‘Jesus,’ Hicks muttered. ‘This is serious stuff, John. There’s no way that we’re going to be able to get the White House to unseal these files. I’ve never even heard of any President authorizing the sealing of a Company file, but there obviously had to be a real good reason.’
‘And unsealing would be a waste of time anyway, Walter,’ Westwood said. ‘Another thing I did was check the file sizes. The CAIP and N17677 files are both around fifteen kilobytes in size, which means they’re effectively empty. Whoever did the actual sealing made absolutely certain that nobody would ever be able to discover anything, even if they did get them unsealed. They deleted everything in each file, then sealed them both. The IT guys tell me fifteen kilobytes means the file will contain a title and pretty much nothing else. Almost no text at all, certainly nothing usable.’
For a few moments Hicks said nothing, just puffed on his cigar and gazed out of the window with unfocused eyes. ‘OK, John,’ he said, ‘what you’ve told me makes sense, despite the lack of any hard data. But I’m worried about how those files were sealed – the authority, I mean. The White House getting involved kicks this whole matter to a much higher, and much more dangerous, level. I’m also concerned that whoever orchestrated these recent killings might still be working here at Langley. So tread carefully, John.’
Hicks stubbed out the remains of his cigar and drained the last of his coffee. ‘I’ve a couple of other questions, though. First, why did your Mr X wait until now before he decided on killing Hawkins and Richards? And what about the various other agents involved?’
‘Let me answer your second question first. As soon as I found the CAIP reference, I checked the personnel files of the other four senior agents listed as part of the operation. Cassells and Stanford died of perfectly natural causes and William Penn got killed a few years ago in a car accident in Ohio.
‘The last man listed is Henry Butcher, who’s lying in a coma in a hospital in Baltimore. He’s apparently dying of a rare cancer that attacks the central nervous system. I’ve even been over to see him, and talked to the doctor looking after him. I’m told he’s got a few months, maybe only a few weeks, to live, and the chances are he won’t recover consciousness. Even if he does, the doctor thinks any kind of questioning would almost certainly be a waste of time. So I’m afraid that’s another dead end.
‘Now the reason our Mr X started his killing spree is something else. This information came from a public domain source posted on Walnut. Some time last week a Greek diver named Spiros Aristides, living on the island of Crete, found the wreckage of a small jet aircraft on the seabed. It was down deep, around one hundred feet, and it apparently took him several expeditions to locate the remains of the cabin. He noted part of the registration number, and was overheard in a local bar talking about his find.
‘Then things start to get weird. Twelve hours later, both the diver and his nephew were found dead, because of some kind of real fast-acting pathogen. The local papers picked up the story, and one of our assets there sent it to Langley. Now, three things puzzled me. First, the newspaper reported the wreckage as being found close to Crete. That meant that the crash occurred a long way from the area originally searched back in seventy-two, so the aircraft itself had either drifted well off-route or was on a covert flight when it went down. Second, according to the diver, the wreckage showed signs of battle damage, suggesting it had been deliberately shot down. Third, we suspect that the same Greek found something in the wreckage containing a virus or chemical that subsequently killed himself and his nephew.’
Hicks nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I can see where you’re going with this. The reason Mr X killed Hawkins and Richards is because the aircraft wreckage had finally been found. There must have been something in the wreck that would blow the lid clean off operation CAIP, and he wasn’t prepared to chance any surviving Company men being questioned about it.’ He paused. ‘But what I still don’t buy is the timescale. The file on CAIP was closed over thirty years ago, and the world has changed a hell of a lot since then. Why is it so important to eliminate the only people who knew about it?’ Hicks paused again, then added, ‘Five gets you ten that this guy has already got a team en route to Crete to take care of that wreckage.’
Chaniá, Western Crete
Stein screeched to a halt by the roadside a mile or so outside Chaniá and leapt out of the car. He ran round to the passenger door, wrenched it open and virtually dragged Krywald out.
