Richter drove Murphy’s rented Peugeot up to Tavronitis and then turned right towards Chania and Rethymno, putting some distance between himself and the two corpses he’d left behind. He stopped in Maleme, dumped the Peugeot there and reclaimed his own Renault hire car. He then drove out of the town towards Chania. On reaching Platanias, he pulled off the road and reached into his jacket pocket.
For obvious reasons, he had switched off both the mobile phones he was carrying when he’d donned the old man’s hat and coat. Now he switched them both on again and, selecting the mobile that Ross had given him, fished out the notebook in which the dead man had written the contact number for SIS Crete. He dialled this and asked for Fitzpatrick. Thirty seconds later the SIS man was on the line.
‘I’ve taken care of that matter we discussed,’ Richter said.
‘That’s “taken care of” as in what, exactly?’
‘You could describe it as a terminal solution. The man who encountered Charles Ross is no longer with us, and nor is the cleaner somebody sent out to take care of him.’
‘Cleaner?’ Fitzpatrick asked. ‘What cleaner? It’s the first I’ve heard of that.’
‘Me too,’ Richter replied. ‘I talked to Watson – real name Richard Stein – before he got ventilated—’
‘Your doing?’
‘Oddly enough, no,’ Richter said. ‘I had every intention of eliminating him, but somebody else did the job before I got the chance. From what Stein told me, my guess is that this whole operation was a double-blind set in motion by Stein’s CIA briefing officer in the States. He sent three agents out here to Crete to totally destroy the wreck of the Learjet and recover all the evidence, and then sent out a cleaner – he was called Murphy – to kill them and take away the evidence. And then, probably, he’d already got somebody else organized in the States to kill the killer.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘This guy is prepared to kill three or four CIA agents just to eliminate all traces of some thirty-year-old Company operation? Why? What the hell is he trying to protect?’
‘I wish I knew. Anyway, I need to explain what happened, so you’ll need to take notes. Ready?’
‘Ready.’
Richter described the location between Zounaki and Nteres where the abandoned Seat and the bodies could be found. ‘Somebody may well have stumbled across them by now,’ Richter said, ‘in which case the Cretan police will already be involved. I tried to set the scene so that it would look like both men died after a shoot-out, with no third-party involvement. I don’t know how good forensic science is here on Crete, so I can’t predict how the police will interpret the scene, but there are a few things you should know before you talk to them.
‘First, the Cordoba has four bullet holes in it: one through the boot lid, one in the driver’s door, another in the passenger door, and one that destroyed the right front wheel. In fact, the hole in the passenger side door is an exit hole, so there were only three hits on the car. All those shots came from a Dragunov sniper rifle that I found around three hundred metres from where the vehicle was stopped.’
‘A Dragunov? I’ve not seen one of those for a while,’ Fitzpatrick commented.
‘Nor me.’
‘What did you do with it – the Dragunov, I mean?’
‘I left it where it was. Unless the Cretan police realize the shots that hit the car came from a rifle, not a pistol, they’ll have no reason to go looking for another weapon. Obviously, if they find it, the “gunfight at the OK Corral” scenario goes straight out of the window.
‘I searched the scene and I couldn’t find any of the Dragunov’s bullets, or even any fragments. But if the police decide to analyse the traces of copper on the bullet holes in the Seat and compare that with the copper jackets of the nine-millimetre slugs in the Daewoo and SIG pistols, they’ll probably find a difference in the composition. That would be a bad idea, so perhaps you can talk them out of conducting too deep an investigation.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Fitzpatrick confirmed. ‘Anything else?’
‘Only to request a light touch in checking the rest of the crime scene. I was responsible for the elimination of Murphy – he’s the one you’ll find holding the Daewoo – and I’ve no doubt I may have left some traces at the scene. I was wearing gloves, but there’ll be hairs, clothing fibres, all that kind of thing.
‘The ideal conclusion for the Cretan police to draw would be that Stein killed their officer in Kandira, and also the diver whose body we recovered from the sea near Gavdos. There’s a police officer called Inspector Lavat who’s up to speed on those two killings, so I suggest you bring him into the loop.
‘In Chania, you could argue that Stein killed his colleague, real name Roger Krywald, though he was near death in the hospital, to avoid any possibility of him talking. In fact, according to Stein, Krywald was killed by Murphy.
‘Then, back in Rethymno, Stein discovered Charles Ross in his hotel room and killed him. Perhaps you could suggest that Six received a tip-off about this renegade American agent. After that Stein, with four killings already under his belt, tried to escape from Crete – perhaps heading for a boat or helicopter, which he’d arranged to pick him up somewhere on the west coast.
‘He’d got himself as far as Maleme when he was intercepted by Murphy – I don’t know if that’s his real name or an alias, but he’s got to be carrying some kind of ID. They drove off the main road and up into the hills, got involved in a confrontation and shot each other to death. End of story, but perhaps you could dress up Murphy’s role so that he becomes a US undercover police officer, hot on Stein’s trail.’
‘OK, that should work,’ Fitzpatrick said after a moment. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I don’t really know. I’ve collected what evidence there is to be found, and all the opposition players have been eliminated as far as I know, so I suppose I’ll just head back to London and let my section or Six sort it all out.’
‘Good luck. Right, I’ll get over to Zounaki and fix things out there. Maybe I’ll see you again some time.’
‘You never know.’ Richter disconnected.
The young communications rating was concerned. The procedures were quite specific, but as far as he could see there was no way he could follow them. So he called the Chief over and explained his problem.
‘Leave it to me,’ the CPO said, and walked across to the Communications Officer.
‘Yes, Chief?’
‘Slight problem, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a Flash signal classified Secret for Lieutenant Commander Richter, but as far as I know he’s ashore somewhere so we can’t deliver it within the specified time.’
‘Sounds like it’s Commander Richter’s problem rather than ours, Chief. Give it to me and I’ll see if the Ops Department has any kind of contact with him.’
As he left the Communications Centre the officer reflected that he’d never known a junior officer – and in his book a lieutenant commander
‘Richter?’ he said without preamble as he stepped into the Ops Office and saw Ops Three sitting at his desk working out the following day’s flying programme. ‘Have you got a contact number for him?’
‘I have,’ Ops Three replied, ‘but he’s either had his mobile switched off for the last few hours or he’s been out of a cell. Why?’
‘I’ve got a signal for him,’ the Communications Officer said, thrusting a clipboard at him. ‘It’s Secret and Flash, and I reckon you’ve got a much better chance of contacting him about it than I have, so you may as well take it. Sign here.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ Ops Three muttered under his breath.
Richter had ended his call to Fitzpatrick only four minutes earlier, and had just started the engine of the Renault and slipped it into first gear when his other mobile phone – the Enigma issued on the
‘Commander Richter? It’s Ops Three, sir, on Mother. We’ve been trying to reach you for some time.’
