Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  ‘And obviously that’s exactly what it might have been,’ Richter suggested.

  ‘I quite agree, but there are a couple of oddities. I’ve looked at Kellerman’s duty roster. He was supposed to be at Langley all that day and so he shouldn’t have been anywhere near Washington. That’s the first thing. Second, late that afternoon he was recorded as a passenger in one of our limos that was driven to an unspecified destination. He left Langley in that car, but the vehicle came back empty. At the internal inquiry that followed, the chauffeur claimed he dropped Kellerman in central Washington but refused to explain why the CIA officer had been in the car at all, where else he’d driven him or whether there had been anybody else in the vehicle.’

  ‘Surely the inquiry could have compelled him to answer?’

  ‘The board tried hard, but he claimed he was acting under the direct orders of a senior CIA officer, and unless that officer specifically instructed him to explain his actions, he wouldn’t do so. And, obviously, he wouldn’t reveal the name of the officer either. He was disciplined, and that was all they could do, because there was no suggestion of any direct connection between the journey in the limo, the chauffeur himself and Kellerman’s death. But the fact that the dead agent’s name and the date of his death have now turned up written on a piece of paper obviously puts a different slant on those events of last January.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Richter agreed. ‘Perhaps the two men met in Washington, and Stevens then killed Kellerman. That might explain the date and the name, but I doubt if Stevens would ever write down anything that could link him to a killing. I think it’s more likely that Kellerman was Gregory Stevens’s briefing officer, and that explains what he was doing in Washington.’

  ‘Maybe, yes. And if he was, then we need to work out if he really was killed by a mugger or if somebody ordered him to be eliminated after he’d delivered the briefing.’

  Are you serious? The Company doesn’t kill briefing officers – at least, I sure as hell hope you don’t.’

  Westwood laughed shortly. ‘No, we don’t. If the CIA assassinated every officer once he’d delivered a briefing, there wouldn’t be enough people left at Lang-ley to sweep the floors. I’ve never heard of it happening before. But it worries me that Kellerman was killed on the very date that was written on the paper, and that means it’s at least possible we’re looking at something more than a random mugging.’

  ‘Let me just get this straight. You think there’s a real possibility that Gregory Stevens was tasked with some mission by Kellerman, and somebody at Langley then had Kellerman assassinated? But why?’

  ‘Look, I still think that’s a very unlikely scenario, but if Stevens’s mission was extremely sensitive, there’s at least a possibility that the guy running it might have decided to tie up one loose end for the sake of operational security. It’s also worth pointing out that Kellerman was a very junior officer. Knowing the way the Agency works, I would have expected a middle-ranking agent to be given the job of briefing someone like Stevens, so that’s a slight anomaly in itself.’

  ‘You mean that a more senior officer would possibly have smelt a rat, and killing a mid-rank agent would have generated a more thorough investigation?’

  ‘You said it,’ Westwood confirmed.

  ‘I think we’re building castles in the sand here, John. But if we are right, what mission could Stevens have been given that would justify killing the guy who had tasked him with it?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Westwood admitted.

  American Embassy, Grosvenor Square, London

  Carlin F. Johnson stared at the computer screen in front of him as he read the email for the third time.

  Now there was no doubt at all. When he’d initiated VIPER, he’d set up four principal tripwires to alert him to anyone searching the Langley database for details of this operation. The first had been obvious – any mention of Gregory Stevens, the name of the agent tasked with the op. The second two were ‘SM/VIPER’ and ‘Keller-man’, respectively. The encrypted email he’d just opened had revealed that somebody had carried out searches for both within the last twenty-four hours. The good news was that Johnson knew there were no references to VIPER anywhere in the database, and ‘Kellerman’ was a dead end – he’d seen to that back in January. It was a pity he hadn’t been able to delete all references to the junior officer from the database, but the computer’s auditing system had prevented him doing that.

  However, the fourth tripwire hadn’t yet been triggered, which was good news. If it had been, Johnson would now be thinking very seriously of taking an unplanned and extended holiday somewhere, because signs of anyone searching for those words would mean that the operation was as good as blown, and he had no illusions about the fate awaiting him if that occurred. The fact that he’d been implementing a specific directive from The Special Group would do nothing to protect him, and he would be lucky to escape with his life.

  His problem now was deciding what to do next. If Stevens was still out there, and sticking to the timetable, he should by now be somewhere in the south-east of England, and Johnson would prefer to remain here on the spot as he waited for the endgame. That was, after all, the reason he’d manipulated the system to get himself sent over to London in the first place. Once the final phase of the operation was concluded, Stevens himself would become a total liability and would then have to be silenced – permanently. Johnson had already decided to carry out that task himself, which meant he had to stay on in England.

  But he was also seriously worried about the searches being carried out back at Langley on the database. He had no idea who was behind them, and that was something he really needed to rectify. If he knew who was trying to trace the operation, it might be possible to dissuade him – somehow – from continuing the search. He sat in deep thought for a few moments, then composed a message of his own, which he encrypted and marked as priority one and ‘eyes only’ for the addressee.

