The Lucifer Network

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Is it true or not that you paid my father to supply guns to the Bodanga rebels?’

  Sam ground his teeth.

  ‘I really can’t get into that . . .’

  ‘Look. If you’re not prepared to be straight with me, then I am going to stand Max up tonight.’

  Her mouth set in a thin line. Sam felt a silly urge to kiss it into a more friendly shape. He leaned forward, his brow furrowing as he prepared to concede more ground.

  ‘The things your father wrote to you about MI6 and Bodanga,’ he said in little more than a whisper, ‘that’s only half the story.’ He glanced round to check no one could overhear and to underline the confidential nature of what he was about to tell her. He described the background to the Bodanga coup attempt, carefully pointing out that if it had succeeded people would have been singing the government’s praises instead of damning it. Then he told her how her father had been using his inside knowledge of the coup to blackmail Whitehall into giving him immunity from prosecution for a whole host of unnamed crimes.

  Julie listened intently. When Sam had finished, she rubbed her forehead. It all fitted. What he’d said had an awful ring of truth about it. She guessed that whatever deceptions Sam/Simon may have indulged in during his life, it was small beer compared to what her father had got up to.

  ‘Thank you for telling me all that,’ she whispered. ‘It won’t go any further. I promise.’

  Sam trusted her as much as he trusted a wet paper bag, but if it made her deliver Max Schenk to him this evening then the risk of telling her these things would have been worth it.

  Their food arrived. The omelettes were undercooked but the surliness of the waiter deterred them from sending them back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sam murmured, indicating her untouched beer glass. ‘I didn’t have the courtesy to ask what you wanted to drink. Was that all right for you?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she replied taking a sip.

  He left it for a few moments before asking her what her arrangement was with Max.

  ‘Ten o’clock tonight. He’s got a dinner to go to first, but he’ll pick me up from the Marriott. I’ve asked to go somewhere quiet for a chat.’

  ‘How did he sound?’

  Julie lifted one eyebrow. ‘I got the impression he thought it perfectly natural that I’d come crawling back to him.’ She shivered.

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ Sam reassured her. ‘We’re going to protect you tonight.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I want you to wear a wire.’

  ‘A wire? What’s that?’

  ‘A small microphone the size of a pinhead attached by cable to a little box hidden in your clothes. It’ll relay your conversation with Max. We’ll be in a car nearby.’

  Sam saw that he’d terrified her. Her composure crumbled before his eyes.

  ‘It’ll be okay, I promise.’

  ‘I can’t do this. Any of it,’ she whispered. ‘I’m no good at pretending things.’

  He grunted in astonishment. ‘You did all right in that café in Chiswick.’ He wasn’t going to let her off the hook. He noticed that she had the grace to blush.

  ‘But what on earth am I going to say to him?’ she whined. ‘He thinks I want him back.’

  ‘Up the stakes to a level he won’t go for,’ Sam suggested. ‘Tell him you want to go on seeing him but only if he divorces his wife.’

  She looked aghast. ‘Suppose he agrees? No way.’

  ‘It’s just for one evening, Julie.’

  ‘What else am I going to talk about? I can’t just plunge straight in and say, “Were you involved with my father in something smuggled out of Russia which he called red mercury.”’

  ‘He’s talked to you about his work in the past?’

  ‘Yes. From time to time.’

  ‘Well, get him to do it again and then pop the question about what sort of business he was doing with your father.’

  ‘Pop the question. Anyway it’s only your paranoid suspicion that he was connected with my dad.’ She was desperate to devalue the plan. ‘I’m far from convinced.’

  ‘Paranoid suspicions are what my trade is all about,’ he reminded her. ‘What has he told you about his work?’

  ‘He’s talked about the clinic. How he and his brother built it up.’

  ‘Where does the virology come in?’

  ‘It’s his special interest. Or used to be. He worked as a physician in one of the main labs in Vienna when he was younger. And he established a state-of-the-art virology lab at the clinic when they set it up four years ago. He still takes an interest, although these days at the clinic he’s more of an administrator. His brother was killed in a skiing accident eight months ago. Hansi was older. The financial brains. Max runs the place on his own now.’

