15th August
Dean Hemmingway passed a tray of food to Maria Galveston through a horizontal gap in the barred door.
The outer door of the cell was never closed now, and Dean and Maria had become used to casually conversing with each other. The bunker was small enough that a voice easily carried from one area to another.
Both of them had a lot of spare time. As Dean had previously explained, he had never intended to retreat to the bunker for such a long period before Judgement Day.
Maria put the tray on a table in the cell and sat down to eat.
Dean sat down on a chair on the outer side of the barred door.
Maria glanced towards Dean. ‘What makes you and the rest of WAR so sure that God wants to end life on Earth?’
‘It’s been prophesied since before the time of Christ,’ Dean replied. ‘If you look at the history of even the past twenty years, you can see an escalation of conflicts and natural disasters – all the things that the prophets said would happen in the approach to Judgement Day.’
‘Suppose you’re wrong?’ Maria continued with the same line of questioning.
‘Then the asteroid will miss or Theta will find a way to defeat us,’ Dean replied. ‘WAR could never succeed against God’s will.’
‘You said previously that this bunker was impregnable within the timescales that the enemies of WAR would have available to take action,’ Maria pondered aloud.
‘That’s true,’ Dean replied. ‘There’s only one way in – via the lift in the West Wing refectory – and that can only be controlled from down here. I don’t expect anyone to even guess that we’re here until it’s too late.’
‘So, you just have to wait and sabotage any attempt to launch American missiles on the thirteenth of September,’ Maria concluded.
‘It’s not quite that simple,’ said Dean. ‘We’re going to have to launch at least one military operation from here before Judgement Day.’
‘You’re going to use fake presidential orders to attack the clean bases,’ Maria guessed.
‘We’ll certainly have to do that to stop the Resolution,’ Dean replied.
‘You’re going to sink a British aircraft carrier!’ Maria stated in disbelief.
‘I’m not happy about that,’ Dean answered, ‘but we must be as certain as we can that the missiles cannot be launched.’
I don’t understand,’ said Maria. ‘If you can prevent the president launching American missiles and you can stop anyone else from doing so by creating a password that they can never know, why do you need to eliminate the clean bases?’
‘Python contains some very clever people,’ Dean replied. ‘It seems impossible that they could launch the specialist missiles from Grand Forks Air Force Base while we have so much control. They may, however, find a way to do that, so we must destroy their launch bases – just in case.’
‘Are you going to launch attacks on Northchester and Waterford in addition to sinking the Resolution?’ said Maria
‘Not necessarily,’ Dean replied. ‘Each base presents a different problem.’
‘In what way?’ Maria asked.
‘Northchester is in a cathedral crypt,’ Dean replied. ‘It would be much better to destroy that base from the inside – in the same way that we did at Meadowcote.
‘The same team that attacked Meadowcote will deal with that. Ordering a strike from here would be a last resort.
‘Waterford is the most problematic, however, because no one has any idea where that base is located – not even Theta, as far as I can judge from intelligence reported by our operative in MI5.’
‘Which means that Theta can’t use it either.’
‘Someone must know. Tom Meadowcote would be very likely to, but no one knows where he is.’
‘How do you plan to deal with Waterford?’ Maria asked.
‘We may have to put agents on the ground in the village on the day,’ Dean replied.
‘You seem to have a very comprehensive plan,’ Maria noted, ‘although there’s one thing that I don’t understand.’
‘What’s that?’ Dean asked.
‘After all your careful planning, killing Rodriguez was very clumsy and extremely dangerous. Why did you do it?’
‘We didn’t,’ Dean replied. ‘He was one of us – why would we?’
‘What happened then?’ Maria asked.
‘Carl, like us, expected Judgement Day on the thirteenth of September,’ Dean began. ‘He had some unfinished business in Washington and wanted to resolve it before the end.
‘It all began back in 1969,’ Dean continued. ‘Those of us who subsequently formed WAR met at a Christian camp in Iowa. There were eight of us in the beginning. The eighth was called Sarah Harrison. Sarah and Carl got married, but they divorced back in 2005 – before WAR became established. Sarah went her own way after that – leaving just the seven of us.’
‘What do you mean by “became established”?’ Maria asked.
‘The original camp in Iowa was for gifted Christian young people. We all expected to get good jobs, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that we realised God had guided us into positions that gave us all significant influence and/or relevant skills in institutions such as the White House, the Pentagon, the US Air Force and the British MI5. It was as if our whole lives were being geared towards some coordinated operation for the Lord. That’s the final reason why we’re so sure that God wants to use us to allow the asteroid to continue on His planned course. Why else would our group have been placed in such a unique position to do that very thing?’
‘How did Sarah Harrison fit in?’ asked Maria.
‘Sarah had a brother,’ Dean explained. ‘He shunned the Way of our Lord: he became a major drug dealer. To cut a long story short, Carl gave evidence that put Sarah’s brother away for twenty years. He was only released earlier this year.’
‘So, what happened on the day Carl was killed?’ asked Maria.
‘Carl wanted to meet with Sarah for one last time. He contacted her and invited her around to the safe house. Her brother followed her, and when she left, he went to the house and shot Carl.’
Maria thought back to the newspaper she had read on the day after Carl’s murder had been reported. She recalled another article in the same paper about a recently released ex-drug dealer who had been found dead in his car by the Potomac. ‘Was that man who was found dead from a heart attack, in his car near the river, Sarah’s brother?’ Maria asked.
‘Carl obviously got an opportunity to defend himself,’ Dean explained. ‘He had a dart gun, like the one Camellia used to drug you. Some of the darts contain a poison that simulates a heart attack. When I got to the safe house, I found the dart on the floor. It had some blood on its tip. I guess that Sarah’s brother, Harrison, didn’t get enough of the drug to kill him outright but that it took effect later.’
‘Did you remove the dart from the house?’ asked Maria.
‘And the dart gun and other things that might look unusual or point to WAR,’ Dean explained. ‘It would have been too risky to try to dispose of the body, so I left that for the police. There was no way they were going to link anything to Camellia or me before the thirteenth of September.’