Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  ‘Have you got anywhere with it?’

  ‘I would hardly be calling you if we hadn’t, would I? Right, we assumed that the encryption used a standard double-transposition cipher and we programmed one of the computers to run first with all possible eight-letter words, then all nine-letter words and so on. That was a quick and dirty attempt to crack it, though we were, frankly, not particularly hopeful of it producing a solution.’

  ‘And did it?’ Richter prompted. He was now worried that this man from Cheltenham was warming up to give him a lengthy lecture on decryption techniques and just now he had better things to do with his time.

  ‘Er, yes, it did indeed, about twenty minutes ago. The two key words were “NOTATIONAL” and “OVERWHELMS”, in that order. Both are composed of ten letters, as you can see. Do you want us to fax you the decrypted text, or would you rather do the decode yourself?’

  That, Richter thought, was arguably one of the stupidest questions aimed at him to date. He’d been taught a bit about ciphers on a course he’d attended a couple of years earlier, and the best way to describe the encryption and decoding process was tortuous and tiresome.

  ‘No, just send me the text, please. And thanks for such prompt service.’

  ‘It’s not us really, old chap,’ the specialist murmured, and then added a somewhat surprising postscript: ‘These computers are fucking marvellous.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway.’

  Richter picked up the phone again and pressed the button for the duty officer.

  ‘It’s Richter. There’ll be a page or two coming through on the secure fax shortly from Cheltenham. Give me a call when it arrives, please.’

  Five minutes later, Richter collected two sheets of paper from him and took them back up to his own office. Laying them side by side on his desk, he studied the decoded text carefully. At first sight, the data looked innocuous enough, but after a few moments Richter realized exactly what he had in front of him. The two sheets contained a long list of names and telephone numbers, including the international dialling codes which identified each country, and two phrases assigned to each name. Richter guessed that the phones themselves were probably disposable mobiles, and the phrases were simple, easily remembered English expressions clearly intended as challenge and response codes. There were two names listed for virtually every country in Western Europe, from Spain in the south right up to Norway.

  At the bottom of the sheet were several other pieces of data, which it took him a few minutes to recognize.

  These two pages basically comprised a spy’s entire support mechanism, confirming what Richter already knew about the man now lying dead in the Maidstone mortuary. Whoever he was working for, he was clearly part of a very large and well-funded operation, as was confirmed by the sheer number of support agents he could call on. That immediately suggested that he had been a CIA operative, despite Kleber’s outright denial when Richter had questioned him. This deduction was supported by two other facts: by the size of paper the codes had been printed on and by one of the French support agents’ challenge and response codes. The first of these read ‘I love the color of the sky in the morning’, for which the response was ‘My uncle Jacques often paints the dawn’. Color, Richter had instantly noted, the American spelling, not colour.

  Just then his internal phone rang again.

  ‘Our esteemed leader would like a word with you,’ the duty officer began. ‘He’s on a secure line, so I presume he must be using communications from some military base in Lincolnshire.’

  Seconds later, Richard Simpson’s unmistakable voice sounded in his ear. ‘This is a secure line, Richter,’ he confirmed.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Right, what’s going on? I gather you’ve drawn a pistol without consulting me. Have you shot anyone?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Richter admitted.

  ‘Good. Let’s try and keep it that way, shall we?’

  Richter outlined to him the discovery of the dead man near Sittingbourne, and also what they’d found among his belongings.

  ‘So who was he, do you think?’

  ‘Based on a couple of pointers, I’d say he got his orders in Langley though he told me categorically he didn’t work for the CIA.’

  And you believed him, I suppose? Get real, Richter. But if he was a Company man, this a serious breach of etiquette. The Yanks know bloody well they’re not supposed to play around in our backyard without giving us a heads-up first. You don’t think this was a freelance op?’

