Simpson looked at his watch. ‘And what do these notes say – briefly?’
‘I’m not a scientist,’ Richter went on, ‘but the gist of the matter seems to be that the nuclear explosion was unlike anything the Russians have detonated before. The seismic signature doesn’t match anything they are known to have developed for their nuclear arsenal. It also doesn’t correspond to any weapon type developed by the Americans, so the obvious implication is that the weapon is entirely new.’
Richter paused and Simpson looked at him appraisingly. ‘So what?’ he asked.
‘That’s precisely the point,’ Richter replied. ‘So the Russians have developed a new bomb, but so what?’
Simpson looked at his watch again. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said, and stood up. ‘So what have we got?’
‘I still don’t really know,’ Richter said. ‘What I’ve read in the files and what Kemp at JARIC said about the lack of normal post-weapon test traces on the tundra suggests that the Russians have developed a completely new form of nuclear bomb. What I don’t understand is why that should make the Americans so cagey about telling us.’
‘Well,’ said Simpson. ‘I might be able to tell you that tomorrow, because this extraordinary JIC meeting has been called on behalf of the London CIA Chief of Station.’
Chapter Twelve
Friday
Hammersmith, London
Richter received a brief call at home just before eight in the morning from Sheila, Simpson’s PA. ‘Committee Room Two at nine, please.’
When Richter reached the third floor, it was clear that he hadn’t been the only operative to receive a summons. The Committee Room seated twenty-four, and there were only five seats spare once he’d sat down. Simpson was at the head of the table, the Intelligence Director on his right. Simpson looked round the table, checking that everyone was present and correct, nodded to himself and then began. ‘We have a problem,’ he said, without preamble. ‘To date the only people who have been aware of this matter have been Richter and myself, although the ID has been consulted about certain aspects of it. Some of you will have heard about the death of Graham Newman, the SIS Head of Station Moscow.’
There were murmurs of sympathy from around the table. ‘What you will not know is that Graham Newman did not die in a car crash. That was, and will remain, the official version. Richter’s researches indicate that Newman was almost certainly snatched by the SVR, and we have concluded that he died under interrogation in Moscow.’ The murmurs turned to angry whispering. ‘That is unusual enough, especially in the current climate of better east–west relations, but there is more. Last week a Lockheed SR–71A Blackbird spy-plane was pulled out of retirement to make a covert flight over north-western Russia. The aircraft was slightly damaged during the flight and was very short of fuel when it cleared Russian airspace. It was unable to rendezvous with any of its support tankers or to reach its airfield of departure – Mildenhall – and it was forced to land at RAF Lossiemouth.’
The room was entirely silent, everyone hanging on Simpson’s words. ‘The photographic intelligence experts at JARIC analysed copies of the Blackbird films that were supplied – under a certain amount of duress – by the Americans. They also ran comparisons between KH–12 satellite pictures they had on file and the SR–71A films, but their initial report was inconclusive. No new installations were detected, and there seemed no adequate reason why the Americans had wanted pictures of the terrain over which the aircraft flew.’ Incomprehension was showing on a number of faces. ‘Richter visited JARIC to examine the films, and on leaving was attacked by an assassination team, later and posthumously identified as Russian.’ Simpson looked straight at him, as did everybody else round the table.
‘I was lucky,’ Richter said. ‘They ran out of road.’
‘Quite,’ Simpson said dryly, and continued. ‘Richter is well known for his wide and somewhat eccentric contact list, and he was able to persuade a CIA analyst to give us some pointers about the Blackbird films, despite their NOFORN caveat. His source stated that it wasn’t what was showing on the films that was important, but what wasn’t. Further study by JARIC staff showed that a hill deep in the Bolshezemel’skaya Tundra had vanished.
‘We considered the possibility that the hill hadn’t been a hill at all – that it had been some sort of camouflaged installation – but we have concluded that this was not the case. Richter’s informant was quite specific in stating that the object removed was both completely worthless and very old, and none of the satellite photographs on file at JARIC showed any sign of activity at the location. So, we have to conclude that the hill was just a hill.’
Simpson poured himself a glass of water. ‘Yesterday Richter checked the seismic recordings. These showed that on the second of last month seismic activity of an unusual sort was detected in the vicinity of the hill. I don’t pretend to understand the technicalities of it, but the boffins here got quite excited. The hill was apparently destroyed by a nuclear weapon, but one without a known signature. In other words, a new type of bomb.’
He changed tack. Simpson had always given good briefings – short, concise and precisely to the point. Nobody ever fell asleep when he was talking. ‘Last night I attended an extraordinary meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which was extraordinary in more than one sense of the word. First, it was called by the CIA Chief of Station – Roger Abrahams – who was accompanied by a man called John Westwood. He’s the Head of the CIA Foreign Intelligence Staff – a Langley big wheel. Secondly, it was a meeting without minutes. All secretarial staff were excluded, and restrictions were placed on all attendees.
‘Roger Abrahams and John Westwood took the chair, as it were, and told us a very interesting story. It’s a story at the moment without an ending, which is why you’re all here now. The CIA needs our help, for reasons which will become clear later.
