Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  At that moment, Simpson’s direct line to the duty office buzzed, and he reached over to answer it. ‘Where?’ he asked, after just a few seconds. ‘Right, got it,’ he said.

  Another one?’ Richter asked.

  At a fairly small bank branch over in Barnet,’ Simpson confirmed.

  ‘And the same MO, presumably.’

  ‘Exactly An IED in a parked van, and then three men wearing police uniforms hit the bank. It looks like about the same number dead, but fewer serious injuries. The haul from this bank’s estimated at around three hundred grand.’

  Richter stood up and pointed silently to the location of Barnet on the open map.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Simpson said, glancing down. ‘It’s nice and close to the M1, or the M25 if they felt like a challenge. So you might be right after all. But even if you are, what can we do about it?’

  ‘Bugger all, as far as I can see. Virtually every district in Greater London has access to either a motorway or a major feeder route. The only thing I’d suggest is that the plods should concentrate their searches on the outer suburbs, because I don’t think these comedians are going to try hitting a bank in the centre. The problem is that London’s full of white vans driven by barely competent idiots who park illegally as a matter of routine, so spotting the one that’s got a bomb ticking away in the back is going to be virtually impossible.’

  ‘Right,’ Simpson said. ‘I’ll pass your thoughts on to Five. If you’ve any other bright ideas, this would be a good time to share them. You’ve still no clue what Morschel’s real target could be?’

  ‘None at all. There’s a huge choice of buildings and landmarks he could hit, but whatever he’s picked will be deliberately spectacular.’

  Romford, London

  Close to a bank in Romford, two men climbed out of a white van and headed off to their pre-briefed rendezvous position. Twelve and a half minutes later, the IED in the back of the vehicle detonated, and a mere eight minutes after that, four men wearing Metropolitan Police uniforms were driving away from the scene at high speed, nylon holdalls packed with cash lying on the floor of the van between them.

  Once clear of Romford, and about to join the M25 motorway, one of the men sitting in the rear of the Transit made a brief call on his mobile to report that Charlie group’s operation had been completely successful.

  Hammersmith, London

  Richter’s internal phone rang just after three.

  ‘There’s been another one,’ Simpson reported grimly. ‘A bank in Romford. Same MO, same sort of casualties. These guys really are pissing all over us.’ His voice sounded old and tired.

  Richter scanned the large-scale London map displayed on the wall of his office. ‘Easy access to three main roads,’ he pointed out. ‘From there, they’ve got a choice of the A12, A127 or even the M25.’

  ‘Don’t rub it in, Richter. Is that the last strike, do you think?’

  ‘No idea, but they’ve been going in a more or less clockwise direction around north London, and this one is the closest to the Thames and the river crossings, so it might be their final shot. On the other hand, that’s probably too simplistic, so I think there’ll probably be another one or two.’

  ‘This is turning out to be a very bad day, Richter.’

  ‘I wouldn’t disagree with that. I’d also suggest you don’t nip out to Barclays until we know this really is over.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant.’

  Richter had barely replaced the phone when it rang again.

  ‘Any news?’ John Westwood asked, speaking from Langley.

  ‘Plenty,’ Richter said, ‘but I’ve no idea if any of it relates to Gregory Stevens.’ Quickly, he explained about the three incidents in London.

  ‘That doesn’t sound at all like anything Stevens would have been tasked with,’ Westwood commented finally. ‘I realize he was an ex-CIA covert agent and so not subject to the usual rules, but I still don’t think he would have gotten himself involved with a group of bombers, and certainly not with a gang of bank robbers. Is it possible these events are entirely separate? Are you looking at some terrorist group that’s self-funding – like you told me Morschel’s “Stammheim” is – and whoever killed Stevens is someone completely different?’

