Bioweapon

by James Barrington

  Vernon stopped the Ford once more to check the printed map before making the final turn into the street – actually a cul-de-sac – where the house was located. He drove slowly down towards the end of the road, checking the house numbers as he went. He stopped the vehicle outside a property on the eastern side of the road, a house that appeared virtually identical to its neighbours.

  There was a small black leather briefcase resting in the passenger foot well. It had originally been on the passenger seat but had shot forward a few minutes earlier when Vernon did his emergency stop as the small Vauxhall had overtaken him. He picked it up, walked to the front door of the semi-detached house and rang the bell.

  A minute or so later the door swung open. A heavily-built black man stood in the opening and stared at Vernon, who extended his right hand and murmured a few words. The man shook his hand and Vernon stepped inside the house.

  * * *

  Almost two hours later the front door opened again and Vernon stepped out, shaking the other man’s hand as he did so. He walked across to his car, then glanced back at the house and raised his left hand in salute as the front door closed.

  Most drivers could have turned the car on the street quite easily by doing a three-point turn, but as usual Vernon made something of a hash of it, a five-point turn being nearer the mark, and even then, he managed to kerb one of the Ford’s front wheels, and ran over the pavement on the opposite side of the road when he finally straightened the vehicle.

  He stopped the car and chose a new destination on the satnav. It was a place he’d been to before, albeit only a couple of times, but even without the directions that would be provided by the somewhat overbearing woman who lived deep in the device’s digital heart he knew it would not be a difficult route. There would be signposts everywhere once he got within about twenty miles of his objective and his biggest challenge would be avoiding the other vehicles on the road, something that he didn’t always manage. But this time he needed to do just that, because it was important to him that he left no trail that could be followed. Or at least not one that could be followed easily.

  But first Vernon had another brief stop to make, for which he didn’t need any directions because he already knew the way. He steered the Ford east towards Salisbury, where he left it in a large supermarket car park, just one more grey car in a tarmac field full of similar vehicles, while he spent about ten minutes inside the building. When he returned, he had another task to complete in the car park, which took him about ten minutes of furtive activity using a screwdriver. Nobody saw what he was doing or even noticed him, as far as he could tell.

  Finally, he spent about another ten minutes in the far corner of the same car park, busying himself in the back seat of his Ford using an electric air pump that he plugged into the car’s cigarette lighter, an old jacket, a couple of other items of clothing, and the contents of a box that had been delivered to his house in a plain wrapper just over a week earlier.

  Then he drove slowly out of the supermarket car park and headed broadly north-east, doing what the satnav woman told him. He had time in hand, and not that far to go.

  Britain’s roads are studded with traffic cameras, installed to alert the police to accidents or other problems and to detect vehicles whose drivers are committing some kind of offence, everything from speeding to having a disqualified driver at the wheel, the latter functions being handled by ANPR – automatic number plate recognition – cameras. The advances in technology had enabled the British police force to concentrate most of their crime-fighting efforts on the easiest of all targets – motorists – rather than getting their hands dirty combatting genuine criminals who might fight back.

  Vernon’s Ford was entirely legal in all respects apart from one, a deception that was an important, though not immediately obvious, part of his exit strategy, and his steady progress in the general direction of London triggered no alerts.

  Not that an ANPR hit would have had any effect upon what happened next. All it might have done would have made tracing his progress and identifying where he had gone slightly quicker and easier.

  But it really made no difference.

  Chapter 4

  Hammersmith, London

  Monday

  ‘Legoland got the access code or whatever you call it by snail mail on Friday,’ Richard Simpson said late on the Monday afternoon, the less-than-polite epithet referring to the Secret Intelligence Service’s avant-garde building at Vauxhall Cross on the Thames. ‘Baker ran checks on the SD card using a standalone computer with no internet connection and no link to our system. It was clean, which is what we expected bearing in mind the source.’

  ‘So, what was the data?’ Richter asked. ‘Was it worth all that fannying about in Amsterdam?’

  ‘Definitely, yes,’ Simpson replied. ‘There wasn’t actually that much on it, but what there was has answered several quite awkward questions about one particular event. There were a few short video sequences, taken with mobile phone cameras most likely, and a kind of overview in Russian that we’ve had translated already.’

  Simpson picked a single sheet of paper out of the red Secret file open in front of him and passed it to Richter over the double row of cacti that lined the edge of his desk.

  ‘That’s the original, so give me your version of it, just as a check.’

  Richter took the document and glanced at the title, which contained three proper names: Salisbury, Novichok and Skripal. He looked up at Richard Simpson.

  ‘A good start,’ Richter said. ‘Is Moscow admitting what happened?’

  ‘Not exactly, or not in so many words.’

  Richter didn’t say anything else, he just read the document, translating the Russian text into English, sentence by sentence as he did so. Then he looked up again at Simpson.

