Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  For a few seconds Murphy peered out of the window, staring across the scrubby grass of the small and unused internal quadrangle towards the side of the building opposite, then he exited the side-ward and retraced his steps to the front entrance.

  Two minutes later, outside the hospital, he headed quickly over to where he had parked his car. He opened the boot, reached inside and pulled his overnight bag towards him. Quickly checking that he was unobserved, he unzipped it and removed the Daewoo DP51, sliding it into the waistband of his trousers. He’d left the pistol in the boot just in case he’d had to pass through a metal detector to get access to the hospital. He felt around again inside the bag until his fingers touched the smooth cylindrical shape of the silencer: that went into his inside jacket pocket.

  Murphy closed and locked the boot, turned back towards the hospital, but didn’t approach the main doors. Instead, he walked around to the other side of the building, striding confidently as if he knew exactly where he was going, and made his way through a service entrance located over on the left-hand side of the hospital complex.

  He possessed a good sense of direction and, once inside, followed a passageway leading to his right. It was lined on both sides with doors marked with signs in Greek, and more or less paralleled the corridor he’d followed in the main building. He had to push open half a dozen doors before he found what he wanted. The seventh door along stood slightly ajar and inside he glimpsed piles of dirty laundry: sheets, towels, gowns and other garments heaped everywhere.

  He’d encountered nobody in the passageway, so it was the work of just a few moments to step inside, grab a slightly discoloured white surgical coat and slip it on over his jacket. There was no name tag, no convenient stethoscope to dangle around his neck, but Murphy wasn’t concerned. All he wanted was something that made him look more as if he officially belonged, and in a hospital nothing works better than a doctor’s white coat.

  Another few metres along, the corridor ended in a T-junction. There, on his right, was what he’d been hoping to find: an unlocked door giving access to the small quadrangle that lay between the ward block and the utility wing.

  On the other side of the patchy grass Murphy spotted the light blue towel moving slightly in a gentle breeze, then counted the windows positioned to the right of it, working out which one belonged to the room in which Krywald was being treated. He pulled the Daewoo pistol out of his waistband, checked that the magazine was fully loaded, then slammed it back in place. He screwed the silencer firmly onto the barrel, racked the slide back to chamber a round, set the safety catch, and replaced the pistol out of sight.

  Only then did he step out and begin moving confidently along the perimeter of the quadrangle.

  Réthymno, Crete

  ‘Understand we’ve got a bit of house-breaking to attend to?’ Ross asked.

  ‘It’s a hotel rather than a house, but otherwise yes,’ Richter replied. ‘I hope you’re good at picking locks,’ he added, ‘because I’m not.’

  ‘All part of the basic training,’ Ross nodded. ‘It’s part of the kit they give you when you join: exploding briefcase, Walther PPK, bullet-proof Aston Martin, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Ross replied, ‘but I have done the course, so unless this hotel is a lot more secure than most you find on Crete, it should be easy enough to get into their rooms.’

  The two men had arrived at Richter’s hotel almost simultaneously, going through the same recognition procedure in the street outside it as they’d followed during their previous telephone conversation. Ross was tall and slim with dark hair greying at the temples, and with a square, somewhat aggressive-looking moustache. He’d been here on Crete for two years, and now that his Greek had become pretty fluent he was confidently expecting a posting notice from SIS almost immediately, which would send him off to some other country where the locals spoke any language but Greek.

  ‘The Royal Navy’s much the same,’ Richter confided, as they took chairs at a table outside a street café. ‘The moment you’re competent and comfortable in any job, they immediately post you somewhere else. So how did you locate the Americans’ hotel?’ he asked.

  ‘It wasn’t that difficult,’ Ross replied. ‘Some of the biggest and most expensive hotels employ their own computerized booking systems, while the really small ones don’t bother with anything except telephone or fax reservations. So if they’d been staying in a hotel at either end of the spectrum it might have been awkward, but we guessed they’d probably go for a middle-priced place. The majority of the hotels on the island use the same central reservations system, and we’ve needed to hack our way into that several times before. It’s not difficult, because the information contained isn’t particularly sensitive or confidential.’

