Frederick Forsyth - The Fourth Protocol

“You will understand, Comrade General Secretary, that what we have sought is a means of swinging a portion of the British electorate of not less than ten percent across the nation to two cardinal viewpoints: one is a massive loss of their popular confidence in the existing Conservative government, the second a conviction that in the election of a Labour government lies their best chance for contentment and security.

“In order to simplify that search, we asked ourselves if there were not perhaps one single issue that could dominate, or be brought to dominate, the entire election. After profound consideration we have all come to the view that no economic aspect—not job losses, factory closures, increasing automation in industry, even public-service cuts— would constitute this single issue we have been seeking.

“We believe there is but one: the greatest and most emotional noneconomic political issue in Britain and all Western Europe at the present time. This is the question of nuclear disarmament. This has become huge in the West, involving millions of ordinary people. It is basically a matter of mass fear, and it is this which we feel should become the main thrust, the issue we should covertly exploit.”

“And your specific proposals?” asked the General Secretary silkily.

“You will know, Comrade General Secretary, of our efforts so far in this field. Not millions but billions of rubles have been spent encouraging the various antinuclear lobbies, in proposing to the West European people that unilateral nuclear disarmament really is synonymous with their best chance for peace. Our covert efforts and their results have been huge, but nothing compared to what we believe should now be sought and achieved.

“The British Labour Party is the only one of four contesting the next election that is committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Our view is that all the stops should now be pulled out, using funds, disinformation, propaganda, to persuade that minimum wavering ten percent of the British electorate to switch their vote, convinced at last that the Labour vote is the peace vote.”

The silence as they waited for the General Secretary’s reaction was almost tangible. He spoke at last. “Those efforts that we have made and of which you spoke—have they worked?”

Professor Krilov looked as if he had been hit by an air-to-air missile. Philby caught the Soviet leader’s mood and shook his head. The General Secretary noted the gesture and went on speaking.

“For eight years we have put a huge effort into destabilizing the confidence of the Western European electorates in their governments on this issue. Today, true, all the unilateralist movements are so left wing that by one means or another they have come under the control of our friends and work to our ends. The campaign has brought a rich harvest in agents of sympathy and influence. But—”

The General Secretary suddenly smacked both palms onto the arms of his wheelchair.

The violent gesture in a man normally so ice-cold shook his four listeners badly.

“Nothing has changed,” shouted the General Secretary. His voice then resumed its even tenor. “Five years ago, and four years ago, all our experts on the Central Committee and in the universities and the KGB analytical study groups told us in the Politburo that the unilateralist movements were so powerful that they could stop the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles. We believed that. We were misled. At Geneva we dug in our toes, persuaded by our own propaganda that if we held on long enough the governments of Western Europe would give in to the huge peace demonstrations we were covertly supporting and refuse to deploy Pershing and Cruise. But they did deploy, and we had to walk out.”

Philby nodded, looking suitably modest. Back in 1983 he had stuck his neck out with a paper suggesting that the peacenik movement in the West, despite noisy popular demonstrations, would not swing any major election or change any government’s mind.

He had been proved right. Things, he suspected, were moving his way.

“It rankles, Comrades, it still rankles,” said the General Secretary. “Now you are proposing more of the same. Comrade Colonel Philby, what are the results of the latest British public-opinion polls on this issue?”

“Not good, I’m afraid,” said Philby. “The last suggests that twenty percent of the British now support unilateral nuclear disarmament. But even that is confusing. Among the working class, Labour’s traditional voters, the figure is lower. It is a dismal fact, Comrade General Secretary, that the British working class is one of the most conservative groups in the world. Polls also show they are among the most patriotic, in a traditionalist way. During the Falklands affair, die-hard trade unionists threw the rule book away and worked around the clock to get the warships ready for sea. I’m afraid if one is going to face harsh reality, one must admit that the British workingman has steadily refused to see that his best interests lie with us, or at least in a weakening of Britain’s defenses. And there is no reason to think he will change his mind now.”

“Harsh reality—that is what I asked this committee to face,” said the General Secretary. He paused again for several more minutes. Then: “Go away, Comrades. Go back to your deliberations. And bring me a plan—an active measure—that will exploit as never before that mass fear of which you spoke; a plan that will persuade even levelheaded men and women to vote to get rid of nuclear weapons from their soil, and thus to vote Labour.”

When they had gone the old Russian rose and with the aid of a cane walked slowly to the window. He gazed out at the crackling birch forest beneath the snow. When he had swept to power with his predecessor still unburied, he had been personally committed to the achievement of five tasks in the time left to him. He wanted to be remembered as the man who had increased food production and its efficient distribution; who had doubled consumer goods in number and quality by a huge overhaul of a chronically inefficient industry; who had tightened Party discipline at all levels; who had extirpated the scourge of corruption that gnawed at the country’s vitals; and who had secured the final supremacy in men and arms over his country’s serried ranks of enemies. Now he knew he had failed in them all. He was an old man, and sick, and time was running out. He had always prided himself on being a pragmatic man, a realistic man, within the framework of strict Marxist orthodoxy. But even pragmatic men have their dreams, and old men have their vanities. His dream was simple: he wanted one gigantic triumph, one great monument that was his and his alone. Just how much he wanted it, that bitter winter night, he alone knew.

On Sunday, Preston took a stroll past the house in Clanricarde Gardens, a street running due north from the Bayswater Road. Burkinshaw had been right; it was one of those once-prosperous Victorian five-story houses that had gone badly to seed, the sort now let out in bedsitters. Its small front area was weed-infested; five steps ran up to a peeling front door above the street. From the front patch, a set of steps led down to a tiny basement area, with the top of a door just in view—the basement flat. Preston puzzled again as to why a senior civil servant and knight of the realm should wish to visit such a dingy place.

Somewhere in view, he knew, would be the watcher, probably in a parked vehicle with a long-lens camera at the ready. He made no attempt to spot the man, but knew he himself would have been seen. (On Monday he showed up in the log as “an undistinguished character who walked by at 11:21 and showed some interest in the house.” Thanks for nothing, Preston thought.) On Monday morning he visited the local town hall and had a look at the list of householders for that street. The owner of the house in question was a Mr. Michael Z. Mifsud. Preston was grateful for the “Z”; there could not be many of that name around.) Called up on the radio, the watcher at Clanricarde Gardens slipped across the street and checked the bell-push buttons. M. Mifsud lived on the ground floor. Owner-occupier, thought Preston, letting out the rest of the house as furnished accommodation; tenants of unfurnished property would pay their own local assessments.