Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  Richter thought for a moment before replying. ‘Open it, please,’ he said, ‘on my authority.’

  ‘I won’t be able to read it to you, sir,’ Ops Three said. ‘Not even over a secure telephone.’

  ‘I know,’ Richter said, ‘but you will be able to tell me if I need to get back to the ship in a hurry or do something else.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Richter heard a faint tearing sound and then silence for a few moments as Ops Three scanned the signal.

  ‘Yes?’ Richter said encouragingly.

  ‘I don’t understand the third sentence here, sir, but the first two are quite clear. You’re to report by the fastest possible means to the American naval air station at Soúda Bay.’

  That wasn’t at all what Richter had been expecting. Having just killed in cold blood someone who was almost certainly a CIA agent or asset, he had rather hoped to be keeping his distance from America and the Americans for some time.

  ‘Who’s it from?’ Richter asked.

  ‘The originator is listed as “FOE” – that’s Foxtrot Oscar Echo,’ Ops Three reported, ‘and the signal is signed “Simpson”.’

  ‘Is there anything else you can tell me without compromising the text?’

  ‘Really there’s only one thing, sir. It’s the proper name “Westwood”. Does that help?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Richter replied, wondering what the hell John Westwood’s name was doing in a signal sent to him from Richard Simpson. At least he could trust Westwood, counted him as a friend. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll get myself to Soúda Bay. Can you get that signal to Soúda Bay Ops or wherever by helicopter so I can pick it up?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve got a Merlin leaving the ship in fifteen minutes to join the ASW screen. I’ll re-task it on telebrief to call at Soúda Bay first.’

  ‘Thanks.’ A thought suddenly struck Richter. ‘Are you still running surveillance out to the west of Crete?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. How did you know about that?’

  ‘Actually, I requested it. You might need a higher authority to confirm it, but there’s now no reason for it to continue. I suggest you check with Wings and tell him what I’ve just said.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Ops Three’s voice sounded uncertain. The instructions for the surveillance operation had come straight from Flag Officer Third Flotilla, Invincible’s operating authority. How the hell could a request from a lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Reserve turn into an order from an Admiral?

  ‘Thanks, Ops Three,’ Richter said. ‘My guess is I won’t get back on board this deployment, but maybe I’ll get the chance to fly with the squadron again some other time.’

  Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  Like Henry Rawlins, Nicholson wasn’t normally to be found at Langley over the weekend, but he’d been expecting a signal from the US Navy frigate that had been tasked with collecting Richard Stein or, more likely, Mike Murphy, from the western end of Crete.

  Conscious of the time difference between the Mediterranean area and the American eastern seaboard, he’d appeared in his office early, but it wasn’t until after ten local time that the signal finally arrived, having been routed through various satellites, the frigate’s operating authority and Langley’s own communications section. And when he read it, Nicholson knew that his problems were far from over. The signal, shorn of its routing indicators and other dross, was for Nicholson a two-word nightmare. It said simply: ‘NO SHOW’.

  For two or three minutes he just stared at the words, wondering what the hell could have gone wrong. He knew Krywald and Stein had recovered the case and file because he’d received Krywald’s email confirmation of that. He knew Elias was dead because Stein had told him, and he knew Krywald had been eliminated because Murphy had confirmed his death. The only thing Murphy had needed to do after that was locate and eliminate Stein himself, recover the two items, and climb onto a chopper for the ten-minute flight to the waiting frigate.

  That wasn’t rocket science, for Christ’s sake, and it was the kind of thing Murphy did all the time. For a few moments Nicholson wondered if the timescale had been just too tight, but he’d discussed it all with Murphy before he’d even left for the airport, and his operative had seemed quite satisfied with the proposal. Something, Nicholson knew, must have gone tits up.

  His priority obviously was to find out what had happened. Nicholson was methodical, so first he checked his secure email inbox, hoping for a message from Murphy, but found nothing there. Then he took a risk: he used his office telephone to call Murphy’s mobile, but just heard a recorded message stating that the phone was switched off. Without much hope, he then tried Stein’s mobile, but got the same response – or rather lack of it.