  Ross switched to Greek to order two coffees from the waiter who had appeared beside their table, then continued in English. ‘We searched for the names you gave me and came up with nothing, but in the circumstances that wasn’t entirely surprising. Then we searched for any two American men who were not part of a large group travelling together, but were staying in the same hotel. That generated fewer matches than you might expect; only about a dozen, probably because it’s low season here now. Finally we narrowed it down to just seven names.

  ‘We then sent men out to check with the hotels those seven men were registered at. Four were in Irakleío itself, so it didn’t take long to get the results. The first two men were a pair of elderly widowers doing Europe, and the other two were very obviously gay lovers. So unless the CIA has started recruiting poofs to do its dirty work, the two men you’re looking for have got to be among the last three we identified – Roger Clyde, David Elias and Richard Wilkins. All three are staying right here in Réthymno. I know you’re only looking for two men,’ Ross added, ‘but these three are apparently travelling together. Is it likely there might be a third man involved?’

  ‘That,’ Richter brooded, ‘could well make sense. When we located the wreck, the chopper picked up a body from the water. He’d been shot in the head and my guess is that he was a specialist diver who’d been recruited just to plant the explosives. Once he’d done his stuff, the others just blew his brains out.’

  The waiter returned with their coffee and Richter paid the bill. ‘And the hotel they’re using?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s just up the road,’ Ross replied. ‘We can go as soon as you’re ready.’

  Chaniá, Crete

  Tyler Hardin took a final look at the motionless figure, with wires and cables connecting him to a bank of monitoring equipment, then shrugged his shoulders and stepped over to the door of the side-ward. As he’d explained to Richter in the helicopter from Kandíra, there was no known treatment for the virus that was attacking the patient called Curtis. The American’s pulse was markedly weaker than when Hardin had last checked it only a few minutes earlier and his blood pressure was now so low it was frankly miraculous that he was still alive. What blood remained in his veins and arteries was gradually seeping out of his ears, eyes, nose and mouth and, even though Hardin could neither see nor measure it, also into his abdominal cavity and internal organs. The man was dying in front of his eyes and Hardin was powerless to do anything to stop it.

  He stepped out into the corridor, pulling the door closed behind him. Gravas and the orderly were waiting outside, and kept well away from Hardin’s space-suited figure. Both were wearing surgical gowns, rubber boots, masks, gloves and protective goggles.

  ‘Is he dead yet?’ Gravas asked, his voice slightly muffled.

  ‘No,’ Hardin replied, ‘but it won’t be long now.’ He turned back towards the side-ward and suddenly caught a glimpse of movement outside the external window beyond, which faced onto the grassy quadrangle. He fell silent and stared for a moment, then turned back to Gravas. Perhaps it had just been a bird flying past.

  The instant the figure in the bulky orange suit had turned towards him, Murphy had ducked down below the lev
el of the window sill. He didn’t think he’d been spotted, and all he had to do now was finish the job.

  He edged carefully upright against the concealing wall, then peered briefly through the adjacent window. The orange-clad figure was still out in the corridor, talking to two others wearing green surgical scrubs, but the ward itself was empty apart from the motionless figure of Roger Krywald.

  For a moment, Murphy peered down at the bed inside, wondering if the man was already dead, if he was endangering himself for no purpose. But then he noticed Krywald’s left hand twitch, and realized he had no option. He leaned back again, pulled out the Daewoo pistol and slipped off the safety catch, concealing the weapon behind his body and pointing it at the ground.

  When he checked the ward again, the three figures out in the corridor had now moved away slightly, so Murphy knew that this was about the best chance he was likely to get. The window in front of him was armoured glass, designed to prevent any violent patient from jumping through it. Murphy knew he wouldn’t be able to knock a hole in it easily, even with a rock, but it would offer almost no resistance to a 9mm Parabellum bullet.

