Berry indicated the four individuals sitting at the conference table opposite the two generals. Walker, sitting at the back and keen now to hide his resentment at the obvious put-down, took in the group, all in their late twenties. Two of the three men had half-grown beards, spiky hair and were earringed and T-shirted: typical geeks. The third was bespectacled, wearing a tweed jacket and looked like a 1950s physics student. Allenby, the one woman, looked attractively self-confident, especially given her age and considering her audience. In fact, she looked positively sporty; more a young, high-flying corporate financier than someone who was planning an attack on Russia’s nuclear systems.

Allenby was explaining how nuclear command and control covered everything required to maintain a nuclear weapons capability: personnel, equipment, facilities, organizations, procedures as well as the chain of command. “Given the need for mobility, multiple launch platforms and redundancy—a back-up system in case the primary system fails—the Russian system is inherently vulnerable,” she went on in her clipped, precise tones, a legacy of what could only be an expensive education. “We looked at the issue and decided we wanted two results. First, we looked at how we might take down the entire Russian General Staff communications system.”

Kydd, sitting opposite her, growled. “Now you’re talking my fucking language . . .”

Allenby looked him in the eye. “General, there’s no need for that in here. Thank you.”

Kydd squirmed and Walker smirked to himself as he watched the soldier’s evident discomfort. Great to see the cocky bastard put down, he thought to himself. This girl’s sussed him out and put him firmly in his place. That’s more than the PM’s managed so far. He caught her eye and gave her an encouraging nod.

Allenby ignored him and continued, “But, more specifically, we also wanted to get inside the nuclear command and control system and take control of that . . . I’ll come back to that in a moment.”

“So, what can you do about the Russian General Staff command and control system?” The Prime Minister was intrigued but also, Walker knew, on a very tight timetable.

“Our tactic was no different from hackers anywhere looking to achieve what’s known in the trade as Distributed Denial of Service—DDoS. That involves taking control of multiple computers by installing a worm these guys invented.” Allenby gestured to the three young men on either side of her. “Once Rasputin, that’s the name we’ve given our particular worm, is inserted into one computer in a botnet—that’s what we call multiple computers linked together under illicit control—it spreads like wildfire. As it spreads, the computers in the network come together to shut down websites or portions of the network by flooding the servers with data requests. This massive flow of data requests causes buffer overflow, jams the servers and makes them unusable.”