Overkill pr-1

by James Barrington

  ‘Yes.’

  Hillsworth shook his head. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t say that at the beginning instead of going all round the houses and sitting through a rather boring lecture on basic nuclear weapon theory. I suppose you enjoy all the cloak and dagger aspects of it.’

  Richter nodded again, somewhat sheepishly. ‘We like to keep in practice, Professor,’ he said. ‘OK, having cleared the air, is it possible that the Russians have managed to develop a strategic neutron bomb?’

  ‘Anything’s possible, I suppose,’ Hillsworth said. ‘But there’s one very obvious problem if they have developed such a weapon and decide to re-arm with it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Richter prompted. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, if they have, the Russians would obviously place themselves at a very severe disadvantage in any future nuclear exchange. But,’ Hillsworth added, ‘there are three other aspects about this that might be relevant to your enquiry. First, does the name Sam Cohen mean anything to you? Second, what do you know about America buying Russian weapons-grade plutonium? And have you ever heard of red mercury?’

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter reached Hammersmith just after six thirty, parked the Escort in the Transport Pool’s underground garage, checked in with the Duty Officer, then went straight up to Simpson’s office. Simpson was sitting at his desk, studying a file, which he snapped shut when Richter walked in.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  Richter sat down heavily in the chair in front of the desk. ‘It’s like this,’ he said, and started to explain what the professor had told him.

  Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye Headquarters, the ‘Aquarium’, Khodinka Airfield, Moscow

  Since the effective end of the Cold War, the number of Russian surveillance satellites which has been launched has dropped considerably, but there are still several vehicles, all operated by the Directorate of Cosmic Intelligence of the GRU, established in polar orbits which do little but watch the American landmass. Like the early American Big Bird satellites and the current KH–11 and KH–12 Keyhole vehicles, the Russian platforms are equipped with sophisticated optical devices and an assortment of other detectors working in the nonvisible electromagnetic spectrum, and are primarily designed to detect any military activity which might be considered a threat to Russia.

  The kind of activity which falls into this category includes precisely the actions taken by the American military machine when the DEFCON state is increased, and five hours after America went to DEFCON FOUR the first satellite pictures arrived at the Aquarium.

  Thirty minutes after that, the GRU duty commanding officer was en route to the Kremlin with a sheaf of pictures and a hastily prepared intelligence appraisal.

  Stepney, London

  Richter left Hammersmith an hour and a quarter later, after the evening meeting, told the duty driver that he was taking the Escort, and drove back to his apartment. Richter’s London home was in an undistinguished building, lurking in the warren of streets that lay north of Commercial Road, which had originally been a grand town house for some unknown Victorian merchant. Richter had taken a lease on one of the two top-floor apartments shortly after he had started working for FOE. It was small, anonymous, fairly central, but above all reasonably cheap, at least by London standards, all of which seemed to Richter to be pretty good reasons for staying there.

  In the flat, he pulled off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair, kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the couch. He needed time to think, time to try to tie some of the loose ends together. Just after eleven thirty the telephone rang and Richter stumbled off the couch and went into the hall to answer it. The FOE duty driver wanted to collect the Escort, unless Richter still needed it.

  ‘No,’ Richter said. ‘Help yourself. It’s parked right outside my building.’

  As he was on his feet, and getting hungry, Richter walked into the kitchenette, opened the freezer door and surveyed the contents with a marked lack of enthusiasm. He selected a frozen lasagne, read the instructions, put it in the microwave and returned to the living room.

  The ‘ping’ of the microwave timer came several minutes later, and was followed almost immediately by a muffled but loud and echoing thump that Richter couldn’t identify. What he knew was that the noise hadn’t come from inside the apartment.

  He peered out of the windows, but could see nothing unusual, so he walked down the hall to the windows which overlooked the main road. The first thing he saw was two men running across the road, towards his building, and a few seconds later he heard the distant wail of a siren, getting closer. Then he looked down at the street directly below him. It was only then, when he saw the blackened, twisted pile of metal that had once been the Motor Pool’s Escort that he knew just how far wrong things had gone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saturday

  Stepney, London

  Richter took another brief glance downwards at the ruins of the car, turned away and walked back into his apartment. He closed and bolted the door on the inside, then walked through into his bedroom. His face was set and icy calm, and he moved with swift and deliberate purpose.

  He peeled off his grey trousers and tossed them on the bed. Then he opened the wardrobe door and pulled out a pair of blue jeans, a black leather motorcycle jacket, a pair of black trainers, a dark blue polo-neck sweater and a small grey haversack. He put on the jeans, fastening the waist with a broad leather belt, pulled on the sweater and laced up the trainers. Then he reached up to the top of the wardrobe and pulled down a dark red motorcycle helmet and a pair of leather gloves, which he placed on the bed.

  Walking back into the living room, he put his mobile phone in the haversack. Then he walked across to a desk set against the wall opposite the main windows and pulled open a drawer. From it he took a pair of rubber surgical gloves, a glasscutter, a roll of black adhesive tape, a small flashlight and two spare batteries, and put them all into the haversack.

