Richter swallowed the last of his coffee and put the cup down. ‘Now I’m guessing. The kill directive must have been included in the Moscow Centre orders, because they tried to hit me as soon as I came out of JARIC, and presumably intended me not to have the opportunity to pass on anything I’d learned to you or whoever they think I work for. That attempt failed, and the two low-lifes they sent after me when I went to Cambridge didn’t do any better. I guess they’ve been waiting for another opportunity, but it’s not all that easy to carry out a hit in London, with the traffic and the crowds. And they don’t know which route I’d be taking to and from Hammersmith, or how I’d be travelling – I’ve been constantly altering my timing, method and route as a precaution, and there are three separate exits from my apartment block to confuse them as well.’
Simpson interrupted. ‘But they must know – or at least assume – that by now you have passed on what you know to me or to SIS, so why are they still trying to eliminate you?’
‘The oldest reason in the world,’ Richter said. ‘Revenge. Two Cultural Attachés, or whatever they were calling themselves, came back in boxes from East Anglia, and I can’t believe that the Russians don’t think it was my fault.’
‘OK,’ Simpson said, after a moment. ‘That does make sense, but it still doesn’t answer the question. Why was there a kill directive? What is so desperately important to them that they’re prepared to break all the rules and risk the consequences?’
‘I don’t know for certain,’ Richter replied, ‘but I believe that they’ve got something really big building and they can’t, under any circumstances, allow any word of it to reach government level.’
‘I don’t buy all this covert assault crap that the CIA is banging on about,’ Simpson said. ‘So what could be that big?’
‘I don’t know, but I think I can find out.’
‘How?’
‘I’m going to go and have a talk with Orlov,’ Richter said.
Simpson just stared at him. ‘You’re joking, of course.’
‘I was never more serious in my life. I’m fed up with sitting around and letting them take pot shots at me, and I’ve got Brian Jackson’s blood on my hands. Someone’s going to pay for that, and Orlov looks to me like the prime candidate.’
Simpson stood up. ‘For God’s sake, man, think of the consequences! You snatch – I presume that’s what you mean – Orlov, and as soon as the Russians realize he’s gone they’ll start yelling the place down. And think what’ll happen when he goes back to them. Think of the repercussions then.’
Richter sat back in the chair and looked up at him. ‘You misunderstand me, Simpson. Orlov isn’t going to go back to anyone. Once I’ve got him, that’s it.’
Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
Karasin sat silent for a moment, his face pale in the light from the desk lamp. ‘How do you expect me to be able to tell you that, Mr President?’ he asked.
‘Because, Mr Ambassador, we have received definite information – and I regret that I cannot disclose the source – which suggests that an imminent assault is planned by your country upon mine.’
Karasin turned white. ‘What?’ he almost shouted, and stood up, protocol forgotten. ‘What? What do you mean – assault?’
‘I cannot be any more specific, Mr Ambassador,’ the President said smoothly, motioning Karasin back to his seat, ‘but we do have the information.’
The Russian sat down, slowly, his eyes never leaving the American’s face. ‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘I have no knowledge, no knowledge at all, of any such operation. The suggestion is—’ he searched for a word ‘—is simply monstrous. Relations with your country have, I believe, never been better. Why would we risk any conflict now?’
‘Why indeed, Mr Ambassador?’ the President said. ‘Nevertheless, that is the information we have.’
Karasin looked stunned. He shook his head and got to his feet. ‘I must take advice,’ he said. ‘Urgent advice. In the meantime, Mr President, I must urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to do nothing which would exacerbate this situation.’
The President looked at him. ‘We will do nothing that we do not need to do,’ he replied, ‘but this situation is, we believe, entirely of your country’s own making.’
Karasin shook his head. ‘I know nothing of this,’ he repeated. ‘Nothing. Thank you, Mr President. I will contact you as soon as possible.’ The Russian shook hands briefly, and walked briskly out of the room.
‘Well?’ the President asked.
Walter Hicks, who had been sitting silently at the back of the room facing the long windows throughout the meeting, rose and walked slowly towards the President’s desk. ‘You know him much better than I do, sir,’ he said. ‘What’s your impression?’
The President sat down again, this time behind the desk. ‘I’ve known Karasin for three years,’ he said. ‘Normally, he’s the model of diplomacy, never a word out of place. I’ve never seen him like this before. If I didn’t know better,’ he finished, the words coming slowly, ‘I’d say he doesn’t know anything about it.’
Orpington, Kent
Vladimir Illych Orlov was the possessor of a diplomatic passport and was officially Third Secretary at the London Embassy of the Confederation of Independent States, with special responsibilities for Cultural Exchange and Industrial Development. Third Secretaries, generally, are pretty low on the pecking order at most embassies, but Orlov lived in a large house with a bodyguard and chauffeur, and was regularly to be seen at important Embassy functions, where he was treated with marked deference by everyone from the Ambassador downwards. The reason was simple enough – Orlov was a full colonel in the SVR, and was head of the large staff of SVR officers employed in the Embassy. He also ran at least three separate and distinct spy rings – mostly comprising low-grade sources in industry and the fringes of the military – that SIS knew about, and probably others as well.
