Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  ‘OK. The Special Group came up with a plan. They decided that the easiest way to keep Britain firmly supporting American foreign policy was to launch a series of bombings in Europe, ending with a major attack on London. If it could be established that all these atrocities were the work of radical Islam, The Special Group believed that some other European nations might also decide to support America, which would be a bonus, but a serious assault on London – something like 9/11 – would definitely make Britain join forces with us against al Qaeda and radical Islam, and that was our primary concern.’

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Richter muttered.

  ‘That was the briefing Stevens was given. We believed he was the ideal man to handle it, because he had the language skills to pass as either a Frenchman or a German, besides having the right background in Agency work.’

  ‘You mean his career in Clandestine Services?’

  ‘OK, I can see you’ve done your homework. But I guess you can also see why we mounted this operation, though with hindsight it looks like Stevens wasn’t the best choice for the job. How was he minimizing casualties? By calling the authorities before each attack occurred, I suppose?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘It looks like he fucked up in London, because what happened there wasn’t exactly what we had in mind. A series of glorified bank robberies isn’t really in the same league as the Twin Towers.’

  Richter shook his head. ‘Those bank jobs were just intended to raise some cash for a German terrorist group and to cause a certain amount of confusion. The real target was a sunken ship in the Thames Estuary, stuffed full of explosives. If that had gone off, we’d have had our very own 9/11 right here in London, thanks to your foul little scheme.’

  For a moment the American looked almost pleased. ‘So Stevens was on track after all,’ he muttered.

  Richter shook his head. ‘No, not really. That plan was the brainchild of a German named Hans Morschel, and the target was suggested to him by an al Qaeda front man.’

  Johnson hesitated. ‘So if it had worked, it really would have been down to radical Islam?’

  ‘Yes, oddly enough. But didn’t you ever wonder, you Yankee fuckwit, how we might react if we discovered that our capital city had been devastated by some crazy plan cooked up by the bloody CIA and The Special Group, on the instigation of the President of the United States?’

  ‘Obviously we considered that, but we decided that the chances of exposure were sufficiently small that it was worth taking the risk.’

  ‘Did you, now?’

  ‘Stevens was a highly experienced agent, very familiar with this kind of operation. We reckoned he had the ability to handle this and keep our involvement secret.’

  And now? Now that we know exactly what you planned and why?’

  ‘It’s unfortunate, is all.’ The American shrugged. ‘I suppose the bomb or whatever this guy Morschel planted didn’t go off?’

  ‘It went off all right,’ Richter said, ‘just not in exactly the right place.’

  And Morschel?’

  ‘He’s no longer with us.’ Richter paused for a few seconds. ‘Do you have any idea how many other people died in this little operation of yours?’ he asked.

  Johnson shrugged again. ‘I’ve no idea. Quite a few, probably. But they’re just collateral damage. You’re bound to have casualties in ops of this sort. Eggs and omelettes, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I don’t have all the figures myself,’ Richter said, in a voice that was low and dangerous, ‘but in Onex in Switzerland four police officers died, and the same number in Stuttgart. Then, here in London, Morschel’s men slaughtered probably a couple of dozen in all, just ordinary men and women going about their normal business. So that’s over thirty people massacred, and you’re telling me the reason is just to let the fucking President of the United States of America retain some political credibility.’ His voice rose almost to a shout at the end of the sentence.

  Johnson grinned at him. ‘Politics is a dirty game, and you British need to grow up and recognize that, if you’re going to play with us big boys. While you’ – he jabbed a finger towards Richter – ‘you need a reality check. You might not like it, but we’ve all got diplomatic immunity, and that means we’re untouchable. We’re leaving here, and you won’t dare try and stop us. Both these cars are armoured, so screw your snipers. My men are aiming their pistols at you right now, so drop the shotgun and back off.’

  Richter glanced to his left. In the Ford parked about twenty feet away, both side windows were now open, and in each a figure was clearly visible, a handgun pointing in his direction.

