Overkill

on, Penny, what was it?’

‘Well, it’s not anything that’s on this film,’ she gestured towards the screen at the end of the room. ‘It’s just I noticed on a couple of the most recent satellite films that there had been a number of vehicles in a location close to the centre of the area the Blackbird filmed.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing, really. Just a bunch of vehicles.’ There was a long and slightly prickly silence. Penny Walters apparently felt the need to defend herself. ‘Commander Richter did say he wanted details of any unusual activity.’

‘That’s true,’ Richter said. ‘What sort of vehicles – military or civilian?’

‘Both,’ she replied. ‘There was one civilian lorry which appeared in the same place on two successive films, and quite a lot of other trucks, mainly military. Oh, and what looked like construction equipment.’

‘What do you mean “looked like”?’ Kemp asked sharply. ‘Either it was construction equipment or it wasn’t.’

Penny coloured slightly. ‘It was construction equipment – a digger and a bulldozer – and it arrived on two low loaders. What I meant was that it wasn’t used as far as I could see. It stayed loaded on the transporters in all the frames I saw.’

‘Peculiar,’ Richter said. ‘Were there any signs of vehicles – these or any others – in the same area in the Blackbird film?’

‘No, sir. None at all.’

Kemp nodded. ‘I agree. It is peculiar, but it doesn’t sound significant. It could, to offer a realistic and simple explanation, mean that the Russians were thinking about starting a housing project there and changed their minds because of problems with the terrain.’

Penny shook her head decisively. ‘No, sir, I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘The location was way out in the tundra, nowhere near any proper roads. If they had been going to do any major construction they would have had to spend millions of roubles on roads.’

Kemp nodded. ‘OK, let’s look at other possibilities. You didn’t see the construction equipment used, so its presence there might be irrelevant. Or, perhaps, the civilian lorries had broken down or got stuck in mud and they used the bulldozer to pull them out.’

‘But,’ Richter interrupted, ‘if the site was so remote, what were civilian lorries doing out there? And Penny said there were several vehicles – some of them military. If it had just been a breakdown, they would only have needed a recovery vehicle, or two at the most.’

‘That’s true,’ Kemp replied. ‘I’m just exploring possibilities. It might be worth looking into, but I don’t think it’s worth running the Blackbird film again. Penny has already said there are no vehicles located in that area, so we wouldn’t see anything. I think the way forward is for us to run detailed comparisons of all available films of that general area and try to deduce what the vehicles were doing there. In fact, as Penny spotted this, she can do it, because I’ve got plenty of other work building up.’ Kemp rubbed his hands together briskly. ‘Well, I think that’s it. Unless you have any other questions, Commander?’ Kemp seemed eager to get back to his ‘In’ tray, or perhaps he just wanted Richter off the premises.

‘No, I don’t think so, but please keep me informed about the comparisons.’

‘Of course.’

Richter gave Kemp the section contact telephone number, and they filed silently out of the room.

Richter surrendered his visitor’s pass, retrieved the identity card and got back into the Granada. At the Guardroom, he handed in his car pass and drove out of the main gate, turning the big saloon left – to the north and away from London to avoid the roadworks on the A1. He glanced at the dashboard clock and was surprised to find that it was already after one. He hadn’t realized that he’d been in the building for so long, and began thinking about lunch.

The two things that saved him were the left turn out of RAF Brampton’s main gate, and the bumpy road surface.

When he heard the bang and the jagged lines speared across the windscreen, Richter reacted instinctively and braked hard. When he glanced in the wing mirror, and then the interior mirror, he changed his mind. Richter floored the accelerator pedal, the auto box dropped two gears and the Granada took off like a scalded cat.

What was bothering him was not the fact that the only other car on the road was only about twenty yards behind the Granada – it was the fact that he couldn’t see it in the interior mirror because the rear screen had shattered, and slightly off-centre to the left-hand side of the car Richter could see the hole where the bullet had come in.

That definitely bothered him.

Chapter Nine

Tuesday

Anton Kirov

Captain Valeri Bondarev stood on the starboard bridge wing, his sparse grey hair being blown awry by the sea breeze, and looked moodily down at the foredeck. With the ship at cruising stations, a group of the new crew had assembled and, with obvious military precision, was performing energetic callisthenics under the direction of a stocky Ukrainian. He detected movement to his left and turned. The leader of the new crew walked across the bridge wing and leaned on the rail beside him. Bondarev realized he still didn’t know the man’s name. ‘What do I call you?’ he growled.

‘My name is Zavorin, Petr Zavorin. You may call me Petr.’

‘I prefer to use your military rank,’ Bondarev said stiffly.

Zavorin looked briefly at the captain, then glanced forward again. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘I am a colonel in a tank regiment – that is all you need to know.’

Bondarev smiled slightly, unbelieving. ‘And those men,’ he said, gesturing forwards, ‘I suppose they’re all tank drivers and gunners, are they? Learned all about ships from reading books, I suppose. You’re all Spetsnaz, aren’t you?’

Zavorin looked appraisingly at Bondarev. The captain’s perception had surprised him – perhaps a more open approach would pay dividends. ‘Yes,’ Zavorin said, nodding, ‘your powers of observation do you credit, Captain. We are part of a Spetsnaz company.’

The Russian Spetsnaz are the most numerous special forces in the world, comprising some twenty-five thousand troops in all. Most are deployed with the regular Russian armed forces, but a significant number operate permanently or temporarily under deep cover in the West, as athletes, delegates or embassy staff. In the event of hostilities, deep-cover Spetsnaz personnel would be ordered to assassinate political and military leaders, disrupt lines of communications by sabotage, seize airfields and undertake other operations to make invasion by Russian regular forces easier. The competence and ability of Spetsnaz forces has already been demonstrated. In 1968 they seized Prague Airport immediately before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Spetsnaz troops were infiltrated into Kabul in December 1979 to soften up local resistance before Soviet forces entered Afghanistan.

Zavorin glanced round the bridge wing, then looked back at Bondarev. ‘I have my orders, Captain, as you have, but perhaps we can work better together if I am frank with you. Not here, though. We will go to your cabin.’

Bondarev nodded, and led the way off the bridge. As soon as Bondarev and Zavorin had left, two of the Spetsnaz troops stopped their exercise routine and ran aft. The first trooper picked up a cardboard package about a metre square and twenty centimetres thick, and carried it easily up the external ladders to the bridge. The second man followed with a small toolbox.

With the proficiency born of long practice, the two men climbed on to the bridge roof and began the assembly and installation of a gimballed satellite dish. When the dish was sitting on its mount, one of the troopers began the preliminary alignment process. The final alignment, and initializing communication with the satellite, would have to be delayed until the ship was stationary in harbour.