“That evening, one of our friends, a man very close to Mr. Kinnock, would have urged the Labour leader to fly to Moscow, see the General Secretary personally, and intervene for peace. Had there been any hesitation, our own ambassador would have invited him to the embassy for friendly discussions of the crisis. With the cameras on him, it was doubtful he would have resisted.
“Well, he would have been issued a visa within minutes, and flown on Aeroflot the next morning at dawn. The General Secretary would have received him before the cameras of the world’s press, and a few hours later they would have parted, both looking extremely grave.”
“As, no doubt, he would have been given cause to look,” suggested Karpov.
“Precisely. But while he was still airborne on his way back to London in the evening, the General Secretary would have issued a statement to the world: wholly and solely as a result of the plea of the British Labour leader, he, the General Secretary, was standing all Soviet forces down to green status. Mr. Kinnock would have landed in London with the stature of a global statesman.
“The day before polling, he would have made a resounding speech to the British nation on the issue of a final renunciation of the nuclear madness once and for all. It was calculated in Plan Aurora that the events of the previous six days would have shattered the traditional Anglo-American alliance, isolated the United States from all European sympathy, and swung ten percent—the vital ten percent—of the British electorate to vote Labour into office. After that, the Hard Left would have taken over. And that, General, was Plan Aurora.”
Karpov rose. “You have been very kind, Professor. And very wise. Remain silent, and I shall, also. As you say, it’s all archival now. And your son’s file will remain in my safe for a very long time. Good-bye. I do not think I shall be troubling you again.”
He leaned back against the cushions as the Chaika swept him away down Komsomolski Prospekt. Oh, yes, it’s brilliant, he thought, but is there time?
Like the General Secretary, Karpov, too, knew of the forthcoming election in Britain, slated for that June, nine weeks away. The information to the General Secretary had, after all, come through his rezidentura in the London embassy.
He ran the plan over and over in his mind, seeking the flaws. It’s good, he thought at last, damn good. Just so long as it works. ... The alternative would be catastrophic.
* * *
“An initiator, my dear man, is a sort of detonator for a bomb,” said Dr. Wynne-Evans.
“Oh,” said Preston. He felt somewhat deflated. There had been bombs before in Britain. Nasty but local. He had seen quite a few in Ireland. He had heard of detonators, primers, triggers, but never an initiator. Still, it looked as if the Russian, Semyonov, had been carrying in a component for a terrorist group somewhere in Scotland. Which group? Tartan Army? Anarchists? Or an IRA active service unit? The Russian connection was odd; very much worth the trip to Glasgow.
“This ... er ... initiator of polonium and lithium—would it be used in an antipersonnel bomb?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, you could say so, boyo,” replied the Welshman. “An initiator, you see, is what sets off a nuke.”
PART THREE
Chapter 16
Brian Harcourt-Smith listened attentively, leaning back, eyes on the ceiling, fingers toying with a slim gold pencil. “That’s it?” he asked when Preston had finished his verbal report.
“Yes,” said Preston.
“This Dr. Wynne-Evans, is he prepared to put his deductions in written form?”
“Hardly deductions, Brian. It’s a scientific analysis of the metal, coupled with its only two known uses. And yes, he has agreed to put it in the form of a written report. I’ll attach it to my own.”
“And your own deductions? Or should I say scientific analysis?”
Preston ignored the patronizing tone. “I think it inescapable that Semyonov arrived in Glasgow to deposit his tin and its contents in a dead drop or hand it over to someone he was due to meet,” he said. “Either way, that means there is an illegal here, on the ground. I think we could try to find him.”
“A charming idea. The trouble is, we haven’t a clue where to start. Look, John, let me be frank. You leave me, as so often, in an extremely difficult position. I really do not see how I can take this matter higher unless you can provide me with a little more evidence than a single disk of rare metal taken from a lamentably dead Russian seaman.”
