mine to load up with gold. A long, wide conveyor belt ran at ground level for the length of the central deck way. It rose out of a large square hole in the wall at the landward end of the hangar and looped back at the far end of the deck way. Race guessed that the landward end of the conveyor belt was to be found somewhere deep within the coneshaped mine itself, probably on a loading ledge somewhere, or maybe even at the very bottom of the crater. The way he figured it, gold was loaded onto the conveyor belt down in the mine, then the conveyor belt lifted it up through the long tunnel cut into the earth, until it appeared here in the warehouse and was loaded onto a boat or plane. The chopper’s slowmoving pontoon came to a halt inside one of the mooring slots, its slowing rotor blades hanging marginally out over the conveyor belt, glinting in the glare of the halogen lights. From his seat in the back of the chopper, Race saw four men step out from a glass enclosed office at the landward end of the warehouse. Three of them wore white lab coats scientists. The fourth wore combat fatigues and carried a Gll assault rifle a soldier. One of the three scientists, Race saw, was much smaller than the other two, and infinitely older. He was a tiny little man, bent with age, with long silver hair and huge round eyes that were magnified by a pair of thick spectacles. Race guessed that this was Dr Fritz Weber, the brilliant Nazi scientist Schroeder and Nash had talked about earlier. Apart from the four men standing in front of the glass walled office, the rest of the warehouse was completely deserted. There’s no one else here, Race thought. The Nazis must have taken everyone they had to Vilcafor to get the idol. The four men here, plus Anistaze, Ehrhardt, Craterface and the pilot, were all they had left.

‘Unterscharfuhrer Ehrhardt said to Craterface as the chopper beneath them jolted to a halt, ‘if you would be so kind, please take Agent Becker and Professor Race out to the refuse pit. Then shoot them and bury them.

Race and Renee were shoved down a dirt path that ran westward through the rainforest away from the enormous riverside warehouses. Behind them, Craterface and the other Nazi soldier, the only other soldier at the mine, marshalled them forward with their G1 Is.

‘Any idea how we’re going to get out of this?’ Race asked Renee as they walked.

‘None at all,’ she replied coolly. ‘I thought you might have a plan or something. You know, something hidden up your sleeve.’

‘No plan.’

‘So we’re going to die?’

‘It looks that way.’

They rounded a bend in the path and Race winced as an overwhelmingly putrid smell assaulted his senses. A moment later, the four of them came to the end of the path and Race saw a pile of garbage scattered among the trees in front of them. It stretched away for about fifty yards old tyres, rotting piles of discarded food and waste, gnarled pieces of metal, even a few animal carcasses.

The refuse pit. ‘On your knees, both of you,’ Craterface growled. They dropped to their knees.

‘Hands on your heads.’ They laced their fingers behind their heads. Chick, chick! Race heard the other Nazi release the safety on his Gll. The reset EMP having sunk with Schroeder, the Glls were now fully operational again. Then he heard him step forward through the mud behind him, felt him place the barrel of the assault rifle against the back of his head. This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen, his mind screamed. It’s going too fast. Aren’t they supposed to dawdle or something? Give you a chance … a chance to get—

Race faced forward, away from the gun, bit his lip and shut his eyes, and gave in to the hopelessness of his situation, waited for the end. It came quickly. Blam! Nothing happened. Race’s eyes were still closed. The Gll had gone off, but for some reason, some bizarre reason, his head was still where it was supposed to be. And then suddenly whump! a body fell facedown into the mud right next to his kneeling frame.

Race opened his eyes and peered behind him and saw Craterface standing there, with his Gll aimed at the spot where the other Nazi’s head had been only moments ago. The dead Nazi now lay face down in the mud with an ugly soup of blood and brains oozing out from a hole in the back of his head.

‘Uli,’ Renee said, standing up and running over to Craterface. She hugged him warmly.

Race’s mind spun. Uli… ? Then Renee slapped the big pockfaced Nazi hard on the chest.

‘Honestly, could you have waited any longer? I was almost jumping out of my skin there.’

‘I’m sorry, Renee,’ Craterface Uli said. ‘I had to wait until we were far enough from the boathouse. Otherwise the others would have known.’

Race turned suddenly to face the man named Uli. ‘You’re BKA,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ the big man said, smiling.

‘And your good intentions saved your life, Professor William Race of New York University. In your bid to save Renee on the catamaran, you tackled the right man. If I’d been a real Nazi, I would have put a bullet in your brain right away. My name is Special Agent Uli Pieck, but around here I am known as Unterscharfuhrer Uli Kahr.’

And then suddenly in Race’s mind, it all made sense. ‘The manuscript,’ Race said. ‘You’re the one who got the BKA their copy of the manuscript.’

‘That’s right,’ Uli said, impressed.

Race recalled Karl Schroeder telling Frank Nash about the BKA’s plan to beat the Nazis to the idol. He remembered Schroeder’s words clearly: ‘To do that, we obtained a copy of the Santiago Manuscript and used it to find our way here.’ It was only now, though, that Race realized he should have known from that moment that the BKA had a man inside the Stormtrooper organization. The BKA’s copy of the manuscript was a Xerox of the actual Santiago Manuscript. But the actual Santiago Manuscript had been stolen from the San Sebastian Abbey in the French Pyrenees several days earlier by the Stormtroopers. Hence, the Xerox of the manuscript that the BKA had in their possession must have been sent to them by someone within the Nazi organization. A spy. Uli.

‘Come on,’ Uli said, hurrying over to the body of the fallen Nazi. He quickly stripped the dead man of his weapons, tossing his G11 and a couple of conventional hand grenades to Renee, and then throwing the Nazi’s black Kevlar breastplate and Glock20 pistol to Race. ‘Hurry, quickly, we have to stop Ehrhardt before he arms the Supernova!’

