Launch Code

by Michael Ridpath

  No one.

  A sandy path branched off to the left, steeply downhill, and he carefully scrambled down it towards the beach, which was almost entirely covered by angry sea.

  He looked back up, along the cliffs.

  For a moment he thought he caught a silhouette moving against the black sky, just beneath the cliff edge.

  ‘Bill!’ he shouted, but the wind took his cry and dashed it against the waves.

  Fifty-Seven

  Megan drove through the potholes on the lane at forty miles an hour, crunching the underside of Brooke’s hired car and jolting its occupants. Alice was in the front seat next to her, and Brooke was in the back.

  They sped past the green and the pub and swerved on to the main road.

  ‘Megan!’ cried Alice, and she reached across to yank the steering wheel to the left. For a second she was blinded by a pair of headlights coming straight towards her, and a horn blared. The car lurched to the left and straightened up.

  ‘You were on the wrong side of the road, Megan!’ Too late, Alice wondered whether Megan had ever driven in the UK.

  ‘Only briefly,’ said Megan, as she took a tight curve too fast, the car clipping the verge.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Brooke from the back.

  ‘Do you know where we are going?’ said Megan.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alice. ‘Just stick on this road. We go through Old Hunstanton and then we’ll get to the cliffs.’

  ‘We should reply to Dad,’ said Megan.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Alice. She stared at her own phone screen. How do you plead with your father not to kill himself? There wasn’t time to fashion a well-crafted appeal. Keep it straightforward and quick.

  Don’t do it Dad! We all love you. Stay alive for us. Please! Alice Brooke Megan and Maya.

  She read it out.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Megan.

  Alice hit Send.

  ‘Do you think Toby will get there in time to stop him?’ said Brooke.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Megan. But that’s all it was. A hope.

  ‘Dad might hesitate,’ said Brooke. ‘You know. He talks to the admiral. Realizes he’s been found out. Decides to kill himself. Sends a message to us. Then . . . Perhaps he walks around a bit. Can’t make up his mind? Suicidal people do that. Maybe your reply will make him pause.’

  But Alice was thinking about something else. ‘You know,’ she said. ‘There’s something not quite right about Henry Greenwald’s story.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Megan.

  ‘Henry said he saw his mother with a naval officer. We assumed that was Dad, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It can’t have been.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Brooke.

  ‘Because Henry said he was six. If he was sixteen in 1996, that means he was six in 1986.’

  ‘And Dad had left the Navy!’ said Megan.

  ‘Correct. Pat Greenwald was speaking to someone else in a navy uniform.’

  ‘Lars?’ said Brooke.

  ‘Lars left the Navy in 1984 too,’ said Megan.

  Megan’s phone rang and she passed it to Alice to answer, swerving as she did so.

  ‘Hi, Maya, it’s Alice.’

  ‘Alice! Did you see that email from Daddy? What’s going on?’

  The fear in Maya’s voice reached out over the Atlantic to her older sister.

  ‘Oh, Maya, yes, we did get it. And we think it must be a suicide note.’

  ‘Oh God! Where is he?’

  ‘We think he’s on the cliffs by Hunstanton. Toby’s looking for him now, and we’re on our way.’

  ‘Has he jumped? Oh my God, Alice, has he jumped?’

  ‘We don’t know. We hope not, but we don’t know. Look, Maya. Can you quickly get in touch with Henry Greenwald and ask him if he can remember whether the officer his mother was with in the kitchen was bald?’

  ‘But Dad isn’t bald?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Maya was no dummy. ‘I’ll do it. Wait there.’

  The car sped through the darkness.

  ‘So what does that mean?’ said Brooke. ‘I’m way behind, here.’

  ‘I get it,’ said Megan. ‘Admiral Robinson is bald. It could have been him in the kitchen with Pat Greenwald. Which would mean it was Admiral Robinson, not Dad, who gave the secrets to the Russians.’

  ‘Dad may have told them about the near-launch,’ said Alice. ‘But Robinson gave them more secrets. The secrets the FBI were asking about in 1996. And he did that over a period of years.’

