The Fourth Protocol

“Well, yes. I suppose so.” He turned toward his family. “Come on, all back in the kitchen.”

Preston rang Charles Street and was put through to Sir Bernard Hemmings, who was still at Cork. Burkinshaw had already used the police radio net to inform Cork in guarded language that the “client” was at his home in Ipswich and that the “taxis” were in the neighborhood and “on call.”

“Preston?” said the Director-General when he came on the line. “John? Where are you, exactly?”

“A small residential cul-de-sac in Ipswich, called Cherryhayes Close,” said Preston.

“We’ve run Chummy to earth. I’m certain this time it’s his base.”

“Do you think it’s time we moved in?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I fear he may be armed. I think you know what I mean. I don’t think it’s one for Special Branch or the local force.” He told his DG what he wanted, then replaced the receiver and put in a call to Sir Nigel at Sentinel House.

“Yes, John, I agree,” said C when he had been given the same information. “If he’s got with him what we think, it had better be as you ask. The SAS.”

Chapter 22

To call in the Special Air Service, Britain’s elite and multirole regiment of experts at deep penetration, observation, and (occasionally) urban assault, is not so easy as the more adventurous television dramas might suggest.

The SAS never operates on its own initiative. Under the Constitution it can, like any part of the armed forces, operate inside the United Kingdom only in support of the civil authority—that is, the police. Thus, ostensibly the local police remain in overall command of the operation. In reality, once the SAS men have been given the “go” order, the local police are well advised to step smartly back.

Under the law, it is the chief constable of a county in which an emergency has arisen—

an emergency that the local police are deemed not to be able to handle unassisted—who must make a formal request to the Home Office for the SAS to be brought in. It may be that the chief constable is “advised” to make the request, and it is a bold man indeed who refuses to do so if the “advice” comes from high enough.

When the chief constable has made his formal request to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office, the latter passes the request to his opposite number in Defense, who in turn apprises the director of military operations of the request, and the DMO alerts the SAS at its Hereford base camp.

That the procedure can work within minutes is due in part to the fact that it has been rehearsed over and over again and honed to a fine art, and partly to the fact that the British establishment, when required to move fast, contains enough interpersonal relationships to permit a great deal of procedure to be kept at verbal level, with the inevitable paperwork left to catch up later. British bureaucracy may appear slow and cumbersome to the British, but it is greased lightning compared to its European and American counterparts. In any case, most British chief constables have been to Hereford to meet the unit known simply as “the Regiment” and to be shown exactly what kinds of assistance can be put at their disposal if requested. Few have emerged unimpressed.

That morning the chief constable of Suffolk was told from London of the crisis that had been visited on him in the form of a suspected foreign agent, believed to be armed and perhaps with a bomb, who was holed up in Cherryhayes Close, Ipswich. The chief constable contacted Sir Hubert Villiers in Whitehall, where his call was expected. Sir Hubert briefed his minister and his colleague the Cabinet Secretary, who informed the Prime Minister. Downing Street’s assent having been obtained, Sir Hubert passed the by now politically cleared request to Sir Peregrine Jones at Defense, who knew it all, anyway, because he had had a chat with Sir Martin Flannery. Within sixty minutes of the first contact between the head of the Suffolk constabulary and the Home Office, the director of military operations was talking on a scrambled line to the commanding officer of the SAS at Hereford.

The fighting arm of the SAS is based on units of four. Four men make up a patrol, four patrols a troop, and four troops a squadron. The four “saber” squadrons are A, B, D, and G. They rotate through the various SAS commitments: Northern Ireland, the Middle East, jungle training, and special projects, apart from the continuing NATO tasks and the maintenance of one squadron on standby at Hereford.

The commitments tend to last from six to nine months, and that month it was B

Squadron that was based at Hereford. As usual there was one troop on half-hour standby and another at two-hour readiness. The four troops in each squadron are always the air troop (free-fallers), the boat troop (marines trained in canoe and underwater expertise), the mountain troop (climbers), and the mobile troop (in armed Land-Rovers).