Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  Ten minutes later, leaving the unidentified corpse zipped inside a body bag and awaiting road transport to the mortuary at Irakleío, the Merlin lifted into the air for a short transit over the mountains back to the Invincible.

  Outside Petres, Crete

  ‘Are you OK?’ Stein asked, as he swung the hired Ford around another of the seemingly endless bends on the road between Chóra Sfakia and Vrýses. They’d covered about half the distance up to the main road running along the north coast of the island, and were now just outside Petres.

  Krywald didn’t look at all well. His skin still possessed the greenish pallor that Stein had noticed in the boat, assuming it was just seasickness, and his eyes were bloodshot.

  ‘Yeah,’ Krywald muttered. ‘Just being in that goddamn boat half the day and then on this fucking road, it’s enough to make anyone feel sick.’

  ‘You want to stop for a while?’

  The other man shook his head. ‘No, let’s get back to the hotel, collect the rest of our stuff and get the hell out of here.’

  ‘OK.’ Stein changed down and accelerated past a pair of goats that were apparently also heading for Petres. ‘But if you feel you wanna throw up, give me a call ahead of time, will you?’

  Krywald nodded, then sneezed. Two minutes later he sneezed again.

  HMS Invincible, Sea of Crete

  As soon as the marshaller had waved in the deck crew to begin lashing the Merlin to the tie-downs on the deck, Richter climbed out of the aircraft. He waved a brief acknowledgement to David Crane and Mike O’Reilly, who had agreed to sort out the diving equipment for him. He then hurried across the Flight Deck to the island and let himself in through its steel watertight door, still carrying his mesh bag containing the pistol and the diving officer’s waterproof board bearing the registration number of the Learjet, and climbed swiftly up the stairs to Flyco.

  Wings was sitting in his usual seat, watching as Roger Black supervised the shut-down of Spook Two, and he turned as Richter entered Flyco. He glanced at the bag in Richter’s hand and stood up. ‘Success?’ he asked. ‘You found what you were looking for?’

  Richter smiled briefly. ‘I’m not entirely sure. We found the wrecked aircraft and I took a note of its registration number, but we didn’t find a lot else, because somebody contrived to blow up the wreckage before we had a chance to do a proper survey. I recovered a pistol from the aircraft cabin, and the chopper then picked up a dead body as well. That’s the short version, but Mike O’Reilly can give you chapter and verse, because he saw everything from the comfort of the Merlin while Crane and I were being tossed around after the explosion.

  ‘With your permission, sir, I’d like to signal my section in London to start tracing action on the aircraft remains and the pistol, and then I’ll probably have to return to Crete at fairly short notice. Whoever placed those charges – or rather ordered them to be placed – is almost certainly still somewhere on Crete, and I’m planning on locating him before this ship leaves the area. Crane and I could very easily have died in that explosion, so I’ve got a score to settle.’

  St Mary’s Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland

  John Westwood pushed through the double swing doors leading into the hospital reception area. He attracted the immediate attention of the harassed receptionist by the simple tactic of pushing his way to the head of a line of people and pulling out his CIA identification. Six minutes later he was following George Grant, a short, overweight African-American, down a long white-painted corridor.

  As Dr Grant halted beside a large window set in the left-hand wall and simply pointed through it, Westwood peered into the room beyond and saw a slight, grey-haired figure lying motionless on a bed. Pipes and wires connected his inert body to an array of monitoring equipment and machines whose purpose Westwood could only guess at.

  ‘Mr Butcher is comatose,’ Grant explained. ‘That means he’s deeply unconscious almost all the time. He enjoys very occasional and invariably short periods of partial lucidity, but the prognosis is terminal and he will certainly die within months, perhaps even within days.’

  ‘What exactly is wrong with him?’

  Grant glanced appraisingly at Westwood. ‘As I thought I had explained, Mr Westwood, I cannot divulge any detailed medical information except to members of Mr Butcher’s immediate family.’