  Johnson was absolutely right, and Richter knew he had no real choice. He was probably already in trouble for blowing the tyre on the American’s car. You didn’t mess with people who had diplomatic immunity. But then he thought about all the people who been blown to pieces by Morschel’s truck bombs in London, bombs that had been placed by the German terrorist group, but essentially working to Johnson’s plan. And then he thought about the way Stevens had been butchered, and he realized that there really was only one choice he could make.

  ‘Fuck you, Johnson,’ he said and tilted his head forward, his mouth close to his lapel microphone. ‘Take him out,’ he snapped.

  Johnson’s face turned suddenly grey as he heard these words, and then his body jerked sideways as the sniper’s bullet took him in the chest.

  And then the three bodyguards in the parked Fords opened up, and before he could bring his SPAS-12 up to the aim, Richter felt three solid punches in his chest as he tumbled backwards, collapsing to the ground beside the parked Jaguar.

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  ‘I genuinely do not know.’ Bin Salalah spread his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Badri was there on the boat and had full instructions on how to detonate the explosives should the automatic system fail. I know that our objective wasn’t achieved, but my understanding is that the explosives on the boat did detonate. That suggests that either the explosion didn’t provide a high enough yield to cause the sympathetic detonation we expected . . . or something else went wrong. Perhaps the autopilot failed to navigate the boat to the optimum position, or Badri himself became confused and triggered the explosion prematurely.’

  ‘Or perhaps some third party intervened and managed to detonate the explosives well away from the wreck.’

  Bin Salalah inclined his head. ‘There is also that possibility,’ he agreed.

  ‘What of the other incidents in London?’

  ‘I gather those worked exactly as our German colleague anticipated. His men completed their tasks as planned, and as far as I know not one of them was apprehended. And, of course, we are not in any way implicated in these somewhat sordid crimes.’

  ‘I’m pleased that something worked as planned,’ the elderly cleric murmured. ‘So there really is nothing we can salvage from this?’

  ‘At this stage, no,’ bin Salalah replied, ‘but I have another suggestion you might like to consider. Not as spectacular a result as this operation would have achieved, but financially almost as destructive to the British – and also with a significant death toll.’

  And just as complicated, I presume?’

  ‘No, much simpler. It will require two vehicles, two controllers, four shuhada and approximately half a metric tonne of plastic explosive. And I do not see how it could be detected or prevented.’

  The old cleric leant forward, his eyes shining. ‘Tell us,’ he instructed.

  Dungeness, Kent

  ‘How is it, then?’ Colin Redmond Dekker asked, as he eased Richter into a sitting position against the passenger door of the Jaguar.

  ‘I feel numb, mostly,’ Richter said, his breath coming in short and painful gasps.

  ‘I’m not surprised. One of those guys was using a 44 Magnum. That’s bound to sting a bit, even with what you’re wearing. And where the hell did you get that body armour? We’ve only just started testing it at Hereford.’

  ‘It was a gift
from a friend in Switzerland,’ Richter said, glancing down at the Dragon’s Skin vest Schneider had sent him and trying a smile for size.

  He looked around at the carnage on the pebble beach. One of the Fords – the one that still had all four tyres intact – had gone, powering away from the scene seconds after Johnson’s body had hit the ground, and the snipers had made no move to stop it. But when the third bodyguard had aimed his pistol from the disabled car at the crumpled shape lying beside the Jaguar, Dekker and the second sniper, also from 22 SAS, had opened up immediately.

  Johnson had been right in claiming that the Ford was armoured, but vehicle armour is intended to defend against small-arms fire and will only normally cope with rounds fired by pistols, assault rifles or sub-machine guns. Dekker, however, was using a Barrett, a lethally accurate ultra-long-range sniper rifle that fired a half-inch round, and against that the car’s armour had proved completely ineffective. The first round had smashed through the rear window and ploughed on through the rest of the vehicle, virtually cutting the bodyguard in half on its way. The following half-dozen rounds essentially reduced the Ford to scrap metal.

