Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  ‘You’re lucky you even got that.’ Westwood changed lanes and accelerated. ‘I had to call in a bunch of favours first and then clear it with my boss.’

  ‘You heard what happened on Crete, I suppose?’

  Westwood nodded. ‘Yes, your Mr Simpson briefed me on a secure telephone link, not that it was much help to me. What I still can’t figure out is why anybody would decide a thirty-year-old covert op is still so sensitive that any people involved with it have to be killed on the off-chance that they might talk about it.’

  ‘I think I can,’ Richter said.

  ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

  ‘I think Stein was more or less right. I think the guys involved in CAIP had found some lethal bug somewhere, and were taking it back to the States for use as the basis for a biological weapon. According to the CDC people on Crete, the bug contained in the flasks acts a bit like a combination of Ebola and Lassa Fever, but it’s much, much faster than either of them. Lassa kills in weeks, Ebola within a few days, but catch this one and you’re dead in a matter of hours.

  ‘That suggests to me that they’d probably found this bug somewhere in the African rain forest, because that’s where most of the real nasties like Marburg and Ebola have come from. Perhaps they’d staged out of Egypt or Israel, or somewhere similar, just stopped for a refuel, and their next stop was going to be a Spanish or British airfield for another top-up before the hop across the pond.’

  ‘But it’s still ancient history,’ Westwood objected. ‘That plane went down over thirty years ago. Why the hell should anyone care about it now?’

  ‘Maybe because the US has always vehemently denied any involvement in biological warfare. Your government always maintains that all its research is aimed at defensive, not offensive, measures. Imagine the outcry if somebody found proof that the CIA was involved in discovering naturally occurring viruses, which Fort Detrick or wherever was then developing into biological weapons for offensive purposes.’

  Westwood remained silent for a few moments, then shook his head. ‘Sorry, Paul, I don’t buy it. In that case, all we’d have to do is claim that the bugs in those flasks were intended for delivery to the CDC, to allow us the opportunity to develop antidotes. Who could ever say that that wasn’t the truth? You talked about proof, and the flasks don’t prove anything, not really.’

  ‘OK,’ Richter conceded, ‘that does make sense. But maybe your phantom killer is a lot more paranoid than either of us, and he’s not willing to take a chance on his name being linked with this operation.’

  ‘Maybe. We’ll get him, though. With what’s in the file, I’m hoping we can nail this bastard real quick.’

  ‘There’s one thing I’ve just remembered that might help,’ Richter said. ‘I had quite a little chat with Stein back on Crete, and the only really solid piece of information he gave me was the name of his briefing officer, which was “McCready”.’

  Westwood looked interested, then shook his head. ‘I don’t recall that name from the research I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I can check it out at Langley tomorrow, of course, but my bet is that he was either employed solely as a briefing officer for this operation, and not beyond that, or else he was using an alias. That would have been pretty much standard procedure for an operation of this classification.’

  ‘And there’s something else,’ Richter said. ‘Something that really worries me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The steel case,’ Richter replied. ‘According to Stein there were four flasks inside it. Three were still sealed and one had been opened by the Greek diver, but there were spaces for twelve flasks altogether. So who’s now got the other eight? Did Aristides sell them on to someone, or did somebody take them out of the aircraft even before Aristides found it? If opening a single flask can kill everyone who comes close to it, do you have any idea what sort of damage a terrorist group could do with eight containers of this bug?’

  ‘Shit. You got any more bad news I should know about?’

  Lake Ridge, Virginia

  About once an hour since he’d got up, Nicholson had been using his home computer to access the classified server, but he was still waiting for a read receipt from either Murphy or Stein to signify that they’d now opened the emails he’d sent them. On repeated attempts to contact their mobiles, each time the system had reported the phones were switched off.

