Death Train

Three

Whatever did happen to chivalry? The question crossed Sabrina Carver’s mind as she stood with her left hand looped through the handle hanging from the rail above her in the aisle of the packed subway train as it hurtled through the cavernous tunnels beneath New York. Her attitude towards feminism was ambivalent. She certainly believed in equality between the sexes, especially in the work place, but felt there was always room for courtesy and manners in what was becoming an increasingly uncaring society. As she looked around she felt a twinge of sadness that in a carriage where 70 per cent of the commuters were men there were five women forced to stand in the aisle.

She had a sneaking suspicion that she knew why the men had not given up their seats.

From where they sat they were able to study the women in detail. Especially her. She was twenty-eight years of age with the kind of breathtaking allure normally associated with the cover of a glossy fashion magazine. Her features were classically beautiful: the perfectly structured high cheekbones, a small nose, sensual mouth and mesmerizing oval-shaped green eyes. Her shoulder-length blonde hair, tinted with auburn highlights, was pulled back tightly from her face and secured at the back of her head with a white ribbon. Her designer clothes were from the pages of a glossy fashion magazine. A Purification Garcia (her favourite designer) white cotton Jacquard tabard, a knee-length black cotton skirt and a pair of Kurt Geiger black suede high-heeled shoes. She hated excessive make-up and had applied just enough to emphasize her striking looks. Her one fixation was fitness and she kept herself in peak physical condition by attending aerobic classes three times a week at the Rivereast Health Club on Second Avenue, where she also helped put housewives through their paces in the basic skills of karate. She had successfully gained her own black belt four years previously.

Although ever watchful of her enviously slim figure she was not obsessive, and loved to dine out. Once a fortnight she and a gaggle of friends would go Dutch at one of their three favourite restaurants: either steaks at Christ Cella’s, cordon bleu cuisine at Lutece’s or her own personal favourite, a tandoori mixed grill at Gaylord’s. This was invariably followed by a session of late-night jazz at Ali’s Alley downtown in Greenwich Village.

As far as her friends were concerned she worked as a translator at the United Nations. It was the perfect cover story. She had a degree in Romance languages from Wellesley and after doing her postgraduate work at the Sorbonne she had travelled extensively across Europe before returning to the States where she was recruited by the FBI, specializing in the use of firearms. She had joined UNACO two years ago.

She alighted from the train at East 74th Street and whistled softly to herself as she walked the two hundred yards down 72nd Street from the subway to her ground-floor bachelor flat. The concierge doffed his hat to her as she crossed the black and white tiled foyer and after smiling at him she unlocked the door of her small flat and entered directly into the sparsely furnished lounge. She kicked off her shoes then crouched down in front of the stereo and traced her fingernail along the impressive collection of compact discs, selected one, and fed it into the machine. A David Sanborn album. It immediately reminded her of the unforgettable night at Ali’s Alley when she had met Sanborn, her jazz idol, who had then discreetly found out from her friends which of his songs was her favourite and made an impromptu appearance on stage to play it especially for her.

The telephone started to ring. She turned the music down and picked up the receiver. Her only contribution to the phone conversation was an occasional monosyllable. After replacing the receiver she sat down on the edge of the coffee table and smiled to herself. An assignment. The team was now officially on standby with a briefing session scheduled for later that afternoon.

Of the other two operatives making up the team, she had always enjoyed a special rapport with the phlegmatic C. W. Whitlock. His equanimity was legendary amongst his colleagues and he had gone out of his way to make her feel a part of the team when she first arrived at UNACO. Furthermore, he had always related to her on an intellectual level, unlike the majority of men she knew who saw her as just another pretty face (to try a line on), and although she and Whitlock never mixed socially, only ever meeting up at work, she had come to regard him as one of her few real friends.

After turning the volume up again she disappeared into the kitchen to make herself a pastrami on rye.

