The Pompeii Syndrome

Father Frank Kane, filming a TV series on ‘Great Catastrophes in History’, grows convinced that people on the verge of extinction, as in Pompeii, consciously ignore all the signs of their impending doom. In Ireland Garda Det-Sgt Stokes keeps encountering references to a shadowy figure called Omar. A young Saudi Arabian disappears from Ennis hospital, and later his body appears in a trawler’s fishing net. In Leeds, journalist Meg Watkins is assigned to research Freshpark Nuclear Plant in Cumbria. Initially impressed, she gradually grows horrified at its safety record. Meanwhile, Sheik Aboud is secretly training terrorist pilots to fly hijacked planes into Europe’s nuclear plants, using flight simulators at his walled County Galway residence. Gradually Stokes closes in on the sheik as he feels some catastrophe is pending. So does Fr Frank Kane, for different reasons. And Meg Watkins is convinced that terrorists are going after Freshpark. Convergence comes when both Kane and Stokes hear Meg say on a TV talk-show that terrorists could hijack a plane out of Ireland and fly it into Freshpark. But it’s all too late. Omar has been in Co Galway all the time, as a respected citizen, and now does precisely what Meg had feared. The consequences are horrific…