The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

7

'… named as Ahmed Memed, an academic from Zamboanga. Intelligence sources in Washington say his influence grew around the year 2000, when he began creating a cohesive organization which would lead the Muslim struggle for independence. Memed is widely believed to have been the brain behind last night's attacks.'

The picture changed to a hand-held camera filming Memed and his bodyguard swaying from the helicopter winch. 'In a bizarre twist, Memed was rescued from his home by a Philippine military helicopter. It's still not known who the pilot was and who ordered the rescue.' The camera swung round the compound showing the guard's dead body on the ground and troops crouching in undergrowth. 'As you can see from these disturbing pictures, there was a gun battle around the time Memed escaped.'

'Heard of him?' asked Stuart Nolan, the British Prime Minister.

'I've heard of him,' said Charles Colchester, a long-time friend and chairman of Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee. 'But I can't say he's on the top of anyone's in-tray.'

Colchester was dressed in a dark pin-stripe suit and business tie, the uniform of senior officials around the corridors of Whitehall.

He handed Nolan a sheet of paper. 'This is a list of places where rioting has broken out in South-East Asia. Our stations believe there was a measure of coordination. The real problem is Brunei. There's been a coup d'etat organized by a pro-Islamic colonel in the army. As far as we can tell, it's been successful. They now control Bandar Seri Begawan.'

Nolan quickly read the list, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had forfeited his morning swim for the meeting with Colchester. He was keen to wrap things up and get some exercise, but already he sensed this was the sort of day when that would not happen. 'Bandar Seri Begawan might be the administrative capital,' said Nolan testily, 'but the oil's at Seria. Whoever holds Seria holds Brunei.'

'They don't hold Seria yet,' said Colchester.

'Nor will they, if I have anything to do with it. I trained in Brunei. I love its impenetrable humidity, its jellyfish and its billionaire Sultan. And I'll be damned—' Nolan waved his hand to shut himself up. At sixty-nine, Nolan was one of the oldest occupants Downing Street had ever had. Prostate cancer had been detected. Radiotherapy had worked, he was told. His long-suffering wife, Jean, had instructed him to seek out a less busy life, although Nolan wondered if tranquillity might end up leading him to an even earlier death. His curiosity about far-flung and difficult places often rested uneasily with his own nation's lack-lustre interest in events beyond its shores. Years into the War against Terror, enthusiasm for conflict had waned. Long gone was the unquestioning patriotism in sending troops to remote corners of the world, particularly since it meant less money to spend on the issues British people now held dearest, their schools, transport and health. Nolan was also waiting to hear whether the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh was going to vote for a referendum on independence for Scotland, called for so suddenly after the Scottish National Party gained control of the governing coalition. He wondered disdainfully whether his footnote in history would be his attempts to focus British minds on Muslim riots in Asia while the United Kingdom itself was breaking up.

'If Brunei totters, just about anywhere can,' said Colchester, glancing at his watch. His meeting slot with the Prime Minister had been set from 06.45 to 07.00. 'If you've got an extra five minutes, I would like you to meet Lazaro Campbell. He's from Washington, on secondment to us. He knows his stuff. He's waiting outside.'

The Prime Minister nodded, knowing that Colchester would not have imposed Campbell on him so early in the morning for nothing. Campbell came in and shook Nolan's hand, without explanation or apology that he had arrived for the meeting in a tracksuit and running shoes, with a line of sweat just on the hairline of his forehead.

'At least someone's clever enough to find time to exercise around here,' muttered Nolan. 'Lazaro Campbell? Where do you get a name like that?'

'From a Cuban mother and a Scottish father, Prime Minister,' said Campbell, pulling out a hand towel from his tracksuit and wiping his face dry. 'My mother was fleeing Castro's Cuba. My father was with the British embassy and literally lifted her from the boat at Key West. So I'm the product of Caribbean sun, fun and revolution.'

Nolan laughed. Campbell was a robust man with Hispanic features and dark tousled hair. He was in his early forties, but a pair of sharp blue eyes, an unshaven face and an expression that often looked a moment away from laughter made him seem a lot younger. Colchester opened his briefcase and slipped documents and photographs out of a large brown envelope. Nolan was not the first Prime Minister or President that Campbell had briefed during a crisis. He knew he could be blunter with Nolan, a former Royal Marine who would understand military strategy and missile threats.

'If I was serving in the US now, I would be briefing the President — if I could get to him,' said Campbell with a knowledgeable glance at Colchester. 'As it is, I am on secondment to Her Majesty's Government, so I have asked to brief you, Prime Minister.' He knelt on the floor and spread photographs over the coffee table. 'I flew in a few hours ago from Australia, where there's been a break-in at a virology lab. We hadn't put two and two together until the North Korean missile tragedy at Yokata.'

