‘Sorry, the phone’s been switched off. What did you want?’
‘I was instructed to pass some landfall information on to you, sir. An American frigate approached Crete from the west and launched a chopper this afternoon at just after three local time. It flew to somewhere near Platanos where we think it landed. It got airborne again a few minutes later and flew back to the frigate. Then the frigate itself left the area, and we presume that the helicopter picked someone up.’
Richter smiled slightly before he replied. ‘I don’t think the man they were expecting actually turned up, because I met him first. Is that it, then?’
‘No, sir. I’ve just been handed a Secret signal for you, precedence Flash. It’s in a sealed envelope so that’s all I can tell you about it. What do you want me to do with it?’
Richter thought for a moment before replying. ‘Open it, please,’ he said, ‘on my authority.’
‘I won’t be able to read it to you, sir,’ Ops Three said. ‘Not even over a secure telephone.’
‘I know,’ Richter said, ‘but you will be able to tell me if I need to get back to the ship in a hurry or do something else.’
‘Right, sir.’ Richter heard a faint tearing sound and then silence for a few moments as Ops Three scanned the signal.
‘Yes?’ Richter said encouragingly.
‘I don’t understand the third sentence here, sir, but the first two are quite clear. You’re to report by the fastest possible means to the American naval air station at Souda Bay.’
That wasn’t at all what Richter had been expecting. Having just killed in cold blood someone who was almost certainly a CIA agent or asset, he had rather hoped to be keeping his distance from America and the Americans for some time.
‘Who’s it from?’ Richter asked.
‘The originator is listed as “FOE” – that’s Foxtrot Oscar Echo,’ Ops Three reported, ‘and the signal is signed “Simpson”.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me without compromising the text?’
‘Really there’s only one thing, sir. It’s the proper name “Westwood”. Does that help?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Richter replied, wondering what the hell John Westwood’s name was doing in a signal sent to him from Richard Simpson. At least he could trust Westwood, counted him as a friend. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll get myself to Souda Bay. Can you get that signal to Souda Bay Ops or wherever by helicopter so I can pick it up?’
‘Yes, sir. That shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve got a Merlin leaving the ship in fifteen minutes to join the ASW screen. I’ll re-task it on telebrief to call at Souda Bay first.’
‘Thanks.’ A thought suddenly struck Richter. ‘Are you still running surveillance out to the west of Crete?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. How did you know about that?’
‘Actually, I requested it. You might need a higher authority to confirm it, but there’s now no reason for it to continue. I suggest you check with Wings and tell him what I’ve just said.’
‘Right, sir.’ Ops Three’s voice sounded uncertain. The instructions for the surveillance operation had come straight from Flag Officer Third Flotilla,
‘Thanks, Ops Three,’ Richter said. ‘My guess is I won’t get back on board this deployment, but maybe I’ll get the chance to fly with the squadron again some other time.’
Like Henry Rawlins, Nicholson wasn’t normally to be found at Langley over the weekend, but he’d been expecting a signal from the US Navy frigate that had been tasked with collecting Richard Stein or, more likely, Mike Murphy, from the western end of Crete.
Conscious of the time difference between the Mediterranean area and the American eastern seaboard, he’d appeared in his office early, but it wasn’t until after ten local time that the signal finally arrived, having been routed through various satellites, the frigate’s operating authority and Langley’s own communications section. And when he read it, Nicholson knew that his problems were far from over. The signal, shorn of its routing indicators and other dross, was for Nicholson a two-word nightmare. It said simply: ‘NO SHOW’.
For two or three minutes he just stared at the words, wondering what the hell could have gone wrong. He knew Krywald and Stein had recovered the case and file because he’d received Krywald’s email confirmation of that. He knew Elias was dead because Stein had told him, and he knew Krywald had been eliminated because Murphy had confirmed his death. The only thing Murphy had needed to do after that was locate and eliminate Stein himself, recover the two items, and climb onto a chopper for the ten-minute flight to the waiting frigate.
That wasn’t rocket science, for Christ’s sake, and it was the kind of thing Murphy did all the time. For a few moments Nicholson wondered if the timescale had been just too tight, but he’d discussed it all with Murphy before he’d even left for the airport, and his operative had seemed quite satisfied with the proposal. Something, Nicholson knew, must have gone tits up.
His priority obviously was to find out what had happened. Nicholson was methodical, so first he checked his secure email inbox, hoping for a message from Murphy, but found nothing there. Then he took a risk: he used his office telephone to call Murphy’s mobile, but just heard a recorded message stating that the phone was switched off. Without much hope, he then tried Stein’s mobile, but got the same response – or rather lack of it.
The only option was to email Murphy and find out what had happened. It took Nicholson less than three minutes to compose and send a message to the classified server. He marked it High Priority and incorporated a request for a read receipt: that way he’d know when the email got displayed on Murphy’s laptop.
After a moment’s thought, he sent an almost identical message to Richard Stein. Then all he could do was sit back and wait.
Inspector Lavat stood by the boot of the blue Seat Cordoba and stared at the two bodies lying on the ground. Then he examined the bullet holes in the metal of the Seat, shook his head and glanced towards the higher ground lying to the north of the crime scene. To Lavat, the damage to the car looked as if it had been caused by a rifle, not a pistol – a rifle that he was certain had been fired from somewhere in those hillocks some three or four hundred yards away. But that, he had already decided, was not going to be the official version.
He’d been telephoned an hour earlier by a man he’d never heard of, called Fitzpatrick, and given brief details of the incident occurring near Zounaki. The moment Fitzpatrick mentioned Richter’s name, Lavat had been sure that there would be more to these killings than met the eye. And, after a brief initial inspection, he knew that he was right.
The police in Maleme had received an almost hysterical phone call from a female British tourist who had stumbled on the grisly scene whilst out walking, and they had reacted immediately. Half a dozen police officers had been dispatched to the location, and now stood around, making sure that the small but growing crowd of eager sightseers all kept their distance and didn’t contaminate the crime scene. They were waiting for their forensic people to arrive, and Lavat knew that then his real work would begin.
No experienced forensic scientist could accept the scenario that Fitzpatrick had suggested to Lavat. The chances of two people inflicting virtually identical bullet wounds on each other, and then simultaneously shooting each other in the head, were less than zero. Lavat realized that and so too would the men in white suits when they finally arrived.
But Lavat also knew that that scenario made perfect sense from the point of view of convenience and even justice. Fitzpatrick had informed him exactly who the two dead men were, and Lavat knew that one of them – the one clutching a SIG P226 automatic pistol – was almost certainly the man who had killed his police officer in Kandira. Fitzpatrick was a little more vague about the identity of the second corpse, but Lavat didn’t feel inclined to probe too deeply.
He shook his head again, wondering how best to approach the problem. Perhaps conjuring up an anonymous eyewitness might be the best option: somebody who had actually observed the two men shooting at each other. That might be the best way of persuading a suspicious forensic scientist to doubt the evidence of his own eyes.
