program, and of the satellite, have passed into Western hands. The kicker is the last section, which tells them that the London weapon is in full working order, armed and ready, and is now residing in Her Britannic Majesty’s Embassy at Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow, which is, as we all know, just across the Moskva River from the Kremlin. The access delay Baker built-in will allow plenty of time for the weapon to be physically placed in the Embassy.’
Simpson smiled – a rare and not particularly attractive sight. ‘A real cuckoo’s egg,’ he said, ‘right in the heart of Moscow, and one we can hatch any time we like. Nice to know that the Diplomatic Bag system works as well for us as for them.’
‘Will it be armed?’ Richter asked.
‘Of course not,’ Simpson replied. ‘We can’t have some simple-minded Embassy hack fiddling about with it. Dewar assures me that it can be armed in about ten minutes, if you know what you’re doing, so it’s still a viable threat.’ He paused. ‘So that’s it. The Prime Minister and “C” are waiting to hear from me, so I’d best get moving. We’ve got a couple of nuclear submarines stuffed full of missiles more or less lurking at the mouth of the Moskva River, and I think the Navy would like to get them back, or at least get them back into deep water. I take it,’ he added, looking at Richter’s red-rimmed eyes, ‘that you don’t want to come with me?’
Richter shook his head. ‘No thanks. What about Abilene? What’s the latest?’
‘The PM and the American President have agreed there’s going to be no military retaliation. In fact, it looks as if the official response will be to write it off as a tragic accident – an American nuke was accidentally detonated.’
Richter grunted in disbelief. ‘Will the American people wear that? With, what, around a quarter of a million dead?’
‘The spin doctors will sort it out, and I don’t actually think it will be that difficult to do. Don’t forget, there was no launch vehicle involved, so they can argue that it couldn’t have been an act of aggression by any other nation, and the bomb itself was really small, by Russian standards, and they can prove it. And there’s even a convenient American Air Force base – Dyess – which is within about four miles of ground zero, down to the south-west of Abilene. They’ll probably say the epicentre of the explosion was there, and blame it on some maintenance glitch or a freak weapon control malfunction.’
‘Very convenient. Does Dyess store nukes?’
‘I’d be very surprised if it didn’t; about half of America’s B-1B bomber force is based there.’
‘And the Russians?’
‘Oh, they’ll pay, there’s no doubt about that. The Americans will seek punitive damages for every life lost and every building flattened, and they’ll get exactly what they ask for. Russia will be in debt for years.’
‘And what about the selection of little incidents on our side of the pond? The SAS killing Russian seamen in Gibraltar, nuclear bombs in Russian trucks on French autoroutes and dead Arabs scattered all over southern France. Am I going to read about them in the paper tomorrow?’
Simpson shook his head. ‘If I’ve got anything to do with it,’ he said, ‘none of these little episodes will ever make any paper. They’ll be far more use to us as bargaining counters with the Russians in the future, not to mention the clout it’ll give us with the CIA and the rest of the American intelligence community. Don’t forget, we – or you, in fact – saved America.’
‘Yeah, right. But you’ll have to tell the press something. You can’t keep incidents like these under wraps – here or over in the States.’
Simpson waved a hand airily. ‘Abilene is going to dominate the news for weeks, maybe months, just like New York did after the nine eleven attacks. Nobody’s going to take any notice of some minor and unrelated incidents in Europe. If anybody asks, we’ll just say, oh, that the Russian ship was carrying arms for the IRA, the Russian truck was stopped as part of a routine security exercise, and the Arabs were terrorists who were killed by a rival faction. Something like that. No further details available due to the security classifications of the incidents and the ongoing investigations.’
‘The usual crap, in fact?’
‘Yes, the usual crap, but that and the Official Secrets Act, and if necessary a handful of D-Notices, will ensure it’s all kept nice and quiet.’
Simpson paused and looked over at Richter. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you push off and take some leave? You must have some crumpet lurking around somewhere.’
‘Two things,’ Richter said. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call any woman under the age of forty “some crumpet”, and there’s still one loose end that needs to be tied.’
Richter told him what he wanted to do. When Simpson started to argue, Richter told him why.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know.’
Richter shrugged his shoulders. ‘No reason why you should. It wasn’t on file anywhere, and until this business it really wasn’t relevant. But you do see why I have to do it?’
‘Yes. Let Tactics and Equipment know what you want and if they give you any flak refer them to me. Just don’t tell me all the details.’
When Sadoun Khamil finally plucked up the courage to contact the al-Qaeda leaders to tell them that their plan, which had taken four years to prepare and cost literally millions of dollars, had come to almost nothing, he had been prepared for furious anger.
To his surprise, the reaction from Tariq Rahmani was much less violent than he had expected. He guessed that the al-Qaeda leaders had realized that detonating the Abilene bomb was a considerable achievement in its own right, overshadowing even the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings in New York, and with a huge loss of life.
He expressed his sorrow at Hassan Abbas’ failure, but assured Rahmani that there would be other targets, other opportunities and, above all, other successes. If he had been less nervous, he might have wondered at one remark made by the man on the other end of the scrambled telephone link.
Just after seven that evening, local time, as Khamil was preparing to go to one of the nearby restaurants for a light meal, he was grabbed from behind by three men, wrestled to the ground and bludgeoned into unconsciousness.
When he came to, he was lying naked on his back somewhere out in the dunes and tied spread-eagled to a rough wooden frame. An hour or so later, a small procession appeared. It was led by Tariq Rahmani, Khamil’s conduit to the very highest echelons of al-Qaeda, and a man he had only seen twice before in his life. Rahmani walked across until he was a few feet from Khamil, looked down at him, shook his head and then stepped back.
From behind him, another figure appeared, moving slowly and with deliberate purpose, and as Khamil heard the click of a knife being opened and saw Rashid’s swarthy features, he suddenly remembered the remark he had heard, but not registered, on the telephone.
Tariq Rahmani had said, ‘It is not Hassan Abbas that we blame for this failure.’
Chapter Thirty
Monday
On Friday night Richter slept like a log, and dozed off and on all Saturday. On Sunday he felt more like a going concern, but didn’t leave his flat, even to buy a paper. He watched the news programmes on the television and ate out of his freezer.
At seven fifty on Monday morning he climbed out of the minicab at Heathrow Terminal One and walked in, carrying an overnight case and a slim black briefcase bearing a gold crest. Around his neck was a blue tie bearing a small silver greyhound motif, the symbol of the Corps of Queen’s Messengers.
The Queen’s Messengers are diplomatic couriers who spend their lives ferrying documents from embassy to
