The Fourth Protocol

Seven of the trucks were of German registration, Ostende being a favored port on the Britain run for firms operating in north Germany. The big Hanomag articulated rig with its containerized cargo on the trailer behind was no different from all the others. The fat sheaf of paperwork that took an hour to clear was in good order and there was no reason to believe the driver worked for anyone other than the haulage contractor whose name was painted on the side of the cab. Nor was there any reason to think the rig contained anything other than its prescribed delivery of German coffeemakers for the British breakfast table.

Behind the cab, two big vertical exhaust pipes jutted toward the sky, carrying the fumes from the diesel engine up and away from other road users. It was already evening, the day shift was drawing to a weary close, and the truck was waved forward on the road to Ashford and London.

No one at Folkestone could be expected to know that one of those vertical exhaust tubes, belching dark fumes as it left the customs shed, had a bypass pipe inside it to carry the fumes, or, amid the roar of starting engines, that the sound baffles had been removed to create extra space.

Long after dark, in the parking area of a roadhouse near Lenham, in Kent, the driver climbed to the top of his cab, unbolted that exhaust pipe, and withdrew from it an eighteen-inch-long package wrapped in heatproof cladding. He never opened it; he just handed it to a black-clothed motorcyclist who sped off into the darkness. Courier Eight had delivered.

“It’s no good, Sir Nigel,” John Preston told the Chief of the SIS on Friday evening. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on. I fear the worst, but I can’t prove it. I’ve tried to find just one more of those couriers I believe have come into this country, and I’ve failed.

I think I should go back to Gordon on Monday.”

“I know how you feel, John,” said Sir Nigel. “I feel much the same. Please give me just one more week.”

“I can’t see the point,” said Preston. “What more can we do?”

“Pray, I suppose,” said C gently.

“One break,” said Preston angrily. “All I need is just one small break.”

Chapter 18

John Preston got his break the following Monday afternoon, May 25.

At just after four o’clock, an Austrian Airlines flight came into Heathrow from Vienna.

One of the travelers aboard, who presented himself at the passport desk for non-UK and non-EEC citizens, offered a perfectly authentic Austrian passport that proclaimed its bearer to be one Franz Winkler.

The immigration officer examined the familiar green, plastic-covered Reisepass, fronted by the emblematic gold eagle, with the usual apparent indifference of his profession. It was of current issue, dotted with half a dozen other European entry and exit stamps, and included a valid UK visa.

Beneath his desk the officer’s left hand tapped out the passport number, perforated through every page of the booklet. He glanced at the display screen, closed the passport, and handed it back with a brief smile. “Thank you, sir. And the next, please.”

As Herr Winkler picked up his suitcase and moved through, the officer raised his eyes to a small window twenty feet away. At the same time, his right foot pressed an “alert”

button near the floor. From the office window, one of the resident Special Branch men caught his gaze. The immigration officer looked in the direction of Herr Winkler’s back and nodded. The face of the Special Branch detective withdrew from the window and seconds later he and a colleague were slipping quietly after the Austrian. Another Special Branch man was rustling up a car in front of the concourse.

Winkler had no heavy luggage, so he ignored the carousels in the baggage hall and went straight through the green channel of customs. In the concourse he spent some time at the Midland Bank changing traveler’s checks into sterling currency, during which time one of the Special Branch men got a good photograph of him from an upper balcony.

When the Austrian took a cab from the rank in front of Number Two Building, the Special Branch officers piled into their own unmarked car and were right behind him.

The driver concentrated on following the taxi; the senior Special Branch detective used the radio to inform Scotland Yard, whence, according to procedure, the information went also to Charles Street. There was a standing order to the effect that Six was also interested in any visitor carrying a “bent” passport, so the tip-off was passed by Charles Street to Sentinel House.

Winkler took his cab as far as Bayswater and paid the driver at the junction of Edgware Road and Sussex Gardens. Then he walked, suitcase in hand, down Sussex Gardens, one side of which is almost entirely taken up with modest bed-and-breakfast boardinghouses of the type favored by commercial travelers and by late arrivals from nearby Paddington Station on modest budgets.