‘OK, Paul. Just be careful.’
‘I will,’ Richter promised. ‘I’ve got a pension I’m determined to collect, if only to piss off my boss.’
Bentley smiled and nodded, and Richter opened the door and stepped out.
Biala Podlaska, Eastern Poland
Modin was pleased. The convoy had encountered no significant hold-ups on the road to Brest, and the crossing into Poland had taken less than fifteen minutes. The Poles knew better than to delay vehicles bearing diplomatic plates, especially Russian diplomatic plates.
Warsaw was about one hundred and twenty miles ahead, and they were actually ahead of Nilov’s schedule. Modin instructed the Spetsnaz escort to radio approval for a meal break and driver change. The lead Mercedes driver pulled off the road where it looped north around the town of Biala Podlaska, and parked his car at the far side of the parking area of a small café. The articulated lorry followed, then the second Mercedes saloon and the limousine.
‘Thirty minutes,’ the Spetsnaz escort said into the microphone. ‘Remember the standing orders. One person to remain in each vehicle at all times. No talking in the café.’
Modin nodded his approval, and he and Bykov got out of the limousine and walked towards the double doors of the café.
Middlesex
Richter opened the nearside rear door of the Jaguar and climbed in. There was an audible clunk as Simpson used central locking to secure all the doors. He turned to face Richter. ‘I’d like some answers, Richter. I’ve had the Met on my back all morning, wanting to know if I knew anything about the late Mr Orlov and two of his associates who were found dead by their cook this morning. The Met Super said he’d never seen such carnage. He said Orlov had twelve bullet wounds, just as if someone had shot bits off him.’ Richter nodded. ‘What happened to your face?’ Simpson asked.
‘I walked into a door. Why did the Met contact you?’
‘Because Orlov was an alien, and a Russian alien at that. They said the Foreign and Commonwealth Office thought that SIS might know something, and the idiot SIS Duty Officer gave the plods my phone number. I’ll be sorting him out later.’
‘And what did you tell them?’
‘I told them I’d look into it,’ Simpson said. ‘And unless you’ve got some pretty fancy answers, I’m going to point the finger straight at you. I told you last night not to touch Orlov.’
‘I thought you said you couldn’t afford to do without me?’ Richter asked.
‘I’ll give it a go, Richter,’ Simpson snarled. ‘Now tell me a tale, and it had better be a good one to justify all this bloody cloak and dagger crap and TESTAMENT.’
‘It may be cloak and dagger crap to you, Simpson, but it means my life, so if it’s all right with you, we’ll just keep on with it, OK?’
Richter leaned forward in the seat and told him what Orlov had told him or, rather, what he had started to tell him after Richter had shot off both his kneecaps, and what had then been forced out of him with further 9mm encouragement. When Richter finished, he leaned back and waited. Simpson looked ashen. ‘You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?’
Richter nodded. ‘I am sure that Orlov believed what he was telling me. I do not believe that anyone in his position would have been able to invent such complicated lies which would tie in so well with what we already know.’
Simpson sighed. ‘Dear God. Dear God help us all. What are we going to do?’
Richter shrugged. ‘That’s not up to me. We have to tell the French, obviously, because they’re already involved. We should tell the CIA officially – I know they’ve been aware that the Russians have been up to something for some time, but if we tell them what we know it might get us a bit of co-operation. As for retrieving the situation, I suppose we could make strong diplomatic noises at Moscow, not that it would do much good if the Kremlin knows as little about this as we did. The only thing Orlov couldn’t tell me, because he didn’t know, was when the final phase is going to happen, but I think we have very little time left.’
‘How long?’
‘Four days, at a guess, perhaps five. No longer.’
‘That hardly leaves enough time to go through diplomatic channels, does it?’
‘No,’ Richter said, ‘but what other course of action is open to us?’
