The most difficult and dangerous phase of his plan was just about to start, and for a few minutes his mind engaged in a kind of mental wrestling match as he tried to work out whether or not he was doing the right thing, and if there was another way of achieving his objective. He knew he could walk away right then. He could simply take a taxi or a bus to Tarragona or Barcelona, buy a ticket back to England and hop on a flight to Heathrow or Gatwick. And, he knew perfectly well if he did that he would be met on arrival by a group of angry and probably armed police officers and immediately arrested. But he also knew he couldn’t afford for that to happen, because if he lost his freedom he knew with a fair degree of certainty that he would very quickly lose his life.
The actions of one person, a person he couldn’t identify because he only knew they were out there because of their actions, or perhaps even those of a group of people, had already convinced him that that would be the case. Vernon knew he would certainly not be safe in prison: the promise of quite a small payment or favour to the right – or rather to the wrong – man behind bars could end with him getting stabbed to death in the showers or beaten to death in his cell. Vernon had no illusions about that. And if he died, the information, or at least the conclusion the information pointed to, would die with him.
He had spent much of his time over the last three weeks he’d still been in England trying to decide exactly what he should do, and the plan he had come up with still represented what he thought was his best possible chance of achieving what he needed to do, of seeing justice triumph over evil.
Bars and restaurants in Spain open late and close later. Vernon had been unsurprised to see entire families arriving at particular eateries for dinner at eleven at night as a matter of course and it was actually difficult to find anywhere open for a meal much earlier than eight in the evening. That was one reason why he had chosen to travel to Spain rather than staying in France or going elsewhere in Europe.
He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just after ten. Probably the timing was about right. He checked that he still had the thumb drive containing his VPN and TOR software, then picked up the newspaper, closed his hotel room door and walked out of the building.
He walked slowly through the streets of Cambrils, pausing frequently to glance in the windows of shops that had already closed, trying to make sure that nobody was following behind him. Counter-surveillance was an art that he knew almost nothing about, but he was doing the best he could to make sure he was unobserved.
Fifteen minutes after walking out of the hotel lobby he pushed open the door of another cybercafe on his list, ordered a café con leche – a white coffee – and took it to an unoccupied terminal on one side of the room. He began browsing the Internet, using Google and just checking to see if any stories or news reports had been released about him, but found nothing. He wasn’t really interested in whether they had or not, but he was one of only three customers in the cafe and he didn’t want to insert his USB stick in the machine until he was sure the man behind the counter was occupied elsewhere.
Within seconds, he discovered that the news had broken. Feeds in Britain, Europe and America had learned about his advertisement, either direct from the Dark Web or from other news agencies and were busy running stories about the ‘renegade scientist’ who was ‘running rampant’ and offering terrorist groups the opportunity to use a bespoke chemical or biological weapon to ‘kill tens of millions’ of innocent people. Most of which, of course, was a grotesque exaggeration, but that was the way the gutter press and many of the Internet sites conducted their business. None of them were ever prepared to let the facts get in the way of a good story. A couple of them had even given the Dark Web address of the website on which he had posted his advertisement. As far as publicity was concerned, what he had done so far had been entirely successful.
A few minutes later, a couple of young Spanish girls, probably in their late teens, walked in and began an animated conversation with the barista, or whatever the appropriate term was for a man who ran a cybercafe. As soon as he was certain that the man’s attention had been completely diverted by the impressive chest of one of the two girls, Vernon connected his thumb drive and in a couple of minutes was working its way through the hidden channels and links of the Dark Web to the site he had posted on.
He hadn’t been sure how long it would take somebody to notice what he was offering, but when he checked he had already had three replies. One was a litany of abuse, written by somebody who was clearly and violently opposed to all forms of chemical and biological warfare, and who suggested as a parting shot that Vernon should try taking a bath in Soman and see how much he liked it. The respondent’s views weren’t that dissimilar to Vernon’s – all his professional life he had worked on the other side of the equation, trying to develop vaccines or antidotes or cures rather than the weapons themselves – not that that was relevant.
The second response was a simple request for the price for a consignment of Sarin to be delivered to Turkey, and the third was an offer of a cooperative venture, with Vernon joining what was very clearly some kind of far-right group of terrorists – or perhaps would-be terrorists. Vernon copied the response onto the thumb drive, just in case they were more than a bunch of rabid fantasists, then looked again at the second reply.
The wording – crisp and business-like, as if the author was doing nothing more than requesting a quotation for some kind of household appliance or device rather than asking for the cost of an entirely lethal nerve agent that could kill hundreds or perhaps thousands of people – chilled him, because it looked entirely and frighteningly legitimate.
Up to that point, Vernon hadn’t really thought through, or at least not in any great detail, how he would react to that kind of response. Was it genuine? What should he quote as a price, and what would be a realistic timescale? He had known he would probably be dealing with people who cared more for a cause than for the innocent victims who might die in their pursuit of whatever ideal they had set their sights on, people to whom human life mattered hardly at all. That was why he had chosen the radical Islamic website as his contact vehicle. At least, that was one of the reasons.