  ‘They’d been close?’

  ‘I get the impression his whole family is. They own a big estate in southern Austria somewhere. Max told me once that his grandfather bought it for next to nothing from some Jews who wanted to flee the country when Hitler moved in. After the war they tried to get it back, but the courts blocked them. It happened quite a lot in Austria, Max said.’

  Sam felt the back of his neck bristling. ‘He told you this with pride?’

  ‘Well . . . he didn’t seem embarrassed by it.’

  ‘What are his politics?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. That sort of stuff doesn’t interest me. He did talk about some new Austrian nationalist party or other once. It’s getting stronger, apparently. But I used to switch off when he got on to politics.’

  ‘Ever talk about there being too many foreigners in Austria? Ever use the word Überfremdung?’

  Flustered, Julie knitted her brow. Sam had taken on the intense look of a terrier. ‘I don’t remember. He seldom used German words with me. But I know that it’s not just Austria he’s concerned about. He thinks the whole of Europe should be keeping the foreigners out. Turks, Bosnians, Albanians, gypsies . . .’

  Sam swallowed, reminding himself it wasn’t only active racists who held such views. He let his eyes wander from Julie’s troubled face and over to the window. He felt like a hound that had scented the fox. The smell was still weak, but it was definitely there.

  ‘It’s going to be okay tonight, Julie,’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. He felt a strong urge to give her a hug. ‘Just a matter of eliminating Max from our enquiries. And don’t worry about it. I’ll be within shouting distance. I’ll look after you. I promise.’

  She looked doubtfully at him. It was a promise men always made – and, in her experience, one they never kept.

  17

  London. St Stephen’s Hospital, Stepney

  19.45 hrs

  SANDRA WILLETTS ARRIVED a little earlier than usual for her night shift on the elderly care ward. There were grey bags under her eyes from lack of sleep. She hadn’t dared confront Rob about the e-mail she’d seen on his computer, but the thought of it had filled every waking moment during the past twenty-four hours.

  St Stephen’s Hospital was an old Victorian building of blackened brick, scheduled for replacement within the next couple of years. Inefficient, draughty and lacking in modern facilities, but Sandra found it a pleasant place to work because the staff were nice. The night shift wasn’t what she wanted to do. Lack of daylight didn’t suit her. But nights paid better. So did caring for the elderly.

  Sandra climbed the stairs to the third floor. She always walked up when she arrived for work because the lift was out of order half the time. Also she was overweight. She was fifteen minutes early this evening, but had been desperate to get out of the flat. Rob had become even more withdrawn and uncommunicative, too wrapped up in himself to realise how uptight she herself was.

  ‘Hi, Mary,’ she breezed, stepping into the nursing office and putting her black leather shoulder bag down in a corner.

  Staff Nurse Mary Cowan was alone in the little room and peered pointedly at her watch. ‘What’s with all this keenness, may I ask?’

&nb
sp; ‘Misread the time,’ Sandra lied. ‘How’s the day been?’

  ‘Not so bad. We’ve six empty beds this afternoon, which must be a record. Two new patients. A woman with a broken hip and a man who’s just been catheterised. They’re considering him for a transurethral prostatectomy tomorrow.’ She frowned. ‘You look as if you could do with a good lie-down yourself. What’s up?’

  Sandra shook her head. She longed to tell someone about it, but held back.

  ‘It’s Rob, isn’t it?’

  Mary Cowan was a small Irishwoman with dark hair and a thin, watchful face. They’d known each other for years and often chatted about their partners during these handovers. Mary was married to a policeman.

  Sandra nodded.

  ‘Up to something, is he?’

  Sandra tried to shrug it off.

  ‘They usually are,’ Mary stated. Then she became concerned. She could see this was no ordinary tiff. ‘What’s it about? I mean I know I’m being nosy, but . . .’

  Sandra looked away. She felt loyalty to Rob, yet was desperately scared about what he’d got himself into.

