‘That group’s purpose today is the same as it was back in Ike’s day. Every covert, illegal or simply potentially embarrassing operation the Agency wants to undertake is first approved by The Special Group, before the president gets to hear about it, so that our chief executive can then quite truthfully deny all knowledge of it if the shit hits the fan. In fact, not even the National Security Council is told about its activities, and the president’s approval is only ever given verbally – nothing is ever written or signed.’
‘I have heard of The Special Group,’ Richter reflected, ‘but I didn’t know much about it, and I certainly didn’t know about the identifying numbers. Who’s actually part of it?’
‘There are usually only four members. It’s normally headed by the National Security Advisor, and the other three are the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and, of course, the Director of National Intelligence ever since that post replaced that of the Director of Central Intelligence. Most of the covert stuff you probably already know about – the building of the U-2, the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, and Iran-Contra – were all clandestine CIA projects approved by The Special Group.’
‘So what’s the story now? Are you saying this guy Stevens was running an operation over here on behalf of this crowd?’
‘Maybe. But if he was, I’ve no idea of the objective, and you’ll appreciate that there’s no easy way I can find out. Membership of The Special Group is way above my pay scale, and for obvious reasons I can’t just buttonhole the Secretary of Defense, or one of the others, to ask him about this covert op he’s got running in London.’
‘Is there anything you can do?’
‘I can run a search through the computer system and see if there’s any mention of SM slash VIPER, but if the operation was carried out with the sole approval of The Special Group, it almost certainly never made it as far as the database we’ve got here. We’re probably looking at a totally deniable op, with verbal briefings, absolutely nothing in writing, and just a tiny number of people who’ve even heard of it.’
‘Understood, John. You’re probably right, but could you check anyway? Oh, and run a check on the name “Kellerman” as well, just in case that helps.’
‘Will do. I’ll call you back.’
It didn’t take Westwood long to respond. Less than ten minutes later, Richter’s secure phone rang.
‘Right, Paul. First, there’s no mention of an operation codenamed SM slash VIPER on the database here, so that looks like a dead end. But I have found something else that’s a little odd. On the sheet of paper you faxed, the first line could be a date – 1/8 – which I assume means the eighth of January. If that was this year, there’s a possible link to the name “Kellerman”.
‘On that afternoon, the body of a junior CIA officer named Richard Kellerman was found in the north Chinatown area of Washington. He’d been shot once in the chest with a nine-millimetre pistol. The slug was pretty badly chewed up, but from the rifling marks it looked like it had been fired from a Browning. His wallet and watch were missing, too, and his empty briefcase was dumped beside him. The police investigation didn’t turn up any suspects, so the killing was written off as just another mugging that went wrong.’
‘And obviously that’s exactly what it might have been,’ Richter suggested.
‘I quite agree, but there are a couple of oddities. I’ve looked at Kellerman’s duty roster. He was supposed to be at Langley all that day and so he shouldn’t have been anywhere near Washington. That’s the first thing. Second, late that afternoon he was recorded as a passenger in one of our limos that was driven to an unspecified destination. He left Langley in that car, but the vehicle came back empty. At the internal enquiry that followed, the chauffeur claimed he dropped Kellerman in central Washington, but refused to explain why the CIA officer had been in the car at all, where else he’d driven him, or whether there had been anybody else in the vehicle.’
‘Surely the enquiry could have compelled him to answer?’
‘The board tried hard, but he claimed he was acting under the direct orders of a senior CIA officer, and unless that officer specifically instructed him to explain his actions, he wouldn’t do so. And, obviously, he wouldn’t reveal the name of the officer either. He was disciplined, and that was all they could do, because there was no suggestion of any direct connection between the journey in the limo, the chauffeur himself and Kellerman’s death. But the fact that the dead agent’s name and the date of his death have now turned up written on a piece of paper obviously puts a different slant on those events of last January.’
‘Absolutely,’ Richter agreed. ‘Perhaps the two men met in Washington, and Stevens then killed Kellerman. That might explain the date and the name, but I doubt if Stevens would ever write down anything that could link him to a killing. I think it’s more likely that Kellerman was Gregory Stevens’s briefing officer, and that explains what he was doing in Washington.’
‘Maybe, yes. And if he was, then we need to work out if he really was killed by a mugger or if somebody ordered him to be eliminated after he’d delivered the briefing.’
‘Are you serious? The Company doesn’t kill briefing officers – at least, I sure as hell hope you don’t.’
Westwood laughed shortly. ‘No, we don’t. If the CIA assassinated every officer once he’d delivered a briefing, there wouldn’t be enough people left at Langley to sweep the floors. I’ve never heard of it happening before. But it worries me that Kellerman was killed on the very date that was written on the paper, and that means it’s at least possible we’re looking at something more than a random mugging.’
‘Let me just get this straight. You think there’s a real possibility that Gregory Stevens was tasked with some mission by Kellerman, and somebody at Langley then had Kellerman assassinated? But why?’
