For Mary-Ann
Contents
08 - They Know, They Don’t Know
14 - You’re Right, But You’re Wrong
About the Publisher
Jimmy Coates can only trust one man to keep the country from falling into chaos. But that man has disappeared and everything and everyone is at stake…
Buried four kilometres below ground and embedded in a concrete crust fifty metres thick, one of the British Government’s seven supercomputers was about to be breached. It was housed beneath Menwith Hill Royal Air Force Station in North Yorkshire, but nobody on the base could have any idea the attack was underway. The battle was lost as soon as it began, when a new string of computer code flickered into life.
Instantly, it began worming through the system, a mere twinkle in a constellation of electrical impulses. Imperceptible. Insignificant too, if it hadn’t been for the fact that at the exact same moment, hundreds of kilometres to the north and eleven kilometres above the earth, an Aurora Blackbird SR-91 plane pierced British airspace.
The two events were timed to perfection. The worm wriggled through the computer network exactly as it had been designed to do, creating a tiny corridor in the British satellite surveillance system – a sliver of shadow, which the Aurora Blackbird ran through like a fencer’s blade. The precisely pinpointed surveillance blackout rendered the plane effectively invisible. It was high enough and fast enough to be missed by conventional, ground-based radar defence systems; its black neoprene-titanium panels didn’t glint in the night, and even the fuel was caesium-based so that the exhaust fumes would be transparent.
In no time, the plane passed over the islands to the north of Scotland and reached the mainland. It was still travelling at 1,900 kilometres an hour when the doors in its undercarriage slid open. Two black body bags dropped from the plane’s belly. Then it immediately wheeled away to leave British airspace as discreetly as it had entered.
The packages hurtled down through the atmosphere. They had reached terminal velocity even before they plunged through the clouds. They twisted as they fell, the wind pummelling the linoleum-coated material to reveal the contours of the bodies inside.
After a few seconds, two black parachutes unfurled automatically and the descent slowed. The body bags drifted and eventually bumped on to the heather, sixteen kilometres from the nearest road. That’s where they lay for almost two hours, ten metres apart, motionless but for the buffeting of the wind.
Then, at the same moment, both bags twitched. They rolled over until their zips faced upwards. On any normal body bag the zips would have been accessible only from the outside. But these were different.
Simultaneously, the two bags peeled open and out climbed two people. They staggered to their feet – a man and a woman, both tall and dressed in black jumpsuits. They peered through the darkness to each other, not making a sound. They stretched and rubbed their heads, but both moved freely enough. The man blinked rapidly and shook his brain back to full consciousness, tangles of straggly black hair blustering around his head. The woman did the same a moment later, then they both gathered in the parachutes, piling up the black silk on top of the protective body bags.
The man produced a matchbox and two boiled eggs from his pocket. In seconds the parachutes and body bags were lighting up the hillside. They waited together in silence, controlling the fire with a ring of damp heather while they carefully shelled and consumed the eggs. Soon they were able to stamp out the embers, leaving no trace of the equipment that