Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  ‘That’s Colin Montgomery. Think bigger, much bigger, and made of steel.’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘It is, or rather was, a ship. This was news to me too, but I’m now informed that there are about three thousand tons of probably perfectly viable explosives, mainly TNT, sitting in the wreck of a Liberty ship just a mile and a half off the sea front at Sheerness. And this very morning a senior plod from Canterbury walked into Thames House with an interesting theory.’

  Briefly, Simpson outlined what the interviewing officer at the Security Service headquarters had learned from DI Paul Mason.

  Richter wasn’t particularly impressed. ‘It’s a good story, OK, but what’s he got in the way of actual facts? Has anyone spotted illegal divers at the scene? Or boats getting suspiciously close to the site of the wreck?’

  ‘No to all of those, as far as I’m aware. So you’re dismissing this lead?’ Simpson asked.

  ‘Not necessarily, but I would like to see a bit more evidence before we go chasing off to the wilds of the Isle of Sheppey looking for bad guys who might not be there at all. And I’m not even sure that what he’s suggesting is viable.’

  Richter paused for a few moments to marshal his thoughts. ‘As you know, I spent some time in the Navy, although a lot of it was in the air, but I do know something about tides and currents, and quite a bit about diving. From what you’ve told me, the wreck’s lying at the southern edge of the Thames Estuary, near the mouth of the River Medway There’s bound to be a reasonably strong current there most of the time, which would make working on the wreck difficult without a diving tender moored above it, and if there ever had been, presumably somebody would have noticed it.’

  He paused again.

  ‘Despite the circumstances of the sinking, I doubt if the holds are open, so trying to get inside the hull would mean cutting through steel plate, which needs expensive and sophisticated gear, or a diver risking his life by swimming down passageways. Getting inside would be a problem, but an absolute doddle compared to the difficulty of getting out again, especially if the diver was trying to recover a Second World War bomb. He would definitely need flotation bags to lift it to the surface, and trying to manoeuvre those through passageways or even a hole cut in the side of the hull would be a nightmare.

  ‘According to what you’ve read in that report’ – Richter pointed to the buff folder lying on Simpson’s desk – ‘most of the munitions were thousand-pound bombs. No surprise, the reason they were called that was because they weighed a thousand pounds. That’s half a ton, so lifting one out of the water would need a crane. Moving it away from the water’s edge would need a powerful van or preferably a lorry.’

  He smiled. ‘After that, there’s the difficulty of cutting open the bomb casing in order to extract the TNT. You don’t just hack your way in with a Black and Decker and hope for the best. It needs specialist equipment and expertise. The whole operation would be a logistical nightmare, perhaps nearly impossible, and certainly very difficult to achieve without anyone noticing. And by that I don’t just mean an old tramp who spots a man in a wetsuit, or whatever else Mason thinks this man Barney might have witnessed at Sheerness.’

  Simpson nodded encouragingly, so Richter continued.

  ‘On the other hand, plastic explosive is freely available throughout most of Europe, as long as you know where to look. So why would any terrorist group go to all the trouble of trying to extract TNT from a wreck in one of the busiest tidal seaways in the world when they could nip over to, say Czechoslovakia, buy a bunch of black-market Semtex and just drive it here in the back of a van? Semtex is more powerful than TNT, a lot more stable and far easier to handle. Plus, if you can get your hands on some from the early production runs, it’s also odourless and won’t show up on X-ray machines. And if the bad guys, for some reason, can’t source a bunch of plastic, they can turn diesel oil and fertilizer into a bloody efficient IED. Just look at the damage to the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma.’

  ‘OK, Richter, you’ve made your point. I’ll note that you don’t believe Inspector Mason’s idea has too much merit.’

  ‘What did Five think of it?’

  ‘Pretty much the same as you, actually. The officer he spoke to earlier thinks Mason’s probably using this theory to wrap up the unsolved murder of the tramp in Sheerness.’

