Timebomb (Paul Richter) Read online

  JAMES BARRINGTON

  TIMEBOMB

  PAN BOOKS

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Prologue

  Present day; early January; Wednesday

  Washington DC

  The sudden silence was as eloquent as anything Gregory Stevens could have said. For a few seconds he just stared at the immaculately dressed man sitting on the leather seat beside him, then turned his head to glance out of the heavily tinted side window.

  The late-afternoon traffic was moving comparatively freely by Washington’s rush-hour standards, and the black Lincoln was making good progress despite the light dusting of snow on the roads. But neither of the two men occupying the back seat behind the driver’s partition had the slightest interest in where they were going or even how long it took them to get there.

  ‘This isn’t a request, Greg. We need to get this done, and you’re the obvious choice.’

  Stevens looked back at him and shook his head. ‘It’s madness. Who the fuck dreamt this one up? Langley’s come up with some crackpot schemes before, but whatever idiot put this one together is in a class all to himself.’

  ‘This hasn’t come from the Company.’

  ‘Then who? And if it’s not from Langley, why are you even talking to me about it?’

  ‘Think of four numbers,’ Richard Kellerman said.

  Stevens looked blank, then his face changed. ‘Five four one two?’ he asked, and Kellerman nodded. ‘Oh, Jesus. Does the president know about this?’

  ‘You know I can’t tell you. That’s the whole point. But you can assume that this has been sanctioned at the highest possible level.’

  Stevens shook his head. ‘I hear what you say, but I still don’t believe it. This makes Iran-Contra look like a Little League baseball game.’

  ‘Believe it, Greg. You know the situation we’re in. If we don’t do this, we could lose all the support we’ve enjoyed up to now.’

  ‘And if word gets out, our asses will be kicked on a global scale.’

  A slight smile crossed Kellerman’s face. ‘But word won’t get out, will it? That’s why we’ve picked you. You’ve got the languages, and you’ve got the training and the skills we need.’ Then his expression hardened. ‘But make no mistake, Greg, this is a wholly deniable operation. You’ll have whatever logistical and financial support you need, but we’ll drop you like a handful of hot shit if anything goes wrong.’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Not since the moment you agreed to step inside this vehicle.’

  ‘OK,’ Stevens gestured to the sheets of paper Keller-man had taken from his briefcase, ‘get on with it.’

  ‘Right. This operation is codenamed SM/VIPER, classified top secret and SCI code word clearance “Dingo”. This is a verbal briefing, and you will take no notes. First, support. We’ve pre-briefed auxiliary agents for you in every country you’re likely to visit in Western Europe. They’re all clean, and none of them has been indoctrinated into VIPER. All they know is that they may be approached by a US asset and they’re to extend all possible support and assistance short of compromising their own cover identities. These are the contact details, including challenge and response codes. It also contains your fall-back and emergency exfiltration procedures.’ He passed Stevens a single sheet of paper on which were typed forty-eight five-letter groups, arranged in ten vertical columns. ‘Encryption is by a standard double-transposition cipher. I presume you’re familiar with the technique?’

  Stevens looked at Kellerman as if he’d just asked him to add two and two together. ‘Decryption keys?’ he demanded, tucking the paper into his inside jacket pocket.

  ‘Key word one is “NOTATIONAL” and key word two is “OVERWHELMS”. You need me to spell those?’

  ‘No. What’s the timescale?’

  ‘As soon as possible, but the longstop date is June.’

  ‘That’s real tight.’

  Kellerman nodded and looked down at his notes. ‘I know.’

  ‘Who’s in my team? From Langley, I mean?’

  ‘Nobody. It’s just you. This is far too sensitive for anything but a solo operation.’

  ‘This just gets better and better,’ Stevens muttered, as Kellerman then began the formal briefing.

  The car they were sitting in belonged to the Central Intelligence Agency, which meant it was not only armoured, with bulletproof glass, multiple layers of Kevlar panels in the doors and bodywork and run-flat tyres, but also checked for bugs at least once every day. The driver – Roy Craven – was a senior CIA agent, one of a pool of men selected for their ability behind the wheel and skill with weapons. Craven also had other qualities which wouldn’t have appeared on his CV, should he ever have chosen to write one, and which was why he’d been selected for this particular tasking.

  In a padded box beside him were four loaded Uzi 9-millimetre sub-machine guns and spare magazines, and in the door pocket a Browning semi-automatic pistol fitted with a small but effective suppressor. The vehicle was equipped with a GPS satellite navigation system, plus a beacon which, when activated, enabled it to be tracked by satellite and its position relayed to a designated control suite at Langley.

  The vehicle itself – known to CIA insiders as ‘The Triple B’, which stood for ‘Big Black Bastard’ – was normally used for transporting the DCI and Langley supergrades to and from meetings in DC. When it wasn’t fulfilling this function, it also provided a secure environment in which could be addressed matters perhaps too sensitive to be discussed inside any building.

