James Barrington - Overkill

British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow

‘What’s that?’ Erroll asked, pointing at the body. Running horizontally across the corpse’s chest, a few inches below the shoulders, was a thin and virtually straight line of light bruising.

‘I don’t know,’ Richter replied, looking carefully at the mark on the body. ‘Perhaps it was caused by the top of the steering wheel, but the line looks too straight to me.’ As Erroll replaced the safety pins, Richter asked how they’d identified the corpse.

‘No problem. Newman had been out somewhere and was driving to the Embassy when he ran into the back of a parked lorry loaded with steel girders. He had all his documents on him, and the Embassy pass on what was left of the windscreen. They cut him out, took him to hospital, confirmed he was dead and then called us.’

Richter nodded, and helped him push the tray back into the fridge. In the lift he asked where the death certificate was. ‘In my office,’ Erroll said. ‘Beaky – sorry, the First Secretary – handed the whole lot over to me as soon as he’d done his bit signalling the FCO, drafting the letter of condolence for the Ambassador to send and so on. Between you and me, he’s not too keen on the sight of blood. Even likes his steaks well done, if you know what I mean.’

Back in his office Erroll sifted through his pending tray and extracted a buff envelope. ‘Here we are. How’s your Russian?’

‘Sorry. Hardly a word,’ Richter replied, lying with a perfectly straight face.

‘OK, I’ll translate. This section here is “Cause of Death”, and it says, er, God, his writing’s awful. Ah, yes, “anterior of skull sustained violent impact resulting in numerous fractures, extensive bleeding and extrusion of” – what’s that? – “brain matter, with severance of spinal column”. I suppose “crushed head” would be a bit brief, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’ve never known a medical man use one word where six would do almost the same job,’ Richter said. ‘Can I take that certificate?’

Erroll frowned. ‘Afraid not. It’s going in the Diplomatic Bag tomorrow, but you can have a photocopy if that helps.’

Richter actually wanted neither the original nor a copy, but he said that would be fine, and asked if he could see the car immediately, and the apartment and Newman’s office straight after lunch.

‘Why the hurry?’

‘I’m booked on the British Airways flight back to London this afternoon.’

‘Oh, I see. Right, here’s the report of the accident, with an English translation, and I’ll have a copy of the death certificate ready for you this afternoon.’

Aspen Three Four

The cameras had started rolling at 1049, and they completed the run at 1112, just twenty-three minutes covering nearly seven hundred miles of Russian territory. At twelve minutes past eleven the mission was, in a tactical sense, complete, but they still had a long way to go.

Paul James calculated that they would cross the Russian frontier at 1122 just north of St Petersburg – this route would enable the Blackbird to exit into Finnish airspace as quickly as possible after completion of the mission – and then head west into the Gulf of Finland, which meant about another ten minutes of flying over hostile territory after the cameras and detectors were switched off.

‘Missile fire control radar! Green three zero. No classification.’

Once again the Blackbird lurched as full power was applied. With the surveillance run complete and tactical freedom restored, Frank Roberts was taking no chances, and as well as increasing speed he turned to port, away from the radar’s bearing, and climbed. At ninety-five thousand feet and just under Mach 3.1, the aircraft levelled out.

The missile didn’t appear, but Paul James called two further missile fire control radars, both ahead and to starboard, in the next three minutes. Each time, no missile appeared, but the port turns made by the Blackbird to evade took the aircraft progressively further to the south of the planned exit route.

‘I don’t like this. We’re being pushed around.’

‘More importantly, we’re getting pushed too far south,’ Paul James replied. ‘It’s time we got out of here. Turn starboard heading two nine zero.’

‘Roger that,’ Roberts replied, as he initiated the turn. ‘I get the feeling they’ve been trying to shepherd us towards something.’

He was right. The ‘something’ appeared two minutes and fifteen seconds later.

Thursday

Voyska IA-PVO Unit, Arkhangel’sk, Confederation of Independent States

‘It’s turning, Colonel,’ Lieutenant Vetrov said. ‘We have forced the American down to the south, almost as far as Vologda, but now he’s turning to the west.’

‘Can the Moscow interceptors catch him?’ Kabalin demanded.

Vetrov switched in the predict vectors, then shook his head. ‘The easterly pair definitely can’t,’ he replied, ‘and the pair to the west are MiG–29s. They can’t hope to catch the American spy-plane in a tail-chase.’

‘Privalov,’ Kabalin ordered, swinging round in his seat, ‘take control of the Minsk MiG–31s. They’re all we have left. For all our sakes, they had better not fail.’

British Embassy, Sofiyskaya naberezhnaya 14, Moscow

In one corner of the parking area behind the Embassy building was a green tarpaulin loosely covering a crumpled wreck. It was just about possible to identify it as a small and somewhat elderly VAZ ( Volzhsky Avtomobilny Zavod ), or Lada as they are known outside Russia. It was about two-thirds as long as it should have been. The bonnet and front wings were crumpled and buckled backwards, the front tyres were slashed and torn on the ruined wheels, and the windscreen was smashed. The driving compartment and front end were blackened by fire. Both doors had apparently been immovably jammed shut in the crash, as the driver’s had been cut open, probably by an air-driven ripper gun, to get at the interior.

Like most old cheap Russian cars, it had only lap seat belts, which explained why the occupant had suffered such horrendous damage to his face and head. With the belt done up, the impact would have swung his body violently forward and downwards, pivoting at the hips, and causing his head to strike first the top of the steering wheel and then, if the impact had been violent enough, the top of the dashboard. The rib and clavicle fractures had undoubtedly been sustained by the impact of the torso with the steering wheel on its rigid column.

Richter looked carefully at the floor, and at the pedals. The former was buckled very badly, and the brake, clutch and accelerator pedals were twisted and bent. This was exactly what he had expected from the external damage to the front end of the vehicle, but not at all what would be indicated by the lack of lower limb fractures on the body. The logic was simple enough; if the driver had been intending to kill himself, he would have had his foot hard on the accelerator pedal. If he hadn’t been on a suicide trip, he would have been pressing the brake pedal as though his life depended on it. In either case, he would have sustained at least one fracture or dislocation in his right leg.

The fact that there were no fractures meant that the man’s feet were clear of the pedals at the moment of impact, which made no sense at all. Or, rather, it made no sense when taken in conjunction with the accident report. It actually made excellent sense to Richter. He straightened up from the wreck, made several notes in his small book, mainly for Erroll’s benefit, took down the registration number and put the book away.