New York was swathed in sunlight and the heat would have been stifling had it not been for a gentle easterly breeze blowing in from the Atlantic. The perfect weather for a barbecue.

C. W. Whitlock emerged from the living-room on to the balcony of his sixth-floor Manhattan apartment, picked up the pair of tongs hanging beside the portable barbecue and prodded the simmering charcoal briquettes through the bars of the grill. It was hot enough. He placed the marinated chops and sausages on the grill then stood back and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the towel draped around his neck. A loud guffaw boomed out from the lounge and he glanced through the doorway, thankful to be out of the way. Dr Charles Porter was, as usual, centre stage. He didn’t dislike the man; he just found him a bore. Porter, one of the country’s most respected authorities on paediatrics, had taken a shy Puerto Rican intern called Carmen Rodriguez under his wing twenty years ago and given her the confidence to start up her own practice soon after graduating from medical school, and she was now one of New York’s most popular and in demand paediatricians. She had become Carmen Whitlock six years ago. Whitlock looked at his wife sitting at an angle to the doorway, her face in profile.

Someone had once described her as ‘willowy’, a description he thought suited her to perfection. Her eyes flickered towards him and she playfully stuck out her tongue. Whitlock smiled at her then looked beyond her at the couple on the sofa. Carmen’s sister Rachel and her German husband, Eddie Kruger. The sisters had similar features but Rachel was shorter and stockier. Kruger was typically Teutonic. Blond hair and blue eyes. They had remained firm friends ever since their first meeting.

Whitlock turned his attention back to the barbecue and prodded each chop with a steak knife to find out if they were properly cooked. After turning the sausages and prodding the briquettes again he rested his arms on the railing and looked out over Central Park, his eyes screwed up against the sun even though he was wearing a pair of prescription sunglasses. It was that kind of day.

He was a forty-four-year-old with a light complexion for an African-born black, his grandfather having been a British Army major stationed in Kenya at the turn of the century.

The sharp nose and thin lips gave his angular face a harshness which was softened by the neatly trimmed black moustache he had worn since his early twenties. He had been educated in England and after graduating from Oxford with a BA (Hons) he returned to his native Kenya where, after a short spell in the national army, he joined the Intelligence Corps. In his ten years with Intelligence he rose to the rank of colonel, but his superiors’ prejudice against his British ancestry and education became unbearable and he resigned to take up the post offered to him with UNACO. To all intents and purposes he was an attaché with the Kenyan delegation at the United Nations and the only person outside UNACO who knew the truth was his wife, and even she had only been briefed in the vaguest possible terms. He never discussed the nature of his work with her.

‘I thought the chef might like a beer.’ Whitlock smiled and took the Budweiser from Kruger.

‘Don’t lie, you’ve just had enough of Dr Kildare.’ He had never lost his distinctive public school accent.

‘I don’t know how Carmen can put up with him.’

‘Carmen?’ Whitlock snorted. ‘Spare a thought for me. At least I’ve got an excuse to miss today’s lecture.’ He picked up the tongs to check the meat. ‘Carmen regards him as a kind of guru and I’m the first to admit he’s been an invaluable catalyst in her career, but I wish he could talk about something other than medicine.’

Kruger grinned then moved to the railing where he watched two female joggers passing beneath him, their bronzed legs moving in rhythmic unison. When they disappeared he turned his attention to a couple of girls who were laughing and giggling as they flung an orange frisbee at each other.

‘You should get yourself a telescope C.W. You could spend the whole day stargazing.’

‘I’d see a lot more stars when Carmen hit me over the head with it. Anyway, those two aren’t much older than Rosie.’

‘None of us are getting any younger,’ Kruger replied wistfully.

‘How is Rosie? We haven’t seen her around here for a while.’

Kruger put a hand on Whitlock’s shoulder. ‘I know. We were counting on her coming with us today but she’d already made plans to meet some friends in Times Square.’

‘Come on Eddie, it’s hardly fair to expect a fifteen-year-old to give up her Saturday, especially one like today, to sit around with a bunch of old fogeys. It’s only natural she should want to be with kids her own age.’