He was quite literally the most powerful Russian in Britain, and FOE had a dossier an inch and a half thick on him at Hammersmith. Richter knew that talking with him wasn’t going to be easy. There was a clip of photographs of the house in the file. It was detached, surrounded by thick hedges and a brick wall on the side of the property adjoining the road, with double gates, electrically operated with remote control switching both from Orlov’s official car and from the house itself. All the downstairs windows were barred, and the doors front and rear were lined with steel. It was not, Richter knew, a tempting place to crack.
He pulled the Honda into the side of the road a hundred yards or so from the house and switched off the engine. He pulled the bike on to its stand, removed the ignition key, secured his helmet to the lock below the seat, switched off his mobile phone and started walking. It was a fairly bright night, the moon only occasionally vanishing behind clouds, which was more or less what he wanted. Richter didn’t anticipate that anyone in the house would be awake, and the moonlight would certainly help him avoid falling into any ditches or other obstacles Orlov might have strategically or accidentally positioned in the grounds.
He felt the brickwork on the top of the wall, but could find no trace of glass, barbed wire or, more importantly, any indication of an alarm system. He checked the road carefully in both directions, then pulled himself up and dropped down on to the lawn on the other side. He removed the haversack, opened it and transferred the glasscutter, torch and adhesive tape to pockets on his leather jacket. Then he pulled down the jacket’s zip so that he could reach the Smith and Wesson easily, pulled on the rubber gloves and moved off.
Richter kept to the edge, near the hedge, all the way, keeping his eyes on the house and looking and listening for any sound of movement. There was a light burning downstairs in the hall, which he could see through the narrow vertical windows either side of the front door, and another upstairs, but no lights were visible in any of the bedrooms. Richter made three complete circuits of the house before he was satisfied.
> It was a substantial red-brick property, as an estate agent would have described it, and the bars on the ground-floor windows would certainly have given Richter peace of mind if he’d been thinking of buying it. With his present intentions in mind they were, at best, a nuisance. The first floor looked a good deal more promising, with no bars as far as he could see, and a balcony area at the rear of the house, above a bay window.
Richter thought briefly about the best entry point, and decided that the balcony was it, as long as he could get up on to the top of the bay. There were no convenient creepers or ivy – Richter would have been surprised if there had been – so he looked around behind the garage and the shed at the rear of the house for a ladder or anything similar. He didn’t find a ladder, but he did find a warped twelve-foot scaffold plank, presumably discarded after some work on the property. Richter examined it carefully, but apart from the twist in it there were no other obvious signs of weakness, so he carried it out from behind the garage to the house. He rested one end on the top of the bay and jammed the other into the soil of a flowerbed adjacent to the wall.
Then he started his ascent. The plank had looked steady enough when he had put it in place, but with Richter’s weight on it, it wobbled enough for him to be very glad of the wall on his left-hand side. He hoped he would be able to leave by the front door.
On top of the bay, he looked cautiously through the window with the aid of the torch. There was a large double bed against one wall with blankets neatly folded at one end. Richter could see a wardrobe, three chairs and a dressing table, but nothing that suggested that the room was anything other than what it seemed – an unoccupied spare bedroom. The window was double-glazed and the catches closed, but that was what he had expected.
Richter took the roll of sticky tape and pulled a length of about a foot off it. This he stuck on to the window pane next to the catch, after doubling the centre four inches of the tape, so that he ended up with eight inches of tape stuck to the glass with a ‘handle’ about two inches long in the centre of it. Then he took the glass-cutter and described a circle around the tape, big enough to get his hand and arm through. He ran the cutter round twice in the groove, then replaced it in his pocket. Holding the tape firmly in his left hand, Richter gave the glass a sharp rap with his right fist. There was a splintering sound, and the circle slid inwards. Carefully he brought the circle of glass outside, and placed it flat on the top of the bay.
Richter repeated the operation on the inner pane and placed the second circle of glass on top of the first. Then he slid his right arm inside, and felt all the way round the opening section. If there were any wires, he didn’t feel them, so he slowly released the catch and gently pulled the window open.
No alarm bells rang or lights flashed. Richter climbed through the window and into the room. He pulled the window closed behind him and secured the catch – the last thing he wanted was for it to bang shut in a gust of wind and scatter glass all over the floor. Richter worked his way carefully round the room, and found absolutely nothing of interest.
He walked to the door and listened for a minute or so. The house was silent. Richter turned the handle and pulled the door towards him. He peered through the widening crack out onto the landing area. All was silent. Just the light burning and closed doors.
Richter knew that Orlov had a staff of only three – his chauffeur and bodyguard, who accompanied him almost everywhere, and a cook/housekeeper who lived out and was helped in the running of the house by two daily women who handled the cleaning and so forth. He knew that because one of the dailies was on the SIS payroll. Richter didn’t anticipate any trouble from the cook, who should be at her home and in bed, but the two heavies might prove more difficult. His intention was simply to snatch Orlov, and with him under his gun, convince the other two men to surrender their weapons. If they didn’t, Richter believed that the Smith could persuade them in a permanent fashion.
