Timebomb

by Timebomb (retail) (epub)

  ‘How the hell do you know that?’

  ‘I know,’ Richter said, ‘because I spent a couple of hours last night talking to him in Maidstone nick. This is the guy who walked in yesterday, claiming he was carrying a lump of Semtex.’

  ‘Shit,’ the inspector muttered. ‘I heard about that. And you’ve no idea who did this to him, I suppose?’

  ‘None at all,’ Richter said, though in truth he knew exactly who was responsible, and why. ‘One last thing. There are international security implications in this matter. I realize a large number of people will now know you’ve found a dead body in the woods, but can you please ensure that’s all the information that’s released? No further speculation about his identity, or the way he was killed. If pushed, you can suggest that his death might be gangland-related.’

  ‘Why the caution, exactly?’

  ‘Because there are two different people I now want to track down. One is the man who physically did this to him, but the other is the guy who issued the orders – and right now I’ve no idea who they are. What I do know is that if Kleber’s boss finds out he’s dead, I’ll probably never be able to identify him.’

  Rochester, Kent

  Morschel had bought the combined GPS navigator and linked universal autopilot system in Germany, because he had needed an outfit equipped with two particular features, and he was unsure if he’d be able to find a suitable unit in Britain.

  Once he’d checked that he had all the components locked in his car, Morschel called Hagen on the mobile and told him to meet at the marina, and to buy a heavy-duty twelve-volt battery and a mains-powered battery charger on his way there. They would have to spend the rest of the afternoon installing the system on the boat, and then making sure that it worked properly. If they found any serious problems with it, they might have to postpone the start of the operation, and Morschel really didn’t want to have to do that. Everything was now prepared for Monday afternoon, and if they couldn’t make that deadline they would be obliged to wait for the next high tide. It would still work, he knew, but there was a very good reason why next Monday was the optimum date.

  Maidstone, Kent

  Richter had stopped for lunch at a pub just off the A2, and his mobile rang as he was finishing a plate of fairly average steak and chips.

  ‘This is DI Mason,’ the caller said. ‘We think we’ve traced the hotel. One of my men recognized the logo, and we’ve contacted the head office of that particular hotel chain. Though they use the same format of card for all their establishments, they’re colour-coded for different towns. The card we found was dark blue, which means Maidstone. The manager’s expecting us shortly. And you’re right: they did have a guest who checked-in under the name “Helmut Kleber”.’

  ‘Give me the address,’ Richter requested. ‘I’ll be there as quickly as I can.’

  Twenty-five minutes later he pulled the Jaguar to a stop in a hotel car park on the northern outskirts of Maidstone. A police patrol car was stationed outside the main entrance, plus a white van and an unmarked Ford with two men sitting inside it. As Richter approached, the doors of the Ford opened and Mason and Clark climbed out.

  ‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ Clark said.

  ‘Good,’ Richter replied, which probably wasn’t the answer the DS had been expecting. ‘Let’s go.’

  The manager was sitting in readiness behind the reception desk, obviously waiting for them. He stood up as they approached.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir. I’m Detective Inspector Mason of the Kent police and this is Detective Sergeant Clark.’

  The manager glanced briefly at their proffered warrant cards then looked enquiringly at Richter, who volunteered nothing.

  ‘Do you recognize this man?’ Mason continued, passing a photograph across the desk.

  The manager stared at the picture intently. The face it showed looked dead to Richter, even upside-down, but after a few seconds the manager nodded.

  ‘Yes, I think I do,’ he said. ‘It looks like Mr Kleber. But he looks rather ill? This photograph…?’ His voice trailed away into an expectant silence.

  ‘I’m afraid this man is dead, sir,’ Mason replied. ‘Can you be sure it is Mr Kleber? He would almost certainly have been a single guest.’

  ‘Let me just check that in the register.’

  A few moments later he looked up at Mason. ‘We have several men staying in single rooms here at the moment, but none of the others look like this. I’m reasonably certain it’s him.’

