“He can’t be serious,” Frank Clayton said, shaking his head. “God, he can’t be fucking serious!”

Gloom and worry permeated the room, as heavy as the ornate, nineteenth-century decor so carefully restored over the past decade. Nine men sat at one end of a long, polished oak table large enough for sixty. Together, they were facing a nightmare long expected.

Each had hoped it would be a nightmare deferred. With the BBC broadcast of two hours before, that hope had just been dashed. After years of being the stuff of fiction, spy thrillers and the like, nuclear blackmail by terrorists had just become reality.

Buchalter was the current President’s advisor on national security, and as such was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the National Security Council. Most of the men present were members of the NSC Principals Committee, one of the three subgroups of the Council formed during President Bush’s reorganization of the group in 1989. Among them were Frank Clayton, the new White House Chief of Staff; Secretary of State James A. Schellenberg; General Amos C. Caldwell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Secretary of Defense Ronald Hemminger; and, rumpled as always in his tweed jacket, Victor Marlowe, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Normally, each of these singularly powerful men was attended by a small army of aides and staff members, but this afternoon the foot soldiers were restricted to a half-dozen or so men and women who waited, standing, at the far end of the room until they might be needed. This meeting of the Principals Committee was both secret and urgent. A special brief was being prepared for the President, a man not known either for his expert grasp of foreign affairs or for his patience, and there was no time to be lost on preliminary meetings or group discussions.

Three of the men at the table were not members of the NSC but had been brought in to assist with the brief’s preparation. The white-haired, professorial-looking man at Marlowe’s side was a second spook, Brian Hadley, the head of the CIA’s Office of Global Issues. Next to him, dapper and trim as always, was Sir George Mallory, the British ambassador to the United States.

The ninth man at the table wore one of the two military uniforms in the room, but his was the blue and gold of a Navy rear admiral, as opposed to the khaki of General Caldwell’s Army uniform. Admiral Bainbridge was the commanding officer of Navy Special Warfare Group Two, a simple enough name that was generally reduced in true Navy acronymic fashion to the jawbreaking mouthful NAVSPECWARGRU-2. The unit included the East-Coast based SEAL teams: Two, Four, Seven, and Eight, plus Helicopter Attack Squadron Light Four. He’d been in Washington attending a series of meetings at the Pentagon when an NSC driver had appeared, with orders for him to report to the Situation Room Support Facility at once.

Bainbridge was no stranger to this room. He’d been here many times before during his career, as advisor during other crises, though it certainly didn’t look like the popular view of such a place—all computers and consoles and wall-sized monitors and screens. The room, once known as the Crisis Management Center, had been carefully restored so that there was no hint that the nineteenth-century decor hid twenty-first-century electronics and telecommunications equipment. For eighty years, in fact, Room 208 of the Executive Office Building had been the office of the Secretary of State, starting with Hamilton Fish during the Administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, and ending with George Marshall in 1948. Cordell Hull had ejected Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura and Special Envoy Saburo Kurusu from this very room early on a certain Sunday afternoon in December 1941. Forty years later, the Reagan White House, seeking to expand the hopelessly cramped and inadequate facilities of the Carter Crisis Management Center in the White House basement, had taken over this room for the purpose. Sometimes the President himself met here, though more often, as today, it was used by members of the National Security Council to make their decisions and prepare their recommendations, which one or several of them would submit to the Oval Office later.

Bainbridge couldn’t help thinking that this was one time when the President really ought to be in the meeting. Action was needed, and cold, hard decisions . . . not meetings.

“Let’s hear the damned thing again,” Clayton, the President’s Chief of Staff, said. He was a small, pinched lawyer of a man who looked as though he was always expecting the worst.

This time, Bainbridge thought, Clayton’s notorious pessimism could well be justified.

