The Fourth Protocol

While the head of the NIS was trying to find something on Bond Street for Mrs. Pienaar, John Preston was at Charles Street for a meeting with Brian Harcourt-Smith. The Deputy Director-General was in his most eager-to-please mood.

“Well, John, I gather congratulations are in order. The committee was most impressed by your revelations from South Africa.”

“Thanks, Brian.”

“Yes, indeed. It’ll all be handled by the committee from now on. Can’t say exactly what’s to be done, but Tony Plumb asked me to pass on his personal sentiments. Now”—

he spread his hands flat and placed them on his blotter—“to the future.”

“The future?”

“You see, I’m in a bit of a dilemma. You’ve been on this case for eight weeks, some of the time out on the streets with the watchers, most of it in the basement at Cork, and then South Africa. During all this time young March, your number two, has been running C1(A), and doing very well into the bargain.

“Now, I ask myself, what am I supposed to do with him? I don’t think it would be quite fair to bang him back to the two slot—after all, he’s been around to all the ministries, made some extremely useful suggestions and a couple of very positive changes.”

He would, thought Preston. March was a young eager beaver, very much one of Harcourt-Smith’s protégés.

“Anyway, I know you’ve only been at C1(A) for eleven weeks, and that’s pretty short, but seeing as you’ve covered yourself with glory, it might be a well-judged moment to move on. I’ve had a word with Personnel, and as luck would have it, Cranley at C5(C) is taking early retirement at the end of the week. His wife, you know, has not been well for a long time and he wants to take her off to the Lake District. So he’s taking his pension and leaving. I thought it would suit you.”

Preston pondered. “C5(C)? Ports and airports?” he queried.

It was another liaison job. Immigration, Customs, Special Branch, Serious Crimes Squad, Narcotics Squad—all monitored ports and airports, checking on various kinds of unsavory characters seeking to bring themselves or their illicit cargoes into the country.

Preston suspected that C5(C) would have to try to pick up whatever did not fall into anyone else’s category.

Harcourt-Smith raised an admonitory finger. “It’s important, John. The special responsibility, of course, is to keep a weather eye open for Sovbloc illegals and couriers—and so forth. It gets one out and about—the sort of thing you like.”

And away from the head office while the struggle for the succession to the director-generalship of Five goes on, thought Preston. Preston was a Hemmings man down the line, and he was aware that Harcourt-Smith knew it. He thought of protesting, of demanding a meeting with Sir Bernard to put his case for staying where he was.

“Anyway, I want you to give it a try,” said Harcourt-Smith. “It’s still in Gordon, so you won’t have to move.”

Preston knew he was outmaneuvered. Harcourt-Smith had spent half a lifetime working the head-office system. At least, Preston thought, he could be a field man again, even if it was what he termed another “policeman’s job.”

“I’ll expect you to start on the first of the month, then,” concluded Harcourt-Smith.

That Friday, March 27, Major Valeri Petrofsky slipped quietly into Britain.

He had flown from Moscow to Zurich with Swedish identity papers, dropped them into a sealed envelope addressed to a KGB safe house in that city, and adopted the papers identifying him as a Swiss engineer that were waiting for him in another envelope deposited with the post office in the airport concourse. From Zurich he had flown to Dublin.

On the same flight was his escort, who neither knew nor cared what his charge was doing. The escort was simply carrying out his orders. In a room at Dublin’s International Airport Hotel, the two men came together. Petrofsky stripped to the skin and handed back his European-style clothes. He put on what the escort had brought in his own suitcase—

British clothes from top to toe, plus an overnight case filled with the usual medley of pajamas, toilet articles, half-read novel, and change of clothes.

The escort had already plucked an envelope from the airport’s messages board that had been prepared by the Line N man at the Dublin embassy and pinned to the notice board four hours earlier. It contained a ticket stub for the previous evening’s performance at the Eblana Theatre, a receipt for an overnight stay at the New Jury’s Hotel for the previous evening in the appropriate name, and the return half of a London-Dublin round-trip ticket on Aer Lingus.