Richter aimed his pistol at Morschel’s head.
‘Wait, wait,’ the German screamed. ‘That wasn’t me.’
‘Maybe not, but you organized it, and that’s the same thing, in my book.’
‘No, it isn’t. I’ll trade you. Get me to a hospital and I’ll tell you who killed Stevens. And who decided to try to blow up the munitions on that wreck.’
‘OK, I’m listening.’ Richter lowered the pistol.
‘We were working with al Qaeda, and the man I dealt with was named Ahmed bin-Salalah, and he’s their front man in Europe. He came up with the idea for hitting that ship – and he killed Stevens.’
‘Who was the man on the boat, then? I presume he was a member of al Qaeda?’
‘He was just someone called Badri, and he was bin-Salalah’s cousin. I don’t know if he was a member of the group or just recruited for that one job. Now I’ve told you, so call me a fucking ambulance.’
‘I don’t think so. That information’s helpful, but not helpful enough for me to change my mind.’
‘You promised, you bastard.’
‘I lied,’ Richter said, and pulled the trigger.
Hammersmith, London
Richter leant both the SPAS-12 and the MP5 against the wall in one corner of Simpson’s office, and then dropped an overnight bag beside them.
‘What’s in that?’ Simpson pointed.
‘Hans Morschel and his boyfriend had a pair of MP5s. I brought their weapons along with me.’
‘Just make sure they get into the Armoury, Richter. I don’t want to find you’ve stashed them away somewhere else. Right, so what exactly happened?’
Richter explained the sequence of events to him.
‘So it definitely was an attempt to blow up those munitions on the Richard Montgomery?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And you couldn’t have stopped it any other way? By cutting the fuel line or something?’
Richter shook his head. ‘Just about every control and connection was fitted with an anti-tamper charge. The man who prepared that craft knew exactly what he was doing.’
‘And that wasn’t the Arab, whoever he was, sitting in the cockpit?’
‘No. According to Morschel, he was only there as a bodyguard to repel boarders, and as a final way of detonating the explosive if everything else failed. The whole thing was automated, and he was pretty much just along for the ride.’
‘Did you have to kill him? He might have told us something useful.’
Richter nodded. ‘I had no choice. It was either him or me. He made a dive for the controls and I reckon he was going to try to fire the main explosive charge right then.’
‘No idea who he was?’
‘Apparently his name was Badri and he was a cousin of Ahmed bin-Salalah. I think he was just a shahid recruited for the operation, but we’ll never know now, as he’s busy feeding the aquatic livestock off Sheerness. If you fancy a fish supper, Kent and Essex might be good places to avoid for the next few weeks.’
‘Don’t be disgusting, Richter. Now, back to Morschel. I know I told you I didn’t want that German thug to stand trial,’ Simpson had a sour expression on his face, ‘but what you did was an execution, pure and simple. Not exactly what I had in mind.’
‘It doesn’t matter, one way or the other. He forfeited his right to live because of what he did to Gregory Stevens. The last thing we needed was a trial with some whinging liberal defence lawyer explaining to the jury about Morschel’s deprived childhood and all that bollocks. You have a boil, you lance it, and that’s exactly what I did. End of story. If the woodentops do come chasing after me, I’m quite sure you can arrange me a water-tight alibi. Perhaps a dinner in Yorkshire with a couple of the more pliable Members of Parliament who owe you favours, that kind of thing.’
‘Probably,’ Simpson nodded curtly.
‘Any sign of the money Morschel’s men took from those banks?’
‘Not yet. The Met have discovered that the fake vans were hired from a television prop supply company. They’d apparently been booked by an outfit named “BB Productions”, with an address on a trading estate in Romford. The plods have raided the premises and found nothing there apart from the replica weapons and blank ammunition supplied as part of the package, so that trail’s gone cold. All the bank accounts used to buy the company, pay the rent, hire charges and all the rest have been closed. We could try back-checking all the documentation these guys used to open those accounts, but my guess is it’ll prove to be another dead end. Two of the police vans were also found, both cleaned out. No fingerprints or trace evidence in either of them, or at least nothing the Met’s admitted to yet. No sign of the uniforms, weapons or the money, obviously. But I suppose something may still turn up.’
