Payback (26 page)

‘Excellent,’ the Arab said, ‘but just contact us if you do need any further assistance. Do you require any food or drink?’

‘Yes, that would be very welcome.’

‘One of our catering vans will come over. Is there anything else?’

‘Just one thing,’ Sutter said. ‘You have our flight plan details, I believe. Could you please send a message to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, information Dubai
International, advising them that we’ve landed here and that our arrival in Dubai will be delayed by up to ten hours. You’ll be advising both airfields once we get airborne?’

The Arab nodded. ‘Of course. That just leaves your landing fees.’ He pulled a sheet of folded paper from his inside pocket.

‘You’re happy with American dollars?’ Sutter asked, glancing at the sum due before opening his wallet and pulling out a wad of notes.

‘Yes, naturally.’

Sutter returned the invoice and the cash to cover it. The Arab signed it with a flourish at the bottom, tore off the top sheet and handed it back, then they walked to their vehicle and drove
away.

‘That wasn’t too bright an idea, was it?’ O’Hagan said. ‘Getting a catering van sent over here, I mean?’

Sutter nodded. ‘Yes, it was, because it’s what he would have expected. With this flight delayed for several hours, and then it’s another three hours to Dubai, we’re going
to
need
food and drink before we get airborne. If we hadn’t accepted his offer, it might have seemed odd, and the last thing we want to do is start them thinking.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ O’Hagan muttered, watching the van drive off the hardstanding. ‘Right, all clear,’ he turned and shouted. ‘Get those stiffs down
here. Move it.’

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Dubai

Climbing out of the taxi, Paul Richter wondered how long he’d be spending in Dubai
this
time. He checked in again, took the elevator back down to the lobby
and walked outside. There he pulled out his Enigma and punched in one of the secure numbers at Hammersmith.

‘Where are you this time?’ Simpson demanded.

‘Back in Dubai,’ Richter said. ‘I’ve just got off the flight from Bahrain. You heard about the bomb in Manama?’

‘Yes. The Six duty officer briefed me last night. What’s your take on it?’

Richter described what little evidence they’d found, and added Mazen’s deductions.

‘Terrorists terrorizing terrorists? I like it,’ Simpson said. ‘Have you seen Holden yet?’

‘No, but I plan to interview him today.’

‘Right. Check in with me once you’ve talked to him. Anything else to report?’

‘Yes,’ Richter said. ‘Just a little local mystery that’s bothering me.’ He explained about the theft of the thoroughbred racehorse.

‘Not really our scene, Richter, horses. What are you expecting me to do? Arrange for some hay to be delivered?’

‘Not unless you really want to. I’m sure the stable staff are all dead, probably buried somewhere in the desert, and I think whoever’s behind it is planning something here in
Dubai. That just might tie up with what Khatid heard in Berlin, and it’s the only thing that explains why they sent the horse here. Now, at the moment I’m just some guy from London sent
out here to investigate an expatriate Englishman. I’d like you to let the local police know I’m here officially, and that I’m looking into both James Holden and the missing
racehorse. I’d like Six credentials if possible, because that will give me more credibility with the locals, and I’d also like permission to carry a personal weapon.’

‘That’s not going to be easy in Dubai, Richter, even if I can get a diplomatic passport issued to you. I’d need a really good reason to even suggest it, so you’d better
come up with something I can use. Why do you want a pistol?’

‘Right now I don’t have a valid reason, but there’s definitely
something
going on out here. I have a gut feeling that whatever it is could blow up really fast, and
I’d like to be ready. You wanted someone on the spot, remember, and if I’m not armed I’m not going to be much use to anyone.’

‘Gut instinct isn’t good enough, Richter. To get you a carry permit I’ll need something that will persuade the Dubai authorities that a weapon is justified, and even then they
may not agree. Without something compelling, there’s no way I’ll even approach them. But I can at least get on to the embassy and ask them to brief the local plods about you.’

Cairo Airport, Egypt

Three hours later, Petrucci stopped the Mercedes beside the G450 while his passengers climbed out, and then drove off again. He’d spotted a group of vehicles parked
about a hundred yards away, and was going to leave the van alongside them.

