While the world waited for Armageddon with tightly clenched fists, tear-stained faces, and racing thoughts, Sir Michael Peckham waited for morning.
He glanced at the silent smart-slab sitting insouciantly on his bedside table. It said “02:14 – 5 Nov” on its face, but it was the things it wasn’t saying he was most interested in. He wanted it to ring and not to. A conflict of such breadth it seemed analogous to the sabre rattling provided nightly on the talking head shows. The hawks and the doves making cases for greater or lesser annihilation.
For two weeks, the world stood on a precipice, while his world sank into the abyss.
For Peckham, triumph and adversity were always the closest of friends, compatriots tired of each other’s company but forced into close association by the trickster steering his life: he had fallen into his job by default when his committee skills were most useless.
And then there was Angela.
His daughter was everything. A bright star in the dark, gathering clouds. A reason to be.
The surgeon said, “The bullet is lodged in the myocardium, we’re going to use a device called a bovie to cauterise the exposed tissue, so there is no active bleeding in the sternum, apply bone wax, suck out the extra blood from the chest wound, then try to extract the fragments before they pierce a heart chamber.”
This was too much information, but he assented, silently hoping his wife on a mortuary slab ten floors below would have agreed. She always made sense of such moments.
He woke, not recalling having fallen asleep. His phone was ringing.
He took the call.
A strange voice said, “Sir Michael, I’m very sorry, I have some bad news…”
The office was busy when he walked in, but it fell to silence as he stood there.
“Sitrep,” he commanded.
An aide stepped forward. “The Russians have moved a third of their nuclear fleet into the North Sea. The US is urging we stay calm. France has moved two of its subs into the Black Sea to join Britain’s HMS Vanguard and HMS Vengeance. Victorious and Vigilant are in polar waters. The USS Henry M. Jackson, USS Alabama, USS Nevada, and USS Pennsylvania have gone dark, while Kentucky, Nebraska, Main, and Louisiana are on manoeuvres in the South China sea off Taiwan.”
“Thank you,” Peckham replied and patted the aid on his shoulder. “I’m going to my office to think. Please ensure I am not disturbed, except in an emergency.”
Sir Michael Peckham, Prime Minister of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland, closed the door, walked over to the wall, and tapped his code into the safe on the wall. He removed the single document it contained and typed the numbers on it into the special terminal on his desk, then went to the window to watch the fireworks.
In a moment of regret, he wondered if he should have waited until the bonfires were lit that evening before he lit his own.
