Overkill (37 page)

Bentley looked at Richter’s battered tragedy of a face. ‘Whatever they’re paying you, Paul, it’s not enough.’

Richter lifted the mug of coffee cautiously to his lips and took an exploratory sip. The scalding liquid played hell with the cuts and abrasions he could feel inside his mouth, but it was
welcome for all that.

‘OK,’ Bentley said. ‘I’ll go and put your motorcycle in the garage, then we’ll see what we can do to make you a bit more comfortable.’

Richter nodded his thanks, and eased back in the chair, wincing as eddies of pain shot through his torso. The journey through London and out to Ickenham had been a slow and painful nightmare.
The beating he’d received had left him weak and dizzy and aching in every joint, and twice he’d had to stop the Honda and wait for his head to clear.

He’d stopped for a few minutes in Clapham and rung Bentley from a public telephone box, just in case the Russians had somehow managed to tap into the GSM mobile system and could trace the
numbers he called. He’d hung on for better than twenty rings before Bentley had picked up the receiver, and he’d told him almost nothing, just asked him to watch out for his arrival and
to let him into the house without delay. Bentley, typically, hadn’t commented, just said that he would, and had rung off.

The side door of the house closed. Richter heard the sound of a key turning in a lock, and then Bentley was back in the living room. ‘Can you stand?’ he asked, and Richter
nodded.

With Bentley’s help, Richter slowly removed the haversack, then eased his arms out of the leather jacket. Bentley looked quizzically at the Smith and Wesson in Richter’s shoulder
holster. The Mauser HSc, which Richter had liberated from Yuri’s deceased colleague before leaving Orlov’s house, was stashed in the haversack. Richter had reduced the Glock 17 that he
had used on Orlov and the bodyguard to its component parts and dumped them in several widely spaced rubbish bins between Orpington and Ickenham.

‘Is that loaded?’ Bentley asked, gesturing at the Smith. Richter nodded, pulled the pistol out of the holster and shook the shells into his palm. Bentley took them from him, and put
the pistol, holster and bullets on the sideboard.

Getting the sweater off Richter’s battered body proved much more difficult than the jacket, and eventually Bentley went into the kitchen and returned with a large pair of scissors, which
he used to slit up the back of the sweater. The shirt was, by comparison, easy.

‘You’re a mess,’ Bentley said shortly, looking at Yuri’s handiwork. Most of Richter’s chest and stomach was a montage of blue and vivid purple bruises.
‘I’m surprised you managed to ride that bloody motorbike of yours all the way here.’

‘I nearly didn’t,’ Richter said, and sat down again.

Bentley vanished into the kitchen for a few minutes and came back with another mug of coffee, a plastic bowl of warm water, and a selection of soft cotton cloths. He looked down at Richter and
shook his head. ‘I’m no medical man,’ he said, ‘but I really think you need to see a doctor. You could have broken ribs, a cracked sternum or anything under that
lot.’

‘No,’ Richter said. ‘I just need a place to rest and hide for a while, that’s all.’

‘OK. Now,’ Bentley went on, ‘this is probably going to hurt, but I’d be obliged if you didn’t scream, because Kate’s still asleep upstairs, and you really
don’t want to wake her. If she doesn’t get her full eight hours she’s not a lot of fun to be around.’

‘I’ll bite on a bullet,’ Richter said, trying another smile, and leaned slowly backwards as Bentley began to gently bathe his cuts.

It didn’t hurt as much as Richter had feared, but the water in the plastic bowl quickly turned a deep red, and he could see the concern on Bentley’s face as fresh blood flowed from
the wounds. ‘I won’t say it again, but you know what I think,’ he said, getting up and carrying the bowl into the kitchen. He came back moments later with a first-aid kit, spread
antiseptic cream on the wounds on Richter’s face and covered them with soft pads which he secured with a bandage wound round his head. ‘I can’t do much about your chest and
stomach,’ he said. ‘I guess you’ll just have to sleep lying on your back for a while.’

‘Thanks, David.’

‘Don’t mention it. And I really do mean don’t mention it, and especially not to the people who did this to you. Now, can you make it up the stairs?’

‘If there’s a bed up there with my name on it,’ Richter said, ‘I can make it.’

