The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

40

From the window of what was called her yogwan or wayside inn, Mary Newman looked out at the battleship-grey mass of the Yellow Sea and the estuary of the Kum River running into it. Outside the compound, stretching down to the water, was flat land of endless rice paddies where patches of shallow water, broken up by the crops, reflected sunlight like fractured mirrors.

Her room was magnificent. She walked into a comfortable area of minimalist beige furniture decorated with Korean porcelain and calligraphic scrolls. Along the whole front was a balcony with gas heaters attached so that guests could sit outside on a sunny winter's morning. A dining table was set in an alcove. Two sharp brass candleholders sculpted in the shape of naked, but graceful women were the only objects on it. A short corridor led round first to a second room, which was kitted out with video link, satellite phone, computer, multichannel television and short-wave radio. A printed note gave a number to call for technical or secretarial assistance.

Further down was a set of double doors made up of small frosted glass panes. Through them lay the high-ceilinged master suite, with a low and hard king-sized bed and a view out on to the mountains. The bathroom was almost as big again, with a double-sized tub and a discreet card laid on the sink with a number to dial should a guest wish to be hand-rubbed by a blind Korean masseur.

Newman was exhausted after her visit to the Kunsan air-base. She was still wearing the souvenir combat flying jacket given to her when she had stood in an aircraft hangar, flanked by two F-16 fighter aircraft, and ringed by 1,500 service personnel listening to her brief address. She had reminded them of the history of the Eighth Fighter Wing, known as the Wolf Pack, and of their duty — as the mission statement read — to deliver lethal airpower, to defend the base and to take the fight north, if ordered to do so.

After reading from notes prepared for her, Newman had dropped her hand by her side, taken off her spectacles, and brushed back her fringe. 'Look, I don't know if I'm meant to say this, but I will,' she said, lowering her voice and bringing her mouth closer to the microphone. 'I've just flown down from Camp Bonifas and Camp Liberty Bell up by Panmunjom. Before that I was in Washington and Camp David. The last couple of weeks have been like I've never known before. All you guys are in the front line, and I mean that in the very real sense of the words. Some of your grandparents might have fought in the Korean War, and the reason you are here is because that war has never really ended. A lot of people died, but there was a stalemate and no glory, and things pretty much went back to what they would have been if it had never happened. The reason I am here is that we're closer to war on this peninsula now than we have ever been in the past half-century. The President is working his damnedest to make sure it doesn't happen. But if it does, I know you'll serve your country and that you'll win. God be with you.'

In her lavish suite, with those words reverberating around her jet-lagged mind, she hung the jacket in the wardrobe, slipped out of her clothes, ran the shower, smelling the hot springs sulphur in the stream of water and stepped under it.

Since David had walked out on her, Newman had learned to relish her time alone. She enjoyed the luxury of letting her mind wander without interruption, and as the water cascaded down her back, it took her back to the start of the long day. After flying into Seoul from Washington in the early morning, she was taken straight from the airport to the newly opened rail link to Panmunjom, along a line which, hopefully, one day would run uninterrupted between North and South Korea. She had laid a wreath at Panmunjom in the Military Armistice Commission hut where Lieutenant Lee Jong-hee, sleeper agent, had murdered an unknown compatriot and fled to the North. She had lunched just south of there at Camp Liberty Bell, making the same speech as she had at Kunsan. Her visit was so last-minute that only local stringers and wire agencies were able to shout questions at her — and she had answered none, promising a full statement at the end of her visit.

From Panmunjom, a helicopter had taken Mary Newman to the presidential palace in Seoul, a cavernous blue-roofed building known as the Blue House, where the diminutive and highly intelligent President Cho Hyon-tak stood at the massive open doors to greet her. Even Newman, who was only five foot five herself, stood an inch above Cho in the photo-call handshake. But what he lost in height he made up for in hyperactivity and blunt talking, with idiosyncrasies of accent and mannerisms picked up from his years at Columbia Business School and living as a student in the rougher areas on the West Side north of Central Park.