‘I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting. This wasn’t just a bunch of hoods with shooters and a getaway car hitting a couple of banks. This was a very slick operation, carried out by a gang of ruthless thugs who knew exactly what they were doing. Look at the planning that was involved. They set up bank accounts, created a front company, hired premises and all the rest. You’ve almost got to admire the sheer professionalism of it. And I don’t believe that a bunch of people taking that kind of trouble wouldn’t have worked out a way to get themselves and their loot out of the country. We’ve no clue who they are, apart from Hans Morschel himself, so there’s no way of identifying and then stopping them.’
‘And the money?’
‘If they haven’t organized a container or something to hide it in and then ship it over to Germany, they’ve probably just tucked it away in suitcases lying in the backs of their cars, or stuffed it under the seats. It’s amazing how much cash you can hide inside the spare wheel well. With the amount of vehicular traffic using Dover, there’s no way every car, or even every hundredth car, can be searched, so they’ve got a very good chance of not being stopped.’
‘The Customs people will be targeting German cars,’ Simpson pointed out.
‘Good plan. Unfortunately, we’ve no idea if Morschel’s men will be driving German vehicles. He arrived in a car on German plates, but the vehicle itself was probably registered in Austria. Remember how Stevens was driving a French-registered hire car, so these people probably hired cars from a bunch of different locations in Western Europe – France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain or wherever – and we can’t hope to stop every non-British-plated vehicle. And there’s nothing to say, either, that they didn’t fly to Britain and hire cars here to drive back to Germany. No, I don’t think we’re going to recover any of that money, and I very much doubt if we’ll see any of those guys standing in the dock.’
‘In short, we’ve been comprehensively pissed on,’ Simpson said acidly.
‘In a nutshell, yes. But we did get Morschel and the man I presume was his number two, which should please the German authorities, and we stopped them detonating London’s permanent timebomb in the Thames Estuary, so in that sense you could say we lost the battle but won the war.’
‘Good cliché.’
‘Good and, like most clichés, also true. But this isn’t quite over yet.’
‘You think you can find this bin-Salalah?’ Simpson’s surprise was obvious.
Richter shook his head. ‘Not any time soon, and I wasn’t actually thinking about him. I meant Gregory Stevens. I know he’s dead, but I’ve been going over what he told me – or rather didn’t tell me. We know he was a former CIA officer who ‘died’ shortly after retirement from the agency so that he could operate undercover more easily. When I talked to him down at Maidstone, he made a remark that didn’t make much sense at the time. We were discussing this bombing campaign, and Stevens said something like “it wasn’t really Morschel’s idea”. I meant to ask him what he meant by that, but I forgot.
‘Now, put that together with what I learnt from John Westwood at Langley, that something called The Special Group was probably involved with this operation, and I’m wondering if the prime mover in this p
lan was actually Stevens himself or, in fact, the man he was reporting to. In short, I think it’s possible that Morschel’s bombing campaign was orchestrated, or at the very least suggested, by somebody in Washington.’
‘Are you serious? Why the hell would the Yanks want to do that? Aren’t we supposed to be their staunchest allies?’
‘Right now, I’ve no idea. But Stevens did tell me that I wouldn’t have believed his briefing.’
‘So what are you going to do about it? Do you actually know who briefed him?’
‘He may have been a CIA officer named Richard Kellerman, but he’s dead too.’
Richter told Simpson what Westwood had discovered about Kellerman’s murder in Washington, and his possible link to Stevens.
‘But if Stevens and Kellerman are both dead, that’s the end of the trail, isn’t it?’
