Pandemic (62 page)

Haywood, Virginia

‘It’s no good,’ Westwood said, tossing down the red Ultra-Secret classified file and looking across his study at the couch where Richter lay sprawled,
half-asleep.

‘No?’ Richter sat up, yawning, but looking interested. Tired but interested.

‘I was going to use this,’ Westwood tapped his finger on the file in front of him, ‘to cross-reference the names of any agents who fitted the rough profile I prepared.
I’d already checked out the senior agents listed on the inside front cover. That got me nowhere, because they’re all dead.

‘In fact,’ he added, ‘it was the killing of the two retired Company agents that sparked our interest in what was going on in the first place. The problem is that all the junior
agents are referred to in the file either by their initials, sometimes only by single initials, or by their Christian names. Sometimes they used two or three initials at the start of a memo and
then only used single letters after that. It’s real confusing now, but probably made good sense at the time, when everybody knew exactly who “B” and “R” and
“John” and “Mike” were.’

‘How many different sets of initials are we looking at?’

Westwood glanced down at the paper on which he’d been making notes. ‘I’ve got eleven sets of three initials, six sets of two letters, and fifteen single initials, and
there’s really no way I can make any sense of them. I mean, right here in this tasking sheet I’ve got “CRP”, “P”, “CP” and “RCP”. That
could be one person if the “RCP” is a misprint for “CRP”, or two, or three, or even four different people, and I can’t see any way of finding out which at this
stage.’

‘And the Christian names?’

‘Half a dozen different ones,’ Westwood said, again reading from his list. ‘I’ve got Dave, George, John, Mike, Oliver and Steve. And unless I’ve missed something,
these guys are never referred to by their initials, because none of them match. There’s no “J” or “D”, for example. And I’ve checked the initials and the names
with the agents that I’m guessing might have been involved way back, but none of them match, apart from “John”, three times, but that’s not real surprising.’

‘Can we look at it from the other side?’ Richter interposed. ‘Is there anything in the memos to show what CAIP was supposed to achieve?’

‘No. Apart from the medical stuff, they’re all just routine: requests for motor transport, inquiries about aircraft availability, booking briefing-rooms, that kind of thing. Nothing
with any details. I think you’re right. Almost everything in this file deals with the very specific medical aspects of CAIP. The other files, the ones that as far as I know were destroyed
back in nineteen seventy-two, probably dealt with the overall picture. Unless we can identify Mr X and persuade him to tell us what the aim of the operation was, I think the only way we’re
going to find out is if the Company vets some of our senior medical specialists and gives them clearance to analyse this file. Maybe they could translate this stuff into something mere mortals
could understand.’

‘So what now?’

‘I don’t know,’ Westwood said, ‘but I guess the first step is to take all this stuff’ – he gestured towards the red file and Stein’s briefcase –
‘and show it to my boss, Walter Hicks. But the problem is we’ve still only got a bunch of initials and six Christian names. We can’t start accusing anyone only with that, and
particularly not any of the senior guys now at Langley.’

‘I can see that,’ Richter said. ‘Accusing somebody who out-ranks you of being a multiple murderer is not the way to make friends and influence people, unless, of course, you
can prove it, and you certainly can’t do that with what we’ve found so far. If you’re wrong, you’d spend a very long time working very hard trying to make people forget.
It’s your call, John, but my advice would be don’t involve Walter Hicks until you’ve got more than some initials to go on. I think the best option would be a bit of finesse
here.’

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

Richter got off the couch and moved across to sit opposite Westwood at the desk. He rubbed his tired eyes then leaned forward. ‘Let’s sketch out a scenario. According to Stein, the
man we’re looking for has been calling himself McCready. I know that’s almost certainly an alias, but let’s use it for the moment as a convenient name for our bad guy.’
Westwood nodded. ‘Now, he’s sent three agents to Crete to recover this file and the steel case with the flasks inside it, and also to blow up the Learjet. He’s probably been
keeping in regular contact with them by email or mobile phone or maybe both.

‘They’ll have been keeping him informed, so he’ll know that they successfully destroyed the jet and found the case and all the bits. He’ll probably have been told that
the diver had been eliminated, and that Krywald was terminally sick in Chaniá hospital, and he’d certainly arranged a pick-up for Stein from the west end of Crete. I know that because
Stein told me so, and the
Invincible
’s radar tracked a helicopter that launched from an American frigate, landed somewhere at that end of the island and then returned to the ship.