When Cho guided her into the meeting room, she found Peter Brock already there, and papers spread out on a conference table among a scattering of coffee cups. Also there were Cho's advisers, two young men and a woman, and also an older man whom Newman recognized as an intelligence chief from the Agency for National Security Planning, one of the umbrella intelligence agencies. Clearly, they had been at it for some hours.

'Let's leave it, Peter, for a moment and see if Mary can knock some sense into us,' said Cho with a smile, clapping his hands for the coffee pot to be refilled. 'Coffee OK with you?' he asked, beaming at Mary, who hesitated just for a second, but it was enough. 'Bring some tea, ginseng and water, still and sparkling,' he added. Tentatively, he pushed open another door in the opposite wall and peered round to see if the room behind it was occupied. He glanced back at Mary conspiratorially. 'It's empty,' he said. 'Let's sneak off in here.' As his advisers lined up to join him, he held out a hand. 'Just the three of us,' he said, winking at Brock. 'Then I can speak my mind.'

On the surface, Cho acted like an overgrown kid, nervous and mischievous. But as soon as they had sat down, with a refreshments trolley in front of them, Newman saw at least one layer of the mask peel away. Cho became even more American, slipping into the role of a Bronx street fighter.

'I was telling Peter,' he said, breaking off to wave his hand at the trolley. 'Help yourselves. Let's be in the trenches for a bit.' Newman had expected the quip to be followed by a smile, but Cho's expression was sombre. 'I'm in a fucking dilemma, Mary, like I was telling Peter. Jim doesn't know about it. But then I didn't know the stakes until Peter got here this morning. The bottom line is this. We hate the fucking Japanese. All right? They came here in 1910 and they fucked us over and we haven't got through the counselling yet. Everyone in Asia hates the fucking Japanese — except the Taiwanese and that's because they hate the fucking Chinese. And maybe the Indians, because they live too far away. "So what?" you say.' He sipped his coffee, put the cup on the table next to his chair and stood up. He looked around for a window and, finding there wasn't one, he paced the room, head lowered and hands behind his back. 'If it comes to a fight with North Korea, you're going to be using your bases here and in Japan. That makes us allies with the Japanese while we bomb the shit out of our brothers north of the border.'

He stopped, looked up at Mary and shook his head. 'No. No. No. No fucking no, if you get my message.' He stabbed his finger in the air to make his point. 'I've got a new fucking generation of troublemakers to deal with. The last generation, they wanted democracy. They hated the fucking dictators. And they won. This new lot, they love their brothers across the border. You get it? If they love their brothers, they hate you. I know it sounds crazy. Here we are, a living example of how the developing world can become the developed world, the fucking miracle which has escaped most of the rest of the Third World, how South Korea, battered and pummelled by war, used the American security umbrella to pull itself up and succeed, and the young kids don't appreciate it at all and want to fuck it up.' He clasped his hands in front of him and lowered his voice. 'You get my drift, both of you?'

'Cho, there's nothing I like more than a straight talker,' Newman smiled. 'Even if your language leaves something to be desired.'

'Good,' said Cho, putting his chubby hands on his small hips and leaning forward before beginning his pacing again. 'So, second point. What happens if that shit Park Ho loses and North Korea collapses?' He stopped in front of Brock and shook his finger. 'I'll tell you what will fucking happen. For three months, you'll all be in there, China, Russia, you guys, the damn Europeans with their blonde aid workers and their strapping lovers, Australian backpackers and their home-grown dope plants, the huge goddamn white bandage of the UN, their Toyota Land Cruisers, their 192 fucking languages. And you'll all fuck it over, just like everywhere else. And you'll say to me: "No, Cho, it's too sensitive for South Korea to be seen in there right now. Give it time. Let the international community handle it."'

He swung round to Mary, eyes glaring, halfway between humour and fury. 'Just like you did in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and all those other post-Cold-War fuck-ups. Then what will happen? Colombia or Kazakhstan will blow up. And the Toyotas, the backpackers — the whole lot of you will be shipped off there and you'll leave us with the mess of what? Do you know what?'

He retrieved his coffee from the table, sat down and crossed his legs, his silence switching the question from rhetorical to real. Both Newman and Brock stayed quiet, hoping he would give the answer.

