Skyfall

“Our leader writer produces better copy than that, Cooper. Leave the story on my desk.” He turned on his heel and started away and Cooper's words reached out desperately after him.

“But sir. Listen sir. Please. What if it doesn't burn up? What happens if it comes down in one lump?”

The City Editor stopped dead, rigid. Then slowly turned about and glared at Cooper. When he spoke his voice was cold as the Arctic.

“Tell me, please. What will happen if it hits in one big piece?”

“Well,” Cooper struggled frantically through the crumpled papers he carried. “I've taken the optimum, you understand. Speed, mass, angle, ideal situation all around. I mean ideal to get the highest speed at impact. Inertia, you understand, velocity times mass, small and fast, big and slow, both hit with the same impact. But what if something very big hits very fast? That is our Prometheus. I estimate its impact explosion will be the equivalent of ten kilotons of TNT.”

“Translation, please.”

Cooper was hopping from foot to foot and chewing his fingertips so hard his words were barely audible. “Well, simply, say it were to hit a populated area, a city, you know. It would explode with about the same force as the original atomic bomb that blasted Hiroshima. No radioactivity, of course, but it would explode….”

“Yes, it certainly would. Very well done, Cooper. Clean up your copy and get it to rewrite. Right now, scoot.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, extracted the last one, lit it and crumpled the pack and threw it to the floor. He looked at the Mechanical Superintendent. “You heard him. Get ready to replate the first page one more time and the hell with how long it takes. We have the story of the century here. Do you realize that flying bomb could take out a city, maybe this city right here….”

He stopped suddenly and looked up. They both looked up.

15

GET 02:19

Washington, D.C., on a muggy morning, at the height of the rush hour. The motorcycle escort was making heavy weather of shepherding the Cadillac at more than the snail's pace through the rest of the traffic. Once they were over the Chain Bridge from Maclean, Virginia, they picked up a larger escort of police cruisers that sirened their way down the wrong side of the parkway, frightening the hell out of the few drivers leaving the city.

General Bannerman slumped in the back seat of the Cadillac and hated the world. He had not been in bed more than an hour, and certainly was not asleep, when this shit of a captain had pounded on the door. The police escort probably had no idea of who was in the car or why they had been called out to this suburb so early in the morning. But the captain knew. He had got the address from Bannerman's adjutant — the only one who knew it — and had barreled out with the car and woken Bannerman and even seen the blonde head in bed with the general, before he had been told to go to hell and get out and wait. The escort had picked them up at the corner and that was that. Bannerman rubbed his massive jaw and felt the sore pot where he had cut himself shaving in a rush and wondered how much would leak out.

“You're not on my staff, are you, Captain?” he asked the driver.

“No, sir. G2 special liaison to the White House.”

Bannerman grunted, then yawned widely.

“There's some Benzedrine in the bar if you're tired, sir,” the captain said.

“What makes you think I'm tired?”

“You didn't leave the party until after four, sir.”

Well, well, so someone was keeping tabs on him. He had always suspected it, but put it down to the endemic Foggy Bottom paranoia. Taking out a crystal glass he filled it with water, then washed down a benny from a little green bottle. He started to put the glass away, hesitated, then poured two fingers of scotch into it instead.

“You know a good deal about my movements, Captain. Is that wise?”

“I don't know about wise, sir, but I have my orders. It's the Secret Service that monitors your movements, for your own protection of course, and I act as liaison.” He turned his head briefly to look back at the general and had the sense neither to smile nor wink, displaying only a fixed and very serious expression. “Your life is your own, General, but we must know where you are in order to protect you. But we are very discreet.”

“Let's hope to hell you are. Do you know what this meeting is about?”

“No, sir. I was just given your address and told to bring you to the White House as soon as possible.”