I would be very surprised if he came round long enough to recognize anyone, so any kind of detailed questioning is almost certainly not going to be feasible.’
Westwood nodded. ‘I understand that, but two things, Dr Grant. First, please don’t allow Mr Butcher any visitors apart from his immediate family and next of kin. If anyone else attempts to enter his room, please have them detained on my authority. Secondly, just as a precaution, could you arrange to have a tape recorder positioned by his bed. If he recovers consciousness, no matter how briefly, get someone to record anything he says and then let me have the tape.’ Westwood was clutching the smallest of all possible straws.
Grant nodded. ‘Is there anything special we should be listening for?’
‘No, just record everything. Right, thank you, Dr Grant. It was worth the journey here just in the hope I could have talked with him. I’ll give you my direct line number at the Agency and if by any chance he should come round or his condition changes for the better, please contact me immediately.’
‘I can almost promise you he won’t improve,’ Grant replied, taking Westwood’s card, ‘but I’ll certainly advise you of any change in his condition.’
Richter was in his cabin on Two Deck drying his hair after taking a shower when there was a knock on his door. He slid it open to find a Communications rating standing there with a buff envelope stamped ‘SECRET’, and with Richter’s name printed on it.
‘Sign here if you would, sir.’
‘Thanks. Could you wait a moment, please?’ Richter scrawled his signature on the form attached to the clipboard. He ripped open the envelope and extracted the signal that had been sent from Hammersmith via the Secret Intelligence Service. The message was brief and to the point.
FAA REPORTS LEARJET MODEL 23 REGISTRATION N17677 RETIRED FROM SERVICE IN USA IN 1979 PRESUME RINGER. COLT REPORTS PISTOL SERIAL NUMBER ISSUED TO STATE DEPARTMENT PRESUME CIA. INVESTIGATION APPROVED.
Richter put the message back in its envelope and watched as the rating re-sealed it. ‘Destroy it, please,’ he instructed, and slid his cabin door closed.
For Simpson to approve further investigation was one thing, but Richter had no clear idea about what to do next. Because of the weapon found inside the wrecked Learjet’s cabin, and the duplicated aircraft registration, it was a reasonable guess that the jet had once been a CIA asset. What he didn’t know was what it had been doing over the eastern Mediterranean, or where it had been before that, where it was going to or what it had been carrying. Nor did he yet know what had killed Spiros Aristides and his nephew, or why somebody now believed the mere existence of the wreck was so dangerous that it had to be completely destroyed.
Richter had just finished dressing as he heard his name called over the tannoy system. ‘Lieutenant Commander Richter is requested to report to the Commander.’ Three minutes later he knocked on a door, waited for the gruff command to enter, then stepped inside the cabin.
The Commander on a Royal Navy aircraft carrier is the Executive Officer, the most senior Commander on board, second in command and responsible for discipline and for the smooth running of the ship. He didn’t, Richter noticed, look too pleased with life, and he didn’t ask his visitor to sit down.
‘Richter,’ he began flatly, ‘I’m not happy about your conduct on board this ship. Since you arrived you’ve flouted the rules on more than one occasion. I understand that your so-called diversion to the Italian airfield was nothing more than a ruse to get you ashore overnight, but this last incident is intolerable. This ship isn’t here just for your personal convenience. We could have lost a very expensive Merlin helicopter, not to mention an even more expensive crew, through your unauthorized activities.’
Richter just stared at him. ‘Is that it?’ he asked after a few seconds.
The Commander spluttered. ‘Are you being insubordinate?’
‘Almost certainly,’ Richter said, ‘but I’ve got better things to do than stand here and listen to you waffling on. You need to get a grasp on the facts of life. I’m not a member of this ship’s company – in fact, I’m no longer even a serving naval officer – and I take my orders from another organization.’
‘I’m fully aware of that,’ the Commander said, his normally russet face darkening a couple of shades, ‘but while you’re on board this ship you’re still subject to naval discipline and you will obey orders and accord proper respect to senior officers.’
‘I will do whatever I have to do,’ Richter retorted, ‘to complete tasks set for me by my section. If that means I have to flout naval discipline and ignore orders that you or anybody else on this ship issues, then that’s what I’ll do. If you don’t like it, that’s tough. If you feel like taking the risk, clap me in irons, but until then, I’ve got work to do. I’d like to do so with your cooperation, but if you want to make an issue of it I can probably get a very specific directive from their lordships at the Admiralty telling you exactly what to do. Your choice.’
For several seconds the Commander stared at Richter in silence, then finally he spat: ‘Get out of my sight.’
‘I was just going anyway.’ Richter turned and walked from the cabin, heading for the CommCen. He had a signal to send off to Simpson right away.
‘So what have you got, John?’ Walter Hicks asked. The two men were sitting in Hicks’s comfortable office, the inevitable coffee pot on the table between them and the usual cloud of blue smoke rising towards the ceiling from Hicks’s cigar.
‘If I’m completely honest, Walter,’ Westwood replied, ‘the answer has to be “not a lot”. As you instructed, I’ve been liaising with Detective Delaney, but so far the crime scenes haven’t been much help to us. All Delaney knows for sure is that it was the same perpetrator who killed Richards and the Hawkins couple. That was confirmed by some dark hairs belonging to the same individual found at all three crime scenes. All the analysts can tell is that they come from the head of a Caucasian, probably male, and were turning grey. That includes about thirty per cent of the adult male population of America, so it doesn’t narrow our search a hell of a lot.
‘The house-to-house in Crystal Springs – where James Richards lived – turned up a bunch of mutually contradictory descriptions of an unknown male who may, or more probably may not, have had anything to do with the murder there. The description of a man seen entering the Hawkins’s residence at Popes Creek by one of the neighbours is probably the only genuine eyewitness account we have, but it’s so vague it’s almost completely useless. It states white male, around six feet tall, wearing a dark coat. About the only thing we know for sure is that we’re not looking for a black female dwarf.
‘As far as Delaney and his men can establish, nobody saw Hawkins arrive at Lower Cedar Point, or noticed him sitting there in his car, and no one saw any other person approach his vehicle, apart from the guy who found him, of course.’
‘So the short version,’ Hicks said, ‘is that these murders were all committed by the same man, but nothing in the forensics can be used to track him down. But once any suspect’s in custody, what Delaney’s found so far can be used to confirm whether he’s the killer?’
‘In a nutshell, Walter.’
‘OK, sounds as if the leg-work investigation is pretty much dead in the water unless Delaney can come up with a new eyewitness. What about the other side of the coin? What did you find out from the files here at Langley?’
‘As I said, not a lot. I’ve already trawled through mountains of files for any combination of factors that could possibly link Hawkins and Richards. I’ve found only one, and it’s old and pretty tenuous. It also seems to have been a deep black operation that was highly classified.’
‘That’s interesting,’ Hicks said. ‘Go on.’
Westwood glanced down at his notes. ‘OK, on the third of July nineteen seventy-one a file was opened on an operation called “CAIP”. That’s spelt Charlie, Alpha, India, Papa. The senior agents tasked with running it were Henry Butcher, George Cassells, Charles Hawkins, William Penn, James Richards and Roger Stanford. According to our records, that is the only operation that ever involved both Hawkins and Richards working together.’
