James Barrington - Pandemic

‘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.