  ‘Then we’d like to inspect his room, please.’

  ‘This way,’ the manager beckoned and led the way across the lobby to the lifts. The four men ascended to the fourth floor and headed down a carpeted corridor. ‘This is his room,’ he said, and knocked briskly on the door, but inevitably there was no response from inside.

  A tiny red light glowed beside the handle, directly below a card slot on the lock. ‘Do you have the key-card?’

  ‘We have, sir,’ Mason confirmed, ‘but not with us, of course, because it’s still being subjected to forensic tests. Please use your master key.’

  ‘Very well.’ The manager extracted a card from his pocket, slid it into the slot, and waited for the red light to change to green. Then he turned the handle and pushed the door open. ‘Mr Kleber,’ he called out clearly, but again without response. Finally he pushed the door fully open, flicked on the lights and stood to one side.

  Mason and Clark both pulled on latex gloves before even crossing the threshold. The DI looked pointedly at Richter. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to remind you to touch nothing.’ He then turned to the manager. ‘Our forensic specialists will be coming up soon, sir. Please wait out here for them, but don’t come in yourself.’

  Boring and anonymous, the standard hotel room could have been found almost literally anywhere in the country. Its walls were decorated in restful pastel shades, the curtains pleasantly neutral, and the double bed – which had clearly not been slept in since last being made – was covered in a light grey counterpane. Clark walked straight across the room to a wheeled suitcase that rested on a wooden luggage frame, flipped back the cover and began looking through the contents. Meanwhile Mason slid open the wardrobe doors and rummaged round amongst the clothes hanging up inside it. Richter himself remained near the centre of the room and just looked around.

  Almost at once, Clark let out a low whistle and reached inside the suitcase to pull out a small cardboard box.

  Richter recognized its distinctive shape immediately. ‘Nine millimetre Parabellum?’ he asked.

  Clark nodded, as he opened the box and looked inside. ‘There are about twenty rounds left.’

  ‘Right,’ Mason said, ‘that lifts this case into a different league, I think. We’re now looking at either a serious criminal or a terrorist here, so I’m glad you’re along, Richter.’

  ‘The victim had no weapons on him when he died, obviously, and I presume your men did a thorough search of the wood?’

  ‘Yes, they did,’ Mason said. ‘There was no weapon anywhere there, unless it was extremely well-hidden. Right, let’s get those forensic guys in here right now.’

  * * *

  Outside the room, the DI briefed the SOCOs and the team who were already waiting in the corridor with their equipment.

  ‘We’ll wait out here,’ he decided. ‘I need to call the DCI and brief him.’ He glanced at Richter. ‘And no doubt you’ll have to tell your people about that ammunition?’

  ‘I’ll see you downstairs.’ Richter turned away, heading for the lifts.

  In the residents’ lounge, he ordered a pot of coffee and, while waiting for it, called up the Duty Officer using his Enigma mobile to ensure his call was securely encrypted.

  He explained where he was and what had happened. ‘This looks like being a long job,’ Richter concluded. ‘The SOCOs are taking the room to pieces right now, and we’ve no idea what else they’ll find, so I’m going to hang on here until they’ve finished. I might even have to spend t
he night down here.’

  ‘Anything you want me to do at this end?’

  ‘Yes,’ Richter reflected. ‘The fact that we’ve found a half-empty box of nine mil suggests that Kleber’s killer – who’s almost certainly Hans Morschel – is now running around the Home Counties carrying a pistol or maybe even a submachine-gun, plus whatever weapons he had with him here already. In view of that, call Simpson and tell him I’ll be drawing a personal weapon. If he wants to argue about it, he can call me direct on the Enigma.’

  ‘But he’s away for the weekend.’

  ‘Exactly. Unless he’s taken a secure mobile with him, he’ll probably have to come back to London to do so, and I don’t suppose he’ll bother. If I decide to stay down here, I might ask you to rustle up one of our couriers to deliver the weapon to me, but I’ll let you know later.’

