Bob gave me a huge grin and wrapped me in a bear hug but there was very little strength in it and I saw straight away that Leslie was hovering in case Cronin should become unsteady.
Cronin looked exhausted but I could see his problems went deeper than that. He had put on weight since I’d last seen him. He was walking more much stiffly and his balance was poor. Clemson was carrying a fabric chair support which he put on top of one the more upright armchairs and carefully settled Cronin into it. ‘I’ll go and get your things,’ he said and quickly left the room.
‘I’m not usually this bad,’ Cronin said apologetically, ‘but there are days when life is pretty much rat shit.’
He waved towards the television set. ‘Don’t worry about all that, I’ll explain what’s going on.’
Before he could go on, Leslie was back and proceeded to give Bob a glass of water and an assortment of medication.
‘Only anti-inflammatories and a slow-release morphine tablet,’ Cronin explained. ‘Better Living Through Chemistry as we used to say. Just give me a few minutes and I’ll be fine.’
Leslie fussed and re-arranged the back support while complaining that the news on the television had completely disrupted the inquest on the afternoon’s bridge hands. Cronin listened patiently and offered suggestions on how to rearrange the evening sessions.
Finally, Cronin persuaded Clemson that he was safe to be left alone. When Leslie closed the door, he said ‘Sorry about that. Let’s get down to business. Start by filling me in. I’ve seen the websites but tell me everything that’s going on. I need to have the whole picture.’
I’d decided before the meeting that I wouldn’t hold back. Knowing Bob’s sources, there was very little he wouldn’t find out sooner or later and if he could help, it was best he knew the whole story now. I started with the early morning encounter with Virginia at the airfield, then went on to the brush with Rance at the selection board, the newsroom fight, Kate’s help in the escape, the meeting with Victoria Dallman and the second confrontation with Virginia. Finally, I went through how my bank card had been blocked, how the Audi owner had been contacted and described the police visit to Tim’s farm.
‘The one thing I don’t get,’ I said, ‘is why this is all moving so quickly. I know how MI6 works. Every move they’ve made is predictable, but why have they put all the resources to come after me this fast and this strong. The manpower, helicopter at Headcorn, the speed they reviewed the CCTV to pick up the car, the way they’ve manipulated UpstairsBackstairs. I know they can be quick off the mark in a crisis, but surely I’m not that important to them.’
‘But you sure as hell are that important to Ray Vossler,’ Cronin said.
‘But why?’
Cronin laughed. ‘Right now, John Saxon, you are the one person Vossler least wants to have on his case. He must have had a heart attack when he saw you.’
‘But I still don’t see why.’
‘First off, he knows how much you hate him and why. Second, he knows how good you are at your job.’
‘‘That’s nonsense,’ I said, ‘I’m not an intelligence officer any more. Until yesterday I was a BBC editor. I’m no threat to Vossler.’
‘Vossler can’t afford to assume that. The fight in the newsroom changed everything. Your career with the BBC is fucked, your past has been exposed, you’re on the run. Ray knows who you blame and he assumes you’ll come after him.’
‘OK, supposing I do. What harm can I do him?’
Cronin grinned. ‘That old buddy is what you’ve come to Norfolk to find out. Look it’s a long story, before we start, shall we have a drink?’
‘Sure,’ Kate said, getting to her feet, ‘What would you like, water, juice?’
Cronin laughed. ‘No, I mean a real drink. Pimm’s Cup please.’
Cronin saw Kate hesitate and added, deliberately misunderstanding, ‘Sorry, Leslie says I should learn to call it just Pimm’s.’
‘Is alcohol OK with morphine?’
‘Hell no, but it’s a great double whammy pain-killer’
Kate smiled. ‘I guess Pimm’s is OK. It is a sailor’s drink.’
Cronin took a gulp and relaxed ‘Right now, Ray Vossler is engaged in the most risky and dangerous operation of his entire career,’ he said, ‘you know him as the world’s go-to money-launderer, but he’s gone way beyond that.’
‘You mean his anti-Iran campaign. That’s why he’s over here, isn’t it?’
Cronin grinned.