  ‘Maybe. I really don’t know, but we think – or, rather, I think – there’s something else going on here behind the scenes, something we know nothing about yet. My worry is that it is in fact Stammheim that’s doing these bank jobs, but they’re intended just as a diversion to get us all looking the wrong way. My guess is that Morschel’s real target is a key structure somewhere in London, maybe one of the Thames bridges or even a tunnel, and that—’ Richter broke off suddenly as another thought struck him. ‘John, sorry, I’ll have to call you back.’

  Richter opened his web browser and input a search into Google, typing the three letters ‘FRB’, but that only produced a number of links directing him to various Federal Reserve Banks throughout America. But if the ‘B’ didn’t refer to some bank, what about a bridge? He thought for a few seconds, checked his London map and then input ‘F R Bridge’. The only thing that came up that seemed in any way relevant was ‘Fulham Railway Bridge’, and that, he realized, could easily be the target Morschel was after. A small barge, loaded with explosives and detonated under the bridge as a District Line underground train was passing over it would kill or injure hundreds of passengers, not to mention the months of disruption to the underground system and the millions of pounds it would cost to rebuild it. OK, it wouldn’t be as big a bang as the Twin Towers going down, but it would still qualify as ‘the big one’, and it would hit London hard.

  For a few seconds he just sat there thinking, then stood up and walked across to the wall opposite, where a large-scale map of the British Isles was pinned. He first searched the entire area around London, then tapped his finger on a spot near Stowmarket in Suffolk.

  ‘That’ll do,’ he muttered, stepping back to his desk to access his contacts database on the computer.

  He dialled a number, and his call was answered almost immediately.

  ‘This is a Military Flash call,’ he announced. ‘Twenty-two Squadron, please. Duty pilot.’

  Having explained what he wanted, Richter ended the call less than a minute later, then rang the armourer in the basement to issue crisp instructions, before checking his database once again and dialling Karl Wolff’s office.

  A voice answered in German, and for several frustrating seconds Richter tried explaining what he wanted, before realizing that the man at the other end spoke very little English. He then found Wolff’s mobile number and tried that, too. The German police officer answered almost immediately.

  ‘Karl, it’s Paul Richter in London. We have a problem here. I urgently need some information about Hans Morschel.’

  ‘We’ve heard about these bombings and the robberies,’ Wolff grunted. ‘Do you reckon he’s responsible?’

  ‘Yes, probably, but that’s not why I’m calling. When you briefed me about Stammheim during the operation in Stuttgart, I think you said Morschel might have had a military background. If so, any idea which branch he was in?’

  ‘Frankly no. It’s just that his operations always run with such military precision. He seems able to decide what he wants, set out a timetable, and then brief his men thoroughly to achieve it. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because I’ve suddenly realized what’s been staring me in the face for the last few days, and it’s finally starting to make sense. I think he’s planned a massive explosion here in London and I’m trying to work out what his target might be. So I wondered if you knew whether he was competent at handling boats.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve no idea. How big an explosion?’

  ‘Big enough, Karl. Sorry, I’ll have to call you later.’

  Rochester, Kent

  Locking the Mercedes, Morschel followed Hagen along the pontoon to where they’d moored the boat.

  As they stepped on board, Morschel glan
ced at his watch. ‘We’ve got two hours left before we have to leave the marina,’ he said. ‘That should be plenty of time.’

  Hagen nodded. ‘But even then, it’s not that critical. I mean, fifteen or twenty minutes either side wouldn’t make too much difference?’

  ‘No, but ideally I’d like this finished before the tide turns this afternoon. That’s the optimum time.’

  The two men set to work. The autopilot was working properly, and they’d already tested it, so all Morschel had to do was enter into the GPS the exact coordinates of the boat’s destination – a point it would reach long after they had left the area. He entered the figures, and then he and Hagen both checked them twice. Then they consulted an Admiralty chart and carefully entered the waypoints they needed, because they would be abandoning the boat once they reached the open water that lay beyond Lower Upnor, and the most direct route from that point to the vessel’s destination was overland, which clearly wouldn’t work. The waypoints would ensure that the boat stayed in the open channels and, as far as possible, kept clear of all obstructions.