‘Only one,’ said Simpson, ‘just as you suggested. First, now that we know what we’re up against I’ll get everything sorted at FOE. Second, I’ll brief Vauxhall Cross so that they can tell the CIA here in London, and everyone else who needs to know. Third, we stop the last device, and that means we send you to France.’
‘Me? Why me?’ Richter asked. ‘You haven’t forgotten I’m at the top of the SVR’s kill list, have you?’
‘No, Richter, I haven’t forgotten, but it has to be you. You know more about this than anybody else in the department, because you’ve been involved right from the start, but the real reason is that you’re the best man I’ve got for this kind of work. I’ll get you a diplomatic passport, for what it’s worth, and give you a couple of bodyguards, but you’ve got to go.’
Richter grunted. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said.
‘I’m not asking you to like it,’ Simpson snapped. ‘I’m just telling you what you’re going to do. Can you see any alternative?’
‘No,’ Richter conceded, ‘I can’t. Don’t bother about the bodyguards; they’d only draw attention to me. If I’ve got a diplomatic passport I can carry a weapon anyway, and there’s no need to risk anyone else.’
‘If that’s the way you want it,’ Simpson said.
Richter got out of the Jaguar and waited until Simpson had driven away. Then he walked over to the Saab, climbed back in and told Bentley they could go.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Richter replied. ‘I’ve got to go away for a few days.’
‘Where to?’
‘Home, James,’ Richter said.
‘No. I meant, where are you going?’
‘I can’t tell you that, either, but it’s between here and Spain.’
‘I see,’ Bentley said, then paused. ‘No, I don’t,’ he added. ‘Why France?’
‘I have to look in the back of a lorry.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s all I can tell you,’ Richter said. ‘You shouldn’t really even know that much – for your own sake.’
Razdolnoye, Krym (Crimea)
Dmitri Trushenko closed his email client software, initiated the shut-down routine for his laptop computer and leaned back in his chair. The message he had just sent, concealed within a typical piece of junk email and bounced round a succession of servers in three different countries, just told the ragheads that he was in position.
They had no idea where he was, and they didn’t need to. The final phase of Podstava simply required him to be in a secure location, outside Moscow, with access to the Internet. Once the Anton Kirov had arrived at Gibraltar, and the last weapon had been successfully delivered to London, Trushenko would be able to initiate the demonstration he had planned from the start and then issue the ultimatum that he was quite convinced would instantly neuter America.
And then, as predictably as night follows day, Europe would fall. Her armies would be destroyed or simply disarmed, her governments faced with no alternative but to accept whatever demands Moscow should choose to make. As the man who had engineered Podstava, Trushenko would be fêted and acclaimed and, in due course, the mantle of leadership of the Confederation of Independent States might well fall upon his shoulders. If he wanted it, of course, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he did. Because there was an alternative, an alternative that he had been considering more and more seriously for the past few weeks.
If the idiots in the Kremlin failed to seize the opportunity he had presented them or, even worse, decided to denounce what they could legitimately consider his treason, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey were all within easy reach. He could simply run, and nobody would ever f
ind him. And the more he thought about it, the more attractive this option seemed to be.
Trushenko smiled as he walked towards the kitchen to prepare a light supper. Money would not be a problem. Podstava had been a long-term project, and at the very first meeting with the oily Hassan Abbas, Trushenko had grasped both the scope of the operation and its potential for his personal enrichment. The funds the ragheads had so liberally provided had been used as they had intended, to construct and deliver the weapons to the locations Abbas had specified, but from the start Trushenko had creamed off a healthy commission, and his three Swiss and two Austrian bank accounts – he had never believed in concentrating any kind of asset in a single location – held between them more than enough funds to allow him to live out the rest of his life in considerable comfort.
He had planned the final phase of Podstava with considerable care, and well in advance. The dacha he had rented for ten days – ample time – was large and spacious, situated on the western tip of the Crimea and with inspiring views across the Karkinitskiy Zaliv, the arm of the Black Sea which lies to the south-east of Odessa. It was an ideal place to wait during the last few days while the final weapon was positioned.