In the end, he decided that his reply should match the enquiry. He calculated a figure for the manufacturing that would include the hire or rent of suitable premises and the purchase of the necessary raw materials, just as if he was really going to complete the order, added a guesstimate for the delivery journey, which would have to be by road, probably by private car rather than a commercial vehicle to avoid possible hold-ups and inspections at border crossings. Then he doubled the combined estimate and rounded it up to the nearest ten thousand dollars and specified that payment would have to be made to a bank in the Cayman Islands, half on acceptance of the price and half on delivery. Details of the account name and number would follow once his quotation had been accepted. Vernon read through the text he had prepared three times before he posted his response.
Once he’d done that, he quite deliberately looked at several other pages on the website, taking his time, before he shut down the browser. He again waited about thirty seconds before he closed the VPN program, and about another thirty seconds before he logged off the computer. Then he removed the memory stick and left the cybercafe.
The die had now been cast, and at least to some extent matters were out of his hands.
Chapter 30
Toulouse, France
Wednesday
Travelling with a diplomatic passport solves a lot of problems, because its possession confers immunity from arrest and search on the individual carrying it, and on his or her baggage. Diplomatic baggage, as a matter of interest, can be anything from a briefcase to an articulated lorry, and large-scale smuggling operations run by corrupt diplomats for their own financial benefit are far from unknown. But there’s no point in having power if you can’t abuse it.
The downside of having a diplomatic passport is that it inevitably attracts possibly unwanted attention.
If an aircraft lands anywhere and disgorges a couple of hundred people, one of whom is carrying a diplomatic passport, of all the passengers processed he or she is most likely to be the focus of some kind of follow-up action, unless there is a demonstrably good reason for that person to be arriving at that airport.
As a matter of routine, the DGSI, the Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, France’s principal counter-espionage and counter-terrorism organisation, was informed by the immigration officials at Blagnac that a British diplomat had arrived there from Heathrow. The report also included a photograph of ‘Paul Beatty’ passing through immigration pulling a carry-on suitcase.
As far as the DGSI was aware, there were no ongoing matters requiring the attention of a British diplomat anywhere in the Toulouse area, and their interest was further heightened by the fact that Paul Beatty didn’t actually look like a diplomat at all. He was less Savile Row suit and old school tie and more a jeans and T-shirt kind of person, although the photograph of him taken at the airport showed him wearing a fairly presentable jacket and casual trousers.
But the passport was genuine and legitimate and obviously there was nothing they could legally do to stop him or question him or otherwise impede his movements. They were kept informed by the local officials that he had hired a car at the airport. They also learned that he had checked in to the local Campanile hotel, which seemed to them to be very un-diplomatic thing to do, most diplomats eschewing budget chain hotels and buffet meals for much grander and more expensive establishments, on the perfectly reasonable basis that somebody else would end up having to pay for it.
The DGSI was sufficiently interested in what ‘Mr Beatty’ was up to that, at a little after two fifty that morning, one of their agents, clad entirely in black and moving with exaggerated care and stealth, spent fifteen minutes studying the hotel parking area to ensure that there was no movement there, and checked the accommodation building as well to make sure that no insomniac businessmen were sitting at their windows and looking out. Only when he was as certain as he could be that the only people within a hundred yards of him were asleep did he walk slowly and silently onto the tarmac parking area, checking all around him as he did so.
He had already noted the exact location of the Peugeot 3008 that was his target. He crept forward, stopped beside the vehicle and then dropped down to the ground. From his pocket he pulled a plastic object about the size of a box of matches. He flicked a tiny switch on one end of the device and was rewarded by a single brief flash of red from an embedded LED. He reached up into the engine bay, his sensitive fingers searching for a flat area of steel on the chassis. He found a suitable location, then reached up with his other hand, holding the device. He held it near the chassis and felt the box move of its own volition as the powerful magnet inside snapped it sideways, clamping it onto the steel with a muffled clunk.
Seconds later he eased up into a crouch, and then stood erect. He glanced round but saw nothing that suggested he’d been seen. Immediately he retraced his steps, moving carefully but quickly out of the car park. Five minutes after that, he unlocked his own vehicle, parked a few streets away, and made a very brief call to an unlisted number.
‘C’est fini,’ he said. It’s finished. It’s done.
The tracker consisted of a small circuit board and a long-life battery that should ensure the device remained active for at least two weeks. By that time the DGSI assumed they would have worked out what Beatty was doing in the area and either lost interest or decided to take some kind of action against him, diplomatic passport or no diplomatic passport.
Chapter 31
Toulouse, France
Wednesday
‘So, what do we know about this guy Vernon?’ Masters said, taking a seat next to Richard Moore in the dining room of the Campanile hotel and sipping cautiously at a cup of black coffee. Both Americans were wearing casual clothes, their jackets roomy enough to conceal their shoulder holsters and Glocks although the weapons, now reassembled and loaded with bullets from Richter’s stash, were still in their carry-on bags in their hotel rooms.
