‘It’s a combination of things,’ the Intelligence Director said, looking up from the screen of his laptop computer. ‘Israel, I mean. Water is a problem there because they suffer droughts and the country has several different methods of storing it and producing it. These include what’s called the coastal aquifer, the Sea of Galilee, some desalination plants that produce fresh water from the Mediterranean and a lot of water recovery schemes of one sort or another. That would make polluting the water supply quite difficult.’
‘While you’re on the Internet, Marcus,’ Simpson said, ‘just tell us the country’s biggest single source of water, because that will probably be the Iranians’ target.’
The Intelligence Director looked back at his screen.
‘According to this site,’ he replied, ‘probably the Sea of Galilee, and there’s an obvious problem with that. It’s a huge body of water. The Sea is pear-shaped, about thirteen miles long and seven miles wide, giving it a surface area of roughly sixty-four square miles, with a maximum depth of nearly one hundred and sixty feet. It’s fed by the Jordan River and several other watercourses that drain into it from the hills in Galilee. This site does not specify the volume of water within the Sea, but according to a second website I’ve looked at, the combined water storage capacity of the Sea of Galilee and the coastal aquifer is around two billion cubic metres.
‘Professor Vernon mentioned the dilution factor, but I don’t see how the Iranians could possibly get enough of this putative vector into that volume of water without diluting it so much that it would have no effect at all. Unless they turned up with a whole fleet of road tankers, parked them beside the Sea of Galilee and then pumped their contents into the water. And bearing in mind that we’re talking about a freshwater lake that lies entirely within the borders of Israel, there is absolutely no chance of that happening without someone noticing and stopping it.’
‘Then there must be something else,’ Richter said.
‘There is,’ the Intelligence Director confirmed. ‘Back in the 1960s, the Sea of Galilee became the source of a thing called the Kinneret-Negev Conduit or the National Water Carrier. That’s a canal that takes water from the Jordan River and supplies the coastal region of the country, where most of the population lives. The Sea of Galilee is almost seven hundred feet below sea level, so the water is pumped up to a place called the Beit Netofa Valley, which is about halfway between Haifa on the coast and the Sea of Galilee, and into a reservoir up there. From the reservoir, water pipes carry supplies down to the coastal areas. The reservoir isn’t very big. It’s intended to act as a kind of header tank for the Israeli water system, to get the source of the water high enough that gravity will take it the rest of the way. That would be a target that could well work in the scenario we’ve been discussing.’
‘We’ll make that assumption, then,’ Richard Simpson said. ‘Unless anyone has any better ideas, we’ll presume that the Beit Netofa reservoir is the probable target of this scheme. Now all we need to do is find out if there’s any truth in this at all, or if we’ve just been sitting here pissing in the wind.’
‘There is one thing we could do,’ Richter said.
‘What?’
Richter told him.
Chapter 45
Soho, London
Thursday
The posthumous letter written by Martin Wilmot had contained a comprehensive statement of everything that the scientist had been able to find out from his conversations with ‘Michael’ as well as deductions he had made about things that hadn’t been said. But because Wilmot had been drip fed only enough information to allow him to obtain whatever data Michael wanted, the hard facts he had been able to glean were comparatively few.
Richter had gone through Wilmot’s letter a couple of times and had noted down every piece of information that he felt might be useful. And now one of these in particular did actually seem to be working out. He had also spent well over an hour on a scrambled telephone call to the MI5 duty officer at Millbank who hadn’t seemed any too pleased to be embarking upon what he clearly felt to be some kind of a wild goose chase – albeit a highly classified wild goose chase – on behalf of an intelligence officer he had never heard of who worked for an intelligence organisation that he had also never heard of.
Simply establishing his bona fides had taken Richter the better part of ten minutes, five of them hanging on the phone while the man at Millbank presumably took advice from someone a little higher up the food chain or perhaps even rang someone at Legoland on the other side of the river at Vauxhall Cross. After all, Richter’s section, the Foreign Operations Executive, ostensibly worked on behalf of the Secret Intelligence Service, so it would have been reasonable to assume that somebody there would have at least heard of the FOE.
In the event, there appeared to be no useful information, or at least not the information that Richter had been looking for, at Millbank, so it had all been a complete waste of his time.
That wasn’t entirely surprising. Every foreign embassy and consulate in every city in the world routinely employed illegals, either professional intelligence officers who had been appointed in an entirely innocuous and meaningless capacity, typically something like a cultural attaché, or citizens of their own country who were acting as students or businessmen or whatever with no apparent official links to their homeland. These illegals were normally employed in active espionage or other activities to the detriment of the host country, and their identities were always a closely guarded secret, sometimes not even being disclosed to the most senior embassy or consulate staff.
