Pandemic pr-2

by James Barrington

  Richter switched on Murphy’s mobile phone again and made sure that the data cable was firmly secured at both ends. He turned to the computer and accessed the dial-up networking script. The default option was a telephone number in the United States, but the name Murphy had given the connection wasn’t what would have been expected if it had been one of the major ISPs like AOL. He’d just called it ‘Crete’, which suggested it was only a temporary connection.

  ‘This is probably it, John,’ Richter said, and clicked ‘Dial’. The mobile phone dialled the number as the two men watched the screen. About half a minute later, the computer broke the connection once the single message on the server had been downloaded.

  ‘Bingo,’ Westwood said. ‘Just the one message, but McCready’s getting restless,’ he added, as he scanned the text.

  ‘OK, let’s put him out of his misery,’ Richter said, and began composing the message they’d agreed to send. It was fairly long, and they made several changes to try to make it as authentic as possible.

  ‘Are you happy with that, John?’ Richter asked, as Westwood read the finished text for the third time.

  ‘I think so. He’s possibly going to smell a rat but I’m betting that he’s so desperate to retrieve the evidence that he’ll still agree to a meet. After all, this’ – he gestured at the screen – ‘could have happened.’

  Three minutes later, Richter clicked ‘Send and Receive’ and watched the screen as the message vanished.

  ‘And now?’ Westwood asked.

  ‘And now we wait,’ Richter said. ‘The ball’s in McCready’s court.’

  Chapter 27

  Monday

  Lake Ridge, Virginia

  Nicholson hadn’t expected a response from Murphy or Stein after such a long silence, being fairly certain that both men had been either killed or captured. But when he checked his email a few minutes before going to bed just before midnight on Sunday he immediately saw the read receipt for the message he’d sent to Murphy, and also a reply from him.

  Murphy sounded flustered, and as he read his message Nicholson could understand why. The killing of Stein had gone badly wrong. The police had turned up almost as soon as he’d pulled the trigger, and Murphy had had to run for it, barely getting away with the steel case, and being forced to avoid police pursuit by heading up into the hills, missing the rendezvous with the helicopter. He’d apparently had to sneak onto the ferry up to Kíthira and make his way from there to the Greek mainland before he could catch a flight out of Athens to Amsterdam and from there to New York. But the message confirmed he had in his possession the steel case, the Ultra Secret file and everything else that Krywald and Stein had been able to retrieve.

  After reading the email half a dozen times, Nicholson leaned back in his seat to consider his options. He was quite certain that the message had been sent from Murphy’s laptop, simply because of the read receipt, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Murphy had sent it.

  On the other hand, the events described in the message were certainly plausible, and would explain why he’d heard nothing further from Stein – because he was already dead – and why Murphy himself had been out of contact for so long.

  For a few minutes he toyed with calling Murphy’s mobile phone, just to see if he could confirm the man’s identity from hearing his voice, but then rejected that idea, because whether Murphy was alive and waiting to complete the last phase of his contract or dead or languishing in some Cretan jail didn’t actually make too much difference.

  What Nicholson knew was that whoever had sent the email, whether Murphy or somebody else, knew far too much about CAIP and that meant that he really had no choice. He had to meet him, find out who he was, and then eliminate him. Nicholson spent a few minutes deciding exactly how to respond, and in particular where he should specify as a rendezvous, then clicked ‘Reply’, and quickly typed his message. He read the text twice, then pressed ‘Send and Receive’, shut down the computer and went to bed.

  Haywood, Virginia

  Richter woke suddenly at four-thirty in the guest bedroom of John Westwood’s spacious house, staring at the unfamiliar surroundings and wondering not merely where he was, but also, for a brief moment, who he was. Some people suffer from jet-lag flying east to west, others vice-versa. Richter belonged to the rather smaller group that suffered it whichever way they flew long-haul, and this had ruined another night’s sleep.

