Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  His appearance now transformed, Morschel went and sat down in the restaurant and drank a cup of moderately bad coffee before returning to the Mercedes. The last thing he did before resuming his journey was to toss the packet now containing the original number plates and German passport into an overgrown ditch that ran between the perimeter of the service area and the uncultivated field adjacent to it. He realized it would be discovered at some point but guessed that wouldn’t be any time soon.

  And, even if somebody found it almost immediately, it still wouldn’t really matter.

  Romford, Essex

  On the south-east side of the town lay a small industrial estate occupied by the usual wide range of businesses, including a discount tyre company, depots for two courier firms, a car repair specialist and a small computer software company.

  On the far side of this estate stood a warehouse identical in size to the others, but without any identifying name outside it, though the mark left by the logo of the previous occupants was still visible on the front of the building. A discreet sign taped on the window right next to the door leading into the former offices bore the company name ‘BB Productions’ – which was an almost entirely uninformative label – and a mobile phone number. Outside the warehouse, two nondescript saloon cars were parked in marked spaces, but otherwise there was no sign of any business activity.

  Just after four that afternoon, an articulated car transporter turned into the estate, the driver slowing almost to a crawl as he searched for the building that was his destination. The vehicle stopped right beside the tyre company, and the driver climbed down to ask there for directions. A couple of minutes later he re-emerged with a youth wearing grubby overalls, who pointed further down the road. The driver nodded his thanks, climbed back into his vehicle and, with a hiss from the air brakes, moved away slowly.

  Outside the unmarked warehouse he again stopped the lorry and descended from the cab. Just then, the side door of the building opened, and two men emerged and headed towards him.

  ‘This BB Productions?’ the driver asked.

  One of the men nodded and turned to his companion. ‘Get the main doors open,’ he instructed.

  The driver handed over a clipboard bearing several sheets of paper. ‘Sign here, here, and here,’ he requested, and watched carefully as the man complied. ‘Thanks. So you want them inside the warehouse?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll find four other vans in there, but there should still be enough space in front of them. Where are the uniforms and the other stuff?’

  ‘Inside two of the vans. You’d better check all of it before I leave here, OK?’

  ‘You can count on it.’

  The driver took back the clipboard, walked over to the cab of the lorry and placed it on the passenger seat. Then he went to the rear of the vehicle and extended wheel-ramps down from the steel framework to the road surface. Once he was satisfied that the ramps were properly positioned, he walked up the narrow gap between the side of the transporter itself and the rearmost of the four vans it was carrying.

  He opened the van’s door, slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. The reversing lights illuminated, and the van backed swiftly down the ramps. Once it was clear of the transporter, he drove it forward to the warehouse, where the double-width roller-shutter doors were now fully open, then steered it inside and parked it where the other man indicated. Ten minutes later, he was parking the last of the four white Ford Transit vans neatly alongside the third. All of them were fitted with roof-bar lights, and with metal grilles over their windscreens. There were ‘Metropolitan Police’ logos emblazoned each side, and ‘Police’ markings on the bonnets.

  After checking their registration numbers against those listed on a sheet of paper, he announced: ‘The uniforms are in this one, and the weapons in that one over there.’

  He opened the rear doors of the two vehicles he’d indicated. In the back of the first were two hanging rails on which were hung twenty black uniforms, and in the second two large wooden boxes. The driver lifted one of the box lids and pointed down at the row of a dozen Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine guns with attached magazines, nestling neatly in racks. In the second box were twenty semi-automatic pistols, with a selection of belts, holsters, helmets and bulletproof jackets. A couple of dozen boxes of ammunition completed the inventory.

  ‘Right,’ the driver said, after the two men had finished counting all the equipment and checking it against their inventory. ‘What is it you’re making with this lot?’ he asked.

  ‘Buggered if I know. Some bloody cops and robbers thing for TV, I suppose. We’ve got nothing to do with the filming. We just deliver the hardware and make sure the actors are wearing the proper uniforms and carrying the right guns when the director shouts “Action”.’

  ‘Well, have a good one,’ the transporter driver replied and turned to walk back to his vehicle.

  Even as he drove away, the main doors of the warehouse slid closed, quickly hiding all the vehicles from view. As soon as they were fully lowered, the two men bolted them shut on the inside. Then they turned their attention to the weapons that the theatrical supply company had provided.

  Even to an expert, the sub-machine guns and pistols would have been indistinguishable from the real thing, until you picked one up, of course. Audiences expected such weapons to look real: anything obviously fake would destroy the illusion. But although they had the look and feel of the genuine article, with bolts that opened and closed convincingly, they were all, nevertheless, just harmless replicas, and replicas weren’t what these men needed.

  Methodically, they collected all the MP5s from the box, carried them to the rear of the warehouse and placed them inside a crate in a storeroom, then repeated the process with the pistols and ammunition.

  One of the men led the way to another storeroom, the door of which was fastened with two exterior-quality Chubb locks and additionally secured with two bolts fitted with heavy-duty padlocks. He pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and methodically undid all four locks, then pushed open the door. Inside the window-less room stood half a dozen dark green steel boxes of a distinctly military appearance.