  This was the worst possible news. It suggested that both men were either dead or imprisoned, or otherwise unable to get access to their computers or phones, and that almost certainly meant that somebody else had now gained possession of the flasks and the classified file. As far as Nicholson knew, no other intelligence services had any interest in the matter, so the most likely organization to have become involved was the Cretan police force.

  That might or might not be a good thing, but he had to find out exactly what had happened, because until he knew he couldn’t take any remedial action. For some minutes Nicholson sat and considered his options, but he realized virtually immediately that he really had only one choice. The sole usable asset he now had on Crete was the CIA agent living and working the persona of Captain Nathan Levy, United States Air Force, and all he could ask of him was to investigate, since Levy was strictly a support agent. For anything beyond that, Nicholson was going to have to fly yet more people out to the island.

  He checked a small notebook in which he’d listed – quite illegally according to CIA regulations – the contact details of all the people he had already tasked in any connection with this operation on Crete. He opened his email client, copied Levy’s address into the ‘To’ field, composed a message, marked it High Priority, added a read request, and then pressed ‘Send’.

  With the message on its way, Nicholson began to feel better, but he knew it would probably be Monday midday, Crete time, before Levy would reply. However, the time difference meant that his reply should be posted on the classified server by the early hours of Monday morning, Eastern Standard Time, so he wouldn’t have that long to wait.

  Haywood, Virginia

  ‘It’s no good,’ Westwood said, tossing down the red Ultra-Secret classified file and looking across his study at the couch where Richter lay sprawled, half-asleep.

  ‘No?’ Richter sat up, yawning, but looking interested. Tired but interested.

  ‘I was going to use this,’ Westwood tapped his finger on the file in front of him, ‘to cross-reference the names of any agents who fitted the rough profile I prepared. I’d already checked out the senior agents listed on the inside front cover. That got me nowhere, because they’re all dead.

  ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘it was the killing of the two retired Company agents that sparked our interest in what was going on in the first place. The problem is that all the junior agents are referred to in the file either by their initials, sometimes only by single initials, or by their Christian names. Sometimes they used two or three initials at the start of a memo and then only used single letters after that. It’s real confusing now, but probably made good sense at the time, when everybody knew exactly who “B” and “R” and “John” and “Mike” were.’

  ‘How many different sets of initials are we looking at?’

  Westwood glanced down at the paper on which he’d been making notes. ‘I’ve got eleven sets of three initials, six sets of two letters, and fifteen single initials, and there’s really no way I can make any sense of them. I mean, right here in this tasking sheet I’ve got “CRP”, “P”, “CP” and “RCP”. That could be one person if the “RCP” is a misprint for “CRP”, or two, or three, or even four different people, and I can’t see any way of finding out which at this stage.’

  ‘And the Christian names?’

  ‘Half a dozen different ones,’ Westwood said, again reading from his list. ‘I’ve got Dave, George, John, Mike, Oliver and Steve. And unless I’ve missed something, these guys are never referred to by their initials, because none of them match. There’s no “J” or “D”, for example. And I’ve c
hecked the initials and the names with the agents that I’m guessing might have been involved way back, but none of them match, apart from “John”, three times, but that’s not real surprising.’

  ‘Can we look at it from the other side?’ Richter interposed. ‘Is there anything in the memos to show what CAIP was supposed to achieve?’

  ‘No. Apart from the medical stuff, they’re all just routine: requests for motor transport, inquiries about aircraft availability, booking briefing-rooms, that kind of thing. Nothing with any details. I think you’re right. Almost everything in this file deals with the very specific medical aspects of CAIP. The other files, the ones that as far as I know were destroyed back in nineteen seventy-two, probably dealt with the overall picture. Unless we can identify Mr X and persuade him to tell us what the aim of the operation was, I think the only way we’re going to find out is if the Company vets some of our senior medical specialists and gives them clearance to analyse this file. Maybe they could translate this stuff into something mere mortals could understand.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Westwood said, ‘but I guess the first step is to take all this stuff’ – he gestured towards the red file and Stein’s briefcase – ‘and show it to my boss, Walter Hicks. But the problem is we’ve still only got a bunch of initials and six Christian names. We can’t start accusing anyone only with that, and particularly not any of the senior guys now at Langley.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Richter said. ‘Accusing somebody who out-ranks you of being a multiple murderer is not the way to make friends and influence people, unless, of course, you can prove it, and you certainly can’t do that with what we’ve found so far. If you’re wrong, you’d spend a very long time working very hard trying to make people forget. It’s your call, John, but my advice would be don’t involve Walter Hicks until you’ve got more than some initials to go on. I think the best option would be a bit of finesse here.’