  ‘I think he’s got a lot more work to do, then. He can’t just claim “Some unidentified terrorists killed the guy” and hope that’s the end of it.’

  ‘Noted.’ Simpson passed the file folder across his desk. ‘As you’re now more or less in charge of this case, you can hang on to this.’

  ‘Thanks. Anything else?’

  Not really. Five sent out a nationwide alert yesterday to all ports and airports, and all the other usual warnings, but nothing’s come in so far. I’ll let you know.’

  Calais, France

  Hans Morschel had experienced no difficulties in leaving Germany and driving across north-east France in the four-year-old Mercedes 300 saloon with Munich plates. His only minor discomfort was the unusual thickness of the carpet, which meant the position of his feet on the pedals was slightly raised.

  In fact, it wasn’t the carpet itself that was causing the problem: the entire floorpan beneath it, the underlay having been removed, was covered in a one-inch thick layer of Semtex. That was the maximum Morschel believed they could hide using that method. The plastic explosive was arranged in individual packs, specially flattened to fit into the available space, and altogether it weighed around 85 kilos.

  Early that afternoon, just outside Calais, as Morschel had begun looking out for signs for the car ferry port, the driver of the Renault Laguna saloon behind him had flashed his headlights once, then overtaken. Morschel raised a hand in acknowledgement as the other car sped past, carrying a second load of Semtex hidden under the carpet in precisely the same fashion. As a basic precaution, the Laguna would be taking the Channel Tunnel train. Neither Morschel nor his associate, Ernst Hagen, thought there was even the remotest chance of either of them being stopped, but taking separate routes to their destination seemed a wise move.

  Just as happens at Dover, every vehicle that leaves France through Calais is subject to surveillance. Pictures are taken, by fixed cameras, of both the driver’s face and the vehicle’s number plate while it is stopped at the ferry check-in booth. Every passport is inspected by immigration officers, both French and British, and those that are machine-readable are run through a scanner. There are also large inspection sheds where vehicles that look suspicious, for whatever reason, can be inspected by French customs officers, and, if necessary, be reduced to their component parts.

  As a frequent border-crosser, Morschel was well aware of this routine and anticipated little trouble in passing through. He wasn’t concerned that the Mercedes’s registration plate would be recorded, because he already had a solution for that, and the same applied to his identification document.

  Exactly as expected, Morschel’s perfectly genuine German passport was accepted by both French and British immigration officers. A few weeks earlier, one of his associates had found a drug addict who bore a slight resemblance to Morschel, and the man had taken little persuasion to hand over his passport in exchange for enough cash to feed his habit for a couple of months. Thirty minutes after arriving at the ferry port itself, Morschel drove the Mercedes onto the vessel, parked it as instructed and then found a seat in the restaurant to enjoy a leisurely meal during the crossing.

  He expected to reach his ultimate destination by mid-afternoon and, as long as none of his men had encountered any difficulties en route, they should be ready to move in another couple of days. That timescale was slightly longer than he’d originally planned but, for their own safety and satisfaction, he and Ahmed bin Salalah had another matter to resolve before they ordered the endgame to begin.

  Two and a half hours after Morschel had driven onto the ferry, Helmut Kleber steered a hired Peugeot saloon on French pla
tes towards the same port. He had no hidden explosives in the vehicle, but there were several items of hardware that he had no wish for anyone to find, and these were well hidden in the rear of the vehicle. He, too, had no fears that he would be stopped, because the passport he was using was absolutely genuine, even though the name inside it wasn’t ‘Helmut Kleber’, or anything like it.

  But even if he was stopped for any reason, unlike Hans Morschel, Kleber possessed a guaranteed ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card. The trouble was that, once he used it, he’d blow the entire operation, so it really was a genuine last resort.

  Hammersmith, London

  ‘What is it?’ Simpson asked as Richter entered.

  ‘I’ve just taken a call from Karl Wolff, who’s given me an update on what the BGS have found out so far from examining that property in Stuttgart.’