‘That’s right, but there’s a helluva lot more to the campaign than you think.’
‘You’ve got to fill me in,’ Kate interrupted. ‘Just why is Vossler so set against Iran?’
‘How long have you got? Cronin said, ‘Iran is seen as a threat by everyone Vossler holds dear – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Big Oil, Big finance. They know Teheran wants to bury Israel and could be on the verge of going nuclear. They’re afraid of Teheran’s ability to put a chokehold on oil flow through the Straits of Hormuz and its capacity to stir up Shia opposition to a lot of undemocratic but pro-western regimes. They don’t want the oil pipeline linking Iran and Pakistan. A lot of the Vossler Group’s big clients have interests in the rival route and they also don’t like Iran’s growing friendship with China and Russia. All in all, the Vossler Group is tied to a whole bunch of powerful interests who see Iran – especially a possible nuclear Iran - as the biggest threat in the Middle East.
‘Right now, those interests are scared the U.S. is going soft because of our fuckups in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel wants to take out Iran’s nuclear sites with an air strike and Vossler’s buddies are afraid the U.S. won’t back them. They want Iran to be seen clearly and unequivocally as Enemy Number One, so Obama can’t dither and Ray has come up with a plan to achieve that once and for all.’
‘What kind of plan?’ I said.
‘Before I tell you,’ Cronin said, ‘you need to know the personal background. For a couple of years now, there’s been a vicious feud developing between the brothers. Ray reckons he’s not getting the respect he deserves within the family. He’s sick of the two brothers being the golden boys. He’s jealous of their war records, their status in Washington. He’s especially jealous of Mark who’s about to launch a political career.’
‘What do the brothers think? Kate asked.
‘Paraphrasing – kindly,’ Cronin said, ‘they say ‘shut the fuck up, just keep the money coming in and be grateful’.’
‘And they’re right,’ I said, ‘Ray Vossler is a bent accountant with a genius for finding sleazy ways to make money. The family needs the money and he needs them to keep him out of jail.’
‘Not how Ray sees it,’ Cronin said, ‘not any more.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning he’s come up with a plan that will make his mark with the hawks in Washington in terms they understand.’
‘What kind of plan?’
‘What would you do if you wanted to demonise Iran for keeps? You’re the black ops expert.’
‘You mean some kind of false flag operation, some kind of attack Iran got blamed for.’
‘Exactly,’ Cronin said triumphantly. ‘And how about a really nasty terrorist attack right here in Britain.’
‘You’re not serious,’ Kate said abruptly. ‘You’re saying Vossler is going to organise a terrorist attack in Britain and blame it on the Iranians.’
Cronin looked at her squarely,
‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’
Before Kate could speak, he held up his hand
‘I know you think I’m some kind of bitter and twisted crazy who’s having a revenge wet dream because Vossler screwed me over. But in the next hour I’m going to show you I’m serious. In fact, I’ve never been more serious about anything.’
Chapter 11
‘First of all,’ Cronin said, leaning tentatively back in his chair, ‘let me tell you how I ended up stuck in Norfolk.’
‘Stuck? I thought you bought the place for your retir
ement,’ Kate said bluntly.
‘I did, but we never intended it to be our total world.’
Cronin glanced over at me. ‘Much as I love this country of yours and much as I love Leslie, I do like to see the wider world from time to time. We haven’t played in an international tournament since Christ knows when.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not welcome anywhere. I’m a pariah in Washington, I’m a pariah in Boston, which is supposed to be my home and I’m a pariah on the world bridge circuit. Shit, I’m even a pariah in cyberspace. Old colleagues won’t go near me and friends I grew up with get twitchy if I even call them on the phone. I’m that corrupt CIA guy who sold his country down the river to feather his nest. You’ve seen the press and the websites.’
‘But you didn’t,’ Kate interjected.
‘Hell no.’
‘So what did happen?’
‘After Iraq, I had a spell driving a desk in Washington. I was being groomed for the top tech job. Then I was asked to contribute to a report on Iran’s germ warfare capability. Their nuclear programme was the big issue, but the anti-Iran junkies in the Pentagon wanted all the ammunition they could muster. It wasn’t my report. It was begun while I was abroad.’