‘Not necessarily. If John Westwood’s right, Kellerman was just an expendable junior officer instructed to deliver a briefing, who was then killed simply to tie up a loose end. If so, I need to talk to the man who ordered his assassination, because he was ultimately the brains behind whatever this plan was about.’
‘And how, pray, can you do that?’
‘There might be a way.’ Richter then explained what he’d found on the sheet of coded groups that Cheltenham had decrypted for him.
‘OK,’ Simpson said, when he’d finished, ‘so now you’ll want to head across the pond, I suppose?’
‘Probably not, in fact. My guess is that this mystery man would have wanted to be in at the kill, so to speak, and I think he’s probably already over here. Once the bombing campaign finished, he would want to ensure Gregory Stevens wouldn’t be able to tell anyone what he’d been up to, because he really was the last loose end. I suspect he’s still here, waiting for Stevens to show himself, and then he’ll try and kill him.’
‘But Stevens is already dead.’
‘We know that, but I specifically asked the Kent woodentops to keep it quiet as long as possible, so most likely this guy won’t be aware of it. I hope. So I’m going to use Stevens’ emergency exfiltration code and see what that produces.’
Simpson mulled that over for a few moments, then nodded agreement. ‘Approved. Do you need any back-up?’
‘Yes, but I’ll arrange it myself, thanks. I think this operation has been very tightly controlled and the last thing this man will want is a lot more people getting involved, especially if they might become witnesses to a killing. My guess is, if he responds at all, he’ll be acting by himself, or maybe just with one or two accomplices. But I’ve no doubt they’ll be bristling with weapons.’
‘Right. Just make sure you extract whatever information he’s got before you blow him away. No doubt that’s your intention?’
‘Oh, yes. This man may personally have clean hands, but he’s indirectly responsible for dozens of deaths. If I’ve got anything to do with it, he’ll be heading back to the States in a pine box.’
American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London
Carlin F Johnson had two mobile phones, only one of which was registered to him. The second one contained a pay-as-you-go chip, and he only switched it on for three one-hour periods every day. Since the operation began, it had never rung once, but that evening, at exactly seven twenty-nine, it did.
Johnson made no attempt to answer it, just checked the caller’s identity, which was predictably unhelpful, as the phone simply reported a ‘private number’. He looked at his watch and began counting. It rang three times, then stopped. Two minutes later, it rang again, and this time stopped after precisely nine rings. After that, it remained silent, but the mobile had conveyed all the information he needed. Stevens had completed his assignment, even though Johnson was somewhat disappointed with the result, and the code ‘3, 9’ meant he should ‘meet at the emergency rendezvous tomorrow morning at ten-twenty.’
And that meant he had plenty of time to make all the preparations necessary.
Chapter Twenty
Tuesday
Dungeness, Kent
It was almost, Richter thought, like a moonscape: bleak and with a peculiar other-world feel to it. Dungeness was, without question, one of the strangest places he’d ever visited. The beach, if one could call it that, was shingle and almost completely flat, with metalled roads meandering through it, an expanse dotted with what looked like large beach huts, but which on closer examination were more like small weekend cottages. In total contrast, the western edge of the promontory was dominated by the distant hulking shape of the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station.
He’d checked the location very carefully the previous evening. The sheet of paper the Kent detectives had found in Steven’s hotel room, and that GCHQ had subsequently decrypted, had specified the exact geographical coordinates of this emergency rendezvous, and also a simple date and time code to be conveyed by ringing a particular mobile phone number.
Richter had arrived there at a quarter to ten and parked the Jaguar – claiming to Simpson that he needed the car’s built-in satnav to make sure he found the place in time – at the precise location, which was simply an unmarked concrete slab just off the single-track road. In his shoulder holster he had the Browning, and resting on the passenger seat was the fully-loaded SPAS-12, the best close-quarter weapon he’d ever used.
