James Barrington - Foxbat

Draco climbed down and jogged across to a sliding steel door, the second set of keys ready in one hand. The door was secured by a single lock, but before he tackled this he used another key from the same set to disable an alarm bolted to the adjacent wall. Once the tell-tale light changed from red to green, he inserted the key for the loading door itself. Thirty seconds later the two men were inside the building, the door left wide open and fluorescent lights blazing overhead.

They were joined by another four, all similarly wearing Bulgarian Air Force uniforms. They spread out quickly, systematically scanning the steel racks and piles of boxes for those they wanted. Within a couple of minutes one man called out, and the others gathered round to check that he’d found what they were looking for. In front of them rose a pile of some fifty wooden boxes, each over twenty feet long and bearing the stencilled marking ‘R-40T’.

Draco nodded in satisfaction and began to issue crisp instructions. In one corner he had already noticed a fork-lift truck, specially modified to handle the awkwardly shaped boxes that were neatly piled against the walls or on rows of steel shelving. One of his men drove the forklift over to the boxes they had located and expertly plucked the top one off the pile. He manoeuvred it carefully down the aisle between the racks and deposited it neatly into the back of one of the three-ton trucks.

They’d already loaded ten of these boxes when a challenge rang out. Four Bulgarian Air Force guards stood in the open doorway, Kalashnikovs aimed directly at the intruders.

Sheremetievo Airport, Moscow

‘We meet again, Mr Richter.’

Viktor Bykov looked pretty much the same as Richter remembered – tall and thin with sharp, almost predatory, features. And he looked suspiciously pleased to see him.

‘Hullo, Viktor,’ Richter said, and shook hands.

Bykov snapped his fingers and a junior officer scurried forward to take the Englishman’s suitcase. He extended a hand for the briefcase as well, but Richter shook his head. ‘I’ll carry this, thanks. I’ve had to sign for the laptop inside it, and I’ll be in all sorts of trouble if I lose it.’

‘Follow me. I have a car outside,’ Bykov said, leading the way through the arrivals hall. Outside the terminal building a black Mercedes saloon stood idling beside the kerb, the driver leaning against the door. The number on the boot lid was 630 SEL, which meant nothing to Richter, who’d never been a fan of overpriced, overweight and frankly vulgar German machinery, but he did notice the registration plate: ‘MOC 65’. Those three letters immediately identified it as a Russian diplomatic vehicle.

‘You have diplomatic status?’ he asked Bykov curiously, but the Russian shook his head.

‘Thankfully, no. But having that plate makes things a lot easier, as it saves arguing with those idiots.’ He gestured towards a number of traffic police who were eyeing the Mercedes in a somewhat hostile manner.

The junior officer put Richter’s suitcase in the boot, then went to sit in the front beside the chauffeur. Bykov opened the rear door for their visitor, then slid in beside him.

‘We’ve booked you into the Rossyia,’ he announced, as the Mercedes pulled out into the flow of traffic. ‘You may be interested to know that Muscovites refer to it as “The Box”, so we thought you’d feel at home there.’

‘The Box’ was one of the nicknames of the Security Service, MI5, from its original postal address of ‘Box 500, London’.

‘Kind thought, Viktor, but you know I don’t work for Five. In fact, I don’t even work for Six, except indirectly.’

And that was the truth. Richter worked for the Foreign Operations Executive, a covert – and unacknowledged except when things went wrong – organization subordinate to the Secret Intelligence Service. Basically, FOE performed any dirty little jobs that Six itself didn’t want to get involved with.

‘Yes, we’re aware that your employment arrangements are quite unusual. We did some checking on you through our London rezident before we extended this invitation. Despite what happened in France, I believe we can trust you to do the right thing.’

Richter inclined his head in acknowledgement. It was coming to something, he mused, when a senior Russian military intelligence officer seemed more inclined to trust you than your own boss did.

‘So what’s the story, Viktor?’

‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather wait until we get to the hotel. Then we can talk freely and in comfort.’ As he said these words, Bykov gestured briefly towards the front seats of the Mercedes, and Richter understood perfectly. The GRU officer had borrowed the car only as a matter of convenience, but either its driver or the escort might well be reporting to a different master.

Careless talk could still cost lives, even in today’s relaxed, post-glasnost, pro-capitalist Russia.

Dobric Air Base, Bulgaria

‘Stop what you’re doing right now,’ the senior Bulgarian Air Force guard ordered, and strode into the warehouse. The other three members of his patrol followed him, their Kalashnikov assault rifles held ready. ‘You.’ He gestured with the muzzle of his weapon. ‘Get out of the forklift.’

The man at the vehicle’s controls climbed down and stood alongside his five companions, as they stared silently at the new arrivals.

Looking irritated by the interruption, Draco stepped forward. ‘What’s the problem?’ he snapped.

‘The problem,’ the patrol leader explained, ‘is that we have no collections or deliveries scheduled for today.’

‘I don’t understand. We have our orders.’

‘Let me see them, then.’

Draco strode over towards the patrol commander, reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers that he handed over. The Bulgarian guard shouldered his weapon and flicked through them, then looked up, puzzled.

‘These are blank,’ he said.

‘Oh, sorry, I must have given you the wrong ones. Here.’ Draco reached inside his tunic again, pulled out a silenced semi-automatic pistol and fired a single shot. The Bulgarian fell backwards, his forehead sprouting a third eye, as a spray of blood and brains flew towards his companions.

‘Now,’ Draco yelled, jumping to one side, out of the line of fire. He brought his pistol to bear on another of the startled patrol members, fired again and watched the second man fall. To his left, three of his men had now produced their pistols but, despite the shock of the sudden attack, the two remaining patrol members reacted immediately, by splitting up and running outside the warehouse to raise the alarm.

‘Find those two and kill them,’ Draco ordered, and a couple of his men picked up the Kalashnikovs belonging to the two dead men, and followed the escaping Bulgarians out of the door. ‘The rest of you, shift these bodies, then finish the loading.’

Outside, the two Bulgarian guards were running for their lives. They might have survived if they’d only used the buildings as cover, but in their panic both of them had decided that they must get back to the guardroom where the telephones were located. So they set off in a more or less straight line.

The first of their pursuers rounded a corner and spotted the two running side by side only about seventy yards in front of him. He knelt down, aimed the Kalashnikov and fired two rapid bursts of perhaps six rounds each. The result was immediate: both his targets fell clumsily to the ground, their weapons spinning uselessly from their hands. He stood up and watched their collapsed figures for a few seconds, then ran towards them.

One was clearly dead – two rounds had ripped through his back, emerging messily near his sternum – but the other was still alive. He’d been hit once in the lower back, the bullet cutting through his spine, and was now trying desperately to drag himself to where his Kalashnikov lay a couple of feet away. His assassin walked calmly across to the writhing figure, kicked the assault rifle well out of reach, then fired two rounds into the man’s skull.