‘Not a hell of a lot, if I’m honest about it,’ Richter replied. ‘He’s never appeared on the radar of the British police or intelligence services until now, and according to his boss and the people that he works with, he’s acting way out of character.’
‘Which is why your people figured he might have been abducted, I guess,’ Richard Moore suggested.
‘Exactly.’
Richter explained that the curious circumstances surrounding Vernon’s actions in Warminster and at Heathrow.
‘What really threw us was the sight of a second man in Vernon’s car when he drove to Heathrow airport,’ he said. ‘The figure was recorded by several traffic cameras and that made the idea of an abduction seem much more likely.’
‘But,’ Masters said, and Richter looked at him quizzically.
‘That just sounded to me like a sentence that was going to have a “but” tacked onto the end of it,’ the American clarified.
Richter nodded.
‘You’re right, it did. We sent a forensic team to the long-term parking at Heathrow to check Vernon’s car. We didn’t really expect them to find anything, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And we were right, at least about the car. Plenty of forensic traces, all of which I have no doubt could be linked directly to Vernon himself. As a matter of course, the team also looked around the area where the car had been parked, and behind another vehicle that had been there even longer than his car, they found a deflated blow-up doll.’
‘A what?’
‘A sex toy,’ Richter clarified. ‘A life-size inflatable woman.’
The two Americans glanced briefly at each other, and then back at Richter.
‘They’re the best kind,’ Masters said. ‘They don’t talk or argue and never answer you back, and they’re always willing and able.’
Richter just stared at him.
‘I assume that was a joke?’ he asked.
‘Obviously,’ Masters said. ‘I prefer my women to have both a pulse and an attitude. Just ask Rich here.’
‘So, what, you’re assuming Vernon is some kind of a pervert?’ Moore asked.
‘He may well be,’ Richter said. ‘I have no idea, one way or the other. But also in his car the search team found an old jacket, a scarf and a hat, and what we think happened is that Vernon bought the blow-up doll and put those clothes on it in the back seat of his car so that it would look like there was another man inside the vehicle with him. They also found a tyre pump that ran off the cigarette lighter which he probably used to inflate the thing. I only found out about this when I had a message from my section this morning, but that pretty clearly shows that Vernon has gone off the reservation for reasons of his own, and that there’s no possibility that he was abducted.’
‘And that could be a good thing for us,’ Masters said. ‘If he’d been snatched by the Commies or whoever, then by now he’d probably be well out of our reach and be sitting in a room at the Lubyanka in Moscow or out at Yazenevo or somewhere and having a bunch of unpleasant options explained to him in words of one syllable. But if he decided to skip for reasons of his own, then he’s probably still somewhere around here and we’ve got a pretty good chance of finding him before he does something even more stupid than what he’s done already.’
That seemed a fair assessment of the situation. All they needed now was some kind of a lead, anything that would tell them where they should start looking.
The two CIA agents already knew about the post believed to have been written by Charles Vernon on the Dark Web site, and on the drive back from Carcassonne the previous evening Richter had explained the reply that Baker had sent to try to flush out Vernon, wherever he was.
As they sat over the remains of their breakfast, Richter’s mobile emitted a double tone indicating the receipt of a text message. He immediately swiped his finger up the screen to wake up the phone, then read the message he�
�d just received.
‘News?’ Moore asked.
‘Yes,’ Richter said. ‘We might have something now. Vernon – assuming that it is him we’re dealing with, of course – replied to Baker late last night. The delay in my section passing the message to me is because they had to run a whole bunch of software to try to establish where he was, and that took time. I don’t understand all the technicalities of it, but apparently he’s using a VPN to disguise his location, unless he really is sitting in a café in Michigan, which is what the VPN is claiming. Baker’s got some clever pieces of software that can work out more or less where he is.
‘According to this, VPNs work really well at concealing your location if you log into one, visit whatever dodgy websites you’ve got in mind, then shut down the Dark Web browser and close the VPN. According to Baker, that’s pretty foolproof. But when Vernon typed his response to Baker’s message, one of the programs Baker had installed forced the connection, the link between Vernon’s computer and the website where he was posting, to remain open, even after Vernon had closed down his browser, and that was our way in. The VPN still showed that Vernon was in Michigan but for a very short time before he logged off the Internet the computer he was using reverted to its normal IP address when he shut down his VPN. And the IP – the Internet Protocol – address is based upon his geographical location. That’s what this says but it’s not my field so I don’t really know exactly how it all works. They can’t tell me his exact location, not his street address, but they have established the general area and you were right, TJ. He isn’t that far away.’
‘Where?’ Moore and Masters said almost simultaneously.
‘Baker and the goblins that work with him down in the cellar reckon he’s on the Costa Brava in Spain, either in or very close to a coastal town called Cambrils. From Vernon’s point of view, that would be a pretty good location, because that coast is lined with big cities like Tarragona and Valencia and Barcelona where he could lose himself, and they’ve all got really good transport links, road, rail and air, so it’d be easy enough for him to move on easily and quickly when he needs to.’
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