  ‘You’re lucky they didn’t try for a head shot,’ Dekker said.

  ‘It was a gamble,’ Richter admitted, ‘but American basic combat training always recommends aiming at the centre of the body mass. Particularly with a pistol, which was all those guys had. A head shot is just too difficult: it’s far too easy to miss.’

  ‘Right, are you OK to drive now? Or do you fancy nipping over to the Britannia Inn for fish and chips?’

  Another time, Colin. Once I get in the driving seat I should be fine,’ Richter said, struggling to his feet. ‘But I’ll be bruised for bloody weeks.’

  ‘What do you want us to do about this mess? I mean, do you want me to call it in, or just get the hell out of here before the plods arrive and start asking awkward questions?’

  ‘Collect the weapons and any ID these two guys are carrying, then let’s get out of here. I’m sure you can play with the MAC-10s up at Hereford. You could make an anonymous triple-nine call from a phone box somewhere near here to get things moving, and I’ll call the Kent woodentops once I get back to London and steer them in the right – or rather the wrong – direction. I’ve got a contact I was working with earlier on during this op and I’m sure I can use him.’

  ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘It’ll be pretty close to the truth. I taped what Johnson said and I’ll feed edited bits of that to Five, just enough to establish that he was the original architect of the scheme. I’ll even suggest that when his masters discovered what he’d done, they ordered his termination. There’ll be a lot of unanswered questions, but there’s enough truth in the story to stop any serious fallout. And I know a senior guy in the Company, so I’ll make sure he knows what really happened.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You ordered the assassination of two CIA officers, both with diplomatic immunity. Isn’t Simpson going to want your balls on a platter or something?’

  ‘Probably,’ Richter grinned, ‘but that’s nothing new. In my job, I’m pretty well always in the shit – the only thing that varies is the depth. But I’ll survive, I guess.’

  ‘OK, Paul, we’ll get out of here now,’ Dekker said, as Richter lowered himself carefully into the driving seat of the Jaguar. ‘Until next time. And there will be a next time, I suppose? Some other op going bad and you need the boys from Hereford to bail you out?’

  ‘You can count on that, Colin. There’ll definitely be a next time.’

  Author’s Note

  SS Richard Montgomery

  The SS Richard Montgomery was a dry cargo Liberty ship built by the St John’s River Shipbuilding Company at Jacksonville, Florida, completed in July 1943 and named after an Irish soldier killed in the assault on Quebec in 1775. In August 1944 the ship embarked 6,127 tons of assorted munitions at Hog Island in Philadelphia and immediately sailed for Great Britain, arriving in the Thames Estuary in preparation for joining a convoy to Cherbourg.

  Upon her arrival, Acting Lieutenant-Commander R. J. Walmsley, the King’s Harbour Master, ordered the ship to anchor in a berth off the northern edge of Sheerness Middle Sand, despite the fact that at low tide the water depth there was a mere 24 feet, and only 30 feet at high water. As trimmed, the Richard Montgomery drew about 31 feet – 3 feet more than the 28 feet of most Liberty ships – because of the weight of her cargo. The discrepancy was quite obvious to the assistant harbour master, Roger Foley, who tried to berth the ship elsewhere, but he was overruled by Walmsley. Foley refused to carry out the original order unless it was put in writing, which Walmsley declined to do, and Foley left the office.

  On 20 August, the Richard Montgomery began drifting towards Sheerness Middle Sand, driven by a northerly wind and buoyed by a spring tide. Despite nearby ships trying to attract the attention of her crew, nobody on board the Richard Montgomery did anything constructive until the ship actually ran aground, when they all took to the lifeboats. This was the worst-case scenario: the ship was heavily laden and had struck the sandbank at high water.

  As the tide ebbed, the ship stuck fast, and a further problem soon became apparent. The Liberty ships were built very quickly, using a welded plate design – the record for completion of a ship from laying the keel to launching was under five days – and, as the Richard Montgomery settled onto the sandbank, her welded hull plates began cracking open, a noise audible over a mile away.

