Quoit shook his head. ‘In summer, perhaps, but not in winter. Nineteen per cent of the country’s electricity comes from nuclear power. Take that away, and the conventional generating stations would not be able to cope. The whole country would be without electricity for days. Thousands of people, sick and old, would die.’

‘Even more than that would die if the country were contaminated by fall-out.’

‘I don’t think shutting down the stations would make any difference,’ said Quoit. ‘If these people have got this far, I’m certain they would have a contingency plan against the stations being shut down. If they cannot be stopped, then the only way you are going to protect the people of this country is to evacuate them.’

‘Evacuate the entire country?’ said Fifeshire. ‘Excellent idea, I’m sure, Isaac. How do you propose getting fifty-five million people off this island by Monday morning? And where exactly would you put them if we did so?’

Quoit looked at him and said nothing.

‘It’s not going to be much use shoving them into empty hotels on the Costa Brava,’ he went on, ‘if the ruddy Spaniards are going to have their reactors blown up too.’ He paused for some moments. ‘And if we did evacuate, how long before everyone could come back? It wouldn’t be a few days would it? It would be a year for the lucky ones, ten years for some less lucky, and several centuries for the less luckier still.’

‘I agree with you, it’s a major problem.’ said Quoit. ‘We’ve always been aware of it. We have plans for minor accidents – and major accidents – but not for a sabotage of this nature. This comes under the category of war – nuclear war, if you like, if they’re going to use nuclear explosives. That’s a different ball-game entirely. You’ve either got to get the people into fall-out shelters, or out of the downwind path. Until you know which are the target power stations, almost any area in the country could be in jeopardy, and by the time the reactors blow, it will be too late for evacuation.’

‘Evacuation is impossible,’ said Fifeshire, ‘completely impossible. It’s been discussed many times.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘You cannot see radioactive fall-out, you cannot smell it, you cannot feel it; unless you have a Geiger counter, you wouldn’t know it was present, neither in massive doses, nor in tiny doses. Correct?’

Quoit nodded.

‘So how would the public know if they were subjected to a massive dose?’

‘How would they know? It depends how the reactor is blown up, and how close they are. If a nuclear device is used, the people up to about fifty miles downwind would be dropping dead like flies, that’s how they’d know.’