Authors: James Barrington
In his toolbox Aristides had a pair of sharp wire-cutters, and it was the work of only a few seconds to snip off the twisted knots of wire at the neck of the flask. Pulling the wire strands out
of the wax took longer, but after ten minutes he had removed them all, and was examining the unconfined wax itself.
The simplest way to get the stuff off, Aristides thought, was to melt it again, so he walked through to his kitchen and reached down beside the cooker to turn on the gas supply from the large
blue cylinder attached to it. Then he rotated the discoloured knob on the front of the cooker and struck a match to light the gas. He’d actually walked back to his dining table and picked up
the sealed vacuum flask before his natural caution reasserted itself.
Suppose the heat from the gas destroyed the contents before the wax melted? Or, worse, what if he was wrong about what it contained – maybe an explosive, not drugs – and the flask
blew up in his hands?
No, the safest option was his knife. Aristides went back and switched off the gas cylinder, then returned to the table. He opened his old clasp knife again and eased its point gently into the
red wax covering the neck of the container, then rotated the flask in his left hand while the right held the blade of the knife firmly, at an angle, against the flask itself. The knife was sharp
and cut easily through the wax, the blade spiralling closer and closer to the top of the flask as he turned it. Then he stopped, put down the knife and seized the loose end of the wax, pulling it
off like the skin of a peeled apple. The wax covering the actual mouth of the flask was much thicker than that on its sides, so he had to insert the point of the knife blade under it to lever it
off.
Aristides looked carefully at the stopper – now revealed – and raised his eyebrows. It had been locked in place, with a small keyhole right in its centre, and the Greek could tell
immediately that this was intended for some kind of security key. His trick with a screwdriver wouldn’t work again.
He sat thoughtfully at the rough oak table, hefting the small steel flask in his hand, considering his options. The precautions that had been taken with these containers were like nothing he had
ever seen before, and in his long career as a diver he’d been involved in the recovery and opening of numerous safes and strongboxes found on wrecked ships. Some had been little more than
padlocked containers, yielding to a simple wrench from a pry-bar or a blow from a hammer, while others had required oxy-acetylene cutters or even a thermic lance to cut around the lock or slice an
access hole in the back or side of a safe. But none that he could recall had ever involved such serious multi-layered protection for such a small object.
Aristides could think of only two possible reasons why such elaborate precautions had been taken: the contents had to be either extremely valuable or very dangerous. The question was, which?
Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
The top-floor office was spacious, light and airy, and had a clear and unobstructed view of the Virginia woodlands surrounding the Headquarters complex, but the big man
wearing the charcoal-grey suit and sitting in a leather swivel chair had no eyes for the natural beauty of the locality. His attention was fixed on six eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs
spread out on the desk in front of him.
The desk itself was big and impressive, an oak-framed antique with a walnut veneer. It was his personal property, having been in his family for at least eighty years. Apart from the photographs
and three steel-mesh document trays, the only other objects on the desk were two telephones and a solid silver writing set. A tidy and organized desk, he had always believed, denoted a tidy and
organized mind.
Beside the desk stood a purpose-built console, which housed a computer terminal with direct access to the CIA’s extensive databases, to the Internet, and to a host of other data sources
including all the major news feeds.
He had arranged five of the photographs in a curving horizontal line across his desk, and in chronological order. The sixth picture he had placed off to one side. That one had been taken on the
transit by the KH-12 bird three days earlier, and just showed an open boat, but no sign of an occupant.
It was that picture that had originally both alerted and alarmed the Director, particularly when he had checked the precise geographical location specified by the satellite, and printed at the
head of each photograph. The next few passes had revealed nothing in that area, and he had for a brief period hoped and almost believed that the first picture had been an isolated occurrence of no
long-term significance.
Then another pass had generated the remaining five pictures, taken at thirty-second intervals as the Keyhole satellite had over-flown the target area. These were superficially very similar.
Close to the centre of each frame was the unmistakable shape of the same open boat – N-PIC had measured its length at just over eighteen feet – with a small wheelhouse at its stern.