‘I’m guessing that McCready also briefed Murphy to eliminate Krywald, find and kill Stein and recover the steel case. I assume both Stein and Murphy had been briefed about the
pick-up by helicopter, and this McCready didn’t much care which of them made it, as long as one of them did. If Stein got there before Murphy found him, fine: McCready could take care of him
in the States. If he was already dead, Murphy would have recovered the steel case and he’d be the man the chopper collected. Probably Murphy would walk into a bullet or a subway train or
something else fast-moving and lethal once he’d handed over the case to our mystery man.’

‘I can’t argue with any of that,’ Westwood said.

‘OK, then look at what’s happened since. The chopper left the rendezvous empty-handed, with Stein and Murphy being no-shows because both of them were already dead. The frigate no
doubt signalled Langley through some covert route informing McCready that nobody had appeared. Once he heard that news, I presume he started trying to reach Stein or Murphy by email or mobile
phone, but for obvious reasons he’s not going to get a response from either. So for the first time since this operation started, he’s completely in the dark. He’s got no idea
what’s happened to either Stein or Murphy, or who’s currently got possession of the steel case.

‘He’ll probably guess that the Cretan police have got involved – maybe they just got lucky and arrested Stein, or picked up Murphy or something like that – so he thinks
that the police have his case. Now if I was McCready, I’d want some sort of information, and I’d want it fast. I’d task any asset I had located anywhere near Crete to get on to
the island and investigate. Then I’d be thinking about sending a new team over there to pick up the pieces the first team dropped.’

‘So?’ Westwood asked.

‘So how about we bring Mike Murphy back from the dead? We email this McCready character, tell him Murphy had to run for his life after he’d killed Stein, didn’t make the
rendezvous with the chopper, so had to fly back to the States commercial. That would explain why he hasn’t replied to any emails McCready might have sent, and why his phone’s been
switched off all this time. We tell him Murphy’s here in America, complete with the file, steel case and its contents, and ask where he wants to fix the handover.’

‘That,’ Westwood said after a few moments, ‘might just be the best idea you’ve ever had.’

‘Obviously you don’t know me as well as you think, John. Back in the UK I’m known as a fund of wonderful ideas. Just ask anyone who knows me.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Westwood smiled briefly. ‘What about the practicalities? Do you happen to know what email addresses McCready and Murphy were using?’

‘No, but it doesn’t matter. I had to borrow Murphy’s car after the shooting stopped, then I decided to liberate his laptop and his mobile, on the grounds that he wasn’t
going to be needing them any more. I’ve also got Richard Stein’s laptop and mobile, and an unfired SIG P226 automatic with a couple of spare magazines I found in Stein’s luggage.
The SIG hasn’t got a serial number, which makes it a potentially very useful bit of kit. In fact,’ Richter added, ‘I’ve now got two laptop computers, four mobile phones, and
a Browning Hi-Power pistol as well as the SIG, and not one of them belongs to me.

‘Murphy’s laptop will have copies of all the emails he’s received and probably those he’s sent as well, and he’ll have been using his mobile phone to dial whatever
ISP McCready has been using. All we have to do is hitch the phone to the laptop, switch on and hope for the best.’

‘Why “hope for the best”?’

‘Because Murphy probably has some kind of password protection built in to his machine. If it’s a Windows password it’s not a problem – a mentally retarded gibbon could
work its way round one of those – but if it’s a BIOS password or something more sophisticated it could be a lot more difficult.’

‘I didn’t think computers were your thing, Paul?’

‘They’re not,’ Richter replied, ‘but this guy Baker back at Hammersmith has been giving me a crash course. We’ve just done basic security. I’m a fast learner
and I’ve got a good memory.’

Six minutes later Richter had everything connected up on the corner of Westwood’s desk. He tried the Nokia mobile first, turned it on and watched the screen. There was no request for a SIM
or phone password and the phone merely displayed the signal strength and battery level.

‘So far so good,’ Richter said, and pressed the power button on Murphy’s Toshiba Satellite Pro. A light illuminated to show that the hard drive was working, and the opening
screen appeared. Then it all stopped and a BIOS password request box popped up in the centre of the screen.

‘Shit.’