‘Look, I still think that’s a very unlikely scenario, but if Stevens’s mission was extremely sensitive, there’s at least a possibility that the guy running it might have decided to tie up one loose end for the sake of operational security. It’s also worth pointing out that Kellerman was a very junior officer. Knowing the way the Agency works, I would have expected a middle-ranking agent to be given the job of briefing someone like Stevens, so that’s a slight anomaly in itself.’
‘You mean that a more senior officer would possibly have smelt a rat, and killing a mid-rank agent would have generated a more thorough investigation?’
‘You said it,’ Westwood confirmed.
‘I think we’re building castles in the sand here, John. But if we are right, what mission could Stevens have been given that would justify killing the guy who had tasked him with it?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Westwood admitted.
American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London
Carlin F Johnson stared at the computer screen in front of him as he read the email for the third time.
Now there was no doubt at all. When he’d initiated VIPER, he’d set up four principal tripwires to alert him to anyone searching the Langley database for details of this operation. The first had been obvious – any mention of Gregory Stevens, the name of the agent tasked with the op. The second two were ‘SM/VIPER’ and ‘Kellerman’, respectively. The encrypted email he’d just opened had revealed that somebody had carried out searches for both within the last twenty-four hours. The good news was that Johnson knew there were no references to VIPER anywhere in the database, and ‘Kellerman’ was a dead end – he’d seen to that back in January. It was a pity he hadn’t been able to delete all references to the junior officer from the database, but the computer’s auditing system had prevented him doing that.
However, the fourth tripwire hadn’t yet been triggered, which was good news. If it had been, Johnson would now be thinking very seriously of taking an unplanned and extended holiday somewhere, because signs of anyone searching for those words would mean that the operation was as good as blown, and he had no illusions about the fate awaitin
g him if that occurred. The fact that he’d been implementing a specific directive from The Special Group would do nothing to protect him, and he would be lucky to escape with his life.
His problem now was deciding what to do next. If Stevens was still out there, and sticking to the timetable, he should by now be somewhere in the south-east of England, and Johnson would prefer to remain here on the spot as he waited for the endgame. That was, after all, the reason he’d manipulated the system to get himself sent over to London in the first place. Once the final phase of the operation was concluded, Stevens himself would become a total liability, and would then have to be silenced – permanently. Johnson had already decided to carry out that task himself, which meant he had to stay on in England.
But he was also seriously worried about the searches being carried out back at Langley on the database. He had no idea who was behind them, and that was something he really needed to rectify. If he knew who was trying to trace the operation, it might be possible to dissuade him – somehow – from continuing the search. He sat in deep thought for a few moments, then composed a message of his own, which he encrypted and marked as priority one and ‘eyes only’ for the addressee.
Greenford, London
‘It’s time,’ muttered the man in the driving seat of the white van.
His companion, slumped beside him with a baseball cap pulled low over his face, immediately sat up straight, glanced at his watch and nodded agreement. He picked up the London A-Z from the seat beside him and opened it to the page he’d already marked.
The driver took out his mobile, consulted a crumpled sheet of paper, and dialled a number.
‘This is Alpha Two,’ he said. ‘We’re getting mobile now, and estimate we’ll be in position at minute fifty-five.’
Then he switched on the ignition, waited a moment for the diesel heater light on the dashboard to go out, then turned the key. The engine started and soon settled down to a steady rumble. The driver engaged first and pulled away, the Transit bouncing over the kerb as he steered the vehicle down the street.
‘Turn left onto the main road at the end here,’ his passenger instructed, ‘then right at the second set of traffic lights.’
Ten minutes later, having caught both lights at red, the driver turned the van into a side street and pulled it to a halt almost directly outside an imposing building, again stopping on a double yellow line. He switched off the engine, and both men climbed out, the driver carefully locking the doors of the cab. They walked round to the back of the vehicle, unlocked and removed both padlocks from the two additional hasps. Opening the rear door, the passenger climbed into the van and pulled the door closed behind him. A couple of minutes later he emerged, jumped down to the ground and slammed the door closed again.
‘Done?’ the driver asked.
‘It’s done,’ the other confirmed.
They replaced the padlocks, made a final check that all the doors were securely fastened, then headed away towards the main road beyond. Just as they turned out of the side street, the driver made another call using his mobile.
‘Alpha Two is in position. Now on foot for the rendezvous.’
‘Roger. Alpha One is mobile. Rendezvous in three minutes.’
In fact, it was nearer five minutes before the white ‘Metropolitan Police’ van nosed its way down a narrow street and stopped outside a row of terraced houses where the two men from the first vehicle were waiting.
The moment the Transit stopped, the rear door swung open and they quickly climbed inside. Without a word, they stripped off their blue overalls to reveal the white shirts and black trousers they were wearing underneath. In a couple of minutes they were clad in police uniforms identical to those worn by the two men already in the cab.
