‘Yesterday?’ John Westwood asked. ‘Why the delay in letting me know?’
‘The usual reasons,’ Walter Hicks said. ‘First we had to get the message from Moscow to Langley, then get it translated – which caused some problems – and checked. Then we had to decide what to do about it. This one, John, was very specific.’
‘Yes?’
‘RAVEN states that the last component will enter the West on the ninth of this month – that’s next Tuesday. He also says that implementation will take place two days later, on Thursday the eleventh.’
‘What does he mean by “component”?’ Roger Abrahams asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Masters replied, ‘but the consensus here is that he must mean a weapon of some sort.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Westwood muttered. ‘Did the message say anything else?’
‘That was the entire text, apart from a single Russian word –
‘And what the hell does that mean?’ Abrahams asked.
‘That was the word that caused the delay in translation,’ Hicks said. ‘According to the Linguistics Section, it’s old-Russian slang and it means generating false statements about agricultural and industrial production. “Cooking the books” is about as close to an accurate translation as we can get.’
‘I don’t see what possible connection that can have with this assault,’ Westwood said.
‘Nor do we,’ Hicks said. ‘Our analysts’ best assessment is that
‘What are you going to do?’ Westwood asked.
‘We have very few options, John,’ Hicks replied. ‘The Director of Central Intelligence is still away, so I’m presently the acting Director. I have a meeting with the President in a little less than two hours, and as far as I can see I don’t have too many options. I’m going to suggest he treats the threat as real and kicks the military into action.’
Richter drove up to Cambridge on the Old North Road, the A10, rather than the faster A1(M) or M11 motorways, and was approaching Ware when he spotted the grey Vauxhall. Four cars behind the elderly Escort supplied by the Motor Pool – the Transport Officer obviously still hadn’t forgotten about the Granada – Richter saw the Cavalier. A common, even unremarkable, car, but what bothered Richter was that he had seen the same vehicle three times before on the journey, always well behind him but, essentially, always behind him.
He patted his left armpit to reassure himself that the Smith and Wesson was snug in its holster, and decided what to do. There was always the chance that the driver was entirely innocent, and that it was simple chance that he was following the same route, but Richter didn’t believe in chance.
First, confirm the tail. He checked the road ahead and selected a garage a quarter of a mile in front. He indicated left, pulled on to the forecourt, stopped beside the pumps, climbed out and watched the road closely. The Cavalier drove past, its two occupants seeming to take no notice of him whatsoever. Richter shrugged. Maybe he was getting paranoid. But, he reflected, just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Richter pumped ten pounds’ worth of fuel into the Escort’s tank, paid at the kiosk, started up and pulled out, heading north. He checked every driveway and turn-off he passed for the next five miles and saw absolutely no sign of a Vauxhall Cavalier, grey or any other colour. He shrugged again, and dismissed the incident from his mind.
He was near Buntingford when he decided to stop for lunch. He pulled into the car park of the next pub he came to, locked the Escort and walked into the lounge bar. He ordered a club sandwich and a coffee, and sat down at a corner table from which he had a good view of the pub door and the road outside. About a dozen cars parked outside while he was eating, none of them Cavaliers, and the pub’s bars filled steadily.
Richter finished his lunch, stood up, brushed the crumbs from his jacket, nodded a farewell to the barman and walked outside. As he turned towards the parking spot where he’d left the Escort, Richter glimpsed a grey Vauxhall Cavalier about fifty yards down the road, well out of sight of the pub’s windows. He’d taken only a couple of steps further when something hard was pushed into the middle of his back and a hoarse and unmistakably Essex voice murmured in his ear. ‘A word with you, my son.’
Richter froze, his mind figuring the angles before he started to move. Then he saw a second man approaching from his right. Big, bulky and with the kind of face even a devoted mother would have a job cradling to her bosom. He was wearing a brown coat over his shoulders like a cape, but not because the day was cold. He had the coat on to help conceal the whippet – a sawn-off double-barrel twelve-bore shotgun with a pistol grip – he was carrying in his right hand. The chances were, Richter realized, that the object pressing against his spine was the other half of the pair, and that changed the odds, seriously.
Richter’s ace in the hole was the Smith, but before he could even think about using it, he had to get these two comedians where he wanted them – in front of him.
‘Over ’ere,’ the man in the brown coat said, inclining his head towards the waste ground at the rear of the pub. His accent confirmed Richter’s suspicion that he was dealing with a couple of contractors hired from the underworld by a cut-out, not SVR agents or professionals. That, he hoped, would help a little.
The man behind him shoved Richter forwards, and he walked in the direction indicated, his arms held wide apart. At the edge of the wood which extended up the hill at the back of the pub, they told Richter to stop. He did so, and turned to face the two men. Both were holding whippets, and both were smiling, but they were the kind of smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.
‘We ’ear you’ve bin a bad boy,’ the man with the brown coat said, menace apparent in every syllable. Good God, Richter thought, they’ve been learning their dialogue from the television. ‘A very bad boy, and my colleague ’ere is goin’ to teach you a lesson.’
The other man placed his whippet carefully on the ground, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two lengths of iron pipe each about a foot long. Never taking his eyes off Richter, he slowly and carefully screwed the two lengths together, then hefted the weapon in his hand.
Richter knew exactly what they intended to do. This was going to be a mugging that went wrong. No knife wounds, no bullets, just a few well-placed blows from the pipe and he’d be dead inside two minutes, his wallet gone and the police with even less clues than usual. What he had to do was get the man in close, close enough to disable him and so close that the other man wouldn’t be able to fire his weapon. But he also had to increase the distance between himself and the whippet. The advantage of the weapon was also its disadvantage – at anything over about ten feet it’s a genuine scatter-gun, ideal for blowing away an opponent but useless if you’re trying for accurate shooting.
The man with the pipe took off his jacket and dropped it on the ground, then walked slowly over to where Richter stood. As he closed, Richter let a look of panic and fear spread across his face, and he took a couple of steps backwards, subtly increasing the distance between himself and the whippet.
The thug smiled again, raised the pipe and swung it in a vicious arc, the iron singing through the air. It wasn’t intended to hit Richter, just frighten him even more. Richter looked over the man’s shoulder to where the second thug stood, still smiling, the whippet dangling from his right hand. He estimated the distance at about twenty feet; far enough, he thought.
Richter stopped moving. The thug swung the pipe again, but this time Richter didn’t flinch. A look of puzzlement crossed the man’s face as he raised the pipe for a killing blow. Richter stood there, gazing levelly at him, arms by his sides, hands open and ready, his left foot slightly advanced. An
Aikido is probably the most unusual of the oriental martial arts, in that it is essentially defensive in concept and its primary weapon is the attacker’s own strength, which an Aikido expert will use against him. Attacking an Aikido master is a bit like trying to punch smoke – frustrating and ultimately pointless. Richter wasn’t a master, but
