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  ‘You sure?’ asked Fifi, her usually sunny features darkened by real fear. ‘That’s close to the… thing.’

  ‘I know,’ said Pete. ‘But I got friends there – well, contacts, anyway. And the effect’s not moving.’

  For now, he thought to himself.

  * * * *

  5

  COALITION HQ, QATAR

  The shock and awe was not long in coming. Coalition headquarters in Qatar was a focal point of communication links, neutron-star-dense, not all of them controlled by the military. Hundreds of journalists had gathered there to report on the upcoming invasion of Iraq, and many if not all of them enjoyed direct voice and data access to their own headquarters and, of course, to the wider global media. ‘The incident’, as it was now being referred to, had occurred shortly before a scheduled press briefing in the main media room, giving the assembled journalists just long enough to work up a fine head of craziness, and to warn their colleagues who might have been disinclined to attend the tightly scripted and mostly useless briefing that for once ‘the follies’ might be worth a look. Bret Melton couldn’t believe the turnout. Normally this room was only half full, but today every seat was taken, and in the back half even the central aisles were packed. He doubted it had anything to do with the scheduled appearance of the British and Australian task force commanders, who were due to give their first joint conference with General Franks.

  Indeed, neither Franks nor the junior Coalition partners were anywhere to be seen as a USAF colonel took the podium. Melton, a former Ranger, was a nine-year veteran of the Army Times foreign desk and knew most of the US military’s Qatar-based flak handlers by their first names. He had never seen this air force bird before. He keyed on his dictaphone as soon as the officer appeared, ensuring that the first twenty seconds of his recording were taken up with the jabbering crescendo of 200-plus colleagues all shouting individual questions at the front of the room. He had no trouble resisting the urge to join in the raucous assault on the dignity of the briefer – what would be the point? Melton waited for the chaos to die down.

  The colonel did nothing to calm the room. He merely placed a sheaf of papers on the podium and stood at ease, examining the unruly mob with cool detachment. Nearly a minute and a half after he had first entered the room, the reporters slowly, gradually, quietened down and resumed their seats like shamefaced school children. As if to make the point about who precisely was in charge, the colonel’s eyes traversed his audience with a cold, mechanical detachment.

  Melton readied his pen to take notes. His Sony recorder was working perfectly but that was exactly when you couldn’t trust the damn things.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Colonel Yost, and I will be taking your briefing tonight in place of generals Franks and Wall and Brigadier McNairn. They have been indisposed by developments but will make themselves available for questioning as soon as possible.’

  An Italian TV producer sitting directly in front of Melton leapt to his feet and called out, ‘When?’

  Yost fixed him with a killing stare and waited a full three seconds before answering. ‘As. Soon. As. Possible.’

  A further glare delivered as a broadside to most of the room cut off any more interruptions.

  ‘As you know, communications links to North America have been severed – not just from CENTCOM, but more generally, across both the civilian and military spectrum,’ said Yost. ‘Answering speculation as to why, how and by whom is not my responsibility today. It may be yours, but you won’t get your answers here. CENTCOM is endeavouring to re-establish contact as quickly as possible. We have already confirmed links with the Pacific, European and – I emphasise – with some elements of the Northern Command. For those of you who do not know, NORTHCOM is the unified military command responsible for operations in the US, Mexico, Canada and the northern Caribbean.’

  Melton didn’t bother to jot down the explanation. He was familiar with all the US commands, having worked in each of them at some time, but he did note that Yost didn’t claim to be in contact with NORTHCOM proper, just ‘elements’ of it. That could mean a big ass-kicking set-up like Fort Lewis, outside of Seattle, or it might mean he’d phoned a guard post somewhere on the outskirts of Anchorage or Guantanamo.

  ‘Have you seen the photos, Colonel? The French satellite photos of your cities? Can you tell us what has happened to them?’

  Melton recognised the voice of Sayad al Mirsaad, the Al Jazeera correspondent who was forever in danger of being thrown off the base. Yost levelled the same robotic stare at him as he’d used to silence the Italian provocateur, but Melton knew his Jordanian colleague wouldn’t be so easily cowed. Mirsaad remained on his feet, hands on hips, almost inviting him to reach over and take a swing.

  ‘They are gone, Colonel. It is all gone. An act of God, no less. How could it be otherwise?’

  Yost jumped in before a flood tide of voices could drown him out. ‘It could very easily be anything but, Mr Mirsaad. You are not there. You haven’t seen anything for yourself. All you know is that you can’t get a phone call through, and somebody is selling very expensive pictures of what looks to me like computer-generated video-game imagery. If I were you I’d go read your H.G. Wells before I pushed the panic button, sir.’

  Melton smirked quietly as he filled his notepad with shorthand. He had to score that one to Yost, although the classical sci-fi reference seemed lost on the Jordanian as it was on most of the other foreign journalists in the room. Or at least those from non-English-speaking countries. For himself, he didn’t mind a bit of trashy reading when he was stretched out in business class, thirty thousand feet up. He even admired Iain M. Banks’s high-tone Culture novels as an unlikely blend of literature and SF. But he lived and worked in the real world, just like the men and women he wrote about, and while the Army Times correspondent couldn’t possibly imagine what sort of technical clusterfuck or psy-war hoax they were dealing with, he had no doubt that the explanation was more prosaic than alien space bats or the hand of God.