The CIA officer wasn’t Photographic Interpretation trained, so each picture had been annotated by the N-PIC analysts at his request. Most of the labels were self-evident –
wheelhouse, ropes, cleats, radar reflector, tyres acting as fenders, and so on – but he was going to have to accept their word that the vague oblong shapes visible along both sides of the
boat towards the stern were aqualung racks, one with a set still in place.
In the first two pictures, the single occupant of the boat was leaning over the side, reaching down for something, or hauling something in. Until he’d studied the third picture, the CIA
officer had wondered briefly if perhaps this was all a false alarm, and that what he was looking at was nothing more than a fisherman hauling up a lobster pot. Then he’d checked a
Mediterranean chart and realized that the water there was far too deep for any lobster fisherman to foolishly try to catch anything.
And, anyway, in the third photograph the shape of an aqualung tank was clearly visible beside the man in the boat, even without the N-PIC label, so the analysts had been right about the type of
boat, although they hadn’t been able to identify it by a name or a number.
The fourth picture showed three aqualung tanks resting beside the anonymous figure in the diving boat, but it was one N-PIC label in the fifth and final photograph that had caused the CIA
officer most concern.
The major difference between this picture and the preceding four was that the figure was no longer bending over the side of the boat. Instead, the KH-12 camera had caught him just entering
– or perhaps standing beside – the wheelhouse. For at least the sixth time, the CIA officer leaned forward over the last photograph and stared intently at one tiny section of it through
his desk magnifying glass.
Clearly visible on the side of the boat, where the man had been bending over earlier, was a very slight protuberance. Next to that was an inked line joining it to the N-PIC label, that simply
stated ‘ROPE IN WATER AND CLEATED TO GUNWALE’.
And that meant, or it could mean, that there was something at the submerged end of the rope.
Aeroporto di Brindisi, Papola-Casale, Puglia, Italy
‘Where did you spot him?’ Richter asked. It was late evening and he and Simpson were sitting in a military briefing-room at the Brindisi-Casale air base.
Brindisi is a small airport, just outside the town of that name, handling a couple of dozen civilian flights a day to and from Rome, Milan and Venice. It is home to 9 Brigata Aerea of 15 Stormo,
which flies Sikorsky HH-3F Search and Rescue helicopters, and also to the United Nations Logistic Base, which supports humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations.
Rather than go to Rome or to any other location where the Italian Secret Service maintained a presence, they had decided it was both safer and easier to brief Richter within the confines of the
airfield. He was, after all, the only member of any Western Intelligence service who could positively identify Lomas/Lomosolov. Even Simpson had wanted reassurance on that point.
‘You can do it, Richter?’ he had asked.
Richter thought back to that hotel in West London, and to the image of Lomas’s smiling face staring at him from the doorway of the room. It was an image that he knew, without a shadow of a
doubt, would be with him for the rest of his days, no matter what happened now in Italy.
‘No problem,’ he had confirmed. ‘I’ll know him.’
‘Lomas – or the man we believe is Lomas – was spotted eight days ago by a covert operative, one of our watchers, at Rome’s Fiumicino airport,’ explained Giancarlo
Perini, a senior operational agent of the SISDE who had flown into Brindisi-Casale an hour earlier by helicopter, specifically to brief Richter.
‘He arrived at the international terminal, Terminal Three. Because he was spotted before he reached passport control, the immigration people were able to record his details. He was
travelling on a German passport, in the name of Günther, and had just arrived on a flight from Geneva. The purpose of his visit, he claimed, was tourism. We checked with Swiss – the
airline he was flying with – and learned he has a return ticket to Geneva, due to fly out of Rome in three days. That was when we contacted your Secret Intelligence Service, Mr
Simpson.’
Richter glanced over at Simpson and did some swift mental calculations. The timing for this was almost exactly right. As soon as Simpson had been informed by SIS about the possible sighting of
Andrew Lomas – who was on the alert list of every Western Intelligence service – he had suddenly, miraculously, changed his mind about Richter’s long-standing request for two
weeks’ continuation training on board the
Invincible
.
‘So where is he now?’ Richter asked, putting the thoughts from his mind.