‘First, a history lesson, which I’ll keep as brief as possible. Following the accession to power of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the entire fabric of Russian society changed. The nation opened up to the West and to Western ideas, but this actually created more problems than it solved with, for example, member states of the former USSR breaking away to try to do their own thing. Names like Chechnya, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan entered the languages of the world, usually associated with violent protests against Moscow and Russia.
‘Obviously nobody anticipated the Westernization of Russia would proceed without difficulties, but there were actually far more obstacles than anyone expected. Instead of the optimism that might have been expected, a significant proportion of the peoples of the Confederation of Independent States began protesting against the new regime. Their argument, reduced to its simplest form, was that although things had been bad under Communist rule, at least everybody knew where they were and what was going on. Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the situation was entirely new, and they felt cut adrift, their normal points of reference removed. This mood led to the attempted coup against the new leaders.
‘That,’ Simpson said, ‘is the history. The CIA has maintained intense surveillance of Russia throughout this period, and has come up with some interesting data. First, overt defence spending in the former USSR has slowed considerably. The CIA and all other Western intelligence services have noted a reduction in the build rate of combat aircraft, submarines and ships, and a lot of building has stopped entirely. This should have freed significant amounts of capital into the general economy, but neither the CIA nor anyone else has been able to detect any evidence of this. The queues outside the shops in Moscow are just as long – in fact, most of them are a lot longer – and the food shortages are just as apparent. What the CIA has been trying to find out is where the “spare” money has been going.’
Simpson glanced round the table again. ‘The CIA has come up with a controversial hypothesis. If it is assumed that actual defence spending is the same as previously, then the secret development of a new weapon is a real probability. Further, if this hypothetical ne
w weapon is sufficiently unusual that it makes existing weapons obsolete or nearly so, then it is possible that glasnost is just a front to lull the West into a false sense of security, and that Russia is actually planning some kind of first-strike against us.’
American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London
‘We’ve heard from SIS,’ Roger Abrahams said, closing the briefing room door behind him.
‘And?’ John Westwood looked up from the file open in front of him.
‘And nothing. Officially, the Secret Intelligence Service regrets that it is unable to assist, but requests that we keep Piers Taylor fully informed.’
Westwood considered this. ‘“Unable to assist” – does that mean that they can’t, or that they just won’t?’
Abrahams shrugged. ‘Whatever. It could be either, but my guess is that they can’t. Either way, we’re going nowhere here. Do you want me to keep Taylor in the loop?’
Westwood nodded his head. ‘Yes. The directive from Langley was clear enough about that,’ he said. He slapped the file closed and looked at his watch. ‘I’d better talk to Langley, and now I’ll have to go see the French. Signal the Paris Chief of Station that I’m coming, and then get me on a flight to Paris tomorrow morning.’
Hammersmith, London
There were sharp intakes of breath around the table and two people started to ask questions. Simpson stopped them. ‘Questions later. I should say that I don’t personally subscribe to this first-strike theory, and I would normally assume that it’s just the usual CIA paranoia. However, the killing of Newman, the attempted assassination of Richter, and the vaporization of a hill in the tundra have to be considered. We can ignore none of these. Something is definitely going on, and we are going to find out what. The Americans have come to the same conclusion as us about the bomb used to vaporize the hill, according to John Westwood. They believe it’s a new weapon, but not one offering an unusually high yield. That appears to be the limit of their knowledge. They don’t know how it works or what its significance is.
‘The final point is the most important, and is the real reason why Westwood is here in Britain. The CIA has acquired a high-level source in Russia, and this source claims that some form of covert assault against the West has actually been launched by Russia.’ In the silence which followed, Simpson held up his hand, and began ticking points off on his fingers. ‘To save time, I’ll run through the obvious questions, and what we believe the answers are.
‘First, the “first-strike” option. I don’t believe – and I don’t think the CIA really believes – that this actually is an option, despite this covert assault business. Whatever the type of bomb, it still has to be delivered, and all Western defence systems are designed to detect not only weapon launches, but all the build-up beforehand. We simply could not fail to be aware of the increased ballistic missile submarine activity, higher alert states at bomber airfields, missile bases and so on that would have to be a precursor to a first-strike. So, if the Russians are planning something sneaky, it has to involve an unconventional delivery system.
‘Second, the bomb itself. A bomb is a bomb. It goes bang and causes damage; everything else is a question of degree. The seismograph records – both the ones we have seen and those acquired by the CIA – indicate that although this weapon has some unusual characteristics, its yield is about the same as a small to medium-sized conventional nuclear bomb, around five to seven megatons, so it’s difficult to see what advantage could be gained by its use, rather than a weapon which already exists.’
Richter put his hand in the air. Simpson looked at him, then nodded. ‘The other thing my CIA source emphasized was that the radiation detectors on the Blackbird gave nil results,’ Richter said. ‘Whatever the weapon was that the Russians used, it didn’t emit the fall-out that a conventional nuclear bomb would have generated.’