Carmen appeared in the doorway, her hands pushed into the pockets of her flared skirt.

‘How’s the food coming on?’

‘A few more minutes yet. Is school out already?’

She rolled her eyes then returned inside.

Kruger stared after her. ‘It’s weird, a peadiatrician without kids of her own.’

‘I don’t see why,’ Whitlock replied without looking up from the grill. ‘You can have too much of a good thing.’

The telephone rang in the lounge and Carmen answered it on the extension in the kitchen.

‘C.W., it’s for you,’ she called out, her hand cupped over the mouthpiece. He went through to the kitchen and knew immediately who the caller was by the apprehension in her eyes. She handed the receiver to him and left the room without a word, closing the door quietly behind her.

When he emerged Carmen was absently rearranging the chrysanthemums in the crystal vase on the table in the hallway. As he approached her he thought of Mike Graham, the third member of the team, who had lost his family so tragically the year prior to his recruitment by UNACO. What if Carmen’s life were put at stake as a direct result of a UNACO assignment?

Would he react as Graham had done? He dismissed the question as so much supposition, but when he tried to give her a reassuring hug she wriggled free and went out on to the balcony to join the others.

The question stayed in the back of his mind.

‘Get rid of the bum!’ Mike Graham snapped when the radio commentator announced the second strike against the batter. He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees, his eyes riveted to the portable radio at his feet as he waited for the pitcher’s next delivery.

‘Strike three, side out,’ the commentator shouted above the disparaging cries of the partisan crowd.

‘Why the hell didn’t they sell you to the Angels when they had the chance?’ Graham hissed angrily.

It had been an indifferent season for the New York Yankees, the team he had followed faithfully for thirty years, and, at 4-1 down to the Detroit Tigers with two innings left, defeat seemed to be on the cards for a third successive game.

As the commentator began to analyse the Yankees’ seasonal batting averages Graham looked around slowly at the tranquillity of his surroundings. In front of him, as far as the eye could see, was the serenity of Lake Champlain, and all about him were the lush verdant forests of southern Vermont. The panoramic grandeur of the place seemed a world away from New York, which had been his home until two years before. New York was 130 miles away and, apart from business trips, he only ever returned there to compete in some of the city’s more gruelling and arduous marathons. He lived alone in a log cabin beside the lake, his only company a portable radio and television. The nearest town was Burlington and he travelled the five miles there each Monday morning in his battered white ‘78 Ford pick-up to collect enough supplies to last him through the week. He had always been friendly but reserved with the townsfolk who, in the main, accepted his reclusive lifestyle without question. He never spoke of the tragedy which had driven him into seclusion.

He was thirty-seven years old with tousled collar-length auburn hair and a youthfully handsome face marred by the cynicism in his penetrating pale-blue eyes. He kept his firm, muscular body in shape with an hour’s run every morning followed by a demanding work-out in the small shed adjacent to the cabin which he had converted into a mini-gym soon after arriving from New York.

Sport had played a significant part in his life. He was granted a football scholarship to attend UCLA and after graduating with a degree in Political Science his dream was realized when he signed for the New York Giants, the team he had supported since childhood, as a rookie quarterback. A month later he was drafted into Vietnam where a shoulder wound abruptly put an end to his promising football career. He subsequently became involved in the training of Meo tribesmen in Thailand and joined the elite Delta anti-terrorist unit on his return to the States.

His dedication and expertise with Delta were finally rewarded after eleven years when he was promoted to leader of Squadron B, with sixteen men under his command, but while he was on assignment in Libya his wife and five-year-old son were abducted by Arab terrorists in New York. Despite a nationwide search by the FBI he never saw either of them again. He was immediately given extended leave to undergo psychiatric therapy but refused to cooperate with the medical staff and was retired from Delta at his own request a month after he returned to work. At the suggestion of the Delta Commander he applied for a post at UNACO and was finally accepted six weeks later after a succession of exhaustive interviews.