  ‘Not with the level of support this man could command. And there’s one other thing: the manager of the hotel remembered him driving a French-plated car. I think that struck him as odd because “Helmut Kleber” is a German name. I’m just waiting for the Kent plods or Immigration to match the number plate to his passport, and then we’ll try to find his car. The name in his passport was probably false, and obviously—’

  ‘Yes,’ Simpson interrupted. ‘If he was previously in France, maybe the DST or DGSE might have known about him. Maybe he wasn’t actually up to anything over here but just ran for the ferry to get away from some French hoods who’d unmasked him. Give the Frogs a tug and see if they know anything.’

  ‘Your phraseology does occasionally leave something to be desired, Simpson.’

  ‘Just do it, OK? Brief Five and Six about the contact data you found on that sheet of paper and tell them to start running down those support agents. A word or two with them might be very instructive. And remember to keep me in the loop.’

  And you’ll be where?’

  ‘On my way back to London in about two hours. That means about three hours on the road, depending on the number of idiots cluttering up the motorway in front of me. I’ll come straight to the office, so if you have to shoot off somewhere, make sure the duty officer’s fully up to speed. Oh, and whether or not the French knew about this guy, contact Langley and express to them our extreme displeasure over this incident.’

  Rochester, Kent

  The installation of the autopilot had taken a considerable time, but that was mainly because they were both determined there should be no mistakes.

  The mechanism itself was simple enough. It consisted of an electric motor and linkage to turn the wheel, and another, much less powerful, motor driving a rod attached to the throttle. Both were connected to a ‘black box’ that delivered current to each motor as required, and was itself attached to the GPS unit. These two electronic devices essentially comprised the brains of the system. Power was supplied by the heavy-duty battery that Hagen had bought on Morschel’s instructions, and that he had charged fully overnight in his hotel room. ‘That’s it, I think,’ Hagen said, inspecting the connections once more.

  ‘We still need to give it a trial run. Go get the ropes.’ Morschel himself stood behind the wheel and started the engine. He waited while Hagen released the fore and aft mooring ropes, then turned the wheel and increased the throttle setting to move the boat away from the pontoon. Carefully, he navigated the craft well clear of the marina and then out into the open waters of the Medway.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘give me a position from the chart.’

  Hagen picked a location some distance up-river and read out the coordinates while Morschel fed them into the GPS unit. Then he flicked a switch on the autopilot control box, stood back and watched what happened. For a few seconds, nothing did, presumably as the GPS worked out the most direct route from the boat’s present position to its programmed destination, then the throttle opened slightly and the wheel swung round to point the bow in the desired direction.

  ‘Looks good,’ Hagen said.

  ‘So far, yes,’ Morschel agreed. ‘But let’s see what happens when it reaches the position I set.’

  Just over ten minutes later, the throttle began easing back, and then the motor reduced to a gentle idle.

  ‘This is the interesting bit,’ Morschel announced, watching carefully.

  The tide was running, and in just a few seconds the boat had been
carried away from the position he’d programmed. Almost immediately, the wheel swung round and the engine revolutions increased to drive the boat back to the correct location. Three times this happened before Morschel declared himself satisfied.

  ‘That’ll do,’ he said, switched off the autopilot and took the wheel himself for the run back down-river to the marina.

  ‘What time tomorrow?’ Hagen asked.

  ‘High tide’s at three thirty-six,’ Morschel replied, ‘so that’s when we should hit the button, plus or minus about twenty minutes, since it’s not that critical. The distance the boat has to cover is about twenty miles, so we’ll need to have it out of the marina no later than one thirty. I reckon it’ll take us at least an hour to connect everything up and install the anti-handling devices. Then add thirty minutes for other contingencies, so we need to be down here by twelve, latest. I’ll pass that on to Ahmed, because his man needs to be here by then as well. And that’ll give you plenty of time to pick out another boat for the transfer and to hotwire it.’

  ‘The other guys. What time for them?’

  ‘I’ll check the vehicles and equipment this afternoon, and we’ll have a final briefing for everyone tomorrow morning, just to go over everything one more time. I’ve programmed their last withdrawal’ – Hagen smiled slightly at the word – ‘for one thirty, because they have to be clear and complete no later than three.’