  Simpson closed the file he had been reading and leant back in his swivel chair. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘As you know, the Germans recovered a couple of laptops and a handful of mobiles from the safe house and the bodies of the terrorists. Some of the phones were quite badly damaged, and one of the computers had taken a bullet, but the forensic people did quite a good job of recovering the data.

  ‘The mobiles first. They were all cheap pay-as-you-go phones, presumably purchased for this one operation, whatever it is. According to the call lists in the phones themselves, most of the calls made were from mobile to mobile within the group, and they all had the other numbers pre-programmed into the speed-dial facility.’

  ‘Pretty much what you’d expect,’ Simpson pointed out.

  ‘Exactly,’ Richter nodded. ‘But they also found four other pre-programmed numbers, both belonging to mobiles that they didn’t find anywhere on the property. If you recall, when GSG 9 hit the building, the surveillance teams reported that there would be eight occupants, but when the shooting stopped they found only six bodies. Hans Morschel and one other man had presumably got out through their improvised escape route some time earlier, while two other bad guys were already known to be away from the property at the time of the assault. The Germans have made the obvious deduction that these four numbers belong to the phones that were carried by Morschel and the other three men unaccounted for.

  ‘As soon as Wolff was given this information, he asked the German phone companies for a history of the mobiles’ locations, and a list of the calls they made and received. As already discovered, the majority of the calls were made from one member of the cell to another, and most of the time the phones had been located either inside the building itself or within that same area of Stuttgart.’

  ‘This is boring me, Richter. Get to the meat of it.’

  ‘I already have. According to the phone companies, two of the mobiles that weren’t discovered in the safe house had been switched off about fifteen minutes after the GSG 9 assault. One of them hasn’t been used since, but the other has. The interesting thing is the call record of this phone. It was used to make a total of seven calls to another mobile number over the past five days. This morning it was switched on again and the user made one short call yet again to the same number. After that, both phones were turned off. Wolff reckons this phone was probably the one being used by Hans Morschel himself.’

  ‘So?’ Simpson still didn’t seem particularly interested.

  ‘The new number – the one that wasn’t programmed into the speed-dials of the other phones found in the safe house – was tracked to a location a few miles south-west of Geneva last weekend. It was only switched on for about fifteen minutes and during that time it received a call from what Wolff believes is Morschel’s mobile, which suggests the two users had some sort of communications schedule in operation. So maybe there was a direct link between the two cells, and that could mean that the phone tracked to Switzerland was being used by this mysterious Schröder character.’

  ‘Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  And this information helps us how, exactly?’

  ‘Not very much,’ Richter admitted. ‘Wolff thinks that the chips or even the phones themselves have been dumped already, so these numbers are probably no more use to us because they’ll never be used again.’

  ‘What about the laptops, then?’

  ‘They were slightly more interesting. The damaged one took a bullet through the screen but the base unit was untouched. All the same, it didn’t have a lot on it, apart from a collection of games and some low-quality porn. But the other one had been used on the web, and some of the sites were interesting and relevant. The two that Wolff flagged up in particular were the Channel Tunnel website and a discount car-ferry booking agency, which might suggest the bad guys are indeed planning on moving their act over here.’

  ‘No bookings recorded, presumably?’ Simpson was now suddenly alert.

  ‘No, they obviously weren’t quite that stupid. They also looked at a couple of hotel and B&B sites, checking on different accommodation in London and the southeast, but again they didn’t make any bookings.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, but I think that what Karl Wolff and his merry men have turned up does suggest we probably have a group of terrorists on their way over here.’

  ‘Wrong tense, Richter,’ Simpson said. ‘You mean “had”, not “have”. The ten men in that safe house would have posed a viable threat to us but, with six of them laid out in a German mortuary, I think most of that particular threat has evaporated, don’t you?’

  Not necessarily. After all, it only takes one terrorist to plant a bomb.’

