“What can I do? I’m just… just a cog.”

“So were Stanislav Petrov and Vasili Arkhipov, but they were the right people in the right place at the right time, and they stopped a third World War. What’s your name, kamerad?”

“Joshua Meldon Junior, sir.”

“You can call me Sam, Joshua. I like you. Why don’t you turn around and take a look at what’s happening behind you.”

Arendt was still standing under the screens showing the virtual destruction of his country, arguing that he was right, and that to speak the last two characters of the launch code would be a disaster. The depleted audience was with him: the Secretary of State, the Chief of Staff, the Deputy Security Adviser and the other two deputies, all willing the president to change his mind.

The admiral’s case was plain. “The White House is a primary target on every conceivable attack pattern of a foreign power. We have not been hit—yet—and neither has any target within a hundred miles. Mister President, an atom bomb in Virginia would rattle the windows in the Oval Office. There are no independently verifiable signs that we have been attacked because we have not actually been attacked.”

Mackensie looked above Arendt’s head, seeking both clarity and certainty. He watched the missile tracks close in on NORAD’s mountain fastness.

“I am the President of the United States of America and Commander-in-Chief of her armed forces. The reason I am in this great office of state, after long years of faithful service to this nation and her peoples, is to be here at this time and this place, to take this decision. When all others fall by the wayside and show themselves unworthy of the responsibilities handed to them by Almighty God, I will not falter. I will set my face like flint in the face of my many adversities and remain faithful to the very end.” Mackensie picked up the gold codes and looked to the screen that held the image of the ever-patient airforce officer, waiting for the complete sequence.

“Sir?” said Joshua Meldon Junior into the sudden silence. “My brother works for the USGS.”

“That’s nice, son, but not now.”

“He’s in Colorado. They have seismometers, sir. And I can verify it’s really him.”

Arendt gestured to Meldon to make the call.

“Niner Zulu,” said Mackensie.

“The launch codes have been authenticated,” said the man at NORAD and saluted crisply. “It was an honor serving under you, sir.”

“Would that others did their duty as diligently as you, son.” The screen went blank, and was replaced by a list of the counterstrike assets as they were activated. Mackensie folded his arms, as if he had known this day would come and he had spent a lifetime preparing himself for it. “Thank you, gentlemen. There is nothing else left to do, and you are all dismissed.”

None of them moved.

Meldon adjusted his mouth mic. “I need to speak to Doctor Jerry Meldon. I don’t care if he’s in a meeting: this is the White House and this is urgent.” While he waited, he picked up Petrovitch’s phone again.

“You’ll go far,” said Petrovitch.

“I’m too late, though, aren’t I?”

“Hell yeah. All your base are belong to us.”

“What are you going to do with them? The codes, I mean?”

“Enjoy them while I’ve got them. They go out of date at midnight, so they have a short shelf-life. I thought I might post them on some public message boards, see if they go viral.”

“Hey Josh. ’S’up?”

Meldon put the phone back down on the corner of his workstation. His brother didn’t sound like a man monitoring the end of everything.

“Jerry, listen very carefully to me. Have you detected any nuclear weapons detonations in the continental United States?”

“What’s going on, Josh? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Just answer the question: yes or no?”

“No! I mean, really no.”

“Or anywhere else?”

“Haven’t you seen the news? Of course you have. Why are you asking me this stuff?”

Meldon screwed his eyes tight shut. “Jerry, what was the name of the first girl you kissed?”

“I… don’t get it.”

Swallowing hard, Meldon tried again. “Third grade. Who did you kiss in third grade?”

“You said you’d never…”

“You don’t know how important this is, Jerry. I need to make sure that it’s you I’m talking to. I’ve got what’s left of the National Security Council staring at me, including the president. Which girl did you kiss in third grade? I caught you and you made me swear I’d never tell, on our mother’s life.”

The missiles were very close to Colorado now. By the rules of the game, if they hit, the connection would disappear.

“Jerry. Which girl?”

“You know damn well it wasn’t a g—”

Meldon cut him off. “Mister President. The United States Geological Survey has not detected a single detonation anywhere within the world, except for the one we caused.”

The two markers converged on NORAD. It winked out.

“Have we launched?” Arendt walked slowly around the table to Meldon’s workstation. He picked up the phone. “Petrovitch, have we launched?”

“Why don’t you put me on the speakers, Admiral?”

“You don’t need me to put you on the speakers, do you? You never have. You’re as good as in this room with us.”

The main screens flickered. The screen changed to inside a rusting container. Faces looked back at them. A teenage girl; two young women, one very tall with a bandaged cut on her partly shaved head, the other a pale and drawn blue-eyed redhead who stared belligerently and raised her middle finger to the camera; it panned over another woman, high cheekboned and disdainful, then they were out in the daylight. There were more containers, strewn seemingly at random, and as the camera wobbled and bounced along in time with the gait of the carrier, the watchers could see compacted brown clay and cloud-laden sky.

“This city has been my home for the last few years. The London Metrozone took me in and sheltered me after I’d run from all the bad things I’d done. I became anonymous here: easy enough to do. Then it got a bit, well, screwed up. Firstly, the New Machine Jihad: a burgeoning AI’s subconscious dreams played out across reality. That, and your CIA, put a hole in the cordon. The Outies came through. It was a trickle at first, then it was a flood. We ended up having a war, and we only just won. Now we have this: lies and subterfuge, more death and destruction, and you’ve finally done what the Armageddonists failed to do: put a nuclear bomb in the heart of London.”

He was at the gates of Regent’s Park, looking up at the sniper’s vantage point, showing them first-hand how damaged it was. “The strange thing is that each time I was no more than lucky. I was able to get in the way, just enough to make a difference. But I’m not doing that again: I’m done here. I’m tired. I’m going to disappear off your radar—hopefully permanently—and this time I’m going to leave this mess for you to clear up. And let’s face it, it is your mess.”

Petrovitch kept walking. There were few people still around: most of them had moved north away from ground zero. The street was littered with red flags, reminding him of that brief moment of euphoria, where change had not just seemed possible but inevitable.

“So I’ve got another of your CIA agents—I’m not talking about Tabletop, she’s one of us now—and I want to send him back to you. Even if I get nothing in return, he’s more trouble than he’s worth. A goodwill gesture, though, part of your reparations, might lead you to stick Epiphany Ekanobi and Paul Dalton on a plane to Europe. That’ll also mean you’ll have to enforce your own laws over in California a bit more rigorously than you are at the moment. Throw in the Anarchy kid, too, while you’re at it. That and stopping trying to kill me and my friends, we can call it quits.”

Mackensie cleared his throat. “You are in possession of the gold codes?”