  Richter had just poured his first cup of coffee when Mason appeared in the lounge, carrying a sheet of paper inside a clear plastic evidence bag.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Mason replied, ‘We found it folded up in a sort of secret pocket under the base of the case Clark examined. It looks like gibberish to me, but I was rather hoping you might have a clue.’

  Richter took the evidence bag and stared at the single sheet that was covered with typed groups of five letters arranged in ten vertical columns. ‘Interesting,’ he remarked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘As I thought when I met the man, our deceased friend was an American.’

  ‘How the hell can you tell that?’ Mason demanded.

  ‘Simple. This isn’t our normal A4 paper. It’s an American size – letter, I think it’s called.’

  ‘But what is it exactly? What does the typing mean?’

  Richter shook his head. ‘I don’t know what it means,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you what it is. This is an encrypted message or more likely a data-set. It could be anything from a set of instructions to a list of contact details for the dead man’s associates. The five-letter groups are a giveaway.’

  ‘Can you decode it?’

  ‘Me, personally, not a chance. But if we send it to the boffins at the Doughnut out at Cheltenham, and they feed it through one of their Crays, there’s a fair chance they might crack it, but probably not quickly. There was nothing else along with this?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing else that we’ve found so far. Why?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know too much about codes, but one of the commonest methods of creating one is to use what’s called a transposition cipher. To encrypt or decrypt a message, you need one key-word for single-transposition, or two words for a double-transposition cipher. Typically you pick words of ten or twelve letters that are easy to remember. A professional would never, ever, write down the key-words, but it’s always worth looking.’

  ‘So that’s what you think he was? A professional terrorist?’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m not yet aware of any groups that use this method. They’re more likely to use simple verbal codes that are essentially meaningless to anyone outside their group. For example, Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 terrorist, contacted his Al Qaeda controller a few days before the attacks on the World Trade Center took place to tell him the exact date it was going to happen. The FBI monitored the call, but what he said meant absolutely nothing to them at the time. During the conversation, Atta used the expression “plate with one stick, two sticks down”. It was only after the event that the FBI realized the phrase decoded easily enough as a verbal description of a figure nine followed by an eleven.’

  ‘So any thoughts about who this man Kleber was?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ Richter said, ‘but he told me he was an undercover agent of some kind, and he dropped hints that he was working for Washington.’

  ‘But they’ve got no jurisdiction over here.’

  ‘That’s what I meant by “undercover”. He’d successfully infiltrated a gang of terrorists, but because of what happened to him, they almost certainly guessed who he was.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘If he was working over here officially, somebody should have known about him, probably someone in Five. I’ll run his picture through Thames House and see if it jogs any memories. I’ll also request details of any infiltration operation they knew was being run by the Americans, or anyone else. I know you could do that, too, but I promise we’ll get the results quicker if I request it.’

  ‘Right,’ Mason said. ‘One other snippet, though. The hotel manager reappeared on the fourth floor to give me all the details of his late guest’s registration. The man offered a passport in the name of “Helmut Kleber”, but unfortunately the reception staff can’t remember the country of issue, and he was paying his bill by a credit card in the same name. Obviously we’ll run a check on the card because the hotel insisted on taking the number when he originally made the booking, and we can presumably check with the Germans to see if the passport’s valid.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Richter said. ‘But without a passport number that’s going to take quite a while.’

  Mason smiled at him, and Richter guessed the DI had already found a short-cut.