  He hadn’t had time to view the still shots on BBC World. He’d been too busy trying (and failing) to get through to head office back in Virginia. If he had to make a bet, however, he’d lay his money on some kind of killer virus, probably written up by guerrilla hackers in Russia or Malaysia as a protest against the imminent war, not to mention as a personal shot at glory in the bizarro underground. A hit like this, just days before the start of the war, would instantly transform some spotty college drop-out into a hyper-celebrity super-hacker. A pity for them they’d never be able to cash in with Nike endorsements or a Coke ad. Best they could hope for was a virtual hand job on some mal-ware chat site. Fuckwits. Just a few months ago he’d freelanced a 3000-word feature on digital security for Statfor.com that the Times didn’t want. He’d come away with mixed feelings; utter contempt for the social misfits and losers who were the creators of so many of the most destructive programs, and an unshakable certainty that some day one of them was going to pull a stunt that did real-world damage to real-world lives. Perhaps this was it.

  Somebody from Agence France-Presse jumped to his feet demanding to know – all the French reporters sounded like they were always demanding this or that – how the Coalition expected to maintain the integrity of their communications in any conflict with Iraq, given the ‘total collapse’ of their network this morning. It was a good question, one Melton had wondered about, and he was surprised to see that Colonel Yost looked almost relieved to get it.

  ‘Our theatre-level networks remain fully functional, intact and secure,’ he said. ‘General Franks is in complete control of all Coalition forces in situ. That is simply not an issue. The US and her allies are ready and willing to carry out any order from their national command authorities. Whatever the mission, we will accomplish it… Thank you. This briefing is at an end. You will be kept informed of any developments via the media centre.’

  Yost nodded curtly, gathered up his papers and walked away from the rostrum as hu
ndreds of seated reporters suddenly leapt to their feet to hurl questions at him. Melton stood with them. In the sudden outburst, all he’d heard was a single question shouted by Sayad al Mirsaad before anyone else.

  ‘What national command authority? They’re gone…’

  * * * *

  It’s an intensely frustrating experience for a newsman to find himself cut off from the biggest story of the day, and Bret Melton soon felt as though he was cut off from the biggest story of all time. That’s not to say there was nothing to report from Qatar. The presser had broken up in chaos and the headquarters of the Coalition forces was seething with all the mad energy of a giant ants’ nest that had been rudely kicked open. But in spite of all the activity as the military spooled up their response to whatever had happened on the other side of the globe, Melton knew that a more immediate story was available a short plane ride away: the inevitable eruption of the Arab world when it realised that America was gone.

  It was unbelievable, insane, and completely fucking outrageous. It was gone.

  He had eaten almost half a roll of antacid pills in the last hour as he’d tried to accept the situation. Sitting by himself in a crowded canteen roaring with the voices of dozens of reporters who’d crowded in for the free Wi-Fi and chilled air, Melton had surfed the web frantically looking for something – anything – that might expose this morning’s news as a gigantic fraud. All he’d managed to do was convince himself that nobody, no state or group, and certainly no individual, could pull off such an enormous scam. The disappearance was real.

  He thumbed another couple of Rolaids into his mouth, sucking at them despondently as he clicked through a series of windows. News reports. Canadian TV shots. Webcam feeds. He’d searched dozens of chat sites, which had ‘lost’ most of their participants hours ago, their last messages often ending mid-sentence. It was a visit to an online gaming site that convinced him, however. He had a little-used subscription to Blizzard.net that he’d set up when researching a piece about the possibility of using multi-player combat sims as a recruiting tool. Everywhere he went in the virtual world he found CGI avatars standing mutely, awaiting instructions from their creators. Beneath them, in the small windows given over to character dialogue, there were reams of increasingly bemused, uneasy, and then fearful comments from players who’d logged in from areas outside North America. Most tellingly, almost nobody was now online, the survivors having abandoned the game servers for news sites or perhaps even the real world.

  ‘A dark day, my friend. A very dark day.’

  Melton looked up from the eerie stillness of a window running a multiplayer version of Diablo. Sayad al Mirsaad, the Al Jazeera correspondent, stood over him.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he asked, indicating the seat in front of Melton.

  ‘Of course not,’ Bret said distractedly. ‘Sit down, Sadie.’

  His Jordanian colleague had given up protesting the American’s use of the slightly offensive nickname, finally accepting some time ago that it was meant affectionately. He was regularly called much worse by some of Melton’s countrymen.

  ‘I can see from your face, you are a believer now, yes?’ said Mirsaad, without a hint of irony. He and Melton were both educated men, both men of strong faith, and they had passed many late hours in Qatar discussing theology and politics.

