The Fourth Protocol

He was watching the approach of a ferry, well over the horizon and beating her way toward the shelter of the harbor mole. The Cornouailles would arrive from Dieppe in thirty minutes. Somewhere on board should be Courier Five.

In fact, Courier Five was on the foredeck, watching the approach of the English coast.

He was one of those who had no car, but his ticket was for the boat train right through to London.

Anton Zelewski, his passport said, and it was perfectly accurate. A West German passport, the immigration officer noted, but there was nothing odd in that. Hundreds of thousands of West Germans have Polish-sounding names. He was passed through.

Customs examined his suitcase and his bag with the duty-free allowance, bought on board the ship. His bottle of gin and his twenty-five cigars in an unopened box were within the permitted limits. The customs officer nodded him through and turned his attention to someone else.

Zelewski had indeed bought a box of twenty-five good cigars in the duty-free shop on the Cornouailles. He had then retired to a bathroom, locked himself in, and eased the identifying duty-free labels off the newly bought box, only to stick them on an identical box he had brought with him. The other went overboard into the waiting sea.

On the train to London, Zelewski sought out the first-class carriage next to the engine, selected the required window seat, and waited. Just before Lewes, the door opened and a man in black leather stood there. A glance confirmed that the compartment was empty except for the German.

“Does this train go straight to London?” he asked in unaccented English.

“I believe it also stops at Lewes,” Zelewski replied.

The man held out his hand. Zelewski passed him the flat box of cigars. The man stuffed it under his jacket, nodded, and left. When the train started out of Lewes, Zelewski saw the man once again, on the opposite platform, waiting for a train back to Newhaven.

Before midnight the cigars joined the radio, plaster cast, and shoes in Ipswich. Courier Five had delivered.

Chapter 17

Sir Nigel was right. By Thursday, the last day of April, the reams of computer printout had shown up no pattern at all of East Bloc citizens, from whatever point of departure, entering Britain on repeated occasions over the previous forty days. Nor was there a pattern of persons of any particular nationality entering the country from the East over the same period.

A number of passports containing various irregularities had shown up, but that was par for the course. Each had been checked, its bearer strip-searched, but the answer was still a big zero. Three passports on the “stop” list had appeared; two were previous deportees seeking reentry, and one was an American underworld figure connected to gambling and narcotics. These three were also searched before being put on the next plane out, but there was not an iota of evidence that they had been couriers for Moscow.

If they’re using West Bloc citizens, or in-place illegals with impeccable documentation as West Bloc citizens, I’ll never find them, thought Preston.

Sir Nigel had again relied on his long friendship with Sir Bernard Hemmings to secure the cooperation of Five. “I have reason to believe the Center is going to try to slip an important illegal into the country in the next few weeks,” he had said. “The trouble is, Bernard, I don’t have an identity, description, or place of entry. Still, any help your contacts at the points of entry could give us would be highly appreciated.”

Sir Bernard had made the request a Five operation, and the other arms of the state—customs, immigration, Special Branch, and docks police—had agreed to keep more than the usual weather eye open either for a foreigner trying to slip past the controls or for an odd or unexplainable item being carried in as luggage.

The explanation was plausible enough, and not even Brian Harcourt-Smith linked it to the report by John Preston on the polonium disk; the report was still in his pending tray while he considered what to do with it.

The camper van arrived on May Day. It had West German registration and came in to Dover on the ferry from Calais. The owner and driver, whose papers were in perfect order, was Helmut Dorn, and he had with him his wife, Lisa, and their two small children, Uwe, a flaxen-haired boy of five, and Brigitte, their seven-year-old daughter.

When they had passed immigration, the van rolled toward the nothing-to-declare green zone of customs, but one of the waiting officers gestured it to stop. After reexamining the papers, the customs official asked to look in the back. Herr Dorn complied.

The two children were playing in the living area and stopped when the uniformed customs man entered. He nodded and smiled at them; they giggled. He glanced around the neat and tidy interior, then began to look into the cupboards. If Herr Dorn was nervous, he hid it well.