  ‘You’re stating the obvious. But what I meant was that, if a group of ten men had formed a terrorist cell to carry out a bombing campaign, or whatever, presumably that means they’d decided they needed ten men to accomplish it. They wouldn’t recruit any extra bodies just for the fun of it – too much of a risk. With six of them dead, my guess is that they’ll need a few weeks, even months, to find replacements, if they bother at all.’

  ‘That’s a good point, but only if you also assume that those men were the intended perpetrators. What bothers me most about this is that we have two terrorist cells which seem to have links to a potential London bombing, but which were apparently also intending to carry out two different attacks in mainland Europe. That could mean that the London team was a separate group altogether. The worst-case scenario is that we could be looking at what was planned as a coordinated attack in three countries at more or less the same time, so the fact that two of the terrorist groups have been eliminated won’t necessarily have any effect on whatever they’ve got planned for this side of the Channel.’

  ‘Christ, you’re full of good news today, aren’t you?’ Simpson muttered sourly, then swung round and stared out of the window towards the Hammersmith flyover. ‘I hope you’re wrong, but if we assume you’re right,’ he said, turning back to face Richter, ‘what else can we do?’

  ‘Not a lot. The alert’s in place, so it’s really just a matter of waiting for someone, somewhere, to spot something else. What I’ll do now is contact Five at Thames House, tell them what Wolff discovered on the laptop’s hard drive and suggest they tell the plods to concentrate their efforts primarily on London and the south-east. And at the moment, that’s about all we can do.’

  Dover, Kent

  Before leaving the Port of Dover, all arriving cars and small vehicles have to pass through a narrow exit, with inspection sheds on both sides, where customs officers stand waiting, and there are cat’s claw vehicle immobilizers to ensure any drivers who are requested to stop will do so.

  The exit lane was Morschel’s only worry, but he was still not unduly concerned. Under his jacket he was wearing a belt holster with a Glock 19 pistol tucked into it, and he was perfectly aware that the British officials would be unarmed. If by some chance the customs officers stopped him, he would answer their questions politely and, if requested, drive the Mercedes into the inspection shed. He would even get out and open the boot if they asked
him to. But if they started really searching the car, he was sure that the Glock would be all the persuasion he would need to convince them to let him pass. And once out in the streets of Dover, he was aware of numerous different routes he could take to get away.

  In the event, his lack of concern was entirely justified. As he drove through the exit lane, none of the customs officers did anything more than simply glance at him and also at the number plate of the Mercedes. So, fifteen minutes after the ferry had docked, Morschel was already on the A2 dual-carriageway, heading northwest towards the M2 motorway.

  At the first large service area he came to, he pulled into the car park and chose a secluded corner. When he was certain that he was unobserved, with no CCTV cameras covering that section of the parking area, he got out of the Mercedes, walked round to the back and opened the boot. He lifted the carpet, reached underneath it and pulled out a flat packet a little over a foot long and about four inches wide. He opened it and extracted the two Austrian registration plates which rightfully belonged on the car. The German plates used for his journey so far had come from an identical model Mercedes that had been written off in a traffic accident. He selected a cross-head screwdriver from the tool kit and within minutes had substituted the two Austrian plates. He then pulled the oval ‘D’ sticker from the boot lid and replaced it with one bearing ‘A’ for Austria. In the same packet he’d taken from the boot was an Austrian passport, which he slipped into his jacket pocket. The photograph inside showed a man looking rather like Morschel, but clean-shaven, so that was the final thing he now needed to rectify.

  Opening one of the suitcases, he removed a small leather wash-bag that he slipped into his jacket pocket, then headed over towards the service area itself. In the male toilet he first washed his hands and, at a moment when no other men were using the facilities, he opened the bag and extracted a pair of sharp scissors, a razor and some shaving cream. It was the work of only a minute to snip away most of his straggly beard and flush the hairs down the sink. Then, more relaxed, he thoroughly lathered his face and took all the time he needed with the razor, because the sight of a man shaving in a motorway service area was not at all unusual. While he was thus engaged, two men came in to use the urinals but neither so much as glanced at him.