'What, Peter? Tell me what we will be left with.'

'We won't abandon you, Cho,' said Brock.

'You fucking would if there wasn't a North Korea any more,' he laughed. 'What are you going to do, move the ceasefire line up to the Chinese border?'

Brock shrugged. 'Tell us. Tell us what would happen.'

'Reunification,' he said in barely a whisper. 'Fucking reunification.' The flare of his eyes faded and his expression, overcome by daunting reality, lost its fire. 'Look what happened to West Germany when it absorbed the East. Calculate it for us and it makes it ten times worse. Ten times the cost.'

For a moment he seemed to retreat into that ultimate nightmare. Brock nudged him on. 'So what's it to be, Cho? What's the way through?'

'Keep it local. Jamie Song and I will handle Park Ho. We can strangle him.'

'And in his last throes of life, he launches a few missiles?' suggested Newman.

'I'll nuke him.'

Cho let those words settle in the room. He fixed Brock and then Newman with an unflinching expression of certainty. No wonder he didn't want his advisers with him. South Korea's dozen or so nuclear reactors would give it ample uranium or plutonium. Its scientists had the knowledge. The parts could be procured from here and there. For Newman, it was like hearing the mechanical clicks of a round being put in the chamber of a revolver. She had known the likelihood of South Korea, Taiwan, Israel and a few others having nuclear weapons. The declaration of it in a meeting like this had elevated it to another level.

'You'll nuke him?' said Newman sceptically, not reacting to Cho's declaration and keeping to Cho's Hollywood-style language. 'If he doesn't mind being nuked by us, why should he mind being nuked by you?'

'That's what you don't see,' said Cho. 'You know why Park Ho's such a shit? Because his mother was killed by a GI in front of his eyes when he was a kid. So you've got a mind there no one can deal with. If his country is pulverized by you guys, he'll fight you back and feel good about it. He'll be avenging his mother's death. He'll be proving that juche is not a piece of crap, that it can take on a superpower. But if he fights me, what the fuck does he get? Nothing. No point getting nuked by little old Cho. If he's going to get nuked it has to be by Uncle Sam, and if Uncle Sam's not going to do that, Park loses. That's how he's thinking. He's Korean, I know how he thinks. We're all a bit crazy.'

Cho stopped pacing, tapped his head and his face broke out into a huge smile. 'There you go,' he said, sitting down and patting Brock's knee. 'That's my rant. Nothing to read between the lines.'

In the shower, Mary Newman laughed as she recalled Cho's language. The steam and warmth soaked into her tight shoulder muscles, letting her think more clearly about the meeting. Newman turned the shower water to the highest pressure, then switched the temperature to cold, letting her body absorb the shock right down the spine. She let it stay there until the goose pimples had subsided. Just as suddenly, she turned the water off, reached for a towel, covered herself and stepped out on to the warm underfloor heating of her bathroom suite.

Darkness had fallen, and through the window she saw the wavering lanterns of farmers making their way home through the rice paddies. Somewhere high above was the high-pitched roar of fighter jets from the base taking off into the night. But it took her a few minutes to work out the other strange sound, which sent a tremble through the building, until she remembered the base commander telling her tonight was artillery practice, the pounding of the big guns which would be moved up to the front line of invading North Korean troops.

Newman draped a robe around herself, loosened the wet towel, hung it on a rail and walked along the short corridor to the living room. She mixed herself a gin and tonic and checked her watch. Peter Brock would be at least another half an hour, and if she greeted him in her bathrobe, what the hell!

Cho had refreshed her and frightened her. As he was ushering them out of the room, having dropped his nuclear bombshell, he had unashamedly homed in on Newman's personal life. 'You getting married again, Mary?' he had said, grinning at Brock.

'Too busy stopping nuclear proliferation,' answered Newman smartly, taking up his offer to step out of the door in front of him.

'You should be married,' Cho retorted loudly so that all in the vast adjoining room, advisers and tea staff included, could hear. He tapped his chest. 'Follow my example. I have one wife and two mistresses. If Cho does anything stupid, he has three women to tell him he's talking shit and is going to fuck things up. Everyone needs that, Mary, even someone as brainy as you. Everyone needs to be told they're talking shit.'