  He pulled the shoulder holster on over the sweater, then checked that the Smith and Wesson was fully loaded and put the pistol into the holster. He put six spare rounds into one of the pockets of his jeans, and the rest of the bullets into the haversack in their cardboard box.

  He ate the cooling lasagne and drank about half of a pint carton of milk. Then he walked back into the bedroom, put on the leather jacket and picked up the helmet and gloves. He shrugged the haversack on to his back, snapped off all the lights except the low-wattage bulb in his hallway, and walked to the main door of his apartment. For just over a minute he peered through the spyhole out into the hallway on his floor, then pulled out the Smith and cautiously unbolted and pulled open the apartment door.

  Looking down from the head of the stairs, Richter saw and heard nothing. The locks on the building doors were good enough to keep casual thieves out, but he doubted that the people who had wired the explosive to the Escort’s ignition system came into that category.

  Satisfied, he pressed the call button for the lift and waited. When it arrived, he slid inside and pressed the button for the garage floor and watched as the numbers unwound. The garage lights were activated by motion detectors, and were out when the lift doors slid open and Richter emerged. Nevertheless, he checked carefully around the perimeter before walking across to the far side of the parking area, where a bulky shape lurked under a green tarpaulin.

  When he’d first arrived in London, Richter had come in a car. Within a month he’d realized that four-wheeled vehicles were much less use than he’d anticipated, and he’d returned to his first love – motorcycles. At the place he still called home – a ramshackle cottage on the east side of the Lizard Peninsular in Cornwall – he kept an immaculate Vincent Black Shadow and a Velocette Venom Thruxton in a securely locked prefabricated garage.

  Wonderful though these bikes were, they were useless in London, being too valuable, too attractive and simply too unreliable to be practical forms of transport. In London, Richter rode Japanese.
Cheap, old, fast Japanese.

  He pulled the tarpaulin off the Honda 500–4 and tossed it on to the garage floor, swung his leg over the saddle, stuck the key in the ignition, turned it and pressed the starter button. As always, the engine burst instantly into life, then settled down to a steady, even tickover. Used to a long series of British-built motorcycles, it had taken Richter a long time to come to terms with the total reliability that characterized most Oriental machines, but now he just accepted it as normal.

  He settled the haversack more comfortably on his back, pulled in the clutch, snicked the gear lever into first and moved quickly away towards the door. Richter stopped by a pillar, reached out a gloved hand to press a button, waited as the electric motors swung the double doors open, then switched on the Honda’s lights and accelerated up the ramp and away into the silent streets, heading for Aldgate and London Bridge.

  Turabah, Saudi Arabia

  The email from Hassan Abbas, which contained the complete transcript of Dmitri Trushenko’s analysis of the implications of the American over-flight of the weapon test site, plus Abbas’ own comments, pretty much confirmed what Sadoun Khamil had already deduced. As soon as he’d been told about the flight of the spy-plane, Khamil had copied Abbas’ email, added his own take on the incident, encrypted it and had sent it to his contact with the al-Qaeda leadership, Tariq Rahmani, a dour, secretive man even by Arabic standards, who remained almost permanently in the background. Although Khamil had explicit instructions to contact only this one man, he had actually met Rahmani only twice in his life.

  He knew little about him, not even which country he lived in, as he used a web-based email service and a mobile phone registered in Saudi Arabia. What Khamil did know was that Rahmani was very close to the top of the al-Qaeda leadership, and that his decisions had the force of law within the organization. And that made Khamil tread very carefully around him.

  Now, with Abbas’ very detailed and explanatory email on the screen in front of him, Khamil thought carefully before composing his own message. Like Abbas, he didn’t see what practical difference the American overflight of Russia made to their own, secret, operation, the part of the plan that al-Qaeda had named El Sikkiyn.

  Finally, he shrugged. He wouldn’t, he decided, say anything at all. He’d just forward the message from Abbas in its entirety and leave it at that.

  Battersea, London

  Richter pulled into the kerb in Fenchurch Street and checked carefully that no other vehicles stopped anywhere near him. He’d watched the mirrors of the Honda constantly since he’d ridden it out of the garage, and had seen no obvious signs of pursuit, possibly because the watchers – and there would definitely have been watchers – would probably have been looking for a man in a suit, not a black-clad figure on a motorcycle.

  Satisfied, Richter pulled out his cell phone and rang the Duty Officer. Using the vague and woolly double-talk necessary when speaking about a highly sensitive matter on an open line, Richter finally managed to acquaint him with the essential details, and also told him that he would be telling Simpson about it.

  ‘It is after one o’clock, you know,’ the Duty Officer reminded him.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He won’t like being woken up.’

  ‘That’s my problem, not yours. Just tell the Pool and you’d better have a chat with the Met as well.’

  Simpson, predictably enough, was a bachelor and lived in a service flat in Battersea, and the Duty Officer had been quite right. Richter had tried to call him immediately after he rang off from Hammersmith, but just got the ansaphone. When he arrived at the building, it took the better part of five minutes to get Simpson to respond to the entry phone before Richter even got into the building. Simpson’s face, as he edged his apartment door cautiously open, was puffy and full of sleep, and his greeting was notably lacking in warmth. ‘What do you want? Do you know what time it is? And what the hell are you dressed like that for?’

