Launch Code

by Michael Ridpath

  ‘Maybe we should wait for the police?’ said Brooke. ‘I mean, the admiral will probably have a gun. Armed police can handle the situation better than us.’

  ‘No!’ snapped Alice and Megan in unison. What Brooke was suggesting might be the sensible thing, but neither woman was in the mood to do something sensible.

  They were on a long stretch of dark road, rapidly approaching a bend. Alice could see the headlights of another car approaching.

  Megan was driving too fast.

  They reached the bend, and their car drifted a few inches over to the other side of the road. That was enough. They hit the oncoming car a glancing blow, their own vehicle spun three hundred and sixty degrees, and hit a tree.

  The hood crumpled. The engine cut out. The airbags didn’t deploy, but Brooke, who wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, catapulted forward into the headrest behind Alice’s head.

  Alice glanced across at Megan who seemed to be OK. She was staring groggily at the dashboard. Alice looked over her shoulder and saw the headlights of the other car pointing cockeyed at a hedge. It was in a ditch.

  Brooke was slumped back in the seat, her face was covered in something dark. Blood.

  ‘Brooke! Are you OK?’

  She raised a sleeve to her nose and wiped it. ‘I’m OK. It’s my nose. It hurts but I’m OK.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ Alice said to Megan.

  In response, she turned the ignition, which fired, slammed the car into reverse and her thrust her foot down on to the accelerator. There was a painful grinding noise, and then the vehicle pulled back into the road. Megan put the gear in drive. The car crunched forward slowly, and then there was a clatter as something fell off the front, and the car drove free along the road. Only one headlight beam was working.

  That didn’t bother Megan.

  In a few minutes they were climbing the hill above Old Hunstanton and they came to the turn off to Cliff Parade.

  Alice called out, ‘Turn right here!’

  Sixty

  ‘Glenn?’ Bill was trying to keep his voice steady.

  ‘No, Bill. No more talking.’ The admiral raised his pistol and pointed it at Bill’s forehead. ‘Take two steps back.’

  ‘No,’ said Bill. He stood up straighter.

  ‘Take two steps back, or I will shoot you.’

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Bill. ‘They’ll find my body. They’ll find the bullet hole. They will know I didn’t jump. They will know you shot me.’

  The admiral didn’t seem put off by this. ‘I’ll count to five. You jump before I get to five or I will shoot you.’

  ‘No,’ said Bill.

  ‘One . . . two . . . three . . . four.’

  Bill was still standing upright on the cliff, calmly facing the admiral’s pistol.

  The admiral swung his weapon towards Toby.

  ‘OK, Toby. Push him backward. Now. Or I’ll fire.’

  Toby almost did what he was told. Part of his brain told him the admiral’s command was illogical. If he pushed Bill off the ledge, he would then be killed himself. And if Bill could call the admiral’s bluff, so could he.

  On the other hand, part of his brain, the cowardly part, urged him to grab at any straw that might allow him to survive, even for a couple of minutes. Push Bill off the cliff and negotiate.

  No.

  Toby swallowed. ‘No,’ he said, drawing himself upright in an imitation of Bill.

  The admiral didn’t bother starting to count this time. He paused to think.

  Toby thought also. The admiral was running out of options. The only one left to him that Toby could see was to shoot both him and Bill then and there, and make a run for it.

  In which case, their best chance was to jump him. One of them might live. Maybe both of them; bullet wounds from handguns were not always lethal.

  The problem with that idea was that at that moment the admiral was pointing his gun straight at Toby’s eyes.

  ‘OK. This is what we are going to do,’ said the admiral. ‘We’re going to go back to Bill’s car. Then you are going to drive, Bill. If you don’t do exactly as I say, then I will shoot you and take my chances. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Toby.

  Bill said nothing.

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘All right. Bill, you go first.’

  Bill hesitated, then squeezed past Toby and began to climb the narrow path upwards.

  ‘You next,’ said the admiral.