Before Mary could answer, Cho had beckoned over his intelligence chief. 'I've told Mr Brock he can have as many agents as we can spare,' he instructed. 'You two work it out between you. Remember two things. We have big problems at home with infiltration, and that the United States is our number-one ally and no argument.'

As the helicopter had lifted off from the grounds of the palace, Newman saw shimmering winter scenes of Seoul, smashed to rubble in the war and now recreated as a Confucian American dream city. She flew over the hills and parks of the northern side, across the Han River, the pilot taking the helicopter higher to clear the skyscrapers of the business and commercial districts, glistening with advertisements and lights. If only Seoul could have been replicated amid the Catholicism of Latin America and the tribalism of sub-Saharan Africa, if only Pakistan had taken a lead from South Korea, if only it had downplayed its nuclear weapon as a friendly instrument of diplomacy and not declared it as an Islamic bomb — as if Cho had made a fanfare on television of his Confucian bomb, and not casually mentioned it in a very private conversation to people who mattered; if only… Her train of thought had wandered with the throb and clatter of the aircraft which had delivered her to Kunsan where, after delivering her speech, she had insisted on being driven through the red-light district of nearby Silver Town. Through the darkened windows of her Mercedes, she watched Americans, barely out of their teens, draped around Korean prostitutes, drunk and wayward, stumbling from bar to bar. How many secrets would they give away to gentle, seductive prodding? A small network of North Korean agents would probably have maps of every aircraft hangar, mess room, set of traffic lights and bowling alley on the base.

Newman must have dozed off in the chair, because a buzzer woke her, with the familiar and slightly distorted face of Peter Brock staring into the security camera. She fumbled for the remote, pressed open the door, pulled her bathrobe around her and got up. Brock appeared, looking as worn out as she had felt about an hour earlier. 'Sorry, Mary, have I barged in?' he said, hesitating.

'No, Pete. Come in,' said Newman. 'I was catnapping.' She eyed her own half-drunk gin and tonic, where the ice had melted and the lemon had sunk to the bottom of the glass. 'How was he? I mean, is what we're doing working?'

'It's working,' said Brock confidently, putting his briefcase by the door and looking around admiringly. 'Wow,' he exclaimed. 'You've hit the jackpot, at least for tonight.'

'Great, isn't it?' said Newman. 'A huge bed, the biggest jacuzzi I've seen in my life, the first heated balcony in the world, and no one to share it with.' She picked up her glass, went into the cloakroom by the door and tipped the contents into the basin.

'You want a drink?' she asked, heading for the bar, and plugging in the kettle.

'Sure,' said Brock. 'But just water. I need something to wash away Cho's caffeine.'

Newman laughed. 'And I need another coffee. Hot and black.' She tore open a sachet and poured coffee powder into a cup. 'Where have they put you?'

'Over in another wing. But nothing like this,' said Brock, unscrewing the cap and drinking straight from the bottle.

'Did you dissuade him from his nuking venture?'

'I hope so,' said Brock. 'He had a point, though. Park would dearly love us to strike from Japan or a carrier. If the strike comes from South Korea it confines the conflict.'

'But then you have a bloody land war across the DMZ.' The kettle clicked itself off. Newman filled her cup and sat down again.

'After you left, though,' said Brock with a grin, 'he was more interested in getting you married than knocking out Park Ho.'

'Oh my God,' said Newman, feeling herself blushing. She put down the coffee and cupped her chin with her hand. 'That man's a menace.'

Briefly, they fell into a companionable silence. Unlike her own, Brock's face was too expressive to hide much of what he was thinking. His talent was analysis more than negotiation where his eyes gave too much away. She sensed that Brock would not have mentioned Cho's marriage line unless he planned to move it on somewhere. 'Do you think Jim will go for a second term?' she said, casually.

'He's just past the mid-terms,' said Brock thoughtfully. 'I guess he's thinking of it. Why? Do you want my job next time round?'