  ‘Actually, Doctor,’ Westwood produced his CIA identification, ‘I think you can. There’s a possibility that Mr Butcher knows information that can be classified of national importance. I require to know what is wrong with him – the exact prognosis. If necessary I can obtain a warrant, which will compel you to disclose any and all information relating to Henry Butcher, but that would take time, so I would far rather you assisted the Agency without my having to resort to legal compulsion.’

  ‘No need for the big guns, Mr Westwood,’ Grant replied, studying the folder Westwood was holding out to him. ‘Now I know who you are, I’m perfectly happy to help in any way I can. I don’t suppose you want the full medical diagnosis, so in summary what Mr Butcher is suffering from is a rare form of cancer that primarily affects the central nervous system. He’s in the terminal stages of that disease now.’

  ‘How long has he got?’

  Grant shook his ample shoulders. ‘God knows,’ he said, ‘and I do mean that literally: only God knows. If I had to provide a forecast I would say anything from six weeks to three months, but that really is just a guess. He’s breathing by himself, his heart is in reasonably good condition and we’re feeding him intravenously. Eventually the cancer will take him, but until it does he’s likely to endure.’

  Westwood nodded and looked again at the still figure lying on the other side of the glass. ‘What about his family? Do they come to visit him?’

  ‘His wife is dead, and as far as I know he’s had no visitors at all since he became my patient about five months ago.’ Grant glanced at the information contained on a clipboard he’d taken from the slot in the door. ‘His next of kin is listed as his brother, but I’ve never seen him here.’

  For a few moments Westwood debated arranging to have a police officer or a junior agent stationed outside Henry Butcher’s door, but after another glance through the partition he decided that would be a complete waste of time. ‘You mentioned some periods of partial lucidity,’ he said. ‘Are these frequent?’

  Grant shook his head. ‘If you’re hoping to question him I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. The last time he showed any signs of consciousness was over three weeks ago, and he was barely aware that he was in a hospital. I would be very surprised if he came round long enough to recognize anyone, so any kind of detailed questioning is almost certainly not going to be feasible.’

  Westwood nodded. ‘I understand that, but two things, Dr Grant. First, please don’t allow Mr Butcher any visitors apart from his immediate family and next of kin. If anyone else attempts to enter his room, please have them detained on my authority. Secondly, just as a precaution, could you arrange to have a tape recorder positioned by his bed. If he recovers consciousness, no matter how briefly, get someone to record anything he says and then let me have the tape.’ Westwood was clutching the smallest of all possible straws.

  Grant nodded. ‘Is there anything special we should be listening for?’

  ‘No, just record everything. Right, thank you, Dr Grant. It was worth the journey here just in the hope I could have talked with him. I’ll give you my direct line number at the Agency and if by any chance he should come round or his condition changes for the better, please contact me immediately.’

  ‘I can almost promise you he won’t improve,’ Grant replied, taking Westwood’s card, ‘but I’ll certainly advise you of any change in his condition.’

  HMS Invincible, Sea of Crete

  Richter was in his cabin on Two Deck drying his hair after taking a shower when there was a knock on his door. He slid it open to find a Communications rating standing there with a buff envelope stamped ‘SECRET’, and with Richt
er’s name printed on it.

  ‘Sign here if you would, sir.’

  ‘Thanks. Could you wait a moment, please?’ Richter scrawled his signature on the form attached to the clipboard. He ripped open the envelope and extracted the signal that had been sent from Hammersmith via the Secret Intelligence Service. The message was brief and to the point.

  FAA REPORTS LEARJET MODEL 23 REGISTRATION N17677 RETIRED FROM SERVICE IN USA IN 1979 PRESUME RINGER. COLT REPORTS PISTOL SERIAL NUMBER ISSUED TO STATE DEPARTMENT PRESUME CIA. INVESTIGATION APPROVED.

  Richter put the message back in its envelope and watched as the rating re-sealed it. ‘Destroy it, please,’ he instructed, and slid his cabin door closed.