“It’s been identified as one half of the initiator of a nuclear device,” Preston pointed out. “It’s hardly just a bit of metal.”
“Very well. One half of what might be the trigger of what might be a device—which might have been destined for a Soviet illegal who might be resident in Britain, Believe me, John, when you submit your full report I shall, as ever, consider it with the greatest gravity.”
“And then NFA it?” asked Preston.
Harcourt-Smith’s smile was unfaltering and dangerous. “Not necessarily. Any report from you will be treated on its merits, like anyone else’s. Now I suggest you try to find for me at least some corroborative evidence to support your evident predilection for the conspiracy theory. Make that your next priority.”
“All right,” said Preston as he rose. “I’ll get right on it.”
“You do that,” said Harcourt-Smith.
When Preston had gone, the Deputy Director-General consulted a list of in-house phone numbers and called the head of Personnel.
On the following day, Wednesday, April 15, a British Midland Airways flight from Paris touched down about noon at Birmingham’s West Midlands Airport. Among the passengers was a young man with a Danish passport.
The name on the passport was also Danish, and had anyone been so curious as to address him in Danish, he would have responded fluently. He had in fact had a Danish mother, from whom he had acquired his basic grasp of the language, now honed to perfection in several language schools and on visits to Denmark.
His father, however, had been a German, and the young man, born well after the Second World War, originated from Erfurt, where he had been raised. That made him an East German. He also happened to be a staff officer in the East German SSD intelligence service.
He had no idea of the significance of his mission in Britain, nor did he care to find out. His instructions were simple and he followed them to the letter. Passing without difficulty through customs and immigration, he hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the Midland Hotel on New Street. Throughout the journey, and during the check-in procedures, he was careful to favor his left arm, which was encased in a plaster cast. He had been warned, if warning had been necessary, that under no circumstances was he to attempt to pick up his suitcase with the “broken” arm.
Once in his room, he locked the door and went to work on the plaster cast with the tough steel cutters tucked at the bottom of his shaving kit, carefully snipping down the inside of the forearm, along the line of tiny indentations that marked the cutting path.
When the incision was complete, he prised the cast open half an inch and withdrew his arm, wrist, and hand. The empty cast he dropped into the plastic shopping bag he brought with him.
He spent the entire afternoon in his room so that the day staff at the reception desk should not see him with the cast off, and left the hotel only late at night, when a different staff was on duty.
The newspaper kiosk at New Street Station was where they had said the rendezvous would take place, and at the appointed hour a figure in black leather motorcycle clothing approached him. The muttered exchange of identification took seconds, the shopping bag changed hands, and the figure in leather was gone. Neither of them had attracted a passing glance.
At the hour of dawn, when the night staff at the hotel was still on duty, the Dane checked out, took the early train to Manchester, and flew out from that airport, where no one had ever seen him before, with or without a plaster cast. By sundown, via Hamburg, he was back in Berlin, where as a Dane he went through the Wall at Checkpoint
Charlie. His own people met him on the other side, heard his report, and spirited him away. Courier Three had delivered.
John Preston was annoyed and not in the best of humors. The week he had arranged to take off work to be with Tommy was being ruined. Tuesday had been partly taken up with his verbal report to Harcourt-Smith, and Tommy had had to spend the day reading or watching television.
Preston had insisted on keeping their date to go to Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum on Wednesday morning, but had come into the office in the afternoon to finish his written report. The letter from Crichton in Personnel was on his desk. He read it with something close to disbelief.
It was couched, as ever, in the friendliest terms. A glance at the files had shown that Preston was owed four weeks’ leave; he would be, of course, aware of the rules of the service; backlogging of leave was not encouraged for obvious reasons; necessity to keep all vacation time up to date, blah, blah, blah. In short, he would be required to take his accumulated leave forthwith—that is, as of the following morning.
“Bloody idiots,” he called to the office in general, “some of them couldn’t find their way to the can without a Labrador.”