  The only option was to email Murphy and find out what had happened. It took Nicholson less than three minutes to compose and send a message to the classified server. He marked it High Priority and incorporated a request for a read receipt: that way he’d know when the email got displayed on Murphy’s laptop.

  After a moment’s thought, he sent an almost identical message to Richard Stein. Then all he could do was sit back and wait.

  South of Zounáki, western Crete

  Inspector Lavat stood by the boot of the blue Seat Cordoba and stared at the two bodies lying on the ground. Then he examined the bullet holes in the metal of the Seat, shook his head and glanced towards the higher ground lying to the north of the crime scene. To Lavat, the damage to the car looked as if it had been caused by a rifle, not a pistol – a rifle that he was certain had been fired from somewhere in those hillocks some three or four hundred yards away. But that, he had already decided, was not going to be the official version.

  He’d been telephoned an hour earlier by a man he’d never heard of, called Fitzpatrick, and given brief details of the incident occurring near Zounáki. The moment Fitzpatrick mentioned Richter’s name, Lavat had been sure that there would be more to these killings than met the eye. And, after a brief initial inspection, he knew that he was right.

  The police in Máleme had received an almost hysterical phone call from a female British tourist who had stumbled on the grisly scene whilst out walking, and they had reacted immediately. Half a dozen police officers had been dispatched to the location, and now stood around, making sure that the small but growing crowd of eager sightseers all kept their distance and didn’t contaminate the crime scene. They were waiting for their forensic people to arrive, and Lavat knew that then his real work would begin.

  No experienced forensic scientist could accept the scenario that Fitzpatrick had suggested to Lavat. The chances of two people inflicting virtually identical bullet wounds on each other, and then simultaneously shooting each other in the head, were less than zero. Lavat realized that and so too would the men in white suits when they finally arrived.

  But Lavat also knew that that scenario made perfect sense from the point of view of convenience and even justice. Fitzpatrick had informed him exactly who the two dead men were, and Lavat knew that one of them – the one clutching a SIG P226 automatic pistol – was almost certainly the man who had killed his police officer in Kandíra. Fitzpatrick was a little more vague about the identity of the second corpse, but Lavat didn’t feel inclined to probe too deeply.

  He shook his head again, wondering how best to approach the problem. Perhaps conjuring up an anonymous eyewitness might be the best option: somebody who had actually observed the two men shooting at each other. That might be the best way of persuading a suspicious forensic scientist to doubt the evidence of his own eyes.

  Failing that, he guessed he would just have to accept whatever the forensic team decreed, but ignore the conflicting evidence when he came to write the report. After all, the one thing certain was that there would be no court case: this double shooting was a dead end, and was also going to close four open files.

  On balance, he was glad Richter had been around, and he was certain he could detec
t the hand of the Englishman in many of the events following the death of Spiros Aristides. But he was also pleased that Richter was leaving Crete: life there had been both quieter and simpler before he arrived.

  NAS Soúda Bay, Akrotíri, Crete

  The armed sentry posted at the counter-weighted barrier guarding the main entrance to the Soúda Bay base took one look at Richter’s Royal Navy identity card and raised the barrier.

  ‘You’re expected, sir,’ he said. ‘They’re warming up one of the RC-135s for you. Do you know where the flight line is?’

  ‘No,’ Richter said, ‘I’ve never been here before.’

  The sentry handed him a printed map annotated with directions and supplemented it with a string of verbal instructions. Richter drove on into the base, trying to shift a feeling of unreality engendered by the sentry’s casual phrase: ‘They’re warming up one of the RC-135s for you.’