  They did have a back-up option in mind but, until Ahmed bin Salalah arrived at the marina, they had no idea of how comprehensive it would be, and Morschel was determined that the boat’s navigation system would still do the job even if the Arab failed to turn up.

  The next part of their preparations was fairly complex. The GPS/autopilot unit Morschel had bought included a warning system – a low-voltage electric bell that would ring once a particular destination or way-point had been reached – and this was one of the two features that had been the major selling points for him. The idea of this device was that, in open-water navigation, where there was little danger of collision, a single-handed sailor could set the GPS to wake him up when the boat reached a specific location. He could then check his radar and do a visual sweep to ensure that no other vessels were nearby, then grab another hour in his bunk.

  Morschel had no use for the bell, of course, but he did have a very good one for the electric current that powered it. The two wires Hagen had routed from the cache of plastic explosive concealed beneath the floorboards terminated in dozens of electric detonators, commonly known as blasting caps, wired in parallel and each pushed deep into one of the packets of Semtex. Any one of them could trigger the entire mass of explosive, but redundancy was always a good idea.

  Hagen had already threaded the wires through the small hole he’d drilled in the bulkhead between cabin and cockpit, and they were still lying coiled up on the floor below the wheel. Morschel watched closely as Hagen attached one of these wires to the end of the bell wire from the GPS unit and carefully taped the ends together. The last thing they would do before they left the boat would be to attach the second wire to it in the same way. Once they’d done that, the activation of the bell circuit once the GPS unit had successfully navigated the boat to its destination would send a current down to the electric detonators, and that would trigger the explosive.

  It was a simple enough plan, and Morschel reckoned there wasn’t a great deal that could go wrong with it. He would have preferred to trigger the device himself, using a mobile phone, but that was now impossible because of the target. If he was close enough to check the boat’s position, he’d be unlikely to survive the subsequent detonation. Nor could he use a standard timer, as his men had been doing in London, because for the plan to work the explosive had to fire only when the boat reached the precise location of the target, and that would obviously depend upon the currents and tides. But he did incorporate one device, as a last-ditch back-up, set to detonate the explosive fifteen minutes after the latest possible estimated time of the boat reaching its destination. One way or the other, those charges were going to blow.

  With the first stage of the wiring now completed, both men turned their attention to installing comprehensive anti-tamper devices. These were small charges of Semtex with the usual electric detonators, and Hagen and Morschel spent some forty minutes connecting them to the obvious weak points of the system – the door into the cabin, the wiring that led from the GPS/autopilot unit, the engine and steering controls, and so on.

  When they finished, the cockpit had become a maze of wires and junctions, enough to confuse anyone. Once they’d made the final two connections, just before abandoning the vessel, anyone attempting to remove the autopilot linkages, or disable the engine, or simply open the cabin door, would be blown to pieces. The explosion of one of these devices, Morschel realized, would probably also destroy the GPS unit and almost certainly trigger the main explosion, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that. All he could hope was that nobody would guess what was happening until it was too late to stop it.

  Hammersmith, London

  ‘It’s Richter, and I’m on the way up to see you. And before you wonder what all the noise is, I’ve just whistled up a SAR chopper from Wattisham. It should be landing on the roof helipad in about twenty minutes.’

  Before Simpson could do more than splutter the beginnings of a question, Richter had replaced the telephone and was on his way out of the door.

  ‘What the hell are you dressed like that for?’ Simpson demanded, as soon as his subordinate entered. Richter was wearing jeans, trainers and a leather biker’s jacket, a Kevlar waistcoat, shoulder holster and the Browning just visible beneath it, and carrying a SPAS-12 combat shotgun and a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun. ‘What’s with the weapons?’ Simpson pointed. ‘And why do you need a helicopter?’

  ‘I have a horrible feeling I know what Morschel is planning. That’s why I need the chopper, because I’ve got to get to Fulham pretty damn quick. And I need the weapons because no doubt Morschel and his men will be heavily armed.’

