Frederick Forsyth - The Fourth Protocol

It was then four in the morning of Thursday, April 9, but in Moscow it was eight o’clock.

General Yevgeni Karpov waited until they were out of the main traffic of southern Moscow and on the open road to Yasyenevo before he started to converse with Gregoriev. Apparently the thirty-year-old driver knew he had been singled out by the general and was eager to please him.

“How do you like driving for us?”

“Very much, sir.”

“Well, it gets you out and about, I suppose. Better than a stuffy desk job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Been driving for my friend Colonel Philby recently, I hear.”

A slight pause. Damn, he’s been told not to mention it, thought Karpov.

“Er ... yes, sir.”

“Used to drive himself until he had his stroke.”

“So he told me, sir.”

Better get on with it. “Whereabouts did you drive him?”

A longer pause. Karpov could see the driver’s face in the mirror. He was disturbed, in a quandary.

“Oh, just around Moscow, sir.”

“Anywhere specific around Moscow, Gregoriev?”

“No, sir. Just around.”

“Pull over, Gregoriev.”

The Chaika pulled out of the privileged center lane, through the southbound traffic, and onto a shoulder.

Karpov leaned forward. “You know who I am, Gregoriev?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know my rank in the KGB?”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant general.”

“Then don’t play games with me, young man. Where, exactly, did you drive him?”

Gregoriev swallowed. Karpov could see he was wrestling with himself. The question was: Who had told him to stay silent as to where he had driven Philby? If it was Philby himself, Karpov outranked him. But if it was someone higher ... In fact, it had been Major Pavlov, and he had frightened Gregoriev badly. He was only a major, but to a Russian the people from the First Chief Directorate are an unknown quantity, whereas a major of the Kremlin Guards ... Still, a general was a general.

“Mostly to a series of conferences, Comrade General. Some at central Moscow apartments, but I never went inside, so I never saw which exact apartment he went to.”

“Some in central Moscow ... And the others?”

“Mainly—no sir, always, I think—at a dacha out at Zhukovka.”

Central Committee country, thought Karpov. Or Supreme Soviet. “Do you know whose?”

“No, sir. Honestly. He just gave me directions to it. Then I used to wait in the car.”

“Who else turned up at these conferences?”

“There was one occasion, sir, when two cars arrived together. I saw the man from the other car get out and enter the dacha. ...”

“And you recognized him?”

“Yes, sir. Before I joined the KGB motor pool, I was a driver in the Army. In 1985 I used to drive for a colonel of the GRU. We were based at Kandahar, in Afghanistan.

Once this officer was in the rear seat with my colonel. It was General Marchenko.”

Well, well, well, thought Karpov, my old friend Pyotr Marchenko, specialist in destabilization. “Anyone else at these conferences?”

“Just one other car, sir. We drivers chatted a bit, what with the hours of waiting and that. But he was a surly devil. All I learned was that he drove for a member of the Academy of Sciences. Honestly, sir, that’s all I know.”

“Drive on, Gregoriev.”

Karpov leaned back and watched the passing landscape of trees. So, there were four of them, meeting to prepare something for the General Secretary. The host was a member of the Central Committee, or maybe the Supreme Soviet, and the other three were Philby, Marchenko, and an unnamed academician.

Tomorrow, Friday, the vlasti finished work as early as they could and went to their dachas. Karpov knew that Marchenko had a villa close to Peredelkino, not far from his own. He also knew Marchenko’s weakness, and sighed. He had better take a lot of brandy with him. It would be a heavy session.

Chief Superintendent Charlie Forbes listened carefully and quietly to Constables Craig and McBain, and now and again interjected a soft-spoken question. Forbes had no doubt they were telling the truth, but he had been on the force long enough to know the truth does not always save your neck.

It was a bad business. Technically, the Russian had been in police custody, even though under treatment at a hospital. There had been no one else on that roof but Police Constable Craig. There was no evident reason why the man should have jumped. Forbes did not even care why, assuming, like everyone else, that the man had been severely concussed and in a state of panic due to temporary hallucination. His whole attention was on the possible perspectives for the Strathclyde police.

There would be the ship to trace, the captain to interview, formal identification of the body, the Soviet consul to be informed, and of course the press, the bloody press, some elements of whom would hint darkly at their usual hobbyhorse, police brutality. The darn thing was, when they asked their pointed questions, he did not have any answers. Why should the silly man have jumped?

At half past four there was nothing more to do at the hospital. The investigative machinery would roll into action by dawn. Forbes ordered them all back to divisional headquarters. By six o’clock the two constables had finished their lengthy statements and Charlie Forbes was in his office coping with the demands of the procedural machinery. A search—probably futile—was on for the lady who had dialed 999. Statements had been taken from the two ambulance men who had answered McBain’s call via the divisional switchboard. At least there would be no doubt about the beating the Neds had given the man.

The emergency ward nurse had told her version; the harassed Dr. Mehta had made a statement; the front desk attendant had testified to seeing the bare-chested man, pursued by Craig, run through the waiting room. After that, during the chase up to the roof, no one had seen either of them.

Forbes had identified the only Soviet ship in port as the Akademik Komarov and dispatched a police car to ask the captain to identify the body; he had woken the Soviet consul, who would be at his office at nine—protesting, no doubt. He had alerted his own chief constable, and the procurator fiscal, whose office, in Scotland, includes the duties of coroner.

The dead man’s personal effects—the “productions”—had all been bagged and were being taken to Partick police station (the mugging had occurred in Partick) to be retained under lock and key on the direction of the procurator fiscal, who had promised to authorize the postmortem for ten that morning. Charlie Forbes stretched and called the canteen for coffee and rolls.

While Chief Superintendent Forbes at the Strathclyde HQ on Pitt Street did the paperwork, Constables Craig and McBain signed their statements at Division and repaired to their canteen for breakfast. Both were worried men, and they shared their concerns with a grizzled detective sergeant from the plainclothes branch who sat at their table. After breakfast they sought and received permission to go home to sleep.

Something they said caused the detective to go to the pay phone in the hall outside the canteen and make a call. The man he disturbed—at that moment with a faceful of shaving cream—was Detective Inspector Carmichael, who listened carefully, hung up, and finished his shaving in a pensive mood. Carmichael was from Special Branch.

At half past seven, Carmichael traced the chief inspector in the uniformed branch who would be attending the postmortem and asked if he might tag along. “Be my guest,” said the chief inspector. “City morgue at ten.”

At that same morgue, at eight o’clock, the captain of the Akademik Komarov , accompanied by his inseparable political officer, stared at a videoscreen on which the battered face of deckhand Semyonov soon appeared. He nodded slowly and muttered in Russian.