  ‘The manager also remembered that this man Kleber – or whatever his real name was – arrived by car. They always get guests to supply the vehicle details when they check-in, so they know which cars should be taking up space in the car park. This man arrived in a French-plated grey Peugeot, though the hotel staff didn’t bother taking down its registration number, because it was the only non-British car here. That vehicle’s not in the parking area now, but I’ve put out an APB for all the Kent forces to watch out for it. But the point is, he must have crossed the Channel by ferry or through the Tunnel, and that means the port authorities should be able to marry the car to the passport of the man who was driving it.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Richter said. ‘Make sure you let me know the result, please.’ He handed back the evidence bag. ‘If you can photocopy that sheet of paper for me, I’ll get Cheltenham to take a look at it, but I’m not too hopeful. If it’s a single-transposition, they might crack it fairly quickly, but anyone who’s gone to the trouble of preparing this will almost certainly have used a double. If so, Cheltenham will have to get both words correct, and that means the possible permutations are almost infinite.’

  ‘OK,’ Mason said, ‘I’ll make you a copy right now. I’m sure the reception desk will oblige.’

  Ten minutes later, Richter was in the Jaguar and heading back to Hammersmith. The sooner he got the encrypted data to GCHQ at Cheltenham the better, but to transmit it he was going to have to use a secure communications system. And the closest place where he could do that was almost certainly the building in which he worked.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sunday

  Rochester, Kent

  An hour after arriving at the marina, Hans Morschel could survey their handiwork with some satisfaction. The wooden floorboards inside the cabin were now properly fitted back in place, while below them, between the repositioned boards and the inside of the fibreglass hull, lay a total of one hundred and seventy kilos of Semtex. All the explosive was completely invisible, and absolutely the only indication that there was anything unusual about the cabin was a pair of thin wires that emerged from below the floorboards in one corner. Any casual observer might assume they were simply attached to some piece of electrical equipment.

  ‘OK to drill here?’ Ernst Hagen asked, pointing to the rear corner of the cabin. He knew that on the other side of the wooden bulkhead was the wheel, throttle control and ignition switch.

  ‘Let me just check you’re not going to hit anything vital.’ Morschel stepped out into the cockpit and checked the bulkhead. ‘OK,’ he told Hagen, ‘keep the drill low and that should be fine.’

  Hagen carefully positioned the bit of the battery-powered drill and in under a minute had driven a small hole, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, through the fibreglass bulkhead. Then he thread
ed the two wires through it and coiled them on the floor of the cockpit. Connecting them to the battery and the autopilot system would be almost the last thing they did.

  There were several other preparations to make, but for Morschel the most vital job was installing the autopilot, which would be the most complicated operation of them all. As Hagen sorted through various boxes and laid out the components on the floor of the cockpit, Morschel flicked open the manual and again read carefully through the installation instructions.

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter turned up at Hammersmith very early that morning, because he guessed that matters were now coming to a head. Almost the first thing he did was take the lift down to the basement and collect a nine-millimetre Browning Hi-Power, a shoulder holster, two spare magazines and a box of fifty Parabellum rounds from the Duty Armourer. He normally preferred to carry a revolver, but he had a feeling that in the current situation speed of fire might be more important than pure accuracy.

  Then he returned to his own office and called the Duty Officer for an update on overnight events. He wasn’t surprised to hear there really weren’t any, because he realized it would take GCHQ some time to make any sense of that enciphered data, if they ever managed to crack it. Nor had he expected the autopsy on the murdered man to produce any startling new information. But it was time he started shaking the trees at Thames House and probably at Langley as well.

  Richter had a few good contacts within the Security Service. So the previous evening he’d rung Thames House, spoken to a desk officer he knew slightly, and flagged up his belief that the dead man was an undercover agent, probably working for some arm of the US government. The MI5 officer had stoutly claimed he had no knowledge of any American infiltration operation currently running in Europe or Britain, and Richter was inclined to believe him. That didn’t, of course, mean that there was no such operation running, just that his contact himself hadn’t been briefed on one. After all, like every other intelligence agency, the Security Service operated a strict need-to-know policy. But once Richter had explained the sequence of recent events, his contact promised to raise the matter with his superiors and so obtain as near a definitive answer as it was ever possible to extract from MI5. In addition, he had promised Richter he would go to the office on Sunday, just to ensure there was some kind of continuity with the enquiry.