  He opened the first one and picked out another Heckler & Koch MP5 that looked virtually identical to those they’d just stored away. But these weapons were not studio props, and there were also twenty boxes of 9-millimetre ammunition, all marked ‘A/P’ for ‘armour-piercing’.

  Working quickly and efficiently, they carried the submachine guns, pistols and ammunition out to the ‘Metropolitan Police’ Ford Transits and stowed them in the purpose-built boxes bolted to the floor in the backs of the vans. Then they locked all the vehicles securely.

  A few minutes later, one of the two men emerged from the building, walked over to his car and drove away. His companion would be staying there in the warehouse overnight, to be relieved by another member of the team the following morning.

  Every door and window in the warehouse was fitted with an alarm, and they’d converted one of the offices into sleeping quarters, equipped with a microwave oven, a small fridge, a television set and a camp-bed. As well as these home comforts, the man would also have a loaded Glock 17 and a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun for company. Now they were so close to the start of their operation, it made sense to provide a permanent guard on such vital equipment.

  Rochester, Kent

  Hans Morschel pulled off the M2 at the Rochester junction and steered the Mercedes towards the centre of the town, following a set of directions he’d previously printed from an Internet site. As he approached the outskirts, he turned aside onto a minor road and shortly afterwards stopped the car outside a line of shops. He locked it and returned twenty minutes later after having made a number of purchases. But he was still missing one item, so he drove on, closer to the town centre, and eventually found another shop selling exactly what he wanted.

  Ten minutes later he parked outside a middle-sized hotel where he’d pre-booked a room. Knowing that the Ger
man police, and probably the Bundesgrenzschutz as well, were looking for him, he’d made all his bookings from a series of Internet cafés located in and around Stuttgart and felt quite certain none of the German authorities even knew he was here in Britain.

  Morschel plucked his bags out of the boot of the Mercedes, carried them inside and checked in. His room was situated on the second floor, with a small en-suite bathroom. It was a little dingy, but would do well enough for the few days he intended staying in the area.

  Once he’d unpacked, he glanced at his watch. He still had plenty of time before his meeting, so he checked that the door was locked, then lay down on the bed. His alarm set for six thirty, he closed his eyes and within minutes was sound asleep.

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter had decided he would work late at Hammersmith. His leg was stiff and ached badly, and he didn’t fancy the horrors of Friday-evening rush hour on the Underground. He’d rather wait until the crowds had dispersed before making his way back to his attic apartment in Stepney. As usual, there would be nobody waiting there for him.

  He decided to call Karl Wolff’s mobile to check on progress at the German end of the investigation, but the Bundesgrenzschutz officer had no further information. His technical support unit was still examining the laptops and mobiles they’d recovered, but they’d found nothing else useful and, Wolff guessed, there probably wasn’t anything more to extract.

  ‘These men were obviously very careful,’ he commented to Richter, shortly before ending their conversation. ‘My guess is that they used these laptops solely for obtaining general information, but anything more specific or incriminating – emails, credit-card payments, that kind of thing – was carried out in cyber cafés. They hadn’t even set up any email accounts on the laptops, and the browser history suggests they didn’t use a web-based service either.’

  ‘So we’re still stumbling around in the dark?’ Richter remarked.

  ‘That’s an appropriate way of putting it. I’ll let you know if anything else turns up, but I’m not very hopeful.’

  ‘And Hans Morschel?’

  ‘Vanished from sight. Nobody’s seen any sign of him here in Stuttgart, so by now he could be anywhere.’

  ‘That,’ Richter said, ‘is exactly what’s worrying us. And what about our “Superintendent Schröder”?’

  Wolff laughed bitterly. ‘Like a ghost in the night. When he walked out of that hospital, he simply disappeared. We’ve still got no idea at all who he really is, or why the hell he’s involved in this. Personally, I think he’s a part of the cell, maybe Morschel’s number two, and he killed the last survivor just to stop him talking to us.’

  ‘Perhaps, but there’s still the phone that was traced to Onex. If that was his mobile, how could you square that with him also being a part of the Stuttgart cell?’

  ‘In two ways, and neither is entirely convincing. Either there was some kind of rivalry between these two terrorist groups, and Schröder deliberately pointed the finger at the Swiss cell so that the police would carry out an assault, or the two cells were genuinely working together and somebody else blew the whistle. Maybe Schröder merely tried his best to warn them, but it was already too late for the terrorists to get out of the building.

  ‘Now,’ Wolff went on, ‘before you pull those suggestions apart, let me save you the trouble. Terrorist groups aren’t normally rivals to each other. Even if their philosophies are entirely dissimilar, they’re usually fighting what they see as a common enemy, and therefore they’re far more likely to cooperate with each other and share resources than to tip off a law-enforcement agency.’

  ‘That’s our thinking too,’ Richter confirmed.