  Toby followed. He could hear the admiral a couple of steps behind him. He was sure that the gun was pointed right at his back.

  What was the admiral’s plan? Take Bill and him away from the cliffs, drive somewhere deep in the Norfolk countryside – a ditch in the fens maybe – and kill them. Hide their bodies somehow. And then brazen it out.

  That seemed the most likely.

  Which would mean Toby had a few more minutes to live. Maybe an hour, max.

  His chances of getting out of this alive were very low. If any opportunity to jump the admiral appeared, they should grab it.

  Toby looked up. Bill had reached the top of the short path up the cliff; if he kept going, he would be out of the admiral’s line of sight for a few moments and he could run off into the night.

  This was it. A couple of seconds when one of them could get away. Problem was, the one of them wasn’t Toby.

  Oh well.

  ‘Run, Bill!’ Toby shouted.

  ‘Run, and I’ll blow Toby’s brains out!’ The admiral yelled from right behind him.

  ‘Ignore him!’ Toby shouted. ‘Run!’ He waited for the gunshot behind him. Then he realized he would be dead before he heard it.

  But Bill paused and stood upright on the cliff top. ‘Come on, you two!’ he shouted.

  Toby scrambled up to join him, his heart pounding. He had really thought he was going to die.

  He probably still was.

  ‘That was dumb, Toby,’ said the admiral. ‘All right. Both of you, walk toward Bill’s car side-by-side. I’ll be right behind you.’

  Toby and Bill did as they were told.

  ‘You should have run then, Bill,’ Toby said. ‘You’d have got a good start before he was on cliff top.’

  ‘Nah.’ Bill grinned.

  ‘Quiet!’ came the rebuke behind them.

  They could see the odd car driving along the parade, which was only a couple of hundred yards away. They could see houses with lights on and televisions flickering. But the illumination of the street lights formed a barrier as effective as any screen; no one could see through it into the darkness in which they were walking.

  A car turned off Cliff Parade, driving fast past the lighthouse towards the car park.

  ‘Stand still,’ said the admiral. He was only a couple of yards behind them.

  Bill and Toby halted.

  The car’s single headlight lurched into the car park, the beam swinging through them as the car turned.

  Then the beam veered back towards them. The engine roared and Toby was dazzled.

  He broke left and ran. Bill broke right.

  Toby had no idea what the admiral did. But the car swished past them, then there was a thump and a cry, which was immediately cut off. Toby spun around to see a car skidding into a fence post by the cliff path with a crash.

  A body lay a few feet away. Dark matter oozed out of a bald head.

  ‘Toby!’ It was Alice’s voice. She was running towards him.

  ‘Dad!’ Brooke and Megan: Brooke was limping, and her face was covered with blood.

  Toby glanced across to Bill, who was bent double, breathing heavily. Then Alice was in Toby’s arms. ‘Thank God you’re all right!’

  Bill approached the body, a daughter on either side.

  Admiral Robinson’s head was a mess. He was definitely dead.

  ‘Who was driving?’ said Bill.

  ‘Megan,’ said Brooke.

  ‘Figures.’

  Sixty-One

  Wedn
esday 3 December 2019, Norfolk

  ‘Some coffee, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Alice poured some into a mug for DI Creswell, and for DC Atkinson and Mr Prestwitch. They were gathered around the kitchen table at Pear Tree Cottage with Bill, Megan, Brooke, Justin, Toby and Maya, who had just arrived from Heathrow. Justin and Brooke were flying back to Chicago the following day, Maya was going back to the Gulf, and Bill, Alice, Toby and Megan were heading down to London. Megan had decided to stay in London with Bill and look for a job there. She said she wanted to remain close to her family for a little bit.

  ‘I’d like to start by apologizing,’ the inspector began. ‘In any murder investigation, we have to ask difficult questions. And sometimes we arrest suspects and subsequently release them.’

  ‘That’s all right, Inspector,’ said Alice. ‘I was not exactly helpful. I apologize for that.’