From the box bolted to the floor, they each took a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine-gun and four loaded magazines. One went into the weapon, the other three into custom-designed loops on their body armour. Then they picked up semi-automatic pistols, loaded them and secured them in their belt holsters.
All they had to do now was wait.
Chapter Fourteen
Monday
South-east London
Hans Morschel was getting increasingly fed up with London traffic. Every time he got into a car, it seemed, he found himself staring at traffic lights – almost invariably red – road-works of some sort or an unmoving line of other vehicles.
‘I won’t be sorry to get out of here,’ he muttered to Hagen as they sat in the Mercedes behind a heavily-laden articulated lorry belching diesel fumes into the surrounding air.
‘Relax,’ his companion muttered, glancing at his watch. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘I know. I’m just pissed off with this place. It’s worse than Munich, and that’s saying something. How long now?’ he asked.
Hagen studied at his watch again. ‘Maybe ten minutes’ he said, ‘depending on the accuracy of the timer.’
Greenford, London
The white van illegally parked in Greenford had not so far attracted any official attention. No traffic wardens or police officers had noticed it, and those Londoners who had to travel down the same street, on foot or by car, simply muttered unfriendly epithets about ‘white van man’ as they squeezed past.
The vehicle looked as if it was used primarily for deliveries, and in a sense this was true. In the locked rear compartment was a fifty-gallon oil drum containing a carefully-calculated mixture of diesel oil and fertiliser: a lethally-explosive combination when in the right proportions, and Morschel had made absolutely sure that it was in the right proportions. Taped to the side of the drum was a simple trigger.
They’d considered detonating the charge using a mobile phone, but Morschel had finally decided that was too much of a risk. If the police somehow guessed that there might be a series of explosions triggered by cellphones, there was a good chance they would shut down the networks to prevent any further devices from functioning. Instead, they’d chosen to use one of the simplest and most effective of detonators: a small charge of Semtex fitted with a blasting cap, a battery and simple timer, which was then attached to the drum. There was enough plastic explosive in the detonator to wreck the van, but it would be the fertiliser bomb that would do the real damage.
As the two men left the vehicle, they’d set the timer for a period of fifteen minutes, but in fact the battery connections closed in a little over thirteen minutes and twenty seconds. Not that anyone was counting.
The Semtex fired less than a tenth of a second later, and around half a second after that the fertiliser bomb detonated. The result was immediate and devastating. There was an enormous blast and the Transit van simply ceased to exist. Metal panels and engine components flew in all directions like shrapnel. A boiling cloud of dust and particles from the explosion rose above the street itself. The ground floor of the adjacent building was pulverized, bricks and timbers and glass crushed into oblivion. Its structural integrity was fatally compromised, and seconds later part of the first floor gave way and tumbled into the void already created by the explosion.
Five people walking down the street were killed instantly, two of them so terribly mutilated that they would eventually only be identified by DNA evidence.
Up and down the same street, car and building alarms howled into life, in a sudden discordant cacophony.
The real target wasn’t the building outside which the vehicle was parked, but in fact the one opposite, a medium-sized bank. The damage to this structure was markedly less, because the building had to be left safe for his men to enter, and Morshel had carefully calculated that the detonation would just blow in the windows and shatter the automatic glass doors. There would probably be numerous casualties inside, caused by flying glass and other debris, but Morschel had never been concerned about collateral damage.
Over the atonic wailing of the alarms, the sound of an approaching siren gradually became audible, and a minute or so later a police van screeched to a halt in the street imm
ediately outside the bank. Pedestrians were still milling about in shock, many bleeding profusely from severe head wounds, others with merely superficial cuts. Other survivors of the blast lay on the pavements or in the roadway, most moaning and screaming but some ominously still.
The rear doors of the van opened and three men jumped out. They were wearing Metropolitan Police uniforms, and all carrying MP5 submachine-guns and, incongruously, large black nylon holdalls and with flesh-coloured masks obscuring the faces under their helmets. They ignored everyone – dead, wounded, and those shocked but fortunately uninjured – and raced straight into the bank. The moment the last of them had vanished inside the building, the driver swung the van into an expert three-point turn that left it facing the main road, and their pre-planned escape route.
In the bank itself, the scene was chaotic. Glass splinters carpeted the floor, and advertising placards and bits of paper were scattered everywhere. Customers and clerks were wandering about in a daze but, as the three men entered, most turned to them with expressions of shocked relief.
But these men had no intention of helping anyone there – they were simply going to help themselves. They moved swiftly into the positions and roles that were now so familiar to them.
In a line down the left-hand side of the bank there were half a dozen teller positions, each protected by a shatterproof glass screen, and these, though damaged, were mostly still intact. At one end was a solid door that led behind the counter, a keypad beside it, and that was their first target. Most of the lights had blown out, though the power was still on, and the keypad and electric lock were still functioning.
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