Ghost Force

Tensions between Siberia and Moscow are already running high, when the sudden disappearance of top-tier Siberian politicians and oil executives sparks open outrage. With relations strained, Moscow needs a new oil source, and quickly, so a dangerous plan is set in motion. Persuading Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands again and reclaim the ‘Malvinas’, Moscow’s hunter-killer submarine Viper 157 promises to come to their aid – in return for Falkland oil.

The United States is furious at this act of international piracy. Admiral Morgan and the Navy SEALs manage to persuade the legendary commander Rick Hunter to return. The mission: to hammer Argentina’s military hardware and free the Falklands. For Hunter, the assignment strikes close to home. His English brother-in-law and an SAS special forces team are trapped on East Falkland, on the run from Argentine shoot-to-kill man-hunt, on their own. . .

About the Author

Patrick Robinson is the Top Ten Sunday Times bestselling author of Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, H. M. S. Unseen, Seawolf, The Shark Mutiny, Barracuda 945, Scimitar SL-2 and Hunter Killer. He is also the author of several non-fiction bestsellers including True Blue (with Dan Topolski) and Born to Win. He is the co-author with Admiral Sir Sandy Woodward of One Hundred Days.

ALSO BY PATRICK ROBINSON

Fiction

Non-fiction

Ghost Force

Patrick Robinson

AUTHOR’S NOTE

FOR THIS, MY ninth ‘technothriller’, set in the future and sailing perilously close to the wind, I needed to be more careful with my sources than usual.

For reasons which I hope will be obvious to the reader, I would not wish to implicate any senior officers of the armed forces on either side of the Atlantic in the many politically lethal issues explored in these pages.

So I decided to accept no direct advice or instruction from anyone. Rather, I would base the story on the strongly held views voiced to me by so many commissioned officers over several years.

This book involves a new journey to the cold South Atlantic, and the ever-vexed questions surrounding the ownership of the remote Falkland Islands. I have inevitably drawn on the mountain of information that I received from the British Task Force Commander of the 1982 war, Admiral Sir John ‘Sandy’ Woodward, whose autobiography I helped to write fourteen years ago.

This time, however, I did not go to him with every twist and turn in the road. Nor did I drive him mad for detailed explanations of the mass of high-tech naval data of which he is a world-acknowledged master and commander and where I remain, as ever, the layman.

I ploughed a lonely furrow, distilling many highly controversial opinions into my own story. I hope its covert message will be appreciated by serving and, indeed, retired officers. With perhaps a chilling lesson for the kind of politician that we all despise.

Any mistakes and wayward opinions, whether technical, tactical, or strategic, are mine alone. And nothing should be laid at the door of any senior armed-forces officer, still serving or not, whose acquaintance or friendship I have long valued.

This applies to perhaps a dozen people, but especially to Admiral Woodward who, on this occasion at least, remains shining-white innocent of any involvement with my occasionally acid-dipped pen.

CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Combat Troopers: Syd Ferry (communications); Peter Wiggins (sniper); Joe Pearson; Bob Goddard; Trevor Fermer; Jake Posgate; Dai Llewellyn

PROLOGUE

AS A GENERAL rule, Admiral Arnold Morgan did not do state banquets. He put them in the same category as diplomatic luncheons, congressional dinners, state fairs, and yard sales – all of which required him to spend time talking to God knows how many people with whom he had absolutely nothing in common.

Forced to choose, he would even have preferred to spend an hour with the political editor of CBS Television or the Washington Post, either of whom he could cheerfully have throttled several times a year.

It was thus a matter of some interest this evening to witness him making his way down the great central staircase of the White House, right behind the President and his guests of honour. The admiral descended in company with the exquisitely beautiful Mrs Kathy Morgan, whose perfectly cut dark-green silk gown made the Russian president’s wife look like a middle-line admin clerk from the KGB. (Close. She had been a researcher there.)

Arnold Morgan himself wore the dark-blue dress uniform of a US Navy rear-admiral, complete with the twin-dolphin insignia of the US Submarine Service. As ever – shoulders back, jaw jutting, steel-grey hair trimmed short – he looked like a CO striding towards his ops room.

Which was near to the mark. In his long years in service as the President’s National Security Adviser, he reckoned that the White House was his ops room. He always called it ‘the factory’, and he had conducted global operations against enemies of the United States with an unprecedentedly free hand. Of course, he had kept the President posted concerning his activities. Mostly.

And now, with the small exclusive reception for the Russians concluded in the upstairs private rooms, Arnold and Kathy stood aside at the foot of the stairs, alongside the Russian Ambassador and a dozen other dignitaries, while the two presidents and their wives formed a short receiving line.