  Stepping slightly away from the wall, he aimed his pistol through the window at Krywald’s still form. When he squeezed the trigger, the pistol coughed once, and a neat hole appeared in the window, surrounded by concentric rings of shattered glass. A brass cartridge case span through the air, as the second round was chambered by the recoil action, and Murphy watched Krywald’s body shudder with the impact.

  He sighted and fired again, this bullet striking Krywald’s chest within two inches of the first wound, then ducked down below the level of the window, his eyes scanning the ground. Murphy picked up one cartridge case, then found the second, and put them carefully into his jacket pocket. He slid the pistol back into the rear waistband of his trousers, under his jacket, crouched low until well clear of the side-ward windows, then he stood upright and headed calmly back the way he had come.

  He’d been out there in the grassy quadrangle for less than ninety seconds, and the first of his Priority Two tasks was successfully completed.

  Réthymno, Crete

  ‘Are their rooms likely to be kept guarded?’ Ross asked. The two men had moved further down the street and were now standing about a hundred yards away from the hotel.

  ‘There’s no reason why they should be,’ Richter said. ‘My guess is that we found one of the three already shot by his companions after he’d completed the diving for them, and another is dying in the hospital in Chaniá. That just leaves contestant number three, the guy who gave his name as Richard Watson at the hospital, and who’s probably shitting himself in case he might be infected with the same bug that’s killing Curtis. So my guess is that guarding his room will be the last thing on his mind. He’ll be looking for a way off this island really fast, and it’s even possible that he may already have left.’

  ‘So you reckon we can just walk in?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Richter muttered.

  ‘OK. I’ll go up first and inspect the lock. Unless there’s a problem, I’ll open the door and check out the room. You’d better stay in the hotel lobby as a look-out.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ Richter said.

  ‘And we’re looking for what, exactly?’ Ross let the question hang in the air.

  ‘That,’ Richter confessed, ‘is the awkward bit. I really don’t know. And there may be nothing there to find anyway if our third man has already legged it. Whatever it is, it’s got to be reasonably small if it can be pulled out of a submerged plane wreck and carried to the surface by a solo diver. So it’s probably a small box or chest, and possibly they’ve already put it in a briefcase or suitcase, that kind of thing.’

  ‘OK,’ Ross said grimly, ‘let’s do it.’

  Chaniá, Crete

  Shrill alarms from the cardiac and EEG monitors echoed along the hospital corridor as Krywald’s heart stopped beating. Hardin span back towards the door of the ward and wrenched it open. He registered instantly the flat lines running across both ECG and EEG displays and knew immediately that the patient was dead. There was obviously no point in considering resuscitation, so Hardin walked across to the left of the bed and switched off the equipment. Instantly the alarms fell silent.

  Though expecting it since he’d first stepped into the patient’s room, it was, like every other death he’d witnessed in his career, still something of a shock to him. He stepped closer to the bed and stared down at Curtis’s body. On looking more closely, he spotted the two open wounds in the left side of the patient’s chest. Bullet wounds were something he rarely saw, but Hardin had not the slightest trouble identifying them.

  He swung round as quickly as the space suit would let him, searching for the assailant who he suspected, for an instant, might still be hidden somewhere in the ward with them. Then he saw the two rings of broken glass in the window with the bullet-holes in the centre of them, and realized that the killer had struck from outside.

  He stepped across to the window and cautiously peered through it, but the grassy quadrangle was deserted. Whoever had killed the mysterious Curtis had already made good his escape.

  Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  ‘Is that Mr Westwood?’

  ‘Yes, Dr Grant,’ Westwood recognized the voice immediately. ‘You’ve got the autopsy results already?’