  Creswell gave her a quick smile. The inspector looked tired. Toby suspected murder investigations did that to you.

  ‘Thanks to all of you for your cooperation, especially over the last couple of days. There are some things we will never know for sure, but we have pieced together enough to have a pretty good idea of what happened, and we want to share that with you. Obviously, Admiral Robinson’s death means he can’t fill in the gaps for us, but it also means there will be inquests into the deaths of Sam Bowen, Lars da Silva and Robinson, rather than a criminal trial. That will make things easier.’

  ‘Much easier,’ said Prestwitch.

  ‘I expect you will all be called as witnesses. I can confirm, Megan, that the Crown Prosecution Service will not be taking any action against you.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Megan.

  It was hard to be sure what effect running down the admiral had had on her. At first she had just been overjoyed that her father and Toby were alive. Then she had stared at the admiral’s mangled body, before being pulled away by Alice. She knew that what she had done had unquestionably saved her father’s and Toby’s lives, but she had killed someone, and that fact wasn’t going to go away.

  ‘On that subject,’ Prestwitch interrupted. ‘The events on the USS Alexander Hamilton remain secret, and you should not divulge them at the inquest, or to the police, or even me. Is that understood?’

  Creswell frowned, and pursed her lips in something very close to a grimace. MI5 had not made her murder investigation any easier.

  Everyone around the table nodded. Apart from Bill, who looked straight at Prestwitch with something close to disdain.

  ‘My understanding is that the FBI will want to debrief you thoroughly when you get back to London, Mr Guth,’ Prestwitch said.

  ‘I have an appointment with them tomorrow morning,’ said Bill.

  ‘So what happened?’ asked Toby. It would be good to finally hear what the police had discovered in their investigation.

  The detective inspector answered him. ‘Sam Bowen had been rooting around for months asking a number of officers and crew of the Alexander Hamilton what happened in November 1983 on the submarine, and also what happened afterwards. I’m not aware of the specifics of this; I could guess, but I won’t.’ Here she glanced at the MI5 officer sitting next to her. ‘But it was enough to worry Lars da Silva, and Robinson.

  ‘So they both flew to England. Da Silva stayed with you, and Robinson stayed in a hotel in Ely, which, as you know, is about an hour from here. We think Lars told Robinson that Sam Bowen had discovered something important that would incriminate both of them – whatever that was you will know better than me – and told him where Sam was staying. Robinson then went to the King William. We have a witness who saw a man waiting in a car outside that evening; we think that was probably Robinson. We think he saw Alice enter the pub and then leave about half an hour later. Soon afterwards he went up to Sam Bowen’s room, knocked on the door, Sam let him in and Robinson stabbed him. He stole Sam’s computer and his notes, and arranged for his back-ups in the Cloud to be deleted.’

  ‘How did he do that?’ Toby asked.

  ‘We have discovered he had a bitcoin account,’ DC Atkinson said. ‘That’s unusual. He could have been speculating; more likely he was paying someone on the dark web to do his hacking for him.

  ‘When Mr Guth called the admiral after Sam Bowen’s death, Robinson was actually already in England. He pretended to fly to the UK right away, then got in touch with MI5.’

  Prestwitch interrupted. ‘As the senior surviving officer on the Alexander Hamilton, he had been in regular contact with the FBI and the Office of Naval Intelligence to ensure that secrecy was maintained. He had told them he was coming and they told me. He didn’t tell anyone he was already in the country.’

  ‘At some point Lars must have realized what had happened,’ Creswell went on. ‘We know he and the admiral met at The Pheasant in Thurstead at lunch time on Saturday, just before Lars was shot. We don’t know exactly what Lars said – whether he threatened the admiral, or just wanted to talk to us – but the admiral decided he had to be killed, and quickly. We found the rifle the admiral used. It was a SIG Sauer, once again bought off the dark web.