‘Jesus, Roger,’ he grumbled, as Krywald vomited onto the edge of the tarmac. ‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’
‘I dunno,’ Krywald replied weakly. It was the third time Stein had had to stop the car since they’d left Chóra Sfakia. Each time Krywald had thrown up, his vomit laced with blood. Quite apart from that, he looked awful.
‘I’ve got to get you to a hospital,’ Stein muttered. He’d said the same thing twice before, but each time Krywald had dismissed the suggestion. This time he just nodded faintly and slumped back into the passenger seat.
Stein sat down behind the wheel, pulled out a map and glanced at it quickly, then started the engine and accelerated away. ‘The closest hospital is at Chaniá,’ he explained, ‘and that’s where I’m gonna take you, right now.’
Again all Krywald did was nod, and Stein realized just how sick his companion must be feeling. ‘Did you eat something – shellfish or something that I didn’t have?’ But even as he asked, Stein knew what the answer would be.
The three men had eaten dinner together the previous evening and shared only a light breakfast that morning, and on each occasion the food had been nothing other than bland. He and Krywald were seasoned enough travellers to avoid any dishes that might cause them problems abroad. They’d been careful to make sure that Elias stuck to simple food as well, not wanting any problems until after he’d completed the crucial dive.
When Krywald shook his head, Stein persisted. ‘You drink something, then?’
‘A coupla beers last night, same as you. Coffee this morning. That’s all.’
Stein looked over at him. ‘Well, you’ve sure as shit caught something,’ he muttered.
Krywald’s face wore a scared and hunted look that Stein had never witnessed before. He’d worked with him half a dozen times previously, and Stein well knew that his partner wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. ‘What is it?’ he pressed.
Krywald turned to look over at him. ‘The case,’ he said, his voice wavering weakly. ‘I took a look in the case this morning. I think I must have caught whatever killed those Greeks.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Stein muttered, unconsciously leaning away from Krywald and pressing his foot down harder on the accelerator. ‘What did you find in it?’
‘That’s the stupid part,’ Krywald said, his voice now so weak that Stein had to concentrate hard to hear what he was saying. ‘There’s a classified file, and spaces for twelve small flasks – but it contained only four. Three of them are still sealed and somebody’s cut one of them open. I didn’t touch the flasks… just looked through the file.’
‘What was in it?’ Stein asked, overtaking three cars apparently travelling in convoy.
‘Medical stuff.’ Krywald was breathing very slowly. ‘I didn’t understand too much of it. The file title read “CAIP”, and I’ve still got no idea what that stands for. I only looked,’ he added, ‘in case it contained something we needed to know about before we handed it over to McCready – and there was.’
‘What?’ Stein asked.
‘This CAIP thing,’ Krywald muttered. ‘You have to read it, Dick. I’ve been with the Company ever since I left college, and I’ve never read anything like it. For starters, it was classified “Ultra”, and I’ve never seen a file with that classification outside the secure briefing-rooms at Langley.’ Krywald broke off and coughed, clutching a handkerchief to his mouth. When he pulled it away, the handkerchief was stained bright red.
‘You OK?’ Stein asked, immediately aware of how stupid this question wa
s.
‘Of course I’m not OK,’ Krywald wheezed. ‘Listen to me. If that file ever gets made public, it could destroy the Company.’
‘What?’ Stein inadvertently jerked on the steering wheel, swerving the car across the fortunately empty road. ‘Christ, Krywald, that file’s over thirty years old. Whatever the Company was doing back then can’t be important today. So what the hell’s in it?’
Krywald shook his head. ‘You have to read it but, believe me, I’m not exaggerating. It could shut down the Agency and maybe even topple the US administration.’ Krywald fell silent, slumped back in his seat.
Stein wondered if his colleague’s ramblings were some kind of a side effect of whatever he was suffering from. But Krywald had always been outstandingly level-headed, so Stein realized he was going to have to read the file himself to try to make any kind of sense of what the man was now saying.
‘There must have been some kind of infectious agent inside the case,’ Stein suggested after a few seconds. ‘Something you didn’t even notice – like dust, a liquid, something?’
