the deadly pathogen they carried to the bottom of the Mediterranean. A subsequent search, if there’d been one, hadn’t found the wreckage, and eventually almost everyone had forgotten about the lost Learjet.
Over the intervening years world opinion had shifted, and now it was no longer acceptable for any nation – and certainly not America, the world’s supposed peacekeeper – to be seen as involved in any aspect of biological warfare. So when that Greek diver had stumbled across the wrecked Lear, somebody at Langley had decided that the once-buried evidence should be re-buried permanently, and had sent a team of agents over to Crete to recover what they could and destroy the rest.
That more or less made sense, but why all the killings? That was what he didn’t get. Killing everyone involved seemed an extreme reaction if Richter’s ‘lethal bug collected for research’ hypothesis bore any relation to the facts. What had started out as an obscure thirty-year-old puzzle had rapidly turned into a massacre, with three CIA agents and the mysterious Murphy – who Richter guessed had been a Company-employed hitman – all now dead. Plus five Cretans: the police officer; Spiros Aristides, his nephew and the two villagers.
In fact, Richter’s hypothesis was wrong in every respect bar one: a team had indeed been sent to Crete to recover what they could and destroy the rest. All his other assumptions were inaccurate, however, because he was looking at the problem from the wrong end.
He was still trying to make some sense of it all as he drifted into sleep.
‘So who do you reckon is knocking off your ex-CIA wrinklies?’ Richter asked, before yawning prodigiously as Westwood threaded his Chrysler Voyager through the light late-morning traffic heading for Interstate 64.
When the RC-135 touched down, Westwood had been waiting for him at the airbase in Norfolk and had whisked Richter away as soon as the aircraft had come to a stop in the dispersal. The plastic box containing the steel case was now in the back of the car, and Stein’s briefcase and Richter’s overnight bag were both sitting on the rear seats.
Westwood shook his head. ‘I wish I knew – and I wish I knew why. I’m hoping you and I can get our heads together and sort this mess out.’
‘We’ll do our best. Thanks for organizing the ride – pretty impressive stuff, getting the use of an RC-135 as an executive jet. They could improve the in-flight catering, though. Coffee from a Thermos and a couple of packs of sandwiches won’t ever get them into the “My Favourite Airline” charts.’
‘You’re lucky you even got that.’ Westwood changed lanes and accelerated. ‘I had to call in a bunch of favours first and then clear it with my boss.’
‘You heard what happened on Crete, I suppose?’
Westwood nodded. ‘Yes, your Mr Simpson briefed me on a secure telephone link, not that it was much help to me. What I still can’t figure out is why anybody would decide a thirty-year-old covert op is still so sensitive that any people involved with it have to be killed on the off-chance that they might talk about it.’
‘I think
‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘I think Stein was more or less right. I think the guys involved in CAIP had found some lethal bug somewhere, and were taking it back to the States for use as the basis for a biological weapon. According to the CDC people on Crete, the bug contained in the flasks acts a bit like a combination of Ebola and Lassa Fever, but it’s much, much faster than either of them. Lassa kills in weeks, Ebola within a few days, but catch this one and you’re dead in a matter of hours.
‘That suggests to me that they’d probably found this bug somewhere in the African rain forest, because that’s where most of the real nasties like Marburg and Ebola have come from. Perhaps they’d staged out of Egypt or Israel, or somewhere similar, just stopped for a refuel, and their next stop was going to be a Spanish or British airfield for another top-up before the hop across the pond.’
‘But it’s still ancient history,’ Westwood objected. ‘That plane went down over thirty years ago. Why the hell should anyone care about it now?’
‘Maybe because the US has always vehemently denied any involvement in biological warfare. Your government always maintains that all its research is aimed at defensive, not offensive, measures. Imagine the outcry if somebody found proof that the CIA was involved in discovering naturally occurring viruses, which Fort Detrick or wherever was then developing into biological weapons for offensive purposes.’
Westwood remained silent for a few moments, then shook his head. ‘Sorry, Paul, I don’t buy it. In that case, all we’d have to do is claim that the bugs in those flasks were intended for delivery to the CDC, to allow us the opportunity to develop antidotes. Who could ever say that that wasn’t the truth? You talked about
‘OK,’ Richter conceded, ‘that does make sense. But maybe your phantom killer is a lot more paranoid than either of us, and he’s not willing to take a chance on his name being linked with this operation.’
‘Maybe. We’ll get him, though. With what’s in the file, I’m hoping we can nail this bastard real quick.’
‘There’s one thing I’ve just remembered that might help,’ Richter said. ‘I had quite a little chat with Stein back on Crete, and the only really solid piece of information he gave me was the name of his briefing officer, which was “McCready”.’
Westwood looked interested, then shook his head. ‘I don’t recall that name from the research I’ve done,’ he said. ‘I can check it out at Langley tomorrow, of course, but my bet is that he was either employed solely as a briefing officer for this operation, and not beyond that, or else he was using an alias. That would have been pretty much standard procedure for an operation of this classification.’
‘And there’s something else,’ Richter said. ‘Something that really worries me.’
‘What?’
‘The steel case,’ Richter replied. ‘According to Stein there were four flasks inside it. Three were still sealed and one had been opened by the Greek diver, but there were spaces for twelve flasks altogether. So who’s now got the other eight? Did Aristides sell them on to someone, or did somebody take them out of the aircraft even before Aristides found it? If opening a single flask can kill everyone who comes close to it, do you have any idea what sort of damage a terrorist group could do with eight containers of this bug?’
‘Shit. You got any more bad news I should know about?’
About once an hour since he’d got up, Nicholson had been using his home computer to access the classified server, but he was still waiting for a read receipt from either Murphy or Stein to signify that they’d now opened the emails he’d sent them. On repeated attempts to contact their mobiles, each time the system had reported the phones were switched off.
This was the worst possible news. It suggested that both men were either dead or imprisoned, or otherwise unable to get access to their computers or phones, and that almost certainly meant that somebody else had now gained possession of the flasks and the classified file. As far as Nicholson knew, no other intelligence services had any interest in the matter, so the most likely organization to have become involved was the Cretan police force.
That might or might not be a good thing, but he had to find out exactly what had happened, because until he knew he couldn’t take any remedial action. For some minutes Nicholson sat and considered his options, but he realized virtually immediately that he really had only one choice. The sole usable asset he now had on Crete was the CIA agent living and working the
He checked a small notebook in which he’d listed – quite illegally according to CIA regulations – the contact details of all the people he had already tasked in any connection with this operation on Crete. He opened his email client, copied Levy’s address into the ‘To’ field, composed a message, marked it High Priority, added a read request, and then pressed ‘Send’.
With the message on its way, Nicholson began to feel better, but he knew it would probably be Monday midday, Crete time, before Levy would reply. However, the time difference meant that his reply should be posted on the classified server by the early hours of Monday morning, Eastern Standard Time, so he wouldn’t have that long to wait.
