Lacomte loaded that into French and rapid-fired it at Giraud. Giraud nodded, and replied quietly. Lacomte asked another question. ‘Have you any independent evidence that what Orlov told you is the truth?’
Richter shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we have no independent evidence that directly corroborates what Orlov told us, but I cannot imagine him telling lies in the circumstances of his interrogation.’ Giraud grimaced slightly. ‘What I can say is that most of what Orlov told us has been indirectly corroborated by the other data we have been able to collect. I’ve already mentioned the Blackbird over-flight, the snatching of our Moscow Head of Station and so on.’
‘Can I add something here?’ John Westwood asked.
‘Of course,’ Lacomte waved a hand.
‘The one thing nobody in this room knows, except for Miles Turner here,’ Westwood said, ‘is that the Company – the CIA – received advance warning of the Russian plan, some time before the Blackbird overflight.’
There was a short and somewhat hostile silence.
‘Did you now?’ Richter said, quietly. ‘But you didn’t think of telling us, did you?’
Westwood shook his head. ‘Not my decision,’ he said. ‘It was Company policy.’
‘What was the source of this information?’ Lacomte asked.
‘I can’t tell you,’ Westwood said, and held up a hand towards Richter, who had opened his mouth to speak, ‘simply because we don’t know. Our Moscow Station Chief was contacted by a walk-in who slipped a film into his jacket pocket. We’ve had further drops from this source, but we still don’t know who he is. What we do know, because of what was on the first film, is that this source is very near the top of either the GRU or the SVR.’
‘OK,’ Richter said. ‘We haven’t time to go into that now. What was the warning this source passed to you?’
Westwood shook his head. ‘That was the problem,’ he replied. ‘That’s why we’ve been running round like headless chickens looking for help. The warning was non-specific. It simply said that a covert assault on the West was in progress, but gave no useful details. What it does do, though,’ he added, looking at Lacomte, ‘is corroborate what Mr Beatty has been saying.’
Lacomte looked at Giraud, and then both of them looked at Richter. ‘The one piece of hard evidence that is available,’ Richter said, ‘is the one that I do not have at present.’
‘The lorry?’ Lacomte prompted.
‘Exactly,’ Richter said, ‘the lorry. When that is stopped, if the back only contains the collected works of Lenin, or whatever the Russians have put on the manifest, then I will apologize humbly and take my delusions home to bed. But I’m quite certain we’ll find a nasty little nuclear weapon in a steel box, with a delivery address of Harrington House, 13 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, W8.’
‘Which is?’ asked Lacomte.
‘The official residence of the Russian Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Court of St James.’
There was a short silence, broken by Giraud, speaking English for the first time. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have to stop the lorry?’
‘Yes,’ Richter replied, ‘we have to stop the lorry.’
Anton Kirov
Zavorin pushed open the steel door leading to the engine room and walked in ahead of Bondarev. He slid quickly down the steel ladder to the deck below, and strode across to the starboard side. Three of his men were assembled close to the starboard fuel pump, around which had been packed a selection of oil-soaked rags and paper.
‘Is this really necessary?’ Bondarev asked, his voice almost plaintive.
‘Yes, Captain, it is,’ Zavorin replied. ‘We do not know whether or not the staff at Gibraltar will insist on helping us. If the engine room shows no sign of damage, we would not be able to allow them on board, which would look suspicious.’
Zavorin looked at the troopers. ‘Ten minutes, no more,’ he said, ‘then douse the flames. Make sure you leave fire-extinguisher foam around the pump, and snap the input pipe.’ He nodded to the second trooper, who was holding a gas lighter. The man snapped the lighter open, kindled the flame and ignited the paper. ‘Now,’ Zavorin said, looking with satisfaction at the growing flames, then turning back and glancing up at Bondarev, ‘we have some real damage we can show them.’
The convoy had picked up the autobahn just beyond Hartmannshof and taken the route to the south-east of Nurnberg. Just south of Ansbach, Modin called a halt in a rest area for refreshments and a driver change. Again, he and Bykov consulted the map.
‘I think we will make one small change, Viktor,’ Modin said. ‘We were to route through Stuttgart, which is the most direct route, but I think that will take longer than staying on the autobahn.’
‘Yes, I agree,’ Bykov said, tracing the route on the map with his finger.
‘So,’ Modin continued, ‘we will continue heading west, through Heilbronn and up to Walldorf, and then south past Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden to Strasbourg. Brief the drivers.’
Giraud turned to one of his aides and spoke rapidly in French, then after listening to the reply he turned back to Richter.
‘This, Mr Beatty, is the situation as I understand it. You have what you believe to be compelling evidence that a section or sections of the Russian security forces are attempting to blackmail America and then force Europe to submit to what amounts to a non-military invasion from the east?’ There was nothing wrong with Giraud’s English, or with his grasp of the situation.
‘Correct,’ Richter said.
‘But neither you nor the American CIA can offer any independent support for this interesting theory, other than what amounts to some circumstantial evidence which is possibly indicative of something going on?’ Richter nodded. ‘And the only hard evidence that can possibly be provided is in the back of a lorry which is about to make its way through France?’
‘Yes,’ Richter said.
‘A lorry which will, unless I’m very much mistaken, be travelling under the legal protection of diplomatic status and, probably, with the physical protection of armed couriers, who will also be carrying diplomatic passports? Is that a fair summary?’
‘Yes,’ Richter said, ‘but—’
Giraud ploughed on relentlessly. ‘You are doubtless also aware that any interference with such a vehicle is tantamount to a severance of diplomatic relations with the originating country? And that there would be most severe – I say again, most severe – international repercussions if your theory turned out to be a fiction?’
‘Yes.’ There wasn’t anything else Richter could say.
Giraud fixed him with a penetrating look, then turned to Lacomte and spoke briefly in French. Richter glanced over at Tony Herron and shrugged his shoulders. Giraud turned his attention back to Richter. ‘I suppose your Special Air Service personnel are already en route?’
‘Er, yes,’ Richter said. ‘Actually, they are, or should be.’
‘We expected that,’ Lacomte said, nodding. ‘With the time-scale you have outlined they would have to be about to leave, or have already left, Hereford.’
‘I had to make some assumptions,’ Richter said. ‘I had to assume that you would give permission. They can be stopped, of course, probably before they reach Calais.’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Mr Beatty,’ said Giraud. ‘I think that you probably will need their help to stop that lorry.’ He favoured the group with a wintry smile, gestured to his aides and stood up. When the four men had left the room, Lacomte relaxed visibly.
‘What made him agree?’ Westwood asked.
‘The possible diplomatic repercussions, I think,’ said Lacomte. ‘If he had refused permission for the lorry to