The spinner dipped under the water. He had a bite. As he reeled the fish in he listened with a growing sense of dismay and despair to the baseball commentary on the radio. The score was unchanged and the Yankees were batting in the ninth, and last, inning. He landed the fish without any difficulty. A five pound pike, hardly worth the effort. The bleeper attached to his belt suddenly shrilled into life and after silencing it he eased the hook from the mouth of the pike thrashing about at his feet and brushed it back into the water with the side of his boot.

The game ended in jeers and abusive chants. He resisted the temptation to kick the radio in after the fish then sprinted the forty yards to the cabin where he made a telephone call to acknowledge the bleeper.

It was answered at the other end after the first ring by a friendly, but formal, female voice.

‘Llewelyn and Lee, good afternoon.’

‘Mike Graham, ID 1913204.’

‘I’m putting you through, Mr Graham,’ came the immediate reply.

‘Mike?’ a deep voice boomed down the line a moment later.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Code Red. I’ve chartered a Cessna from Nash, saves us sending a plane from our end. He’s waiting for you at the Burlington airstrip. Sergei will be waiting for you at JFK.’

‘I’m on my way, sir.’

‘And Mike, pack some warm clothes. You’ll need them.’

He replaced the receiver then hurried back to the water’s edge where he gathered together his tackle before returning to the cabin to pack.

Sergei Kolchinsky was the stereotyped image of a chain smoker. Early fifties, thinning black hair, the unmistakeable signs of middle-age spread and the sort of doleful features that gave the impression he was carrying the troubles of the world on his shoulders. The strange thing was that he derived no real enjoyment from smoking. It had just become a costly, and addictive, habit. Yet behind those melancholy eyes lay a brilliant tactical mind.

Following a distinguished career with the KGB, including sixteen years as a military attaché in a succession of western countries, he was appointed as Deputy Director of UNACO after his predecessor had been sent back to Russia in disgrace for spying. He had been with UNACO now for three years and although he still suffered from bouts of homesickness he never allowed those feelings to interfere with his work. His clinical approach to his job had always been one of complete professionalism.

‘This cab free, tavarishch?’

Kolchinsky looked round sharply at the face peering through the open passenger-door window. He smiled, then scrambled from the white BMW 728, crushing the half-smoked cigarette underfoot. ‘Hello Michael, I wasn’t expecting you for another twenty minutes.’

Kolchinsky was the only person Graham knew who called him Michael. Not that it bothered him. After all, it was his name.

‘I told Nash to step on it. The boss sounded agitated when I spoke to him over the phone.’

‘He’s got reason to be,’ Kolchinsky replied, opening the boot so Graham could deposit his two black holdalls.

‘When’s the briefing?’

‘As soon as we get to the UN,’ Kolchinsky answered, then snapped his seatbelt into place. ‘Sabrina and C.W. should be there already.’

‘Have you been briefed yet?’

Kolchinsky started the engine, glanced in the side mirror, and pulled away from the kerb.

‘Naturally. And no, I’m not telling you anything.’

‘I never said a word.’

‘You didn’t have to. Put some music on; the cassettes are in the glove compartment.’

Graham found three tapes, holding up each one in turn. ‘They’re all Mozart. Haven’t you got anything else?’

‘Mozart’s the perfect driving music,’ Kolchinsky replied, lighting another cigarette.

Graham reluctantly pushed one of the cassettes into the system, waved the cigarette smoke irritably from his face, then turned his attention to the New York skyline and started to name the numerous skyscrapers to himself in an attempt to pass the time.