  ‘You think he’s seeing someone?’ Mary persisted in a soft, low voice.

  ‘Another woman? No.’ Sandra shuttled her head. ‘Although how would I know what he does in the evenings when I’m on shift? All I know is that the bed’s left in a mess and smells of him when I get home in the mornings. No. It’s not that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  Sandra looked towards the door. It did seem remarkably quiet out on the ward.

  ‘He’s doing stuff on the Internet,’ she mumbled.

  Mary Cowan looked a little dismissive. ‘What, like porn and that?’

  ‘No. Well . . . I don’t know. He may be for all I know, but that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, yesterday – I’d been out shopping and when I got back to the flat he’d left his computer on. He was out, see. Now, he always turns it off, normally. Never lets me see what he’s looking at on the net. So . . .’

  ‘So you thought you’d give it the once-over. Don’t blame you.’

  ‘It was e-mail.’

  ‘It’s like picture postcards, isn’t it? If you leave ’em lying around, you’ve only yourself to blame if other people read them.’

  ‘Well . . . yes.’

  ‘So, what did it say?’

  Sandra bit her lip. Rob would kill her.

  ‘It was a message from somebody who was congratulating him. Talking about the “effort on Saturday” all across Europe. Thanks to Rob and the other comrades, it said some network has been established.’

  ‘A network?’ Mary wasn’t getting the drift at all. ‘About football, was it?’

  Sandra shot a guilty glance behind her, almost as if she expected to see Rob there. ‘Not football, Mary. The message called it the Lucifer Network. You remember what happened last Saturday? Here and across Europe?’

  Mary frowned. Then suddenly her eyes were as big as marbles. ‘You don’t mean . . .’

  ‘I mean Southall, Mary . . .’ Sandra gulped.

  ‘No! But why, in the name of God? Why d’you think that?’

  ‘Well, to be honest, Rob’s always been a bit of a racist . . .’

  ‘So’s my Colin and he’s a copper, but blowing people up . . .’

  ‘I know. It’s crazy, isn’t it. My mind’s gone doolally thinking about it.’

  ‘But that is crazy, Sandra. You can’t seriously think that Rob . . .’ They held each other’s look for several seconds, knowing that men were capable of almost anything. ‘Have you asked him?’

  Sandra laughed bitterly. ‘You have to be joking. He’d knock the breath out of me if he knew I’d read the stuff on his screen. I never used to be scared of him, Mary, but I’m petrified of him now.’

  ‘But hang on a minute . . .’

  ‘Look. All I know is he’s up to something he shouldn’t be. And it’s serious. I’ve never seen him so uptight, so secretive.’

  ‘But that bomb in Southall . . . That was murder,’ she gasped.

  ‘I know,’ Sandra moaned. ‘It couldn’t really have been him, could it?’

  Mary didn’t answer. It wasn’t for her to judge. ‘What’re you going to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was about to tell her friend about the last part of the e-mail, the bit asking him to select a target for the coming weekend, but a buzzer sounded.

  ‘Duty calls,’ said Mary Cowan as she bustled from the room.

  Duty. For the past twenty-four hours Sandra had been trying to work out where hers lay.

  HMS Truculent

  The submarine passed at periscope depth through the channel between Lastovo island and the rocks a few miles to the east. The tiny piece of land named Palagra where the Russian voices had been detected was now just two miles distant, in a wide stretch of inter-island water known as the Lastovski Channel.

  ‘Depth under the keel?’

  Talbot had been pacing nervously between the navigation table and the planesman’s position. Charts of this part of the world weren’t famous for their accuracy.

  ‘Thirty-eight metres, sir,’ the navigator reported, reading off the echo-sounder.

  They were navigating with every means at their disposal. GPS, bottom contour analysis and visual sightings through the periscope. They had the attack mast up on this moonless night, slimmer and less visible than the search periscope and equipped with a thermal imager which produced ghostly outlines of the islands around them.

  ‘Single flash, five seconds, bears that,’ barked Lieutenant Harvey Styles, his face pressed to the periscope sight. He swung the optics to the east, where another light was visible. He counted the flashes and timed the pause between the bursts. ‘Flashing five, thirty seconds, bears that.’

