or so later, walked straight to the kitchen and switched on the kettle.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Colin Dekker said. ‘Oh, I see you have.’
Brown walked into the lounge carrying a mug of tea and sat down next to Trooper Jones. He was more Dekker’s build, compact and wiry, but looked just as competent and capable as his companions. Colin Dekker outlined the task ahead, and Brown just nodded. ‘No problem,’ he said.
Richter coughed politely. ‘I have no wish to dampen this mood of unbridled optimism,’ he said, ‘but you should remember that we are likely to be facing two or three armoured saloons occupied by
Brown looked at him coldly. ‘I said, no problem.’
‘Fine,’ Richter said. ‘Colin?’
‘Trooper Brown, as you’ve probably noticed, is not one to be bothered by the odds, but he does have the experience to back up what he says.’
‘I don’t doubt that for a moment, but I don’t think it’s going to be a picnic.’ Richter took a fresh sheet of paper. ‘We have a meeting at nine thirty tomorrow morning with DST and GIGN personnel in Paris, where we’ll sort out the details of the actual assault, but I would like to get some feedback from you first. Are you happy with the basic plan – stopping the lorry and the escort using the fake accident?’
‘Yes,’ Dekker said. ‘That’s good, and it should minimize the risks.’
‘So the next question,’ Richter said, ‘is how to immobilize the truck and the escort.’
‘Right. The truck first, as that’s the most important. What size vehicle is it?’
‘We’ll know tomorrow morning, but my guess is an articulated lorry.’
‘Good,’ said Dekker, ‘that makes it easier.’ He thought for a moment. ‘The two most important things, I take it, are that the load the lorry is carrying isn’t damaged, and that the vehicle is completely immobilized as quickly as possible?’
‘Yes,’ Richter replied. ‘I doubt if any external cause could detonate the weapon, but there would be obvious radiation hazards if the container was breached.’
Trooper Jones spoke for the first time. ‘We can slice the main drive-shaft.’
‘How?’ Richter asked.
‘Easy. A small piece of plastic, wrapped around it and detonated. The shaft’s hollow, and that would snap it like a twig. Without the drive-shaft, that truck’s going nowhere.’
‘That’s good,’ Colin Dekker said. ‘That’s very good. And you’d deliver the explosive as soon as the truck has stopped at the accident?’ Jones nodded.
‘OK,’ Dekker continued. ‘That takes care of the truck. Escort?’
‘Again,’ Richter said, ‘we won’t know until tomorrow what the strength is. The DST has mounted surveillance of all overland border crossings, and will then operate a long-tail on the convoy as it travels through France. I’m expecting a minimum of two escort vehicles, possibly three, so probably at least ten armed opposition personnel.’
‘How do you want them?’ Colin Dekker asked. ‘The escort? Alive or dead?’
‘I don’t personally care,’ Richter said, ‘but I think preferably alive. It doesn’t make such a mess on the road and that might irritate the French a bit less, and one or two of them might have something useful to tell me.’
‘OK,’ said Dekker. ‘Subject to GIGN or DST veto, we’ll aim for a co-ordinated assault, using stun grenades and CS gas, the go signal being the detonation of Trooper Jones’ lump of plastic on the truck’s drive-shaft. Then the application of the minimum force necessary to achieve the objective. Textbook stuff.’ Dekker looked at his watch. ‘Two thirty,’ he said. ‘Bed, now. I’ll meet you here again at – what – seven?’
‘Seven will be fine,’ Richter said, and the three men filed quietly out into the night.
‘Have you briefed the Joint Chiefs yet?’
‘No, Mr President.’ Walter Hicks shook his head. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’
The older man gestured. ‘Go ahead.’
‘I wish we could claim the credit for this, Mr President,’ Hicks began, ‘but the fact is that we can’t. The British put this together themselves from the data we released to them about the Blackbird flight, the implications behind the murder of an SIS man in Moscow, and some other bits and pieces. They then persuaded a senior SVR officer to fill in the gaps.’
‘Really? How did they persuade him?’ the President asked.
‘You really don’t want to know that, sir,’ Hicks replied.
The President looked up and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘perhaps I don’t. Carry on.’
‘Our source in Moscow – RAVEN – was quite right. There was and is a covert assault in progress against us. The problem is that there’s almost exactly nothing we can do to eliminate the threat. What the Russians have done is sneak a whole bunch of conventional nuclear weapons into major cities here in the States and tie them all to a trigger in a communications satellite.’
‘They’ve done what?’ the President shouted. Hicks didn’t reply. ‘Jesus Christ.’ The President stood up abruptly, his face flushing red with anger. He leant across the desk and pressed a switch on the intercom. ‘Get that bastard Karasin here as quickly as you can,’ he ordered. The intercom squawked. ‘Yes, I do mean fucking Ambassador fucking Karasin. I want him here now.’ He almost shouted the last word, and snapped the switch back angrily. Fists clenched, he stood silent for a moment, then sat down. The anger had vanished, and he was again the calm, calculating man Hicks had come to know. ‘Which cities?’ he asked.
‘That’s the problem,’ Hicks said. ‘We don’t know which cities, and even if we did that wouldn’t help us to find the bombs. You’re only talking about something the size of a small car, even with its back-up power supplies. You could hide it almost anywhere. Almost any crate in any warehouse could contain a weapon.’
‘How did they get them here?’ the President asked.
‘As far as the Brits know, it was a mixture of discreet smuggling and improper use of the Diplomatic Bag.’
The President nodded, not really hearing Hicks’ answer. ‘So,’ he muttered, almost to himself. ‘What do we do?’ He raised his voice slightly. ‘And what do they want?’
Hicks gave a shrug. ‘That, Mr President, is the point. The Russians don’t actually want us to do anything.’
The grey-haired man looked up sharply. ‘They haven’t gone to all this trouble, smuggling nuclear weapons into America and launching a satellite, for nothing,’ he said. ‘There must be a purpose behind it.’
Hicks nodded. ‘Oh, there’s a purpose, Mr President, but the Russians really do want us to do nothing. They want us to stand aside and watch as they march into Western Europe.’
Colin Dekker knocked on Richter’s door at seven exactly, came in and sat down. They ate a scratch breakfast of toast and marmalade, washed down with English tea – Dekker had brought the bags with him.
‘One question,’ Dekker said, as they stood up to leave. ‘Are we authorized to carry side-arms before the operation?’
‘Probably not,’ Richter replied, ‘but I’m wearing the Smith, and in view of the situation I suggest that you should all carry personal weapons.’
‘Good enough,’ Dekker said, and vanished outside to brief his troops, two of whom he would be leaving at the camp to ‘mind the store’. When he reappeared, Trooper Smith in tow, the three men climbed into the Granada and retraced Richter’s route of the previous day, driving over the autoroute to Disneyland, parking the car and catching the RER to Paris.
They arrived outside the British Embassy at eight fifty. Tony Herron and John Westwood appeared five minutes later, and the group walked into the French Ministry of the Interior exactly on time. Lacomte was already