He glanced at his watch. Ten zero five. If the man was going to turn up at all, he should arrive in about fifteen minutes. But even as that uncertain thought crossed his mind, he saw two black American Ford saloon cars approaching, the vehicles bouncing on their soft springs as they lurched over the uneven surface.
Richter left the shotgun on the passenger seat, but pulled out the Browning and checked it yet again. Then he replaced it in the holster and waited, watching the approaching vehicles carefully.
One Ford stopped about twenty feet away, on the other side of the concrete slab, and the second on the road just behind it. The windows and windscreens of both vehicles were heavily tinted, and all Richter could see were a couple of vague shapes in each.
Then a man climbed out of the driver’s side of the car nearest to him. The moment Richter saw him move, he did the same. He picked up the SPAS-12, stepped out of the Jaguar and walked round the car to lean against the passenger door. The figure who had emerged from the Ford looked American – dark suit, loafers, a light tan and dark hair cropped short – and he stared across at Richter with a sour expression. The MAC-10 submachine-gun he was holding also looked American. The weapon, Richter saw immediately, was fitted with a bulky suppressor, which was hardly good news, and the man looked as if he knew exactly how to use it.
To his left, Richter heard the sound of car doors closing and glanced round. Two other men – virtual clones of the first one – had emerged from the second car and immediately moved apart. He noted, without surprise, that each was also holding a MAC-10, and that the muzzles of the submachine-guns were pointing directly at him.
He was instantly out-gunned and guessed that if he raised the shotgun, now hanging loosely from his right hand, he’d be dead in seconds. But he didn’t even attempt to move because, apart from the SPAS-12, he had two aces up his sleeve.
‘Figures,’ the man opposite him muttered, and slapped the roof of his car. Immediately, the passenger door opened. Yet another men stepped out and glared over at Richter.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ he demanded. ‘And where’s Stevens?’
‘Stevens didn’t make it,’ Richter said. ‘But we thought you’d want to know what happened to him.’
‘How did you know our emergency rendezvous routine?’
‘We decrypted the data sheet you supplied him, or maybe that was Kellerman.’
‘How the hell do you know about Kellerman? And who are you?’ he repeated.
‘My name’s Richter and I work for the British government,’ Richter responded, ‘and we’ve been tracking your man Stevens for a while.’ A lie, but it could easily have been the truth. ‘What’s your name?’
; ‘It’s Johnson, not that you’re going to live long enough to use that information.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Richter replied. ‘We know that when Agent Kellerman was shot in Washington it wasn’t just a random mugging. Who did you order to do it, then? The chauffeur? That was Roy Craven, wasn’t it?’
‘Jesus, what the hell else do you know?’
‘Almost everything.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘I’m here because about the only thing we don’t know about this business is why. Why did you order this operation? Oh, and we don’t know who you really are either, but actually we don’t care. We just assumed you were another expendable asset recruited by The Special Group to do their dirty work.’
The American was clearly growing more angry by the second, and Richter guessed he’d like nothing better than to order the three bodyguards, who’d barely moved a muscle since they’d climbed out of the Fords, to kill him and end this.
‘OK, wise guy. I don’t give a flying fuck who you are, who you work for, or what you know. This operation is over. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now.’
‘I can give you two, actually,’ Richter said. ‘This beach may look pretty deserted, but it’s not. There are two SAS snipers with rifles trained on you right now.’
The American glanced round uncertainly, then swung back to face Richter.
‘You’re bluffing.’
‘Am I?’ Richter asked. ‘Left-hand rear,’ he murmured.
There was an almost instant bang from the back of the car next to the Jaguar, and the left-hand rear tyre of the Ford blew, the sound followed a split second later by the flat crack of a rifle shot.
‘I hope you remembered to bring the spare wheel and a jack,’ Richter said, almost conversationally. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘what I’d like is for your three goons to drop those ugly little MAC Tens right now and then climb back into their cars and shut the doors.’
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