This was deliberate, because the Russians always brought with them a vast entourage of state officials, diplomats, politicians, military top brass, and, as ever, undercover agents – spies – badly disguised as cultural attachés. It was, frankly, like seeing a prizefighter’s attendant goons and bodyguards dancing a minuet.

But here they all were. The men who ran Russia, being formally entertained by President Paul Bedford and the First Lady, the former Maggie Lomax, a svelte blonde Virginian horsewoman, fearless to hounds but nerve-racked by this formal jamboree in support of US-Russian relations.

As far as President Bedford had been concerned, the presence of Arnold Morgan had been nothing short of compulsory. Although the telephone conversation between the two men had been more like a verbal gunfight.

‘Arnie, I just got your note declining the Russian banquet invite – Jesus, you can’t do this to me!’

‘Bullshit. I’m retired. I don’t do state banquets. I’m a naval officer, not a diplomat.’

‘I know what you are. But this thing is really important. They’re bringing all the big hitters from Moscow, civilian and military. Not to mention their oil industry.’

‘Nothing. ’Cept I want you there. Right next to me, keeping me posted. There’s not one person in Washington knows the Russians better than you. You gotta be there. White tie and tails.’

‘Since I don’t much want to look like a head waiter, or a goddamned violinist, I won’t be wearing that, either.’

‘OK. OK,’ said the President again, sensing victory. ‘You can come in full-dress Navy uniform. Matter of fact, I don’t care if you turn up in jockstrap and spurs as long as you get here.’

Arnold Morgan chuckled. But suddenly an edge crept back into his voice. ‘What topics concern you most?’

‘The rise of the Russian navy, for a start. The rebuilding of their submarine fleet in particular. And their export of submarines all over the world.’

‘Well, that new deep-water tanker terminal in Murmansk cannot fail to be an issue,’ replied the President. ‘We’re hoping that they’ll ship two million barrels a day from there direct to the USA in the next few years.’

‘And I guess you know the Russian president already has terrible goddamned problems transporting crude oil from the West Siberian Basin to Murmansk . . .’ Arnold was thoughtful. He added slowly ‘. . . And you know how important that export trade is to them.’

‘That’s why you gotta be at the banquet, Arnie. Starting with the private reception. Don’t be late.’

‘Silver-tongued bastard,’ grunted Admiral Morgan. ‘All right, all right. We’ll be there. Good morning, Mr President.’

Paul Bedford, who was well accustomed to the admiral’s excruciating habit of slamming down the phone without even bothering to say goodbye, considered this a very definite victory.

‘Heh, heh, heh,’ he chortled in the deserted Oval Office. ‘That little bit of intrigue on a global scale. That’ll get the ole buzzard every time. But I’m sure glad he’s coming.’

Thus it was that Arnold and Kathy Morgan were now in attendance at the state banquet for the Russians, gazing amiably at the long line of guests entering the White House.

So many old friends and colleagues. It was like a fraternity reunion. Here was the Commander of the US Navy SEALs, Admiral John Bergstrom and his soignée new wife Louisa-May, from Oxford, Mississippi; Harcourt Travis, the former Republican Secretary of State with his wife Sue; Admiral Scott Dunsmore, former CNO of the US Navy with his elegant wife Grace. The reigning Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Tim Scannell, was with his wife Beth.

Arnold shook hands with the Director of the National Security Agency, Admiral George Morris, and he greeted the new Vice-President of the United States, the former Democratic Senator from Georgia, Bradford Harding and his wife Paige.

The Israeli Ambassador General David Gavron was there with his wife Becky, plus, of course, the silver-haired Russian Ambassador to Washington, Tomas Yezhel, and the various ambassadors from the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.

Arnold did not instantly recognise all the top brass of the Russian contingent. But he could see the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Josh Paul, talking with the Russian Foreign Minister, Oleg Nalyotov.

He vaguely knew the Chief of the Russian Naval Staff, a grim-looking ex-Typhoon Class submarine Commanding Officer, Admiral Victor Kouts.

But Admiral Morgan’s craggy face lit up when he spotted the towering figure of his old sparring partner, the Russian admiral Vitaly Rankov, now C-in-C Fleet and Deputy Defence Minister.

‘Arnold!’ boomed the giant ex-Soviet international oarsman. ‘I had no idea you’d be here. They told me you’d retired.’

Admiral Morgan grinned and held out his hand. ‘Hi, Vitaly – they put you in charge of that junkyard navy of yours yet? I heard they had.’

‘They did. Right now, admiral, you’re talking to the Deputy Defence Minister of Russia.’

‘Guess that’ll suit you,’ replied the American. ‘Should provide ample scope for your natural flair for lies, evasions and half-truths . . .’

