The Fourth Protocol

After a few minutes, a young black man with earphones over his head and a Walkman clipped to his belt came in and sat three rows away. Once seated, the man nodded his head in time to the apparent reggae blasting into his ears, closed his eyes, and enjoyed his music. One of Burkinshaw’s team was in place; the earphones were silent of reggae music but were picking up Harry’s instruction on strength five.

One of Burkinshaw’s team took the front carriage, and Harry himself and John Preston the third, so that Winkler was boxed. The fourth man took a first-class seat in the last car in case Winkler did a “runner” down the train to shake off what he thought was a tail.

At 9:25 on the dot the Inter-City 125 hissed out of St. Paneras and headed north. At 9:30 Brian Harcourt-Smith was traced to the dining room of his club and called to the phone. It was Simon Margery. What he heard caused the Deputy Director-General of Five to hasten outside, grab a taxi, and race the two miles across the West End to Charles Street. On his desk he found the order written out earlier that afternoon by Sir Bernard Hemmings. He went quite pale with rage.

He was a highly self-disciplined man, and after thinking the matter over for several minutes, he picked up the phone and in his usual courteous manner asked the operator to get the service’s legal adviser at his home. The legal adviser is the man who does most of the liaison between the service and the Special Branch. While the call was going through, Harcourt-Smith checked train times to Sheffield. The legal adviser was plucked from his seat in front of the television in Camberley and came on the line.

“I need Special Branch to make an arrest,” said Harcourt-Smith. “I have reason to believe an illegal immigrant suspected of being a Soviet agent may escape surveillance.

Name: Franz Winkler; supposed Austrian citizen. Holding charge: suspected false passport. He’ll be arriving by train from London at Sheffield at eleven-fifty-nine. Yes, I know it’s short notice. That’s why it’s urgent. Yes, please get on to the commander of Special Branch at the Yard and ask him to alert his Sheffield operation to make the arrest when the train arrives at Sheffield.”

He put down the phone grimly. John Preston might have been sicced on him as field director of the surveillance team, but an arrest of a suspect was a policy matter, and that was his department.

The train was almost empty. Two carriages instead of six would have amply accommodated the sixty passengers on board. Barney, the watcher in the front carriage, shared the space with ten others, all innocent passengers. He was facing aft, so that he could see the top of Winkler’s head through the window in the intercarriage door.

Ginger, the young black with the headphones who was with Winkler in the second carriage, had five other passengers in there with him. There were a dozen sharing sixty seats with Preston and Burkinshaw in the third. For an hour and a quarter, Winkler did nothing. He had no reading matter; he just stared out of the window at the dark countryside beyond.

At 10:45, when the train slowed for Leicester, he moved. He took his suitcase off the rack, walked up the carriage, passed out to the toilet area, and pulled down the window of the door giving onto the platform. Ginger informed the rest, who prepared to move at short notice if they had to.

Another passenger pushed past Winkler as the train stopped. “Excuse, please, is this Sheffield?” Winkler asked.

“No, it’s Leicester,” the man said, and descended to the platform.

“Ah, so. Thank you,” said Winkler. He put down his suitcase, but stayed at the open window, looking up and down the platform during the brief stopover. As the train pulled out, he returned to his seat and put his suitcase back on the rack.

At 11:12 he did it again at Derby. This time he asked a porter on the platform of the cavernous concrete hall that forms Derby Station.

“Derby,” sang out the porter. “Sheffield is the one after next.”

Again, Winkler spent the stopover gazing out of the open window, then returned to his seat and tossed his suitcase onto the rack. Preston was watching him through the intercarriage door.

At 11:43 they rolled into Chesterfield, a Victorian station that is beautifully maintained with bright paintwork and hanging baskets of flowers. This time Winkler left his suitcase where it was, but went to lean out of the window as two or three passengers left the train and hurried through the ticket barrier. The platform was empty before the train began to roll. When it did, Winkler snapped open the door, jumped to the concrete, and slammed the door closed with a backward movement of his arm.

Burkinshaw was very rarely caught off balance by a Joe, but he later admitted that Winkler had got him cold. All four of the watchers could easily have made the platform, but there was not an iota of cover on that strip of stone. Winkler would have seen them and aborted his rendezvous, wherever it was.