Richter awoke with the sunlight streaming through the windows, from which the curtains had been drawn. For the briefest of moments he lay still, trying to work out where he
was. He didn’t recognize the room, and the pyjamas he was wearing were an unfamiliar pattern. Then everything fell into place. He turned to look at his watch on the bedside table and winced
as a spasm of pain shot through his neck. He tried again, more cautiously. Almost eleven. He lay back slowly, luxuriating in the warmth.

The ache from his stomach had eased somewhat, but his whole body was stiff and sore, and his face hurt like hell. He was wondering whether to try to get up by himself, because the one place he
was definitely going to have to get to, and soon, was the toilet, when the bedroom door swung open and David Bentley walked in, bearing a laden tray. ‘Breakfast,’ he said, and put the
tray on top of a chest of drawers.

Richter tried a smile that almost worked. ‘Thanks, David. Actually, what I need more than breakfast is the bathroom.’ With Bentley’s help, Richter levered himself into a
sitting position, and then to his feet. Three minutes later, and much relieved, he sat down again on the bed and leaned back against the headboard.

‘Coffee?’ Richter asked, took the cup from Bentley and put it on the bedside table.

‘I wasn’t sure what you wanted, so I’ve just brought toast and marmalade. If you want anything else, it’s no problem.’

‘No, that’s fine,’ Richter said. ‘I’ve never got much of an appetite in the morning.’

Richter ate the toast and drank his coffee. Bentley poured a second cup and handed it to him. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

‘First of all,’ Richter said, ‘and if you don’t mind, I’m going to take this cup of coffee and go and have a long soak in the bath. After that, I’ll let you
know what my plans are. Always assuming,’ he added, ‘that I’ve worked any out by then.’

Richter looked at himself in the full-length mirror before he climbed into the bath. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a pretty sight. The bruises, although not aching quite as
much, looked a damn sight worse than they had the previous night, and there were very few areas of his body which were free of some purple blotches. He pulled off the bandage and looked at his
face. It was a mess, puffy and red with livid wheals on both cheeks – caused by the wet towel wielded by the late and unlamented Yuri – overlying the deeper bruises resulting from the
early stages of his interrogation. The good thing was he still seemed to have all his teeth, and he could feel no evidence of deeper damage. What he wasn’t going to be able to do for a while
was shave.

Richter lay in the bath, feeling the heat of the water beginning to ease his aches, drank the coffee and then started thinking. He needed to talk to Simpson, face to face, and quickly. The
problem was how. He knew Simpson was going to be at Hammersmith for most of the day, because he had told him so the previous night. Richter wanted to keep out of sight as far as possible, which
meant he couldn’t risk going to Hammersmith, because there would certainly be a hostile watch there, and even if he got inside without being hit, there would definitely be a man with a rifle
waiting for him when he came out.

So he had to set up a meet, on neutral ground. Richter still wasn’t happy with the telephone situation, either. It was at least possible that his flat line had been tapped, and if it had,
then he had no guarantee that the Hammersmith building exchange hadn’t got a few bugs as well. So, Richter knew he had to contact Simpson some other way.

Richter walked slowly and carefully down the stairs, wearing a vivid blue dressing gown he’d found hanging in the wardrobe in the bedroom. Bentley was sitting in an armchair, reading a
copy of the
Daily Telegraph
, and looked up as Richter walked into the living room. ‘Kate?’ Richter asked, interrogatively.

‘Weekend shopping,’ Bentley replied briefly. ‘Normally I go with her, but as you’re here . . .’

‘Is she OK?’ Richter asked.

Bentley nodded. ‘Yes, she’s fine. She knows the sort of work you do, so she’s not too enthusiastic about having you in the house, but that’s all.’

‘If there was anywhere else I could go, David, I’d be out of here in a minute. The last thing I want to do is cause you or Kate any problems.’

‘It’s no problem, Paul. Just relax. Oh, and don’t, for heaven’s sake, let her see that pistol. You know what she’s like about guns of any sort.’

‘Of course not. It’s tucked away in my haversack upstairs.’

‘Good. Now, would you like another coffee?’

‘I never say no,’ Richter said. ‘Have you got some writing paper and an envelope? I need to send somebody a message.’