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter’s internal phone buzzed with a call from the Duty Office, which he answered immediately.

  ‘I’ve got a DI Mason on the line for you, from the Kent Constabulary. How did he get this number?’

  ‘He got it because I gave it to him. So put him through.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Richter,’ Mason began.

  ‘Hi. Any news?’

  ‘Of a sort, yes. We’ve now heard from Immigration, but the results are a bit odd. We sent them a photo of the dead man which we took in the mortuary, mentioned the name “Helmut Kleber” and requested that they match the passport with the car. It should have been a mere formality to just check the passport records and the vehicle-lane cameras and tie the two bits of information together.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Richter said. ‘Nobody with that name has entered Britain in the last couple of weeks?’

  ‘Actually, no. In fact, three men called “Helmut Kleber” arrived here, but all three came by air, and our initial checks suggest they’re alive and well and busy trying to sell us whatever their respective companies manufacture. Because the Maidstone hotel manager remembers Kleber arriving in a car with French plates, but called to make his reservation from Germany last week, we’ve presumed he crossed the Channel either by ferry or through the Tunnel, which means he must have used a different passport.’

  ‘How did the manager know Kleber was originally calling from Germany?’

  ‘They have automatic caller identification software on the hotel switchboard, and he even printed out the records to show me. Most of their clientele is British, so the call struck him at the time as fairly unusual.’

  ‘OK, what else?’

  ‘We went back to Immigration and asked them to check their camera images over the last two weeks, looking for any French-plated cars – just in case the manager got it wrong and it wasn’t a Peugeot saloon – with a male driver and no passengers. That produced over 2,000 possibilities from all the ferry ports, but they could filter out most of them quite quickly, simply because the drivers looked nothing like Kleber, or else they were driving the wrong kind of vehicle – meaning a sports car or a jeep or an MPV, that kind of thing. Anyway, the short version is that they sent us details of thirty-two potential matches, and we now think we’ve got him. I’m currently looking at a picture of a French-plated Peugeot saloon, and I reckon the man in the driving seat looks pretty much like “Helmut Kleber”. I’ve shown this photograph to the hotel manager and some staff and they all agree.’

  ‘And the passport?’

  ‘I was saving the best bit for last. The passport presented by the man in the Peugeot was perfectly genuine and had been issued by the US Department of State about two years ago. It looks as if our “Helmut Kleber” was really an American citizen named Gregory Stevens.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Richter muttered.

  Anyway,’ Mason finished, ‘the Immigration people have told us he entered the country at Dover on Friday afternoon. We’ve already checked the hotel car park and all the streets in the vicinity and there’s absolutely no sign of the Peugeot. We’ve widened the search, and I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything. Oh, by the way, any progress with that sheet of paper we found?’

  Richter deliberated for a few moments, trying to decide what he could – or should – disclose. Then he mentally shrugged, and decided they were both on the same side.

  ‘Yes. Fortunately, GCHQ at Cheltenham cracked the cipher,’ he said, and explained what the decoded page contained.

  As soon as Mason rang off, Richter dialled his Thames House contact to pass on this new information, then telephoned the SIS duty officer at Vauxhall Cross to do the same. Entirely unsurprisingly, neither organization would admit to having any knowledge of a ‘Gregory Stevens’ operating undercover in Europe.

  Although Richard Simpson had instructed him to contact the two French security organizations, the DST and the DGSE, about ‘Helmut Kleber’, the fact that he now knew the dead man had been carrying a genuine American passport obviously changed the focus of the investigation. Richter doubted very much if the French would have anything useful to tell him, simply because, whatever Stevens had been up to in Europe, the dead man’s briefing had almost certainly been delivered to him somewhere in Virginia. It was time, instead, to see what the CIA had to tell him.