‘Any problems?’ Sutter asked, handing him a soft drink from the new supply recently delivered by the catering van.

‘Not really,’ Dawson replied, opening his Coke before slumping down in one of the seats. ‘We drove way out of Cairo, but the roads were always full of people.’

‘Not to mention cars and trucks and camels,’ O’Hagan added.

‘Eventually we got out into the desert and found what looked like a dried-up stream bed, about fifty yards off the road. We dumped the bodies there and shovelled sand on top of them. I
don’t think anyone could have seen us.’

‘How long before somebody stumbles across them?’ Haig wondered.

‘The vultures will smell them pretty soon, I guess, but it might be a few days at least.’

‘Long enough, then,’ Sutter decided.

‘Long enough,’ O’Hagan echoed, as Petrucci climbed the stairs into the cabin. Wilson pulled the door closed, then sat down and they all strapped in.

In the cockpit, Haig fired up the engines, then waved away the power cart and the fire crew who’d been sent over to monitor the start.

Ten minutes later, the Gulfstream accelerated down the runway and lifted smoothly into the air. Sutter received an almost immediate clearance to turn to port on a south-easterly heading, and
soon, as the G450 passed fifteen thousand feet in the climb, it crossed over the Suez Canal, heading towards the Red Sea.

They’d now completed the most difficult phase of the entire operation, though none of the men in the aircraft underestimated the magnitude of the task which still lay before them. But, as
O’Hagan remarked once the Gulfstream reached top of climb, if everything went well in less than five days they’d be on their way home – or, to be more accurate, heading for the
Cayman Islands, where the banking authorities had a relaxed attitude to total strangers making substantial cash deposits.

Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye
Headquarters, the ‘Aquarium’, Khodinka Airfield, Moscow

Viktor Grigorevich Bykov surveyed the files piled on the desk in front of him with a certain amount of dissatisfaction. It’s a regrettable truism, applicable to the
armed forces of all nations, that the higher the rank attained, the less time the holder has to do anything other than sit at a desk and read things – files, reports, statements or whatever.
Bykov shifted slightly in his chair, wondering once again if you really could develop haemorrhoids from prolonged sitting, and reached for the large, bright-red and heavily sealed envelope that had
now surfaced at the top of his in-tray.

Bykov was tall – just over six feet two – and thin, with noticeably sharp features. His greatcoat hung from a rack in the corner of his spacious office on the top floor of the
building, the large windows offering an excellent view over the huge and largely deserted airfield.

He sliced open the envelope and pulled out a file. The title was uninformative and, as he was about to find out, also highly misleading: ‘Inventory errors at Zarechnyy, Penza
Oblast’. He opened it more with curiosity than any particular enthusiasm. The document was classified above Top Secret, and its distribution was severely restricted: Bykov was one of only
three GRU officers on the list.

By the time he’d reached the end of the first page, Bykov was beginning to see why the author of the file, a senior official at Zarechnyy, had given it such an innocuous title. He’d
probably hoped nobody would bother to read a file purportedly dealing with some accounting discrepancies at an obscure plant in the middle of Russia. That ruse hadn’t worked, because the FSB
had been involved in the investigation from the start, and had insisted that the file be properly classified and circulated throughout all the higher echelons of the security apparatus of the CIS.
That was why it was now sitting on Bykov’s desk at the Aquarium.

When he finished reading, he leant back in his chair and deliberated for a few minutes. Following the arrest of the miserable administrator Yuri Borisov, currently languishing in Lefortovo
Prison in Moscow awaiting trial and probable execution – ironically only three cells away from Investigator Litvinoff, who was facing charges of gross negligence – a check of the secure
storage areas at Zarechnyy had revealed that one suitcase nuclear device was missing. All the other weapons had been removed immediately and sent to another location – a classic stable-door
reaction, Bykov recognized – but the FSB investigators were still no further forward in finding the two American criminals who’d orchestrated the theft.

