eventually to somewhere agreeable in southern Europe, perhaps on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.
Chapter Six
Tuesday
Dobric Air Base near Varna had been ‘inactive’ since the millennium, but there are degrees of inactivity and, despite the fact that no aircraft flew to or from the base, there were always armed guards on duty there. This was because Dobric had become one of Bulgaria’s largest repositories of reserve planes, aircraft stores and munitions.
Deliveries and collections were frequent, but these were always carefully pre-notified to ensure that sufficient staff were on hand to assist with the loading and unloading. So when a trio of unmarked three-ton trucks pulled up outside the locked main gates, the guard in the concrete security post at first more or less ignored them because no such movements had been scheduled for that day.
He watched with greater interest though when two men wearing Bulgarian Air Force uniforms climbed down from the lead vehicle and walked over to the security post, arguing loudly. Reassured by the sight of the familiar uniforms, the guard didn’t think to pick up the assault rifle leaning against the wall beside him. Behind him, a small and cheap TV set blared out a current pop song, while professional dancers writhed unenthusiastically on the black-and-white screen.
One of the arrivals, who was using the name Draco, nodded to the guard and slid a folded sheet of paper through the slot under the window. The Bulgarian took it, expecting to find the address or location they were looking for but, on unfolding it, found it completely blank. He looked up in puzzled surprise to see the man smiling slightly.
The next thing he registered was the muzzle of a silenced pistol levelled at him through the slot. Before the guard could react, there came a sound like a cough, and he fell backwards, shot directly through the heart.
Immediately, the second man jogged over to the main gates and studied them carefully. Even if not electrified, some kind of an alarm system might have been expected, but he saw nothing there to cause him concern. That meant all they had to do now was find the key and get inside.
Typical of military establishments the world over, each gate comprised a ten-foot steel frame with cross- braces, and diamond-pattern wire mesh secured to it. He could have easily cut through this, but it was just as quick to climb over.
Grasping the wire with his gloved hands, he pulled himself up, jamming the toes of his boots periodically into the mesh, feeling for the firmer frame and cross-braces behind it. In less than ten seconds he was astride the gate, and fifteen seconds after that was standing outside the door of the security post, trying the handle.
As expected, the door was locked, so he reached down to his equipment belt and removed a crowbar from one loop. Then he forced the end of it into the gap around the door and pulled hard. The wood splintered, but held, so he changed position slightly and levered again. This time the door creaked loudly, then flew open. He stepped inside.
Ignoring the sprawled body of the dead guard, the intruder strode across to the open key safe bolted to the wall. Inside, there were probably a couple of dozen sets of keys hanging on labelled hooks, but he knew exactly which ones he needed. He chose two sets and headed back to the main gates. Inserting one key in the lock, he pulled the double gates open wide.
The moment he did so, the three trucks started up and drove inside the base. At this point he stepped up to the leading vehicle and handed over the second set of keys to Draco, who’d meanwhile returned to his cab. After that he closed and relocked the main gates. As the threetonners drove away towards the storage buildings, the first intruder started a perfunctory clean-up operation in the security post, by dragging the guard’s corpse out of sight of the window.
Deep inside the Dobric complex, the three trucks stopped outside a likely-looking building while the driver checked the number painted on its wall. He shook his head and they drove to the next one. There he swung the truck in a wide turn so that he could reverse close up to the doors.
Draco climbed down and jogged across to a sliding steel door, the second set of keys ready in one hand. The door was secured by a single lock, but before he tackled this he used another key from the same set to disable an alarm bolted to the adjacent wall. Once the tell-tale light changed from red to green, he inserted the key for the loading door itself. Thirty seconds later the two men were inside the building, the door left wide open and fluorescent lights blazing overhead.
They were joined by another four, all similarly wearing Bulgarian Air Force uniforms. They spread out quickly, systematically scanning the steel racks and piles of boxes for those they wanted. Within a couple of minutes one man called out, and the others gathered round to check that he’d found what they were looking for. In front of them rose a pile of some fifty wooden boxes, each over twenty feet long and bearing the stencilled marking ‘R-40T’.
Draco nodded in satisfaction and began to issue crisp instructions. In one corner he had already noticed a fork-lift truck, specially modified to handle the awkwardly shaped boxes that were neatly piled against the walls or on rows of steel shelving. One of his men drove the forklift over to the boxes they had located and expertly plucked the top one off the pile. He manoeuvred it carefully down the aisle between the racks and deposited it neatly into the back of one of the three-ton trucks.
They’d already loaded ten of these boxes when a challenge rang out. Four Bulgarian Air Force guards stood in the open doorway, Kalashnikovs aimed directly at the intruders.
‘We meet again, Mr Richter.’
Viktor Bykov looked pretty much the same as Richter remembered – tall and thin with sharp, almost predatory, features. And he looked suspiciously pleased to see him.
‘Hullo, Viktor,’ Richter said, and shook hands.
Bykov snapped his fingers and a junior officer scurried forward to take the Englishman’s suitcase. He extended a hand for the briefcase as well, but Richter shook his head. ‘I’ll carry this, thanks. I’ve had to sign for the laptop inside it, and I’ll be in all sorts of trouble if I lose it.’
‘Follow me. I have a car outside,’ Bykov said, leading the way through the arrivals hall. Outside the terminal building a black Mercedes saloon stood idling beside the kerb, the driver leaning against the door. The number on the boot lid was 630 SEL, which meant nothing to Richter, who’d never been a fan of overpriced, overweight and frankly vulgar German machinery, but he did notice the registration plate: ‘MOC 65’. Those three letters immediately identified it as a Russian diplomatic vehicle.
‘You have diplomatic status?’ he asked Bykov curiously, but the Russian shook his head.
‘Thankfully, no. But having that plate makes things a lot easier, as it saves arguing with those idiots.’ He gestured towards a number of traffic police who were eyeing the Mercedes in a somewhat hostile manner.
The junior officer put Richter’s suitcase in the boot, then went to sit in the front beside the chauffeur. Bykov opened the rear door for their visitor, then slid in beside him.
‘We’ve booked you into the Rossyia,’ he announced, as the Mercedes pulled out into the flow of traffic. ‘You may be interested to know that Muscovites refer to it as “The Box”, so we thought you’d feel at home there.’
‘The Box’ was one of the nicknames of the Security Service, MI5, from its original postal address of ‘Box 500, London’.
‘Kind thought, Viktor, but you know I don’t work for Five. In fact, I don’t even work for Six, except indirectly.’
And that was the truth. Richter worked for the Foreign Operations Executive, a covert – and unacknowledged except when things went wrong – organization subordinate to the Secret Intelligence Service. Basically, FOE performed any dirty little jobs that Six itself didn’t want to get involved with.
‘Yes, we’re aware that your employment arrangements are quite unusual. We did some checking on you through our London
