With the alignment completed, the trooper called to two other men who had climbed up to the bridge. The three of them manhandled four large plywood screens, painted to match the superstructure of the
The second trooper attached a coaxial cable to the LNB on the dish and ran it down the side of the bridge, concealing it in an existing cable conduit. At deck level, he again made every effort to hide the cable, and finally passed the end through a small hole he had drilled earlier. The hole led directly into the forward hold of the
Roger Abrahams swung open the heavy door and John Westwood followed him into the secure briefing room. The long table had seats for ten, but there were only two mugs by the coffee pot at the head of the table. The two men sat down facing each other, and Abrahams poured coffee.
‘Thanks,’ said Westwood as Abrahams passed the mug over. Westwood unlocked his briefcase, opened the lid and pulled out a large sealed envelope. Taking a clasp knife from his pocket, he sliced through the closed flap at one end and pulled out a slightly smaller envelope. In contrast to the plain brown of the outer envelope, this one was prominently stamped in red ink ‘Cosmic Top Secret. NOFORN. By hand of officer only’.
Abrahams raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the envelope. ‘NOFORN’ was the CIA acronym derived from ‘NO FOReign Nationals’ which prohibited non-US citizens from seeing a document. ‘CTS? NOFORN? What the hell have you got there, John?’
Westwood grinned somewhat wryly as he used the knife on the second envelope. ‘We’re not really sure,’ he replied, pulling out the file. The cover bore the title ‘Ravensong’. He positioned the file on the table in front of him, opened it and glanced at the minute sheet on the left-hand side. Then he took a sip of coffee and looked over at Abrahams.
‘None of this makes much sense yet, Roger, so you’ll have to bear with me while I run through the sequence of events. I’m not even sure if you’ll be able to help, but I hope so. We really do need something concrete to work on.’
Abrahams nodded. Westwood glanced down at the file and began his briefing.
The Granada’s sudden burst of acceleration had taken the chase car driver by surprise, and the gap between the vehicles had opened from twenty to about a hundred yards. The pursuing car was a Jaguar XJ saloon, the version with the 4.2-litre six-cylinder engine. It was a good car for a chase, and Richter knew there was no way the old Granada could out-run it. Not for the first time, he cursed Simpson’s insistence on only using cars at least five years old. That was one of his worries. The other was the rest of the opposition.
If he had been setting up a hit, particularly a mobile hit, Richter would have made sure that he had a back- up vehicle somewhere ahead, just in case the first attempt failed. Richter had no reason to suspect that whoever had organized his attempted demise would be any less conscientious than him, so he knew he had to start going the other way, and quickly.
The dual carriageway was rapidly coming to an end, which provided him with the opportunity he needed. Richter hit the brakes, hard, and watched the speedometer needle unwind as the car’s speed dropped. When he had fifty-five showing, he span the wheel hard right, released the brakes, pulled on the handbrake, waited until the car was sliding sideways, then released the handbrake and floored the accelerator. The tyres screamed as the power broke their grip on the road surface and the Ford fishtailed up the opposite carriageway.
As he got it more or less straight, Richter ducked down as low as he could, because the Jaguar was right beside him, going the other way under heavy braking, and he’d seen the man in the back seat, with the dark mouth of a gun pointing straight at him. He heard three shots above the roar of the engine, and the driver’s door window fell in a million pieces all over him. One thing was clear – there was no way Simpson was ever going to be able to offer that Granada as a clean one-owner model. Richter straightened up in the seat and checked the door mirror.
He had better than a quarter of a mile on them, and the Jaguar was only just making the turn to follow, so Richter had perhaps half a mile to play with. The XJ6 was still visible in the mirror when Richter took the first left- hand junction, so he knew they’d follow. He started to breathe a little more easily, and started thinking straight.
He had no idea who was behind the attempt to deprive him of his meagre pension, but he was quite determined to find out. He scanned the road ahead, looking for a bend and some kind of cover where he could get the car out of sight. Richter also needed a dearth of witnesses, and luckily there seemed to be almost no other traffic.
Two miles further on, with the Jaguar out of sight behind him, Richter found it. A left-hand curve, followed by a right, with a farm track leading off to the left, past a dilapidated barn. He hit the brakes hard, hoping that the driver of the Jaguar wouldn’t notice the skid marks on the road, slammed the box into reverse, and backed the Granada off the road.
He only just made it. Less than three seconds after the Ford had rocked to a halt by the barn, the XJ6 roared past the end of the track. Richter hauled the auto shift into drive and floored the throttle. He forced the car, bucking and kicking, back on to the road. Now he was where he wanted to be – behind them.
Richter was doing fifty as he hit the right-hand curve, and saw the Jaguar a quarter of a mile ahead when he entered the straight, with the speedometer needle hovering around the seventy mark. The Jaguar vanished from sight around a bend, and Richter gave the Granada its head. He couldn’t rely on them not seeing the Ford until the last moment, though he hoped they would be concentrating on the road in front, so he had to make up ground when they were out of sight.
The XJ6 was less than two hundred yards in front as Richter came out of the bend, then he lost it almost immediately as the road swung left again. He passed a road sign which brought a slight smile to his lips, announcing bends for two and a half miles, and pushed the Granada as much as he dared.
Then, suddenly, he was right behind them. Richter had practised it often enough, but this was the first time he’d ever had to do it for real. When they saw him, the Granada was less than fifty yards behind them. The Jaguar driver touched his brakes, thought better of it, and put on power again. The shape in the back seat twisted round, gun in hand. Richter watched to see which window he was going for. He moved to the left – he was probably right-handed – so Richter floored the accelerator and swung right.
As the nose of the Granada passed the rear of the Jaguar, Richter swung the car left, still under full power. The XJ6 lurched sideways as the Ford’s nearside front wing hit it, and whatever the driver did then, Richter had them.
Anton Kirov
In his sea cabin on the deck below the bridge and next to the radio room, Valeri Bondarev produced two shot glasses and a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka, and gestured Zavorin to a chair. He poured two measures of vodka and passed one to Zavorin; both men drank, knocking the liquid to the back of their throats. Bondarev poured two more glasses and waited.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Zavorin said, picking up his glass. ‘Now, let me explain what we will be doing. As you guessed, your new crewmembers are
‘And the mission is?’ Bondarev asked.
‘All in good time, Captain,’ Zavorin replied, taking a sip from his glass. ‘Now, your original route was what?’
‘One moment.’ Bondarev stood up, left his cabin and climbed the stairs to the chart-house at the rear of the bridge, selected a route-planning chart of the Mediterranean and returned with it to his cabin. He moved the bottle of vodka and the glasses to one side and spread the chart across his desk.
‘We sailed from Odessa, here,’ he said, pointing, ‘and we were programmed to route through the Black Sea to Istanbul, then cross the Aegean to Piraeus, and route west through the Mediterranean to Tangier and then