Heinrich Anistaze and Odilo Ehrhardt were standing in one of the glass enclosed offices inside the boathouse, surrounded by a bank of radio and communications equipment. In front of them stood Dr Fritz Weber, the former member of Adolf Hider’s atomic bomb project, the Nazi scientist who during World War II had conducted experiments on human subjects and been sentenced to death for it. Although his body was seventy-nine years old, hunchbacked and gnarled, his mind was as alive as ever. Weber held the Incan idol out in front of him.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said. At seventy-nine, Fritz Weber was two years older than Ehrhardt and two feet shorter. He was a small bespectacled man with hard appraising eyes and a wild Einsteinian mane of hair that flowed all the way down to his shoulders.

‘What word from the European and American governments?’ Ehrhardt asked him.

‘The Germans and the Americans both asked for more time to raise the money. Nothing from the others,’ Weber said. ‘It’s a ruse, a standard negotiator’s stalling tactic. They’re trying to buy more time until they know for sure that their own teams haven’t found the idol first.’

‘Then let’s show them who has the idol,’ Ehrhardt growled. He turned to face Anistaze. ‘Make a digital image of the idol now. Time it and date it and then feed it into the computer and send it to Bonn and Washington direct. Tell the presidents that the device has been armed and set to detonate in exactly thirty minutes. It will only be disarmed when we have confirmation of the transfer of one hundred billion dollars into our account in Zurich within that time.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Anistaze said, crossing the room to switch on a digital camera.

‘Doctor Weber,’ Ehrhardt said.

‘Yes, Oberstgruppenfuhrer?’

‘When the Obergruppenfuhrer is finished taking the digital image, I want you to take the idol to the control booth and arm the Supernova immediately. Set a thirty minute countdown and start the clock.’

‘Yes, Oberstgruppenfuhrer.’

Race, Renee and Uli hurried back up the dirt path towards the boathouse. Uli and Renee carried Glls, Race the small Glockthat Uli had taken from the dead Nazi at the refuse pit. He also now wore the dead Nazi’s black Kevlar breastplate over his Tshirt. He hadn’t really noticed the Nazis’ body armour before. But now, now that he was wearing it, he looked at it more closely. First of all, it was incredibly light and easy to wear. It didn’t inhibit his movement at all. Secondly, however, he noticed a strange A shaped unit attached to the back of the breastplate, covering his shoulder blades. This was also light, and like a spoiler on a sports car, it had been smoothly incorporated into the design of the Kevlar breastplate so as not to ruin its slick aerodynamic appearance. As always, and perhaps incongruously with his high tech body armour, Race was still wearing his damn Yankees cap.

‘Digital image is complete,’ Anistaze said from over by the bank of radio and electronic equipment. ‘Sending it now.’

Ehrhardt turned to Weber. ‘Arm the Supernova.’

Weber immediately snatched up the idol and, with Ehrhardt in tow, quickly headed out of the office.

‘Over there!’ Renee yelled, pointing at one of the two incredibly long suspension bridges that connected the riverside buildings to the control booth in the centre of the crater. Race looked out over the mine and saw two tiny figures one large and fat, the other small and dressed in a white lab coat bouncing across the modern steelcabled bridge. The smaller man was carrying something wedged underneath his arm. An object wrapped inside a purple cloth. The idol. Uli and Renee left the dirt path, plunged into a section of low foliage, heading in the direction of the crater. Race followed them. Seconds later, the three of them arrived at the rim of the gigantic mine and looked out over it.

‘It’s Ehrhardt and Weber,’ Uli said. ‘They’re taking the idol to the Supernova.’

‘What do we do?’ Race asked.

Uli said, ‘The Supernova is inside the control booth hanging over the mine. There are only two bridges that lead out to it that one from the north, and the other one from the south. Somehow we have to get to that cabin and disarm the Supernova.’

‘But how do we do that?’

‘To disarm the device,’ Uli said, ‘you have to enter a code into the arming computer.’

‘What’s the code?’

‘I don’t know,’ Uli said sadly. ‘No one knows. No one except Fritz Weber. He designed the device, so he’s the only one who knows the disarming code.’

‘Great,’ Race said.

Uli turned. ‘Okay now, listen, this is how I see it. I am the only one of us who can get to the control booth. If they see either of you running down one of the cable bridges, they’ll drop them immediately and isolate the booth. Then, if they don’t get their money, they’ll blow the Supernova.

‘But they’re expecting me back soon, believing that I have killed the two of you. When I get back, I will try to get to the control booth. Then I will try to … persuade … Weber to disarm the device.’

‘What do we do in the meantime?’ Race asked.

‘For this to work,’ Uli said, ‘I must be able to deal with Weber alone. I need you two to take out Anistaze and the remaining men in the boathouse.’

Exactly seven hundred feet above the floor of the mine, Dr Fritz Weber was punching buttons on a computer console. Beside him, a laser cutting device was carefully going to work on the thyrium idol inside a vacuum sealed chamber. Behind Weber stood Ehrhardt. And behind Ehrhardt, standing in the exact centre of the control booth, stood a very imposing, six foot tall silver and glass device. Two thermonuclear warheads, each approximately three feet in height and roughly conical in shape, were positioned inside a clear glass cylinder. They were arranged in what was known as an ‘hourglass formation’, the upper warhead pointing downwards, the lower one pointing upwards, so that the whole device looked like an enormous egg timer. In between the two warheads, at the throat of the hourglass, sat a skeletal frame made of titanium into which a subcritical mass of thyrium would be placed. It was the Supernova. A pair of cylindrical leadlined containers each the size of an ordinary garbage bin sat beside the device. They were warhead capsules monumentally strong, radiation proof containers that were used to transport nuclear warheads in safety. Now, as Weber knew, a conventional nuclear weapon required about four and a half pounds of plutonium. The Supernova, on the other hand, according to his calculations, would require much less than that, only a quarter of a pound of thyrium. Which was why now, with the aid of two Cray YMP supercomputers and a high-powered laser beam that could cut to within a thousandth of a millimetre, he was extracting a small cylindrical section of thyrium from the idol.