  His boss was, as usual, immaculately dressed in a dark grey suit, white shirt and dark blue silk tie, his pinkish complexion and clean-shaven, bland features making him look something like a benevolent bank manager, an impression that was entirely erroneous: the one word that could never be used to describe Richard Simpson was ‘benevolent’. He was a mandarin, a high flyer in the civil service who had been appointed the head of the Foreign Operations Executive, a deniable executive arm loosely attached to the Secret Intelligence Service, purely on merit. And in his case, the word ‘merit’ meant he was ruthlessly efficient, highly organised and utterly vindictive. He was, without any doubt, the right man in the right job at the right time. Richter didn’t particularly like him, but he had enormous respect for Simpson’s undeniable ability and competence.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ Richter said. ‘I assume that the video sequences show the actions taken by these two men in Salisbury, who I also assume are not two of the sharpest tools in the shed.’

  ‘They are not,’ Simpson agreed. ‘The Russian text confirms that the Skripals were poisoned with Novichok administered by these two men, who filmed themselves depositing the agent and then disposing of the delivery medium, the perfume bottle, as well as a couple of spares that they had. The other video sequences just show them walking to and from the Skripals’ house, and there’s one slightly longer sequence where they discuss exactly how they’re going to do it. It looks as if their idea was to claim credit for the assassination with their masters at Khodinka once the Skripals had croaked, and the videos would prove that they had been responsible. All that implies that it was an unauthorised assassination attempt, that they were trying to get rid of a troublesome former agent – Sergei Skripal – presumably to curry favour with their bosses.’

  ‘Or alternatively,’ Richter pointed out, ‘it might have been a genuine operation authorised by somebody at the Aquarium and these two numpties had been told to document everything to prove that they had followed orders. Either way, they don’t appear to be that tightly wrapped. Orders or no orders, even someone with a double-digit IQ ought to have realised that filming yourself attempting an assassination is never going to be a good idea in an
y circumstances. So, what are we going to do about it?’

  Simpson shook his head.

  ‘We’re not going to do anything. The data helpfully identifies exactly who these two people are, and the route they took while they were in Salisbury. I’ve already had a few words with my opposite numbers at Five and Six, and the FCO, come to that, and we have a plan that we’ll push through the Woodentops.’

  Simpson’s shorthand was simple to understand: ‘Five’ was the security service, MI5, located at Millbank in London, while ‘Six’ was the Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI6, based at Vauxhall Cross. And he almost invariably referred to the British police as ‘Woodentops,’ because he had an extraordinarily low opinion of their capabilities, competence and even usefulness.

  ‘And the plan is?’

  ‘Easy. Because this is domestic Millbank will take the lead. They’ll release the information from the SD card to the Woodentops, suitably sanitised and probably in dribs and drabs so that it looks as if Five have actually done some investigative work to find out what happened rather than had it handed to them on a plate by us. We’ll let the plods put together a case once they’ve checked CCTV footage and the like from Salisbury, as well as relevant airline records and hotel reservations. When they’ve done that, the British government can start demanding the extradition of these two guys from Russia – which we all know will never happen but will look good in the press and take everybody’s mind off the shambles they’re making of Brexit – and start pounding the table in righteous indignation complaining about Russian special forces’ operatives blatantly carrying out illegal acts on the soil of our precious sovereign nation. All the usual bollocks, basically.’

  Richter didn’t reply for a few seconds, and then he too shook his head.

  ‘I’m not really sure why the Russians have bothered giving us this,’ he said. ‘They never came out of the woodwork after the Litvinenko assassination or the killing of Georgi Markov, so what’s different about this one? Apart from the fact that it was a failure, obviously?’

  ‘We’ve talked about that, and the Intelligence Director has a theory that does hold together.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  Richter only rarely saw eye to eye with the ID, and had had a somewhat public row with him, albeit by telephone on a conference call, with representatives from SIS, MI5 and GCHQ all listening in, in the initial stages of an operation a couple of months earlier.

  ‘He thinks,’ Simpson went on, ‘the reason is exactly that: because it was a failure. The difference is that the Skripals are alive and talking, and Litvinenko and Markov are dead and buried. When the Russians carry out this kind of operation they do it to eliminate a troublesome agent or traitor or dissident, but they also do it to remind anyone else out there in the field that Mother Russia has a long reach and an even longer memory. And because the attack on the Skripals was such an obvious and clumsy failure, the Russian state organs are distancing themselves from it and trying to pretend that it didn’t work because it was not officially sanctioned. They’re claiming that it was nothing more than an amateur attempt that didn’t succeed, and they’re holding up the two men involved to ridicule both here and in Russia. Whatever the truth behind the attack, if it had succeeded and the Skripals had died in agony in a British hospital, the ID doesn’t think the Russians would have said a word, because the deaths would just have been another reinforcement of Russian omnipotence and Moscow’s refusal to ever forgive and forget.’

  ‘I have to say,’ Richter replied, almost unwillingly, ‘that does make quite a lot of sense. This time, I think the ID might actually have got something right for a change. So what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Nothing, obviously. I’ve just kicked the whole thing sideways to MI5 at Millbank and now it’s their problem. We’ll probably see the tabloids frothing at the mouth about it over the next few weeks, demanding this, that and the other, and then it’ll all die away because Moscow will simply ignore any extradition requests or anything else that Westminster sends their way, just like the Russians always do. So you can just get back to work and forget all about it.’

