Beirut - An Explosive Thriller (11 page)

‘
You weren’t
taking this seriously, Dieter. Dubois took the decision to act on
the information on Friday. You had time to get your order, even
from a provincial judge in Bad fucking Bramstedt.’

Schmidt
sighed. ‘Dubois also agreed that we weren’t going to make arrests
until we had performed at least some basic investigations. We
needed time to plan and assign responsibilities in this operation,
particularly considering the resource limitations we all face. But
I’m not going to argue about it, Gerald. We can’t roll back the
clock. If you don’t like it, complain to Dubois.’

Lynch’s
frustration found expression in his physicality, shifting his body
weight from heel to heel and tapping the roof of the car. Schmidt
handed a plastic folder across the roof.

‘
Here. GSG 9
helped us interview the workers and the office staff at the Luxe
Marine boatyard. The customs man Duggan was right. The boat they
converted was a Luxe 500, a fifty-metre luxury cruiser. We have a
copy of the general arrangement before the refit, but there is no
copy of the new layout. The boat left the yard at night and crossed
the Czech border, coming back ten days later. We’ve now confirmed
it passed the Kiel Canal on the twenty-eighth. Its reported
destination was Southampton.’

‘
Three days
ago.’

Schmidt
nodded. ‘No Luxe 500 reported entering Southampton. We’ve requested
air patrols from the British and the French, but that boat could be
almost anywhere.’

Lynch
whistled. ‘Amazing. They floated the whole fucking lot down the
Elbe in a luxury yacht. Have they located the bunker?’

Schmidt was
cautious, his hand held out to slow Lynch down. ‘Whatever ‘the lot’
was. We still don’t know what this is all about, Gerald. The Czechs
are still searching for it. All we have is the girl’s word there
was something illegal on that boat.’

‘
Have they
brought Meier in?’ Lynch flicked through the folder.

‘
No, it
appears they just missed him at his office. He gave them the slip.
He hasn’t been near his apartment. We have circulated his car
details and photograph to all stations.’

‘
Have you
alerted the border people, at least?’

Schmidt shook
his head. ‘That would be a serious escalation. We would need to
have made some sort of charge. There is no charge against
Meier—’

Lynch slammed
his hand down on the car roof. ‘For fuck’s sakes, Dieter, why
aren’t you guys taking this seriously? You want a charge? Try two
counts of fucking murder for a start!’

Schmidt had
been leaning against the car. He straightened up to face Lynch.
‘You think
Meier
did this?’ He gestured back to the house with his
thumb.

Lynch reached
into the car and tossed the folder onto the passenger seat. He
spoke slowly, controlling himself with an obvious effort. ‘Hoffmann
didn’t struggle at all. He didn’t run, the shot was clean in the
chest. He just stood and took it. So did she, sitting up on her
sofa. She sat there while he levelled a gun at her head without
even uncrossing her legs or putting up her hands to protect herself
precisely because he was her brother.’

‘
That’s one
possible scenario. There is any number of others.’

Lynch’s fists
clenched and his jaw tightened. ‘I don’t care. That’s the one I’m
going with. That and the one involving a shitload of arms from a
cold war dump that’s heading for a city which really does not need
supplied with any more bloody guns and rockets. You’re not taking
this seriously, Dieter, any of you. But if that girl was right, God
help her, Meier is a major fucking hood, and if I’m right, he’s a
murderer as well. So why don’t you people get off your arses and
prove me wrong? Or do you want to wait for more people to get
killed?’

Lynch waited
for an answer but Schmidt merely looked down at the roof of the
car. The grey sky reflected on the paintwork. Lynch tore the door
open and got in. He wrenched the key in the ignition. Schmidt
leaned in the passenger window.

‘
Okay,
Gerald, we’ll play it your way. But we’ll need time to alert the
border police.’

Lynch gripped
the wheel. ‘Time? I’m not sure we’ve got much of that
left.’

His mobile
rang and he grabbed the secure handset. Dubois.

‘
What
happened at the Hoffmann house, Gerald?’

‘
Both shot at
close range. I’d swear it was Meier, but Dieter and his boys aren’t
convinced.’