  Talbot stalked to the chart again. The navigator had noted down the bearings and was pencilling in the plot. Everything matched. Just as it should.

  On a small monitor behind the ship control position the periscope’s thermal imager showed the stumpy, flat-topped outline of Palagra island dead ahead: 300 metres long and about 100 wide, it was uninhabited, according to the preliminary archive research done in London. The submarine’s task was to approach as close as they dared and photograph it from every angle to find a landing place for the reconnaissance team London was sending out.

  Depth would limit how close they could get. The chart showed sixty-two metres a mile off shore, perilously close to the minimum for a submerged nuclear submarine. Talbot also feared uncharted rocks and fishing boats. Getting snared in a net or going aground well inside Croatia’s territorial waters would be an embarrassment of world-shattering proportions. He marched into the sound room and hovered. Every man concentrating, every sensor straining for some noise that shouldn’t be there.

  In the trials shack, Arthur Harris also had headphones clamped to his ears, but there’d been nothing on the frequencies the Russians had used. Disappointment was written on his face. Disappointment and annoyance. Time had been lost when the boat had headed for Crete. Precious time, which if they’d returned to the surveillance straight after the rendezvous with the helicopter, might have given him another piece of the jigsaw.

  He checked the digital time display at the top of the equipment rack. It was after 11 p.m. local. An inactive hour. The broadband frequency analyser showed a flat trace, apart from the blip from two fishing boats on marine band VHF. He lifted off the headphones, and nudged the CT wedged next to him on the bench. He was going for a leg stretch. As he emerged into the control room, a voice rang out from the intercom speakers.

  ‘New contact bearing red zero-five.’ Chief Smedley’s voice.

  The control room was electrified.

  Talbot marched into the sound room and craned his head towards the bow sonar screens, staring at the thin green trace that had suddenly come up.

  ‘Contact is track number nine-zero-one,’ Smedley called.

  ‘Cut it through.’
/>   ‘Cut.’

  ‘Motor boat, sir.’

  ‘Somewhere near the island,’ the captain growled, hurriedly returning to the control room. He stopped by the periscope. ‘See anything, TSO?’

  Harvey Styles had the optics on full magnification. ‘Yes, sir. Small boat just visible, heading left to right.’

  ‘How small?’

  ‘Fifteen, twenty metres at a guess, sir. Looks like there’s a little harbour at the east end of the island.’

  There was nothing on the chart to indicate it. ‘Let me see.’

  Styles relinquished the eyepiece.

  The craft was a powerboat, moving at a good speed, judging by the bow wave. As he watched, Talbot saw it turn and settle on a course heading straight towards them.

  ‘Starboard twenty,’ he barked, handing the periscope back to Styles. The risk of their mast being seen in the black of night was minimal, even if the powerboat passed close, but he would take no chances. He returned to his command seat and watched the video screen as the craft veered away to their left. Styles switched the sight to full magnification. The front half of the boat filled the frame. There was lettering on the bow, barely distinguishable on the thermal imager.

  ‘I think there’s a “k” and an “l” there, sir,’ Styles commented. ‘Could be the Karolina.’

  Talbot glanced round and saw Arthur Harris hovering by the conning tower access hatch. He beckoned him over and pointed to the monitor.

  ‘I have an awful feeling, Chief Harris,’ he opined softly, ‘that those are our Moscow birds in that boat. And if so, they may have just flown the coop.’

  Vienna

  22.10 hrs

  The dark blue Passat had been rented by a twenty-six-year-old Cambridge graduate called Malcolm who had the shoulders of a rowing blue and the nervous enthusiasm of a teenager. Through the windscreen, Sam and he watched Max Schenk double-park his Audi outside the Marriott, then walk quickly into the hotel.

  ‘Off you go,’ Sam murmured.

  Malcolm pushed open the driver’s door, hurried over to Schenk’s car and crouched by a rear wheel arch, pretending to tie a shoelace. Fifteen seconds later he was back.