  ‘Now, Robinson must have realized that sooner or later he would be suspected. So he decided to shift suspicion on to Mr Guth, and then fake his suicide to seem like an admission of guilt. Given the British and American security services’ obsession with keeping whatever happened on that submarine secret, he thought difficult questions wouldn’t be asked.’ Another glance at Prestwitch. ‘He was probably right.’

  ‘We will be raising this with the Americans,’ Prestwitch said. ‘Security breaches like this over such a long period of time are totally unacceptable.’

  That was the sound of a buck being flung far over the Atlantic.

  ‘Totally,’ said Bill, drily.

  ‘Toby?’ Bill said after the police officers and the MI5 man had left. ‘Before we leave, do you want to take Rickover for a walk with me?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Toby.

  They set off, with Rickover at their heels. The marsh was twittering, rustling and gurgling. The big bull and the black-and-white cow stared at them.

  ‘This reminds me of walking down to the beach with Lars,’ said Toby.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bill. ‘Are you OK with this? Going back to where he was shot?’

  ‘No, it’s good,’ said Toby. ‘I love this walk. I refuse to let it become a place I can’t go.’

  Bill smiled. ‘I like it too. I’ll miss Lars.’

  ‘He always said he was grateful to you.’

  ‘We shared something, him and me.’

  ‘Whatever else he did, he did do his bit to stop us all getting blown up.’

  They reached the dunes and threaded their way through them to the beach. Bill stopped and surveyed the sand and the shifting sea beyond it. All signs of a crime scene had been removed, including the little green boat.

  Empty.

  Bill bent down to pat his dog, who seemed uncharacteristically worried, circling their legs. Toby hoped the walk wouldn’t be ruined for Rickover either.

  He drew the clear Norfolk air into his lungs. By mid afternoon he would be back in London with its small sky, its channels of metal and fumes and its walls of concrete and brick.

  ‘Toby?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you think of them keeping the near-launch quiet all these years?’

  Toby answered immediately. ‘I think it’s wrong.’

  ‘You know what? So do I. They are just trying to hide a screw-up. If our enemies, whoever they may be, knew about it, it wouldn’t help them at all. How could it help them? That’s a question I have been asking myself all these years. How could it help them? I’m just covering other people’s asses.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Toby waited. This was what Bill wanted to talk to him about.

  ‘I have a suggestion for you, Toby. When you get back to London.’

  Sixty-Two

  Wednesday 11 Decemb
er 2019, London

  Toby emerged from Baker Street tube station and made his way north to Regent’s Park. The good thing about Regent’s Park in December was that there were loads of empty benches. The bad thing was they were all very cold.

  It was three o’clock, morning in Washington and well after lunch in London. He had had to fib to his co-workers at Beachwallet about where he was, co-workers who now included Megan. She was on her third day at the company as a temporary employee. The firm was desperate for warm bodies to do administrative and data-related crap, and Megan was proving surprisingly effective. She was smart, she was enthusiastic and she could figure out unfamiliar systems almost instantaneously. Piet thought she was great.

  And Toby thought it was good to have her around.

  Alice had been pleased too. For a moment it had looked as if the Guth family would shatter, but it had held together, thanks in great part to Megan. And Toby.

  Also, her client had postponed its stock-exchange announcement, so her deal was still live. There were plenty of legal documents to get stuck into, which meant she was happy.

  Toby found a bench opposite the little Japanese garden island near the dormant rose beds, and took out his ancient long-retired Nokia phone and his brand new pay-as-you-go SIM card. The website had suggested it was best to use a payphone, but there were scarcely any of those in London anymore, so his plan was to use an old mobile, and only switch it on when he was well away from where he lived or worked. That way it shouldn’t be possible to trace it to him.

  With cold fingers, he slid the card into the phone and turned it on. He had charged it the day before, and it seemed to work.

  He pulled out the Washington phone number he had printed off from the website and stared at it.

  He gave himself a moment. Was he sure he should do this?

  He would probably be charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act if he was caught, although he had no intention of being caught. And the fact he wasn’t a US citizen might help if the worst came to the worst.