  Salvage operations commenced almost immediately, and over the next weeks about half the cargo of munitions was successfully removed, holds numbers four and five and the mast locker being completely emptied. Four days after grounding, the hull split just forward of number three hold, flooding that hold, and numbers one and two, virtually stopping any further salvage efforts in them, and the ship broke her back early in September.

  The wreck was finally abandoned on 25 September, by which date only 2,954 tons of munitions had been removed, and no subsequent salvage attempts have been made. The contents of holds one, two and three were virtually untouched, leaving nearly 3,200 tons of high explosive, mainly 250-, 500-, 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs, white phosphorus smoke bombs and cluster fragmentation bombs in the wreck, a mere 3,000 yards from the seaside town of Sheerness.

  Roger Foley was posted to another department immediately after the ship grounded, to ensure that his evidence wouldn’t be heard at the subsequent Board of Inquiry. Bizarrely, despite the fact that the grounding of the vessel was entirely caused by Walmsley’s gross incompetence, the ship’s captain and chief officer were found guilty of placing their vessel in a hazardous position.

  Since 1944, the wreck has broken into three pieces and has sunk a little way into the sand, but is still only just below the surface, the masts clearly visible. The remains are cautiously inspected by divers every year or so, and there have been representations to the British Government by everyone from the people of Sheerness, who are pretty much at ground zero, to the American Government, which still nominally owns the cargo, suggesting it might be time to either remove the explosives or make them safe. Every approach has been rejected, presumably on the grounds that the wreck isn’t close enough to Westminster to be of any real concern to the politicians.

  It’s argued by some that the longer the wreck stays there, the safer it gets. This suggestion is somewhat naive, because the bulk of the explosive material is TNT which, just like the plastic explosives C4 and Semtex, is largely unaffected by submersion in water. The reality is that the Richard Montgomery’s cargo is just about as lethal today as it was when the ship was stranded.

  In 1970, the British Government produced a report which estimated that the explosion of the wrecked ship’s cargo would punch a 1,000-feet-wide column of water and debris 10,000 feet into the sky and generate a wave over 15 feet high. It would be the world’s largest ever non-nuclear explosion.

  Sheerness and the surrounding
areas – including the oil refinery on Sheppey, and the eastern end of the Isle of Grain – would suffer catastrophic damage. And the destruction wouldn’t stop there. It’s probable that the wave resulting from the explosion would swamp Canvey Island, South Benfleet and Southend-on-Sea on the south Essex coast. It would also sweep into the Medway and cause flooding in Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham. But possibly the most destructive effects of the wave would be felt some distance away. The narrowing Thames Estuary would have the effect of increasing the height of the wave as it approached Greater London. It would probably overwhelm the Thames Barrier and flood the lower-lying areas of the city, including much of the Underground system and the road tunnels under the river, causing considerable loss of life and widespread destruction that would take months to rectify.

  The explosion would be, quite simply, the biggest economic and environmental disaster ever to strike the United Kingdom, infinitely more destructive than all the bombs and V-weapons that fell on London during the Second World War, and equivalent to the north-east corner of the Isle of Sheppey being hit by a tactical-yield 1.5 kiloton nuclear weapon.

  The Special Group

  The Special Group was created by President Eisenhower under the auspices of the National Security Council as a sub-cabinet level organization. Then known as the 5412 Committee, it was tasked with oversight of all the country’s clandestine operations and, more importantly, of insulating the president from official knowledge of those operations. The Special Group was, and is, the most secret organization in America.

  The name has been changed frequently – over the years it’s been known by numerous innocuous titles such as ‘The 303’ and ‘The 40 Committee’ in a modest attempt to muddy the waters – but its concept and purpose have remained unchanged. Normally headed by the president’s National Security Advisor, and including the Director of National Intelligence (formerly the Director of Central Intelligence until this post was disestablished after 9/11), the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, The Special Group approves all sensitive, and especially all illegal, activities proposed by the CIA.