  Within two minutes Maya’s phone beeped. It was a simple text.

  Henry says officer was bald. Call me with news.

  ‘I thought so!’ said Alice. ‘It was Admiral Robinson!’

  ‘The admiral has managed to keep what he did quiet for all these years,’ said Megan. ‘But he would have gotten worried when Sam Bowen started asking questions. Especially when Sam mentioned Pat Greenwald to us at Thanksgiving.’

  As Megan was talking, the pieces were slipping into place in Alice’s mind.

  ‘So he had to shut Sam Bowen up. He must have killed him! It wasn’t Dad.’

  ‘But the admiral wasn’t in England then,’ said Megan. ‘Dad said he flew over here as soon as he heard about Sam Bowen’s death.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Alice.

  ‘We don’t really know that he wasn’t in England,’ said Brooke from the back seat.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He could have been here all the time. Then when Dad got in touch with him, he pretended to fly straight to London.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alice. ‘But how did he know Sam had mentioned Pat Greenwald?’

  ‘Perhaps Dad told him?’

  ‘Dad said he told Lars,’ said Alice. ‘Maybe Lars told the admiral?’

  ‘In which case, Lars would have been suspicious when Sam Bowen was killed.’

  ‘And the admiral would need to shut him up too.’

  ‘If that’s all true, why would Dad want to kill himself?’ said Brooke.

  ‘A good question,’ said Alice.

  But the pieces were tumbling into place in Megan’s mind as well. ‘The admiral needs someone else to be the fall guy, and Dad is the natural person for that. Better than you, Alice. But he can’t risk Dad being arrested. There would be a big trial and an investigation, and his own role might come out.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And he can’t just kill him, like he killed Lars. He’d be the last man standing – a more obvious suspect.’

  ‘So he wants to get Dad to kill himself?’

  ‘He wants Dad to be seen as the murderer. And then push him off the cliff and make it look like suicide, like Dad was overwhelmed with guilt. Everything will be tidied up. With a suicide rather than a murder, the authorities won’t ask difficult questions and the admiral will go free. That’s why he took Dad to the top of a cliff. I mean, why else choose that place to talk? At night, when no one will see them?’

  ‘And we would back up his story; we’d say we all thought Dad had killed Sam Bowen.’

  ‘But what about that email to all of us?’ said Megan. ‘Why would Dad send that email?’

  Silence for a few seconds as they scrambled for an answer, Megan successfully splitting her concentration between the problem and the dark road ahead.

  ‘Dad didn’t send it. It was a hack,’ said Alice. ‘Must have been. The admiral made it look like it came from Dad.’

  ‘The admiral doesn’t look like a hacker to me,’ said Brooke.

  ‘No,’ said Alice. ‘But he was in intelligence for many years. He’ll know how to find himself a hacker for hire. One who will keep quiet.’ She paused. ‘Wait a moment. When I was in custody, the police accused me of hacking Sam Bowen’s Cloud account, or finding his password and deleting his notes. I didn’t, I wouldn’t know how. But someone did.’

  ‘It adds up,’ said Brooke.

  ‘It does,’ said Alice.

  ‘So what’s hap
pened to Dad on the cliffs?’ said Brooke.

  ‘The admiral is planning to push him off,’ said Megan. ‘Fake his suicide. And then say he spoke to Dad and told him he had been found out, and Dad took it very badly.’

  ‘So we’re too late?’ said Brooke.

  ‘Maybe Toby will stop him,’ said Megan.

  ‘But Toby doesn’t know what the admiral is up to,’ said Alice. ‘And the admiral would have no qualms about killing Toby if he thought Toby saw him push Dad off a cliff.’

  ‘Call him,’ said Megan.

  Fifty-Eight

  Toby ran back up the path and along the cliff, to where he thought he had seen the figure, but it was difficult to pinpoint the spot exactly. Once again, he slid over the fence and pushed his way through the bushes towards the cliff edge.

  Carefully. He didn’t want to step into nothingness.

