Safa glowers, seethes, frowns, scowls, then shrugs and goes back to eating her orange. ‘Fair one.’
‘So moving on,’ Emily says, looking at Miri.
‘I wasn’t there all night anyway,’ Safa adds.
‘Great,’ Emily says, looking to Safa, then back to Miri. ‘So . . .’
‘Like, a few hours,’ Safa says.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Emily asks.
‘Do I fuck.’
‘Then stop talking about it.’
‘I am.’
‘Great. So what were you saying, Miri?’
‘Need to get bigger beds,’ Safa says to Ria as Ben bursts out laughing and Harry chuckles into his mug. ‘What?’
‘Safa!’ Emily says.
‘I’m just saying. No point pushing two beds together, cos I’ll fall down the gap in the middle.’
‘Oh my god,’ Emily says. ‘Done sharing?’
‘Piss off. Who stole my other orange? Oh, and a lamp for my side of the bed. On a little table or something. It was pitch black when I got up, couldn’t see a thing . . . I tripped over one of Ben’s boots. Maybe get him a chest like you got Emily. Stop laughing! I never had a boyfriend, so I don’t know how this stuff works. Twats.’
Miri listens and watches. Showing patience where patience is needed. This is it. Her team has been built. It’s time for the endgame.
‘I need to talk about Cavendish Manor.’ Her tone eases the humour from the room. The smiles fade. The joviality abates. As she speaks, her voice becomes increasingly blunt, without any trace or inflection of emotion.
They listen in rapt attention. Faces become focussed and hard. Surprise and shock show. Miri watches each closely. Reading reactions.
She speaks for several minutes without interruption. From the start to the end. When she finishes, there is but silence. Heavy and charged.
‘No,’ Safa says, the first to speak out. Her voice strangely quiet, almost timid. ‘No way.’
‘It is the only way,’ Miri says. A master at work, with a deft touch of tone and inflection. She waits, expecting the next response from Safa.
‘Ben? Is she right?’
Miri waits, expecting the next response from Ben.
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’re not doing it unless you say it’s right,’ Safa tells him.
‘How do you stop a government?’ Ben says to himself, but his voice carries round the room to everyone else watching him. He looks at Miri. ‘I need to know what you know.’
‘Of course. But we’ll train and make ready nonetheless.’
A buzz inside Miri. A tingling. This is the endgame. Win Ben. Win the team. Win the game.
Thirty-Five
They work to train and be ready to do a thing they will only do if Ben says it is right, because what Miri said made even Harry’s eyes go wide.
‘As of our time, nine countries had nuclear weapons. As of Ria and Bertie’s time, fifteen countries have nuclear weapons. NATO failed. The sanctions to prevent more countries enriching uranium failed. Where do the warheads point, Mr Ryder?’
Days and weeks blur. There is only work. Sleep, eat, train. Repeat.
‘We are not here to stop the Brits gaining the device. We are not here to stop one country gaining it. We are here to stop them all.’
‘Can’t we just talk to them? We’ll open dialogue and say we’ve got it.’
They work in monsoons with driving rain so thick they can’t see more than a metre in front of them. They work through howling winds that blot noise. Through energy-sapping humidity that dehydrates and causes headaches. Safa drives them on, heedless of the warnings given by the doctor, heedless of everything.
‘This is not about oil or money, but about power beyond anything any nation has ever possessed. This changes everything.’
In the darkness. In the rain. In all elements at all times. Room clearance. Scenario training. Attacking the bunker. Attacking the shack on the island. Defending both. Hand-to-hand training. Weapons training. Sniper training. Ben grows sick of the Barrett. The power of it. The noise of it. The weight of it.
‘The US is allied to the UK. The French are allied to the US. Israel and Iran hate each other. India and Pakistan the same. North Korea is right there. Russia is allied to China. China is allied to North Korea, but all bets are off if the Brits have the device. Will China ally with the UK? If they do, does the US attack China? What happens then? What if Russia launches against the UK? Who retaliates for the British? The French? Does Israel take advantage of the chaos and unleash on Iran? Does China attack the US to prevent them gaining more power? Think, Mr Ryder. What we do now defines everything for the whole of the world.’
Miri’s office slowly fills with stacks of newspapers and magazines, piles of encyclopaedias and tablet devices. A huge map of the world on one wall. Coloured pins denote the nuclear powers. Coloured string fastened between each to show the threats, political situations and warring factions.
The pace is relentless. Miri works with them on attacking the house. Miri and Ben work in the evenings or when they can snatch time to study and learn. Miri trains with them when she can. Joining room-clearance drills to hone her skills and to learn how they each move.
While Miri and Ben study, so Safa, Harry and Emily set the scenarios up, clean weapons, make adjustments to kit and run through tactical options. Harry’s training is brought up to modern standards, but likewise, his ability to draw on countless real combat missions helps the others.
The sense of excitement in Miri becomes almost tangible. She’s never felt more alive. This is the biggest game of all. This is power beyond anything, and it’s just her against everyone. To pit her five against everyone else.
The portal room gains another shimmering light. Red and blue next to each other. One with a handwritten sign above it saying LIVE and one above the red saying ISLAND.
John Watson, an intelligent and highly experienced medical doctor, becomes an assistant to a young man with a shock of unruly black hair. The two go back and forth, testing radio and satellite signals, digital and analogue signatures and sound waves to try and push them through. It’s all just binary.
Ria works too. Keeping clothes clean. Providing food. Hiding when she feels sick. Running the bunker. The Quartermaster, as Harry calls her. She takes coffee into Miri’s office and listens to Ben and Miri talking as they stand in front of the huge map. She spots the markers and tracks the ever-changing lengths of coloured string that propose the strike patterns of nuclear weapons.
A few days later, she presents a hologram program of planet earth big enough to replicate the two-dimensional paper map on the wall, with different coloured lasers instead of the strands of material, and an ability to tap and bloom out information panels.
She presents it coyly, thinking they will take it as a gimmick or a toy. The map on the wall was forgotten after that evening and the new holo used instead.