The decision not to shoot down the air ambulance so close to Turkey had probably been correct, Bykov decided, but that didn’t mean Russia should wash her hands of the entire affair. Two
potential terrorists were now on the loose, armed with a nuclear device having a calculated yield of one thousand tons of TNT. That classified it as a tactical rather than a strategic weapon, but
its detonation within a major city would be devastating. The official estimates included in the file suggested a likely death toll of around thirty-five thousand from the blast alone, and probably
a further two hundred thousand fatalities resulting from the radiation and the subsequent fallout. Perhaps as many as a quarter of a million people in all, and the utter destruction of the urban
environment.

What appalled him was the recommendation of a senior FSB investigator, who had suggested just forgetting about the whole business. What the idiot apparently didn’t realize was that all
nuclear explosions leave behind residue that can allow experts to determine the likely origin of the weapon involved. If the stolen bomb was detonated, Bykov could guarantee that it would be
identified as being of Russian construction within a matter of weeks.

There was only one way to ensure this scenario never occurred. He picked up the direct line to his superior, then thought better of it. Sometimes the personal approach was more effective than
using the telephone.

British Embassy, Dubai

The receptionist studied Richter’s passport. ‘Who did you wish to see, sir?’

‘Michael Watkinson.’

‘Please take a seat. I’ll see if he’s available.’

Richter nodded his thanks and retrieved his passport. All he’d been given by Hammersmith was the man’s name, so he had no idea what Watkinson’s official title was, but he
presumed he was one of the handful of SIS officers based in Dubai.

A few minutes later a tall dark-haired man appeared in the reception area and approached him.

‘Mr Richter? I’m Michael Watkinson. May I see your passport, please?’ Richter handed it over for perusal. ‘Do you have any other form of identification?’

‘If you’re asking if I’ve got a neat little leather folder issued at Legoland,’ Richter said in a low voice, ‘well I haven’t, because I’m not actually
employed at Vauxhall Cross.’

Watkinson looked somewhat taken aback. ‘So where do you work then? We were expecting a Six officer.’

‘Somewhere in the backstreets of Hammersmith. If you haven’t heard of my section, it’s because you haven’t needed to know about it. We get lumbered with all the shitty
little jobs nobody else wants. And this is one of them.’

‘Right,’ Watkinson said, returning the passport. ‘You’d better follow me.’ He led the way to a doorway in one corner, waved a card at a portal reader and pushed
open the steel-lined door. Richter followed him down a corridor to a small office containing a desk, three chairs, six filing cabinets and an air-conditioner that sounded as if it was fighting a
losing battle with the heat outside.

Watkinson slid behind his desk and gestured vaguely towards the other chairs. ‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘We were expecting you a couple of days ago.’

‘I was retasked, which meant I got sent out to Bahrain to run an identity check that never happened because the subject died, and then they held me in Manama because of the bomb threat. I
only got back here this morning.’

Watkinson nodded. ‘And how is George Caxton these days?’

‘His name is Julian, as I think you know perfectly well. He seems fine. Bill Evans and Carole-Anne Jackson also send you their best wishes.’

‘Thank you. I’m satisfied you are who you say you are.’

‘Oh, good,’ Richter murmured.

‘You know we have to take precautions, especially with people who turn up without the normal documentation. Now, about Holden – you’ve been briefed, obviously?’

Watkinson stood up, opened the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets, removed a beige folder and passed it across his desk. File covers are colour-coded: Secret is red; Confidential is green,
and Restricted and Unclassified are both beige. Richter glanced down at the title, ‘HOLDEN, James’, and confirmed the classification: ‘Restricted’.

‘He lives in a small apartment in the Al-Ramool district, just south of the International Airport. I’ve had a couple of my people keeping an eye on him, but we don’t have the
manpower for total surveillance, and it’s difficult to justify spending too much time watching him.’

‘The result?’

‘Nothing.’ Watkinson shook his head. ‘Or at least nothing suspicious. His daily routine is depressingly predictable. He works part-time as a waiter, so he’s out most
evenings and rarely arrives home before midnight. He gets up quite late and always leaves his apartment during the morning to walk to the local shop where he buys a newspaper – he’s a
Daily Express
man. Then he goes to a café where he has coffee and a couple of cigarettes while he reads it.