Chapter Seventeen
Monday
Richter was awake at six, and walked stiff-legged but fully dressed into Bentley’s kitchen just after six thirty. He still ached abominably, but he was mobile, and knew he wouldn’t have too much of a problem riding the Honda.
He was on the road by seven. He picked up the A40 within three minutes of leaving the house, and turned east for central London. Just over an hour later, he pulled the Honda into a garage on the A2 in Bexley and filled the tank. The early-morning traffic was building up, but most of it was heading into the city, and Richter was going the other way. At Strood he joined the M2, but continued to keep his speed low, as he had time in hand.
At nine thirty he rode the Honda into the car park of the Dover Court Hotel, and stopped the bike in a corner of the car park. He switched off the engine, removed his helmet and locked it to the seat. At nine forty exactly he walked into the lounge, found a table and ordered a pot of coffee. Richter spotted the two FOE contacts the moment they walked in through the door, and waved a friendly hand.
If you are organizing a meet in a public place – and the lounge of the Dover Court Hotel at that time in the morning was fairly full – it looks far more suspicious if you try to be sneaky about it. A meeting between two businessmen who know each other, on the other hand, attracts almost no attention whatsoever. Not that Richter looked much like a businessman. The jeans and leather jacket had already attracted one or two stares which stopped just the safe side of being hostile, and the fresh plasters on his face didn’t help either.
The two men came over to Richter’s table and sat down. Richter glanced round the lounge, and spoke in a low voice to the senior FOE officer – Tony Deacon, who ran the Far East desk. Mark Clayton, the second FOE man, sat back in his seat, checking for watchers or listeners. ‘Do you need to give me a verbal briefing on the operational stuff?’ Richter asked.
Deacon shook his head, his eyes still fixed on Richter’s battered countenance. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s all in the briefcase, plus details of your contact and fallback arrangements. Your car’s in the corner of the car park. It’s a Granada Scorpio which replaced the last one you used, and you-know-who said he wanted it back in one piece this time.’
He passed Richter a key fob with a label attached. ‘Here are the keys. Your diplomatic passport, ferry tickets, insurance details and Green Card are also in the briefcase, plus a couple of credit cards and enough cash to keep you going. There’s a letter of introduction – sealed – which should stay that way until you deliver it, and a copy of the letter for your eyes only. Read it and destroy it before your meeting. Also sealed is a copy of the operation file, fully updated, and there are seals and envelopes for you to re-seal it once you’ve read it. There’s a suitcase of clothes in the boot, hopefully in your size.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What happened to your face?’ Deacon asked.
‘I was mugged,’ Richter said, and Clayton laughed. ‘Anything else?’
‘No,’ Deacon said. ‘You have an open return ferry ticket, and as long as you get to the rendezvous on time you can go when you like. You might like the choice of accommodation we’ve booked for you. It proves that the Cashier’s got a sense of humour after all.’ He looked around the room, as if anxious to be away.
‘Anything else?’
‘No, that’s it. Have a good trip.’
‘Just one thing,’ Richter said. ‘I arrived here on a motorcycle. Can either of you ride it back to Hammersmith for me?’
‘I’ve got a licence,’ Clayton said. ‘Where is it?’
‘Far corner of the car park,’ Richter said, passing over the keys and eyeing Clayton’s city suit. ‘The helmet’s locked to the seat, and there’s a pair of weatherproof coveralls in the pannier. I know it’s old, but I’m attached to that bike, so please try not to bend it.’
‘Right.’
They stood up, shook hands with Richter because that’s what businessmen do, and left. The briefcase Deacon had been carrying stayed under the table. It was a neat black leather attache case, complete with a handcuff and keys allowing it to be chained to the wrist. Richter wondered if he would be able to hang on to it after the job was over.
Despite an early start, the convoy encountered increasingly heavy traffic after leaving Wroclaw. As they approached the major junction at Jelenia Gora, where the roads from Wroclaw, Prague, Gorlitz and Boleslawiec meet, they saw the reason. Two lorries had met more or less head-on, and the rescue services were still trying to cut one of the drivers free. Although they had dragged the other vehicle to the side of the road, the junction was partially blocked, and the police were filtering traffic through one lane at a time.
Modin briefly considered taking the road to Gorlitz and directly into Germany, bypassing Czechoslovakia altogether – a variation on the route suggested by Viktor Bykov the previous evening – but again rejected the idea. With the cargo they were carrying, the planned route still seemed the safest. So, they waited in the queue with all the other vehicles, and took their turn across the junction.
Richter looked round the car park, spotted a dark grey Scorpio in the far corner, and walked over to it. He checked the registration number, unlocked it, opened the door and climbed in. Inside, he opened up the briefcase and examined the contents. The ferry tickets were in the name of Beatty, and Simpson had thoughtfully provided a diplomatic passport in the same name, bearing a reasonable photograph of Richter’s face before Yuri had started work on it. There was, as Deacon had said, a letter addressed to Sir James Auden, British Embassy, Paris, stamped ‘Strictly Personal, Private and Confidential’ and sealed with wax. The copy for Richter’s information was in a separate envelope, also sealed.
Richter signed the two credit cards and put them in his wallet, together with the cash which amounted to about ?500 in euros. He also found a permit issued by the Metropolitan Police, and endorsed by a senior Gendarmerie officer, in the name of Beatty authorizing the carriage of the Smith and Wesson, and a personal search exemption certificate which, together with the diplomatic passport, should avoid any problems with Customs on either side of the Channel. The FOE file was enclosed in two sealed envelopes, one large and one slightly smaller, as is mandatory for classified files which are taken out of a secure building. Richter wouldn’t open that until he reached his destination.
He stepped out of the Ford, glanced round the car park to check that he wasn’t being observed, opened the boot and dropped the haversack inside. From the suitcase of clothes he extracted a dark blue blazer which he swapped for his leather jacket. He had to wear a jacket simply because of the shoulder holster, and the blazer was more in keeping with the Granada than the motorcycle jacket would have been.
Richter started the car and drove down into Dover. He found his way to the Eastern Docks, where he presented his ticket and was directed into a line of other vehicles waiting to board the Calais ferry. Twenty-five minutes later he was aboard the P&O vessel and sitting in a corner seat in the Club Class lounge.
Richter ordered coffee, but ignored the newspapers and opened the briefcase. He made sure he couldn’t be overlooked, then read the copy letter of introduction to the Ambassador at the British Embassy in Paris. He read it twice, then put it into his jacket pocket. Immediately before disembarkation he would visit the loo, tear the letter into very small pieces and flush it away. That was not the recommended disposal method for a document of that classification, but entirely adequate in the circumstances.
He also looked at the faxed confirmation of his accommodation arrangements, and could immediately see what Tony Deacon had meant. The Cashier had booked Richter four nights in a cabin at Davy Crockett Ranch, one of the accommodation areas at the Disneyland Paris resort. However, a note attached to the fax from Simpson showed that the decision had received his approval, and there were actually good reasons for it.
First, Disneyland Paris was directly linked to the centre of the city, where only an idiot or a Frenchman would drive a car, by the very efficient rail system – the RER – which meant that Richter could reach the British Embassy in well under an hour. Second, by the very nature of the place, the car parks at Disneyland were always