A crackle of static sounded from a hidden set of speakers in the room. “Nations of the world,” a voice said a moment later. Bainbridge thought it sounded German . . . or possibly Dutch. Northern European, certainly. “This is Heinrich Adler, and I am speaking to you from the operations center of the BGA petroleum consortium’s Bouddica oil production platform in the North Sea. My name is not important, but my message most assuredly is. I and the people with me represent the People’s Revolutionary Front, an organization dedicated to redressing the wrongs and imbalances of a world political system designed to take advantage of the poor, the oppressed, the technologically backward peoples of this earth. You, the rich and powerful, have long been able to ignore the plight of the billions of human beings who have needed your help; you have raped this planet, upset the balance of nature, impoverished whole nations by your callousness and greed.

“For too long, the majority of the world’s population has had no say whatsoever in affairs that concern them . . . the distribution of food and consumer products, the benefits of the technology so esteemed by you richer nations, or the use of the mineral wealth torn from their own soils.

“For too long, the majority of the people of this world have had no voice because they have been powerless in the face of the capitalist nations, disenfranchised simply by accident of birth. We, the People’s Revolution, will redress this wrong. We will be their voice. We will be their power.

“In short, the People’s Revolution is declaring itself to be another state among states, a nation as legitimate and as real as any other nation on the face of the earth. The single difference is that we are a state without boundaries. We exist everywhere, for the benefit of the disenfranchised everywhere, for the redressing of social wrongs everywhere.

“It would be easy enough, of course, to dismiss my words as the ramblings of a madman. I assure you all that I and the people behind me are saner than any of those who now occupy the halls of power in the world’s capitals. However, since we have been forced to play the game according to their rules rather than according to the rules of moral right and of justice, I am taking this opportunity to announce that the People’s Revolutionary Republic is, as of this moment, a nuclear power and worthy of the respect due any of the world’s nation-states that hold similar power.”

There was a pause in the broadcast, as though the unseen Adler were waiting for the real meaning of his words to sink in. The vault-ceilinged emptiness of Room 208 was silent, save for the hiss of recorded static.

“A nuclear device has been transferred to the Bouddica oil production facility,” Adler’s voice continued after a moment. “It will be detonated if our demands are not met. These are our demands.

“First. The United Nations, meeting in special session, shall vote to recognize the People’s Revolutionary Republic as a legitimate state and to admit that state to the UN, with all rights and powers accorded any other member state of that organization.

“Second. Since the People’s Revolutionary Republic is not limited to any one geographical area, it requires a place where it can do business as a state among equals, a place to receive ambassadors, conduct trade negotiations, and the like. An office suite within the United Nations Building in New York City will be made available for this purpose. Our representatives will consult with the appropriate agencies at a later date in order to guarantee such matters as security, privacy, and our specific requirements for space and personnel.

“Third. The governments of the United States of America, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Russia will all immediately and formally recognize the People’s Revolutionary Republic, and agree to an exchange of ambassadors and other representatives, which will take place at our United Nations office as soon as such a meeting can be arranged.

“Fourth. Arrangements will be arranged for the transfer of six thousand million American dollars to an account in the name of the People’s Revolutionary Republic to be opened in the British Bank of Commerce at its London office. This sum is to be raised as follows: one thousand million American dollars each from the United States of America, Great Britain, and Germany, the three governments whose combined investments are represented by the BFA petroleum consortium. In addition, five hundred million American dollars apiece will come from the governments of Norway, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, all of which have a serious stake in this matter. Finally, to make up the total sum, another five hundred million American dollars will come from Lloyd’s of London, which, of course, insures the Bouddica complex. This money will become the initial operating capital for the PRR. Even states without boundaries require a national treasury.

“Fifth. Citizenship in our nation will be free to any who ask it and who can demonstrate that their legitimate needs have not been met by their former governments. Any attempt against the lives or liberty of members of the People’s Revolution, against our representatives anywhere in the world, or against citizens wishing to join us in any country, will be considered an act of war against the PRR.

“Sixth. We have a list of our people already apprehended by various governments. Among them are two PRR people now being held by the government of Germany, and eight more who were taken prisoner in Middlebrough, England, last Saturday. These people are to be released without delay. Failure to do so will be considered an act of war against the PRR. Furthermore, one of the PRR personnel now being held by the British government is a Korean woman, a Ms. Chun Hyon Hee. Arrangements are to be made to fly her at once to the Bouddica facility.