Dubois’ voice
was silky. ‘A transfer was made from Luxe Marine’s account to a
private bank in Liechtenstein four hours ago. Forty million dollars
precisely.’

‘
Meier. They
haven’t blocked his passport yet, you know. Dieter’s onto it
now.’

‘
Shit.’

Lynch was
impressed. Dubois was far too smooth to swear. The silky voice
paused, then gained an edge. ‘Gerald, I have a favour to ask. The
Czechs have located the arms cache. It is close to the border in an
area of heavy woodland. I need someone there.’

‘
Sure, no
problem. But Michel Freij is in Beirut, not in Czecho.’

‘
Time enough
for him, Gerald. Let’s see what Meier’s sold to him first. Let’s
see how much trouble is stored on that boat.’

Lynch gripped
the handset. ‘Sure. Let’s.’

TEN

Lynch ran
doubled over until he was well clear of the rotors. He straightened
up to shake hands with Branko Liberec, his liaison in Czech
Security Intelligence. Liberec was tall with square hands, and
prematurely grey cropped hair. Lynch put him in his early fifties.
Dressed in a heavy greatcoat, Liberec shouted above the roar of the
helicopter, his face screwed up against the wind and the hail of
wet leaves whipped up by the rotors. ‘Welcome to the Czech
Republic. You have brought light to our week, you know?’

‘
I can
imagine,’ Lynch laughed as they strode together away from the
helipad. ‘Dubois said your guys have found the
facility.’

Liberec
opened the passenger door of his black Skoda with a flourish. ‘We
have found it, indeed. It is ten minutes from here. We shall go
there first, yes?’

A silver
squad car followed them as they pulled away, its lights flashing
but no siren breaking the calm of the brown-flecked, sodden
countryside.

‘
We had some
witnesses to this boat of yours. It is not always we see this type
of vessel on the Elbe, you know. We get mainly cargo or pleasure
cruisers. Not so much the luxury yachts.’

‘
Do you
inspect shipping at the border?’

Liberec
winced. ‘We are all Europeans, Mr Lynch. Our customs wave through
ninety-nine point nine percent of traffic. The Elbe has been an
open river for over a hundred years.’ He chuckled. ‘With occasional
periods of disruption, obviously.’

They motored
through the increasingly hard rain, the wipers whipping as Liberec
slowed in the face of the onslaught, the lorries on the motorway
lashing spray. Lynch settled deep into his jacket. Liberec glanced
across. ‘They said you’re based in Beirut.’

‘
Yup.’

‘
Is that
where this materiel is headed, then?’

Lynch nodded.
‘We think so. We’re sort of keen to define what “this materiel”
actually means.’

Liberec
glanced across at Lynch. ‘We have many very expensive specialists
here finding that out just for you, Mr Lynch.’

Lynch liked
Liberec’s sardonic grin. ‘I am honoured, Branko. Deeply
honoured.’

They took a
series of increasingly unimportant branches into the muddy
bronchioles of the wooded hillside, eventually halting in a
clearing packed with pulsing blue lights and silver Skodas, vans
with rear doors open, revealing banks of equipment and figures
bustling in white boilersuits. After a short, squelching walk down
a muddy track, Lynch halted by the concrete doorway set into a long
barrow in the woods, Liberec panting by his side. Wooden sheeting
led away from the opening, long lines of tape cordons floated
lazily.

‘
So this is
it?’

‘
Come,’ said
Liberec. ‘It’s still being dusted, so hands off please.’

Lynch
followed Liberec down the steep steel stairway, the handrail
glowing with the reflection of the strip lighting. At the bottom
was a wide corridor with six great grey steel bulkhead doors
leading off.

Lynch was
open-mouthed. ‘Christ. An honest-to-goodness cold war museum
piece.’

Liberec
signalled to one of the boiler-suited figures, who bustled towards
them. ‘As you say. One we had forgotten about. We are officially
embarrassed.’ He grinned at Lynch. ‘Unofficially, we are barely
surprised. This was a messy time and our record keeping is not as
good as we would like. Many records were kept in Moscow, not in
Prague. Certainly not here in Děčín.’

