Ten million people lived here.
Bill said: ‘The distance is about two hundred and fifty miles, which is a two-minute journey, and the missile has been in the air about a minute, so I’d guess sixty seconds to go.’
There was nothing Pauline could do in sixty seconds.
She never saw the missile. She knew it had landed when all the screens showing Seoul whited out.
For several moments they all stared at blank screens. Then a new image appeared, presumably from a US military drone. Pauline knew it was of Seoul, because she recognized the W-shaped meander of the river; but nothing else was the same. In a central area a couple of miles across there was nothing: no buildings, no cars, no streets. The landscape seemed blank. The buildings had all been flattened, she realized, every single one; and the piled debris covered everything else, including bodies. It was ten times as bad as the worst hurricane, maybe a hundred times.
Beyond that central area, fires seemed to have broken out everywhere, some large and some small, fierce gasoline fires from roasted vehicles and random blazes in offices and stores. Cars were overturned and scattered like toys. Smoke and dust hid some of the damage.
There was always a camera somewhere, and now one of the back-room technicians found live video that looked as if it was being taken from a helicopter rising from one of the airports to the west of the city. Pauline saw that a few cars were still moving on the outskirts of Seoul, indicating survivors. There were injured people walking, some stumbling along sightless, presumably blinded by the flash; some bleeding, perhaps from flying glass; some unhurt and helping others.
Pauline was dazed. She had never thought to see such destruction.
She shook herself: it was up to her to do something about it.
She said: ‘Bill, raise the alert level to DEFCON 1. Nuclear war has begun.’
*
Tamara woke up in Tab’s bed, as she did most mornings now. She kissed him, got up, walked naked to the kitchen, switched on the coffee maker, then returned to the bedroom. She went to the window and looked out at the city of N’Djamena heating up rapidly under the desert sun.
She would not be looking at this view for many more mornings. She had won her transfer to Paris. Dexter had opposed it, but her record with the Abdul project made her a natural choice to manage agents infiltrating Arab-French Islamist groups, and Dexter had been overruled. She and Tab were going to move.
The apartment filled with the invigorating aroma of coffee. She turned on the TV. The main news was that the US had sunk a Chinese aircraft carrier.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she said. ‘Tab, wake up.’
She poured the coffee and they drank it in bed while watching. The ship, called the Fujian, had been sunk in retaliation for the Chinese bombing of Japanese troops on the disputed Senkaku Islands, said the newsreader.
‘That won’t be the end of it,’ said Tab.
‘You bet your ass.’
They showered and dressed and had breakfast. Tab, who could get a delicious meal out of the contents of a nearly empty refrigerator, made scrambled eggs with grated parmesan cheese, chopped parsley and a sprinkle of paprika.
He put on a tropical-weight Italian blazer, she tied a cotton scarf around her head, and Tab was about to turn the news off when they were stopped by an even more shocking report. The North Korean rebels had dropped a nuclear bomb on Seoul, the capital of South Korea.
Tab said: ‘It’s nuclear war.’
She nodded sombrely. ‘This could be our last day on Earth.’
They sat down again.
Tamara said: ‘Maybe we should do something special.’
Tab looked thoughtful. ‘I have a suggestion,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘It’s kind of off the wall.’
‘Spit it out.’
‘We could . . . would you . . . what I mean to say . . . Will you marry me?’
‘Today?’
‘Of course today!’
Tamara found herself unable to speak. She was silent for a long moment.
Tab said: ‘I haven’t upset you, have I?’
Tamara found her voice. ‘I don’t know how to tell you how much I love you,’ she said, and she felt a tear run down her face.
He kissed the tear away. ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then.’
CHAPTER 41
Information began to flood into the Situation Room at Zhongnanhai, and Kai took it in while fighting off a feeling of dazed helplessness. In the next few minutes the whole world was shocked. This was the first time nuclear weapons had been used since 1945. The news travelled fast.
Within seconds, stock markets in East Asia went into free fall. People cashed in their shares, as if money would be any use to them in a nuclear war. President Chen closed the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, an hour before the regular time. He ordered the Hong Kong market to close too, but Hong Kong refused, and lost 20 per cent in ten minutes.