box with a small hinged panel on its front. ‘I suspect you’re itching to press it.’
‘And I suppose you’ll kill me if I try,’ the platform boss said, jutting out his chin defiantly. ‘I was in the Royal Air Force and my father fought in the Battle of Britain.’
Deacon raised his eyebrows. ‘I love the RAF. The only military unit that sends its officers to war first. I won’t kill you if you try. In fact, I want you to go ahead and press it.’
The GM glanced at his security supervisor, suspecting a catch of some kind. The security man had nothing to offer apart from a fearful stare.
‘Go ahead,’ Deacon said, encouraging the man. ‘It’s all part of the plan. You wanna do it. I want you to do it. So let’s just do it.’
The manager remained anxiously hesitant, suspecting a trap.
‘Go on,’ Deacon urged.
The GM took a step towards the button, scrutinising the hijackers for any sign of a reaction. There was none. He took another step.
Deacon gestured for him to get on with it, looking at his watch as if he needed to be somewhere else. ‘I don’t ’ave all day.’
The GM clenched his jaw and decided to go for it, whatever the outcome. He felt close enough to activate the alarm even if they did shoot him. He faltered just before pressing it in order to take a look and see if the large thug with the machine gun had it aimed at him. He did not. The GM gritted his teeth and depressed the button all the way. Seconds later a red LED light above the box began to flash, accompanied by a soft beeping sound.
Everyone remained still, waiting for the terrorist’s next move. But the man simply checked his watch, looking as if he was impatient for something else to happen.
The phone on the general manager’s desk rang.
‘I expect that will be a response to your general-emergency activation,’ Deacon said. ‘You can go ahead and answer it.’
The manager remained uneasy. ‘What do you want me to tell them?’
Deacon shrugged.‘Whatever you like. Start with what’s ’appenin’. The truth . . . Go on, then.’
The GM brought the phone to his ear. ‘This is Andrews . . . Yes. We . . . we have a situation. The Morpheus has been hijacked . . . Yes, that’s what I said. Hijacked. Armed men arrived by helicopter and . . . well, it would seem they have control of the platform . . . No. No violence yet. No damage as far as I’m aware,’ he said, glancing at Deacon. ‘I don’t know what’s happening outside the control room but they appear to be quite serious . . . They’re in the room, with me, here, right now. Their leader. They’re armed.’ He listened to a further question and looked at Deacon. ‘What exactly is it you want?’
‘The usual. A shitload of money or we destroy the platform. And if anyone tries to attack us we’ll kill everyone on board.’
The manager was unbalanced by Deacon’s casual manner. ‘How much money?’
‘A small percentage of the platform’s value plus loss of productivity if it met with a disaster. Two billion dollars, US. Pretty cheap, really.’
The GM cleared his throat. ‘They want two billion dollars,’ he said into the phone.
‘That’s enough,’ Deacon said. ‘You can put the phone down now. We can get into the details with them later. They’ve got enough to be getting on with for the time being.’
The manager hesitated, wanting to say something that might be of use to the crisis-management team. But he could not, partly because of the possible repercussions and also because he could not think of anything to say anyway. It was all so surreal, all so quick. He placed the phone’s headset back into its cradle.
‘Good. That’s that part over. Now for the next step. All outside communications sources will come under my control. I’ll allow one engineer at a time in here to keep the place running. Same goes for engineering. What are you pumping right now?’
‘We’re at around sixty-three per cent of capacity,’ the GM replied.
‘You’ll maintain everything as normal. You,’ he said to the secur - ity supervisor. ‘Turn off all your CCTV now. Go.’
The security supervisor walked quickly through the cluttered room to his office and turned off the cameras.
‘Unplug the hard drive and bring it here,’ Deacon ordered.
The officer carried the small heavy box through the room and held it out to Deacon, who took it.