At the mention of Yokata, Nolan eyed Campbell sharply, and took hold of the photograph Campbell was offering him. 'That's the canteen,' explained Campbell. 'That was taken at shortly after 3 a.m.'

Nolan took his time studying the scene in the photograph. There was an unfinished snack on a table. Two cups of coffee, one black, one a creamy white, sat undisturbed on each side of the table. A mark of light red lipstick ran around the rim of one cup. At the centre of the table was a bowl of fruit containing bananas, tangerines, kiwi fruit and a bruised apple. On one plate were the remains of a ham omelette; on the other was the crust of a burger bun, smudged with tomato sauce. The knives and forks were laid side by side on the plates. A newspaper on one side was folded over to the crossword page. The chair was neatly pushed in to the table. The other chair was toppled over on the floor.

'That fallen chair,' said Campbell, looking over the Prime Minister's shoulder, 'is the only sign there had been a struggle. The Australian police are certain that the two scientists on duty at the time were murdered. But their bodies are missing.'

Campbell passed Nolan another picture. It showed a laboratory with a red neon sign on the wall saying in large capital letters NO ADMITTANCE. HIGHLY INFECTIOUS AREA. Two people were inside, both wearing darkgreen surgical gowns, gloves, medical masks and blue polypropylene shoe covers. The door ahead was closed. Behind it was an ante-chamber of transparent glass with a blue ultra-violet light shining inside.

'This is a file picture,' said Campbell. 'It's the ante-room of the laboratory where they've been working on a substance known as interleukin-4 or IL-4.' He handed over a third picture, which simply showed a cage with two mice in it.

'This is what they were after, isn't it?' said Nolan, dropping the picture on to the pile on the coffee table, and leaning back in his chair. 'You're here now because they succeeded?'

'IL-4 is a tragic scientific mistake,' said Campbell. 'It is an agent that makes mice sterile. The Australians were planning to spread it throughout urban mice populations using a virus called mousepox, which is normally harmless. But something happened that no one had anticipated. Not only did it shut down the reproductive system, it also shut down a key element of the body's immune system, something called cell-mediated response, the specific mechanism that fights against viruses. Suddenly, mousepox became a killer virus. Those mice infected with mousepox together with IL-4 died almost immediately.'

The expression on Nolan's face showed that he was beginning to understand the implications. 'And mousepox is—?'

'A sister virus of variola major, which is smallpox,' said Colchester. 'Mice are — or were — far more immune to mousepox than we are to smallpox. But virologists are now pretty certain that if IL-4 is administered with the smallpox virus, the world will be facing a biological weapon threat such as never before.'

'Not least because we don't have a vaccine for it,' said Campbell.

'Has there been a theft of smallpox as well?' asked the Prime Minister.

'Not that we have heard of,' said Campbell, glancing across to Colchester. 'But we're checking.'

'And who took it?' asked Nolan calmly.

'Officially we don't know,' said Colchester, constantly ensuring that he and Campbell were speaking with one voice. Nolan was familiar with Colchester's ability to transform his character like a chameleon and he detected a change now of Colchester using the refuge of civil service anonymity to push forward a political position. He was a Whitehall civil servant with enormous power and flair who skilfully projected an image of a man of absolute ordinariness.

'Officially,' began Nolan. 'What the hell does that mean?'

Campbell had his eyes down, sorting the photographs.

'Tell the Prime Minister,' said Colchester.

'North Korea,' said Campbell, looking up, then leaving the photographs and springing to his feet. 'I do not have the evidence, sir, but my contacts are good, and I would forfeit my job on it.'

'The source of Lazaro's information is highly, highly classified, Prime Minister,' said Colchester calmly.

Nolan turned to Campbell. 'What is your source?' he demanded.

Campbell gripped his hands together, powerfully enough to show the whites of his knuckles, suddenly showing the emotions of his part-Latin heritage. 'I said I would forfeit my job. My job is my life, sir. I would not be here if I did not think that this agent had gone to North Korea.'

'I asked you what your evidence is?' said Nolan.

Campbell deferred to Colchester.

'As I said, the information is—' began Colchester.

'Damn you, Charles,' exploded Nolan, 'if you want me to look at this stuff and then make an argument to Jim West — because I damn well know this is why you've produced Campbell — I need to know the source. I need to know that it's true. If you feel you can't tell me, then we'll do it through the appropriate channels, and if it gets lost in the bureaucracy, so be it.'

'It is — or was — President Asif Latif Khan of Pakistan.'