Nuclear science had come a long way since J. Robert Oppenheimer’s masterwork at Los Alamos in the 1940s. With the aid of multi tasking supercomputers like the two Crays, complex mathematical equations regarding the size, mass and force ratios of the radioactive core could be finished in minutes. Inert gas purification, proton enrichment and alpha-wave augmentation could all be done simultaneously. And the mathematics of it all the crucial part, the part that had taken Oppenheimer and his band of masterminds six whole years to master with the aid of the most primitive computers could be done by the YMPs in seconds. In truth, the hardest part for Weber had been the actual construction of the device itself. Even with the aid of the supercomputers, it had still taken him more than two years to build. While the laser cut through the stone in accordance with a preset weight for volume ratio based on the atomic weight of thyrium, Weber entered some complex mathematical formulae on one of the nearby supercomputers. Moments later, the laser cutter beeped loudly and reverted to standby mode. It was done. Weber came over, flicked off the laser cutter. Then, using a robotic arm, human arms being too inexact for such a task, he extracted the small cylindrical section of thyrium from the base of the idol. The section of thyrium was then placed inside a vacuum sealed chamber and bombarded with uranium atoms and alpha waves, turning it into a subcritical mass of the most potent substance ever to have existed on earth. Moments later, the robotic arm carried the entire chamber over to the Supernova where with the utmost precision it slid the chamber, with the subcritical mass of thyrium inside it, into the titanium frame that was suspended in between the two thermonuclear warheads. The Supernova was complete. The subcritical mass of thyrium now sat horizontally in its vacuum sealed throne between the two warheads, looking for all the world as if it contained the power of God. The thing was, it did. Screens all around the control booth scrolled out massive amounts of data feed. On one screen, under the heading DUAL AXIS RADIOGRAPHIC HYDRODYNAMIC TEMPLE FACILITY a never ending series of ones and zeroes scrolled downwards. Weber ignored them, began typing on the computer keyboard that was attached to the front of the Supernova. A prompt appeared on the screen: INSERT ARMING CODE. Weber did so.

SUPERNOVA ARMED. Weber typed: INITIALIZE TIMER DETONATION SEQUENCE. TIMER DETONATION SEQUENCE INITIALIZED.

INSERT TIMER DURATION.

Weber typed: 00:30:00. The screen changed instantly. YOU NOW HAVE 00:30:00 MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE. ENTER DISARM CODE HERE Weber paused as he gazed at the screen, took a slow, deep breath. Then he slammed his finger down on the ENTER key.

00:29:59

00:29:58

00:29:57

‘Where is Unterscharfuhrer Kahr?’ Heinrich Anistaze asked nobody in particular as he peered out from the boathouse office at the immense earthen crater outside. ‘He should have been back by now.’

Anistaze turned. ‘You,’ he said, tossing a radio to one of the two lab coatwearing technicians standing at a computer terminal nearby. ‘Go to the pit and see what is taking the Unterscharfuhrer so long.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Renee and Race slammed into the boathouse wall together. Only moments earlier, Uli had left them. He had headed off down the side of the massive boathouse in the direction of the crater and the northern cable bridge. Renee peered round the wide garage door next to her. The interior of the enormous boathouse was clear, in particular, the wide section of floor between the glass offices to her right and the mooring slots on her left. Nothing stirred. There wasn’t a soul in sight. She nodded to Race. Ready? Race acknowledged her signal by gripping his Glock a little more tightly. Ready. Then without a word Renee quickly ducked around the doorway, her Gll held high, pressed against her shoulder. Race made to follow her, but as he did so, another door behind him suddenly burst open and he dropped to the ground in an instant, taking cover behind an old oil barrel. A young Nazi technician, dressed in a white lab coat and holding a radio awkwardly in his hand, rushed out through the newly opened door and hurried off down the path towards the refuse pit. Race’s eyes went wide. He was going to the refuse pit, where he would find one dead Nazi and nothing else.

‘Shit,’ Race said.

‘Uli . . ‘ Decision time. He could go after the technician and then do what? Kill him in cold blood? Despite all that he had been through so far, Race wasn’t sure if he could actually do that, kill a man. On the other hand, he could warn Uli. Yes, that was better, much better. And so at that moment, instead of following Renee into the boathouse, Race headed off down the side of the big warehouse like building in the direction of the crater and Uli. Uli came to the northern cable bridge. It stretched away from him into the distance, swooping fearlessly over the vertiginous seven hundred foot drop, its steel threaded handrails converging like a pair of railroad tracks disappearing into the distance, ending as tiny specks at the doorway to the control booth four hundred yards away.

‘Unterscharfuhrer,’ a voice said suddenly from behind him. Uli spun. And found himself standing before Heinrich Anistaze himself.

‘What are you doing?’ Anistaze demanded. ‘I was going to see if the Oberstgruppenfuhrer and Doctor Weber required any assistance over in the control booth,’ Uli answered, perhaps a little too quickly.

‘Have you eliminated the two prisoners?’

‘Yes, sir, I have.’

‘Where is Dieter?’ Anistaze asked.

‘He, uh, had to go to the WC,’ Uli lied.

At that exact moment, the lab technician Anistaze had sent to the refuse pit arrived there. He saw Dieter’s body immediately, lying face down in the mud, blood and brains seeping out from the hole in the back of its head. No Americans. No Uli, either. The lab technician lifted his radio to his lips.

‘Herr Obergruppenfuhrer,’ the technician’s voice came in over Anistaze’s earpiece.

‘Yes.’ Anistaze was still standing with Uli at the edge of the northern cable bridge. The four fingers of the Nazi commander’s left hand tapped silently on his pants leg as he listened to the voice on his earpiece.

‘Dieter is dead, sir. I repeat, Dieter is dead. I can’t see the prisoners or Unterscharfuhrer Kahr anywhere.’

‘Thank you,’ Anistaze said, staring at Uli.

‘Thank you very much.’ Anistaze’s cold black eyes bored into Uli’s.

‘Where are the prisoners, Unterscharfuhrer?’

‘I beg your pardon, Herr Obergruppenfuhrer?’

‘I said, where are the prisoners?’

