Ark Angel

house and it was clear that Shulsky’s men were in command. Very little damage had been done. The guardhouse and the gate had been blown up—that was the explosion Alex had heard—but it seemed that Drevin’s men had surrendered quickly. None of them had known what Drevin was really planning. They had been paid to help launch a rocket into space: Drevin had never told them what the rocket actually contained.
    At least Paul Drevin was out of it. He had been flown to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Bridgetown, on Barbados. Alex was relieved to hear that he was going to be all right. He had already been given blood and the doctors were waiting for his condition to stabilize before he was flown to America. His mother was apparently on her way to see him. Alex wondered if the two of them would ever meet again. Somehow he doubted it.
    Now there were just four people in the room, surrounded by computers, video screens and the blinking lights of the electronic display board. A series of blueprints had been spread out on the large conference table. They showed the overall design of Ark Angel with the different modules—a dozen of them—
    extending in every direction, up and down. It was like an enormously complicated toy.
    Alex was slumped in a chair, his face grim, still dressed in the borrowed combat clothes. Ed Shulsky and Tamara Knight were sitting opposite him. Tamara looked exhausted, grey with pain and fatigue. She’d accepted a shot of morphine but nothing else. She wasn’t leaving Alex until a decision had been made.
    The fourth person in the room was Professor Sing Joo-Chan, the man in charge of the Gabriel 7 launch. The flight director seemed a completely different person. He had lost his calm and self-possession and looked as if he was on the verge of a heart attack. His face was pale and he was sweating profusely, dabbing at his forehead with a large white handkerchief. Like everyone else, he claimed to know nothing about the bomb, nothing about Drevin’s real plans. He had promised to cooperate, to do anything the CIA required, and for the time being Shulsky was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But Alex wasn’t so sure. The professor had been recruited by Drevin; he had been in charge of the operation from the very start. Alex was certain he knew more than he was letting on.

    “This is the situation,” Shulsky said. “Gabriel 7 will dock with Ark Angel at half past two this afternoon.
    It’s carrying a bomb which will go off exactly two hours after that.” He glanced at Alex. “Drevin told you that himself.”
    Alex nodded. “That’s right. Half past four. That’s what he said.”
    “Now, as I understand it, there are three docking ports on Ark Angel.” Shulsky pointed to the diagram.
    “Two of them are positioned at the very centre … here. But that’s not where Gabriel 7 is heading, because if the bomb blew up there it would simply rip the whole space station apart.” He reached out and tapped a section on the other side, at the end of a long corridor. “Gabriel 7 will dock here,” he explained. “Right on the edge.”
    “Yes—the very edge!” Sing agreed. Alex noticed that the professor’s eyes were wide and unfocused. He was taking care not to look at anyone directly. “That’s how it was decided. That’s what Mr Drevin insisted.”
    “The bomb must be inside the observation module,” Shulsky said. “And I guess it’ll be in exactly the right position. Most of the force from the explosion will go outwards. It’ll have the effect of a push in the wrong direction, propelling the entire space station back to earth.” He took a deep breath and for a moment something like panic flashed in his eyes. “The hell of it is, there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can’t blow up Gabriel 7. And according to Professor Sing here, we can’t access the computers to reprogram it.”
    “You can’t!” The white handkerchief was out again. “Only Mr Drevin had the codes. Only Mr Drevin—”
    “I’ve checked it, Alex,” Tamara said. “It’s true. The entire system has been shut down. It would take us days—possibly even weeks—to hack into it.”
    “I know it sounds crazy, but that leaves us with just one option,” Shulsky went on. “We have to send somebody up to Ark Angel. Believe me, Alex, it’s the only way. Someone has to find the bomb and neutralize it—by which I mean switch it off. And if that isn’t possible, then they have to move it. They have to