The Fourth Protocol

In May 1981, when Karpov returned to Moscow to head the Third Department, he asked around for a possible South African pro-Soviet sleeper. The Illegals Directorate mentioned that they had two men, one an officer in the South African Navy named Gerhardt, the other a diplomat named Marais. But Marais had just returned to Pretoria after three years in Bonn.

It was in the spring of 1983 that Karpov rose to major general and became head of the Illegals Directorate, which controlled Marais. He ordered the South African to ask for a London posting to terminate his long career, and in 1984 Marais got it. Karpov personally flew to Paris under deep cover and briefed Marais himself: Marais was to cultivate George Berenson and try to recruit him for South Africa.

In February 1985, after the death of Kirpichenko, Karpov succeeded to his present post, and a month later Marais reported that Berenson was on the hook. That month, the first batch of Berenson material came through, and it was solid twenty-four-karat gold, the mother lode. Since then Karpov had personally run the Berenson/Marais operation as a director’s case, twice in two years meeting Marais in European cities to congratulate and debrief him. That very lunch hour, the bagman had brought the latest batch of Berenson material, mailed by Marais to a KGB address in Copenhagen.

The London spell from 1978 to 1981 had brought a second benefit. As was his wont, Karpov had given Prime and Berenson his personal code names: Prime had been

“Knightsbridge” and Berenson was “Hampstead.” And then there was “Chelsea” ...

Karpov respected Chelsea, as he despised Prime and Berenson. Unlike the other two, Chelsea was not an agent but a contact, a man high in his own country’s establishment and a man who, like Karpov, was a pragmatist, a man wedded to the realities of his job, his country, and the surrounding world. Karpov never ceased to be amazed at journalistic references in the West to intelligence officers living in a world of fantasy; for Karpov, it was the politicians who lived in a dream world, seduced and bemused by their own propaganda.

Intelligence officers, Karpov believed, might walk on shadowed streets, lie and deceive to carry out their missions, but if they ever wandered into the realm of fantasy, as the CIA’s covert-action people had done so often, that was when they came badly unstuck.

Chelsea had twice dropped hints that if the USSR continued on a certain course there would soon be a fearsome mess for them all to clear up; twice he had been right. Karpov, able to warn his own people of impending danger, had scored a mountain of credits when he turned out to be correct.

He stopped and forced his mind back to the present problem. Borisov was right; the General Secretary was mounting some kind of personal and private operation right under his nose, and inside Britain, but excluding the KGB from any part of it. Karpov sensed danger; despite his years as Chairman of the KGB, the General Secretary was not a professional intelligence officer. Karpov’s own career might hang in the balance, but it was vital to find out what on earth was going on. But carefully, very carefully.

He checked his watch. Half past eleven. He beckoned his driver forward, climbed into the Chaika, and was driven home to Moscow.

Barry Banks arrived at the headquarters of the SIS at ten to nine that Monday morning.

Sentinel House is a large, square, and surprisingly tawdry-looking building on the south bank of the Thames and is leased to a certain government ministry by the Greater London Council. Its elevators are erratic and around its lower floors a mosaic mural is forever shedding its tiles like ceramic dandruff.

Banks identified himself at the front desk and went straight up. The Master, bluff and genial as he always was toward aspiring underlings, received him at once.

“Do you know a chap at Five named John Preston, by any chance?” asked C.

“Yes, sir. Not well, but I’ve met him several times. Usually in the bar at Gordon, when I’ve been over there.”

“He heads C1(A), doesn’t he, Barry?”

“Not anymore. He’s been transferred to C5(C). He started there last week.”

“Oh, really? That was rather sudden. I heard he’d done rather well at C1(A).”

Sir Nigel felt no need to inform Banks that he had met Preston at the JIC meetings or that he had used him as his personal ferret in South Africa. Banks knew nothing of the Berenson affair, nor did he need to know. For his part, Banks wondered what the Master had in mind. So far as he knew, Preston had nothing to do with Six.

“Very sudden,” Banks replied. “In fact, he was only at C1(A) for a few weeks. Up till the New Year he was head of F1(D). Then he must have done something that upset Sir Bernard—or, more likely, Brian Harcourt-Smith. He was booted out of there and into C1(A). Then last month he was given the heave-ho again.”