The enormous Russian threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘Now you be kind, Arnold,’ he said in his deep rumbling baritone voice. ‘Otherwise I may not introduce you to this very beautiful lady standing at my side.’

A tall, striking, dark-haired girl around half the Russian’s age smiled shyly and held out her hand in friendship.

Admiral Morgan took her hand and asked if she spoke any English since his own Russian was a little rusty. She shook her head, smiling, and Morgan turned back to Vitaly and shook his head sadly. ‘Too good for you, old buddy. A lot too good.’

Again the huge Russian admiral laughed joyfully, and he repeated the words he had used so often in his many dealings with the old Lion of the West Wing.

‘You are a terrible man, Arnold Morgan. A truly terrible man.’ Then he spoke in rapid Russian to Mrs Olga Rankov who also burst out laughing.

‘I understand we are sitting together,’ said Arnold. ‘And I don’t believe you have actually met my wife Kathy.’

The Russian admiral smiled and accepted Kathy’s outstretched hand. ‘We have of course spoken many times on the telephone,’ he said. ‘But believe me, I never thought he’d persuade you to marry him.’ And, with a compliment and a gesture more appropriate to a St Petersburg palace than a naval dockyard, Vitaly added with a short bow and a flourish, ‘The legend of your great beauty precedes you, Mrs Morgan. I knew what to expect.’

‘Jesus, they’ve even taught him social graces,’ chuckled Arnold, carelessly ignoring the fact he was a bit short in that department himself. ‘Vitaly, old pal, seems we both got lucky in the past year. Not too bad for a couple of old Cold Warriors.’

By now the guests were almost through the receiving line and had moved to the sides of the room, leaving a wide entryway to the State Dining Room. Within a few moments, President and Maggie Bedford came through, escorting the Russian president and his wife to their dinner places, with all of the guests falling in – line astern, as Arnold somewhat jauntily told Vitaly.

The President took his place next to the former KGB researcher directly beneath the Lincoln portrait. Maggie Bedford showed the boss of all the Russians to his place next to her at the same table, and everyone remained standing until the hostess was seated.

The banquet, on the orders of Paul Bedford, was strictly American. ‘No caviar, or any of that restaurant nonsense,’ he had told the butler. ‘We start with Chesapeake oysters, we dine on New York sirloin steak, with Idaho potatoes, and we wrap it up with apple pie and American ice cream. There’ll be two or three Wisconsin cheeses for anyone who wants them. California wines from the Napa Valley.’

‘Tough,’ replied the President. ‘Russians love ’em. I’ve had ’em in Moscow and St Petersburg. Anyone who can’t eat ’em can have an extra shot of apple pie if they need it.’

‘Very well, sir,’ replied the butler, suspecting, from vast experience, that Arnold Morgan himself must have been in the shadows advising Paul Bedford. The tone, the curtness, the certainty.

As it happened, there had indeed been one short conversation when the Oval Office had called Chevy Chase to check in on the menu content. ‘Give ’em American food,’ Arnold had advised. ‘Strictly American. Big A-A-A. The food this nation eats. We don’t need to pretend sophistication to anyone, right?’

And now, with the apple pie just arriving, the Strolling Strings, a well-known group of US Army violinists, began to play at the rear section of the room. Their short concert clearly followed a similar brief, comprising all-American numbers, such as ‘Over there!’, ‘True Love’ (from High Society), a selection from Oklahoma, ‘Take me Out to the Ball Game’ . . . and concluding with ‘God Bless America’.

Finally the President rose and made a short speech extolling the virtues of the Russian president and the new and close trade links developing between the nations.

The chief guest of honour then stood and echoed many of the President’s statements before concluding with a formal toast ‘to the United States of America’.

At this point the entire room stood up and proceeded towards the door which led out to the Blue Room where coffee would be served, followed by entertainment in the East Room, and then dancing to the band of the United States Marines in the White House foyer.

The crowd was steadily moving towards the doors, when one guest suddenly stopped. Mikhail Masorin, the senior minister from the vast plains of Siberia, which occupy one-twelfth of the land mass of the entire Earth, had suddenly pitched forward and landed flat on his face. He collapsed right in front of Arnold, Vitaly, Olga and Kathy, and the huge Russian admiral had actually leaned forward to try and break his fall. But he was a fraction of a second too late. Masorin was on the floor, twisted on his back now, his face puce in colour, gasping for breath, both hands clutched to his throat as he frantically worked his jaws, fear and agony etched on his face.

Women gasped. Men came forward to see if they could help – mostly Americans, Arnold Morgan noticed. Casting around for someone who would be able to do something, Morgan realised quickly that Masorin was very nearly beyond help. He was desperately trying to breathe but his face showed a slight blue tinge now.

