Free Traitor by Duncan Falconer Page A

weather, but it could still prove detrimental to the operation’s overall success.
    He retrieved another stored number from the satellite phone and pressed the call button. ‘Is this the Ministry of Defence? . . . Good. Me and some friends have just hijacked an oil platform in the North Sea. Who should I speak to?’

5
    Gerald Nevins walked briskly down a broad staircase into an Elizabethan hallway. Its ornate wooden carvings stretched from the ground- to the second-floor ceiling. He touched the perfectly tied knot of his silk tie as if to adjust it but without doing anything of the kind. It was a characteristic reflex when he was deep in thought. Two suited aides came down the steps behind him, one tapping the keys of a BlackBerry while the other talked into a phone.
    ‘All shipping within a radius of fifty nautical miles is being diverted away from the area,’ one of the aides announced. ‘Airspace is being cleared out to a radius of one hundred.’
    ‘The submarine HMS Torbay will be inside the operational boundaries by this evening,’ said the second. ‘Admiral Bellington will command all forces. He’ll be on board HMS Daring within the hour and then inside the ops area by early morning.’
    ‘It’s confirmed that the satellite-phone transmission originated on the Morpheus, sir,’ the second added.
    ‘Thanatos is Greek mythology,’ the BlackBerry scrutiniser offered. ‘The god of death.’
    ‘What did you think he’d call himself? Kermit the bloody frog?’ Nevins muttered.
    ‘Voice is definitely English,’ the aide continued, used to the sarcasm. ‘London or close to. Ninety per cent certainty he’s Caucasian.’
    The three men headed across the marble-floored lobby towards a pair of solid-looking carved doors. The aide with the phone hurried ahead and placed his hand on a fingerprint scanner that unlocked the door. He opened it in time for Nevins to breeze through without breaking stride.
    They entered a large operations room dominated by a huge screen that practically covered an entire wall from the floor to the high ceiling, the majority of its surface taken up by a live map of the North Sea - a hybrid of satellite imagery and colourfully illustrated enhanced topography. The Morpheus was indicated at the centre. Colour-coded reference numbers shadowed hundreds of other platforms and vessels, including the smallest fishing boats. Lines emanating from naval vessels extended across the map, indicating their tracks. Details of aircraft included their number, altitude and speed: most of them looked as if they were moving or turning away from the centre of the map. The screen’s deep margins contained data on various meteorological and current events. The air was filled with suppressed radio conversations from countless sources.
    A dozen men and women occupied the room, a few in civilian clothes but most of them in casual military uniform from all three forces. They sat in front of computer consoles, facing the large screen and typing or talking into wire headsets.
    The command centre’s operations officer, wearing a Royal Navy uniform and standing in the centre of the room looking at the screen, turned grim-faced towards Nevins as he approached, acknowledging his superior with a slight stiffening of the back and a nod. ‘We’ll have a satellite view of the platform in fifteen minutes,’ he said while Nevins scanned the display. ‘A Nimrod will provide a view in less than five.’
    ‘Do we know who these damned people are yet?’ Nevins asked as though it were all a great personal inconvenience.
    ‘No. It still appears to be a purely economic event. The ransom demands remain focused on the oil company.’
    ‘Arcom,’ one of Nevins’s aides interjected. ‘They’re at the top of the ownership tree, sir. Head office in Abu Dhabi.’
    ‘Any previous?’ Nevins asked.
    ‘Nothing relative to this,’ the aide replied.
    ‘Shareholders?’
    ‘Still compiling that one, sir,’ the other aide