  The former Ranger shrugged and let his hand fly up in a gesture that was part resignation, part expression of utter futility. He didn’t reply. Around him, the reporters all roared on, each holding forth on their own ideas and bullshit conspiracy theories. An unpleasant energy pervaded the room, setting Melton’s teeth on edge. In contrast with the others, Mirsaad appeared to be as depressed as he was.

  ‘Not everyone will think it’s a bad day, Sadie,’ Melton said at last. ‘Some assholes are gonna be sending a lot of extra prayers upstairs tonight, thanking their God for getting rid of the great Satan.’ He watched Mirsaad closely, but he seemed almost as upset as any American was.

  ‘Then they would be fools,’ replied the Jordanian. ‘Ultimately everything is God’s will, but this is not His work. In the affairs of men, the will of Allah is known through the actions of men. This… this is something else.’

  Melton nodded. ‘I think so too. But it doesn’t mean -’

  ‘Hey, shut the fuck up!’ somebody yelled from across the room. ‘It’s Saddam.’

  The name acted like a spell, laying a hush over the room as Melton twisted around in his plastic chair to get a view of a television screen high on the wall behind him. The Iraqi leader appeared there, beaming like a pirate king who’d fallen ass-backwards into a huge pile of both kinds of booty. The electronic watermark in the top right-hand corner of the screen belonged to the Al Jazeera network and the report was in Arabic.

  ‘What’s it saying?’ somebody asked.

  Melton glanced back at Mirsaad for a translation, but before he could answer, an educated English voice rang out over the heads of the crowd. A handsome, well-groomed young man with South Asian features and an impeccable Etonian accent stood on a chair to get a clear view of the TV. Melton thought he recognised him. A BBC producer.

  ‘It’s saying that Saddam appeared briefly before a crowd at one of his palaces about forty minutes ago,’ the man called out.

  The footage showed a beaming dictator. Melton thought he was smiling so much that if he’d been a cartoon character, the top of his head might well have fallen off. Dressed in army greens and sporting a black beret, he fired six rounds from a pistol into the air as a small coterie of unctuously smiling generals watched on and the hand-picked crowd exploded into spasms of joy and tyrannophilia. Saddam began talking and an Arab voice-over cut in, after a few seconds, paraphrasing him. The English producer translated as the roomful of journalists remained unnaturally still and quiet.

  ‘He’s saying that Allah the merciful, the Almighty, has swept the crusaders from the very heart of their castle… from the very face of the earth, which they defiled with their presence. He’s calling on General Franks to come out of his spider hole, to fight right now. He’s demanding that all of the Arab world rise up and throw out the invaders… and their dogs and puppets in Riyadh and Kuwait and Qatar… And he’s promising to lead a coalition of the Fedayeen, the honourable, to drive the infidel and the apostate out of the holy lands.’

  The Iraqi leader punched out a few more gunshots before spreading his arms wide and retreating inside the palace. Probably to haul ass to an underground bunker before a Tomahawk caught him out in the open, thought Melton. He raised an eyebrow at Mirsaad, and the Jordanian nodded, confirming the accuracy of the BBC man’s translation. Within a second, the room was in uproar again, even louder and somehow denser this time. Melton shifted in his seat and rolled his shoulders in a vain attempt to shrug off a growing sense of frustration.

  He had no family back in the States. He was an only child and his parents, who’d had him late in life, were both dead. For the first time in what felt like a long and lonesome existence, he was glad to be on his own in the world. His work didn’t lend itself to stable relationships, and although he’d never had trouble finding women to date, none had ever lasted beyond a few weeks. Now, perversely, he was thankful for that. What must it have been like for these poor fuckers around him who had family back home? A cursory glance around the canteen told him they were the ones whose voices were loudest, and whose faces were the most strained.

  ‘What will you do, Bret?’ asked Mirsaad.

  He was about to throw out the standard reply of ‘My job’, when it occurred to him what a ridiculous answer that would be. Did he even have a job anymore? His month’s salary and travel allowance were due to be paid overnight – would it go through? He had no idea. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered honestly, raising his voice to be heard over the tumult. ‘What about you?’

  Mirsaad seemed almost ashamed. ‘I have an assignment in Palestine,’ he said. ‘They are celebrating there. Dancing in the streets. A big party. But soon I think there
will be fighting, no?’

  ‘Fighting?’ muttered Bret Melton, as he contemplated the loss of his whole world and the prospect of what remained falling to pieces beneath his feet. ‘I reckon so.’

  * * * *

  6

  PITIЙ-SALPКTRIИRE HOSPITAL, PARIS

  A harried-looking man wearing a white coat over a dark suit appeared at the door and pushed past Maggie. Poleaxed by the TV news, she barely noticed him. The physician seemed to do his level best to ignore all of them, including Caitlin, even as he questioned her. A name-tag on his white jacket read Colbert.

  ‘Vous avez mal? Une douleur, un malaise?’ he said, asking whether she was experiencing any pain or discomfort. He addressed the query to his watch, which he was examining as though it was the most fascinating trinket in the world.