“If you fail to satisfy us that our conditions are being met in good faith in every particular, we will have no alternative but to detonate our first nuclear device. We estimate a yield of approximately one hundred kilotons, or roughly five times the power of the explosion that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945, and the blast will have three immediate consequences.

“First, the three hundred twelve civilians on Bouddica and the twenty-four crewmen of the Noramo Pride will die. Next, the blast will do considerable damage, both from shock and from heat effects, to the infrastructure of the North Sea oil fields and the attendant drilling and pumping apparatus. It is impossible to guess how extensive this damage will be, but at the very least, a great many of the seafloor pipelines that now supply Germany, Great Britain, and Norway with crude oil will be ruptured, as will dozens of well heads, sea-bottom pumps, and surface derricks. I’m sure the representatives at Lloyd’s will be able to give you a succinct estimate of the damage purely in terms of dollars, pounds, and marks. The Bouddica complex alone is worth several thousand million pounds, and that is only one of many such production platforms that could be destroyed or heavily damaged by blast or rendered uninhabitable by fallout. In particular, the oil platform and other facilities at Ekofisk, as well as the seafloor pipeline to Middlebrough, will all sustain considerable and possibly irreparable damage.

“Further, we suspect that the oil leaking from hundreds of ruptured well heads will be rather difficult to stop. The well heads are located on the seafloor at depths ranging from one hundred to five hundred feet and are not easily accessible. Shutting them down will not be so simple a matter as putting out the oil well fires in Kuwait, or as easy a cleanup as the effort to repair the damage caused a few years ago by the Exxon Valdez. Those tasks were completed in a number of months. How long will it be before the radioactivity reaches levels at which it will be safe to send divers or submarines into the area? I leave that to the experts to decide. Frankly, we believe that the majority of the North Sea oil deposits, what is left of them anyway, will be forever unusable simply because it will be too expensive to reopen them. In the meantime, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil will be released over a period of time, much of it contaminated by radiation. The smoke from the oil fires left burning on the surface could blacken Europe’s skies for months. The soot and the resultant rains will be radioactive. Beaches and seaside towns and cities from Oslo to Calais, from Aberdeen to Hamburg, could be threatened, depending on the wind and weather patterns and on the prevailing sea currents.

“Finally, the blast will hurl a tremendous amount of radioactive water into the sky. Again, depending on the weather patterns, the ‘footprint’ of radioactive fallout will almost certainly threaten densely populated areas in England, in Scandinavia, or on the Continent, and quite possibly all three. The cost in human life and suffering would be appalling.

“Believe me when I say that we have no wish to unleash this horror. No sane people would. But in the interests of national sovereignty, we will do what we must do to preserve our cause and our sacred mission to the disenfranchised peoples of the world.

“It is now five past eleven, GMT. By the time this message is broadcast, it will be early afternoon of Wednesday, May 2nd. While I realize that it will take time to discuss my, ah, demands, you must understand that I have neither unlimited time nor unlimited patience. We will expect to see Ms. Chun here by 2400 hours on Friday. All other demands, including the transfer of funds to our accounts, must be carried out and confirmed by noon, GMT, Saturday. If all of these conditions have been met, the nuclear device will not be detonated. Armageddon, for the North Sea, will have been averted.

“I will not negotiate and I will not tolerate attempts to wear me down or play psychological games. Your next communication with me will signal your agreement to my terms, or you will suffer the consequences.”

The static hissed on for a moment, punctuating the echo of Adler’s words.

“Extortion, plain and simple,” Schellenberg said, shaking his head. “Never mind the crocodile tears for the disenfranchised. That character’s just hitting us for the money.”

“Interesting point,” Hemminger observed. “How interested is he, really, in the people he claims to represent? Is he serious about this stuff?”

“If he is, he’s a complete lunatic,” Clayton said, shrugging. “This ‘country without borders’ idea sounds okay, but it would never work in practice. Do its citizens still pay taxes to the government of the country where they live? Do they obey two sets of laws? Is the country where they live going to have to treat them as aliens, complete with green cards and visas and all of that? Do citizens of the United States lose all the entitlements, food stamps, welfare, Social Security, whatever, that they had before they join the PRR?” He shook his head. “None of it makes sense. It seems to me it’s not very well thought out.”