He called Personnel and insisted on speaking to Crichton personally.
“Tim, it’s me, John Preston. Look, what’s this letter doing on my desk? I can’t take leave now; I’m on a case, right in the middle of it. ... Yes, I know it’s important not to backlog leave, but this case is also important, a damn sight more so, actually.”
He heard out the bureaucrat’s explanation concerning the disruption caused to the system if staffers accumulated too much vacation time, then cut in. “Look, Tim, let’s keep it short. All you have to do is call Brian Harcourt-Smith. He’ll vouch for the importance of the case I’m on. I can take the time in the summer.”
“John,” said Tim Crichton gently, “that letter was written at the express orders of Brian.”
Preston stared at the receiver for several moments. “I see,” he said finally, and put it down.
“Where are you going?” asked Bright as he headed for the door.
“To get a stiff drink,” said Preston.
It was well after the lunch hour and the bar was almost empty. The late-lunch crowd had not yet been replaced by the early-evening thirst-quenchers. There was a couple over from Charles Street having a head-to-head in one corner, so Preston took a stool at the bar. He wanted to be alone. “Whisky,” he said, “a large one.”
“Same for me,” said a voice at his elbow. “And it’s my round.”
Preston turned to see Barry Banks of K7.
“Hello, John,” said Banks, “saw you scooting down here as I was crossing the lobby. Just wanted to say I have something for you. The Master was most grateful.”
“Oh, yes, that. Not at all.”
“I’ll bring it to your office tomorrow,” said Banks.
“Don’t bother,” said Preston angrily. “We are down here to celebrate my four weeks of leave. Beginning as of tomorrow. Enforced. Cheers.”
“Don’t knock it,” said Banks gently. “Most people can’t wait to get away from the place.” He had already noticed that Preston was nursing a grudge of some kind and intended to ease the reason for it from his MI5 colleague. What he was not able to tell Preston was that he had been asked by Sir Nigel Irvine to cultivate Harcourt-Smith’s black sheep and to report back on what he had learned.
An hour and three whiskies later, Preston was still sunk in gloom. “I’m thinking of quitting,” he said suddenly.
Banks, a good listener who interrupted only to extract information, was concerned. “Pretty drastic,” he said. “Are things that bad?”
“Look, Barry, I don’t mind free-falling from twenty thousand feet. I don’t even mind people taking potshots at me when the chute opens. But I get bloody annoyed when the flak’s coming from my own side. Is that unreasonable?”
“Sounds perfectly justified to me,” said Banks. “So who’s shooting?”
“The whiz kid upstairs,” growled Preston. “Just put in another report he didn’t seem to like.”
“NFA’ed again?”
Preston shrugged. “It will be.”
The door opened to admit a crowd from Five. Brian Harcourt-Smith was at the center of it, several of his heads of section around him.
Preston drained his glass. “Well, I must love you and leave you. Taking my boy to the movies tonight.”
When Preston had gone, Barry Banks finished his drink, avoided an invitation to join the group at the bar, and went to his office. From there he made a long phone call to C in his office in Sentinel House.
It was not until the small hours of Thursday that Major Petrofsky arrived back at Cherryhayes Close. The black leathers and visored mask were with the BMW in their garage at Thetford. When he drove his little Ford quietly onto the hard pad in front of his garage and let himself into the house, he was in a sober suit and light raincoat. No one noticed him or the plastic shopping bag in his hand.
With the door firmly locked behind him, he went upstairs and pulled open the bottom drawer of the clothes chest. Inside was a Sony transistor radio. Beside it he laid the empty plaster cast.
He did not interfere with either item. He did not know what they contained, nor did he wish to find out. That would be for the assembler, who would not arrive to perform his task until the complete list of required components had been safely received.
Before sleeping, Petrofsky made himself a cup of tea. There were nine couriers in all. That meant nine first rendezvous and nine backups in case of a no-show at the first meeting. He had memorized them all, plus another six that represented the three extra couriers to be used as replacements if necessary.