He had anticipated that sooner or later – in fact, it had been later – the Americans or somebody would discover that something was going on, simply because of the increased activity that was an inescapable part of the last phase of the operation. In the latter stages, too, more people had had to be told about it, which increased the potential for leaks, either deliberate or accidental. With hindsight, he wondered if he should have insisted on the above-ground weapon test in the tundra, but he had believed, and still did, that the final test was essential, if only to confirm that the satellite firing system was working properly.
Trushenko walked back into the living room with a tray on which was a dish of solianka that he had prepared – meat soup with added tomatoes, cucumber, olives, onions, capers, lemons and sour cream – and two slices of black bread. Though he rarely cooked for himself, Trushenko was competent and creative in the kitchen, and in the short period since his arrival in the Crimea he had been indulging himself.
He put the tray on a side table, poured a glass of vodka and sat comfortably in an armchair, gazing out of the large windows and over the dacha’s grounds which sloped down to a small jetty, and across at the distant lights of Port-Khorly and Perekop. He wondered how much the Americans knew, or had been able to deduce, and what they would do about it. At some stage, he presumed, they would talk to the Kremlin, and that would be when the fun would really start, when they found out that the Kremlin knew even less about it than they did. He smiled to himself again in the gathering dusk.
The trail he had laid so carefully in Moscow led straight to St Petersburg, and he knew that there was no surviving trace of his journey to the Crimea. From his dacha he could control all of the final stages of Podstava, without risk, and after the Gibraltar demonstration he doubted if there would be any problems with the Americans or anyone else. His only regret was personal – he missed dear Genady and their weekly couplings – but it was essential to have one trusted friend in Moscow to handle the communications with the ship, and Trushenko trusted no one as he trusted Genady Arkenko.
‘Genady,’ Trushenko sighed, raising his glass, ‘I do miss you, old friend.’
Then he cheered up somewhat, and promised himself that he would watch a video from his Lubyanka collection, the pick of which he had brought with him. Perhaps the German – though that was rather long – or maybe the Georgian. Yes, Trushenko mused, the Georgian, and he felt his body stirring with anticipation.
Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland
The first major delay the convoy encountered was about five miles west of Wroclaw, heading for the Czechoslovakian border in the early evening. Modin heard the bang quite clearly even though the limousine was over a hundred metres behind the lorry, and as soon as he saw the articulated vehicle lurch he knew that a tyre had blown.
The limousine cruised to a stop behind the lorry, and Bykov and Modin got out. It was a typical heavy goods vehicle problem; the tyre had shed its tread in chunks, and then the carcase had ruptured. Not a problem, just a delay that they didn’t need. The lorry was carrying two spare wheels and the heavy-duty jacks and wrenches needed to change a wheel, but Modin stopped Bykov when he instructed the Spetsnaz troopers to effect the change. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Ring a tyre service company.’
‘Why, General?’ Bykov asked.
‘Because it’s safer,’ Modin replied. ‘We have a long way to go once we cross the German border, and I do not want to attract any attention once we enter the West. If we have a problem like this there, we can attend to it ourselves, and not call on anyone for help. Here in Poland, things are different.’ Bykov nodded, acknowledging the rationale of the decision.
The service vehicle arrived forty minutes later, but two of the nuts had jammed and fitting the new tyre to the wheel took nearly two hours in all. The convoy was not ready to move on until almost ten thirty. Before any orders were given, Modin gestured to Bykov and the two officers consulted a map. Nilov’s schedule, and the planned route, called for the convoy to cross into Czechoslovakia at Jakuszyce, and then route via Prague and Pilsen to Waidhaus on the German border.
‘We do have one alternative,’ Bykov suggested, pointing. ‘We could turn back towards Wroclaw and then head north-west on the E22 autoroute past Legnica.’
‘And then?’ Modin prompted.
Bykov pointed again at the map. ‘Through Boleslawiec to Zgorzelec.’