Nolan stared blankly at Colchester and then in disbelief at Campbell. Outside was the whine of an electric milk float. With each driver personally screened, it was still allowed within the secure area of Downing Street. Nolan got to his feet, walked across to the window, looked down at the clatter of bottles on the doorstep, turned back inside the room, glanced at the photographs laid out on the table, then looked at Campbell. 'Khan?' he asked, showing part irritation and part sarcasm. 'The now dead President of Pakistan?'

'Khan, as you know, was deputy head of the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency before going into politics,' explained Colchester. 'Lazaro worked closely with him during the War on Terror.'

'He told you that North Korean agents had walked into a secure Australian laboratory, killed two scientists and stolen this agent?'

'He told me more than that,' said Campbell, sinking to his knees again by the coffee table, and pulling two photographs from the middle of the pile.

'Show me, then,' said Nolan, sitting down and putting on his spectacles.

Campbell handed Nolan a picture, labelled with a caption describing it as an unidentified guest at a cocktail reception in New York. The subject wore a lounge suit, badly cut, with a tie too tightly knotted and creating wrinkles on his shirt collar. He had no drink and was caught with both hands clasped behind his back and a ripple of boredom on his face.

The second picture was of the same man, but it revealed much more. He was short, but stocky and strong, with truculent features, and dressed in the uniform of a four-star general. He was with a dozen other dignitaries. The date on the caption was 15 April 2003. The setting looked like an official celebration in Pyongyang. It might have been that particular split second with the camera, or the resulting image might have been etched into the subject's character. His arms were stretched out to the edge of the rail of a balcony and his whole presence dwarfed the lost expression on the face of the then North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who stood next to him. The general's long fingers were wrapped around the rail into a fist. His eyes were fixed straight ahead in an expression of awesome determination, not of a man who had inherited power, but of a man intent on gaining it. He was by far the most charismatic figure among them.

'This man's name is Park Ho,' said Campbell. He looked at Nolan with an unflinching expression of certainty. 'He ordered the theft of the IL-4. He fired the missile at Yokata. He believes it is better that North Korea be destroyed and go down fighting, than to surrender to unification with South Korea. He is the mastermind behind North Korea's missile programme. He now has power, and his finger, Prime Minister, is literally on the button.'

'He has power?' queried Nolan. 'You mean he has just taken power.'

'That's right,' said Campbell, nodding.

The Prime Minister glanced over to Colchester. 'Is he right, Charles?'

'I fear he is,' said Colchester.

There was a knock at the door and Joan Nolan poked her head round. She was much loved by the British for being matronly, unstuffy, down to earth and the one person who could keep their brilliant, but sometimes erratic, Prime Minister in check.

'There's a queue of supplicants waiting to see you, Stuart, and none dares knock on the door to see what you're up to.'

Nolan looked at his watch. The meeting had overrun by fifteen minutes and he would need another fifteen to end it. 'Give them tea, champagne if they need it. I'll be with them by seven-thirty.'

'And which do you want, tea or champagne?' she asked, stepping back to leave her husband in peace.

'Nothing, thanks,' said Nolan, without consulting Colchester or Campbell. Joan would have to boil the kettle or indeed uncork the bottle herself. Downing Street must have been the only official residence of a head of government where the Prime Minister and his wife did their own washing up.

Colchester glanced across to check they were alone again, leant back and put his arm over the back of the sofa. 'Stuart, Lazaro has an idea, which might shed some light on events.'

Nolan raised his eyebrows. 'With your permission, sir,' said Campbell, 'I would like to go to Brunei. As far as we know, your training camps there are operational and unaffected by the coup d'etat. Rioting after Khan's death, I can understand. But it takes time to plan a coup d'etat. There are too many coincidences running around. If we can get some sodium pentothal into one of those rebellious Bruneian colonels, we might learn a hell of a lot more than we do now.'

Nolan rolled his pen along the desk top, then burst out laughing, shaking his head in disbelief. 'I have a feeling you and I are going to get on very well indeed,' he said, glancing across to Colchester. 'And you, Charles, would you be prepared to forfeit your job, if you're wrong?'

'My years release me from that decision,' said Colchester with a slight smile.

'Then with your agreement, as my chief intelligence adviser, I will track down Jim West.'

'I understand he's in the White House situation room. Yokata will keep him up all night.'

As he dialled, a genuine smile spread across his face. Despite his considerable political skills, Nolan was a soldier at heart, feeling best when he was planning a military operation. He waited impatiently for the connection and whispered to Colchester: 'Tell the mob outside, I'll be another half an hour. And get a bloody map of Brunei up here.'

In Washington it was past two in the morning. But three minutes after his call to the White House, the British Prime Minister was patched through to the US President, interrupting the long session he was having with his principals.

'Jim, I'll be brief,' said Nolan. 'There's been a military takeover in North Korea. I understand that we could be dealing with the most dangerous enemy we have faced since Hitler.'