The Fourth Protocol

Known simply as “Aldermaston,” the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment so beloved of peace marchers looking for a target is in fact a multidiscipline unit. Its workers do, indeed, design and build nuclear devices, but it also houses researchers into chemistry, physics, conventional explosives, engineering, pure and applied mathematics, radiobiology, medicine, health and safety standards, and electronics. By the by, it has a very fine metallurgy department.

Years earlier, one of the scientists based at Aldermaston had given a lecture to a group of intelligence officers in Ulster on the kinds of metals the IRA bombmakers favored for their devices. Preston had been one of those in the audience and had remembered the scientist’s name.

Dr. Dafydd Wynne-Evans was waiting for him in the hallway. Preston introduced himself and reminded Dr. Wynne-Evans of his lecture many years before.

“Well, well, what a memory you’ve got,” the scientist said in his lilting Welsh accent.

“All right, Mr. Preston, what can I do for you?”

Preston dug into his pocket, produced the handkerchief, and held it out to show the three disks it contained. “These were taken off somebody in Glasgow,” he said. “They defeat me. I’d like to know what they are and what they could be used for.”

The doctor looked at them closely. “Nefarious purposes, you think?”

“Could be.”

“Difficult to say without tests,” said the metallurgist. “Look, I’ve got a dinner tonight and my daughter’s wedding tomorrow. Can I run them through some tests on Monday and call you?”

“Monday will do fine,” said Preston. “I’m taking a few days off, actually. I’ll be at home. Can I give you my number in Kensington?”

Dr. Wynne-Evans hurried upstairs, locked the disks in his safe for the night, bade good-bye to Preston, and hurried to his dinner. Preston drove back to London.

While Preston was on the road, the listening station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire picked up a single squirt from a clandestine transmitter. Menwith got it first, but Brawdy in Wales and Chicksands in Bedfordshire also got a trace and computed the crossbearings.

The source was somewhere in the hills north of Sheffield.

When the Sheffield police got there, the spot turned out to be the shoulder of a lonely road between Barnsley and Pontefract. There was no one there.

Later that evening, one of the duty officers at GCHQ Cheltenham accepted a drink in the office of the duty director.

“It’s the same bugger,” the officer said. “He’s carborne and he’s got a good set. He only spent five seconds on the air, and it looks indecipherable. First the Derbyshire Peak District, now the Yorkshire hills. It looks as if he’s somewhere in the north Midlands.”

“Keep after him,” said the director. “We haven’t had a sleeper transmitter go suddenly active in ages. I wonder what he’s saying.”

What Major Valeri Petrofsky had been saying, although transmitted by his operator when he was long gone, was: Courier Two never showed. Inform soonest re arrival substitute.

The first bottle of Akhtamar stood empty on the table, and the second was well broached.

Marchenko was flushed, but he could be a two-bottle-a-day man when the mood took him, so he was still well in control.

Karpov, though he seldom drank for pleasure, and even more rarely drank alone, had seasoned his stomach for years on the diplomatic circuit. He had a good head when he needed it. Apart from that, he had forced half a pound of white butter down his throat before leaving Yasyenevo, and though he had nearly gagged on it, the fat had lined his stomach and was now retarding the onset of the alcohol’s effect.

“What are you up to these days, Petya?” he asked, dropping into the diminutive and familiar form of the name.

Marchenko’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

“Come on, Petya, we go back a long way. Remember when I saved your ass in Afghanistan three years back? You owe me a favor. What’s going on?”

Marchenko remembered. He nodded solemnly. In 1984 he had been heading a big GRU operation against the Muslim rebels up near the Khyber Pass. There was one particularly outstanding guerrilla leader who ran raids into Afghanistan, using as his bases the refugee camps inside Pakistan. Marchenko had rashly sent a snatch-squad over the border to get him. They had run into bad trouble. The pro-Soviet Afghans had been unmasked by the Pathans and had died horribly. The single Russian accompanying them was lucky to survive; the Pathans had handed him to the Pakistani authorities of the North-West Frontier District, hoping for some arms in exchange.

Marchenko had been out on a limb. He had appealed to Karpov, then head of the Illegals Directorate, and Karpov had endangered one of his best undercover Pakistani officers in Islamabad to get the Russian sprung and back over the border. A big international incident then could have broken Marchenko, and he would have joined the long list of Soviet officers whose careers had crashed in that miserable country.