He guessed that Orlov would sleep in the large bedroom at the front of the house – FOE and SIS held detailed plans of all the properties leased by Russian citizens – so Richter walked along the landing corridor until he came to the door. He took the Smith out of the shoulder holster and turned the door handle slowly. As the door opened, he could see no light in the room, but he could hear the sound of gentle snoring. Even if it wasn’t Orlov, it would do no harm to incapacitate the occupant. Richter eased the door shut behind him and started walking across the floor towards the sound on the other side of the room.
He was about halfway there when the main lights came on and something hard prodded him in the back. A voice from behind Richter spoke softly. ‘Good evening, Mr Willis. We’ve been expecting you.’
Chapter Fourteen
Saturday
Orpington, Kent
The basic training given to men who become members of elite combat forces, like the Royal Marine Commandos and Special Air Service, lays a very considerable stress on proficiency in a hand to hand combat situation, because taking someone out with the use of a knife, fists or feet is, generally speaking, silent and anonymous. Every bullet fired from a gun identifies the gun, but the best a forensic scientist can do with a stab wound is to say that the knife had, say, a single-edged blade at least four inches long, which covers a positive multitude of weapons. As well as being taught to attack and kill in silence, such men are also taught to counterattack in the same sort of situation.
Early in Richter’s term of employment with the Foreign Operations Executive he had spent a painful five weeks with the SAS in Hereford, learning what the instructors had called the dirty tricks of the trade. One thing he remembered very clearly was that in a close combat situation, anyone who sticks a gun in your back is as good as dead. It’s all to do with speed of reaction and speed of movement. The technique is simple. With a pistol pressed into your back, even if the holder has his finger on the trigger, there is no way he can pull it faster than you can move providing that he doesn’t know you’re going to move. By the time his brain has registered the fact that you are moving, and has instructed his finger to squeeze the trigger, your move should have been completed, and by then he’s either dead or unconscious.
If you’re right handed, twist your body to the left, bringing the blade of your left arm back and down across his gun arm. That will knock the weapon off aim and even if it does fire the bullet won’t hit you. Continue the twisting movement of the body, and bring your right hand down hard – the harder the better – on the side of his neck. Dead simple. Dead being the operative word, if you do it right.
Two things had surprised Richter when the lights went on. The first was the fact that whoever it was behind him had used the name ‘Willis’, until he remembered that that had been his cover name in Moscow, and would be the name under his photograph in the Moscow Centre files. The second thing that surprised Richter was that the man behind him should have pressed his pistol into his back. But Richter hadn’t even started to move when the voice spoke again and the pressure vanished. ‘Don’t, Mr Willis. Just drop the gun and then put your hands on your head, fingers interlocked.’
His training had been as thorough as Richter’s, by the sound of it. Richter had absolutely no option anyway, because by then he’d seen the other two occupants of the room. Orlov was sitting in an easy chair in pyjamas and dressing gown, with a smile on his face, and a second man was standing behind him, wearing a somewhat crumpled shirt and slacks, and pointing an automatic pistol at Richter’s stomach. He looked as if he knew how to use it.
No man should ever surrender his weapon to an armed adversary unless there is absolutely no alternative. Richter calculated that he could, possibly, shoot the man standing in front of him, but if he did that he would certainly be immediately killed by the bodyguard standing behind him. Even a short extension of life is always preferable to instant certain death, so he tossed the Smith on to the thick pile carpet, and put his hands on his head.
The room was obviously a man’s bedroom. The walls we
re light blue, with hunting prints in silver frames, and the carpet a darker blue. There were two large built-in double wardrobes, no dressing table, a desk and chair in one corner, and a double bed with twin bedside cabinets against one wall. There were four other chairs – one easy chair in which Vladimir Orlov was comfortably seated, and three more or less upright chairs, one facing Orlov, the other two either side of it. It looked like a prisoner’s chair in front of a jury and Richter knew that was almost precisely what they had in mind. Orlov nodded and Richter received a hefty push in the back which propelled him to the chair.
‘Sit down, Mr Willis,’ said Orlov, speaking for the first time. His voice was low-pitched and bore only traces of his native Georgian accent.
Richter sat. With the bodyguard behind Orlov still pointing his gun directly at Richter, the second one pulled off the surgical gloves, then went through the pockets of his jeans. He found and removed six spare rounds for the Smith, but allowed Richter to keep his comb and handkerchief, as the Russian presumably thought that neither could be turned into any kind of weapon. Unfortunately, Richter agreed with him.
Orlov nodded again, and the bodyguards sat, one on each side of Richter, who saw them both for the first time. They were very similar. Tall, dark, and well built, and both looked very professional. Richter couldn’t see how he was going to get out of the house alive. There was a moment of silence while the three Russians looked at him, then Richter spoke. ‘Good evening, Vladimir. I’m from British Gas, and I’ve come to read your meter.’
Oval Office, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.
‘If you’re right, Mr President,’ Walter Hicks said, ‘then that’s the worst possible news.’
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