By now two or three people were shouting, ‘Heart attack! Come on, guys, let the doctor through . . .’

Within a few minutes two doctors were in attendance. One of them filled a syringe and unleashed a potent dose of something into Masorin’s upper arm, but they could only bear witness to the death throes of the Siberian head honcho.

In seconds, he was gone, dead even before the Navy stretcher-bearers could get to him. Dead, right there, on the floor of the State Dining Room in front of his own president and the leader of the United States.

President Bedford forced himself to shake off the shock and fired a series of quiet orders into the small knot of people around Masorin. Luckily, only those few in the immediate vicinity realised that one of the Russian guests had actually died and the body was carried away before the other dignitaries were fully aware of what had happened.

Arnold Morgan and Paul Bedford watched the crowd warily, but the rest of the evening passed uneventfully and shortly before 11 p.m. the White House Press Office felt obliged to put out a general press release that the Chief Minister for the Urals Federal District, Mr Mikhail Masorin, had suffered a heart attack at the conclusion of a state banquet, and had been found to be dead on arrival at the United States Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

‘Terrible about that poor Russian, wasn’t it?’ said Kathy, as they headed north-west to Chevy Chase. ‘He was at the next table to us, couldn’t have been more than fifty years old. Must have been a very bad heart attack . . .’

Her husband hadn’t said much for the remainder of the night. Now he turned away from the window he’d been staring out of. ‘Bullshit,’ he said succinctly.

‘Bullshit,’ confirmed the Admiral. ‘That was no heart attack. He was writhing around on the floor, opening and shutting his mouth like a goddamned goldfish.’

‘I know he was, darling. But the doctor said it was a heart attack. I heard him.’

‘Oh, I am so sorry. It entirely slipped my memory I was escorting the eminent cardiovascular surgeon and universal authority Arnold Morgan.’

Arnold looked up, grinning now at his increasingly sassy wife. ‘Kathy,’ he said. Then, more seriously, ‘Whatever killed Masorin somehow shut down his lungs instantly. The guy suffocated, fighting for air, which you probably noticed was plentiful in the State Dining Room. Heart attacks don’t do that.’

‘A bullet, correctly aimed. A thrust from a combat knife, correctly delivered. Certain kinds of poison.’

‘But there was no blood anywhere. And anyway, why should the CIA or the FBI or whatever want to get rid of an important guest at a White House banquet?’

‘I have no idea, my darling,’ said Arnold. ‘But I believe someone did. And I’ll be mildly surprised if we don’t find out before too long that Mikhail Masorin was murdered last night. Right here in Washington DC.’

CHAPTER ONE

LT. COMMANDER JIMMY Ramshawe, assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland had his feet and his antennae up. Lounging back in his swivel chair, shoes on the desk, he was staring at an item on the front page of the Washington Post.

TOP RUSSIAN OFFICIAL

DROPS DEAD IN WHITE HOUSE

Siberian political chief

suffers fatal heart attack

‘Poor bastard,’ muttered the American-born but Australian-sounding Intelligence officer. ‘That’s a hell of a way to go – in the middle of the bloody State Dining Room, right in front of two presidents. Still, by the look of this, he didn’t have time to be embarrassed.’

He read on, skimming through the brief biography. The forty-nine-year-old Mikhail Masorin had been a tough, uncompromising Siberian boss, someone who stood up for his people and their shattered communist dream. Here was a man who had brought real hope to this 4,350-mile-long land mass of bleak and terrible beauty, of snowfields and seven time zones.

Of the three Siberian ‘kingdoms’ which make up this huge area, the two others being the Siberian Federal District between the Yenisei River and the Lena River, and the Russian Far East, the Urals Federal district was easily the most important. Here was where most of the oilfields were located. Beneath the desolate plains of Western Siberia, the freezing place which locals claimed to be ‘forgotten by the Creator’, lay the largest oilfields on earth.

One of the reasons why Mikhail was adored in Siberia was because he was a politician who wasn’t afraid to speak brass tacks, frequently reminding his Russian rulers that the oil upon which the entire national economy was built was Siberian and that it was the natural property of the Siberian people. He wanted more money for it from the central government. Not for himself, but for his people.

And now Mikhail was gone, and Jimmy Ramshawe’s hackles rose a lot higher than his shoes on the desk. ‘Strewth,’ he said quietly, taking a swig of his hot black coffee. ‘Wouldn’t be surprised if a bloody lot of people were glad he died. And none of ’em Siberian.’