After a short silence, Simpson nodded and spoke again. ‘Oddly enough, neither Roger Abrahams nor John Westwood mentioned that, and they really should have known about it, shouldn’t they?’
‘If my source knows,’ Richter replied, ‘they know, no question. I know John Westwood,’ he added, ‘and he’s sharp and very competent. If he didn’t tell you, it’s because he didn’t want you to know.’
The Intelligence Director stirred uncomfortably and offered a contribution. ‘That data, if substantiated, could radically influence any subsequent actions taken by the Russians.’ He always talked as if he was delivering a lecture to a class of university students. ‘MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – was predicated on the twin premises that any aggressive action would be matched by retaliation in kind, and that no nation could survive the nuclear winter that would follow any significant exchange of nuclear weapons. The nuclear winter, of course, would be caused primarily by the radiation products of the weapons themselves. If you remove the radiation, to some extent you remove the nuclear winter.’
Simpson nodded agreement. ‘True enough, but that somewhat misses the point. If the Russians have developed a radiation-free weapon with a yield equivalent to a normal fission or fusion weapon – a kind of strategic neutron bomb, in fact – and if they equipped their armoury with it, that could actually encourage the West to launch a pre-emptive attack. If we take that scenario to its logical conclusion, the West would be able to lob bombs willy-nilly on to the Russian landmass, rendering it uninhabitable for possibly centuries to come, whilst the Russians would only be able to retaliate by launching what would amount to very large conventional weapons. In other words, if Richter’s informant is correct, the development and deployment of such a weapon would actually disadvantage the Russians.’ Simpson paused and drummed his fingers on the table. ‘We’re missing something here, and I don’t mind admitting that I don’t know what it is.’
His thought processes were interrupted by a respectful double tap on the door, which opened to reveal Simpson’s PA. Simpson nodded, and she retreated briefly before shepherding in two of FOE’s elderly female retainers pushing Ministry-issue tea trolleys. When all the people sitting round the table had selected either lukewarm tea or lukewarm coffee, and paid excessively for it, the retainers shuffled out again and the door closed firmly.
Simpson took a sip, then put down his cup with a grimace and continued. ‘So, what have we got? In summary, we’ve got a weapon which the Russians seem desperate to stop us finding out about, and which, if they deploy it, would apparently benefit the Western alliance. I don’t need to tell you that that is complete nonsense. Any thoughts?’
He glanced round the table encouragingly. The Intelligence Director opened his mouth to speak, but apparently thought better of it and closed it with a snap.
‘What I don’t like about this,’ Simpson went on, ‘is that I personally think that the Americans do know what’s going on, or at least they know more than they’re telling us. I think they’re trying to drive us in a particular direction for reasons of their own. What those reasons are I don’t know, but I am sure we’re being misdirected. The ball, as it were, is in the air, and that’s what we’re watching, but what we should be looking at are the players. However, I think this is probably a side issue, and one that we will be able to resolve later. The important thing is that we are now involved, and we have things to do. Any comments on the central issue?’
Nobody spoke. Simpson didn’t seem put out by the lack of useful response, and continued briskly. ‘Right – actions. There are a lot of peculiarities about this situation, and I intend to launch some immediate actions to find out what’s really going on.’ He opened the briefcase on the table in front of him, and began tasking operatives, passing each a slim pink folder containing assignment details. Clearly he had spent most of the night in the building preparing for this meeting. His strategy was comprehensive but simple, intended to ascertain Russian intentions and if possible the true nature of the weapon.
One liaison officer was appointed to work directly with MI5 to look at Russian activity in Britain, and several to perform the
same function with SIS, studying Russian operations abroad. Others were to work with the Naval Intelligence Department and the intelligence arms of the other armed forces, two with the Foreign and Colonial Office and a further two with CIA London. Another was to go to Aldermaston and to a specialist at the Science Museum to discuss the seismographic evidence, which just left Richter.
‘Richter,’ Simpson said, sliding a folder down the table towards him. ‘It looks like a nice day for a drive. You have an appointment in Cambridge at two thirty this afternoon.’ Simpson looked round the table. ‘Until this matter is resolved, Thomas, Williams and Lowry will act as Duty Officers, working a three-watch system and will collate the data gathered. Assessment of the information will be handled by myself and the Intelligence Director. We will have a brief meeting every evening at seven, and another in the morning at nine to discuss overnight developments. All available operatives are to attend both.’
Simpson wound up the briefing. ‘One last point. The attempt on Richter’s life at Brampton is an indication of the seriousness of this situation. With immediate effect, operatives are to be armed at all times. Those of you who are not currently carrying weapons are to report to my outer office immediately after this briefing for the issue of carry permits and other documentation. You are then to visit the Armoury to collect pistols and ammunition and to fire the weapons. This is to be completed before you leave this building for any reason.’ He looked directly at Richter, then continued. ‘Unless any of you object, you will be issued with Browning nine-millimetre semi-automatic pistols.’ Simpson looked at the clock over the door. ‘Right, briefing completed at ten zero three. Let’s get on with it.’
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