It was then that Uli saw the Glock appear in Anistaze’s right hand. Renee moved silently through the boathouse, gun up. Race hadn’t come in behind her, and she wondered what had happened to him. But she couldn’t wait, she still had a job to do. The boathouse was silent, still. The conveyor belt that rose up out of the tunnel to her right sat motionless. She saw no one standing in the office beyond it. An engine turned over. Renee spun. And saw the rotor blades of the parked Bell Jet Ranger helicopter slowly sputter to life. Then she saw the pilot, lying on his side on the floor of the cockpit, oblivious to her presence, carrying out some kind of repairs on the chopper. Then suddenly with a shrill buzz the rotor blades of the helicopter snapped into overdrive and the deafening roar of their motion filled the enormous space of the boathouse. Renee almost jumped out of her skin. If it hadn’t been for the roar of the rotors, however, she probably would have heard him sneak up on her. But she didn’t. For at that moment, as Renee moved towards the pilot and the chopper with her Gll raised, something very heavy hit her on the back of her head, pitching her forward, sending her falling heavily to the ground.

‘Herr Obergruppenfuhrer,’ Uli said as he stood at the edge of the massive crater, raising his hands.

‘What are you—’

Blam!

Anistaze’s Glock went off a single shot that went thundering into Uli’s stomach. Uli doubled over at once, fell to the ground. Anistaze stood over him, gun in hand.

‘So, Unterscharfuhrer. Am I to assume that you are BKA scum, too?’

Uli rolled around on the ground at the Nazi commander’s feet, clenching his teeth in agony.

‘No answer,’ Anistaze said. ‘Well, how about this, then. How about I blow off every finger on your right hand, one by one, until you tell me who you work for. And when I am done with that hand, I shall start on the other one.’

‘Argh!’ Uli grunted.

‘Wrong answer,’ Anistaze said, aiming his gun at Uli’s hand, squeezing the trigger. The gun went off. Just as William Race, bursting out from behind the nearby corner, crashed into Anistaze from the side, hitting him at speed, knocking the Glock from his hand. But the two of them fell awkwardly, bouncing off one of the buttresses that held up the cable bridge. Anistaze’s right foot slipped over the edge of the crater and he threw out a hand that gripped Race’s arm like a vice and before Race even knew what was happening, both he and Anistaze were falling out over the edge of the mine. Down the wall of the crater. Fortunately, the earthen walls of the mine weren’t perfectly vertical but rather were slanted at a very steep angle, maybe seventy five degrees or so. As such, they still fell fast, but not straight down. Both men kicked up puffs of dirt as they slid wildly down the wall of the crater. They slid a full ninety feet before they both landed in a crashing heap on flat, solid ground. In the boathouse, Renee hit the ground, too, and for a moment she saw stars.

She rolled onto her back— just in time to see a length of piping held by the second Nazi lab technician come rushing down at her face! She rolled again and the pipe clanged against the floorboards inches away from her head. She quickly somersaulted to her feet, looking for her weapon. Her G11 lay on the ground four feet away, out of reach, dislodged by her fall after being smacked on the back of the head with the pipe. The technician swung at her again. Renée ducked and the pipe went swiping over her head, then she bobbed back up and punched the technician square in the face, sending him flying backwards into a wall. The technician’s back slammed into a control panel on the wall. He must have struck a button as he hit it, Renée guessed, because at that moment she heard an ominous clanking of machinery within the walls of the massive boathouse and suddenly—without warning—the big conveyor belt that ran down the length of the warehouse started moving. Race and Anistaze jolted forward. Both men were still in something of a daze after their ninety foot drop into the open cut mine, and they were only just getting to their feet when suddenly the ground beneath them lurched forward. Race tottered slightly, looked down at the ground beneath his feet. It wasn’t solid ground at all. It was the low end of the conveyor belt—the same conveyor belt that reached the surface inside the boathouse! Only now it was moving. Upward. Race spun—just in time to see Anistaze’s four fingered left fist come flying at his face. The German commando’s blow hit its mark and Race dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the wide conveyor belt. Anistaze stood over him and then, abruptly; the world went black. At first Race didn’t know what had happened. Then he realised. He and Anistaze— positioned on the moving conveyor belt—had just been drawn into the long dark tunnel that led back up to the boathouse.

Up in the boathouse, Renée fought with the technician as the deafening roar of the Bell Jet Ranger’s rapidly spinning rotor blades echoed throughout the cavernous interior space. The tech swung at Renée with the pipe again just as she leapt backwards and the blow missed, but as she moved, Renée saw that the pilot over in the helicopter had seen what was going on over by the conveyor belt and was now looking directly at her! The pilot began to shimmy out of his awkward position on the floor of the chopper—just as, at that exact same moment, the young technician who had gone to the refuse pit to search for Uli appeared in the doorway of the boathouse! Renée saw them both. And then in one fluid motion, as she ducked underneath another blow from the first technician, she pulled two grenades from her belt—the grenades Uli had retrieved from the dead Nazi at the refuse pit— yanked out their pins, spun and hurled them across the boathouse together! The two grenades skidded across the floor, fanned out at different angles—one heading for the helipad pontoon and the chopper, the other heading directly for the young technician standing at the doorway. One, one thousand… Two, one thousand… Three, one thousand… The tech in the doorway realised what the object bouncing toward him was a second too late. He tried to move at the last moment, but he wasn’t fast enough. The grenade exploded. So did he.