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’

  Richter got off the couch and moved across to sit opposite Westwood at the desk. He rubbed his tired eyes then leaned forward. ‘Let’s sketch out a scenario. According to Stein, the man we’re looking for has been calling himself McCready. I know that’s almost certainly an alias, but let’s use it for the moment as a convenient name for our bad guy.’ Westwood nodded. ‘Now, he’s sent three agents to Crete to recover this file and the steel case with the flasks inside it, and also to blow up the Learjet. He’s probably been keeping in regular contact with them by email or mobile phone or maybe both.

  ‘They’ll have been keeping him informed, so he’ll know that they successfully destroyed the jet and found the case and all the bits. He’ll probably have been told that the diver had been eliminated, and that Krywald was terminally sick in Chaniá hospital, and he’d certainly arranged a pick-up for Stein from the west end of Crete. I know that because Stein told me so, and the Invincible’s radar tracked a helicopter that launched from an American frigate, landed somewhere at that end of the island and then returned to the ship.

  ‘I’m guessing that McCready also briefed Murphy to eliminate Krywald, find and kill Stein and recover the steel case. I assume both Stein and Murphy had been briefed about the pick-up by helicopter, and this McCready didn’t much care which of them made it, as long as one of them did. If Stein got there before Murphy found him, fine: McCready could take care of him in the States. If he was already dead, Murphy would have recovered the steel case and he’d be the man the chopper collected. Probably Murphy would walk into a bullet or a subway train or something else fast-moving and lethal once he’d handed over the case to our mystery man.’

  ‘I can’t argue with any of that,’ Westwood said.

  ‘OK, then look at what’s happened since. The chopper left the rendezvous empty-handed, with Stein and Murphy being no-shows because both of them were already dead. The frigate no doubt signalled Langley through some covert route informing McCready that nobody had appeared. Once he heard that news, I presume he started trying to reach Stein or Murphy by email or mobile phone, but for obvious reasons he’s not going to get a response from either. So for the first time since this operation started, he’s completely in the dark. He’s got no idea what’s happened to either Stein or Murphy, or who’s currently got possession of the steel case.

  ‘He’ll probably guess that the Cretan police have got involved – maybe they just got lucky and arrested Stein, or picked up Murphy or something like that – so he thinks that the police have his case. Now if I was McCready, I’d want some sort of information, and I’d want it fast. I’d task any asset I had located anywhere near Crete to get on to the island and investigate. Then I’d be thinking about sending a new team over there to pick up the pieces the first team dropped.’

  ‘So?’ Westwood asked.

  ‘So how about we bring Mike Murphy back from the dead? We email this McCready character, tell him Murphy had to run for his life after he’d killed Stein, didn’t make the rendezvous with the chopper, so had to fly back to the States commercial. That would explain why he hasn’t replied to any emails McCready might have sent, and why his phone’s been switched off all this time. We tell him Murphy’s here in America, complete with the file, steel case and its contents, and ask where he wants to fix the handover.’

  ‘That,’ Westwood said after a few moments, ‘might just be the best idea you’ve ever had.’