‘Not too far from here,’ Perini replied, ‘and he’s led us on quite a dance so far. He took a taxi from Fiumicino to the Stazioni Termini – Rome’s main railway
station – and there bought a ticket to Naples. One of our men got close enough to him to hear him speaking to the ticket clerk.’
‘Why didn’t he just fly direct to Naples, then?’ Simpson asked.
‘He couldn’t,’ Perini replied. ‘There are no direct flights from Geneva to Naples. They all route through an airport in some other country first, usually Paris or Munich,
and our guess is that Lomas didn’t want to risk being spotted either in France or in Germany.’
‘So he’s now in Naples?’
‘No. Let me explain,’ Perini shook his head, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘We got one of our men on to the train that Lomas caught, and briefed watchers to wait for him at
Naples. That train makes three stops before it gets there: Latina, Formia and Aversa. Lomas got off at Aversa – the station serving Caserta, a few miles north of Naples. Our man followed him
out, and then used his mobile phone to let us know what had happened, but we had nobody waiting at Aversa and the station’s at least a half-hour drive from Naples. That was our mistake.
‘Lomas got into a taxi and our man followed in another, but it was late afternoon and the traffic was very heavy. When he got boxed in, the taxi carrying Lomas slipped away.’
‘We tend to use motorcycles,’ Simpson remarked shortly.
‘So do we,’ Perini replied with a frown, ‘and we had two waiting at the station in Naples, but unfortunately nothing at Aversa. There had been no indication that Lomas realized
he was being followed, and we assumed incorrectly that he would proceed to Naples. It was just an unfortunate oversight.’
‘He probably
didn’t
know he was being followed,’ Richter said sympathetically, ‘but for men like Lomas taking precautions becomes a way of life. He’d
probably never buy a ticket to any railway station he was actually intending to use – always for somewhere further down the line, and then get off earlier. So how did you find him
again?’ Perini stared at him. ‘You obviously did find him,’ Richter went on, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to develop a taste for
pasta al forno
and with a Sea Harrier parked outside that the Royal Navy would quite like to get back safely.’
Perini nodded. ‘Yes, we did find him again. Our man had the registration number of the taxi Lomas hired, and we interviewed its driver. He took his fare to one of the smaller hotels in the
centre of Caserta, but when we checked with the hotel reception, nobody resembling Lomas was registered there.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Simpson snorted. ‘As Richter’s already said, Lomas is an accomplished professional. He was a deep-cover illegal in Britain for years, and for
at least the last ten of them he was running the head of the Secret Intelligence Service as a source for the SVR. We had no inkling this man even existed until we got to interrogate Malcolm
Holbeche. What he certainly isn’t going to do is take a taxi to any hotel that he’s actually staying at. So where did you pick him up?’
‘We had a bit of luck then,’ Perini admitted. ‘We circulated all the hotels in Caserta, searching for a guest who looked like Lomas or who was using the name Günther. As
we had expected, that produced no results, and neither did canvassing taxi drivers and car-hire firms. But, like you, we have watch teams permanently in place around all the foreign embassy
buildings in Italy, and three days ago—’
‘Don’t tell me Lomas actually went to an East European Embassy?’ Simpson interrupted.
Perini shook his head. ‘No, and we didn’t expect him to either. But we did wonder if he was in Italy to receive instructions, or perhaps to deliver a report, so we blanketed the
whole area. We positioned pursuit crews – on motorcycles, Mr Simpson – outside all buildings known to be used by East European officials and businesses in the Caserta, Naples and
Salerno areas. Each operative was briefed to follow any known or suspected intelligence officer, to stay out of sight, and to report any contact with anyone who looked anything like Lomas.
‘For the first few days we used up a lot of petrol and covered a lot of kilometres, and discovered absolutely nothing that we didn’t already know. And then, as I said, three days ago
we got lucky. One of our watchers followed a mid-level consular official, believed to be an SVR agent, to a restaurant on the eastern outskirts of Salerno. He went inside and bought a drink at the
bar, and appeared to be waiting for someone. Our operative followed him into the restaurant, bought herself a drink and—’