Richter was then sitting in a corner of the public bar of a hostelry in Dean Street, a glass of lemonade sitting on the table in front of him. Like most professionals in his somewhat murky trade, Richter never drank alcohol, because it was far too easy for such beverages to be spiked or poisoned, and in his case it was simple enough to avoid the temptations of the demon drink because he had never tasted anything alcoholic that he actually liked. He was staring at the screen of his Blackview smartphone, a wired earpiece in his right ear and listening while James Baker, back in the dungeons at Hammersmith, worked some kind of arcane magic to explain what he was seeing on the screen.
It wasn’t, in fact, desperately impressive, just a mapping application that showed the network of fairly narrow streets and alleyways that characterised that part of London, Soho. There were numerous apps available for smartphones that would produce a very similar display to the one Richter was looking at, but his app differed from those in two important ways: first, it was not available to the general public for any price because of one feature it incorporated and, second, overlaid on the map was a very faint grid upon which a tiny blue symbol was pulsing slowly. And it was that symbol which was holding Richter’s full attention at that moment.
He had spent just over half an hour with Baker that morning, after catching about four hours of fitful sleep in one of the ground floor ready rooms of the building at Hammersmith, telling him what he needed to do and how he planned to do it. James Baker, the resident IT wizard for the section, had listened, nodded agreement and had then very efficiently produced the information – the location, or rather the locations – that Richter had needed.
Half an hour later, Richter had been on his way towards central London, travelling as a passenger in one of the pool cars. He’d climbed out of the vehicle on the edge of Covent Garden and then made his way slowly north towards Soho. There had been, at least at that stage, no hurry because they had no idea where the contact was. All Baker had been able to do was identify the area in which he had previously been located, which had come as something of a surprise, not because of where it was, but because it was such a small geographic area: basically, just Soho and Covent Garden.
Most intelligence professionals made a point of never being predictable, of never following the same route twice, even altering their method of transport, timing and route when travelling to work. Richter himself used a mix of public transport
– the Tube, buses and taxis – plus his feet when he travelled to Hammersmith each day, and on two or three days each week he used his motorcycle, taking a slightly different route every time and always watching his mirrors. But for some reason the contact he was going to meet tended to always pop up in the same bit of London. Maybe he just felt comfortable there, or he lived nearby. Either way, it was sloppy and very unprofessional, and the man had also made another bad mistake that Baker was taking advantage of right then.
Richter had headed slowly towards Soho, hoping that a definitive and accurate location would follow.
And it had. It had just taken rather longer than he had hoped or expected.
Most people who use mobile phones, which in the Western world means almost everybody over the age of five, will normally keep the device switched on at all times except when they are in bed. Some people even leave them switched on overnight but with the ringer muted so they have a fighting chance of getting a decent night’s sleep. That way, they will still be aware from the call record if somebody tried to ring them.
But there are other users of mobile phones who have a slightly different way of working. Often these people have two or more mobiles, or perhaps two SIM cards in a single handset if the hardware allows it, with individual ringtones selected. One phone or SIM card will be on most of the time, and the other only turned on when needed, when the user is expecting a call or a message of some kind. Not all, but many, of these users are involved in criminal activity of one kind or another, most frequently involving the supply of illegal pharmaceutical products: drug dealers, in short. These people may not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they are not entirely stupid. If they are able to read – a skill which almost all of them possess to a greater or lesser degree – they will know that the location of every mobile phone can be tracked as long as it is switched on, and sometimes even if it switched off but the battery is still fitted.
For the forces of law and order, tracking the location of the cell phone of a suspected criminal provides a very convenient and easy way of establishing that particular person’s movements in any given period. It’s especially convenient and easy for the police because all the work is done by somebody else, some technician employed by the mobile phone provider. But if the phone is only switched on for a few minutes, the only thing that can be established is a single location at a specific time, and this is of much less use to an investigating police officer.
The phone that Richter was following had, according to the data that Baker had obtained through a series of parallel high priority requests sent a couple of days earlier to every mobile phone service provider in the United Kingdom, spent most of the previous day, and in fact most of the previous week and the previous six months, switched off. But the records also showed that the mobile was normally switched on for about twenty to thirty minutes in the late morning of almost every weekday, and almost invariably when this happened the phone was located somewhere in the Soho or Covent Garden areas of London. Sometimes the location was mobile, but usually only for a couple of minutes, and then it typically remained static for at least fifteen minutes.
The reasonable supposition was that the user of the device expected to be contacted by a colleague or a superior or some other person at that time, perhaps while he was sitting in a cafe or a restaurant somewhere, and that once whatever message had been received or the telephone conversation had finished, the phone was switched off again so that his movements could no longer be tracked.
‘Still static,’ Baker said into Richter’s ear.
‘Elapsed time?’
‘Three minutes fifty-two. You’re less than two minutes away.’
Richter was now walking quickly through the streets of Soho, not running because that would attract attention and he had no idea whether or not the target he was homing in on would have protection: one or more minders inside or outside wherever he was, men who would be looking out for anything unusual. Like a running man, for example.
‘Activity?’ Richter asked.