  ‘Yes,’ Richter said, ‘I do own a watch. I want to come in. I’m in a hurry, and I’ve got some bad news for you.’

  Simpson stared at him suspiciously. ‘What kind of bad news?’

  ‘The kind I don’t want to talk about out here in the hallway.’ Richter pushed the door open impatiently and walked in.

  Simpson slammed it shut behind him. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

  Richter told him the night’s events in clipped tones. Simpson thought for a second and walked over to the telephone. He dialled, switched in the scrambler, held a very brief and subdued conversation, replaced the receiver and walked back. ‘The driver was Brian Jackson,’ he said. ‘They had to do a run down to Manor Park, and decided to collect the Escort on the way back. He’d only been married three months.’

  Richter nodded. Simpson got up again and walked over to the drinks’ cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of malt whisky and splashed a generous three fingers into a tumbler. He held the bottle up towards Richter.

  ‘I know you don’t normally, but—’

  ‘I don’t ever,’ Richter said. ‘I’ll make myself a coffee.’ The kitchen area was small but well equipped. Richter spooned instant coffee into a mug and switched on the electric kettle. While he waited for it to boil, he went back into the lounge. Simpson was sitting in his armchair, looking old and tired. He took a long swallow of his Scotch and looked up.

  ‘This has got to stop,’ Simpson said. His eyes were like black coals in his pink face. Richter nodded. For the moment they were in complete agreement, but Richter doubted if they would be when he told him what he was going to do. The kettle emitted a high-pitched scream, and Richter returned to the kitchen and poured water into the mug. He added milk from the fridge and sat down in a chair.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Simpson asked, for the second time that night.

  ‘I think I’ve worked most of it out, now,’ Richter said.

  Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

  His Excellency Mr Stanislav Nikolai Karasin, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Embassy of the Confederation of Independent States, sat somewhat stiffly in the leather armchair and looked over at the President of the United States of America.

  ‘Mr President,’ he began formally, ‘I thank you for agreeing to see me this evening at such short notice, for the matter is grave.’

  The grey-haired man opposite him smiled slightly. ‘It is always a pleasure to see you, Mr Ambassador. How can I help?’

  The Russian diplomat paused briefly. When he spoke, he sounded almost embarrassed. ‘Mr President, we have, as you know, bilateral agreements which require each of our countries to inform the other in advance of any planned major military exercises or operations. Despite this, our technical surveillance systems indicate that you have ordered your armed forces to a higher alert state than normal – what you refer to, I believe, as Defence Condition Four – and there appears to be significant activity at many of your military establishments. Have your staff, perhaps, forgotten to inform us of some exercise you have planned?’ Karasin stopped and waited.

  The President looked at him levelly. ‘We have no exercise planned, Mr Ambassador,’ he replied. ‘It is true that we have moved our forces to a higher alert state, but this is just a precautionary measure.’

  ‘A precaution against what, Mr President?’ Karasin asked sharply.

  The President waited a few moments before replying. ‘I was hoping,’ he said finally, ‘that you might be able to tell me.’

  Battersea, London

  When Richter had finished, Simpson got up and poured himself another Scotch. ‘Are you sure? It sounds bloody unlikely to me.’

  ‘I’m as sure as I can be,’ Richter said. ‘In any case, as far as I can see, it’s the only explanation that covers all the facts we have. If you’ve any better theories, let’s hear them. All I’m saying is that the explanation I’ve just advanced seems to me to be the simplest and most likely, and until a simpler and more likely one come
s along, I’m going to work on the assumption that it’s correct.’

  Simpson paced up and down in front of the coal-effect electric fire. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Assuming that your hypothesis is right, why are the Russians trying to hit you, and what are they going to do next?’

  Richter took a mouthful of coffee. ‘I don’t know for certain, but I can guess. Follow the sequence of events. They snatch and torture to death the Head of Moscow Station. I turn up to investigate, ostensibly as an insurance company representative. Either somebody in Moscow recognized me or they guessed I wasn’t an insurance rep, hence the attack at Sheremetievo. Then my picture is relayed to London, to the Russian Embassy, with watch orders. Perhaps I was tailed from Heathrow when I landed. Perhaps they’ve even tapped my telephone – I wouldn’t put it past them to have someone at Tinkerbell.’

  Tinkerbell is an anonymous grey building in Ebury Bridge Road, opposite Chelsea Barracks, which is responsible for tapping telephones in Britain. It was the subject of controversy in January 1980 when it was alleged on excellent authority (in fact by the people employed there to carry out the work) that illegal tapping of telephone lines was common. Tinkerbell’s equipment can monitor and record well over a million lines at any one time. The building is officially used by the Post Office for equipment development, which is true, but tells only half the story.

  ‘What I am sure,’ Richter continued, ‘is that they found out where I lived and worked. The next thing I did was turn up at JARIC, which is a place that very few insurance company investigators have ever heard of, far less been to. The Russians know – obviously – about the Blackbird flight, and having seen that I’ve been involved both with Newman’s death and the photographic intelligence centre, they must have assumed I was getting too close.’