The Fourth Protocol

When Brigadier Jeremy Cripps finished his call from London, it was to Seven Troop, the free-fall parachute men of B Squadron, that the task fell of going to Ipswich.

“What is your normal routine at this hour?” asked Preston of the Cherryhayes Close householder, whose name was Adrian. The young executive had just finished a phone conversation with the ACC for Suffolk, who was in his office at Ipswich police headquarters. If there had been any lingering doubt in Adrian’s mind as to the authenticity of his unexpected guest of half an hour earlier, it had been dispelled. Preston had suggested that Adrian make the call himself, and the young man was now rightly convinced that the Suffolk police were backing the MI5 officer in his sitting room. He had also been told that the man across the street might be armed and dangerous, and that an arrest would have to be made later in the day.

“Well, I drive to work at about quarter to nine—that’s in ten minutes. At about ten, Lucinda takes Samantha to playschool. She usually does her shopping, picks up Samantha at midday, and returns home. On foot. I get back from work around six-thirty—by car, of course.”

“I’d like you to take the day off work,” said Preston. “Ring your office now and say you are not well. But leave the house at the usual time. You will be met at the top of the road, where Belstead Road joins the access to The Hayes, by a police car.”

“What about my wife and child?”

“I’d like Mrs. Adrian to wait here until the usual hour, then leave with Samantha and shopping basket, walk up there, and join you. Is there any place you can go for the day?”

“There’s my mother at Felixstowe,” said Lucinda Adrian nervously.

“Could you spend the day with her? Perhaps even tonight?”

“What about our house?”

“I assure you, Mr. Adrian, nothing will happen to it,” said Preston optimistically. He might have added it would either be unharmed or, if things went wrong, vaporized. “I must ask you to let me and my colleagues use it as an observation post to watch the man across the way. We will come and go via the back. We will do absolutely no damage.”

“What do you think, darling?” Adrian asked his wife.

She nodded. “I just want to get Samantha out of here,” she said.

“In one hour, I promise you,” said Preston. “We know that Mr. Ross has been up all night because we have been tailing him. He’s probably asleep, and in any case no police move against the house will take place before the afternoon, maybe the early evening.”

“All right,” said Adrian, “we’ll do it.”

He made his call to the office to excuse himself for the day, and drove off at eight-forty-five. From his upstairs bedroom window, Valeri Petrofsky saw him go. The Russian was preparing to catch a few hours’ sleep. There was nothing unusual going on in the street. Adrian always left for work at this hour.

Preston noted that there was an empty lot behind the Adrians’ house. He radioed Harry Burkinshaw and Barney, who came in through the back, nodded to a startled Lucinda Adrian, and went upstairs to adopt again their profession in life—watching. Ginger had found a patch of high ground a quarter of a mile away from which he could see both the estuary of the Orwell, with the docks on its banks, and the small housing development spread out below. With binoculars he could monitor the rear of 12 Cherryhayes Close.

“It backs onto the rear garden of another house, on Brackenhayes,” Ginger told Preston on his radio. “No sign of movement in house or garden. All windows closed— that’s odd in this weather.”

“Keep watching,” said Preston. “I’ll be here. If I have to go, Harry will take over.”

An hour later, Lucinda and Samantha walked calmly out of the house and away.

In the town itself another operation was moving up through the gears. The chief constable, who had risen through the uniformed branch, had handed the details of the pending operation to his assistant, Chief Superintendent Peter Low.

Low had dispatched two detectives to the town hall, where they had elicited the information that the target house was owned by a certain Mr. Johnson but that bills were to be sent to Oxborrows, the real-estate agents. A call to Oxborrows revealed that Mr.

Johnson was away in Saudi Arabia and the house had been rented to a Mr. James Duncan Ross. A second picture of Ross, alias Timothy Donnelly of the streets of Damascus, was telexed to Ipswich and shown to the agent at Oxborrows, who identified the tenant.

The town hall housing department also came up with the names of the architects who had designed the development called The Hayes, and from this partnership were obtained detailed floor plans of the property at 12 Cherryhayes Close. The architects were even more helpful; other houses, identical in design to the last detail, had been built elsewhere in Ipswich, and one was found to be standing empty. It would be useful for the SAS

assault team; they would know the exact geography of the house when they went in.