  The RC-135 is a highly specialized and very expensive electronic surveillance aircraft based on the ubiquitous and reliable Boeing 707 platform. It was an RC-135 on a regular patrol out of the States that stood off the Kamchatka Peninsula in 1983 and recorded all the transmissions from Soviet ground stations and fighter aircraft, as Korean Airlines flight KAL007 flew increasingly further off-course into Soviet territory and was finally shot down by a Russian Flagon interceptor. That incident resulted in the loss of two hundred and sixty-nine lives but produced for the West arguably the greatest intelligence coup of the decade, comprising Russian radar signatures, radio frequencies, intercept procedures and all the rest. Appallingly, many Western intelligence analysts considered the sacrifice of so many lives to be entirely justified.

  The RC-135 is not only an extremely complex and expensive aircraft, but is also highly classified. The Americans are very reluctant to let anyone anywhere near one unless they have a demonstrable and essential need to know what goes on inside the fuselage. So why, suddenly, was Richter being allowed aboard one as a passenger? And as a passenger to where, exactly?

  As he hauled the Renault round a corner and headed towards the complex of hangars, he suddenly noticed the unmistakable shape of a Royal Navy ASW Merlin standing over to his right. He checked the mirrors, braked the car to a halt, then reversed back until he could turn onto the dispersal where the helicopter was parked.

  He stopped about fifty yards from the Merlin, switched off the engine and climbed out of the vehicle. The chopper’s engines were running and the rotors turning, so he knew that at least some of the crew had to be on board. A ground marshaller was standing in front of the Merlin, wands crossed below his waist in the ‘park’ position. Richter moved across to him and spoke into his ear.

  ‘Are all the crew still on board the chopper?’

  The marshaller glanced at him. ‘No, sir. One of the guys from the back got out a few minutes ago. He’s over in that building to your right.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The building indicated was about seventy metres away, and as Richter approached the door it opened and a man wearing flying overalls stepped out. Richter recognized him immediately as one of the 814 Squadron aircrewmen.

  ‘Is that for me?’ Richter asked, gesturing at the buff envelope the man held in his hand.

  ‘Oh – hullo, sir. Yes, it’s for you.’ He took a crumpled sheet of paper out of one of the pockets of his overalls and proffered it. ‘It’s classified Secret, sir, so you’ll have to sign for it.’

  Richter scribbled something approximating his signature in the space the aircrewman indicated, then took the buff envelope from him. He ripped it open and pulled out the message form. The text was brief and specific:

  RICHTER, INVINCIBLE. PROCEED NAS SOUDA BAY IMMEDIATE. JOIN FIRST AVAILABLE FLIGHT NORFOLK VIRGINIA. ON ARRIVAL AWAIT CONTACT COMPANY REP WESTWOOD REFERENCE CAIP. SIMPSON, FOE.

  Richter walked back to the Renault and dropped into the driver’s seat. He read the message again, then made a decision. He pulled out the Enigma mobile phone and dialled FOE in London. Five minutes later he was talking to Simpson himself.

  ‘I was called up by your old pal John Westwood,’ Simpson began, ‘and when he found out it was you that was opening cans of worms all over the Mediterranean, he thought the two of you should get together.’

  ‘Get together on what, exactly?’ Richter asked.

  ‘Good question. I don’t know, and nor does Westwood, but it looks as if someone in the States is going around permanently silencing CIA personnel who were involved in a deep black operation the Company ran in the early seventies.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So there’s a link to what happened on Crete. A direct link. Pretty much all Westwood has been able to dig up is the name of the operation. Everything else – all the documentary evidence and all records on the CIA’s database – seems to have been destroyed. But the name’s interesting. It was called “CAIP”, spelt Charlie, Alpha, India, Papa,’ Simpson added. ‘The same as the initials on that steel flask and the file you’ve recovered from those Yankee comedians.’

  Chapter 26

  Sunday

  RC-135 callsign ‘Trent Two Four’, mid-Atlantic

  Richter was feeling the strain. His sleep on Friday night had been interrupted by the news that Stein’s hire car had been spotted, and Saturday had been, by any standards, a very full day. He was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable seat in the darkened rear compartment of the RC-135 – none of the electronic surveillance devices had been switched on, and three of the consoles were shielded by tied-on shaped plastic sheeting so he couldn’t even see the displays – and he was now trying to make some sense of the CAIP file.