Westwood didn’t seem fazed. ‘I’ll get one of our IT guys out here to bypass it,’ he said, and reached for the phone.

‘On a Sunday afternoon?’ Richter asked.

‘I carry a fair bit of weight around here, Paul,’ Westwood replied. ‘Of course I can get somebody out on a Sunday.’

The technician arrived just over an hour later. He didn’t look like a computer nerd – he was around thirty, clean-shaven, wearing blue jeans and trainers, white button-down shirt and
a red sweater – and he was carrying a large aluminium briefcase.

‘Is this it?’ he asked, before sitting down in front of the open laptop. Westwood nodded. ‘Do you know the name of the owner?’ the man asked.

‘Mike Murphy,’ Westwood said.

‘OK,’ the technician muttered, and began pressing keys. ‘What programs do you want to access?’

‘It’s essential we get into his email client software,’ Richter said, ‘but we’d prefer to be able to access everything.’

Six minutes later the technician stood up and picked up his case.

‘Is that it?’ Westwood demanded. ‘What was it?’

‘Always try the obvious first. His name was Mike Murphy, so I tried “MikeM”, “MMurphy”, “MikeMurph” and so on. It turned out he was using
“TheDoubleM”. It was about the twentieth option I tried. I’ve checked the other programs and none of them are password-protected. The dial-up networking script and the email
client – he’s using Outlook Express – both have their passwords stored, so you shouldn’t have any other problems.’

By the time Westwood had closed the front door behind the technician, Richter had already opened up Outlook Express and was scanning the contents of Mike Murphy’s inbox.

‘Here we go, John,’ he said. ‘There are three messages from McCready in the inbox, the last sent on Friday, advising him of the rendezvous near Plátanos at fifteen
twenty on Saturday afternoon. I’ll just check his sent messages now . . . OK, nothing of great interest, just acknowledgements of what McCready has told him. Ah, this one’s different:
he’s just confirmed that Krywald has been dealt with at Chaniá, which at least bears out what Stein said.’

Richter switched on Murphy’s mobile phone again and made sure that the data cable was firmly secured at both ends. He turned to the computer and accessed the dial-up networking script. The
default option was a telephone number in the United States, but the name Murphy had given the connection wasn’t what would have been expected if it had been one of the major ISPs like AOL.
He’d just called it ‘Crete’, which suggested it was only a temporary connection.

‘This is probably it, John,’ Richter said, and clicked ‘Dial’. The mobile phone dialled the number as the two men watched the screen. About half a minute later, the
computer broke the connection once the single message on the server had been downloaded.

‘Bingo,’ Westwood said. ‘Just the one message, but McCready’s getting restless,’ he added, as he scanned the text.

‘OK, let’s put him out of his misery,’ Richter said, and began composing the message they’d agreed to send. It was fairly long, and they made several changes to try to
make it as authentic as possible.

‘Are you happy with that, John?’ Richter asked, as Westwood read the finished text for the third time.

‘I think so. He’s possibly going to smell a rat but I’m betting that he’s so desperate to retrieve the evidence that he’ll still agree to a meet. After all,
this’ – he gestured at the screen – ‘could have happened.’

Three minutes later, Richter clicked ‘Send and Receive’ and watched the screen as the message vanished.

‘And now?’ Westwood asked.

‘And now we wait,’ Richter said. ‘The ball’s in McCready’s court.’

Monday
Lake Ridge, Virginia

Nicholson hadn’t expected a response from Murphy or Stein after such a long silence, being fairly certain that both men had been either killed or captured. But when
he checked his email a few minutes before going to bed just before midnight on Sunday he immediately saw the read receipt for the message he’d sent to Murphy, and also a reply from him.

Murphy sounded flustered, and as he read his message Nicholson could understand why. The killing of Stein had gone badly wrong. The police had turned up almost as soon as he’d pulled the
trigger, and Murphy had had to run for it, barely getting away with the steel case, and being forced to avoid police pursuit by heading up into the hills, missing the rendezvous with the
helicopter. He’d apparently had to sneak onto the ferry up to Kíthira and make his way from there to the Greek mainland before he could catch a flight out of Athens to Amsterdam and
from there to New York. But the message confirmed he had in his possession the steel case, the Ultra Secret file and everything else that Krywald and Stein had been able to retrieve.