  Craven was isolated in his driving compartment, unable to hear anything said by the two men sitting behind him, and also unable to see them, as the raised divider was heavily tinted. Neither factor bothered him because, just like the man on the back seat, he was following very specific orders.

  As Kellerman wrapped up the briefing, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small photograph and handed it to Stevens. ‘You recognize him?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Probably not. We only found out about him around six months ago, and you’ve been out of the loop for a lot longer than that. We believe he’s probably the principal European liaison officer for UBL, and that he might be receptive to the right kind of approach. We suggest you target him first.’

  Kellerman took a folded sheet of paper from another pocket and passed it over.

  ‘This is pretty much everything we know about him. Now, the final point is most important. Whether you deal with this man or not, any subsequent investigations have to reach the conclusion that we want.’

  ‘Yeah, I get it,’ Stevens muttered. ‘Payment?’

  ‘I was just getting to that. We’ve got your offshore bank details. There’ll be half a million dollars transferred to your account there by the close of business today. There’ll be a further million available for you in Europe, split equally between five separate banks, for your expenses. They’re listed here’ – Kellerman handed over another sheet of paper – ‘and there’ll be another half a million due to you as a bonus on successful completion of the operation.’

  ‘Two million doll
ars? Somebody wants this done real bad.’

  ‘You’d better believe it.’

  Ten minutes later the divider slid downwards, and Kellerman leant forward. ‘Take us to Union Station to drop off our passenger, then head back to Langley.’

  ‘No problem, sir.’

  The divider hissed upwards again as Craven took the next available left turn and began increasing speed. At the corner of F Street and Second he pulled the car into the kerb and stopped. He watched in the door mirror as the bulky and untidy man climbed out. They’d picked him up just over an hour earlier outside a small hotel in the north DC area. Craven had no idea who he was or why he’d been meeting with the junior Company agent still in the back seat, nor had he the slightest interest in finding out.

  Stevens held the heavy door open for a few moments, looking back down at Kellerman, then closed it and walked away down F Street without a backward glance. In every respect bar one, Gregory Stevens was the right man for the job. As Kellerman had said, he had the skills and the languages, but he also had something else that the CIA hierarchy wasn’t aware of, because it wasn’t listed on any of his reports or analyses. Stevens had a conscience.

  The moment the door closed, Craven indicated, pulled out and moved the car back into the traffic flow, heading north up Second Street. He made the turn onto H Street, and a couple of minutes later was heading northwest on Massachusetts Avenue out towards Bethesda. It wasn’t the most direct route to CIA headquarters at Langley, but he knew the traffic around Foggy Bottom and on both the Memorial Parkway and Canal Road would be a bitch. And he had another reason for choosing this particular route.

  A couple of minutes later he flicked a switch mounted just below the dashboard. It was a recent addition to the vehicle, fitted just days earlier. The only apparent result of this action was a faint clunk, virtually inaudible against the background traffic and the engine noise.

  In the rear compartment, Kellerman was again scanning his briefing notes, checking he’d covered everything, though if he hadn’t it was now far too late, so he heard nothing. Satisfied, he opened his briefcase and slid the papers inside. He gazed incuriously out through the window, mentally rehearsing the report he’d deliver to Johnson once he got back to Langley.

  He first realized the Lincoln was driving a somewhat circuitous route when the driver turned left off Massachusetts Avenue onto Goldsboro Road, just east of Glen Echo. Kellerman knew the area reasonably well and guessed that the driver – Kellerman thought his name was Craven, but he wasn’t sure – had chosen to go this way because of traffic conditions in west DC. The obvious route was to make a right turn onto Seven Locks Road and pick up the southbound freeway at the clover-leaf just north of Cabin John. But the driver didn’t make the expected turn in Cabin John. Instead, he continued straight ahead, along MacArthur towards the Naval Surface Warfare Center.

  Kellerman frowned, leant forward and depressed the switch to lower the partition. The glass stayed exactly where it was. He tried again, then rapped on it, but it was as if the driver couldn’t hear him, and Kellerman began to feel concerned. The Lincoln was maintaining a steady speed along the road, but that didn’t mean anything. Craven could have passed out at the wheel, leaving the car running on cruise control.

  Then Kellerman sat back, relaxing again in his seat. The car was pulling off the road onto a section of rough ground just north of Vaso Island. Obviously Craven had simply missed the earlier junction, difficult though that was to believe, and was now going to head back towards Langley.

  But the Lincoln didn’t continue through the U-turn. Instead, it stopped suddenly, the suspension almost bottoming. Kellerman looked out and saw only trees and bushes, grass and shrubs. No other cars were in view in either direction. Then the door beside him opened with a jerk and he looked up to see the driver staring down at him.

  ‘What the—?’ he started to say, then fell silent as he saw the Browning.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ Craven said. ‘Orders,’ he added, as he pulled the trigger.

  Kellerman opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the 9-millimetre slug smashed into his chest before the words could form.

  The pistol was clean and stock, straight off the shelf, purchased in Florida three weeks earlier, and the bullet was standard lead with a copper jacket. But the powder load was special, a much reduced amount, designed to generate sufficient muzzle velocity to kill the target after passing through the suppressor, but not enough to travel all the way through his body.

