Gillian Thorpe had worked as an Operations Supervisor for a little over ten years, and at the Potomac TRACON ever since it became operational. Four weeks earlier a tall, well-built, dark-haired man named Charles Rogers had walked into her office, without an appointment, and showed her his FBI identification.
He’d sat in the chair in front of her desk and for about thirty minutes explained the measures the Bureau had taken in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 to check the legitimacy of both commercial and non-commercial aviation. Most of what he’d said Gillian already knew, either professionally or through reports in the media, but some of it was news to her. These measures, Rogers told her, had proved successful, but it was now felt that a further independent check should be instituted regarding certain types of flight plan.
The majority of flight plans are those filed by airlines themselves for their scheduled movements, and although they are submitted individually, the basic information remains the same. For instance, every morning a British Airways 747 flies from London Heathrow to John F. Kennedy Airport at New York and then, with a fresh crew on board, does the same journey in reverse, departing JFK in the early evening and arriving at Heathrow early the following morning. The scheduled departure times are always the same, as are the aircraft callsigns — British Airways use ‘Speedbird’ followed by a number — but what changes each day is the route the aircraft will follow, because of the Atlantic weather systems.
These commercial flights were not a problem, Rogers had said, because of the stringent security measures now imposed at all American and major international airports, but the FBI was growing concerned about charter flights, cargo carriers, private aviation and even government-operated aircraft. These categories, he explained, posed different kinds of dangers. There was always the possibility that a group hostile to America could hire, steal or commandeer an aircraft and, after evading security at some small airfield, turn it into a flying bomb.
To counter this possibility, the FBI had increased its surveillance measures across the country. Most of the new procedures had already been applied at the points of origin — airfields, flying clubs, maintenance facilities and the like — but the Bureau believed that significant additional data could be extracted from analysing flight plans. Initially, this was being done on a random basis, choosing areas of the country likely to be particularly targeted by terrorist organizations. Selecting Washington D.C. and the Potomac Consolidated TRACON had been a no-brainer and that, Rogers had added, was where Gillian Thorpe could help the Bureau.
And so, for just under a month, Thorpe and her fellow supervisors had been analysing all non-commercial flight plans processed by the TRACON, selecting those which met the FBI’s criteria, and sending the data they extracted to the email address Rogers had provided. Twice the TRACON had received acknowledgements from him, and three times requests for additional information about some particular flight.
That morning, Thorpe scanned the overnight plans, identified those that she would need to extract data from, and began working on them. The thirty-seventh flight plan she opened had been filed the previous evening by the State Department. It was for a Gulfstream G450 out of Andrews Air Force Base, destination Dubai, with a single refuelling stop planned in Barcelona, Spain, and departing the following afternoon.
This flight plan had been filed with the Andrews Airport Traffic Control Tower and forwarded to the Potomac TRACON and, Thorpe noted, well ahead of the required minimum time, which was ninety minutes before takeoff. Most such plans are filed as late as possible, after the aircraft’s operating authority has finalized all the details, because it’s much easier to file late than to submit early and then have to make changes. State, Gillian Thorpe presumed, had no intention of altering any aspect of that flight.
After extracting the data, she would send it on to Washington Center. From there it would be routed to Boston Center, to the Canadian authorities and thence to Eurocontrol, thus ensuring that all controlling agencies that would handle any portion of the flight were aware of the programmed movement.
She wasn’t to know it, but this particular flight plan was the only one that Charles Rogers had the slightest interest in. Rogers — his real name was Roy Sutter, and the closest he’d ever got to the Federal Bureau of Investigation was when he drove past the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C. — had been waiting for two particular pieces of information extracted from that plan for the whole of the last week. Minutes after he opened the email in a cyber café in Paris, he made copies of the relevant sections, pasted them into a new message and sent it on to another email address.
He would monitor the messages sent by the TRACON supervisors for another twelve hours, just in case there were any changes to the Gulfstream’s details, and then he’d send Thorpe the email he’d already prepared. This would tell her the Bureau no longer considered the arrangement necessary, and thank her and her colleagues for their efforts and cooperation in assisting the FBI to combat international terrorism.
But before he did any of that, he’d catch the first available flight down to Barcelona, because the next phase of the operation was starting about twenty-four hours sooner than he’d expected.
Richter was lying in bed, reading a bad novel that he hoped would eventually send him off to sleep, when he heard a brief double knock on the door. He pulled on his dressing gown and padded over to open it.
Carole-Anne Jackson was standing outside in the corridor. Richter said nothing, just opened the door wide. Jackson walked in, stopped in the middle of the room and glanced round.
‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I’m not paying for it.’
‘So am I. Is there a problem?’
Jackson sat down in one of the easy chairs and looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Not really. It’s been called off.’
‘Why? Does that mean the geniuses at Vauxhall Cross have finally come to their senses?’
‘That would be a bit too much to expect. No, it’s something simpler and more obvious than that. Twenty minutes ago Tariq Mazen rang me. He’d just come from an emergency meeting called by his informant, the cleaner at the hospital. The sheikh’s private ward is now empty.’
‘He’s gone? Does he know where?’
Jackson grinned. ‘Nobody knows exactly where he’s gone, but it really doesn’t matter. The sheikh died early this afternoon, and now we know precisely who he was.’
‘Brilliant,’ Richter muttered. ‘So who was he?’
‘His name wasn’t Rashid, but he was a sheikh and a minor member of the Saudi royal family. He’d come to Bahrain for dialysis, as we guessed, but then he died of liver failure following some kind of complication.’
‘Well, that bears out what we all thought. It’s a pity he didn’t die a couple of days earlier — then I wouldn’t have had a completely pointless journey.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Your visit here might not have been a total waste of time.’
For a long moment Richter said nothing, just looked at her. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘I can’t deny it’s been a pleasant interlude being here. A good meal this evening, very pleasant company, not to mention the five-star accommodation.’ Jackson still said nothing, just smiled. ‘You do realize,’ Richter added, ‘that the pointy-heads at Legoland have strict rules about their employees fraternizing?’