These ‘projects’ have included the various attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro; building and operating the U-2 spy plane; Iran-Contra; the murder of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973; financing anti-government rebels in Mauritius; attempts to destabilize the Libyan regime; providing the Mujahadin in Afghanistan with money and weapons to counter the Russian invasion; and money-laundering plots almost without number. The latter included the smuggling of a ton of pure cocaine into the United States from Venezuela in 1990, cocaine that was later sold on the streets of America after a complex and unworkable plan to ensnare drug traffickers had failed.
Each of these ventures was, of course, approved by the then president, but never in writing. The Special Group would assess the viability and utility of each proposed operation, and brief the president verbally about it. If he agreed, also verbally, the CIA would be directed by the Group to implement the plan. If – or, more likely with many CIA operations, when – the operation failed or was exposed to public scrutiny, the president could legitimately disavow all knowledge of it, and the lack of any paper trail would support that denial.
As with so many political matters, what’s important isn’t the truth, but what somebody can prove to be the truth.
TIMEBOMB
James Barrington is a trained military pilot who has worked in covert operations and espionage. He now lives in Andorra and this is his fourth novel, writing under a pseudonym. His previous novels, Overkill, Pandemic and Foxbat, also featured Paul Richter.
Also by James Barrington
OVERKILL
PANDEMIC
FOXBAT
Acknowledgements
Looking back over my previous books, I’ve noticed how the same three names have cropped up in the dedication of each one, and with very good reason.
As always, I must thank my friend and agent Luigi Bonomi, principal of LBA, for his constant enthusiasm and encouragement. I’ve said it before, and I mean it – without him I am nothing. Thanks are also due to the whole team working at Macmillan, and especially to Peter Lavery, one of the most talented and skilful editors working in publishing today, not to mention an excellent companion for a leisurely lunch!
And last but by no means least, Sally, my first and fiercest critic.
James Barrington
Principality of Andorra, 2008
Glossary
ARV Armed Response Vehicle. Police vehicle carrying weapons in a locked case in the boot. Known within the force as a ‘gunship’.
CINCFLEET Commander-in-Chief Fleet. The most senior operational command in the Royal Navy, subordinate only to the First Sea Lord, with its operational headquarters based at Northwood in Middlesex.
The Company Slang term for the American Central Intelligence Agency, based at Langley, Virginia.
Double-transposition cipher A basic but very secure encryption technique involving no special equipment whatsoever, just two memorized key words, each usually containing ten or more letters. The result is a series of groups of four, five or six letters. Cracking this kind of cipher is possible, but extremely difficult without access to complex decryption algorithms running on a supercomputer.
The Doughnut The new one-billion-pound electronic eavesdropping centre at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham in Gloucester. So named because that’s what it looks like from the air, the building is almost as big as Wembley Stadium. At its core is an underground bomb-proof chamber the size of the Albert Hall that accommodates rows of supercomputers. Some 4,500 specialist staff work in the Doughnut, including linguists fluent in 67 languages.
Echelon Echelon is a satellite and communications monitoring network jointly run by the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, which monitors all communications – telephone calls, faxes and digital data streams – that begin, end or pass through these territories. Echelon searches for incriminating words or phrases, these being submitted by some 300 agencies from these five governments, which form the so-called ‘Echelon Dictionary’. The Echelon programme is the biggest employer in the American state of Maryland, with over 20,000 people on the payroll, and has a budget that equates to almost one million pounds sterling per hour.
FOE Foreign Operations Executive. The organization which employs Paul Richter. Though FOE is fictitious, the concept is not: SIS has always relied heavily on ex-services personnel recruited to carry out deniable operations on its behalf. The generic term used for these recruits is ‘The Increment’.
Fort Detrick Established in Maryland in 1943 as the site of the US Biological Laboratories, when it was known as Camp Detrick, during the Second World War, this facility became America’s principal biological warfare establishment. It was renamed Fort Detrick in 1956 and continued its work until 1969, when the USA finally signed the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of chemical and biological weapons. Since then, the Fort has been officially involved only in defensive research, but it’s a fact that you can only defend against biological and chemical weapons if you either hold or can manufacture the weapons yourself. So Fort Detrick, by default and no matter what official line is taken, is still involved in the biowarfare business.
Four numbers An oblique reference to the Special Group, originally known as the 5412 Committee. See Author’s Note.
GSG 9 Formerly known as Grenzschutzgruppe 9 – Border Guards Group 9 – GSG 9 is Germany’s elite anti-terrorist organization.
IED Improvised explosive device.
Legoland Slang term for the British Secret Intelligence Service’s headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the bank of the Thames.
SCI Special Compartmentalized Intelligence. In addition to the normal security classifications, there is also a code word clearance system which applies to subjects classified at top-secret level and above. The system is known as Special Compartmentalized Intelligence or SCI, and allows knowledge of specific subjects to be restricted to people on a ‘need to know’ basis, even if their normal security clearance would theoretically give them access. For example, a file classified ‘top secret’ could be viewed by anyone with a ‘top secret’ or higher clearance, but not if a specific code word was also applied to the file.
SM or Sierra Mike CIA operations are often given a geographical designator as part of their code name. For example, ‘BE’ refers to Poland, ‘DB’ to Iraq, ‘DN’ to South Korea and ‘SM’ to the United Kingdom.
UBL Usama bin Laden. Referred to in the UK as Osama bin Laden.
Vauxhall Cross The London headquarters of the British Secret Intelligence Service.
First published 2008 by Macmillan
First published in paperback 2009 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2010 by Pan Books
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ISBN 978-0-230-73817-1 PDF
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Copyright © James Barrington 2008
The right of James Barrington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Timebomb (Paul Richter) Page 37