Newman threw her head back and laughed. 'Not at all. I'm thinking of quitting. Getting myself a life.'

Mockingly, Brock raised his eyebrows, and swept his hand around the room. 'You mean all this is not a life?'

She eyed him bashfully. 'You know what I mean.'

'With Jim?'

'I think we've both been thinking about it,' she said, lowering her head so Brock couldn't see her embarrassment. 'Maybe we've been thinking about it too much.'

'Well, I'll be damned,' said Brock, crunching his hands around the water bottle.

'Don't tell me, with all that stuff in the press, that you're playing the innocent.'

Brock put his hands in the air as his face cracked up in a smile. 'I leave Caro to get involved in these things. But if he runs again, what then?'

'If he agrees, I become the First Lady, or whatever.' She uncrossed her legs and sat up. 'I like Jim. I like him a lot. He's one of the most decent men I know. The way he handled Valerie's illness and death has been an example to us all. Maybe it's too soon. I don't know. The thing that worries me is if even now my feelings towards him — even his towards me — affect our judgement. As you know, Chris and I don't exactly see eye to eye.'

'If I had noticed it, Mary, I would have told him,' said Brock firmly. 'And I haven't.'

'So I can keep my job, then?' said Newman with a smile.

Brock whistled through his teeth. 'With South Korea going nuclear and you marrying the US President, this has been one hell of a day for me.' He slapped his knees and stood up. 'I told Cho we didn't need entertaining tonight — just a quiet meal to chew things over together. That OK with you? They're fixing it in a private room downstairs.'

Newman was on her feet as well. 'Sure. I'll slip on a tracksuit or something.'

'You got anywhere I can call Caro?' said Brock, picking up his briefcase from the floor.

'Follow me down the corridor and turn off to the left just before the glass door to my room,' said Newman. 'They've got better stuff there than we've got at State.' She began leading the way. 'There's a number to call if you don't know how it works. But I'm sure you'll be fine.'

Newman went through the frosted-glass doors to her suite and heard the automatic lock click into place. She washed her face in the bathroom and fiddled with her make-up. Half of her wanted to throw on a tracksuit, like she had said. The other half wanted to dress up because of the beautiful tranquillity of the place they were in. She examined her scant options hanging, suitcase-creased, in the wardrobe. Deep down, the adolescent in her wanted her to be attractive to Brock, so he could pass it on to Jim West. That was why she was dithering, because, here in this strange, unfamiliar place, she was making the personal stakes so high. But eventually she ended up with her white tracksuit, a new pair of trainers, but with light mascara and lipstick and the same perfume she had used for the dinner at Camp David.

Through the frosted glass, a light flickered as another artillery shell smashed into the ground miles away and shook the building. A light went off, making the corridor dimmer. She slid open the balcony door and stepped out into the ice-cold evening air. A click behind her made her jump. Above, the gas heater automatically flared up. She felt the warmth immediately, but a chill wind blew up from the rice paddies. She shivered and wrapped her arms round herself. She waited a few seconds in case she could see the flash of the artillery gun. Back inside, she heard another click, like a door opening, and a spit of rain hit her on the face. She stepped back and closed the door as the spit became a downpour, loudly assaulting the windows.

She checked herself in the long wardrobe mirror, rearranging strands of hair thrown out by the sudden change of weather. The glow of the heater on the balcony dimmed and quickly faded, leaving the place in darkness. She looked for the switch to an outside light, couldn't find one and gave up. Just as she was heading out, she had a craving to make a phone call, to a son, daughter, or husband, and say: 'Hi, I'm in this incredible place in the middle of nowhere in South Korea. You wouldn't believe it. You should be here with me—'

Dismissing these difficult thoughts, she unlocked the door with the remote and it slid open. Indeed, one lamp had gone, somewhere. The corridor was lit from the living room.

'Pete, you finished with Caro?'she asked gently, a few feet away from the door of the office suite. She couldn't hear him speaking. The door was open, but no sound came from the room.

'Pete,' she called out loudly. 'You there?'

There was no answer from the living room, either. A shadow passed a table lamp. Newman moved forward and looked into the office. Her hand went to her mouth. No scream, just an empty dryness thrown up before her brain could even take in what she saw.