  Simpson glanced down at an unopened file on his desk, an indication that Richter was being dismissed, then glanced up again.

  ‘Well done in Amsterdam, by the way,’ he added. ‘That was very competently handled.’

  Simpson looked at Richter and raised one eyebrow a bare couple of millimetres.

  ‘I hope the nubile Tash gave you every satisfaction,’ he added. ‘I gather she’s quite athletic, in the right circumstances.’

  Richter’s face remained expressionless and he didn’t respond as he stood up and walked out of the office.

  He had no idea where Simpson got his information from, because he’d said nothing to anybody and he was quite sure that Tash had also remained tight-lipped. But somehow Simpson seemed to always have at least one of his fingers in almost every pie, and to know almost everything, almost all of the time.

  Chapter 5

  Hammersmith, London

  Friday

  ‘We’ve got a runner,’ Richard Simpson said economically, and slid a red ‘Secret’ file across his desk in the general direction of Richter, who was sitting in the chair in front of him. ‘Or maybe we haven’t,’ he added.

  ‘And that interests me why, exactly?’ Richter replied, making no move to pick up the file.

  ‘There are reasons.’

  ‘There are always reasons, but I wasn’t aware that finding missing persons was a part of our remit. I thought that was something the local plods were supposed to sort out.’

  ‘It is, but in this case it isn’t, because this particular runner is a person of interest, and that’s why we’re in the loop, along with Five and Six. The Woodentops have been told as well, but our best guess is that the subject of this search has probably already left for warmer climes. Or possibly colder ones.’

  Richter grunted dismissively and reluctantly picked up the Secret file.

  ‘So, who is it?’ he asked. ‘Some civil servant who’s decided to supplement his income by doing a little bit of freelance data exchange with the SVR or the FSB or even what’s left of ISIS or some other bunch of lethal misfits?’

  ‘We don’t know – yet. That’s why we’ve been tasked. I mean, we know exactly who the runner is, which is one reason why the guys at the FCO and other assorted aristocrats are hopping about like freshly-fucked stoats, but what we don’t know yet is his motive. And it’s that which is making a lot of people start to lose sleep.’

  Richter nodded, opened the file and stared at the A4-sized colour photograph of the man staring back at him from the left-hand side of the document. He looked about sixty years old, with clumps of longish and slightly dishevelled white hair on both sides of his head, the rest of which was entirely bald. A pair of blue eyes stared at the camera from under bushy brows, topping his regular and largely unmemorable features surrounded by a fairly full white beard. More than anything, he looked irritated, as if he was about to object to being photographed. But what he didn’t look was dangerous, and Richter said so.

  ‘He looks like a harmless old duffer to me. If he’s a person of interest, I presume he’s dangerous. So if I do find him, what’s he going to do – bore me to death?’

  Simpson shook his head.

  ‘He looks completely harmless and as far as I know he is, though I don’t know if he’s boring. The problem isn’t really him but the information he’s got locked up inside his head, and that’s what’s brought us and Millbank and Vauxhall Cross into the mix. Take that file away with you, read it and then come back up here.’

  ‘I suppose you can’t brief me now?’ Richter asked. ‘Save me climbing up those bloody stairs again?’

  ‘No, because I’m waiting for the latest reports from the Border Control and Immigration people. Once I’ve got those I’m hoping I’ll have a better idea where to send you. Come back in a couple of hours and we’ll take it from there.’

>   Back in his own office, Richter made a cup of instant coffee, then opened up the file and began to read. The information it contained was both comprehensive and at the same time strangely uninformative.

  The man with the bald head and slipped tonsure was Charles Edward Vernon, and what the file contained was a kind of CV-cum-biography of him, from his double first in chemistry and biochemistry at an Oxbridge college some forty years earlier through to his current employment, or more accurately to the job he had apparently walked out of exactly a week earlier. And it was that job that had clearly rung a whole carillon of alarm bells in the corridors of the Secret Intelligence Service because of its overseas implications, and with the Security Service due to fears of a domestic incident.

  In brief, Charles Vernon, one of the most senior professors of biochemistry at the Dstl, had walked out of his office at the end of the previous working week and, within a few hours, had appeared to vanish completely.

  The initials of his parent organisation were far more familiar to Richter than they would have been to most people, not least because of the information he’d brought back from Amsterdam and a briefing he had subsequently attended about the Salisbury incident – the attempted assassination of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. The Dstl is the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, one of the most secretive and arguably most misunderstood military research units in the United Kingdom, usually incorrectly referred to by the media as ‘Porton Down.’ Actually, Porton Down is a 7,000 acre science park located just to the north-east of the village of Porton, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, and the Dstl only occupies one section of this park.

  But now everyone in Britain knows exactly what ‘Porton Down’ is and what the scientists who work there do, thanks to Novichok and the attack on the Skripals. And, of course, because of the later and unrelated death of Dawn Sturgess – unrelated, that is, except that she was killed by the Russian-developed and manufactured nerve agent Novichok.