It was at times like this that Lt. Commander Ramshawe’s famously reliable instincts sprang to the fore. Suspicion, mistrust, misgivings and downright disbelief, as well as a few harsh lessons taught to him by the Big Man fought their way to the front of his mind: whenever a major politician with a lot of enemies dies, check it out . . . never trust a goddamned Russian – and never believe that anything is beyond them, because it’s not . . . the KGB lives, trust me.

‘Wouldn’t be the biggest shock in the world if the old bastard calls on this one,’ he said, refilling his coffee cup. And he was right about that.

Three minutes later his private line rang. Jimmy always thought there was an irritable, impatient note in its modern ring-tone when the Big Man was on the line. And he was right about that, too.

‘Jimmy, you read the Washington Post yet? Front page, the dead Siberian?’ Arnold Morgan’s tone echoed that of the telephone.

Arnold Morgan chuckled. For the past few years he had treated Jimmy Ramshawe almost like a son, not simply because the young Aussie-American was the best Intelligence officer he had ever met, but also because he both knew and liked his father, an ex-Australian Navy admiral and currently a high-ranking airline official in New York.

Jimmy was engaged to the surf goddess Jane Peacock, student daughter of the Australian Ambassador to Washington, and Arnold was very fond of both families. But in Jimmy he had a soulmate, a younger man whose creed was suspicion, thoroughness and a tireless determination to investigate, someone always prepared to play a hunch, and with a total devotion to the United States, the country where Jimmy had been brought up.

He might have been engaged to a goddess, but Jimmy Ramshawe believed Arnold Morgan was God. Several years ago Admiral Morgan had been Director of the National Security Agency, and ever since had continued to consider himself in overall command of the place.

This system suited everyone, not least Admiral George Morris, the ex-Carrier Battle Group commander and current NSA Director, extremely well, because there was no better advice than that of Admiral Morgan.

When Admiral Morgan called the NSA, Fort Meade trembled. His growl echoed through Crypto City – as the Military Intelligence hub was called. And, essentially, that was the way Arnold liked it.

‘Jimmy, I was at the banquet, standing only about ten feet from the Siberian when he hit the deck. He went down like he’d been shot, which he plainly hadn’t. But I watched him die, rolling back and forth, fighting for breath, just like his lungs had quit on him. Wasn’t like any heart attack I ever saw . . .’

‘Shut up, Jimmy. You sound like Kathy. And listen . . . I want you very quietly to find out where the goddamned body is, where it’s going, and whether there’s going to be an autopsy.’

‘Never mind “then what?”Just take step one, and call me back.’ Slam. Phone down.

‘Glad to see the old bastard’s mellowing,’ muttered Jimmy. ‘Still, Kathy says that’s how he’s talked to at least two Presidents. So I guess I can’t complain.’

He picked up his other phone and asked the operator to connect him to Bill Fogarty down at FBI headquarters. Three minutes later the top Washington field agent was on the case, and twenty minutes after that Bill was back with news of the fate of the corpse of Mikhail Masorin.

‘Jimmy, I walked into a goddamned hornets’ nest. Seems the Russians want to take the body directly back to Moscow tomorrow afternoon. But the Navy is not having it. Masorin is officially in their care while the body’s in the USA. He died on American soil, and they’re insisting the formalities are carried out here, including, if necessary, an autopsy.’

‘Not a whole hell of a lot,’ said Bill Fogarty. ‘They are saying Masorin was an official guest of the President in the United States, and they should be afforded the diplomatic courtesy of treating his death as though it had happened in their own embassy where he was staying.’

‘I don’t think so. Under the law, a foreign national who dies in the USA is subject to the lawful procedures of the United States. If something has happened to a high-ranking Russian official, it is within the rights of the United States to demand the most exhaustive inquiries into the causes of death until we are satisfied that every avenue has been explored. Even then, the body is released only on our say-so. And they still have the body at the hospital at Bethesda.’

Jimmy paused for a moment, thinking. Then he said, ‘Bill, I’m gonna make one phone call. And I have a hunch it’s going to end all speculation. After all, anyone who was in the White House at that time must be a suspect if there is a question of foul play. And that must include the President and all his agents and officials. That body’s not going anywhere for a while, except the city morgue.’

Thanking Bill Fogarty, Lt. Commander Ramshawe immediately called the Naval Hospital. The conversation took two full minutes. The body of Siberia’s Number One political commissar would be leaving for the morgue inside the hour and an autopsy would be carried out this afternoon. The Russians were, apparently, not pleased.

‘Sir, the body of Mr Masorin will be at the city morgue in a couple of hours. The Russians are trying to kick up a fuss and get permission to remove it back to Moscow. But that’s obviously not going to happen.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me any, Jimmy. Tell the pathologist we’re looking for poison of some kind. I’m damn sure it wasn’t a heart attack.’