Brock's body was slumped forward on the desk, blood streaming from the back of his neck, running down the curls of the telephone cord and dripping on to the floor.

She turned round, saw the shadow again, her hands fumbling for the remote to open the door and get back into her room. She heard a dull thud as a round from a silenced pistol splintered wood in the door frame above her head. The door was open, and Newman ran, hurling herself down, hitting the floor, pressing the remote again to get it closed, and crawling away as two more shots smashed into the room, one exploding into the television set, the second splattering out plaster above the bed.

In the tiny gap before the door closed she saw the killer, thin lips pursed in concentration, wearing a black poncho-style raincoat, exactly matching the darkness outside, water dripping on to the floor.

He fired again.

His shape, darkening the corridor, now appeared blurred coming closer and closer. He fired twice more. But each time the bulletproof glass blocked the shot. Keeping on the floor, she edged herself towards the telephone by the bed. Another round. She glanced up towards the balcony door. That would be bulletproofed as well. Newman's VIP survival training with the secret service told her that if she stayed put, help would be with her within seconds — well, minutes at least. She was the goddamn US Secretary of State. Where were the two secret service guys assigned to her? Where were the Korean bodyguards? Where the hell was everybody? She picked up the phone. The line was dead. She crawled to the wardrobe and found her mobile in the briefcase. He was right up close to the glass, his head against it, peering in. She heard the scraping of metal on glass as he ran the end of the silencer down the pane. He tested the door latch and his hand dropped away.

Newman keyed in her mobile's pin number. It bleeped and she saw the distorted shape of his head jerk up, alerted. The battery was half gone. The signal only showed two bands. She flipped down her phone book and pressed the White House. She had a code, given to her by the secret service. They had made her put the number in her mobile.

He stepped back from the door. Without rushing, he bent down and picked up another weapon. Newman pressed 'call'. He unscrewed the silencer and switched it to the new weapon. The phone did nothing, except emit a whining tone of disconnection. His movements were confident and deliberate, as if he knew no one was coming and that whatever he did, however long he took, he would be safe.

He aimed the first shot at the pane of glass closest to the latch. A crack appeared. A second followed, then a third, each one of the more powerful rounds weakening the bulletproofing. Newman turned her head left and right, looking where to go. She had no choice. She opened the balcony door with the remote. Above her head came the whoosh of the gas heater lighting up. A squall of rain swept on to her. Below her was soft rain-dampened grass and rice paddies. She would jump and run, if she got through without a sprained ankle. Run and scream. That was her plan — as simple as they come.

The central half of the balcony was taken up with the sliding glass door. On either side was brick wall. Newman rolled behind this, stood up, went to clasp the rail to jump and stopped dead. A huge transparent perspex shield covered the open space of the balcony, with only tiny slats for ventilation. Like the heater, this new obstacle must have been automatic and weather-controlled. But it completely blocked her escape.

She banged on it, fury welling up in her throat. She slammed both fists into it, just as she heard the first pane of glass shatter in the bedroom door. The black-gloved hand of her attacker slid inside, turned the lock and opened it.

Against the walls on each side of her balcony prison was a row of four plants potted in earth. To her right was a heavy wrought-iron table with six chairs and under a dark-green protective cover was what looked like a barbecue with a plastic tube running to a gas cylinder on the floor. Another tube ran from a second cylinder to the heater. To the left were two sunloungers. Through the perspex, she could make out majestic angry clouds swirling under a bright moon. In the distance, near the base, was tracer from live-fire exercises. Rain smashed relentlessly against the perspex, glistening and running down and away.

He was inside the room, but still nonchalant, strangely not caring about her. He turned on a flashlight and shone it through on to the balcony. He let off three rounds in rapid succession, all on the same spot, and a fourth, which broke through, cut a tiny hole in the glass and sent a crack splaying across it. Suddenly Newman found herself caught in the harsh white beam of his flashlight. He turned it off and looked straight at her. He was standing in the middle of the bedroom. She stayed absolutely still. For a full five seconds his eyes were on her, and behind him she could see her own reflection in the wardrobe mirror, her face twisted with fear and anger, the face of a terrified little girl.

