Free Manhunt by James Barrington Page B

who was anorexic almost to the point of starvation but still possessed a pair of the largest breasts Richter had ever seen, so he settled for an alleged Cornish pasty – but
which had obviously begun its life somewhere well to the east of Slough – and some slightly soggy chips. But the coffee was good enough for him to order a second cup, and his hunger had
subsided by the time he finally stepped out onto the pavement and looked hopefully up and down the street.
    There were no taxis in sight, but the day was fine, so he decided to walk to the closest tube station. Ninety minutes later found him stepping off the train at Uxbridge station, for a short walk
to the local RAF station, which was one of the many non-flying Royal Air Force establishments dotted around Britain. Not for nothing, he reflected, were RAF personnel sometimes known dismissively
as ‘penguins’, because only about one in a million of them actually flew.
    Back in his room, Richter put the briefcase on the desk and used the key Simpson had given him to unlock it. Inside was a Nokia GSM mobile phone and charger, plus a two-pin continental adapter,
two typewritten pages of briefing notes, and a sealed A4-size manila envelope containing the diplomatic passport Simpson had promised him. Also a single economy-class ticket from Heathrow to
Vienna, one thousand euros in cash, split into fifty- and one-hundred euro notes, and a gold Visa card which he’d already signed.
    There was also a carbon copy of a sheet of paper signed by Richter and countersigned by Simpson, which listed every item contained in the briefcase, including the Visa card number and the
numbers of each of the euro notes, and even details of the briefcase itself. Simpson had also made it clear that Richter was expected to return all of those items except the cash, and he had been
instructed to produce receipts for everything he purchased and for every euro and cent he spent. That, in fact, was precisely what Richter would expect, because all government departments and
employees worked in more or less the same way, and such an excessive concentration on completely unimportant minutiae was typical of the breed.
    He’d already read through the briefing sheets at Hammersmith but before he went downstairs to have an early meal in the dining room he decided to look through them again. He’d given
no hint of it while he’d been at Hammersmith, but he was reasonably certain that there must be a lot that both Simpson and Gibson – or whatever his real name was – had so far
neglected to tell him.
    As he’d informed Gibson, the briefing had been clear enough; but it just didn’t make any sense. What Simpson had explained to him subsequently had clarified matters considerably, but
Richter hadn’t really bought that ‘defector running across Europe’ story. What was clear was that Simpson’s organization needed somebody on the ground in Austria,
Switzerland or France, for a week or so, but whether he would actually be contacted by somebody, or whether there was some other reason for his presence there, he had no idea.
    What he did know was that he was going to be watching his back carefully, from the moment he climbed out of that British Airways flight in Vienna.
    Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, London
    Sir Malcolm Holbeche rang Simpson a little before six-thirty that afternoon.
    ‘How did it go?’ Simpson asked him. ‘I presume there was no problem getting Moscow to play ball?’
    ‘None at all,’ Holbeche replied. ‘The origin of any enquiry made to the Holy of Holies there’ – he was using the term applied to the section of a British embassy
which is occupied by SIS personnel – ‘will be logged and the defecting clerk story will be confirmed.’
    ‘And at this end?’ Simpson enquired.
    ‘As expected, nobody showed anything other than purely professional interest.’
    ‘What about the other places?’ By ‘other places’, Simpson