‘Well, that’s what it looks like. But you never know with the Russians. A short, sharp murder in the White House gives ’em marvellous cover. Because then they can feign outrage at this disgraceful breach in American security, while they make their getaway, home to that God-awful country of theirs.’

‘You mean they might have killed their own man?’ Jimmy was taken aback but not really surprised. And Morgan apparently felt the same.

‘It’s happened before, both during and after the old Soviet era. But let’s not get excited. We’ll wait till we hear the autopsy report. Then we’ll take a very careful look . . . Hey, well done, kid – but I gotta go. I’d better talk to the Chief.’

Lt. Commander Ramshawe’s veteran black Jaguar pulled into the parking lot behind the city morgue and headed straight into one of the VIP reserved spaces. This was an old ruse taught him long ago by Admiral Morgan: no one, ever, wants to tangle with a high-ranking officer from the NSA. Park wherever the hell you like. Anyone doesn’t like it, tell ’em to call me.

Inside the building, the area where the autopsy had been conducted was busy, despite the fact the FBI had denied the Russians entry. There were two US Navy guards on the door and three White House agents milled around in the corridor. The coroner, Dr Louis Merloni, was there, with the Chief Medical Officer from Bethesda in attendance. The autopsy had been carried out by the resident clinical pathologist, Dr Larry Madeiros. No details of the examination had yet been released.

Jimmy showed his NSA pass to the guards and was admitted immediately. Once inside he said firmly, ‘Dr Madeiros?’

‘Lt. Commander Ramshawe, NSA,’ said Jimmy. ‘I would like to talk to you for a few minutes in private.’

They walked across the wide examination room to an adjoining office, and almost before they’d had time to sit down Jimmy Ramshawe said, ‘OK, Doc, gimme the cause of death.’

‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean he was given a substance, a poison of some type, which caused the transmission of nerve impulses from the brain to the muscles to be seriously impaired. In the end to the point of limpness. When this process hits the chest muscles, breathing stops.’

‘No. I found a very fine puncture mark on the back of his neck, right side. I think we shall find he was injected with the poison through that hole.’

‘Do we know what the poison was yet?’ Jimmy wanted to make sure he got every detail for Arnold Morgan.

‘No idea. All the bodily fluids are still in the lab. That’s blood-cell counts, as well as bone marrow, liquids from the liver and kidneys, and all other biochemical substances found in the body. It’ll take a while, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to find something very foreign deep inside that corpse.’

‘The bloody corpse itself is very foreign,’ said Jimmy cheerfully. ‘That makes the poison amazingly foreign.’

‘You can call me on my cellphone at ten o’clock tonight. I’ll let you know in confidence what we’ve found. Thereafter the report will be issued first thing tomorrow morning to the hospital and to the medical officer of record in Bethesda, and then to the FBI and the White House agents.

Jimmy excused himself from the Australian Ambassador’s dinner table and walked into the next room where he punched in Dr Larry Madeiros’s number on his cellphone.

‘Hello, sir. It was curare, and quite a sizeable shot of it. A most deadly poison originating from South America.’

‘Well, curare is a generic name for many different poisons made from the bark and roots of forest vines,’ said the doctor. ‘The main one’s called Pareira, and the lab technicians here think that’s the one. Five hundred micrograms of that stuff will cause death in a few minutes. And Mr Masorin had more than that. It’s a classic poison and it seems it’s a favourite of the professional assassin.’

‘Steady, Doc, old mate. This was a White House state banquet. There weren’t any professional assassins walking around there.’

‘As you wish,’ said Doctor Madeiros stiffly. ‘But that is very much the history of this particular poison.’

‘You were dead right, sir. Someone hit Masorin with a lethal shot of poison injected into his neck. More than 500 micrograms, according to the pathologist . . .’

‘Wait a minute, Jimmy. I got a book of poisons here. I was waiting for your call. Lemme check this out – yeah, right, curare, a known poison since the sixteenth century, a gummy substance used to tip hunting arrowheads by Indian tribes up the Amazon river in South America.’

Jimmy could hear Morgan flipping pages so he said quickly, ‘Sir, I’ll alert Admiral Morris to what’s going on. And then I guess we’ll let the rest of the investigation take its course. It’s not really our business any more, is it? Civilian matter now, right?’

‘Exactly so, Jimmy. But I’m sure as hell glad we know what’s going on. Murder.’

For the US government, it wasn’t quite so easy to get rid of the case. From an official point of view, inquests, coroners’ statements and autopsies were a pain in the rear end, especially as they were always public and had to be entered in the public record. Thus it was that on the morning of Thursday 16 September, the FBI announced to the world that the death of the Siberian Chief Minister, Mikhail Masorin, was indeed suspicious.