‘And into Germany at Görlitz,’ Modin finished. ‘Yes, that has some advantages, because we could then use the E63 and E6 autobahns down to Nürnberg, and that would certainly be quicker than going through Czechoslovakia.’
Modin looked at his watch, then back at the map, considering. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘I think we should continue as planned. This route was selected precisely so that the convoy would enter Germany as far west as possible.’
‘Agreed,’ Bykov said. ‘That is the safest option.’
‘It’s too late to carry on tonight. We’ll drive back to Wroclaw,’ Modin finished, yawning, ‘and stop somewhere there. We will still be able to cross the Czech border tomorrow morning.’
Middlesex
Bentley and Richter went out in the Saab just after eight that evening to buy a take-away Chinese meal, and to allow Richter to use a public call box to contact Hammersmith. The Duty Officer, after Richter had identified himself, said simply, ‘Nine forty at the Dover Court Hotel,’ and rang off.
Chapter Seventeen
Monday
Ickenham, Middlesex, and Dover
Richter was awake at six, and walked stiff-legged but fully dressed into Bentley’s kitchen just after six thirty. He still ached abominably, but he was mobile, and knew he wouldn’t have too much of a problem riding the Honda.
He was on the road by seven. He picked up the A40 within three minutes of leaving the house, and turned east for central London. Just over an hour later, he pulled the Honda into a garage on the A2 in Bexley and filled the tank. The early-morning traffic was building up, but most of it was heading into the city, and Richter was going the other way. At Strood he joined the M2, but continued to keep his speed low, as he had time in hand.
At nine thirty he rode the Honda into the car park of the Dover Court Hotel, and stopped the bike in a corner of the car park. He switched off the engine, removed his helmet and locked it to the seat. At nine forty exactly he walked into the lounge, found a table and ordered a pot of coffee. Richter spotted the two FOE contacts the moment they walked in through the door, and waved a friendly hand.
If you are organizing a meet in a public place – and the lounge of the Dover Court Hotel at that time in the morning was fairly full – it looks far more suspicious if you try to be sneaky about it. A meeting between two businessmen who know each other, on the other hand, attracts almost no attention whatsoever. Not that Richter l
ooked much like a businessman. The jeans and leather jacket had already attracted one or two stares which stopped just the safe side of being hostile, and the fresh plasters on his face didn’t help either.
The two men came over to Richter’s table and sat down. Richter glanced round the lounge, and spoke in a low voice to the senior FOE officer – Tony Deacon, who ran the Far East desk. Mark Clayton, the second FOE man, sat back in his seat, checking for watchers or listeners. ‘Do you need to give me a verbal briefing on the operational stuff?’ Richter asked.
Deacon shook his head, his eyes still fixed on Richter’s battered countenance. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s all in the briefcase, plus details of your contact and fallback arrangements. Your car’s in the corner of the car park. It’s a Granada Scorpio which replaced the last one you used, and you-know-who said he wanted it back in one piece this time.’
He passed Richter a key fob with a label attached. ‘Here are the keys. Your diplomatic passport, ferry tickets, insurance details and Green Card are also in the briefcase, plus a couple of credit cards and enough cash to keep you going. There’s a letter of introduction – sealed – which should stay that way until you deliver it, and a copy of the letter for your eyes only. Read it and destroy it before your meeting. Also sealed is a copy of the operation file, fully updated, and there are seals and envelopes for you to re-seal it once you’ve read it. There’s a suitcase of clothes in the boot, hopefully in your size.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What happened to your face?’ Deacon asked.
‘I was mugged,’ Richter said, and Clayton laughed. ‘Anything else?’
‘No,’ Deacon said. ‘You have an open return ferry ticket, and as long as you get to the rendezvous on time you can go when you like. You might like the choice of accommodation we’ve booked for you. It proves that the Cashier’s got a sense of humour after all.’ He looked around the room, as if anxious to be away.
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