‘What frightens me is that I think you really believe that. Anyway, as a sweetener, you can consider your leave as starting again once this is over.’
‘Wonderful,’ Richter said, pulling a notebook and ballpoint out of the pocket of his leather jacket. ‘OK, who do I contact?’
Simpson rattled off a name, address and telephone number. ‘He speaks better English than you do, or so I’m told, so you needn’t bother buying a German phrase book.’
‘Right. You want me to report back to you?’
‘Not unless you find something you think I ought to know about. Just give the duty officer a quick résumé and then push off down to Spain.’
‘I’d better get moving, then,’ Richter said and ended the call.
Before he started the engine of the Westfield, he made a call to the Playas del Duque complex in Puerto Bañus and left a message on his friends’ answerphone to explain that he had been unavoidably delayed, but hoped to be there in about three days.
Then he programmed the Navman with the Swiss address Simpson had given him and waited while the computer calculated the fastest route. As he’d expected, the satnav instructed him to continue along on the A20 as far as Junction 45, just south of Uzerche, and then take the N120 towards Tulle before picking up the eastbound A89 autoroute. He checked the distance he had to cover, making mental calculations, then started the car and pulled out of the parking area and back onto the road.
He would, he expected, reach Geneva early that evening. Then, if he could sort out whatever FedPol wanted tomorrow, he might still be able to make southern Spain by late Wednesday night.
Stuttgart, Germany
Fritz Stiebling had been a police officer for almost twenty years and prided himself that he knew his city as well as anyone could. He sometimes said to friends that he could feel Stuttgart’s pulse, a somewhat flowery statement from a man who was about as down-to-earth as it was possible to be. He worked shifts, like most policemen, but he never really clocked off, always keeping his eyes and ears open, checking for any irregularity in the well-ordered routine of the city that he knew so well.
So when he spotted two workmen, carrying a large and apparently heavy box between them, entering a building on the east side of the city his interest was aroused. The building itself consisted of an empty shop with storerooms above it, so men shifting boxes of equipment, fittings or stock was not in itself remarkable. What puzzled Stiebling was the fact that this was early on a Sunday evening. Furthermore, the building stood right next to the local branch of a large bank.
It could all be entirely innocent, just new business tenants working over the weekend to get their enterprise open as quickly as possible. Or it could be something else entirely. Stiebling decided to park his car a little way up the road and watch.
There was a café about a hundred metres away, on the opposite side of the street. The four tables outside were all occupied by diners, but that wouldn’t be a problem. Stiebling marched inside and showed his identification to the manager. Within four minutes he was sitting at one of the outside tables and studiously contemplating the menu, while the two couples who had occupied it previously were being reseated inside, amid profuse apologies from the maître d’.
Stiebling ordered himself a half-bottle of red wine and a bowl of pasta, took out a notebook and pen and settled down to watch and record whatever might be happening at the far end of the street.
During the next hour he watched four other ‘workmen’ enter the same premises, all carrying boxes or bulky bags. Stiebling was too far away to be able to identify the men, or see exactly what they were carrying, but what he had observed was sufficiently unusual for him to decide to raise the matter officially. With his wine finished and an empty plate in front of him, he took out his mobile and called the duty inspector at his police station.
‘Stiebling,’ he announced, and gave his exact location. ‘I think I might be witnessing preparations for a bank robbery.’
Within two hours, the building was under surveillance by teams of watchers using cameras fitted with powerful telephoto lenses, and Stiebling himself was sitting in an interview room back at the station, describing exactly what he’d witnessed.
Onex commune, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland
Richter had changed his mind just before he entered Switzerland. It was already almost eight thirty in the evening, and it made better sense to find a hotel for the night before visiting the police station. From past experience, he knew that continental hotels had a tendency to bar the doors to all comers the moment night fell, and sleeping in the Westfield wasn’t an option he was prepared to consider.
With a room booked and his two small leather bags deposited on the bed, Richter climbed back into the car and drove less than a mile to the address Simpson had given him. The police building was large and square, and it exuded an almost palpable air of efficiency. There were dozens of free spaces in the public car park opposite, and two minutes later he was standing at the reception desk in front of a slightly belligerent police officer – probably a sergeant – asking if he could see Wilhelm Schneider. And, yes, he was expected.
Schneider appeared almost before Richter had sat down in the waiting area. He strode across to greet him, extending his hand.
‘Mr Richter?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Richter was immediately aware of the contrast between his own casual attire – trainers, faded blue jeans and black leather jacket – and the Swiss police officer’s immaculate dark grey suit.
‘Just a formality, but could I see some identification?’
‘It’ll have to be my passport,’ Richter reached into his jacket pocket, ‘because I don’t have anything else with me.’
‘No, that’s fine.’ The Swiss inspector opened the document and compared the tiny photograph there with Richter’s unshaven countenance. ‘I gather you’ve postponed some leave to assist us here, and we really appreciate that. Come on through.’
Richter followed him to a door secured with a combination lock, and along a cream-painted corridor to a mid-sized briefing room, where about half a dozen men, all wearing smart civilian clothes, were already waiting. The buzz of conversation ceased as they walked in. The Swiss police officer strode to the head of a long table and looked round the room.