  The problem was, it was full of what looked like complex medical information, none of which meant anything to Richter: his medical expertise basically encompassed taking an aspirin whenever he had a headache. He hadn’t yet found any explanation of what ‘CAIP’ meant, or even what the initials stood for, and he guessed that this file wasn’t a stand-alone. As far as he could see, it dealt only with the strictly medical aspects of whatever CAIP involved. No doubt there had been other files at Langley – presumably already destroyed if what Simpson had said was accurate – which would have contained more general information about the concept and scope of the operation.

  Stein’s briefcase lay on the seat beside him, the sealed flask tucked beside Richter’s two mobile phones and his Browning Hi-Power, none of which he’d found the time or the inclination to return to the ship. The steel case was still wrapped in its black dustbin bags but was now, as an additional precaution, locked in a sealed heavy-duty plastic box and tucked away under an adjacent seat. Next to it was Richter’s overnight bag, noticeably bulkier than when he’d packed it on board the Invincible what seemed like weeks ago.

  The X-ray machine operator in the military departure lounge had thrown a fit when he’d registered what was in the briefcase, and another one when Richter had put his overnight bag through, but that hadn’t stopped him taking the two cases onto the aircraft unopened. Richter could be very persuasive, and the orders that had caused the ground crew to start pre-flighting the RC-135 had come from a level whose authority couldn’t be ignored.

  Richter closed the file, replaced it in the briefcase and snapped the lid shut. None of it made much sense to him. His best guess was that thirty odd years ago a bunch of American scientists had found, or stolen, or maybe even bought, the lethal bug that was sealed in those remaining steel flasks. They’d been returning to the States when fighter interceptors from some hostile power, maybe Libya, had shot down their aircraft, plunging them and the deadly pathogen they carried to the bottom of the Mediterranean. A subsequent search, if there’d been one, hadn’t found the wreckage, and eventually almost everyone had forgotten about the lost Learjet.

  Over the intervening years world opinion had shifted, and now it was no longer acceptable for any nation – and certainly not America, the world’s supposed peacekeeper – to be seen as involved in any aspect of biological warfare. So when that Greek
diver had stumbled across the wrecked Lear, somebody at Langley had decided that the once-buried evidence should be re-buried permanently, and had sent a team of agents over to Crete to recover what they could and destroy the rest.

  That more or less made sense, but why all the killings? That was what he didn’t get. Killing everyone involved seemed an extreme reaction if Richter’s ‘lethal bug collected for research’ hypothesis bore any relation to the facts. What had started out as an obscure thirty-year-old puzzle had rapidly turned into a massacre, with three CIA agents and the mysterious Murphy – who Richter guessed had been a Company-employed hitman – all now dead. Plus five Cretans: the police officer; Spiros Aristides, his nephew and the two villagers.

  In fact, Richter’s hypothesis was wrong in every respect bar one: a team had indeed been sent to Crete to recover what they could and destroy the rest. All his other assumptions were inaccurate, however, because he was looking at the problem from the wrong end.

  He was still trying to make some sense of it all as he drifted into sleep.

  Norfolk, Virginia

  ‘So who do you reckon is knocking off your ex-CIA wrinklies?’ Richter asked, before yawning prodigiously as Westwood threaded his Chrysler Voyager through the light late-morning traffic heading for Interstate 64.

  When the RC-135 touched down, Westwood had been waiting for him at the airbase in Norfolk and had whisked Richter away as soon as the aircraft had come to a stop in the dispersal. The plastic box containing the steel case was now in the back of the car, and Stein’s briefcase and Richter’s overnight bag were both sitting on the rear seats.

  Westwood shook his head. ‘I wish I knew – and I wish I knew why. I’m hoping you and I can get our heads together and sort this mess out.’

  ‘We’ll do our best. Thanks for organizing the ride – pretty impressive stuff, getting the use of an RC-135 as an executive jet. They could improve the in-flight catering, though. Coffee from a Thermos and a couple of packs of sandwiches won’t ever get them into the “My Favourite Airline” charts.’