  Greenford, London

  ‘It’s time,’ muttered the man in the driving seat of the white van.

  His companion, slumped beside him with a baseball cap pulled low over his face, immediately sat up straight, glanced at his watch and nodded agreement. He picked up the London A-Z from the seat beside him and opened it to the page he’d already marked. The driver took out his mobile, consulted a crumpled sheet of paper and dialled a number.

  ‘This is Alpha Two,’ he said. ‘We’re getting mobile now, and estimate we’ll be in position at minute fifty-five.’

  Then he switched on the ignition, waited a moment for the diesel heater light on the dashboard to go out, then turned the key. The engine started and soon settled down to a steady rumble. The driver engaged first and pulled away, the Transit bouncing over the kerb as he steered the vehicle down the street.

  ‘Turn left onto the main road at the end here,’ his passenger instructed, ‘then right at the second set of traffic lights.’

  Ten minutes later, having caught both lights at red, the driver turned the van into a side street and pulled it to a halt almost directly outside an imposing building, again stopping on a double yellow line. He switched off the engine, and both men climbed out, the driver carefully locking the doors of the cab. They walked round to the back of the vehicle, unlocked and removed both padlocks from the two additional hasps. Opening the rear door, the passenger climbed into the van and pulled the door closed behind him. A couple of minutes later he emerged, jumped down to the ground and slammed the door closed again.

  ‘Done?’ the driver asked.

  ‘It’s done,’ the other confirmed.

  They replaced the padlocks, made a final check that all the doors were securely fastened, then headed away towards the main road beyond. Just as they turned out of the side street, the driver made another call using his mobile.

  ‘Alpha Two is in position. Now on foot for the rendezvous.’

  ‘Roger. Alpha One is mobile. Rendezvous in three minutes.’

  In fact, i
t was nearer five minutes before the white ‘Metropolitan Police’ van nosed its way down a narrow street and stopped outside a row of terraced houses where the two men from the first vehicle were waiting.

  The moment the Transit stopped, the rear door swung open and they quickly climbed inside. Without a word, they stripped off their blue overalls to reveal the white shirts and black trousers they were wearing underneath. In a couple of minutes they were clad in police uniforms identical to those worn by the two men already in the cab.

  From the box bolted to the floor, they each took a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun and four loaded magazines. One went into the weapon, the other three into custom-designed loops on their body armour. Then they picked up semi-automatic pistols, loaded them and secured them in their belt holsters.

  All they had to do now was wait.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Monday

  South-east London

  Hans Morschel was getting increasingly fed up with London traffic. Every time he got into a car, it seemed, he found himself staring at traffic lights – almost invariably red – roadworks of some sort or an unmoving line of other vehicles.

  ‘I won’t be sorry to get out of here,’ he muttered to Hagen as they sat in the Mercedes behind a heavily laden articulated lorry belching diesel fumes into the surrounding air.

  ‘Relax,’ his companion muttered, glancing at his watch. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘I know. I’m just pissed off with this place. It’s worse than Munich, and that’s saying something. How long now?’ he asked.

  Hagen studied his watch again. ‘Maybe ten minutes,’ he said, ‘depending on the accuracy of the timer.’

  Greenford, London

  The white van illegally parked in Greenford had not so far attracted any official attention. No traffic wardens or police officers had noticed it, and those Londoners who had to travel down the same street, on foot or by car, simply muttered unfriendly epithets about ‘white van man’ as they squeezed past. The vehicle looked as if it was used primarily for deliveries, and in a sense this was true. In the locked rear compartment was a 50-gallon oil drum containing a carefully calculated mixture of diesel oil and fertilizer: a lethally explosive combination when in the right proportions, and Morschel had made absolutely sure that it was in the right proportions. Taped to the side of the drum was a simple trigger.

  They’d considered detonating the charge using a mobile phone, but Morschel had finally decided that was too much of a risk. If the police somehow guessed that there might be a series of explosions triggered by cellphones, there was a good chance they would shut down the networks to prevent any further devices from functioning. Instead, they’d chosen to use one of the simplest and most effective of detonators: a small charge of Semtex fitted with a blasting cap, a battery and simple timer, which was then attached to the drum. There was enough plastic explosive in the detonator to wreck the van, but it would be the fertilizer bomb that would do the real damage.

  As the two men had left the vehicle, they had set the timer for a period of fifteen minutes, but in fact the battery connections closed in a little over thirteen minutes and twenty seconds. Not that anyone was counting. The Semtex fired less than a tenth of a second later, and around half a second after that the fertilizer bomb detonated. The result was immediate and devastating. There was an enormous blast, and the Transit van simply ceased to exist. Metal panels and engine components flew in all directions like shrapnel. A boiling cloud of dust and particles from the explosion rose above the street itself. The ground floor of the adjacent building was pulverized, bricks and timbers and glass crushed into oblivion. Its structural integrity was fatally compromised, and seconds later part of the first floor gave way and tumbled into the void already created by the explosion.