  Kellerman slumped backwards, sprawling half across the seat, his legs twitching as his muscles began to spasm.

  Craven took a half-step closer, wondering if he’d need a second round, then decided he wouldn’t. He left the door open, stepped round to the back of the vehicle and opened the trunk. Inside was a grey tarpaulin, already spread across the floor. He walked back, paused for a brief moment to check that he was still unobserved, then reached down and dragged out Kellerman’s body. Craven was a big man, powerfully built, and dropping the dead man into the trunk took him only seconds. Before closing the lid, he reached inside, pulled off the CIA officer’s watch and ring and removed the wallet from his inside jacket pocket. Then he thoroughly inspected the back-seat area of the Lincoln, picked up the ejected cartridge case, ensured there were no bloodstains on the leather seats or carpet and checked his own clothes. He picked up Kellerman’s briefcase, opened it and pulled out the VIPER briefing notes. On the front seat of the Lincoln was a portable shredder that could be powered from the car’s cigar lighter. Craven separated the pages and fed each one individually through it, then tipped the contents of the shredder’s basket onto the ground beside the car. Taking a cigarette lighter from his pocket, he ignited the confetti of paper. It immediately flared into oblivion and he trod the ashes into dust.

  Craven checked all around the car one last time, then got back in the driver’s seat, replaced the Browning in the door pocket and started the engine. He swung the wheel hard over, powering the heavy car across the road to head back the way he’d come, and then picked up speed.

  Just under an hour later Craven accelerated the Lincoln away from a vacant lot in the north Chinatown area of Washington. Dumped in one corner, behind a parked Ford, was Kellerman’s body, his open briefcase beside him, papers scattered about, the apparent victim of a mugging that had turned into homicide. The Browning, minus the custom-built suppressor and the magazine holding the special rounds, he tossed into a garbage bin a few blocks away from the lot. When he spotted a public phone, he pulled the Lincoln to a stop beside it, climbed out and made a four-second call to a Virginia number. VIPER was now up and running, and its first phase had been completed exactly as planned and precisely on schedule. Including now Gregory Stevens, only six men in America knew anything about it. The briefing officer, Kellerman, had been the seventh, and, in the opinion of the architect of this plan, that had been one too many.

  Chapter One

  Present day; early May; Sunday morning

  Autoroute A20, south of Limoges, France

  Paul Richter had just pulled out to overtake a line of three lorries when his mobile rang. The cockpit of the Westfield was no place to hold a telephone conversation, at least while the car was moving, so he ignored it, and after half a dozen rings the phone fell silent as the voice-messaging system cut in.

  Ten minutes later, Richter pulled the Westfield – the indecently rapid sports car he’d recently bought as a toy to play with when he was away from London – to a halt in an autoroute service area, parked well away from any occupied vehicles, and took the phone out of his pocket. He checked the ‘missed calls’ list and saw, not to his entire surprise, that the caller had been his boss, Richard Simpson. Or at least, someone using Simpson’s private line.

  He had thought it too good to be true. Despite a recent outbreak of minor terrorist incidents in Europe, everything had seemed quiet at FOE, and Richter had decided to use some of his accumulated leave to visit friends in southern
Spain. He’d left London only the previous afternoon, and had been hoping to get as far as the Toulouse area before stopping for the night.

  Whatever Simpson wanted, it probably wouldn’t be good news, and, as Richter dialled the Hammersmith number, he could already see his holiday evaporating.

  ‘Richter,’ he announced as his call was answered.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In the middle of France. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m supposed to be on leave.’

  ‘I know that,’ Simpson replied. ‘I signed your chitty. Where are you exactly?’

  Richter glanced at the screen of his Navman 750 before replying. ‘Right now, I’m between Limoges and Brive-la-Gaillarde, just south of a place called Pierre-Buffière on the A20 autoroute. Why? What’s happened now?’

  ‘Nothing much. Are you in a secure area?’

  ‘Not really. I’m in the car park of a service station, but there’s currently no one within fifty yards of me.’

  ‘That’ll have to do. Right, Vauxhall Cross has had a request from FedPol – the Swiss Federal Police – for a Six officer to travel to Geneva as soon as possible. Nobody over at Legoland was very enthusiastic about the job, so it got shoved onto us. You’re more or less on the spot, so I’ve offered your services.’

  ‘Thanks a lot for asking me first. What’s it about, anyway?’

  Simpson’s tone was dismissive. ‘Nothing too exciting. FedPol’s been tipped off about some suspected terrorist activity in the Geneva Canton, and they seem to think there might be a British connection. A possible target over here – something like that. All you have to do is get yourself over to cuckoo-clock land and check it out, then let us know why the gnomes have got their knickers in such a twist. It should take you two days, tops, then you can climb back into that rather vulgar sports car of yours and bash on down to Puerto Bañus.’

  ‘Your Mercedes is vulgar, Simpson. My Westfield is a modern classic’