‘This is Mr Richter,’ he began, ‘from the British Secret Intelligence Service’ – which wasn’t strictly true, though Richter had no intention of explaining exactly who he worked for – ‘who’s here to help us clarify this situation.’
Schneider then turned to Richter. ‘Let me explain what we’ve found. Two days ago, a middle-aged Swiss businessman walked into the local police station here in Onex and asked to speak to the counter-terrorism section. We don’t often get requests like that, and when we do they’re as likely as not made by people who are mentally disturbed or else reading far too much into an innocent sequence of events. But after listening to what the man had to say, the commune officers decided he should be taken seriously. Our local police force obviously doesn’t have its own counter-terrorism unit, so they contacted the Federal Police, and details of the report were passed on to me. I myself am a senior inspector in the Terrorism Investigations Unit, and when we’d analysed what the man had said, I travelled down from Geneva with most of the team you see gathered here.’
Schneider waved a hand to indicate the others in the room, and Richter nodded.
‘This businessman, whose name is Rolf Hermann, owns several apartments in a certain building here in Onex, which he rents out. Onex is very close to Geneva, almost a suburb, but rental costs here are a lot less than they are in the city itself, and many of his tenants are working in Geneva on short- or medium-term contracts. Two weeks ago, he agreed to rent one of his apartments for just a month to a German national, supposedly living here on his own. That wasn’t particularly unusual in itself, since quite a lot of people take a property for a similar short period while they look around for more permanent accommodation, but he became concerned on l
earning that this man might be sub-letting the flat. If he was, it was a clear breach of the terms of the lease, so he decided to enter the property at a time when it was unoccupied and check how many of the bedrooms were being used.’
Schneider turned to a map of the commune on the wall behind him and picked up a pointer.
‘We’re here,’ he said, indicating a square shape marked more or less in the centre of the map. ‘The apartment building is precisely here, on the edge of Onex, and about a mile away from where we are now. The landlord waited until the German tenant had left the property – accompanied, he noted, by three other men – and then used his master key to enter the apartment. Inside, everything was clean and tidy, but he noted that four of the five beds – one double and three singles – were obviously being slept in.
‘The other thing he noted was a laptop sitting on the table in the dining area. It was still switched on, though the screen was blank. Out of curiosity, he touched the space bar. When the screen illuminated, what he saw there prompted him to contact us. It was like a shopping list, composed in German, but none of the items mentioned on it would be found in your local supermarket – at least, not here in Switzerland. The list included plastic explosive and detonators, timing devices, grenades, and weapons including pistols, assault rifles and shotguns, and ammunition.’
Richter shook his head. ‘I’m not sure I’m buying this,’ he said. ‘It’s just as likely to be some hack novelist preparing a list of details to research, or maybe a journalist writing up a story about the black-market arms trade. If these people really are terrorists, you have to ask two questions. First, would they really be prepared to leave their safe house so conveniently unoccupied that somebody could just wander in and take a look around? Second, assuming they were stupid enough to do that, would they leave details of what they were planning on a laptop computer that they hadn’t even protected with a password?’
Schneider nodded agreement. ‘Exactly what we thought at first,’ he said patiently, ‘and if that was all the landlord had seen, we wouldn’t be here. But he also spotted a Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle, with a fully loaded magazine, behind the living-room door. As you probably know, Swiss citizens are required to possess assault rifles and ammunition – our government policy has always relied on our nationals being able to function as a militia – so the landlord was perfectly familiar with this type of weapon, but here we normally use the SiG 550. He took a note of the serial number of the AK47, and we ran a trace. It turned out to be part of a consignment of 200 Kalashnikovs stolen from an army depot in Hungary about three years ago.
‘The fact that we could identify the origin of the weapon the landlord saw lent credence to his story, even if it also suggested we were dealing with a particularly stupid – or careless – group of terrorists.’
‘Agreed,’ Richter nodded. ‘So what’s the British connection?’
‘The “shopping list” the landlord saw included an entry for “FRB London”. That could have meant the city, or was perhaps just someone’s surname, but it looked significant enough for us to pass on the information to your SIS. Do you yourself have any idea what it means?’
Richter thought for a moment. ‘No, frankly. If you’d given me just the initials “FRB”, I’d have suggested “Federal Reserve Bank”, but that makes no sense in terms of the word “London”. Sorry, right now I can’t think of anything, but there’s one simple and obvious way to find out.’
‘Which is what?’ Schneider looked interested.
‘We kick down the door of that apartment and ask these bastards exactly what they’ve got in mind.’
‘We seem to think the same way, Mr Richter. We’ve got the building under surveillance, and we’re planning on going in tomorrow morning, once we’re certain all four men are there in residence. If you’d like to come back here no later than nine, I’d be happy for you to tag along – strictly as an observer, of course.’
