The Fourth Protocol

Preston and Burkinshaw ran forward to the boarding platform, where they were joined by Ginger from the carriage in front. The window was still open. Preston stuck his head out and looked back. Winkler, satisfied at last that he had no tail, was striding briskly down the platform with his back to the train.

“Harry, get back here with the team by car,” shouted Preston. “Get me on the radio when you’re in range. Ginger, close the door after me.” Then he shoved the door open, stepped to the running board, dropped into the paratrooper’s landing position, and jumped.

Paratroopers hit the deck at about eleven miles per hour; sideways speed depends on the wind. The train was doing thirty when Preston slammed into the embankment, praying he would not hit a concrete post or a large stone. He was lucky. The thick May grass took some of the shock; then he was rolling, knees together, elbows in, head down.

Harry told him later he couldn’t watch. Ginger said he was bouncing like a toy along the embankment and down toward the spinning wheels. When he finally stopped, he was lying in the gully between the grass and the roadbed. He hauled himself to his feet, turned, and began to jog back toward the lights of the station.

When he appeared at the ticket barrier, the guard was closing for the night. He looked with amazement at the grazed apparition in the torn coat.

“The last man through here,” gasped Preston, “short, stocky, gray mackintosh. Where did he go?”

The guard nodded toward the front of the station, and Preston ran. Too late, the guard realized he had not collected the ticket. At the same time, Preston was watching the taillights of a taxi sweeping out of the station and toward the town. It was the last taxi. He could, he knew, get the local police to trace the driver and ask where he had taken that fare, but he had no doubt Winkler would dismiss the cab short of his ultimate destination and walk the rest. A few feet away, a railway porter was kick-starting his moped.

“I need to borrow your bike,” said Preston.

“Bog off,” said the porter. There was no time for identification or argument; the lights of the taxi were passing under the new ring road and out of sight. So Preston hit him—

just once—on the jaw. The porter crashed over. Preston caught the falling moped, jerked it free of the man’s legs, straddled it, and rode off.

He was lucky with the traffic lights. The cab had gone up Corporation Street, and Preston would never have caught it on his tiny-engined putt-putt except that the lights outside the central library were red. When the taxi rolled down Holywell Street and into Saltergate, he was a hundred yards behind, and then he lost more ground as the bigger engine outpaced him for the straight half mile of that highway. If Winkler had been taken out into the countryside due west of Chesterfield, Preston could never have caught him.

Fortunately the taxi’s brakelights flashed on when it was a speck in the distance.

Winkler was paying the driver where Saltergate becomes Ashgate Road. As Preston closed the gap, he could see Winkler beside the cab, looking up and down the street.

There was no other traffic; Preston realized there was nothing for it but to keep going. He puttered past the halted taxi like a late homegoer about his business, swerved into Foljambe Road, and stopped.

Winkler crossed the road on foot; Preston followed. Winkler never looked back again.

He just strolled around the boundary wall of Chesterfield’s football stadium and entered Compton Street. Here he approached a house and knocked on the door. Moving between patches of shadow, Preston had reached the corner of the street and was hidden behind a bush in the garden of the corner house.

Up the street he saw lights come on in a darkened house. The door opened, there was a brief conversation on the doorstep, and Winkler went inside. Preston sighed and settled behind his bush for a night-long vigil. He could not read the number of the house Winkler had entered, nor could he watch the rear of the place as well, but he could see the towering wall of the football stadium behind the house, so perhaps there was no feasible exit on that side.

At two in the morning, he heard the faint noise of his communicator as Burkinshaw came back into range. He identified himself and gave his position. At half past two he heard the soft pad of footsteps and hissed to give his location. Burkinshaw joined him in the shrubbery.

“You all right, John?”

“Yes. He’s housed up there, second beyond the tree, with a light behind the curtain.”

“Got it. John, there was a reception party at Sheffield. Two Special Branch and three uniformed. Drummed up by London. Did you want an arrest?”

“Absolutely not. Winkler’s a courier. I want the big fish. He might be inside that house.

What happened to the Sheffield party?”