  ‘Right. So that makes the “working together” hypothesis sound more likely, but what bothers me is the fact that the mobile – which I think might be Schröder’s – was switched on for only such a brief period in Switzerland, and, as far as we know, he was never spotted anywhere near the target building. My understanding from the Terrorism Investigations Unit is that no unidentified people were detected entering or leaving the property. If he really was a part of that cell, why didn’t he ever visit the apartment?’

  ‘And why,’ Richter interjected, ‘did the warning about the raid come so late, just seconds before the Swiss police went in? Our hypothesis is a little different, or at least mine is, since my boss remains unconvinced. We believe the mystery caller wanted the terrorists to react the way they did, because he intended that none of them would survive that assault. That’s pretty much the same as happened in Stuttgart, and Herr Schröder was waiting in the wings there to ensure that the only survivor died peacefully and harmlessly in his sleep.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Wolff replied, ‘but what was his motive? Why is Schröder betraying terrorist cells? And don’t forget that the Stuttgart group was detected by a German police officer, so there was no tip-off regarding their presence. How do you explain that?’

  ‘I don’t know, unless Schröder realized that the target building was already under surveillance, which meant that he didn’t need to bother contacting the police himself. But you’re right about motive. It really doesn’t make sense.’

  Fifteen minutes after he’d ended this call to Wolff, the internal line from the duty officer rang.

  ‘Richter.’

  ‘That’s a surprise. I thought you’d be long gone. Everybody else has.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Richter said, ‘since Friday is POETS Day – piss off early tomorrow’s Saturday. Did you actually want me for any reason, or were you just feeling lonely down there?’

  ‘Not lonely enough to want to talk to you, thanks. No, I’ve had a call from my opposite number at Five, looking for Simpson, so I’ve been trying all the office phones to track him down.’

  Richter glanced at the wall clock. ‘It’s gone six,’ he pointed out, ‘and you’d be lucky to find him here at this time even during the week. On a Friday there’s no bloody chance because by now he’s probably half-way to Lincolnshire or wherever one of his land-owning pals has invited him this weekend. What’s it about, anyway?’

  ‘Did you know that Five has requested an analysis of all the passenger-lane camera images from Calais, Boulogne, the French Chunnel terminal and all the other ports, for the last couple of days?’

  ‘Yes, actually it was me that asked for it.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well, it turned up a few oddities, just as you might expect, but Five has flagged up one that might be significant, in view of Stuttgart.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This afternoon a Mercedes on German plates was photographed at Calais waiting to board the P&O ferry to Dover. The driver was a single male, and his passport checked out as being legitimate.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Five has carried out routine checks on all car registrations since the watch order was initiated. Obviously this takes time because they have to run the checks through the vehicle registration systems in the respective countries of origin. Anyway this one came back from the Germans with a flag.’

  ‘False plates?’ Richter suggested.

  ‘Oddly enough, no. The plates are legitimate, registered to a Hanover address, but the car they should be attached to is sitting in a wrecker’s yard near Munich. It was written off in a three-vehicle crash on the autobahn about a month ago. It’s the same model as the Mercedes that took the ferry, and it’s even pretty much the right colour – dark grey.’

  Richter felt a buzz of excitement. ‘They got pictures of the driver?’

  ‘Yes, and his passport details.’

  ‘Fat lot of use they’ll be. If the car’s on false plates, the driver will have a spare identity tucked away in his pocket. Are the pictures here yet?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve just put them on the system. You can access them on your PC in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Richter said, and rang off.

  Three minutes later he was studying an image of the front end of a Mercedes saloon, and a few seco
nds after that a slightly blurred image of the driver. The nineteen-inch monitor offered pretty good reproduction, but Richter preferred to hold the pictures in his hand, so he printed out both photographs on the colour laser sitting beside his desk.

  Then he took out a magnifying glass and began studying the images carefully.

  Chapter Ten

  Friday

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter took a last look through the magnifying glass at the face of the driver of the Mercedes saloon, then reached for the phone and dialled Karl Wolff’s mobile in Germany.

  ‘It’s Paul Richter again. I think we might have something here.’

  Quickly he explained about the Mercedes saloon with the wrong number plates fitted. ‘This could be someone completely innocent,’ he added. ‘Somebody who’s bought a second-hand Merc from a shady source somewhere, and I don’t want to generate an APB – an all-points’ bulletin – here just to catch some German tourist driving around in a dodgy set of wheels. I recall you ran some kind of photo-recognition software before in order to identify Morschel. Can you do the same thing with the picture we’ve got here?’

  ‘That depends on how good the image is. I’m no computer expert, but I understand the program needs to be able to identify certain key facial features to make a positive identification. If it can pick those out, it’ll work; if it can’t, it won’t. Can you send it over immediately by email?’

  ‘Of course. Let me have the address.’

  Having jotted down what Wolff told him, Richter turned to his computer and swiftly drafted an email to which he attached the two images from the Calais port cameras. Then he picked up the phone again.

  ‘OK, Karl, it’s on the way to you right now. I’ve sent both pictures. Is there anyone there at the moment who can run a comparison?’