Traces of the lethal poison curare had been found in the body, and the investigators were now treating the case as a murder inquiry.

MURDER IN THE WHITE HOUSE, bellowed the New York Post. SIBERIA BOSS ASSASSINATED, thundered the Washington Post. All of it on the front page, in specially reserved end-of-the-world typeface.

And while the maelstrom of a media frenzy swirled around the Russian visitors, the President’s Aeroflot state airliner took off for Moscow from Andrews Air Base on Thursday evening. The body of Mikhail Masorin was not on board.

For some reason best known to neurotic news editors, the US media, including the 24-hour news channels, leaped to the conclusion that an American had been responsible for the Siberian’s death. Perhaps it was just too far-fetched that the Russians would choose the White House as a theatre in which to assassinate one of their own.

And the American media, to a man, jumped on the story of an American-based terrorist, possibly a Chechen rebel in disguise, firing some kind of poison dart into Masorin’s neck so that he had subsequently died while dining with the President of the United States and 150 of his friends.

The media grilled the FBI, grilled the Washington Police Department, grilled the White House press office. It took three entire days before it dawned on them all that no one had the slightest idea who had really killed Masorin, and that there had been no Chechen rebels at the state banquet.

Busy concocting stories of their own, none of them realised the massive rift that had opened up between the presidents of the United States and Russia. The Russian leader had almost begged Paul Bedford to allow him to take the body home to Moscow, only to have his pleas rejected again and again.

It seemed that the Russians could not understand that the boss of the United States could not just do anything he pleased. The key point of a Western democracy – that when it came to the absolute crunch the law of the land, correctly administered, remained sacrosanct – still eluded them.

Masorin’s body was going nowhere until the investigation was complete. Someone had plainly murdered him. Possibly inside the White House. And until that someone was identified, the corpse was staying put in the home of the brave.

Jimmy Ramshawe was thoughtful. He sat in his colossally untidy office, surrounded by mounds of paper. Although each pile was neatly stacked there were so many of them that they crowded out his desk, clogged his computer table, and turned the carpeted floor into a death trap.

One thought was uppermost in his mind: the Big Man thinks the bloody Russkis killed Masorin in the White House because no one would ever dream they would pull off something quite like that.

Jimmy knew the Russian president would shortly be landing in Moscow and that his public-relations machine would be full of venom. All aimed at the leaky, decadent security arrangements in the United States . . . which has somehow caused the death of our beloved brother – sorry, comrade – Mikhail Masorin.

‘And a right crock of shit that is,’ Jimmy muttered with all the natural-born charm of an Aussie swagman. ‘I’m with the Big Man on this one. And I consider it’s in the interests of the United States of America to find out what the hell’s going on – I’d better go and see the boss.’

Admiral George Morris, a portly ex-Naval Battle Group commander with the appearance of a lovesick teddy bear and a spine of steel, listened attentively.

He betrayed scarcely a flicker of surprise when Jimmy delivered his punchline: ‘Sir, I think Admiral Morgan believes the Russians bumped old Mikhail off, right there in the bloody State Dining Room.’

‘Yes, he does,’ replied Admiral Morris. ‘So do I. Want some hot coffee?’

‘Jimmy, Admiral Morgan knows more about the Russian mindset than any man I ever met. And I’ve known him for over thirty years, most of them as a pretty close friend. And there is one view of his which ought never to be discounted.’

‘That even after President Reagan forced them to take down the Berlin Wall; even after he made them dismantle the old Soviet Union a coupla years after he’d gone, in 1991, all those old instincts for brutal central control remained as strong as ever. And it’s going to take decades to get rid of them. Barbarous actions, poisoning and assassinations, all aimed at crushing dissent, stamping out free expression. Remember Stalin himself who said very simply, “If you have a man who represents a problem, get rid of the man. Then there’s no problem.”Both Arnie and I believe Mikhail Masorin was just such a problem. The fact that his territory held most of Russia’s oil and that he controlled it closely. Perhaps he threatened to secede from Russian rule and take his oil with him?’

Jimmy mulled this over. ‘Well, not any more he wouldn’t,’ he then said. ‘And no bloody error.’

Morris fiddled with the coffee pot. ‘Arnold and I would like you to continue your investigations on a full-time basis for the next couple of weeks. We really ought to find out what the hell’s going on.’

‘Christ, sir. Mind if I have some of that coffee now? That’s a bloody lot to digest.’

Admiral Morris smiled and poured Jimmy a cup. ‘Take a look at some of the really suspicious deaths which have taken place in the past, say, forty years. And you might start with Georgi Markov.’