Bentley gestured towards a roll-top desk in the corner of the room. ‘Help yourself,’ he said, and walked out into the kitchen.

Richter wrote out a note with some care. He hand-wrote it, so that it could be verified against the samples of his handwriting held at Hammersmith, and prefixed it with the code-word
‘TESTAMENT’, which he knew would capture Simpson’s undivided attention. ‘TESTAMENT’ was a code-word only used when the sender of the message had information which was
believed with reasonable certainty to be likely to involve major powers in conflict or, to remove the top-dressing of Ministry of Defence verbiage, information likely to lead to war. The word had
not, to Richter’s knowledge, been used at FOE since the formation of the department, but in the circumstances it was certainly justified.

Richter read the note several times, ensuring that the contents were clear and unambiguous, then sealed it in an envelope and addressed it to ‘Hammersmith Commercial Packers’. At the
top of the envelope he added in block capitals ‘For the personal attention of Mr Simpson’, and underlined ‘personal’ twice. He asked Bentley to ring one of the numerous
motorcycle despatch firms working in west London and to request a rider as soon as possible.

The front door bell rang forty minutes later, and two minutes after that Richter watched through the living-room windows as the black-clad rider climbed back onto his Suzuki and roared away
towards the Uxbridge Road.

Situation Room, White House,
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.

‘Gentlemen,’ the President began, ‘the folders in front of you contain the latest information we have about this alleged Russian assault. The code-name
“Kentucky Rose” has been allocated to this, and the data is subject to a “Top Secret, US EYES ONLY” classification.’

He looked slowly round the table at the three other statutory members of the National Security Council – the Vice-President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense – and
at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the two statutory advisers to the Council. The other statutory adviser, the Director of Central Intelligence, was absent.

‘You should also know,’ the President continued, ‘that Ambassador Karasin has denied all knowledge of this threat. It could be argued, of course, that he would have been
instructed by Moscow to make such a denial, which is certainly possible. However, I’ve known Karasin for three years, and I don’t think he’s following the party line. I think he
really doesn’t know. If we take that as fact,’ he went on, ‘then the situation is even more dangerous than the Cuban crisis. At least then Kennedy knew who he was dealing with.
This time, I don’t think we do. Accordingly, despite the fact that we still have no independent evidence to support the data the CIA claims to have uncovered, I propose to invoke SIOP with
immediate effect.’

The Single Integrated Operational Plan is the central and most secret part of the West’s nuclear deterrent. Despite the fact that SIOP has existed, in one form or another, since 1960, it
is so secret that even the acronym ‘SIOP’ is classified and the plan has its own dedicated security classification – ‘Extremely Sensitive Information’ or ESI. SIOP has
evolved from a simple ‘launch everything and blast the Commies to pieces’ strategy to a finely tuned and infinitely variable plan which would, in certain circumstances, permit nuclear
exchanges between the superpowers to continue for weeks or even months.

The plan identifies in excess of forty thousand potential military and civilian targets within the Confederation of Independent States, and contains a vast number of options and sub-options for
both major and minor strikes. The American nuclear arsenal contains over ten thousand deliverable strategic nuclear weapons ranging in size from around fifty kilotons, or just over twice the size
of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, up to weapons yielding over nine megatons. The accuracy of the missiles varies from less than six hundred feet to nearly one mile. SIOP factors-in
the yield, accuracy and number of available missiles, and combines that with the type and number of suitable targets, and allows the nuclear commanders to select a multiplicity of possible
responses to an attack.

‘We are now,’ the President continued, ‘at DEFCON FOUR. I propose to leave decisions on timing of increased readiness to the Secretary of Defense, but I require us to be at
DEFCON ONE – maximum force readiness – no later than sixteen hundred hours Eastern Standard Time on the tenth.’

Paris

The British Airways Boeing 757 landed at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport fifteen minutes early, but the black Lincoln with CD plates was already there when John
Westwood walked out of the terminal building. He didn’t know the junior diplomat who had been tasked with meeting him, and he only made small talk on the drive south through Paris to the US
Embassy at 2 avenue Gabriel, just off the avenue des Champs-Élysées. Westwood hadn’t been to Paris before, although he’d visited France on three separate occasions, once
professionally and twice as a tourist, and he looked with interest through the tinted windows at the bustle of the city.