  He reached the edge and looked down. A ledge a few yards wide jutted out into the air ten feet below the rim. Gingerly he eased himself down.

  He slid the last couple of feet, until he reached firm rock and pulled himself to his feet.

  He was correct; he had seen a figure up there. In fact there were two, standing just a few feet apart from each other.

  ‘Bill?’ said Toby.

  But it wasn’t Bill who answered. ‘Stay exactly where you are, Toby.’

  It was the admiral. And in his hand was a gun. And the gun was pointed straight at Toby.

  Toby didn’t understand. So the admiral had got to Bill before he had jumped? That was good. And now he was stopping Bill from jumping.

  By pointing a gun at him.

  That didn’t make sense. Shooting someone was not a great suicide-prevention method.

  Toby took a step forward.

  ‘Stop! Or I’ll shoot you.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ said Toby, opening his hands to show he wasn’t carrying anything. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Bill. ‘But it doesn’t look good. For either of us.’

  The admiral stepped back against the rock so that he could cover both Toby and Bill. ‘Come and stand over here, next to Bill,’ he said.

  For a moment Toby wondered whether to obey. It occurred to him that if Bill and he were going to jump the admiral, now would be the best time to do it, while they were sufficiently apart from each other that the admiral could only cover one of them at a time.

  Except that the admiral was pointing his pistol straight at Toby’s chest. And he had spent his life in the military; he probably knew how to use it.

  Toby moved over to Bill. ‘So why did you send us that message, Bill? ‘ he said.

  ‘What message?’

  ‘The goodbye message. Like you were going to kill yourself.’

  Bill glanced at Toby. ‘He just told me to jump. My guess is Admiral Robinson sent you that message.’

  ‘He’s trying to fake your suicide,’ said Toby, beginning to understand. It was impossible to see the admiral’s eyes in the darkness, but the barrel of his pistol glimmered a lighter shade of grey.

  ‘You gave those secrets to the Russians, didn’t you, Glenn?’ said Bill. ‘You are the spy the FBI asked me about?’

  ‘I was never a spy,’ said the admiral. ‘I never betrayed my country.’

  ‘Then why did you give them those secrets?’

  ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘Because I’m the only man in the world who might understand you,’ said Bill. ‘I gave them secrets too, remember?’

  There was silence for a second or two. For a moment, Toby’s body was overwhelmed with a wave of fear, fear which rooted him to the spot and threatened to paralyse his brain.

  He fought it.

  Stay calm. Stay focused. Just like Bill. Watch out for an opportunity.

  They were both only a foot from the cliff edge. The wind roared in his ears and the waves crashed sixty feet below. If they both jumped the admiral, one of them just might overpower him. But the other would be shot, and would probably fall backwards into the sea.

  But if they both did nothing, they would both die.

  Unless Bill could talk their way out of it.

  Wait. Listen. Watch for an opportunity. Conquer the fear.

  ‘I’d like to hear why you did it, Glenn,’ Bill said, his voice calm and encouraging. ‘There must have been a good reason.’

  The admiral spoke. ‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ He paused to marshal his thoughts. ‘What I learned in the Pentagon when I was working on Able Archer 83 exercise really shook me up. And then what happened on the Hamilton made it all clearer. By the 1980s the Russians were never about to grab Europe and roll their tanks into West Germany. At that stage, they were way more scared of us than we were of them. We had a stronger economy and we were building a much bigger and better nuclear arsenal. And Reagan was making our nuclear policy much more aggressive.’

  ‘I remember,’ said Bill. ‘He was talking about winning the Cold War.’

  ‘Star Wars. Cruise missiles in Europe. All that talk of the Soviet Union being an “evil empire”. It scared them, almost to the point where they were about to strike us first. And I found out later I was right. I worked with the CIA group that investigated the Soviet reaction to the Able Archer 83 exercise. The Russians really did think we were about to launch a decapitation first strike.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ said Bill.

  ‘I was really impressed by what you and Lars did on the Hamilton. So when Pat Greenwald approached me after she had spoken with you, I thought maybe I could do my bit to stop a war starting. I couldn’t change US nuclear policy, but I could help the Russians understand what we were really doing. That we were not really planning a pre-emptive strike. And that if we ever did launch missiles it would be by accident rather than design.’

  ‘It was worth a shot,’ said Bill. ‘That’s exactly what I was thinking. That’s what we discussed at the fort in Groton.’

  ‘Yes, it was. I spoke with a Russian physicist who claimed she was a peace activist. Irena. Did you ever talk to her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bill. ‘In Paris.’

  ‘I was pretty sure she was KGB, but I didn’t care. That was better, really. More certainty that my message would get through to the Russian top brass.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Bill. ‘I was worried she was KGB.’ Toby was impressed by the way Bill was placing himself on the admiral’s side. In fact, he was doing such a good job of it that Toby wondered whether he really meant it. Which was of course what Bill was trying to achieve.

  Toby’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He ignored it.

  ‘I went further than you. Told them more over a period of years until the wall came down. I wanted them to know what our nuclear strategy really was; that despite what Reagan was saying, we were never about to launch an unprovoked attack.

  ‘Lars knew what I was doing,’ the admiral went on. ‘He had spoken with Pat Greenwald and then put her on to me. We talked about it over the years, especially after he got out of jail in the Caribbean.’

  Toby joined the dots. Bill had told Lars that Sam Bowen was on to Pat Greenwald. Sam Bowen had died. Lars guessed it was Admiral Robinson who killed Sam. So Lars had died.

  Toby didn’t know whether Bill was figuring that out. Probably best not to mention it if he was.

  ‘I think you did the right thing,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll tell you what. If you leave Toby and me alive, I won’t mention any of this. I respect what you did. I respect why you did it. I’ll keep quiet. Like I have for the last twenty-six years. I took a risk back then to preserve peace. I killed my best friend. I understand.’

  Bill’s voice was calm and persuasive. It almost persuaded Toby.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill the historian,’ said the admiral. ‘I brought a knife with me in case I had to. I would have preferred not to use it, but when I spoke to Sam at the pub, he had so nearly put everything together I had to stop him. Like I had to stop Pat Greenwald before the FBI got to her.’ />
  So it had been the admiral who had murdered Pat Greenwald in 1996, not some random mugger.

  ‘I get that,’ said Bill. ‘This stuff is bigger than individual lives.’

  ‘What about him?’ said the admiral.

  ‘Toby understands too. You’ll keep quiet, won’t you, Toby?’

  That was Bill’s mistake. He might have got away with it if he had ditched Toby, said something like: ‘you can’t trust him but you can trust me’.

  ‘I understand,’ said Toby.

  ‘No,’ said the admiral. ‘I’m sorry, Bill. I admire what you did all those years ago. And I admired what Lars did. But he had to die. And so do you.’

  Fifty-Nine

  Alice’s fingers reached up to a handle just above the passenger door, giving her something to cling on to.

  With her other hand she pulled out her phone and called Toby.

  Voicemail.

  ‘Toby, it’s me. For God’s sake stay clear of the admiral. We think he killed Sam and Lars and he is probably about to kill Bill. Toby, be careful! Please be careful!’

  ‘Shouldn’t we call the police?’ said Brooke.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said Alice. ‘I’ll do it.’ She dialled 999 and told the operator that she was a suspect in the Sam Bowen murder investigation and that she believed a murder was about to be committed on the cliffs above Old Hunstanton by a man who may be armed. The operator sounded sceptical but promised to send officers to the cliffs.

  Megan was driving too fast for safety. Part of Alice wanted her to slow down, but part of her wanted to speed up. Of course, they might be too late. The admiral might have already killed their father. But if there was a chance – the slightest chance – that they might get there in time to warn Toby or their father, they should try to take it, even if they risked their own lives.

  Alice had lost her mother. Now she was in danger of losing her father and her husband. That couldn’t happen. She couldn’t let that happen. They had to stop it. Somehow.

  Realistically they were going to be too late. Alice felt the panic rise in her chest, but just managed to prevent it erupting in a scream or a sob.