James Barrington - Overkill

He reached the centre of Paris at eight forty, and climbed up into Châtelet-Les Halles and into the sunshine. The station is only a few metres from the eastern end of the rue St Honoré, and Richter walked northwest along it until he reached the crossing of the rue Royale, which runs from place de la Concorde to Sainte Marie Madeleine. On the far side of the rue Royale the rue St Honoré becomes the rue du Faubourg St Honoré, and the British Embassy is at number 35, on the south side of the road.

Entry was painless, due to the persuasion afforded by both the diplomatic passport and Richter’s appointment – as ‘Mr Beatty’ – with the Ambassador. They showed him into a comfortably furnished waiting room and he sat there clutching his briefcase until ten past nine, when a junior staff member appeared and said that the Ambassador would see him. Richter followed her down a corridor and into a large, high-ceilinged room with tall, elegant windows looking south, towards the Seine. A small man with silver hair, immaculately dressed in a charcoal grey suit, was seated behind a large, and obviously antique, rosewood desk. He rose and extended a hand as Richter was ushered in, but he didn’t smile. He didn’t, Richter thought, look particularly pleased to see him. ‘Mr Beatty?’ His hand was cool and somewhat limp.

Richter nodded and sat down in the chair the Ambassador indicated in front of his desk. ‘I have been advised – perhaps instructed is a better word – to afford you all the assistance you require,’ Sir James Auden began, speaking clearly and somewhat pedantically. ‘What the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has declined to do, for reasons which may become clear later, is to tell me why. Perhaps you can enlighten me.’ Before Richter could speak, the Ambassador added apologetically. ‘I am sure that your credentials have already been checked by my staff downstairs, but I would like to see your identification, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Not at all,’ Richter said, and handed over the Beatty diplomatic passport.

The Ambassador opened the passport and inspected the contents, glancing over at Richter to ensure that his face bore at least some resemblance to the photograph in it. Then he closed the passport and passed it over the desk to Richter. ‘That seems to be in order, Mr Beatty,’ he said, ‘though I must say that you certainly don’t look like a diplomat.’ Richter took that as a compliment. ‘In fact, I would have been somewhat surprised if you did,’ Auden continued. ‘I am aware that you have an appointment to see Mr Herron this morning, and I am sure that it is no coincidence that he is the senior Secret Intelligence Service officer here – what you would probably term the Head of Station.’ Sir James Auden was obviously no fool. ‘I presume, therefore, that this matter involves some form of covert action.’

‘Probably more overt, in fact,’ Richter replied.

Auden’s eyebrows rose a millimetre. ‘Indeed. Perhaps you would care to explain.’

‘Better than that, Ambassador, I have here a letter which I think will clarify things.’ Richter handed over the sealed envelope.

Auden looked at it with interest, particularly at the seal, then he selected a silver letter-opener, slit the top open and extracted the three sheets of paper it contained. He looked first at the signature block and scrawled signature at the end, then at the crest on the first page. He glanced over at Richter, and began to read. At the end of the first sheet he looked up. ‘I can assume that this is not some sort of a joke?’

‘No, Ambassador. It’s not any kind of a joke – I wish it was.’

Sir James Auden shook his head and carried on reading. Finally he put the pages down and stared across the desk. He looked suddenly older, and his hand was shaking slightly. ‘This is monstrous. It’s unbelievable.’

‘You have to believe it, Ambassador. It’s the truth, and I need your help if it isn’t going to become a reality.’

Auden looked at the letter, then back at Richter and shook his head. ‘You are sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

The Ambassador spoke quietly. ‘The letter does not deal with the specifics of the matter, only the overall concept. I do not, I think, wish to know the specifics, which you will no doubt be discussing with Herron. What exactly do you want me to do?’

Richter told him, and five minutes later walked out of the Ambassador’s office for his appointment with Tony Herron, Paris Head of Station. The Holy of Holies – that section of the Embassy used by Secret Service officers – was small in Paris, and the staff was similarly tiny. This was due to the fact that the French are, at least nominally, on the same side as the British. Richter had never met Tony Herron, but he knew his name from SIS reports.

Herron was six feet tall, sandy haired and, like Richter, appeared slightly rumpled. He welcomed Richter into his inner sanctum, and they settled down to business. ‘I’ve had several Flash and Immediate Top Secret signals from SIS London,’ Herron began. ‘From these I gather that something is afoot with our eastern neighbours, despite glasnost and all the rest.’

‘Spot on. Do you want the background now, or wait until we talk to the French?’

‘It can wait. One question, though. What grade is the information you have?’

‘Grade One – no question.’

Information obtained by all Secret Services is graded according to source and type. Under the United Kingdom grading system, Grade One data is absolutely, one hundred per cent correct without any possibility of error; Grade Two is probably correct; Grade Three is possibly correct; Grade Four is unlikely to be correct, and Grade Five is known to be incorrect. Most of the information Richter had obtained had been unwillingly provided by Orlov, and he had no doubt at all of its veracity.

‘I was afraid you’d say that. It’s the—’ Herron broke off as the telephone rang and he answered it. He identified himself, then listened without speaking for a couple of minutes. ‘Thank you, Your Excellency,’ he said, replaced the receiver and looked at Richter. ‘You certainly got the Ambassador’s attention. That was His Nibs – we have an appointment in fifteen minutes with DST operational staff at the rue des Saussaies.’

The Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire is France’s counter-intelligence agency, which functions like a combination of the British Special Branch and MI5. It is controlled by the Ministry of the Interior and freely employs the resources of the Renseignements Généraux , the General Intelligence section of the French police service. It was the DST which in late March 1987 rolled up the Soviet-bloc espionage network that had been passing data on the HM–60 cryogenic rocket motor designed to launch the European Space Agency’s Hermes space vehicle.

Richter looked at his watch. ‘How long to get there?’

‘No time at all – it’s just around the corner, off the place Beauvau,’ Herron replied. He pressed a button on the telephone, told the duty officer where he was going, then grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.

French Ministry of the Interior, rue des Saussaies, Paris

Herron and Richter were escorted to a small conference room on the second floor where three people waited, seated at a long table. The man at the end announced, in perfect English, that he was the senior officer, Colonel Pierre Lacomte, introduced the other two Frenchmen as DST officers, and requested that the Englishmen sit down. Tony Herron briefly outlined the reason for their visit, introduced Richter as a colleague from SIS London, then handed over to him.

‘We have a problem,’ Richter began, ‘and so do you.’ He opened his briefcase, pulled out the operation file and opened it on the table in front of him. ‘We have code-named this operation “Overkill”, which is actually quite appropriate. What I’m about to tell you will probably sound most unlikely, perhaps even impossible, but I can assure you that it isn’t.’ Richter glanced at the other men in the room – none showed any signs of dozing off. ‘Before I explain the present situation, I have to give you some background information – a bit of history, if you like.’ Richter looked at the two DST men. ‘Some of this is moderately technical, so please stop me if there are any words you do not understand, and perhaps Colonel Lacomte could then translate for you.’