Cronin laughed but without any real humour.
‘All they wanted was my personal assessment of Iran’s bio-warfare programme.’
‘Do they have one?’ Kate interrupted.
‘No-body knows for sure. There was a time when Iran did have an active germ warfare programme and I said there was no doubt they could develop one again, but we had no Intel to confirm they were doing so.’
‘The hawks didn’t like that?’
‘No, but there was a lot worse to come. I said all we knew for certain was that when they had developed bio-weapons in the past, plenty of western companies had been willing to help them. They came back to me and asked me to name names.’
‘And of course up popped a lot of Vossler’s friends and clients,’ I said.
‘You got it. When communism collapsed, a lot of former Soviet germ warfare experts were on the market and that creep Simpson-Carr started touting their services to Teheran. Someone tipped Vossler off that I was preparing a list and that’s when he moved in.’
‘How exactly?’
‘You know the drill, John, you’ve been there. He did to me what he did to you in Rome. He knew I was starting to get sick and I was looking for a medical retirement. He started the rumour that I was panicking because my pension wasn’t big enough and that I’d taken a huge kickback from the Iranians to water down the report.’
Cronin shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It was clear that as he became more agitated, the pain was also increasing but I knew there was no point in trying to interrupt.
‘Leslie and I had just bought this complex in Norfolk when Vossler put the word around that the Iranians had paid for it. In fact, Leslie paid for most of it.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’ Kate asked.
‘I did but Vossler produced some phoney documents – supposedly from Iranian government files – saying they’d used Leslie as an intermediary so he got landed in the shit as well. I tried to fight back but that’s not easy to do from a bed in the Walter Reed Hospital. My bosses knew they had no real proof so they said if I went quietly I could have my pension and all my entitlements including private medical care. I was exhausted, so I gave in.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ I said. ‘What happened next?’
‘Well, I admit I went a bit over the top. People got sick of hearing me bang on about how I’d been shafted, so I started that website asking anyone with dirt on Vossler to get in touch.’
‘Anything come of it?’
‘It sure did. At first I just got crazy shit from conspiracy theorists then a guy called Vince Delgado got in touch. He was a protégé of mine and when I was ousted, his career got caught in the downdraft. He was a high flyer, but instead of continuing up the greasy pole in Washington, he was put out to grass as CIA liaison officer at Fort Dettrick Maryland.’
Cronin turned to Kate
‘That’s the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases USAMRIID. It’s where we do all our chemical and germ warfare research. Officially it’s a bio-medical research facility, concerned with protection against chemical or germ warfare attack.’ He smiled. ‘But you have to play with the weapons to know how to defend against them.
‘Anyway, not long after Delgado arrived in Dettrick, a high-level Congressional group turned up, calling itself the Toxic Warfare Risk Assessment Group. Since 9/11, the US has spent over 40 billion dollars on chemical and biological defence. This group was supposed to be making a True Needs Assessment, reporting to various Congressional subcommittees on whether the expenditure was justified.
‘Delgado ran a check on the group and there was a pretty worrying cast of characters. In among the kind of Congressional researchers you’d expect, there were three members of the Vossler group and several people with intelligence backgrounds.’
‘You mean CIA? Kate interrupted.
‘No. No connection whatever,’ Cronin said. ‘Under the Bush Administration, a lot of fringe intelligence operations sprang up. Most of them were sanctioned or at least unofficially blessed by the Department of Defence who thought the CIA were a bunch of losers who didn’t understand how to run a War on Terror. Obama wants them all dismantled but it ain’t that easy and some of the hardest of the hardliners were in the group that came to Dettrick.’
Cronin activated an iPad, established a wireless link with the television, and a photograph flashed onto the screen. It showed a heavily bearded, bulky, shambling man, with staring, blood-shot eyes, standing on the steps of some kind of log cabin, surrounded by deep woodland.
‘This,’ Cronin said, ‘is the guy they came to Dettrick to contact. His name is Pete Zwieback and his speciality is bubonic plague - the Black Death.’