  Five people walking down the street were killed instantly, two of them so terribly mutilated that they would eventually only be identified by DNA evidence.

  Up and down the same street, car and building alarms howled into life, in a sudden discordant cacophony.

  The real target wasn’t the building outside which the vehicle was parked, but in fact the one opposite, a medium-sized bank. The damage to this structure was markedly less, because the building had to be left safe for his men to enter, and Morshel had carefully calculated that the detonation would just blow in the windows and shatter the automatic glass doors. There would probably be numerous casualties inside, caused by flying glass and other debris, but Morschel had never been concerned about collateral damage.

  Over the atonic wailing of the alarms, the sound of an approaching siren gradually became audible, and a minute or so later a police van screeched to a halt in the street immediately outside the bank. Pedestrians were still milling about in shock, many bleeding profusely from severe head wounds, others with merely superficial cuts. Other survivors of the blast lay on the pavements or in the roadway, most moaning and screaming, but some ominously still.

  The rear doors of the van opened, and three men jumped out. They were wearing Metropolitan Police uniforms, and all carrying MP5 sub-machine guns and, incongruously, large black nylon holdalls and with flesh-coloured masks obscuring the faces under their helmets. They ignored everyone – dead, wounded, and those shocked but fortunately uninjured – and raced straight into the bank. The moment the last of them had vanished inside the building, the driver swung the van into an expert three-point turn that left it facing the main road, and their pre-planned escape route.

  In the bank itself, the scene was chaotic. Glass splinters carpeted the floor, and advertising placards and bits of paper were scattered everywhere. Customers and clerks were wandering about in a daze but, as the three men entered, most turned to them with expressions of shocked relief. But these men had no intention of helping anyone there – they were simply going to help themselves. They moved swiftly into the positions and roles that were now so familiar to them.

  In a line down the left-hand side of the bank there were half a dozen teller positions, each protected by a shatterproof glass screen, and these, though damaged, were mostly still intact. At one end was a solid door that led behind the counter, a keypad beside it, and that was their first target. Most of the lights had blown out, though the power was still on, and the keypad and electric lock were still functioning.

  The leading ‘officer’ stepped up to the door, levelled his MP5 at the lock and fired a couple of short bursts. Wood splinters flew like confetti as the armour-piercing 9-millimetre rounds slammed into the door and the frame directly beside it, the yammer of the automatic weapon a further assault on everyone’s ears after the explosion of the bomb.

  They’d assumed that the frame would have a steel insert and the door itself a metal lining and, as the wood flew off in chunks, it was immediately obvious that this was correct. But that level of security was intended to protect the bank’s assets against blaggers wielding sledgehammers and crowbars; against the rapid-fire assault by the armour-piercing rounds it stood no chance.

  The German stepped back from the door and kicked out hard with the sole of his boot, aimed directly against the remains of the lock. The door flew open, and the man raced inside. He was joined behind the counter a couple of seconds later by one of his companions, carrying two holdalls. The third member of the team remained on the other side of the counter, his MP5 trained on the dazed and injured customers and staff, in case of any sign of resistance.

  One of the intruders pushed the dazed tellers aside, forced open all the cash drawers one by one and began scooping handfuls of notes into his holdall, his MP5 now slung over his shoulder. The other crashed through to the manager’s office, the door to which was already standing open. The room was empty, so he swung round, reached down and grabbed a male clerk who was cowering under the counter. He pulled the young man to his feet, slammed him back against the wall and rammed the muzzle of his MP5 into his stomach.

  ‘Where’s the fucking manager?’ he snapped, his voice harsh, the gut
tural accent clearly German.

  The clerk just stared at him, whether in shock or incomprehension. The German lifted the Heckler & Koch, slammed the butt against the side of the man’s head and sent him tumbling senseless to the floor.

  The terrorist strode across to a woman cashier and repeated the question. She took one look at his masked face and pointed silently at a middle-aged man crawling away on his hands and knees, his face streaming blood from a gash on the temple.

  The German seized the older man’s collar and pulled him to his feet. ‘The safe,’ he snapped. ‘Open the safe.’

  The manager shook his head. ‘There’s a time lock,’ he stammered. ‘I can only open it when—’

  He got no further. The terrorist swung round, aimed his MP5 directly at one of the few tellers still standing and fired a three-round burst. The man tumbled backwards, the front of his shirt suddenly sporting three crimson circles as the slugs smashed into his chest at point-blank range, and slammed him into the wall. As his lifeless body slid down to the floor, the massive exit wounds left a gory vertical streak on the light-coloured paintwork.

  ‘Now open the fucking safe.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Just don’t shoot, please.’

  The manager led the way along a short corridor and into a small room, where he stopped in front of a solid steel door with a keyhole and combination lock fitted. He took a key from his jacket pocket and slid it into the lock. With hands trembling from shock and outrage, he began turning the dial. The first time, he missed one of the numbers, either deliberately or by accident, and the German grunted in annoyance.