The second grenade bounced onto the helipad pontoon and came to rest directly underneath the sleek white Bell Jet Ranger. It detonated—abruptly, powerfully— shattering the chopper’s bubble in a nanosecond, killing the pilot on its floor instantly. The blast also blew the helicopter’s landing skids to hell, obliterating them, causing the whole chopper to drop four feet straight down and crash down onto the pontoon. It came to rest on its belly, its rotor blades still whipping around above it in a blur of speeding motion. As they rose through the darkness, Race and Anistaze struggled. Race fought hard—as hard as he physically could— throwing punches wildly, some hitting, most missing. But Anistaze was by far the better fighter, and soon he had Race flat on his back, pinned to the ground, vainly fending off his blows. And then Anistaze drew a Bowie knife from a sheath down by his ankle. Even in the darkness of the steeply sloping tunnel, Race saw the long glistening blade as it came rushing down toward his face. He caught Anistaze’s wrist with his hands, held the blade at bay, but the Nazi had all the leverage and the blade came closer and closer to his left eye— abruptly, harsh white light assaulted both of them and just as suddenly ,the steep slope of the conveyor belt dropped level beneath them, causing both men to lose their balance and giving Race the chance to swipe Anistaze’s knife clear. He looked quickly about himself. He was inside the boathouse again! Only now he was travelling horizontally on the conveyor belt, still pinned underneath Anistaze. Unfortunately for both of them, however, the conveyor belt was now drawing them toward the rapidly spinning blades of the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter, which now—owing to the fact that it had lost its skids in the grenade blast—whipped round like a horizontal buzz saw barely three feet above the moving conveyor belt! The rotor blades were ten feet away. Spinning fast. Nine feet. Anistaze saw them too. Eight feet. Race saw Renée struggling with the technician over by the wall. The roar of the chopper’s blurring rotor blades thundered throughout the cavernous warehouse. Seven feet. And Anistaze decided on a horrifying new tactic. With tremendous strength, he yanked Race up by the lapels and held him out at arm’s length so that Race’s neck was level with the speeding blades of the helicopter. Six feet. Renée was still fighting with the first technician. In between blows she saw Race and Anistaze fighting on the conveyor belt, saw Anistaze lift the professor onto his knees and hold him out from his body. Her eyes went wide with horror. Anistaze was going to decapitate Race with the blades of the chopper! Five feet. And she saw the control panel on the wall. The panel that started and stopped the conveyor belt… Four feet. Race saw the rapidly spinning rotor blades behind him, saw what Anistaze was trying to do. Three feet. He tried to move, tried to fight. But it was no use. Anistaze was just too strong. Race looked into his assailant’s eyes and saw nothing but hate. Two feet. Certain death was approaching. Race yelled in desperation.

‘Arrggghhhh’

One foot. At that precise moment, Renée ducked another blow from the technician and swung in swiftly behind him, then she grabbed him roughly by the hair and banged his head hard against the control panel on the wall. The conveyor belt stopped on a dime.

Race stopped, too—the nape of his neck jolting to a halt an inch from the speeding blur of the helicopter’s rotating blades. Anistaze’s face went blank in surprise. What the fuck? Race took the opportunity and kneed the Nazi hard in the crotch.

Anistaze roared. Just as Race grabbed him by the lapels!

‘Smile, motherfucker,’ Race said. And then he dropped down onto the conveyor belt and rolled quickly backwards, underneath the chopper’s blur ring blades, using his newfound leverage to yank Anistaze forward, neck first, right into the buzz saw like blades of the helicopter! The rotor blades of the chopper sliced through Anistaze’s neck like a chainsaw through butter, removing his head from his body in a smooth, frictionless cut. An explosion of blood splattered all over Race’s face as he lay on the conveyor belt, still holding onto Anistaze’s lapels. Race quickly discarded the body—yecch!—and rolled himself off the conveyor belt. He shook his head. He couldn’t quite believe what he had just done. He had just decapitated a man. Whoa.

He looked up and saw Renée standing over by the control panel, standing astride the unconscious body of the Nazi technician. The tech had been knocked out cold by the blow she’d given him against the control panel. Renée smiled at Race, gave him the thumbs up. For his part, Race just fell limp against the floor, exhausted. No sooner had his head hit the ground, however, than Renée was at his side. ‘Not yet, Professor,’ she said, pulling him to his feet. ‘No resting yet. Come on, we have to stop Ehrhardt from detonating the Supernova.’

In the control booth high above the mine, the timer on the Supernova’s laptop screen continued to tick downwards.

00:15:01 00:15:00 00:14:59 Ehrhardt keyed his radio. ‘Obergruppenfuihrer?’

No response.

‘Anistaze, where are you?’ Still nothing. Ehrhardt turned to Fritz Weber. ‘Something’s wrong. Anistaze’s not answering. Initiate protective counter measures around the device. Seal the control booth.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Renée and Race dragged Uli into the glasswalled office overlooking the mine and laid him down on the floor. A large digital timer on the wall ticked downwards: 00:14:55 00:14:54 00:14:53

‘Damn it,’ Race said, ‘they started the countdown!’

Renée immediately went to work on the gunshot wound to Uli’s stomach. As she did so, however, a fax machine on the far side of the office began to clatter loudly.

Race, now carrying a G11 assault rifle, went over to it as a fax began to scroll out. It read:

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SECURE FACSIM V,F, TRANSMISSION ORIGINATING FAX NO: 12025556122 DESTINATION FAX NO: 5134549775 DATE: 5

JAN, 1999

TIME: 18:55:45 (LOCAL) SENDER CODE: 004 (NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR)

MESSAGE IS AS FOLLOWS:

Having consulted with his advisors, and in keeping with his well-known views on terrorism, the President has instructed me to inform you that he WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES pay to you any sum of money to restrain you from detonating any device you may have in your possession.

W. PHH, VP LIPANSKI

National Security Advisor to the President of the United States

‘Jesus,’ Race breathed. ‘They’re not going to pay…’

Renée came over, looked at the fax. ‘God, look how forceful the wording is. They’re trying to call his bluff. They don’t think he’ll blow the Supernova.’

‘Will he blow the Supernova?’

‘Absolutely,’ Uli said from the floor, causing Race and Renée to spin around. Uli spoke through clenched teeth. ‘He talks constantly of it. He’s insane. He only wants one thing—his new world. And if he can’t have that, then he will simply destroy the existing one.’

‘But why?” Race said.

‘Because that is the currency he trades in. It is the currency he has always traded in—life and death. Ehrhardt is an old man, old and evil. He has no further use for the world. If he doesn’t get his money—and hence his new world order—he will just destroy the old one without even thinking twice.’

‘Wonderful,’ Race said. ‘And we’re the only ones who can stop him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then how do we do it?’ Renée said, turning to Uli. ‘How do we stop the countdown?’