  For Simpson to approve further investigation was one thing, but Richter had no clear idea about what to do next. Because of the weapon found inside the wrecked Learjet’s cabin, and the duplicated aircraft registration, it was a reasonable guess that the jet had once been a CIA asset. What he didn’t know was what it had been doing over the eastern Mediterranean, or where it had been before that, where it was going to or what it had been carrying. Nor did he yet know what had killed Spiros Aristides and his nephew, or why somebody now believed the mere existence of the wreck was so dangerous that it had to be completely destroyed.

  Richter had just finished dressing as he heard his name called over the tannoy system. ‘Lieutenant Commander Richter is requested to report to the Commander.’ Three minutes later he knocked on a door, waited for the gruff command to enter, then stepped inside the cabin.

  The Commander on a Royal Navy aircraft carrier is the Executive Officer, the most senior Commander on board, second in command and responsible for discipline and for the smooth running of the ship. He didn’t, Richter noticed, look too pleased with life, and he didn’t ask his visitor to sit down.

  ‘Richter,’ he began flatly, ‘I’m not happy about your conduct on board this ship. Since you arrived you’ve flouted the rules on more than one occasion. I understand that your so-called diversion to the Italian airfield was nothing more than a ruse to get you ashore overnight, but this last incident is intolerable. This ship isn’t here just for your personal convenience. We could have lost a very expensive Merlin helicopter, not to mention an even more expensive crew, through your unauthorized activities.’

  Richter just stared at him. ‘Is that it?’ he asked after a few seconds.

  The Commander spluttered. ‘Are you being insubordinate?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ Richter said, ‘but I’ve got better things to do than stand here and listen to you waffling on. You need to get a grasp on the facts of life. I’m not a member of this ship’s company – in fact, I’m no longer even a serving naval officer – and I take my orders from another organization.’

  ‘I’m fully aware of that,’ the Commander said, his normally russet face darkening a couple of shades, ‘but while you’re on board this ship you’re still subject to naval discipline and you will obey orders and accord proper respect to senior officers.’

  ‘I will do whatever I have to do,’ Richter retorted, ‘to complete tasks set for me by my section. If that means I have to flout naval discipline and ignore orders that you or anybody else on this ship issues, then that’s what I’ll do. If you don’t like it, that’s tough. If you feel like taking the risk, clap me in irons, but until then, I’ve got work to do. I’d like to do so with your cooperation, but if you want to make an issue of it I can probably get a very specific directive from their lordships at the Admiralty telling you exactly what to do. Your choice.’

  For several seconds the Commander stared at Richter in silence, then finally he spat: ‘Get out of my sight.’

  ‘I was just going anyway.’ Richter turned and walked from the cabin, heading for the CommCen. He had a signal to send off to Simpson right away.

  Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  ‘So what have you got, John?’ Walter Hicks asked. The two men were sitting in Hicks’s comfortable office, the inevitable coffee pot on the table between them and the usual cloud of blue smoke rising towards the ceiling from Hicks’s cigar.

  ‘If I’m completely honest, Walter,’ Westwood replied, ‘the answer has to be “not a lot”. As you instructed, I’ve been liaising with Detective Delaney, but so far the crime scenes haven’t been much help to us. All Delaney knows for sure is that it was the same perpetrator who killed Richards and the Hawkins couple. That was confirmed by some dark hairs belonging to the same individual found at all three crime scenes. All the analysts can tell is that they come from the head of a Caucasian, probably male, and were turning grey. That includes about thirty per cent of the adult male population of America, so it doesn’t narrow our search a hell of a lot.

  ‘The house-to-house in Crystal Springs – where James Richards lived – turned up a bunch of mutually contradictory descriptions of an unknown male who may, or more probably may not, have had anything to do with the murder there. The description of a man seen entering the Hawkins’s residence at Popes Creek by one of the neighbours is probably the only genuine eyewitness account we have, but it’s so vague it’s almost completely useless. It states white male, around six feet tall, wearing a dark coat. About the only thing we know for sure is that we’re not looking for a black female dwarf.