One of those would now have to be called on, as Courier Two had failed to show. Petrofsky had no idea why that rendezvous had failed. Far away in Moscow, Major Volkov knew. Moscow had had a complete report from the Glasgow consul, who had assured his government that the dead seaman’s effects were locked up in Partick police station and would remain there until further notice.
Petrofsky checked his mental list. Courier Four was due in four days, and the meet was to be in the West End of London. It was dawn of the sixteenth when he slept. As he drifted off, he could hear the whine of a milk truck entering the street and the clatter of the day’s first deliveries.
This time, Banks was more open. He was waiting for Preston in the lobby of his apartment building when the MI5 man drove up on Friday afternoon with Tommy in the passenger seat.
The pair of them had been out at the Hendon Aircraft Museum, where the boy, enthused by the fighter planes of bygone ages, had announced he intended to be a pilot when he grew up. His father knew he had decided on at least six careers in the past, and would have changed his mind again before the year was out. It had been a good afternoon.
Banks seemed surprised to see the boy; he had evidently not expected his presence. He nodded and smiled, and Preston introduced him to Tommy as “someone from the office.”
“What is it this time?” asked Preston.
“A colleague of mine wants another word with you,” said Banks carefully.
“Will Monday do?” asked Preston. On Sunday his week with Tommy would be over and he would drive the boy to Mayfair to hand him over to Julia.
“Actually, he’s waiting for you now.”
“Back seat of a car again?” asked Preston.
“Er ... no. Small flat we keep in Chelsea.”
Preston sighed. “Give me the address. I’ll go, and you take Tommy up the street for an ice cream.”
“I’ll have to check,” said Banks.
He went into a nearby phone booth and made a call. Preston and his son waited on the sidewalk. Banks came back and nodded.
“It’s all right,” he said, and gave Preston a piece of paper. Preston drove off while Tommy showed Banks the way to his favorite ice-cream parlor.
The flat was small and discreet, in a modern building off Chelsea Man
or Street. Sir Nigel answered the door himself. He was, as usual, full of Old World courtesy. “My dear John, how good of you to come.” If someone had been brought into his presence trussed like a chicken and borne by four heavies, he still would have said: “How good of you to come.”
When they were seated in the small sitting room, the Master held out the original Preston report. “My sincere thanks. Extremely interesting.”
“But not believable, apparently.”
Sir Nigel glanced at the younger man sharply but chose his words with care. “I would not necessarily agree to that.” Then he smiled quickly and changed the subject. “Now, please don’t think ill of Barry, but I asked him to keep an eye on you. It appears you are not too happy in your work at present.”
“I’m not in work at present, sir. I’m on compulsory leave.”
“So I gather. Something that happened in Glasgow, was it?”
“You haven’t received a report yet on the Glasgow incident of last week? It concerned a Russian seaman, a man I believe was a courier. Surely that involves Six?”
“Doubtless it will be on its way before long,” said Sir Nigel carefully. “Would you be kind enough to tell me about it?”
Preston started at the beginning and told the tale through to the end, so far as he knew it. Sir Nigel sat as if lost in thought, which he was: taking in every word with part of his mind and calculating with the rest.
They would not really try it, would they? he was thinking. Not breach the Fourth protocol? Or would they? Desperate men sometimes take desperate measures, and he had several reasons to know that in a number of areas—food production, the economy, the war in Afghanistan—the USSR was in desperate waters. He noted that Preston had stopped talking. “Do forgive me,” he said. “What do you deduce from it all?”
“I believe Semyonov was not a merchant navy deckhand, but a courier. That conclusion seems to me unavoidable. I do not believe he would have gone to those lengths to protect what he was carrying, or to end his life to avoid what he must have thought would be interrogation by us, unless he had been instructed his mission was of crucial importance.”