“You have to enter the disarm code into the device’s arming computer,’ Uli said. ‘But as I said before, only Weber knows the code.’

‘Then somehow,’ Race said, ‘we’re going to have to get that code out of him.’

Moments later, Race was running around the rim of the immense crater, heading for the southern cable bridge. The plan was simple. Renée would wait at the start of the northern bridge while Race ran around the crater to the southern bridge. Then, when he arrived there, they would both make a run for the control booth at the same time, from opposite ends. The logic of their plan was based on the fact that the two cable bridges that stretched out to the control booth were quite advanced and very sturdy each bridge was constructed of high tensile steel threads and to drop either of them would require someone to uncouple four separate pressure couplings. If Race and Renée bolted down the two bridges at the same time, one of them might make it to the booth before Ehrhardt and/or Weber managed to uncouple both bridges. After six and a half minutes of running, Race arrived at the southern cable bridge. It stretched away from him, out over the mine. It was so monstrously long—a feature which was accentuated by its narrowness. While it was only wide enough for one person to travel down at a time, it was easily as long as four football fields stretched end on end. Oh God, Race thought.

‘Professor, are you ready?’ Renée’s voice said suddenly in his earpiece. It had been so long since he’d used his radio gear, Race had almost forgotten he was wearing it.

‘As I’ll ever be,’ he said.

‘Then let’s go.’ Race stepped out onto the rope bridge. He saw the white box shaped cabin at the far end of it, suspended high above the floor of the mine saw the door sunk into its wall at the point where the bridge met it. At the moment, that door was closed. There was no movement inside the control booth’s long rectangular windows, either. No. The booth just sat there—silent—hovering perfectly in the air, seven hundred feet above the world. Race moved down the bridge. At that very same moment, Renée was moving quickly down the northern cable bridge. She moved with her eyes locked on the closed door at the end of her bridge—watched it with tense anticipation, waiting for it to burst open at any moment. But the door remained resolutely closed. Odilo Ehrhardt peered out from behind one of the windows of the control booth, saw Renée coming down the northern bridge. Out the opposite window, he saw Race mirroring her movement, coming down the southern cable bridge. Now Ehrhardt had to make a choice. He chose Race. The tiny figures of Race and Renée made their way down the two swooping suspension bridges, converging on the control booth. Renée was moving a little faster than Race, running quickly, her gun up. When she was about halfway down her walkway, however, the door at the end of it burst open and Odilo Ehrhardt stepped out onto the bridge. Renée stopped dead in her tracks, froze.

Ehrhardt was holding the tiny figure of Dr Fritz Weber in front of him, shielding himself with the little scientist’s struggling body. Ehrhardt had one pudgy arm wrapped around Weber’s throat. In his other hand, he held a Glock 20 semiautomatic pistol levelled at the scientist’s head. Don’t do it, Renée’s mind pleaded, willing Ehrhardt not to kill the only man who knew the code to disarm the Supernova. She obviously wasn’t wishing hard enough. For at that moment—that singular, chilling moment—Odilo Ehrhardt gave Renée a final sinister smile and pulled the trigger. The gun in Ehrhardt’s hand went off loud and hard, echoing throughout the crater. It sent a geyser of blood exploding out the side of Weber’s head, sent his brains spraying out over the handrail and down into the crater. Weber’s body went completely limp as Ehrhardt tipped it over the railing and Renée could do nothing but stare in stunned horror as the corpse dropped—dropped and dropped and dropped—seven hundred horrible feet before it hit the bottom of the mine with a muted distant thud.

Race heard the gunshot too, and a second later, he caught sight of Weber’s body as it went sailing down into the crater. ‘Good God…’ He started moving more quickly toward the control booth, started running…

Back on the northern side of the control booth, Odilo Ehrhardt wasn’t finished. Having tossed Weber’s body off the bridge, he now hurriedly began uncoupling the pressure hoses that connected the cable bridge to the control booth.

“No!” Renée yelled, gripping the handrail on either side of her. With a sharp snaphiss! one of the pressure couplings came free, and the handrail to Renée’s left just dropped away. Renée did the calculations in her head. There was no way she could get to the control booth before Ehrhardt released the other three couplings. She turned around and ran, ran for all she was worth, back up the cable bridge.

Snaphiss! Another coupling broke free, and the other handrail dropped away. Two couplings to go. Renée was running hard—now on a rail less bridge— seven hundred feet above the ground. A few seconds later, the third coupling went and the boards beneath her started to sag to the left. Then, with a final grin of satisfaction, Ehrhardt snapped open the last coupling and the massive suspension bridge— connected to the northern rim of the crater, but now no longer connected to the cabin in its centre—fell into the abyss, with Renée Becker on it. Renée was only about fifty feet from the rim when the bridge dropped away beneath her. As soon as she felt it give way, she dived forward, clutching onto the steel floorboards with her fingers, holding onto them for dear life. The cable bridge fell flat against the slanted wall of the crater. Renée slammed into the mine’s earthen wall, bounced off it, but—somehow—managed to hold on.

Race reached the door at the end of his cable bridge just as Renée’s voice came blasting in over his headset.

‘Professor, this is Renée. My bridge is down. I’m out of the equation. It’s up to you now.’

Great, Race thought wryly. Just what I needed to hear. He took a deep breath and gripped his gun tightly. Then he grabbed the doorknob and turned it, and pushed open the door with the barrel of his G11… Beep! Race saw Ehrhardt before he saw the source of the high-pitched beep. The big Nazi general was standing on the other side of the control room, over by the northern door, with his Glock hanging lazily by his side. He was smiling at Race. To Ehrhardt’s left, Race saw the Supernova—its silver and glass surfaces gleaming, the cylindrical section of thyrium situated in its core, suspended inside its vacuum sealed chamber in between the two thermonuclear warheads. Two Cray YMP supercomputers sat against the wall to the side of the Supernova. The two warhead capsules that had been used to transport the nukes sat on the floor beside the big device, and the idol—now with a hollowed out section in its base—sat on a nearby bench, discarded. On the laptop computer attached to the front of the Supernova—the source of the beep— Race saw the countdown timer ticking down toward zero: 00:05:00 00:04:59 00:04:58 Underneath the countdown, he saw the words: ‘ALTERNATE DETONATION SEQUENCE INITIALIZED’ Alternate detonation sequence?

