Frederick Forsyth: The Fourth Protocol

“Precisely,” said the confidant. “No, it won’t work. For better or worse, the die is cast.

It’s too late to call in the police now.”

“Then what the hell do I do?” asked the apartment owner. “They have simply got to be recovered.”

“How long will your wife remain away from London?” asked the other.

“Who knows? She enjoys it up in Yorkshire. Some weeks, I hope.”

“Then we shall have to effect a replacement of the damaged safe with a new and identical model. Also a replica set of the Glen Diamonds. It will take time to arrange.”

“But how about what has been stolen?” asked the apartment owner desperately. “They can’t just be left somewhere out there on the loose. I’ve got to have them back.”

“True,” the other answered, nodding. “Look, as you may imagine, my people have some contacts in the world of diamonds. I’ll cause inquiries to be made. The gems will almost certainly be passed to one of the main centers for reshaping. They could not be marketed as they are. Too identifiable. I’ll see if the burglar can be traced and the things recovered.”

The man rose and prepared to leave. His friend remained seated, evidently deeply worried. The sober-suited man was equally dismayed but he hid it better.

“Do nothing and say nothing untoward,” he advised. “Keep your wife in the country as long as possible. Behave perfectly normally. Rest assured, I shall be in touch.”

The following morning, John Preston was one of those who joined the great throng of people surging back into central London after the five-day, too-long New Year break. As he lived in South Kensington, it suited him to come to work on the Underground. He disembarked at Goodge Street and made his way the remaining five hundred yards on foot, an unnoticeable man of medium height and build, aged forty-six, in a gray raincoat and hatless despite the chill.

Near the top of Gordon Street he turned into the entrance of an equally unnoticeable building that could have been an office block like any other; it was solid, but not modern, and purported to house an insurance enterprise. Only when one had entered it were the differences from other office buildings in the neighborhood discernible.

For one thing, there were three men in the lobby—one at the door, one behind the reception desk, and one by the elevator doors. All were of a size and a muscularity not normally associated with the underwriting of insurance policies. Any stray citizen seeking to do business with this particular company, and declining to be directed elsewhere, would have learned the hard way that only those presenting identification that could pass the scrutiny of the small computer terminal beneath the reception desk were permitted beyond the lobby.

The British Security Service, better known as MI5, does not live in one single place.

Discreetly, but inconveniently, it is split up into four office buildings. The headquarters are on Charles Street (and no longer at the old HQ, Leconfield House, so habitually mentioned in the newspapers).

The next-biggest establishment, on Gordon Street, is known simply as “Gordon” and nothing else, just as the head office is known as “Charles.” The other two premises are on Cork Street (known as “Cork”) and a humble annex on Marlborough Street, again known simply by the street name.

The department is divided into six branches, scattered throughout the buildings. Again, discreetly but confusingly, some of the branches have sections in different buildings. In order to avoid an inordinate use of shoe leather, all are linked by extremely secure telephone lines, with a flawless system for identification of the credentials of the caller.

“A” Branch handles in its various sections policy, technical support, property establishment, registry data processing, the office of the legal adviser, and the watcher service. The last-named is the home of that idiosyncratic group of men and (some) women, of all ages and types, streetwise and ingenious, who can mount the finest personal surveillance teams in the world. Even “hostiles” have had to concede that on their own ground MI5’s watchers are just about unbeatable.

Unlike the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), which handles foreign intelligence and has absorbed a number of Americanisms into its in-house jargon, the Security Service (MI5), which covers internal counterintelligence, bases most of its jargon on former police phrases. It avoids terms like “surveillance operative” and still calls its tracker teams simply “the watchers.”

“B” Branch handles recruitment, personnel, vetting, promotions, pensions, and finance (meaning salaries and operational expenses).

“C” Branch concerns itself with the security of the civil service (its staffers and its buildings), the security of contractors (mainly those civilian firms handling defense and communications work), military security (in close liaison with the armed forces’ own internal-security staffs), and sabotage (in reality or in prospect).

There used to be a “D” Branch, but with the arcane logic known only to its practitioners in the intelligence world, it was long ago renamed “K” Branch. It is one of the biggest, and its largest section, called Soviet, is subdivided into operations, field investigations, and order of battle. Next in K comes Soviet satellites, also divided into the same three subsections, then research, and finally agents.

As may be imagined, K devotes its not inconsiderable labors to keeping track of the huge number of Soviet and satellite agents who operate, or try to, out of the various embassies, consulates, legations, trade missions, banks, news agencies, and commercial enterprises that a lenient British government has allowed to be scattered all over the capital and (in the case of consulates) the provinces.

Also inside K Branch is a modest office inhabited by the officer whose job it is to liaise between MI5 and its sister service, MI6. This officer is in fact a “Six” man, on assignment to Charles Street in order to carry out his liaison duties. The section is known simply as K7.

“E” Branch (the alphabetical sequence resumes with E) covers international Communism and its adherents who may wish to visit Britain for nefarious reasons, or the homegrown variety who may wish to go abroad for the same purposes. Also inside E, the Far East section maintains liaison officers in Hong Kong, New Delhi, Canberra, and Wellington, while the section called All Regions does the same in Washington, Ottawa, the West Indies, and other friendly capitals.

Finally, “F” Branch, to which John Presten belonged, at least until that morning, covers political parties (extreme left and right wings), research, and agents.

F Branch lives at Gordon, on the fourth floor, and it was to his office there that John Preston made his way that January morning. He might not have thought his report of three weeks earlier would establish him as Brian Harcourt-Smith’s flavor of the month, but he still believed his report would go to the desk of the Director-General, Sir Bernard Hemmings.

Sir Bernard, Preston was confident, would feel able to impart its information—and, admittedly, partly conjectural findings—to the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee or to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office, the political ministry commanding MI5. A good PUS would probably feel his minister should glance at it, and the Home Secretary could have drawn the attention of the Prime Minister to it.

The memorandum on Preston’s desk when he arrived indicated this was not going to happen. After reading the sheet he sat back, lost in thought. He was prepared to stand by that report, and if it had gone higher there would have been questions to answer. He could have answered them—would have answered them, for he was convinced he was right. He could have answered them, that is, as head of F1(D), but not after being transferred to another department.