  Romford, Essex

  Ernst Hagen braked the Mercedes to a halt outside BB Productions’ small warehouse on the industrial estate. He and Morschel climbed out and headed round to the side door of the unprepossessing building, which swung open just as they reached it. The man inside nodded to them as they walked past into the premises, then locked the door behind them.

  Morschel stood in the large open space that comprised most of the interior and stared at the four vans sign-written ‘Metropolitan Police’.

  ‘From the outside, they’re completely indistinguishable from the real thing,’ Hagen assured him. ‘Unless he ran a check on their registrations or the numbers painted on the roofs, not even a police officer could tell the difference.’

  ‘Good. Now show me the uniforms,’ Morschel instructed, and the two men proceeded through to one of the storerooms at the rear.

  ‘Again, they’re just like the genuine article,’ Hagen commented, ‘and they probably even came from the same supplier. They’ve got personal radios, too – inoperable, of course, but they look right – and I doubt these bulletproof waistcoats would stop anything more dangerous than a wasp sting. The helmets are pretty tough, though.’

  Morschel turned to the man who was acting as a guard over the building. ‘You’ve already swapped the weapons?’ He was pointing down at a collection of submachine guns and semi-automatic pistols stashed in a crate on the floor in front of him. ‘So these are the props?’

  The man nodded. ‘That was the first thing we did once the vans were delivered. The real weapons are already stored inside the security box in the back of each vehicle, along with the magazines and ammunition.’

  ‘Good,’ Morschel nodded, and walked back into the centre of the warehouse. He glanced again at each of the ‘police’ vehicles, checking that everything was ready. Finally, he inspected the rear compartments of the other four vans parked at the rear of the warehouse. Each of these was carrying a very special and sensitive cargo, and he was careful not to disturb their contents.

  ‘Right, we’re ready.’ Morschel said. ‘Ernst and I will handle the next phase of the operation and we’ll be back here tomorrow morning at eight thirty. Make sure everyone’s here by then, and that everything
’s ready to go. That means a thorough check of each vehicle, and to make sure the tanks are full of fuel. Then we’ll have a final briefing, and we can get the ball rolling.’

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter had known John Westwood ever since he’d first begun working for Richard Simpson and had the American’s home number in his organizer. This was just as well, because he had no illusions about the potential difficulties in trying to extract information about any covert CIA operation out of an uninterested weekend desk officer at Langley and especially over a transatlantic telephone line.

  ‘Hi, Paul. It’s been, what, six months?’

  ‘Probably, but far too long anyway. How’re you keeping?’

  Westwood chuckled. ‘I know you, Paul. You haven’t dragged me out of bed at eight on a Sunday morning – you do know there’s a time difference, don’t you? – just to check on me and my beloved family. You obviously want something, so why not get to the point? What’s the story this time?’

  ‘OK, John. Does the name Gregory Stevens mean anything to you?’

  There was a short pause while Westwood considered the question. ‘Not that I can recall, no. Is he a Company man? Or is that what you’re trying to find out?’

  ‘More or less, yes. Briefly, we have a dead body over here, very messily murdered. He was going by the name of Helmut Kleber, and aged about forty to forty-five years of age. What’s interesting is that he used a genuine US passport, in the name of Stevens, to get himself into Britain a couple of days ago. That suggests either he genuinely was Gregory Stevens, or his name really was Kleber and he somehow got hold of the Stevens passport. Whatever the truth, we have a couple of concerns. First, when we searched his hotel room, we found a half-empty box of 9-millimetre ammunition. Second, in the same place we found a typed sheet of coded five-letter groups and, when our computer wizards at GCHQ ran them through a Cray, they came up with the decryption keys. It used a standard double-transposition cipher with two ten-digit key words. The sheet listed names, mobile phone numbers and challenge and response codes for a bunch of people we assume are support agents based in almost every country in Western Europe. MI5 and SIS have been running checks on them through the phone numbers, but most they’ve tried so far are no longer on the system, so we guess this Stevens character has already made use of their services and now they’ve ditched the chips or even the phones. That would be standard procedure for us.’