‘An expert on Soviet affairs who worked with the BBC in London – a good journalist with excellent contacts behind the Iron Curtain. He wrote some hair-raising stuff about the Soviets and the KGB and I believe he was a good friend of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A real thorn in Russia’s side . . .’

Lt. Commander Ramshawe retreated to his lair and logged on to the internet. It took him ten minutes to find a reference: Georgi Markov, Bulgarian dissident working for the BBC . . . assassinated in London, 1977 . . . later discovered to have been jabbed by a pellet weapon disguised as an umbrella, firing a tiny platinum sphere containing a deadly poison, almost certainly curare.

Subsequent revelations by the former KGB colonel and renowned pro-Western double agent Oleg Gordievsky indicated that Markov had probably been assassinated by a KGB freelancer. And, what was more, that the assassination had been carried out with the approval of the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov, later the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

‘Strewth,’ said Jimmy Ramshawe for the second time in half an hour. ‘One bloody surprise after another.’

He trawled through all manner of disappearances – of politicians, of dissidents and of anyone else deemed to be whatever the Russian was for ‘pain in the ass’. Finally he alighted on the big one, the one that had for ever blighted the name of the Russian leadership. And the plan hadn’t even worked.

Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader in the infamous Ukraine election of 2004, a hugely popular pro-European politician, was spectacularly poisoned just before the election but didn’t die.

His face, hideously pock-marked and disfigured, was shown to the entire world just a few weeks after he had looked perfectly normal. The murder attempt had taken place at a political dinner with Ukraine security services, and the doctors who subsequently treated Yushchenko in Vienna claimed to have found overwhelming evidence of poisoning by dioxin.

It was more than obvious that his stance as a pro-European, pro-democracy candidate posed a serious threat to the Kremlin, with its love of state control. Here was a man, and here was a problem. And Josef Stalin himself had instructed them how to be rid of it.

Jimmy Ramshawe was gratified to note that Viktor Yushchenko eventually became President of the Ukraine, and that his health had slowly returned to normal. But his ordeal was a timely reminder that the vicious, old KGB methods of elimination were alive and well in modern Russia. Not just alive, and not just well, but ruthlessly woven into the fabric of Russian politics, where they’d been since the 1920s when the KGB’s predecessors first built their laboratories to develop special poisons to use against dissidents. Modern ideas of political freedom and human rights had never taken root in Russia, and probably never would.

At least, that was the view of Admiral Arnold Morgan and his colleague Admiral George Morris. ‘And who the bloody hell am I to argue with those two?’ muttered Jimmy. ‘They got me. The ole Ruskies most definitely took a pop at Mikhail and this time they didn’t fuck it up.’

By now, Admiral Morris had left for a meeting at the Pentagon. Jimmy elected to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find out just what Masorin had done: it had to be something so bad the heavies from Moscow had decided to take him out, right after dinner in the White House, damn nearly in full view of the entire world.

Jimmy Ramshawe picked up his telephone and asked to be put through to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

‘Hold a moment . . . yes, that will be fine. Mr Suchov said the usual place, say forty-five minutes?’

Six minutes later Lt. Commander Ramshawe’s black Jaguar was ripping down the Spellman Parkway heading south. He cut onto the Beltway at Exit 22 and aimed the car west, anti-clockwise, and stayed right on the great highway which ringed Washington DC until it crossed the Potomac River at the American Legion Memorial Bridge.

Seventeen miles along the Beltway had taken him fifteen minutes. Now he picked up the Georgetown Pike for two miles, straight through the CIA headquarters main gate where a young field officer from the Russian desk met him and accompanied him to the parking area near the auditorium.

Jimmy thanked him and walked through to the CIA’s tranquil memorial garden, pausing briefly to gaze at the simple message carved into fieldstone at the edge of the pond – In remembrance of those whose unheralded efforts served a grateful nation.

Like most senior Intelligence officers, a place in Jimmy’s soul was touched by those words – and visions instantly stood before him: of grim, dark streets in Moscow or the old East Berlin or Bucharest, of men working for the United States, alone, in the most terrible danger, stalked by the stony-faced agents of the KGB. Always the KGB, with their hired assassins, knives and garrottes.

‘I hope the nation bloody well is grateful, that’s all,’ he said, as he walked through spots of bright sunlight towards the blue-painted seat by the pond where he always met Leonid Suchov, one of the most brilliant double agents the West had ever had.

About the Book

About the Author

ALSO BY PATRICK ROBINSON

Fiction

Non-fiction

Ghost Force

Patrick Robinson

AUTHOR’S NOTE

CAST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE