Confessor (45 page)

There was a long pause, then the CSIS’s voice again, terse, with underlying tension. “Is this a very important point of evidence?”

“Very, sir.”

“Well, neither I nor my PA called Carole Keene that early. By five fifty-seven I was on the way to Warminster by helicopter. We gave no prior indication that I was going there. I went because I thought Carole probably needed to see me. I thought it would help. Worboys knew, but I did not make any call. Understood?”

“Absolutely, sir. Thank you.”

“Good hunting, Kruger.”

Big Herbie sighed, shook his head. “One more call now. To Warminster, depends who’s around.” At the distant end someone picked up and Kruger asked to speak with Martin Brook.

“Hey, Martin,” he greeted the new officer in charge of Warminster. “Herbie. Look, do you have access to what equipment is in or out? …Sure, I know it’s a pain, but that’s what we got computers for …Right. I want to know if poor old Gus ever returned his cellular scrambler. If not, I wouldn’t mind knowing if it’s just knocking around the place …I give you this number? Sure.” He trotted out the number, said he would be waiting for the call, then hung up. Turning to Bex, who was gradually making her way through the chef’s salad, he gave a little shrug. “Worth a try.”

“Where are we, Herb? I’ve only had one side of the conversation.”

“We’re in limbo. This much we know, the Chief did not make that call to Carole at five fifty-seven. She was telling us lies. So who made it? Whoever it was called from a secure line, which means the Office or Office property. Let me give you a for instance, Bex. A what-if.”

“I know what you’re going to say. What if Gus did not die in that car? Right?”

“Would account for all the calls. Call from Gus, half-two in the morning. Again call from Gus from public telephone on the motorway, then another, on a secure line, twenty-seven minutes after the motorway. What if, Bex? What if Gus set up his own death? What if Carole knew? What if they had an arrangement about signals? What if he calls from the motorway? What if he still has a cellular phone with scrambler facilities? This would account for the call she says was from the Chief.”

“Can I play devil’s advocate?”

“Sure, how does it go?”

“It goes, if Gus still had a cellular with a scrambler facility, why does he use an ordinary telephone at the M4 service station? There’s also the question of the call at seven-seventeen that same morning. The log shows that came from a public telephone at Heathrow. If this is some kind of strange plot, where Gus dies, but is later resurrected, why play ducks and drakes with public telephones and scrambled cellular? From what I know of Gus, he wouldn’t switch from a secure telephone to a very open line. Herbie, Gus knew the routine. He must have known the telephone log was still in operation. That all calls were saved on the computers: that they would be traced, and that we’d eventually get to them.”

“Sure. Sure, he would. This is pure Gus, though, Bex. You didn’t know him. I knew him well. He was master of deception. He might just be giving us a bit of misdirection by switching the calls. Damn it, I don’t know anymore. I didn’t know Gus was a great magician until after he was dead …”

“If he’s dead?”

“Sure, if he’s—”

The telephone rang. Herbie spoke in monosyllables for around a minute, then said, “Thanks, Martin. See you.”

“Well?” Bex nibbled at half a hard-boiled egg.

“Gus didn’t turn in his cellular phone. It was a Mark Eight, with all the bells and whistles. Absolutely secure, with a long range. So, Bex Olesker, it could have been done. Give me a piece of that egg.”

“Get your own. We have twenty-four-hour room service.”

“Rather have a piece of yours, Bex.”

“Really?” She shifted, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Well, if you’re good, who knows what you’ll get?” Her eyes twinkled and she blushed like a teenager on her first date. “Herbie, you must have had some of this in mind, so I have another question. Why’d you let Carole go?”

“I didn’t. I let her walk, but she has company. Remember I took two telephone calls in my bedroom last night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“First one was to say that the tail from Heathrow to here, New York, lost her. Second one was to tell me they found her again.”

“So where is she?”

“At this very moment?”

“Now. At this moment, yes.”

“She’s in D.C. She’s staying at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, which, incidentally, we’re going to be looking at over next weekend.”

“We are?”

“Sure. We’re going to a magic convention and guess who’s on the bill?”

“Not …?”

“Precisely.”

“Have some of my chef’s salad.”

The head of SIS Internal Security sent two of his best men up to The Hall, Harrow Weald. They were both very well trained and had a great deal of experience under their belts. They had sought and found bombs from Belfast to London, Beirut to Bahrain. Most explosive devices were meat and drink to them.

Worboys’s new Range Rover looked exactly like the one that had blown up in front of his house.

The two explosives experts knew all the wrinkles, and they even cut the engine of their own car so that it coasted to within feet of the brand-new vehicle. In the trade they were known as Mutt and Jeff because one was called Matthew and the other Geoffrey. Geoffrey loathed being called by any diminutive.

They worked very much as a team and approached the Range Rover with initial caution, circling it as animals might circle a prospective victim. Mutt peered through the windows while Jeff got onto his knees, then his back, in order to slide under the vehicle. He knew cars of all types and makes almost down to the last rivet. He detected nothing under the Range Rover.

“Clean as a whistle,” he pronounced.

“Okay. Let’s open the hood and look at the wires. Will you get the lock inside?”

“With pleasure.”

Jeff put the key into the driver’s side lock and turned. It was the last thing he ever did. The slight nudge of the locks opening tipped the mercury switch that had been balanced precariously directly behind the dashboard. The mercury switch completed the circuit, which was run off a 9-volt battery. The bare wires carefully laced into a detonator glowed red-hot. The detonator popped off, blowing a one-pound block of Semtex, which, in turn, ignited a long plastic straw, which encased yet another set of wires leading to another ball of Semtex lying inside a four-gallon flat metal can of gasoline, which, again in turn, sent a charge into the gas tank of the Range Rover. Matthew, who always prided himself on being a professional, had one last thought, which pulsed through his brain before it was swallowed up into darkness. That’s bloody clever, he thought. Wish I could see this from a distance.

Indeed, it was spectacular. A rumble, followed by a whoosh and a second rumble and another whoosh. Gallons of gasoline were shot, aflame, into the air, so that the whole thing looked like a fountain of fire with the ground shaking underneath it.

Worboys, saddened by the whole thing, was very quiet as he was driven to the Chemical Warfare Centre.

Hisham checked out of the Parker Meridien, just as instructed. Yes, indeed, they told him at the desk, Mr. Jaffid was taking care of his account. Mr. Jaffid had, in fact, left a note for him.

Hisham went out to the waiting cab. He did not open the envelope and read the note until the cab drew away, starting its journey to La Guardia.

Dear Friend, the note began—

I have made a slight change to the itinerary prepared for you. Instead of staying at the Willard Hotel in D.C., we shall all be checking into the Grand Hyatt. All reservations have been made, and they will be expecting you. We shall join you later in the day. Everything else stays as it is. Do not forget the pickup from Washington National. Please destroy this note.

Hisham burned the note in the gentlemen’s rest room at La Guardia and flushed the ashes down the bowl.

After doing as he was told, he went to the nearest bank of telephones. He wondered if there was any place to which he could run. Leaning against the side of the telephone booth, he dredged a number from his brain.

Slowly he stripped the credit card and punched the get-out code, followed by the get-in code for a number in Belfast. A man, he thought to himself, has to have all the insurance he can possibly get.

H
ERBIE AND BEX WERE
picked up on time. Neither looked tired, though they had both remained awake through the rest of the night, talking of possibilities and the likelihood of Herb’s what-if theory regarding Gus. In fact, they had become quite comfortable together on the sofa. “This is just a friendly cuddle, you understand,” Bex had said around five in the morning, giving Herb the hint of a wink as she spoke.

“How could it be anything else?” Herb had growled.

Apart from the driver, they were accompanied by two senior FBI Special Agents from the Counter-Intelligence Unit, Dick Hatch and a tough, attractive female—if you liked crew-cut blond hair and a boxy figure—who insisted upon being called simply Christie. “Same as the crime writer, Dame Agatha,” was her only comment.

They were out of New York and thundering along I-95 when Hatch mentioned something about
Intiqam
’s sting being pulled.

