Payback Read Free Page B

day had been the drive, and only because it had finally stopped raining and Richter had gone up to Hereford in his favourite toy. His first love had always been
motorcycles, and he hadn’t even owned a car for three or four years, simply because it was so much easier to get around London on two wheels rather than four. So it was hardly surprising that
when he’d finally decided to buy a car, what he’d chosen was more or less a four-wheeled motorbike.
    It was a jet-black Westfield Sport 2000, a spiritual descendant of the original Lotus 7. Two seats, four wheels, a long bonnet covering a two-litre engine, rudimentary weather-proofing and a
very basic interior, but with about the same power-to-weight ratio as a Saturn Five rocket. Or at least that was what it felt like to Richter. It was an animal. It could out-drag just about any
alleged ‘supercar’ on the road, irrespective of make, model and price, and it had cost him about the same as a cheap family box on wheels. He simply adored it.
    The journey back to London had been quick – very quick, as the traffic police officer indignantly pointed out to Richter when he finally caught up with him at a set of road works on the
A5, south of Weedon Bec. Richter had listened politely, waited until the man had finished, then produced a small leather folder containing a laminated exemption card that he flipped open in front
of the officer’s face. It was basically a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ permit issued to SIS – and by extension Foreign Operations Executive – operatives and agents.
    Once he was certain the traffic officer had fully read and understood it, Richter closed the wallet, slipped it back into his pocket, waved a brisk two fingers under the officer’s nose,
then engaged first gear on the Westfield and dropped the clutch. The rear wheels spun for almost seventy yards, leaving two parallel black scars on the road surface. He hit sixty in a whisker under
four and a half seconds, and he didn’t see the policeman again.
    ‘I wanted you back here two days ago.’ Simpson closed the file and fired his opening salvo. ‘I called your mobile, but it was switched off.’
    ‘I was on an exercise. I was supposed to be carrying out covert surveillance, watching a target. I’d have looked a right prat if my bloody phone had started ringing in a hole in the
middle of some field. Of course it was switched off. In fact, I didn’t even have it with me.’
    ‘Well, your little holiday playing war games with the SAS has severely inconvenienced us.’
    ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ Richter replied smoothly.
    ‘Keep your sarcasm to yourself. And another thing. Next time you use your exemption card to avoid a prosecution for speeding, don’t wave two fingers at the Black Rat who’s
stopped you.’
    Richter glanced at his watch. By his calculation, the incident at the road works had happened less than two hours ago. ‘How do you know about that?’
    ‘I know almost everything, Richter, almost all of the time. In this case, he ran your registration plate through the PNC. The plate was blocked, of course, and that raised a flag which
stopped his enquiry. The system forwarded the time, date and place of the incident to Vauxhall Cross, because Six issued the card. The duty officer contacted the patrolman who’d stopped you,
and then he told me all about it. QED. Anyway, don’t do it again.’
    ‘So why did you want me back here in such a hurry? And why are you in the office on a Sunday afternoon? Isn’t there any cricket on television?’
    ‘You’re here because the woodentops reckon they’ve discovered a terrorist cell lurking in an apartment pretty close to where we’re sitting right now.’
    ‘I presume you’re referring to the Metropolitan Police?’ Simpson’s dislike of all police officers was legendary. Richter assumed he’d been nicked as a spotty youth
by the local bobby – probably for something embarrassing. ‘And what has that got to