‘Thank you, Little Man Trying Desperately To Be Brave,’ Ehrhardt sneered. ‘By entering this cabin, you have just condemned yourself to death.’

Race frowned. Ehrhardt’s eyes flicked left. Race followed them, and saw—situated along the eastern wall of the control booth eight yellow 200gallon drums. The words ‘CAUTION!’ and ‘DANGER: HYPERGOLIC FLUIDS’ screamed out from their sides. Other words were stencilled across the front sections of the huge yellow drums: ‘NITROGEN TETROXIDE.’ There were four drums of hydrazine. Four of nitrogen tetroxide. A complex web of cables and hoses connected each plastic barrel to the next. Hypergolic fluids, Race recalled from his chemistry days, were fluids that exploded on contact with one another. A second countdown timer sat on top of one of the hydrazine drums. This timer, however, sat motionless, frozen at five seconds.

00:00:05 And then—just then—Race saw that the eight yellow drums were connected to the Supernova’s arming computer by a thick black cord that snaked its way across the floor of the cabin.

00:04:00 00:03:59 00:03:58

‘How?’ Race demanded, his G11 pressed against his shoulder, trained on Ehrhardt’s chest. ‘How have I condemned myself to death?’

‘By opening that door, you just triggered a mechanism that will, in one way or another, end your life.’

‘How goddamnit!“ Ehrhardt smiled. ‘There are two incendiary devices in this room, Professor: the Supernova and the hypergolic fuels. One will blow up the entire planet, the other will only blow up this cabin. I know you wish to disarm the Supernova, but if you succeed in doing that you will do so at a price.’

‘What price?’

‘Your life in exchange for the world’s. By opening that door, Professor, you set off a mechanism that linked the Supernova’s arming computer to the hypergolic fluids. Now, if for any reason the Supernova’s countdown is terminated, the timer on the hypergolic fuels will be started. In five seconds, the fuels will mix and when they do they will detonate, destroying this cabin, destroying you. ‘So now you have a choice, Professor, a singular choice, unique in the history of mankind. You can die with the rest of the planet in exactly three and a half minutes—or you can save the world. But in doing so, you must sacrifice your own life.’ Race couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A singular choice… You can save the world… But to do so, you must sacrifice your own life… The two men stood on either side of the control booth, Race standing in the southern doorway with his G11 pressed against his shoulder, Ehrhardt over by the northern door, with his Glock by his side.

00:03:21 00:03:20 00:03:19

‘The President has agreed to pay your ransom—’ Race said quickly trying a last ditch ploy.

‘No he hasn’t,’ Ehrhardt snapped, snatching a sheet of paper from the bench beside him and flinging it at Race. The sheet fluttered to the floor. It was a copy of the same fax Race had seen in the mine’s office earlier. Ehrhardt must have had a fax machine in here too.

‘And even if he had said that he would pay,’ the Nazi spat, ‘I still wouldn’t be able to disarm the device. Only Weber knew the disarming code and he, my friend, is dead. No. Now, it is you or it is nothing. Now, whatever happens, at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that you will not be leaving this cabin alive.’

‘But what about you?’ Race said defiantly. ‘You’ll die too.’

‘I am old, Professor Race. Old and decayed. Death means nothing to me. The fact that I can take the rest of the world with me, however, means everything…” And at that moment, quick as a rattlesnake, Ehrhardt whipped his Glock up, aimed it at Race and pulled the—

Blam!.

Race’s G11 bucked against his shoulder as he fired a single round. The caseless bullet smacked into Ehrhardt’s enormous chest, causing a gout of blood to explode out from it, the impact hurling the big man into the wall behind him. Ehrhardt slammed into the wall and—bablam!—his Glock went off, firing into the ceiling, smashing a smoke alarm to pieces, and suddenly a series of fire sprinklers in the ceiling of the cabin burst forth with showers of water. Ehrhardt sank to the floor in the teeming indoor rain—a dribbling, ugly mess—his mouth open, his eyes wide with shock.

Race just stood there in his doorway, frozen in the firing position, water hammering against his face, stunned. He had never shot a man before. Not even during the river chase earlier. He felt ill. He swallowed back the bile welling in his throat. And then he saw the Supernova’s timer: 00:03:00 00:02:59 00:02:58

He snapped out of his trance, hurried over to examine the fallen Nazi leader. Ehrhardt was still alive, but barely. Blood dribbled out from his mouth, bubbled out from his chest. But his eyes still glimmered, glaring up at Race with a kind of mad delight, as if Ehrhardt were thrilled to have left him in this position—alone in a control booth in a foreign country, with nothing but a dying Nazi, a ticking Supernova, and eight drums of explosive hypergolic fuel that would kill him for certain even if he did manage to disarm the main bomb. All right, Will, stay calm.

00:02:30 00:02:29 00:02:28 Twoanda half minutes to the end of the world. Stay calm, my ass! Race scrambled across the floor to the Supernova, peered at the screen on its arming computer. YOU NOW HAVE 00:02:27 MINUTES TO ENTER DISARM CODE. ENTER DISARM CODE HERE Race stared in dismay at the timer. Sprinkler rain pounded against his head. What are you gonna do, Will? It wasn’t like he had a choice now, was it? He could die along with the rest of the world or he could try to figure out how to stop the Supernova—and die that way, too. Damn it! he thought. He wasn’t a hero. People like Renco and Van Lewen were heroes. He was just a nobody. A guy. A university professor who was always late for work, who always missed his train. Jesus, he still had outstanding parking fines to pay, for God’s sake! He wasn’t a hero. And he didn’t want to die like one either. Besides, he wouldn’t know the first thing about cracking the code on the Supernova’s arming computer. He wasn’t a hacker. No, the simple fact of the matter was that Fritz Weber was dead, and he was the only one who knew the code that would disarm the Supernova. 0002:01 00i02:00 00i01:59 Race shut his eyes, sighed. Might as well die like a hero. And so he sat up straight in front of the Supernova, and stared at its display screen with a fresh mind. All right, Will, deep breaths. Deep breaths. He looked at the screen, at the line that read: ENTER DISARM CODE HERE Okay. Eight spaces to fill. To fill with a code. Okay, so who knows the code? Weber knows the code. He was the only one who knew the code. Just then a voice exploded in Race’s ear and he almost jumped out of his skin. “Professor. What’s happening?’