Officially, UNACO didn’t exist. Its name was absent from all the directional boards in the United Nations foyer and none of its thirty telephone lines was listed in any of the New York directories. When someone did ring one of the numbers it was answered by a receptionist on behalf of ‘Llewelyn and Lee’. If the caller could identify himself either by an ID number or a codeword his call would be transferred to the relevant extension. If it was a wrong number, no harm had been done. Not surprisingly ‘Llewelyn and Lee’ were also unlisted in the city directories. The receptionist presided over a small office on the twenty-second floor of the United Nations Building, its unmarked door locked at all times and only accessible to authorized personnel. Apart from her desk and swivel chair, the only other furniture was a burgundy-coloured couch and two matching armchairs. Three of the walls were papered in a light cream colour and decorated with a selection of framed sketches of the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, commissioned by the Secretary-General himself. The fourth wall was constructed of rows of teak slats, incorporated into which were two seamless sliding doors, impossible to detect with the naked eye and only capable of being activated by miniature sonic transmitters.

The door to the right led into the UNACO command centre, manned round the clock by teams of analysts monitoring the fluctuating developments in world affairs. Massive multicoloured electronic charts and maps plotted the vacillating movements in known trouble-spots, computer print-outs updated existing material and VDUs displayed detailed information on known criminals at the touch of a button, feeding off the thousands of names stored in the system’s central memory bank. It was the nerve centre of UNACO’s highly sophisticated world operation. The door to the left could only be opened by one person. It was the Director’s private office.

Malcolm Philpott had been the UNACO Director ever since its inception, having spent the previous seven years as head of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. He was in his mid-fifties with a gaunt face and thinning wavy red hair.

There were 209 employees working for UNACO, thirty of those being crack field agents siphoned off from police and intelligence agencies around the world. Ten teams, each with three operatives, able to cross international boundaries without fear of breaking the law or breaching protocol. There was no pecking order; each team had its own individuality and style.

That was certainly the case with Strike Force Three. Of all his field agents Philpott had known Whitlock the longest, having personally recruited him for MI5 at Oxford University. He had liaised closely with him as a handler until his transfer to the Operations Planning Department, but Whitlock never really got on with his new handler and jumped at the chance to work with Philpott again. Whitlock was the master of patience; nothing ever seemed to rile him, which was just as well considering the simmering tension between Sabrina and Graham.

When Sabrina’s dossier had arrived on his desk from the FBI Director he was initially sceptical about her abilities but quickly changed his mind after meeting her. She was both friendly and intelligent with none of the vanity so often associated with beautiful women. Then he had been treated to a display of her marksmanship, involving both moving and stationary targets. She was, without question, the finest shot he had ever seen. He had never regretted the day he welcomed her to UNACO. Graham, on the other hand, had nearly slipped through the net. The Delta Commander had contacted the Secretary-General instead of Philpott to put Graham’s case forward. The Secretary-General rejected Graham on the basis of his psychiatric report.

Philpott had then been contacted by Graham personally on the advice of the Delta Commander. Philpott had been furious that the Secretary-General had failed to consult him and after several meetings with Graham overruled the decision, accepting Graham on to the team on a probationary basis, on the understanding that he would be subjected to periodic re-evaluation. Graham still bore the mental scars of his tragedy but he had proved to be an excellent operative and Philpott had no intention of letting him go.

Philpott pressed a button on his desk intercom.

‘Sarah, send them through.’

Although he had left his native Scotland as a boy his voice still contained traces of his Celtic background. He pointed the miniature transmitter at the door and pressed the button. The door slid open.

When they had all come in he closed it again. He indicated the two black leather couches against the wall and Kolchinsky was the first to sit down, immediately lighting up a cigarette.

‘If you want tea or coffee, help yourself,’ Philpott said, waving in the general direction of the dispenser to the right of his desk.

‘Milk, no sugar,’ Graham said to Sabrina then eased himself on to the couch beside Kolchinsky.

Sabrina glared at him, arms akimbo. ‘I’m not your personal maid.’

Whitlock saw the anger in Philpott’s eyes and stepped forward with a placating smile. ‘Let Uncle Tom get it. My ancestors had plenty of practice, it’s second nature to me by now.’