  He knew from past experience that there was no point in even trying to get back to sleep, and he didn’t think Sally Westwood would appreciate him blundering around the house in the pre-dawn darkness. He switched on the bedside light, padded across the room to the low bookcase beside the door and scanned the titles. They seemed to be mainly Aga sagas and chick-lit, and Richter guessed that the room was usually occupied by Sally’s female friends overnighting, but he found a rather battered Clancy novel on the bottom shelf and took that back to bed with him.

  Jack Ryan had just been informed by Admiral Greer that he was to give a presentation at the White House about the missing Russian submarine ‘Red October’ and its renegade captain when Richter’s alarm went off. He silenced it, put the book down on the bedside table and walked into the bathroom for a shower – the guest bedroom didn’t run to a bath, which Richter would have much preferred. He always believed he did a lot of his best thinking while in the bath.

  He appeared in the kitchen just after eight. Sally was on her way out of the door shepherding the two Westwood children in front of her, and heading for her Cherokee Jeep and the school run over to Culpeper. She waved a casual hand towards the cooking range.

  ‘Hi, Paul,’ she called, ‘ham and eggs are in the oven. Just help yourself. I’ll be back in about an hour. Make toast if you want it,’ she added over her shoulder as she pulled the door to behind her.

  Richter headed for the coffee pot instead. He found a mug to fill, added milk, then walked into the study. Westwood was sitting at his desk and staring at the screen of Murphy’s laptop. He looked up as Richter entered.

  ‘Morning, Paul. Sleep well?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Richter said. ‘I’ll sleep a lot better tonight, when this lot’s over. What news?’

  ‘I think we’ve set the hook.’ Westwood wore a smile of triumph. ‘McCready’s replied already. He’s given Murphy a good dressing-down for being out of contact for so long, and he wants to collect the stuff at eleven this morning.’

  ‘Where from?’ Richter asked.

  ‘One of the Company’s regular safe houses. It’s about twenty miles from here. I’ve been there a few times before.’

  ‘Do you know it well?’

  ‘Pretty much. There are sensors covering the drive, external cameras, alarms on all the doors and windows, and also a secure briefing-room installed in the cellar. That’s a room within a room, soundproof and airtight. The Company uses this house for sensitive debriefings, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Staff?’ Richter asked.

  ‘Just one. He’s a retired Company man employed as a permanent caretaker.’

  ‘OK, we shouldn’t have any trouble from him. What about walls and fences?’

  ‘It’s surrounded by hedges. Most of the properties in that area are fairly open, and the Company decided that building a wall would attract too much attention.’

  Richter nodded. ‘Right. It’s obvious McCready’s setting a trap. Once Murphy’s handed over the goods, he’ll be planning a “wham, bam, thank you, Mike” pay-off. He’ll get a bullet in the back of the neck and his body will be dumped in a shallow grave somewhere. We need time to think this through. Send him a reply as Mike Murphy, John, but tell him you’re still in New York or somewhere and that the earliest you can get there is four this afternoon. That’ll give us time to get our beans in a row.’

  Lake Ridge, Virginia

  The first thing Nicholson had done that morning was call in sick to Langley. This was merely a courtesy – as a Head of Department he reported to the Director of Central Intel
ligence and nobody was going to check his attendance record – but he had three meetings planned during the day, all of which he told his PA to cancel or reschedule.

  Then he drove down the road to a gas station – not the one he normally used – and parked beside the pay phone at the side of the lot. He made one short call to a Virginia number, then got back into his car and drove home.

  He had left his computer switched on, expecting the confirmation email from Murphy, and as soon as he got back to his house he checked the inbox. The first message he looked at was from Murphy, explaining that he couldn’t make the morning rendezvous. That wasn’t entirely surprising, as Nicholson had no idea where the other man was in America, but he had no problem with the revised rendezvous at four in the afternoon. It just gave him more time to organize things over at Browntown. Nicholson sent a brief acknowledgement, climbed back into his car, drove to a different pay phone and made another call to the number he had dialled previously, then returned home again.

  He left the house a couple of hours later, heading for the meeting he had just arranged, and after making a final check of his inbox, hoping that Levy would have replied. In fact, Levy was typing his response to Nicholson’s query as the CIA officer drove away from his property. All he’d been able to discover from his contacts was that two men had been found dead after some kind of a shoot-out at the western end of the island, but the Cretan police weren’t looking for any third party. At that stage, Levy had no idea of the identity of either victim, but both were believed to be American.

  If Nicholson had received Levy’s email, he might have deduced that the dead men were Stein and Murphy, and hence been better prepared for his subsequent encounter at the safe house, but it didn’t arrive for a further forty-five minutes.

  Browntown, Virginia

  The safe house was located deep in the Virginia countryside, at the northern end of the Shenandoah National Park and on the outskirts of Browntown. Richter guessed that the location had been picked, at least in part, because of easy access from Washington and Langley along Interstate 66.

  It looked, from Richter’s vantage point some four hundred metres away, in all respects like a typical small country property. The binoculars didn’t help much: through them the house looked exactly the same, only a lot closer.

  ‘We could have a hell of a long wait here, Paul,’ Westwood said. ‘It’s not ten yet.’ The two men were lying side by side at the edge of a small copse of trees, watching the house through binoculars.

  They’d started out immediately Westwood had transmitted the email message to McCready, and hadn’t bothered waiting for a reply. Richter was certain that whoever was hiding behind the McCready alias wouldn’t go to the safe house until ‘Murphy’ had agreed a time and place for the rendezvous. But it was essential, both men had agreed, that they themselves were there and ready in position well before anybody else arrived. They needed to assess exactly what the opposition strength was before they even thought about entering the property.

  Richter had dialled the secure server using Murphy’s laptop just before Westwood pulled his Chrysler to a halt about half a mile beyond the safe house, and had downloaded the confirmation from McCready that he would reach the safe house at four. Westwood had parked the Voyager in a side road, but left it in plain sight. As he explained to Richter, cars half-hidden in woods always looked far more suspicious than vehicles parked right out on the street. Then they’d moved on foot until Westwood had spotted the roof of the safe house beyond the trees, and only then had the two men left the road and headed up towards the copse.

  ‘Early birds, worms, that kind of thing, John,’ Richter replied. ‘Anyway, it’s a fine day. We’ve got sandwiches and coffee and two pairs of binoculars. If nobody shows, we can at least improve our knowledge of ornithology.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Westwood didn’t sound either enthusiastic or convinced.

  For nearly four hours almost exactly nothing happened. They saw a lot of birds, a handful of rabbits and a couple of squirrels, and got bitten by an interesting selection of insects, some of which they saw but most of which they didn’t.

  To begin with, they both watched the house. Then they took that task in turn, because few activities are more terminally tedious than staring through binoculars at a scene that simply doesn’t change. They drank a coffee each at about eleven, and a little after one ate the sandwiches Richter had prepared.

  Westwood was unimpressed with his choice of filling. ‘Cheese and pickle or cheese and pickle, Paul? What the hell kind of choice is that? I don’t even like cheese.’

  ‘In England, we call it Hobson’s Choice, John,’ Richter replied, not taking his eyes from the view through the binoculars. ‘The cheese was in your fridge, the pickle was in your cupboard. All I did was put the two together between a couple of slices of bread. So just eat it and stop bitching about it.’

  Westwood sank his teeth into the sandwich, then: ‘Why Hobson’s Choice, Paul?’

  ‘It’s supposed to derive from a man named Hobson who ran a livery stable in Cambridge a couple of hundred years ago. Apparently when you hired a horse from him he offered you a choice of exactly one. You either took it or walked, hence Hobson’s Choice. You finished?’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘OK, your turn to watch. Don’t take your eyes off the house.’

  At thirteen fifty, Westwood muttered the single word: ‘Showtime.’