  ‘As far as Delaney and his men can establish, nobody saw Hawkins arrive at Lower Cedar Point, or noticed him sitting there in his car, and no one saw any other person approach his vehicle, apart from the guy who found him, of course.’

  ‘So the short version,’ Hicks said, ‘is that these murders were all committed by the same man, but nothing in the forensics can be used to track him down. But once any suspect’s in custody, what Delaney’s found so far can be used to confirm whether he’s the killer?’

  ‘In a nutshell, Walter.’

  ‘OK, sounds as if the leg-work investigation is pretty much dead in the water unless Delaney can come up with a new eyewitness. What about the other side of the coin? What did you find out from the files here at Langley?’

  ‘As I said, not a lot. I’ve already trawled through mountains of files for any combination of factors that could possibly link Hawkins and Richards. I’ve found only one, and it’s old and pretty tenuous. It also seems to have been a deep black operation that was highly classified.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Hicks said. ‘Go on.’

  Westwood glanced down at his notes. ‘OK, on the third of July nineteen seventy-one a file was opened on an operation called “CAIP”. That’s spelt Charlie, Alpha, India, Papa. The senior agents tasked with running it were Henry Butcher, George Cassells, Charles Hawkins, William Penn, James Richards and Roger Stanford. According to our records, that is the only operation that ever involved both Hawkins and Richards working together.’

  ‘What was CAIP intended to achieve?’

  Westwood shook his head in frustration. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he admitted. ‘The file was sealed just under a year later, and was then classified “Ultra”. And this is where it starts to get interesting. I’ve been through the Registry and the Archives and there’s no hard copy of anything relating to CAIP to be found anywhere: no files, not even any record of the destruction of a file. It’s as if CAIP never happened, so somebody – I’m guessing the same person who killed Hawkins and Richards – did a very thorough job of expunging all traces of that operation. The only thing he couldn’t achieve was to eliminate the basic file details from the computer system, simply because of the way the database itself is set up. But he did the best he could: he protected the file from random searches. The only way you can get to see what little information there is, is if you type in “CAIP” and nothing else. Wildcard searches don’t work. You do see what this means, Walter?’

  Hicks nodded. ‘Whoever offed these two former Company agents probably still works right here at Langley. That’s very disturbing, John.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Oddly enough, I think I now know why our Mr X kil
led Hawkins and Richards. There are no details of anything to do with CAIP on the computer apart from what I’ve told you, but there was one other piece of information. CAIP is cross-referenced to a file called “N17677”. I checked that file as well, and guess what? It was started in June nineteen seventy-two, classified “Ultra” and sealed on exactly the same date as CAIP – the second of July seventy-two.’

  ‘And N17677 is what, precisely?’

  ‘It’s the registration number of an aircraft – a Learjet 23 to be exact – which went missing over the eastern Mediterranean in June that year. The file itself was sealed long before the search for the aircraft’s wreckage was abandoned.’

  ‘So what’s the link to CAIP?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m guessing that CAIP, whatever the hell it represented, was a covert op somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean and the crashed Learjet was bringing out some of the agents involved. The only problem with that hypothesis,’ Westwood anticipated Hicks’s obvious question, ‘is that there’s no record of any Company personnel dying during that period, anywhere in the world. But if this joker can sanitize our records the way he did with CAIP, losing a few personnel files wouldn’t prove that difficult a trick.’

  ‘OK,’ Hicks said, ‘let’s do this the easy way. Get those files unsealed and see what the hell CAIP is all about. Who authorized the sealing anyway?’

  Westwood smiled and shook his head. ‘I’ve already checked that, Walter, and we’re going nowhere with it. The authorization was POTUS.’

  For a moment Hicks just stared. ‘POTUS?’ he echoed.

  Westwood nodded. ‘POTUS – as in President Of The United States. That file was sealed by the authority of the White House. And before you ask, Walter, I checked the Learjet file as well – that was sealed by the same authority.’