  ‘No, no. The procedure won’t be completed for another half-hour or so, and then we’ll have to wait for the toxicology results. But I thought you’d be interested to know that you were right. Henry Butcher was murdered.’

  Westwood’s reply didn’t sound even slightly surprised. ‘But how do you know that if the autopsy isn’t finished?’

  ‘Simple,’ Grant replied. ‘After we last talked, I made a point of examining Mr Butcher’s room and the equipment contained in it. As you probably noticed, he was receiving saline solution through an intravenous drip, and I noticed a tiny discolouration in the bottle. Saline solution is, of course, completely clear. So I checked the seal on the bottle and found a puncture, the kind that could be made by a hypodermic needle. I immediately had the contents analysed, and the lab found traces of a vegetable alkaloid.’ Grant paused, as if in triumph.

  ‘Thank you, Dr Grant,’ Westwood said. ‘I’d like to hear the final analysis result when you have it, but my guess is that you’ll find Butcher was killed by a dose of coniine. That seems to be our mystery man’s preferred modus operandi.’

  Réthymno, Crete

  Richard Stein had decided on two things. First, he wasn’t going to wait around any longer than necessary in the hotel at Réthymno, which meant he had to sneak out the back way, climb into his hire car and, as they say in the old westerns, get out of town. He was reasonably certain that neither McCready nor anybody else could have linked the Seat to him, because he’d paid for it using cash, and the credit card that the hire company had swiped as security had come from the private stash of documents that he always carried with him.

  The second priority was to make a final check of any emails waiting for him on the server in America, just in case there was anything he could use. Just moments after he logged on, he sat reading an email from McCready with an escalating feeling of disbelief.

  It didn’t exactly say come home: all is forgiven, but it certainly sounded like the next best thing. The message specified a route for him off Crete, courtesy of the US Navy, or at least a US Navy frigate that was even then approaching the island from the west, after a helicopter pick-up from the coast the following afternoon. McCready expressed his brief regrets about Krywald, then reiterated that the steel case should remain sealed for Stein’s own protection. Stein had no problem with that request, but he was surprised that McCready had apparently decided not to eliminate him immediately. And he reckoned he’d be safe enough on a US Navy vessel – McCready surely couldn’t have suborned the entire crew – and if he felt unhappy about things once he got on board, he would probably have the chance t
o leave the ship and get himself ashore somewhere in Europe.

  The trick, however, would be climbing into that helicopter without getting his brains blown out. Stein wasn’t stupid, so he realized immediately that McCready’s arrangement meant that the following afternoon his location would be both known and fixed, giving an ideal opportunity for a sniper to take him down. Clearly he would have to take extreme precautions in checking out the rendezvous well before the chopper arrived.

  In the meantime, there was nothing to stop him getting out of this hotel and finding somewhere else to spend his last night on Crete.

  Ross and Richter entered the hotel at more or less the same instant that Richard Stein shut down his laptop computer. Richter turned left and walked into the coffee shop where he found a vacant seat that offered a good view of the lobby, lifts and stairs. He watched as Ross strode across to the two adjacent elevators. As he waited for the lift to arrive, Ross dialled a number on his mobile phone and then slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  Richter’s phone rang – a new unit supplied by Ross for the duration of this operation. He picked it up and answered it. ‘Richter.’

  ‘Ross. Loud and clear.’

  His voice was exceptionally clear through the lightweight hands-free headset that he had donned just before entering the hotel. It would allow him to keep in constant contact with Richter, while leaving both hands free to carry out his searches.

  Just then the lift arrived, and Ross stepped inside. Richter watched as the doors slid closed. ‘Going up,’ Ross muttered, and seconds later Richter clearly heard the sound of the elevator doors sliding open. ‘Third floor,’ Ross said. ‘I’ll start with 301.’

  The hotel booking computer system had shown the three American guests as occupying one single room on the third floor, number 301, and on the other side of the corridor two adjoining rooms with connecting doors, numbers 306 and 308.