Caldwell laughed. “Doesn’t need to be, Mr. Clayton. It just has to sound good . . . one of the great evils of our age. You think people are going to wait for all the loose ends to be tidied up first?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the wall behind him. “Soon as word of this gets around, there’s going to be lines a mile long looking for where they can sign up. We could be facing a complete breakdown of the social order.”

“I don’t see how you can equate a bit of social disorder with the catastrophe that this nuclear explosion would bring on Europe,” Sir George said softly. “Tens of thousands could die. Great Britain’s economy will be plunged into chaos . . . and not simply from the loss of North Sea oil, though that loss would be staggering. An ecological disaster of the scale this man is proposing, my God. We could lose half of our fishing industry, or more. Whole cities would have to be evacuated, their citizens moved and resettled into camps of some kind, I suppose. Industry would be brought to a standstill. Presumably, the Arab countries would raise oil prices as well. Gentlemen, this catastrophe could ruin the economy of the entire world!”

“Which, of course, is what Adler is threatening us with,” Buchalter said. “Compared to all of what Sir George has just said, six billion dollars is chicken feed.”

“Six billion dollars?” Schellenberg asked with a sniff. “That’s hardly enough for a national treasury. Is it possible we’re dealing with simple thieves here? Con artists?”

“It’s a possibility,” Caldwell said. “I don’t believe for a moment that their demands will stop with six billion dollars. They’ll be back to hit us again once we show that all they need to do is rattle a nuke at us to get us to give them whatever they want.”

“Yeah,” Clayton said. “That could be. But maybe they’re bluffing too. Maybe they don’t have an atomic bomb after all.”

“You really want to take that chance?” Hemminger said. Clayton glared back at him.

“They have a bomb,” Marlowe said, speaking for the first time. “At least, we have to assume that they do.” Briefly, he outlined for the others the events of the past few days in England, particularly the SAS raid in Middlebrough. Most of the men present had heard about the assault, of course, but the information about the North Korean woman captured in the raid and the traces of radiation picked up on her clothing was new.

And shocking. “Good God,” Clayton shouted at the CIA man. “Why weren’t we told?”

“We were . . . we are still assessing the situation. We’re still trying to acquire independent corroboration.”

“Corroboration be hanged,” Hemminger put in. “We’ve got a crazy out there who claims to have an atomic bomb! This requires action!”

“And just what, Mr. Secretary,” Marlowe said coldly, “would you have us do?”

“Easy!” Hemminger declared. “This fucking PRR wants to be treated like a real country? Declare war on ’em!”

“And what targets do we attack?” General Caldwell said quietly. “Their, ah, national capital in the UN building? Their treasury in London? Or do we simply attack their population, which happens to be the poor or the homeless or the underdogs or the radical militants in any of a hundred countries?”

“Including our own,” Clayton put in. “This Adler guy’s message is going to play great with black extremists right here in the U.S.A.”

“And Hispanics,” Buchalter added. “Native Americans. Hell, radical environmentalists. Even militant feminists, maybe. Anybody in the damned country who claims to have a beef with the government or with society as a whole could sign on to this guy’s PRR movement. General Caldwell is right. If this gets going, it means social chaos, a complete breakdown in order.”

“Did you hear his comment about this being their first device?” Hemminger said. “What about that, Victor? How many bombs do these guys have?”

“Unknown,” Marlowe said.

“Actually,” Hadley said, leaning forward on the table, “since we suspect that North Korea is the agency responsible for supplying these people with a nuclear device in the first place, we have to assume that they could have provided the PRR with more than one, but that they probably did not do so.”

The Defense Secretary frowned. “Why not?”

“Our best estimates are that North Korea doesn’t have more than five to seven nuclear devices in all. That’s not much of an arsenal. Simple math. Seven bombs take away one leaves six. Seven take away two leaves five. The leadership in Pyongyang will want to see how it goes before giving away almost thirty percent of their entire nuclear capability.”