‘There was some powder on the cover of the file,’ Krywald said, ‘but I blew it off before I opened it.’
Bingo, Stein thought, but said nothing further. Eighteen minutes later, having removed the SIG pistol from Krywald’s waistband and the two spare magazines from his pocket, Stein helped him through the double doors of the hospital and watched helplessly as his partner was rushed away for emergency treatment.
Hammersmith, London
‘Oh, shit,’ Simpson muttered, and tossed the signal flimsy over to the Intelligence Director, who stared at it in incomprehension.
‘What’s the problem?’ the ID asked, having read it through to the end. ‘OK, the signal’s from Richter. He’s explained what happened when he dived on the wrecked Learjet, he’s acknowledged your instruction to investigate further and he’s confirmed he’ll take care of it, so presumably that’s exactly what he’ll do.’
‘It’s not what the signal says,’ Simpson snapped, ‘but what it means. I don’t like the way Richter takes care of things. Buildings get destroyed, aircraft get blown up, and the body count gets higher the more pissed off he becomes. And as somebody’s just detonated a bunch of plastic explosive directly underneath his little rubber boat, I’m guessing that he’s very pissed off right now.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘Yes, I am, but not a lot.’
‘He’s under your orders, so he’ll do what he’s told.’
‘You wish.’ Simpson laughed mirthlessly. ‘He was supposed to be under my orders out in Italy. I instructed him – not once but several times – not to touch Lomas. Six minutes later Lomas was lying on a gravel drive while two Italian policemen tried to shovel his intestines back inside his abdomen. Don’t talk to me about Richter being under my orders.’
‘Well,’ the Intelligence Director suggested, ‘if he’s such a loose cannon, then get rid of him. Give him to the Italians. I’m sure they’d be only too happy to stick him in the oubliette, so to speak.’
‘No way.’ Simpson shook his head. ‘For all his faults, Richter’s probably the most useful man I’ve got – and I’ll tell you why. He’s like a Rottweiler with attitude. Once he gets his teeth into a problem he simply never lets go until he’s fixed it.’
‘But if he won’t follow your orders?’
‘I can live with that, as long as he gets the job done – which he always has up to now. Of course, the day may come when he’ll outlive his usefulness and then I’ll have to get rid of him, permanently, but until then I’m prepared to cope with the problems he causes.’
‘But what he did to Lomas—’
‘What he did to Lomas,’ Simpson interrupted again, ‘was a hell of a lot less than I’d have done if I’d had the same chance. And Richter was probably right: all the Italians would do is stick Lomas in a nice comfy safe house for a year or two, give him three square meals a day, and ask him politely if there’s anything he’d like to tell them. From what we know of that bastard they’d get the square root of sod all out of him. And anything they did get would probably be disinformation that they’d then spend months wasting their time checking out.
‘In fact, Richter may actually have done us a favour. While Lomas is recuperating and dependent, the Italians are probably more likely to get something useful out of him. They can fiddle with the drugs, feed him a little sodium pentothal or scopolamine, and give him the third degree while he’s still woozy. All Richter has to worry about is what Lomas will do once he’s recovered.’
‘He’ll go after Richter, you mean?’
‘Like a shot. Richter, of course, is looking forward to that. He doesn’t like unfinished business.’
HMS Invincible, Sea of Crete
‘Invincible, Invincible, this is Fob Watch, over.’
‘Fob Watch, Invincible, you’re loud and clear. Go ahead.’
‘Invincible, this is Fob Watch with a transport request, and a message for Lieutenant Commander Richter. Ready to copy? Over.’
‘Ready to copy.’
‘Roger. Message reads as follows. “From Tyler Hardin, CDC, to Lieutenant Commander Richter, HMS Invincible. Third suspected case reported within last few minutes. Subject is surname Curtis, first name Roger. Nationality, American. Profession, reporter. Status, emergency admission to Chaniá hospital. Request helicopter transport from Kandíra to Chaniá ASAP. Suggest Richter accompanies.” Message ends.’
‘Fob Watch, Invincible, all copied. Listen out this frequency for aircraft callsign and estimate for Kandíra. Out.’