‘It switched on but not being used. According to the map, the target’s a pub on the next corner on your left.’
‘Visual,’ Richter said, his voice clipped. ‘Going off-line.’
He removed the earpiece and tucked it into his jacket pocket, pulling the mini jack plug out of the socket on the top of his Blackview and replacing the cover using his thumb.
Richter stopped for a few seconds outside the door of the pub, accessed the telephone function of the mobile and made sure that the correct number was displayed on the screen. Then he stepped inside, glanced around to get his bearings and, more importantly, to visually check the people standing and sitting around inside the bar, looking for his target.
Then he touched the screen to begin the call and held the phone to his ear.
On the far side of the bar were three booths and as Richter looked round he heard the unmistakable sound of a phone beginning to ring. In the centre booth he saw a man, who was sitting by himself, lower a glass containing a clear liquid to the table in front of him and pick up a mobile phone to answer it.
Richter began walking towards him, but in the crowded bar he was just one of several people moving around and the man in the booth did not appear to have even noticed him.
‘Hello?’ a man’s voice sounded in his ear as Richter saw the seated figure’s lips forming the word.
He pressed the button on the screen to end the call, dialled another number and then slipped the phone back into his pocket and sat down in the booth directly opposite the seated figure.
‘Hello, Michael,’ Richter said. ‘We need to talk.’
Chapter 46
Soho, London
Thursday
The man Richter was looking at was of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance: black hair cut fairly short and neatly styled, light brown complexion and with dark brown eyes. His features were regular and unmemorable, his suit was clearly good quality and expensive and what Richter could see of his figure suggested he was fairly fit, which possibly hinted at membership of a gym somewhere. What he looked like more than anything else was a successful businessman.
What he also looked like was puzzled and annoyed.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘And what do you want?’
‘As I said, Michael,’ Richter replied, ‘just a chat, really. I think you know the answers to a few questions that have been bothering me for a while.’
‘I don’t have to talk to you. Are you a police officer?’
‘Now why would you ask that? Have you done something wrong?’
Michael glanced to one side, apparently looking for someone, then returned his gaze to Richter, a slight smile on his face, but he didn’t reply.
Moments later, two heavily-built men also wearing suits but of a noticeably poorer quality than Michael’s appeared beside the booth.
‘Time for you to go,’ Michael said, and barely glanced up at the taller of the two men. ‘Get him outside,’ he instructed. ‘Take him down one of the alleyways and break both his legs.’
Richter didn’t even look at the two men.
‘I don’t think so,’ another voice said quietly, the American accent unmistakable.
TJ Masters had apparently materialised beside the taller of Michael’s two bodyguards. Like a bookend, Rich Moore matched his position beside the other man, the two Americans having shadowed Richter ever since he’d climbed out of the pool car in Covent Garden. They were both aiming Glock pistols at the bodyguards, stubby suppressors fitted to the ends of the barrels, the weapons out of sight of any of the other patrons of the pub because of the way the two men were standing.
‘This is just the sort of thing I mean,’ Richter said, in the same conversational tone. ‘You need to take a bit more care. Be more aware of what’s going on, and just try thinking things through a bit more. Maybe you should take these two guys for a short walk, TJ,’ he added to Masters, ‘but try not to make too much of a mess when you dump t
hem. I can do without the extra paperwork.’
Masters nodded, gestured with the barrel of his pistol and the procession of four men walked slowly out of the pub, the two Americans with their weapons hidden under their jackets but ready for immediate use.
Michael watched as they left the building, then reluctantly looked back across the table at Richter.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘I don’t know you, and I think you’ve confused me with somebody else.’
Richter shook his head.
‘I don’t think so, Michael,’ he said. ‘I suppose it all really comes down to attention to detail. You probably thought your relationship with Martin Wilmot finished when you or one of your hired thugs stuck a knife in his stomach and ripped out his guts in Epping Forest, but you’d be wrong about that. Wilmot obviously had his faults otherwise you’d never have got your claws into him, but I think he knew his time was running out. So, before you got around to slicing and dicing him he wrote a letter. Not to anyone in particular because he probably hoped he’d eventually be able to destroy it. But as we know, that didn’t happen so it ended up on my desk.
‘He wrote down pretty much everything he could remember about his relationship with you, all about TRAIT and the files he supplied, none of which he should have done, obviously. The problem we had was that he hadn’t got much information that you might call substantive, and he obviously couldn’t supply any proof of what he was saying either. But one thing he did tell us that absolutely panned out was your mobile number. The number you told him to call you on whenever he had any urgent information to pass on, but only at certain times of the day. Like about this time of the day, for example, which is why I’m sitting here right now. It’s not good tradecraft to maintain the same channel of communication between two separate operations and I’m really surprised you didn’t know that. If you’d just bought yourself a new SIM card and told all your contacts what your new number was, I’d never have found you.’
Bioweapon Page 28