“They may not be giving them away, you know,” Clayton said. “North Korea is desperate for money. For all we know, they just sold their whole arsenal.”

“Maybe,” Marlowe conceded. “But a conservative involvement seems more likely, given North Korea’s dealings with foreigners in the past. Remember, we’re dealing with an insular, isolationist regime, one that doesn’t trust any outsiders, no matter what their politics might be.”

“I thought this had all been ironed out with North Korea.” Schellenberg put in. “After the confrontation with them a couple of years ago over their nuclear program, we promised to give them a new, safer nuclear reactor in exchange for certain guarantees—”

“And why is it, Mr. Secretary,” Caldwell said softly, “that you people in State always assume that other nations in the world are going to play the game by our rules?”

“In any case,” Marlowe added, “we don’t have enough information yet. This could be the work of a small clique in their military, rather than a policy decision by Pyongyang.”

“None of this gets us anywhere, does it?” Hemminger pointed out. “It all comes down to a question of whether or not we’re going to pay the price this guy demands.”

“The United States does not accede to blackmail,” Caldwell said flatly.

“Come off it, Amos,” Buchalter said. “We’re not talking about a few hostages here. We’re talking about a single bomb that, at the very least, will do unimaginable damage to the economies of half a dozen of our allies, and could, possibly, through radioactive contamination kill tens of thousands of people. You know as well as I do that we’ll negotiate if we have to, if the alternative is—”

“Pay the blackmailer and you’ll never be rid of him,” Marlowe stated softly. “Worse, you’ll have a dozen more like him knocking at your door the next day.”

“What alternative do we have?” the British ambassador asked. “As with you, Her Majesty’s Government has a standing policy of never negotiating with terrorists. This time, however, we may have no choice. The risks, to our economy, to our people, are simply too great.”

Buchalter turned to face Bainbridge. “Admiral. Your thoughts on the matter?”

Bainbridge shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He knew why he’d been called here, and he knew what he was expected to say. Still, he was not entirely comfortable with his role.

“As per orders,” he said slowly, “we have positioned a SEAL platoon—that’s two officers and twelve men—in England, with orders to stand by. It, ah, happened that some of these men were already training with your SAS, Sir George. We merely had to send a second detachment with their equipment.”

“I’ve heard about your SEALs,” the ambassador said. “Impressive.”

“SEALs,” Clayton said thoughtfully. “Could they pull off some sort of mission? Maybe go in and disarm that bomb?”

“We are looking into alternatives,” Bainbridge said, a bit stiffly. “My staff in Norfolk is working on several options, including an assault.” He spread his hands. “I should caution you not to put too much hope into that possibility, however. Fourteen men, however well trained, are not much of an army in a situation like this. Our intelligence is woefully inadequate. We have no idea where the bomb is being kept, or how many terrorists are there, how they are armed, how they are positioned. Assaulting them blindly would be insane.”

“An open invitation to Adler to push the button,” Schellenberg agreed.

“Then why did you pre-position the SEAL platoon?” Buchalter asked.

“To give us some leverage,” Bainbridge replied. “And in case NAVSPECWAR can provide the necessary intelligence. I had in mind the possibility of using a minisub, one of our SEAL delivery vehicles, to carry out a covert reconnaissance of the situation.”

“That makes sense,” Buchalter said. “I want you to write me up a plan. Tell me what you need. You’ll get it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

In fact, Bainbridge was more uncomfortable than ever with the idea. Though he commanded the Navy’s East Coast Special Warfare Group, he’d never entirely believed in the concept of special warfare . . . and that meant the SEALs. Oh, they had performed splendidly in the past, certainly. SEAL Seven’s recent rescue of hostages, including an American congresswoman, from a terrorist stronghold in what had once been Yugoslavia had been a classic.

But the Navy SEALs, he knew, were unpredictable, and damned near uncontrollable. Like many in the senior levels of the U.S. military, Bainbridge did not trust Special Warfare forces. This situation in the North Sea was one place where gun-toting cowboys could not be allowed to interfere.

Not even if the only alternative was surrender.