joins were completely air-tight.
‘Doctor, if you please.’ Hardin handed Gravas a small paper sachet.
‘Talcum powder?’ Gravas hazarded, and Hardin nodded.
Gravas opened the sachet and sprinkled the white powder over Hardin’s hands, then handed the American a pair of thin rubber surgical gloves to pull on. Following further directions, Gravas taped the wrists of the biohazard suit over the gloves, ensuring an air-tight join there too. Then Hardin pulled another sachet of powder out of the box and a second pair of surgical gloves and repeated the procedure, but this time Gravas taped the gloves
‘Now the hood and blower,’ Hardin said. He secured a thick webbing belt around his waist and clipped on a heavy square battery box, a large purple filter and a blower.
‘That’s a special filter?’ Gravas asked.
Hardin nodded. ‘Yes, a HEPA – High Efficiency Particle Arrestor. It’s designed to trap biological particles present in the air so that what I breathe in won’t kill me. At least, that’s what the manufacturer claims.’
Gravas smiled at the weak joke, then helped Hardin settle the Racal hood over his head. The hood comprised a soft and fairly flexible breathing helmet, like a transparent plastic bubble connected to the blower and filter assembly at his waist. Hardin switched on the blower as Gravas checked the pipe connections for leaks. Satisfied, Gravas positioned the double flaps that hung down from the hood over Hardin’s chest and shoulders, then zipped up the biohazard suit over these flaps and sealed it at the neck.
‘How long does the battery last?’ Gravas asked.
Hardin’s reply was somewhat muffled by the hood, but clear enough.
‘Eight hours, but I’ll be out long before then. Now, if you could just apply tape over the main zip and anywhere else that you think it needs it.’
‘That’s it.’ Gravas stepped back, satisfied, a couple of minutes later.
‘Thanks,’ Hardin said. ‘Just walk all round me and check if there are any tears or splits anywhere in this suit, please.’
Three minutes later, Hardin picked up his small bag of instruments and approached the street door of the house that belonged to the late Spiros Aristides.
Westwood accessed the FAA database again, and grunted in satisfaction. He hadn’t bothered looking before, but this time he checked carefully. The registered owner of the Learjet 23, registration number N17677, was the American Government. The State Department, in fact.
That single fact meant there was a very good chance that the FAA aircraft registry and the CIA’s central database were both right, despite their apparently contradictory information.
Westwood guessed that the Learjet had been a Company plane, but a ringer – one of two identical aircraft wearing the same tail numbers, thus allowing a measure of deniability if one were spotted somewhere that it shouldn’t be.
What he wasn’t sure about was where he went from here, but he knew he was going to carry on digging. Thirty years ago, the Company had probably been involved in some form of covert operation in the Eastern Mediterranean, but that was hardly surprising news. Back in the 1970s the CIA had been involved in covert operations almost everywhere on the surface of the globe. And all he had here was a Learjet that had crashed off-route, somewhere near Crete: it was hardly another Watergate.
Westwood checked the database again, looking for any clues to indicate what the Company might have been up to in 1972, but he found nothing to suggest that anything of any interest to either America or the CIA had been happening around Crete in that year.
But still he sat and worried, about two things in particular. Why had both the CAIP and Learjet files been sealed since July 1972, a full two weeks
Tyler Hardin’s gaze took in the flaking white-wash on the walls and the faded light green paint of the door and windows. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but he was keenly aware that he was entering a potential hot zone, where something too small to be seen except through the magnified gaze of a scanning electron microscope was lurking in wait to kill him. He wouldn’t be able to see it, feel it, smell it or taste it, but that didn’t alter the fact that it was there, and all that stood between him and this unknown pathogen was a thin layer of Tyvek, a plastic helmet, two pairs of rubber gloves, a battery-driven blower and a HEPA filter.
Inside his suit, Hardin shook his head slightly in self-admonishment, then lifted the latch, pushed open the solid old wooden door and stepped from the sunlight into the sudden cool darkness of the house.
The communications rating stopped outside the open door to the Wardroom and peered inside hopefully, clutching a buff envelope and a clipboard with a single sheet of paper on it. He’d already tried Richter’s cabin on Two Deck and found that empty, and the Wardroom was his second, and last, option before requesting a tannoy broadcast.
‘Who is it you want?’ Malcolm Mortensen asked, approaching the rating from the starboard passageway.
‘Oh, Lieutenant Commander Richter, sir,’ the rating replied, turning to the young lieutenant.
Mortensen walked into the Wardroom and peered round. ‘Right, he’s over in the far corner. Give that to me and I’ll take it to him.’
To Mortensen’s surprise, the rating shook his head firmly. ‘Sorry, sir. I have to hand it to him personally and he has to sign for it.’
Mortensen raised his eyebrows slightly, then nodded. ‘OK, wait here.’ He walked across the Wardroom to where Richter sat, an inevitable cup of coffee in front of him, leafing through a three-month-old copy of
‘Spook, your presence is required.’
Richter looked up, an expression of mild surprise on his face. ‘By whom, pray?’
‘There’s a lad at the door with a clipboard and a brown envelope. You’re to sign one and he’ll give you the other. I’ll leave it to you to work out which is which.’
‘Thanks, Malcolm,’ Richter said. He got up and shambled over towards the door. Mortensen watched him cross the Wardroom. Richter really was a scruff, he thought. He was amazed he’d actually got his half-stripe, but Mortensen supposed, correctly, that Richter’s undoubted flying ability had counted for more in the eyes of the Promotions Board than whether or not his shirts were properly pressed or his hair combed.
‘You’ve got something for me?’ Richter asked the communications rating, at the entrance to the Wardroom.
‘Yes, sir. Message classified Secret, precedence Immediate and for your eyes only,’ he added, with a hint of a smirk.
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘No, sir, it really is. Just sign here.’
Richter scrawled an approximation of his signature in the space indicated by the rating’s slightly grubby finger, added the date and time, and handed back the clipboard. He took the envelope and tore it open as the rating walked off along the passageway leading back towards the Communications Centre on Five Deck.
Richter glanced at the red ‘SECRET’ stamps at the top and bottom of the single sheet of paper. He quickly read the message printed in capital letters – all military communications printers generate their output in capital letters – and then he read it again, carefully.
‘Bugger,’ he said, and walked off towards the starboard-side staircase, heading for Flyco, because that’s where he expected to find Commander (Air).