  Richter rolled over onto his stomach and in one fluid movement swept his binoculars to his eyes. Two cars were driving slowly – much more slowly than normal traffic – down the road towards the safe house. The leading vehicle turned into the short drive and stopped right outside the house itself, while the second car carried on.

  ‘The lead car will be McCready’s,’ Westwood murmured, unconsciously lowering his voice although there was no possibility he could be overheard. ‘The second car is probably his muscle. They’ll be checking the area, looking for people like us.’

  ‘Right,’ Richter said. ‘How many, do you think? Can you see?’

  ‘No, but we’ll know soon enough, I guess.’

  ‘Yes. Once they’re satisfied we don’t have a fully equipped SWAT team waiting in the wings they’ll go back to the house.’

  ‘Just remind me again,’ Westwood said. ‘Why, exactly, don’t we have a fully equipped SWAT team waiting in the wings?’

  ‘Evidence, John, evidence. All we actually possess is a few emails on a stolen computer, a classified file that nobody without a degree in medicine can understand, a bunch of stiffs out on Crete, and three sealed vacuum flasks. So far we don’t have anything that implicates anyone that we can identify.’

  ‘And there’s another reason, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Richter said. ‘I got dragged into this because my boss was looking for a really shitty little job to give me. Since then I’ve been pulled off a ship, where I was having a pretty good time, and hauled all over Crete following one lead after another. I’ve been exposed to a lethal pathogen, I’ve had a bunch of explosives blown up right under me, I’ve been shot at, and I’ve had a fellow professional killed more or less right in front of my eyes. All that, as far as I can see, is down to this McCready character – and I don’t like unfinished business.’

  ‘OK, OK. I didn’t expect an extract from War and Peace. Right, someone’s getting out of that car.’

  Both men concentrated on the scene unfolding at the safe house. The driver’s door opened and a tall, bulky man climbed out and pushed the door closed.

  ‘Got him.’ Westwood then paused for a few moments. ‘Jesus Christ, that’s a surprise. It looks like our man is John Nicholson. He’s head of the Intelligence Directorate, and he wasn’t even on my list. But he does fit, I guess, if only because of his Christian name. And that must be the caretaker,’ he added, as the main door of the house opened and a grey-haired figure emerged. He walked across to the car and stood talking to Nicholson. Then he pointed towards the double gar
age adjacent to the house. As Richter and Westwood watched, the door swung open by remote control. Nicholson headed towards the house while the caretaker climbed into his car and drove it into the garage.

  ‘He’ll only want one car to be visible in the driveway when Murphy arrives,’ Westwood observed, then paused as a second car emerged from the garage and halted in front of the house. ‘OK, that’s probably the caretaker’s motor. He’ll want the man out of the way for the rest of the day.’ The caretaker climbed out of the vehicle, pointed his remote to close the garage door, and walked back into the house.

  Five minutes later the main door opened again and the caretaker re-emerged. He climbed into his car and drove away from the house and down the road.

  ‘He’ll have been explaining the security systems and other stuff to Nicholson, I guess,’ Westwood commented, not taking his eyes off the scene.

  ‘Here come the bad guys.’ Richter watched as the other vehicle, the one that had been behind Nicholson’s when they arrived, reappeared down the road, turned into the drive and stopped outside the safe house. Three men got out and looked all around them, then two of them walked over to the house and went inside while the third began walking slowly around the property itself.

  ‘That figures,’ Westwood said. ‘They’ll have two guards inside covering Nicholson, and the third guy outside to intercept anyone who wanders onto the property by accident and to shoo away neighbours or salesmen.’

  ‘OK, John,’ Richter lowered the binoculars and rolled on to his side to face Westwood, ‘now we know the strength of the opposition, are you happy with the plan we worked out?’

  Westwood nodded. ‘We figured there would be up to four heavies plus Nicholson and maybe the caretaker as well, so the odds are actually better than we calculated,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you can handle this, Paul, because it really will be my neck on the line in there?’