‘Yes,’ Richter said. ‘Just a little local mystery that’s bothering me.’ He explained about the theft of the thoroughbred racehorse.
‘Not really our scene, Richter, horses. What are you expecting me to do? Arrange for some hay to be delivered?’
‘Not unless you really want to. I’m sure the stable staff are all dead, probably buried somewhere in the desert, and I think whoever’s behind it is planning something here in Dubai. That just might tie up with what Khatid heard in Berlin, and it’s the only thing that explains why they sent the horse here. Now, at the moment I’m just some guy from London sent out here to investigate an expatriate Englishman. I’d like you to let the local police know I’m here officially, and that I’m looking into both James Holden and the missing racehorse. I’d like Six credentials if possible, because that will give me more credibility with the locals, and I’d also like permission to carry a personal weapon.’
‘That’s not going to be easy in Dubai, Richter, even if I can get a diplomatic passport issued to you. I’d need a really good reason to even suggest it, so you’d better come up with something I can use. Why do you want a pistol?’
‘Right now I don’t have a valid reason, but there’s definitely something going on out here. I have a gut feeling that whatever it is could blow up really fast, and I’d like to be ready. You wanted someone on the spot, remember, and if I’m not armed I’m not going to be much use to anyone.’
‘Gut instinct isn’t good enough, Richter. To get you a carry permit I’ll need something that will persuade the Dubai authorities that a weapon is justified, and even then they may not agree. Without something compelling, there’s no way I’ll even approach them. But I can at least get on to the embassy and ask them to brief the local plods about you.’
Three hours later, Petrucci stopped the Mercedes beside the G450 while his passengers climbed out, and then drove off again. He’d spotted a group of vehicles parked about a hundred yards away, and was going to leave the van alongside them.
‘Any problems?’ Sutter asked, handing him a soft drink from the new supply recently delivered by the catering van.
‘Not really,’ Dawson replied, opening his Coke before slumping down in one of the seats. ‘We drove way out of Cairo, but the roads were always full of people.’
‘Not to mention cars and trucks and camels,’ O’Hagan added.
‘Eventually we got out into the desert and found what looked like a dried-up stream bed, about fifty yards off the road. We dumped the bodies there and shovelled sand on top of them. I don’t think anyone could have seen us.’
‘How long before somebody stumbles across them?’ Haig wondered.
‘The vultures will smell them pretty soon, I guess, but it might be a few days at least.’
‘Long enough, then,’ Sutter decided.
‘Long enough,’ O’Hagan echoed, as Petrucci climbed the stairs into the cabin. Wilson pulled the door closed, then sat down and they all strapped in.
In the cockpit, Haig fired up the engines, then waved away the power cart and the fire crew who’d been sent over to monitor the start.
Ten minutes later, the Gulfstream accelerated down the runway and lifted smoothly into the air. Sutter received an almost immediate clearance to turn to port on a south-easterly heading, and soon, as the G450 passed fifteen thousand feet in the climb, it crossed over the Suez Canal, heading towards the Red Sea.
They’d now completed the most difficult phase of the entire operation, though none of the men in the aircraft underestimated the magnitude of the task which still lay before them. But, as O’Hagan remarked once the Gulfstream reached top of climb, if everything went well in less than five days they’d be on their way home — or, to be more accurate, heading for the Cayman Islands, where the banking authorities had a relaxed attitude to total strangers making substantial cash deposits.
Viktor Grigorevich Bykov surveyed the files piled on the desk in front of him with a certain amount of dissatisfaction. It’s a regrettable truism, applicable to the armed forces of all nations, that the higher the rank attained, the less time the holder has to do anything other than sit at a desk and read things — files, reports, statements or whatever. Bykov shifted slightly in his chair, wondering once again if you really could develop haemorrhoids from prolonged sitting, and reached for the large, bright-red and heavily sealed envelope that had now surfaced at the top of his in-tray.
Bykov was tall — just over six feet two — and thin, with noticeably sharp features. His greatcoat hung from a rack in the corner of his spacious office on the top floor of the building, the large windows offering an excellent view over the huge and largely deserted airfield.
He sliced open the envelope and pulled out a file. The title was uninformative and, as he was about to find out, also highly misleading: ‘Inventory errors at Zarechnyy, Penza Oblast’. He opened it more with curiosity than any particular enthusiasm. The document was classified above Top Secret, and its distribution was severely restricted: Bykov was one of only three GRU officers on the list.
By the time he’d reached the end of the first page, Bykov was beginning to see why the author of the file, a senior official at Zarechnyy, had given it such an innocuous title. He’d probably hoped nobody would bother to read a file purportedly dealing with some accounting discrepancies at an obscure plant in the middle of Russia. That ruse hadn’t worked, because the FSB had been involved in the investigation from the start, and had insisted that the file be properly classified and circulated throughout all the higher echelons of the security apparatus of the CIS. That was why it was now sitting on Bykov’s desk at the Aquarium.
When he finished reading, he leant back in his chair and deliberated for a few minutes. Following the arrest of the miserable administrator Yuri Borisov, currently languishing in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow awaiting trial and probable execution — ironically only three cells away from Investigator Litvinoff, who was facing charges of gross negligence — a check of the secure storage areas at Zarechnyy had revealed that one suitcase nuclear device was missing. All the other weapons had been removed immediately and sent to another location — a classic stable-door reaction, Bykov recognized — but the FSB investigators were still no further forward in finding the two American criminals who’d orchestrated the theft.
The decision not to shoot down the air ambulance so close to Turkey had probably been correct, Bykov decided, but that didn’t mean Russia should wash her hands of the entire affair. Two potential terrorists were now on the loose, armed with a nuclear device having a calculated yield of one thousand tons of TNT. That classified it as a tactical rather than a strategic weapon, but its detonation within a major city would be devastating. The official estimates included in the file suggested a likely death toll of around thirty-five thousand from the blast alone, and probably a further two hundred thousand fatalities resulting from the radiation and the subsequent fallout. Perhaps as many as a quarter of a million people in all, and the utter destruction of the urban environment.
What appalled him was the recommendation of a senior FSB investigator, who had suggested just forgetting about the whole business. What the idiot apparently didn’t realize was that all nuclear explosions leave behind residue that can allow experts to determine the likely origin of the weapon involved. If the stolen bomb was detonated, Bykov could guarantee that it would be identified as being of Russian construction within a matter of weeks.
There was only one way to ensure this scenario never occurred. He picked up the direct line to his superior, then thought better of it. Sometimes the personal approach was more effective than using the telephone.