Chapter Two
Monday
Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey, Kent
For a few moments, Barney wasn’t sure just what had awakened him, but he reacted the way he always did, by doing nothing. He lay absolutely still, eyes closed, listening intently to the voices and trying to make sense of what he was hearing. He’d had many years of sleeping rough, and the biggest single problem he’d ever faced was teenagers – youths emboldened by drink and the support of their friends, eager to show their courage by attacking a target that couldn’t retaliate – and he knew that his best defence was to do nothing to attract their attention. So he just lay still, hoping they hadn’t yet seen him, but listening carefully.
His given name was Edward Holmes, but he’d been known as Barney for more years than he could remember, the origins of the nickname lost forever in the alcohol-clouded obscurity of his memory. Few people who saw him, a battered trilby topping his lined, weather-beaten, unshaven face, his body wrapped in a faded brown overcoat secured with string at the waist, would have guessed that he’d once been employed in a reasonably responsible position. His problem, predictably enough, had been the burgeoning alcoholism, which had eventually proved too great an impediment for any employer to ignore. When his money finally ran out and he could no longer pay his rent, Barney had been driven into that twilight world of the non-people: the beggars with their dogs, the tramps ever on the move and the other unfortunate derelicts of society.
In a community that possessed neither pride nor respect, Barney had no trouble at all fitting in. He had acquired a handful of acquaintances and still fewer friends, but in the past fifteen years he’d become a familiar figure around the coast of south-east England, trudging along the country roads, sitting outside shopping centres or lying on a bed of cardboard and newspapers in some shop doorway, almost always with a comforting bottle to hand.
His favoured location was the Isle of Sheppey, the low-lying island about ten miles long and four wide located just off the north coast of Kent with a bridge link over the narrow channel that separates it from the mainland. Barney felt as much at home there as he did anywhere, perhaps because his birthplace, Ramsgate, was close by. He’d also found the people, and perhaps more importantly the police, a little more relaxed and generous on the island than in many other locations. And when on Sheppey he was most often to be found in or around Sheerness, the only town of any size.
By Barney’s somewhat modest standards, it had been a good day. He’d positioned himself in Bridge Road, not far from the old red and green painted clock-tower, and close to one of the cheaper cafés. He’d upturned his stained and tattered old hat on the pavement in front of him, seeded it with some coins from an inside pocket of his coat, then leant back against the wall and waited with the patience of a man with nowhere to go and all day to get there. He moved only three times, twice when he saw a police constable approaching and finally when the café closed at four thirty. The money arrived in dribs and drabs: mainly copper and low-denomination silver coins, but occasionally a twenty- or fifty-pence piece, which earned the generous donor a nod of thanks. By six, when the last of the shops had closed, he’d accumulated almost eight pounds, more than enough to buy a bottle of cheap wine and something hot to eat.
Just after midnight, his stomach pleasantly full of pie and chips and with still almost half a bottle of very average red wine tucked into his coat pocket, Barney had settled down for the night on the beach.
To be accurate, he wasn’t actually on a beach as such, because the coastline at Sheerness is less conducive to shoreline activities than most English seaside resorts. The town is separated from the choppy waters of the Thames Estuary by a low sea wall that extends a considerable distance along the north coast of Sheppey What beach there is tends to be steeply sloping and largely gravel, while large sections of the coastline are confined behind bare concrete.
But to the north-west of the Tesco superstore that abuts the sea wall in Blue Town, at the edge of Sheerness, is an L-shaped body of water known as The Moat. It is intermittentl
y occupied by resting seabirds, clusters of partially submerged shopping trolleys and other less savoury debris. The sloping banks of this miniature lake lie below the level of the sea wall itself, and so offer some shelter from the wind. That night, the ground was damp because of the nearby water, but Barney’s ragged tarpaulin held most of it at bay, and he was prepared to suffer that minor discomfort in exchange for some protection from the biting wind. Besides, it was far enough away from the town itself that he doubted anyone would disturb him. But that assumption had clearly been wrong.
Now, after a few seconds of listening quietly, he realized that these people didn’t sound like teenagers. The soft, muffled voices had an unmistakably adult timbre, and then he registered something else: they weren’t speaking English but some language he didn’t recognize. That surprised him, and he opened his eyes to look.
Barney had no watch, but it was clearly the early hours of the morning. The moon by now was low in the sky, but provided sufficient light for him to see reasonably well. Directly in front of him, four or five metres away, three dark-clad male figures stood huddled close together on the concrete path that ran along the top of the sea wall. They were all peering intently out at the dark waters of the Thames Estuary.
Unfortunately for Barney, curiosity got the better of him. He shifted position to sit upright, wondering what had attracted their attention. But the sea wall rose too high for him to see the water’s edge, so he stood up, allowing himself a clearer view down the sloping concrete towards the breaking waves. He still saw nothing, but there had to be some object, some reason the men were there. Barney shuffled slightly to one side and then he saw it: a dark, roundish object bobbing in the water close up to the sea wall. For a moment, he thought it was maybe a large seal, but then, as he recognized it, he let out an involuntary gasp of surprise.
Immediately he realized he should have kept silent, because one of the men turned round and looked in his direction. He then said something, and the other two stopped talking and all just stared at their uninvited audience.
Timebomb (Paul Richter) Page 2