Far away by the still-frozen White Sea is the Russian city of Archangel. Nearby is the shipyard of Sevmash in Severodvinsk. It is the biggest and best equipped in Russia. That day, muffled against the cold, the work teams were putting the finishing touches to the longest and most expensive refit in Russian naval history. They were completing and preparing for sea what would become the largest and most modern battlecruiser in the world; indeed, apart from the American aircraft carriers, she would be the world’s biggest surface warship. Her name was the Admiral Nakhimov.
Russia has only one carrier to the USA’s thirteen, the clapped-out Admiral Kuznetsov, attached to the Northern Fleet headquartered at Murmansk. She once had four huge battlecruisers, headed by the Peter the Great, or Pyotr Velikiy.
Two of these four are no longer in commission, and the Peter the Great is also old and barely functional. In fact, she was waiting out in the White Sea for the work at Sevmash to be completed so that she could take her place where the Nakhimov had lain for ten years while her multibillion-ruble refit was completed.
That morning, as Sir Adrian motored comfortably through the burgeoning spring countryside of Hertfordshire, there was a party in the quarters of the captain of the Admiral Nakhimov. Toasts were raised to the ship, to her new skipper, Captain Pyotr Denisovich, and to her triumphal pending voyage from Sevmas
h around half the world to flagship the Russian Pacific Fleet at its HQ at Vladivostok.
The following month she would fire up her mighty nuclear twin engines and cast off to emerge into the White Sea.
Chapter Three
WHEN THE ENTIRE Jennings family was detained at three in the morning, the attitude of the parents was one of utter bewilderment but also of obedience and cooperation. Not many people are jerked awake at that hour to find their bed surrounded by men in black with submachine carbines, their faces distorted by ghoulish night-vision goggles. They were frightened and did as they were told.
With the coming of daylight and the ride out to Latimer, that mood changed to anger. The two soldiers who rode with them could not help, nor the polite but non-committal staff at the Latimer manor house. So when Sir Adrian arrived at noon on the day of the house invasion at Luton, he met the full force of the pent-up rage. He sat quietly until it had blown itself out. Finally, he said:
‘You really don’t know, do you?’
That had the effect of silencing Harold Jennings. His wife, Sue, sat beside him, and they both stared at the man from London.
‘Know what?’
‘Know what your son Luke has actually done?’
‘Luke?’ said Sue Jennings. ‘But he’s harmless. He has Asperger’s syndrome. That’s a form of autism. We’ve known for years.’
‘So, while he has been sitting above your heads in the attic, you don’t know what he has been doing?’
The earlier anger of the Jenningses was now replaced by a sense of foreboding. It was in their faces.
‘Tapping away at his computer,’ said the boy’s father. ‘It’s about all he does.’
It was clear to Sir Adrian that there was a marital problem. Harold Jennings wanted a fit, boisterous son who dated girls, could join him for a round of golf and make him proud at the club, or play football or rugby for the county. What he had was a shy, withdrawn youth who did not function well in the real world, and was only really at home in semi-darkness staring at a screen.
Sir Adrian had not yet met Luke Jennings, but a short telephone call from the limousine to Dr Hendricks, who was still posing as a decorator while he and his team gutted the Luton house, had convinced him that the problem did indeed derive from the elder son.
Now he was beginning to understand that the blonde forty-year-old mother was hugely protective of her fragile offspring and would fight for him tooth and claw. As they spoke it became clear that this totally enclosed teenager was emotionally dependent on his mother and was only comfortable when communicating with the outside world through her. Were they to be separated – as by extradition to the USA – he would be likely to disintegrate.
‘Well, I’m afraid he seems to have managed the impossible, given the equipment he had at his disposal. He has broken into the heart of the American national security system, causing many millions of dollars’ worth of damage and frightening the living daylights out of all of us.’
The parents stared back at him open-mouthed. Then Mr Jennings put his face in his hands and said, ‘Oh God.’
He was a fifty-three-year-old chartered accountant in a private practice with two partners, making a good if not spectacular living and enjoying his weekend golf with his mates. He clearly did not understand what he had done to deserve such a fragile son, who had enraged his country’s principal ally and could be facing extradition and jail. His wife exploded.
‘He can’t have done! He’s never even left the country. He’s hardly left Luton, or barely the house, apart from to go to school. He has a terror of being moved from the only place he knows. His home.’
‘He did not have to,’ said Adrian Weston. ‘The world of cyberspace is global. It looks as if the Americans, in their present mood, which is not a happy one, will demand that we extradite him to the States for a trial. That would presume jail time for many years.’
‘You can’t do that.’ Mrs Jennings was close to hysteria. ‘He would not survive. He would take his own life.’
‘We’ll fight it,’ said the father. ‘I’ll get the best lawyer at the London Bar. I’ll fight it through every court in the country.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ said Sir Adrian. ‘And you will probably win, but at enormous cost. Your house, your pension, your life savings – all gone in legal fees.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ snapped Sue Jennings. ‘You cannot take my child away and kill him – and that is what it would amount to, a death sentence. We’ll fight you up to the Supreme Court.’
‘Mrs Jennings, please understand I am not the enemy. There may be a way to prevent all this. But I will need your help. If I do not get it, then I will fail.’