  ‘Fulham? It’s just down the road. You can drive there in fifteen minutes. What the hell do you need a helicopter for?’

  According to our late friend Stevens, Morschel’s biggest target is right here in London, and he overheard some of the terrorists talking about “FRB”. The only London district lying south of the river I can think of that begins with “F” is Fulham, and the most obvious target there is the railway bridge, hence “R B”.’

  Simpson swung round to look at the map on the wall behind him. ‘You’re still convinced the attack will be south of the river, then?’

  ‘Yes, because all of the car-bombs have been to the north.’

  ‘So . . .’ Simpson broke off as his phone suddenly rang. A minute later he replaced the receiver. ‘There’s been another bombing,’ he said, ‘this time at Wanstead. And, to save you checking, it was nice and handy for the M11 and A12. That’s four so far.’ He returned his gaze to the map. ‘But you’ve forgotten Falconwood.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Falconwood. It’s south-east, out by Eltham. And, actually, you do know that Fulham is north of the Thames?’

  ‘Yes, but if I’m right, the target is actually on the river itself. And I’ve never even heard of Falconwood.’

  ‘No,’ Simpson agreed, ‘frankly nor had I until I looked at this map, but maybe you should still check it before you swoop out of the sky on Fulham with all guns blazing.’

  ‘That wasn’t exactly what I’d planned. I was going to check all the boats and barges heading towards the bridge there, and I’ll only start shooting at them if they fire at me first.’

  Simpson looked doubtful. ‘You think they’re planning their big attack so soon?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, obviously. They’ll want to take full advantage of all the confusion caused by those car-bombs. My guess is that whatever vessel they’re using to deliver their device must already be fairly close to the Fulham Railway Bridge. That’s why I whistled up the chopper.’

  ‘So what about Falconwood?’

  At that moment the throbbing of rotor blades became clearly audible even through the bulletproof glass of Simpson’s office windows. Then the noise died away as the aircraft landed on the reinforced flat roof.

  ‘If you’re bothered, check it out yourself.
I don’t have the time. What you can do, though, is call the Met and suggest they get some ARVs and snipers down to Fulham straight away.’

  SAR Sea King helicopter, callsign ‘Rescue 24’

  ‘Who are you exactly, and where are we going?’ the RAF pilot demanded as Richter strapped in and pulled on a headset.

  ‘Let’s get airborne first, and I’ll fill you in on the way. Head for Fulham, and get down low over the Thames. And put your foot down – I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘Fulham? Christ, you could have walked there in the time it took us to fly here from Wattisham.’

  ‘I know,’ Richter snapped, ‘but just do it now, will you?’

  ‘Right. Going off intercom to get clearance,’ the pilot said.

  A few seconds later, the noise of the two jet engines rose to a scream, and the big helicopter rose into the air, adopting a nose-down attitude as the pilot swung the aircraft around to the east and accelerated.

  ‘Now who are you, then?’ the pilot demanded again.

  ‘My name’s Paul Richter, and I suppose you could say I’m a civil servant.’

  ‘A fucking well-armed civil servant,’ the aircrewman contributed. ‘Boss, this guy’s carrying a sub-machine gun, a combat shotgun, even a pistol under his arm.’

  ‘I do like to be prepared,’ Richter said.

  ‘OK, Mr Richter, we’re on the way. Now answer my question: what are we supposed to be doing down in Fulham? In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a military rescue helicopter, not a taxi service. If you just needed to get there in a hurry, you could have whistled up a civilian Jet Ranger or something.’

  ‘I was aware of that, thank you,’ Richter replied. ‘I called you because Wattisham is pretty close to London, and I know you’ve got a maximum response time of fifteen minutes in daylight hours. That was one thing but, more important, this chopper has a winch and a guy in the back who knows how to use it. Your average Jet Ranger doesn’t possess either.’

  ‘So this is a rescue, then?’ the pilot asked.