  ‘Obviously you don’t know me as well as you think, John. Back in the UK I’m known as a fund of wonderful ideas. Just ask anyone who knows me.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Westwood smiled briefly. ‘What about the practicalities? Do you happen to know what email addresses McCready and Murphy were using?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t matter. I had to borrow Murphy’s car after the shooting stopped, then I decided to liberate his laptop and his mobile, on the grounds that he wasn’t going to be needing them any more. I’ve also got Richard Stein’s laptop and mobile, and an unfired SIG P226 automatic with a couple of spare magazines I found in Stein’s luggage. The SIG hasn’t got a serial number, which makes it a potentially very useful bit of kit. In fact,’ Richter added, ‘I’ve now got two laptop computers, four mobile phones, and a Browning Hi-Power pistol as well as the SIG, and not one of them belongs to me.

  ‘Murphy’s laptop will have copies of all the emails he’s received and probably those he’s sent as well, and he’ll have been using his mobile phone to dial whatever ISP McCready has been using. All we have to do is hitch the phone to the laptop, switch on and hope for the best.’

  ‘Why “hope for the best”?’

  ‘Because Murphy probably has some kind of password protection built in to his machine. If it’s a Windows password it’s not a problem – a mentally retarded gibbon could work its way round one of those – but if it’s a BIOS password or something more sophisticated it could be a lot more difficult.’

  ‘I didn’t think computers were your thing, Paul?’

  ‘They’re not,’ Richter replied, ‘but this guy Baker back at Hammersmith has been giving me a crash course. We’ve just done basic security. I’m a fast learner and I’ve got a good memory.’

  Six minutes later Richter had everything connected up on the corner of Westwood’s desk. He tried the Nokia mobile first, turned it on and watched the screen. There was no request for a SIM or phone password and the phone merely displayed the signal strength and battery level.

  ‘So far so good,’ Richter said, and pressed the power button on Murphy’s Toshiba Satellite Pro. A light illuminated to show that the hard drive was working, and the opening screen appeared. Then it all stopped and a BIOS password request box popped up in the centre of the screen.

  ‘Shit.’

  Westwood didn’t seem fazed. ‘I’ll get one of our IT guys out here to bypass it,’ he said, and reached for the phone.

  ‘On a Sunday afternoon?’ Richter asked.

  ‘I carry a fair bit of weight around here, Paul,’ Westwood replie
d. ‘Of course I can get somebody out on a Sunday.’

  The technician arrived just over an hour later. He didn’t look like a computer nerd – he was around thirty, clean-shaven, wearing blue jeans and trainers, white button-down shirt and a red sweater – and he was carrying a large aluminium briefcase.

  ‘Is this it?’ he asked, before sitting down in front of the open laptop. Westwood nodded. ‘Do you know the name of the owner?’ the man asked.

  ‘Mike Murphy,’ Westwood said.

  ‘OK,’ the technician muttered, and began pressing keys. ‘What programs do you want to access?’

  ‘It’s essential we get into his email client software,’ Richter said, ‘but we’d prefer to be able to access everything.’

  Six minutes later the technician stood up and picked up his case.

  ‘Is that it?’ Westwood demanded. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Always try the obvious first. His name was Mike Murphy, so I tried “MikeM”, “MMurphy”, “MikeMurph” and so on. It turned out he was using “TheDoubleM”. It was about the twentieth option I tried. I’ve checked the other programs and none of them are password-protected. The dial-up networking script and the email client – he’s using Outlook Express – both have their passwords stored, so you shouldn’t have any other problems.’

  By the time Westwood had closed the front door behind the technician, Richter had already opened up Outlook Express and was scanning the contents of Mike Murphy’s inbox.

  ‘Here we go, John,’ he said. ‘There are three messages from McCready in the inbox, the last sent on Friday, advising him of the rendezvous near Plátanos at fifteen twenty on Saturday afternoon. I’ll just check his sent messages now… OK, nothing of great interest, just acknowledgements of what McCready has told him. Ah, this one’s different: he’s just confirmed that Krywald has been dealt with at Chaniá, which at least bears out what Stein said.’