‘He looks like some kind of mountain-man,’ Kate said.
‘Yeah, he does in that photo,’ Cronin said, ‘but look at him two years earlier.’
This time the photograph showed the same man, but looking clean-cut and bright eyed. He was wearing a smart white lab coat and standing on a podium, addressing what looked like a group of colleagues.
‘What happened in between?’ Kate asked. As she spoke, Kate pulled out a small pink note-book from her jeans pocket. The pink notebook had been a standing joke around the newsroom. Like all yacht skippers, Kate was completely at ease with every kind of technology, but the notebook was still her weapon of choice in her struggles to get a story right.
‘Zwieback is a drop-out from USAMRIID,’ Cronin went on. ‘He was a bio-weaponeer working on a small bubonic plague programme. You need to understand that this is pretty much a backwater in germ warfare research. Bubonic Plague – the Black Death – is one of those names that strikes fear and loathing but is not considered all that dangerous nowadays.’
‘Why not?’ Kate said, making notes.
‘Because there are plenty of antidotes available, but Zwieback headed up a team developing a strain of bubonic plague that was resistant to any known vaccine, antidote, or cure.’
‘Did he succeed?’
‘Pretty much,’ Cronin said, ‘but the programme went down the tubes.’
‘Why?’
‘Zwieback got seriously stressed out and started drinking. It got out of hand and eventually he was put into an alcohol programme and finally, pensioned off. The project wasn’t considered a budget priority so he wasn’t replaced. Bubonic plague germs aren’t easy to weaponise.’
‘Why?’ Kate persisted.
‘The effects are terrible but they are slow. You have to count on the impact of the name. You mix in some component that produces sores – and social networking does the rest. You can have a Black Death scare in minutes but there are better weapons that are less complicated to develop.’
‘So what happened to Zwiebeck?’ I asked.
‘He managed the alcohol thing fairly well for a while and then set up his own company, giving lectures to ‘concerned citizens’ on bio-terrorism threats. At first it worked. He kept within the official secrets guidelines and gave the kind of lectures he used to give to visiting firemen, politicos and such at USAMRIID. But then he started talking about what he called Strain 11 – the bubonic plague thread they had been working on. Incidentally, the name has nothing to do with 9/ll, Zwiebeck named it from the date he got fired.’
‘So,’ Cronin went on, ‘pretty soon, he was making contact with all kinds of right-wing crazies and USAMRIID’s legal and security people were wondering what the hell to do about him, when he started drinking real heavy again and it looked as though the problem would go away on its own because he was more or less non-functional.’
‘Until this new intelligence group came in?’ Kate prompted.
‘You got it. They got in touch with Zwieback as soon as they arrived at Fort Dettrick. The excuse was that one of the group was an old friend and was worried about his welfare. The old friend - Johnny Swinburne - turned out to be a member of the Vossler Group. Here’s a list of meetings. You’ll see the pattern.’
Cronin flashed onto the screen a list of meetings with names, dates and places. It began with a one-on-one house call by Swinburne. Then over a two week period, there were six more meetings, first with two, then finally with four members of the visiting group. With each meeting was a set of photographs. They were surveillance photos but the quality was fairly good. Zwieback appeared in all of them, heavily bearded but dressed in more conventional clothes than in the original photo.
‘Now for a change of scene,’ Cronin said, ‘take a look at this.’
The photo on the screen could not have been more different. In contrast to the dark surveillance pictures, it showed a seaplane taxiing to the private dock of a stunning oceanfront villa. The sea was emerald in colour and the sky a cloudless blue.
‘Where does this come in? Kate said.
‘This is Panther Island,’ Cronin explained. ‘One of the Bahamas out-islands. This was taken a month after the last meeting with the toxic investigators in Fort Dettrick. It’s a private villa with Zwieback suddenly in full possession, complete with servants, a private pool, boat dock with a Riva motor launch and a Sunfish sailing dinghy. He also has a seaplane whenever he needs it to take him to the main islands. Quite a jump from just about making the mortgage each month on a rundown clapboard house in Fort Dettrick.’
The Saxon Network Page 10