James Barrington - Pandemic

‘Morning, Paul. Sleep well?’

‘Not particularly,’ Richter said. ‘I’ll sleep a lot better tonight, when this lot’s over. What news?’

‘I think we’ve set the hook.’ Westwood wore a smile of triumph. ‘McCready’s replied already. He’s given Murphy a good dressing-down for being out of contact for so long, and he wants to collect the stuff at eleven this morning.’

‘Where from?’ Richter asked.

‘One of the Company’s regular safe houses. It’s about twenty miles from here. I’ve been there a few times before.’

‘Do you know it well?’

‘Pretty much. There are sensors covering the drive, external cameras, alarms on all the doors and windows, and also a secure briefing-room installed in the cellar. That’s a room within a room, soundproof and airtight. The Company uses this house for sensitive debriefings, that kind of thing.’

‘Staff?’ Richter asked.

‘Just one. He’s a retired Company man employed as a permanent caretaker.’

‘OK, we shouldn’t have any trouble from him. What about walls and fences?’

‘It’s surrounded by hedges. Most of the properties in that area are fairly open, and the Company decided that building a wall would attract too much attention.’

Richter nodded. ‘Right. It’s obvious McCready’s setting a trap. Once Murphy’s handed over the goods, he’ll be planning a “wham, bam, thank you, Mike” pay-off. He’ll get a bullet in the back of the neck and his body will be dumped in a shallow grave somewhere. We need time to think this through. Send him a reply as Mike Murphy, John, but tell him you’re still in New York or somewhere and that the earliest you can get there is four this afternoon. That’ll give us time to get our beans in a row.’

Lake Ridge, Virginia

The first thing Nicholson had done that morning was call in sick to Langley. This was merely a courtesy – as a Head of Department he reported to the Director of Central Intelligence and nobody was going to check his attendance record – but he had three meetings planned during the day, all of which he told his PA to cancel or reschedule.

Then he drove down the road to a gas station – not the one he normally used – and parked beside the pay phone at the side of the lot. He made one short call to a Virginia number, then got back into his car and drove home.

He had left his computer switched on, expecting the confirmation email from Murphy, and as soon as he got back to his house he checked the inbox. The first message he looked at was from Murphy, explaining that he couldn’t make the morning rendezvous. That wasn’t entirely surprising, as Nicholson had no idea where the other man was in America, but he had no problem with the revised rendezvous at four in the afternoon. It just gave him more time to organize things over at Browntown. Nicholson sent a brief acknowledgement, climbed back into his car, drove to a different pay phone and made another call to the number he had dialled previously, then returned home again.

He left the house a couple of hours later, heading for the meeting he had just arranged, and after making a final check of his inbox, hoping that Levy would have replied. In fact, Levy was typing his response to Nicholson’s query as the CIA officer drove away from his property. All he’d been able to discover from his contacts was that two men had been found dead after some kind of a shoot-out at the western end of the island, but the Cretan police weren’t looking for any third party. At that stage, Levy had no idea of the identity of either victim, but both were believed to be American.

If Nicholson had received Levy’s email, he might have deduced that the dead men were Stein and Murphy, and hence been better prepared for his subsequent encounter at the safe house, but it didn’t arrive for a further forty-five minutes.

Browntown, Virginia

The safe house was located deep in the Virginia countryside, at the northern end of the Shenandoah National Park and on the outskirts of Browntown. Richter guessed that the location had been picked, at least in part, because of easy access from Washington and Langley along Interstate 66.

It looked, from Richter’s vantage point some four hundred metres away, in all respects like a typical small country property. The binoculars didn’t help much: through them the house looked exactly the same, only a lot closer.

‘We could have a hell of a long wait here, Paul,’ Westwood said. ‘It’s not ten yet.’ The two men were lying side by side at the edge of a small copse of trees, watching the house through binoculars.

They’d started out immediately Westwood had transmitted the email message to McCready, and hadn’t bothered waiting for a reply. Richter was certain that whoever was hiding behind the McCready alias wouldn’t go to the safe house until ‘Murphy’ had agreed a time and place for the rendezvous. But it was essential, both men had agreed, that they themselves were there and ready in position well before anybody else arrived. They needed to assess exactly what the opposition strength was before they even thought about entering the property.

Richter had dialled the secure server using Murphy’s laptop just before Westwood pulled his Chrysler to a halt about half a mile beyond the safe house, and had downloaded the confirmation from McCready that he would reach the safe house at four. Westwood had parked the Voyager in a side road, but left it in plain sight. As he explained to Richter, cars half-hidden in woods always looked far more suspicious than vehicles parked right out on the street. Then they’d moved on foot until Westwood had spotted the roof of the safe house beyond the trees, and only then had the two men left the road and headed up towards the copse.

‘Early birds, worms, that kind of thing, John,’ Richter replied. ‘Anyway, it’s a fine day. We’ve got sandwiches and coffee and two pairs of binoculars. If nobody shows, we can at least improve our knowledge of ornithology.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Westwood didn’t sound either enthusiastic or convinced.

For nearly four hours almost exactly nothing happened. They saw a lot of birds, a handful of rabbits and a couple of squirrels, and got bitten by an interesting selection of insects, some of which they saw but most of which they didn’t.

To begin with, they both watched the house. Then they took that task in turn, because few activities are more terminally tedious than staring through binoculars at a scene that simply doesn’t change. They drank a coffee each at about eleven, and a little after one ate the sandwiches Richter had prepared.

Westwood was unimpressed with his choice of filling. ‘Cheese and pickle or cheese and pickle, Paul? What the hell kind of choice is that? I don’t even like cheese.’

‘In England, we call it Hobson’s Choice, John,’ Richter replied, not taking his eyes from the view through the binoculars. ‘The cheese was in your fridge, the pickle was in your cupboard. All I did was put the two together between a couple of slices of bread. So just eat it and stop bitching about it.’

Westwood sank his teeth into the sandwich, then: ‘Why Hobson’s Choice, Paul?’

‘It’s supposed to derive from a man named Hobson who ran a livery stable in Cambridge a couple of hundred years ago. Apparently when you hired a horse from him he offered you a choice of exactly one. You either took it or walked, hence Hobson’s Choice. You finished?’

‘I guess.’

‘OK, your turn to watch. Don’t take your eyes off the house.’

At thirteen fifty, Westwood muttered the single word: ‘Showtime.’

Richter rolled over onto his stomach and in one fluid movement swept his binoculars to his eyes. Two cars were driving slowly – much more slowly than normal traffic – down the road towards the safe house. The leading vehicle turned into the short drive and stopped right outside the house itself, while the second car carried on.