He had driven up from Cornwall on Sunday, and found his room at RAF Uxbridge without difficulty. He knew the base well from his previous appointment at Military Air Traffic Operations — MATO — which was then based at Hillingdon House, within the RAF Uxbridge station complex.
That morning he had travelled into London by tube, arriving at the Old Admiralty Building just after nine. He’d been greeted there in a somewhat perfunctory fashion by Colonel Baldwin, before he was shown round the building by a young Royal Navy lieutenant. Getting his photograph taken, and sorting out his building pass and personal identity card — which identified him as a Senior Executive Officer, but did not specify for which organization he worked — had occupied the rest of that morning. Richter had then gone for lunch in a nearby pub with the lieutenant, who was on hold-over pending a posting abroad, and he had returned to his office just after one-thirty.
He had been sitting at his desk for less than five minutes, doing absolutely nothing because there was absolutely nothing for him to do, when Baldwin knocked on the door and walked in.
Richter looked up enquiringly. ‘This is somewhat sooner than I expected,’ Baldwin announced, ‘but it looks as if your first trip will be taking place on Wednesday this week.’
‘Where to?’ Richter asked.
‘France, I think,’ Baldwin replied, ‘but you’re scheduled to attend a formal briefing tomorrow morning. It will take place in Hammersmith, at this address.’ The colonel placed a single sheet of paper on the desk top.
Richter barely even glanced at it. ‘A formal briefing for a courier delivery?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that a bit of overkill?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Baldwin said. ‘It may not be completely straightforward.’
Richter looked up and smiled thinly. ‘I’d have been very surprised if it was,’ he remarked.
Baldwin stared at him silently for a few moments, then turned on his heel and left the office.
The main conference room was on the ground floor, but the four men had decided to meet in the first-floor library instead. The chairs were more comfortable for one thing, and Sir Malcolm Holbeche, the current ‘C’ — the head of the Secret Intelligence Service — preferred an informal atmosphere. And in the library he could smoke.
‘Are you sure, absolutely sure, of your facts?’ he asked William Moore, the head of Section Nine of the SIS and responsible for Russian affairs, once the pleasantries were out of the way.
Moore shook his head. ‘Not one hundred per cent, Sir Malcolm, no. With any data of this sort there is always room for some doubt, some uncertainty. The balance of probability, though, suggests that we have been compromised.’
The man at the other end of the table snorted in disgust. ‘Why don’t you just come out with it? What you mean is that we’ve got a high-level mole.’
Holbeche looked pained by the remark. In his opinion, George Arkin — the head of the Security Service, MI5 — was rather too blunt in his opinion, especially where delicate inter-service matters were concerned. Arkin’s background was north-country and police — neither of which endeared him to Holbeche — and both his origins and his career had engendered a fondness for what Arkin liked to call plain speaking and common sense.
One of the tasks with which the Security Service was entrusted was the detection and investigation of traitors within the ranks of the Secret Intelligence Service, and this role had on numerous occasions led to outright hostility between the two organizations.
‘Yes,’ Holbeche agreed, ‘we think we have a mole.’
He had been reluctant to involve Arkin at all, but the data obtained by Moore had left him with little alternative. He just hoped that this whole episode could be wrapped up fairly quickly and quietly.
‘Right, then,’ Arkin nodded briskly, ‘what’s your evidence, and what do you want me to do about it? And who’s this Mr Simpson, and what’s he doing here?’ He gestured to the smaller man sitting in the armchair to his right.
‘Mr Simpson is here as my assistant and advisor,’ Holbeche snapped. ‘Now, Moore will outline the data we’ve so far received.’ He sat back in his chair and reached into his jacket pocket for a cigar.
William Moore took a red file from his briefcase and placed it on the table in front of him, but didn’t yet open it. He leaned forward and, in unconscious mimicry, Arkin and Simpson did the same. When Moore now spoke, his voice was low and intense.
‘Ten days ago,’ he said, ‘a Russian diplomatic courier was taken suddenly and violently ill at Heathrow Airport. He had already passed through Passport Control, and was sitting in the departure lounge waiting to board the flight to Moscow when he got up and made a dash towards the toilet, but vomited on the floor before he made it, and then passed out.’
Moore paused briefly, then continued. ‘The Heathrow medical staff were called immediately, and the Russian, whose name is Sinyavsky, was rushed to the airport medical centre, where the on-call doctor examined him, and from there he was taken to Hillingdon Hospital. Heathrow security staff were notified, because Sinyavsky was carrying a diplomatic passport, and he had a locked briefcase chained to his left wrist. In due course, the Metropolitan Police were notified, and they in turn called the Foreign Office and Special Branch.’
All of them there knew the Security Service had no powers of arrest — in fact, its very existence had only fairly recently been officially acknowledged — and it relied on Special Branch officers to carry out executive actions on its behalf. The Special Branch comprised some four hundred detectives attached to local police forces throughout the country, but with the highest concentration in London, and it was accountable to the Home Secretary through London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
‘The duty Special Branch Inspector, Charles Wingate, immediately went to Hillingdon and saw Sinyavsky in hospital. The Russian was still unconscious, and the doctors thought he was likely to remain that way. They were treating him, by the way, for salmonella poisoning.’
Arkin interrupted, and tried for a joke. ‘Most people get that after they’ve flown with Aeroflot, not before.’ He looked at the faces around him, but saw not a trace of a smile. ‘And’, he added, ‘he seems to have suffered a very severe reaction, if it was salmonella. I thought most people just got stomach cramps, the squits, and so on.’
Moore nodded. ‘Normally, you’d be right, but there are several strains of salmonella, and subsequent tests showed that Sinyavsky had contracted Salmonella typhi, probably from undercooked poultry. Salmonella typhi is a comparatively rare strain, but it causes typhoid fever, and proves fatal in about thirty per cent of cases. Sinyavsky, I’m pleased to say, is now recovering.’
Moore finally picked up the file and opened it. ‘Inspector Wingate instantly ordered Sinyavsky to be kept in isolation — which simply reinforced instructions for what the hospital was already doing — and had an armed police officer posted outside his room. The key for the handcuff on the briefcase was in the pocket of Sinyavsky’s jacket, and the doctors had already removed it from his wrist so that they could treat him more easily. The briefcase, of course, was locked, and was considered diplomatic baggage, so Wingate himself took it into safe custody.’