“Sting?” Herb must have looked bewildered.

“What sting?” asked Bex.

“Oh, you won’t have heard.” Hatch smiled, then launched into the story of the aerosol canisters discovered at Heathrow. “We’re waiting for an analysis now,” he concluded. “The general opinion is that they contain some kind of nerve gas, so to be on the safe side, our people checked out packages waiting for pickup at Union Station, Dulles, and Washington National. We hit pay dirt at National. There was an identical parcel there. It’s been moved to one of our own military labs.”

“What if they try to collect?” Bex asked.

Hatch chuckled. “They’ll find one there. Our people mocked up an identical package—same waybill and everything. It contains a dozen aerosols with exactly the same labels, but with one difference. The ones at Heathrow and National are sealed and have fake spray tops. Your experts pointed out to us that the design of the top of these things includes grooves and a kind of locking channel to which some timing device can be fixed. We’ve copied this but the sprays are genuine, so we’ve filled them with water under pressure. If the jokers try to fit any device on top of the spray, it will simply give out a fine mist of water.”

Herbie gave a snort. “Put fear of God into them if they know it’s dangerous.”

“Panic in the streets,” Bex commented. “We’ve no idea what’s really in the things?”

“None.” Christie was a woman of few words.

The Chemical Warfare Centre is still one of Britain’s best-kept secrets. Members of the Cabinet know of it, as do a select number of senior Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force officers. Even those in the know only refer to it as Dalch—though it lies nowhere near that Welsh town, the name of which means “black stream.” Those responsible for coding the place felt that
Black Stream
was an apt name.

Everyone who works at Dalch is an expert in his or her field, and locally it is thought to be a research laboratory for the Department of Agriculture. These days, the biochemists and chemists who live on the site are more concerned with the ways and means of destroying chemical weapons, yet there is still research being done on samples of material brought in from the old Eastern Bloc, the new Russia and the Middle East.

They had been given due warning concerning the aerosols, which were kept in a stable environment within an area where leaks could not spread. Though they had started work on discovering what these canisters contained, the facts of the horrific explosion and deaths at the Swiss laboratory that was supposed to have prepared the samples had not escaped their notice.

Two highly experienced biochemists and one skilled laboratory technician had begun work on extracting the contents under secure conditions.

One of the aerosols was placed in a padded vise so that it could not move during the process of transferring the contents from its pressurized container into a second, unpressurized sealed drum. A line, like an IV drip, ran to the drum, affixed to its top by a completely leakproof rubber cup, while a similar seal was fitted to the side of the aerosol. This latter seal was larger and contained a mechanism that looked like a hypodermic syringe, so that a Y-shaped angle lay inside it. Activating the syringe would, technically, puncture the aerosol, the contents of which, under pressure, would be released and so run from the aerosol into the air and watertight drum.

This was fully explained to Worboys and officers from MI5, who had driven down that morning to be present at the tests. They stood now behind glass, watching the scientists, who were dressed in fully protective clothing, including masks and breathing apparatus, similar to those worn by divers. In the cumbersome suits and skintight helmets, with air tanks on their backs, they moved as slowly as astronauts in a hostile environment. Every spoken word was heard by those watching from behind the glass, for the three men wore headsets and throat microphones under their helmets, and their words were relayed through amplifiers.

“We’re going to penetrate the aerosol at the count of five,” one of the biochemists said calmly. All three men were bent over the apparatus on a steel workbench in the center of the room.

They counted down through the five beats, and the watchers saw the slight movement made by the expert as he plunged the needle through the side of the aerosol.

“Fine,” one of the other scientists spoke. “It’s a fine spray that appears to be liquefying as it runs into our container. Moving very fast …Done. The aerosol is technically empty, though there are bound to be traces. We’re going to seal it off before we remove the tubing. Then we’ll do the same to the catchment container.”

It all took a good hour before they could breathe any sighs of relief, though the next step would take longer. The liquid from the spray now had to be analyzed and it was not until after seven in the evening that they got the frightening news that the aerosols had been filled with highly toxic Strep A containing the deadly enzymes which would produce the necrotizing fasciitis condition.