It was Renée.

‘Jesus, Renée. You scared the shit out of me. What’s hap peg? Well, Ehrhardt shot Weber and then I shot Ehrhardt and now I’m sitting in front of the Supernova trying to figure out how to disarm it. Where are you?’

‘I’m back in the office overlooking the crater. Ehrhardt cut my bridge!’

‘Got any ideas on how to disarm this thing?’

“No. Weber was the only one—”

‘I know that already. Listen, I’ve got eight spaces to fill and I need to fill ‘em fast.’

‘Okay. Let me think…’

00:01:09 00:01:08 00:01:07

‘One minute, Renée.’

‘All right. All right. They said in that telephone transcript that their Supernova is based on the US model, right? That means the code must be numerical.’

‘How do you know that?’

“Because I know that the American Supernova has a numerical code.’ She must have heard his silence. “We have people inside your agencies.’

‘Oh, okay. Numerical code it is then. Eight digit code. That leaves us with about a trillion possible combinations.’

00:01:00 00:00:59 00:00:58

‘Weber was the only person who knew the code, right?’ Renée said. ‘So it has to be something to do with him.’

‘Or it could be a number that’s completely random,’ Race said dryly.

‘Unlikely,’ Renée said. ‘People who use numerical codes rarely use random numbers. They use numbers that have significance to them, numbers that they can recall by thinking of a memorable event or date or something like that. So what do we know about Weber?”

But Race wasn’t listening anymore. Something had twigged in the back of his mind as he’d been listening to Renée something about what she had just said. ‘

All right,’ Renée was saying, thinking aloud. “He was a Nazi during the Second World War. He performed experiments on human subjects.’

But Race was thinking about something else entirely. They use numbers that have significance to them, numbers that they can recall by thinking of a memorable event or date… And then it hit him. It was the New York Times article that he had read on his way to work yesterday morning—before he had arrived at the university to find a team of Special Forces troops waiting for him in his office. The article had said that thieves were finding it easier to break into people’s bank accounts because 85 per cent of people used their birthdays or some other significant date as their ATM number.

‘When was his birthday?’ Race said suddenly.

“Oh, I know that,’ Renée said. ‘I saw it in his file. It was in 1914 sometime. Oh, what was it? That’s it. August 6. August 6, 1914.”

00:00:30 00:00:29 00:00:28

‘What do you think?’ Race yelled over the roar of the indoor rain.

“It’s a possibility,” Renée said. Race thought about that for a second. He scanned the room around him as he did so— saw Ehrhardt sitting with his back up against the wall, cackling through his bloodfilled mouth.

‘No,’ Race said decisively. ‘That’s not it.’

“What?”

00:00:21 00:00:20 00:00:19

For some reason, Race was thinking with crystal clarity now.

‘It’s too simple. If he used a date at all, it would be a significant one, but one which would be in some way clever or smug. Something which shoved it to the rest of the world. He wouldn’t use something as inane as his birthday. He would use something with meaning.’ “Professor, we don’t have much time. What else is there?” Race tried to remember everything he had heard about Fritz Weber earlier. He had performed experiments on human subjects.

00:00:15 He had been tried at Nuremberg.

00:00:14 And sentenced to death.

00:00:13 And executed.

00:00:12 Executed. Executed… That’s it, Race thought.

00:00:11 But when was the date?

00:00:10 ‘Renée. Quickly. What was the date of Weber’s supposed execution?’

00:00:09 ‘Oh… November 22, 1945.’

00:00:08 November 22, 1945.

00:00:07 Do it.

00:00:06

Race leaned forward, punched in the numbers on the Supernova’s keyboard: ENTER DISARM CODE HERE 11221945 Once he had entered the code—with the sprinkler rain pounding down around him and the timer in front of him rapidly counting down to zero—Race slammed his finger down on the ‘ENTER’ key. Beep! Ehrhardt’s cackling stopped as soon as he heard the beep. Race’s face broke out into a wide grin. Oh my God, I did it… And then suddenly the Supernova’s screen changed:

DISARM CODE ENTERED. DETONATION COUNTDOWN TERMINATED AT

00:00:04 MINUTES. ALTERNATE DETONATION SEQUENCE ACTIVATED.

Alternate detonation sequence? ‘Oh, damn…“ Race breathed. His eyes flashed over to the other timer—the one that sat on top of the hydrazine drums on the other side of the room—the timer that was set permanently at 00:00:05. The second timer activated, ticked over to 00:00:04. Ehrhardt’s eyes went wide with surprise. Race’s went even wider. ‘Oh, man,’ he said. Exactly four seconds later, at the expiration of the abbreviated countdown, the hypergolic fuels in the drums mixed and the walls of the control booth blew out with shocking force.

Its windows shattered as one, blasting out into the sky in a million fragments, closely followed by a roaring, billowing, blasting ball of flames. Debris shot out in every direction—doors, pieces of the Supernova, torn segments of wooden benches, sections of floor—all dispatched with such monumental force that some of them even managed to clear the rim of the crater, landing in the thick foliage that surrounded the giant earthen mine. The cracked pieces of the two thermonuclear warheads that had comprised the Supernova landed harmlessly on the floor of the crater—the hypergolic blast far too crude to split the atoms inside them. In a moment, all that was left of the control booth was a blackened skeletal frame charred beyond recognition, hanging loosely above the mine its walls gone, its windows gone, its floor and ceiling also gone. William Race was gone too.