A woman in a
rustling Tyvek suit gave her hand to Liberec and then to Lynch. She
was blonde, with wide-set blue eyes. She looked, Lynch thought,
typically Slavic, as if she had escaped from a propaganda poster
exhorting the people to farm the happy collective.

‘
I am
Milena.’

‘
Gerald. Nice
to meet you.’

She smiled,
her speech halting. ‘I am sorry, I not speak very good
English.’

‘
Better than
my Czech. Do you know what was taken from here yet?’

She nodded.
‘This is big facility. We have some record now but some Moscow
claim it is lose. We are ask again. Mostly we guess because of gap
in stacking.’

Liberec led
the way through one of the great bulkhead doors. The poorly lit
storeroom stretched back into gloom. Clear spaces were apparent in
the phalanxes of stacked boxes. He gestured at the piles of crates.
‘High explosive 122mm warheads. These are designed for the RM70
launcher. We think they took something like five hundred of these.
The RM70 launches up to forty at a time.’ He grimaced.

Milena cut
in. ‘We think two hundred they took are early Trnovnik.’

Lynch shook
his head. ‘Sorry, Trnovnik?’

Milena turned
to him. ‘Yes. They are ban from Czech army now. They are HEAT
warhead. You know this, cluster bomb.’

Lynch
whistled. ‘Nice.’

She read from
her clipboard. ‘The rest is Soviet 9M22 type Grad warhead. HE
fragmentation. This is ordinary shit.’

Liberec led
the way into the gloom, his hands shoved deep into his pockets
against the cold of the concrete and steel bunker. He turned
towards Lynch. ‘So, a mixture of tactical short-range missiles.
Maybe forty of these are chemicals grade.’

‘
Go
on.’

Milena tapped
down the list with her pen. ‘These are perhaps two tonnes of
explosive in these warhead. There is plastic also. This we are not
sure is good.’

‘
Why
not?’

Liberec cut
in. ‘It’s Semtex, pre-1991, so it hasn’t had a tagging vapour added
to it. Semtex has a nominal ten-year shelf life, so this explosive
could be useless. But conditions here are good – if it is well
packed, it perhaps is viable.’

Lynch pulled
a black notebook from his inner pocket and started to catch
up.

Milena’s
voice was matter of fact. ‘We are still count. Perhaps 250 Russian
Vampir launchers and projectile, maybe two thousand in
total.’

Lynch felt
the cold sweat on his back. ‘Headed for Lebanon? This is enough to
start a small war. Question is, whose war is it?’ Lynch wandered
along the central corridor, marvelling at the sheer weight of the
huge, open grey doors and at the stacks of crates behind them. He
called back to Liberec. ‘They took only a fraction of what’s stored
here.’

‘
Yes. We
think they were planning to come back for more but for some reason
were interrupted.’

Lynch stopped
by the last door. ‘This one’s still shut.’

Milena and
Liberec caught up with him. Milena held her clipboard to her chest.
Lynch could see the faint mist of her breath escaping her full lips
and smelled mint.

‘
We have not
access code for this door. We think it is Russian access
only.’

Lynch scanned
the door. ‘Russian access? I don’t understand.’

Liberec spoke
slowly. ‘These facilities are many in Czech Republic and other
countries around us. The Russians controlled them even if they
nominally belonged to the host country. Sometimes the Russians keep
access to areas only for Russian personnel. At that time we Czechs
had to allow this.’

‘
And you have
no records of what is stored here?’

‘
No. The
records are in Moscow and we have requested them, but we have no
idea of what they kept. We are little bit concerned because
obviously they would only use access codes for highly controlled
materiel. It does appear as if your friends had access to this
area. There are some scrape marks here showing recent
activity.’

Lynch reached
for the door. ‘So how did they get in?’

Liberec
shrugged. ‘There are sophisticated systems that can manage this
type of lock. It is over thirty years old, please remember,
although it was very advanced for its time. We have asked for
electronics specialists, they will take perhaps a few more hours to
arrive. Come.’