The communications rating pulled off his headset, read over what he’d written, then handed it to the duty Communications Officer who scanned it quickly. ‘Three copies,’ the officer said crisply. ‘One for Air Operations, one for Commander Richter, and file the other.’
Just over thirty minutes later an 814 Squadron Merlin was sitting on two spot, rotors turning and waiting for the ship to steady on a flying course. Richter, back in civilian clothes, was the only passenger. Beside him was his leather overnight bag, in the inside pocket of his jacket was an Enigma T301 mobile phone, and tucked in the rear waistband of his trousers was a Browning 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
Chapter 20
Friday
Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Westwood had just arrived back in his office when his outside line rang.
‘Mr Westwood? It’s George Grant, from Baltimore.’
‘Dr Grant. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Has something happened?’
‘Yes. I’m afraid Mr Butcher died about an hour ago,’ the doctor replied.
Westwood realized immediately that his last possible straw had just vanished. ‘Isn’t that rather sooner than you were expecting?’
‘Frankly, yes,’ Grant said, ‘but, as I told you, in these cases our expectations are only very rarely accurate. Some patients last a lot longer than we anticipate, others die much sooner than expected. I said as much to his brother too.’
‘His brother?’ Westwood asked.
‘Yes, John Butcher came to visit just a couple of hours after you left, and his brother Henry slipped away soon after he had gone. And before you ask me, Mr Westwood, I did confirm his identification. I checked his driver’s licence, and I had the ward nurse keep an eye on him all the time he was in the room with our patient.’
Despite Grant’s reassurances, Westwood immediately recognized the lethal hand of Mr X, tying up yet another loose end. ‘Can you describe this John Butcher, please?’ he asked.
‘Certainly. He’s a big man, around two hundred pounds, red-brown hair and a full beard.’
‘Thank you.’ Westwood jotted down the brief description, which was probably that of a man wearing a simple disguise. ‘One other thing, Dr Grant. Can you please arrange for an autopsy on Henry Butcher? And as soon as possible?’
‘I can,’ Grant said, surprise evident in his voice, ‘but
it’s most unusual in any case where there’s no doubt about the diagnosis. May I ask why?’
‘Yes, you may. I have good reason to believe that Henry Butcher may have been murdered, most likely poisoned.’
There was a brief stunned silence across the line as Grant absorbed the implications. ‘That’s absolutely unbelievable,’ he replied finally. ‘This patient was comatose and terminally ill. What would be the point in murdering a dying man? And who did it? His own brother?’ His voice rose the better part of an octave on the last word.
‘All that’s classified information, Dr Grant, but I’d be very surprised if the man who identified himself as John Butcher was any relation to your patient.’
‘Very well. I’ll contact you when I get the results.’
As soon as he put the phone down, Westwood pressed buttons on his computer keyboard and brought up Henry Butcher’s personnel file, accessing details of his family. Butcher’s wife had died some years earlier, and his next of kin was listed as his brother – John James Butcher – with an address in Idaho. Westwood noted down the telephone number and then dialled it. His call was answered almost immediately.
‘Mr Butcher?’
‘That’s me. Who’s calling?’
‘My name’s Westwood, Mr Butcher, from your brother’s old company.’
Westwood heard a wheezing chuckle. ‘Spare me the covert crap, Mr Westwood. I know Henry was a spook. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘I’ve some bad news, I’m afraid, Mr Butcher. Your brother Henry died today in his Baltimore hospital.’
There was a short pause before John Butcher replied. ‘Well, that’s a relief, I guess. He had no quality of life left. Not for a while, really.’
‘When did you last see your brother, Mr Butcher?’ Westwood asked.
‘Oh, ’bout six months ago, I reckon. Didn’t seem too much point to go on visiting him. He never even knew I was there.’
Two minutes later Westwood replaced the receiver. He’d been fairly sure before he’d made that call, but now there was no possible doubt. Somebody still working at Langley was making sure that all the details of CAIP, and any possible witnesses, would be dead and buried for ever.
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