He cocked his head to one side, as if he had heard something. His were hard eyes. He squatted down, turned on the flashlight again, crouched and looked under the bed. His eyes were off her for a second, and Newman slipped out of his line of sight. Straining through the dark, she searched the remote for a button that would open the perspex balcony wall, but found none. There must be a switch. She felt along the wall, looking for one. Plants brushed her face. She ran her hands along the rough brick. Moonlight, refracted by the perspex and rain, played tricks, making it black in one place and throwing tricky light on another.

He fired. The door cracked even more. There was a ledge between the glass wall and the brick of the balcony wall. She clambered on to it and felt up the wall to a metal trellis trailing plant leaves. She tested her weight on it. The door shattered, collapsing into tiny squares like a car windscreen. He stepped through, his feet crunching on them.

For a flicker of a moment he was confused, as he tried to work out where Newman was. The silence which had been menacing was broken by another squall of rain against the perspex. From a dark edge of the wall, Newman climbed higher up the trellis and found a metal bar stretched along the roof of the balcony. He was attracted by something through the window. There was quiet again, apart from the low whine, just a few feet from her, of burning gas from the heater. With horror, she realized that he was seeing her reflection, blurred and distorted, thrown out into shadows created by the flames.

Squeezed in the corner of the balcony ceiling, she had nowhere to go. He turned towards her, no confusion about him now. She gripped the metal bar. Her hands were numb, but she managed to swing herself out, lift her feet, then swing herself back, forcing her legs up and smashing her trainers into the gas heater.

Sparks flew out, but nothing else. He raised his weapon. Newman hurled herself backwards. He fired, tearing brickwork out of the wall next to her. She flung herself forward, drawing on every reserve, feeling the heater break as she crashed into it, fire shooting out, a roar, and then curling, running flames, and his face alert, thinking, as he stepped back. She fell, the world spinning around her. Fingers of flame leapt around the balcony. He was burning, his hands up against his face. She heard herself screaming, watching as the fire reached the gas tank near the barbecue. She dragged herself, half stumbling, half crawling towards it, only knowing that she had to destroy him, plunging her hand into the heat and wrenching the tube from the cylinder, knocking it over, rolling it towards him, then hurling herself back into the bedroom, just as the balcony was engulfed in a roaring inferno of exploding gas.

She breathed in, choking on the smoke. He was ablaze, but conscious, a killing machine in his last throes. On the wall just inside her room was the switch she had been looking for. She punched it. The perspex balcony cover slid away, creating a sudden tunnel of oxygen, which threw the fire into the room.

The air was sucked from his lungs. His hand let go of the weapon, his arms flailing as he threw it away from him. Newman picked it up, not caring about the heat, running backwards to get away, then turning, holding it with both hands, keeping her finger on the trigger, feeling round after round leave the gun for his body. Her hand was burned from the metal of the gun, her hair singed and her eyes streaked with soot.

She staggered backwards, out of the bedroom, balancing on the wall and came to the office, where she saw Brock's body, just as it had been only a few minutes ago. The air was cooler. She breathed in deeply and walked unsteadily towards him. The telephone receiver was on the hook. He must have just finished speaking to Caro. He had jotted down a number on a pad. She felt his neck. He was still warm. His eyes were open, and if it wasn't for that and for the pool of blood still gathering on the floor, Peter Brock, one of her oldest friends in the world, could have just fallen asleep at his desk.

From behind, she heard the click of a weapon. She turned to face a single man, uniformed, with gun drawn. 'Freeze. Hands on your head.'

She kept her hands by her side. 'Where were you?' she whispered.

'Hands on your head. Don't move,' came the command again.

She stepped forward, her eyes on fire with anger. 'You're meant to protect us, you piece of shit,' she said, knocking the weapon away. 'Why don't you ring Caroline Brock and explain where you've been? Her mobile number's on the pad on the desk there, right next to the body of her murdered husband.'

The Secretary of State sank to her knees, put her blackened, watery face into her burned hands, and burst into tears.