‘It’s okay, C.W., I’ll get it,’ she muttered.

‘Sabrina!’

She turned to Philpott, who was pointing at the couch behind her. She sat down without a word and shook her head when Whitlock asked if she wanted coffee.Whitlock poured two cups of coffee then returned to his seat with one after handing the other to Graham.

Philpott opened the file in front of him. ‘As I said to you all over the phone, it’s a Code Red operation. Time isn’t on our side. There isn’t much to go on but these are the facts as we know them. A vagrant was discovered yesterday in Linz, the skin on his face and hands severely burnt almost as though he had been in a fire. On further examination at the hospital it was discovered that he had lost most of his teeth and hair and there was irreparable damage to the stomach and intestines as well as to the central nervous system. The doctors were unanimous in their diagnoses. Somatic radiation poisoning. An instantaneously absorbed dose of five grays would prove fatal within the space of two weeks. The autopsy revealed he had absorbed three times that amount.’

‘What are grays?’ Graham asked.

‘It’s the SI unit to measure absorbed doses of radiation,’ Whitlock answered without looking at him.

Philpott nodded, then continued. ‘He managed to give the authorities a few sketchy details before he died. He jumped a freight train at Wissembourg on the Franco-German border and found six beer kegs in the car, but when he broke one of them open he was showered in fine powder. He then covered the kegs with a tarpaulin and left the train at Strasbourg. Three days later he was found in Linz.’

‘Have the doctors identified the radioactive substance?’ Whitlock asked.

‘Plutonium-IV.’

‘Used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons,’ Whitlock added grimly.

‘So the kegs could be anywhere in Europe by now,’ Sabrina said.

Philpott tamped a wad of tobacco into his briar pipe and lit it carefully before looking up at Sabrina. ‘Correction. Those kegs could be anywhere in the world by now. They must be found, and quickly.’

Kolchinsky got to his feet and paced the length of the room before turning to face the others.

‘That damaged keg’s a time bomb. You’ve heard what happened when a few particles came into contact with the vagrant. Imagine the consequences if its entire contents were to escape into the atmosphere. Chernobyl’s still fresh in everyone’s mind. It’s absolutely imperative that we avoid another nuclear disaster.’

Philpott paused before speaking to give added impact to Kolchinsky’s words. ‘Mike, Sabrina, you’ll work together to trace those kegs. And for God’s sake bury the hatchet.’

They both nodded sombrely.

‘What about finding out who’s behind the shipment?’ Graham asked, breaking the brief silence.

‘Your only concern is to find the plutonium.’ Philpott jabbed the stem of his pipe towards Whitlock. ‘Anyway, with luck C.W. we’ll come up with something there. We’ve run a series of programs through the computer in the Command Centre and it’s almost certain that the plutonium originated from the nuclear recovery plant outside Mainz in West Germany. It’s the only reprocessing plant in Western Europe which specializes in the production of grade-IV plutonium. I’ve organized your usual undercover role as a freelance reporter; see what you can dig up. Initial enquiries at the plant have so far uncovered nothing. There’s no record of any shipments or thefts so we’re obviously dealing with a professional outfit.’

Kolchinsky picked up three manilla envelopes from Philpott’s desk and handed them out.

They contained the standard kit for any UNACO operation. A resume of the assignment (to be destroyed after reading), airline tickets, maps of their ultimate destinations, written confirmation of hotel reservations, contacts (if any) and a sum of money in the appropriate currency. There was no limit to the amount of money which could be used during any given assignment but at the end of it each operative had to account to Kolchinsky for his or her expenses in tabular form, supplying the relevant chits to back up the figurework. Kolchinsky’s pedantic approach towards the expense accounts had given rise to a joke amongst the field operatives that it would be better to lose a life than a chit.

Graham held up his envelope. ‘C.W.‘s bound for Mainz. Where are we going?’

Philpott exhaled, blowing the smoke upwards. ‘Strasbourg.’