Frederick Forsyth - The Fourth Protocol

“Just in case they touch each other.” He grinned. “Now that would be bad news.”

The single unused component was the timer box. Vassiliev used the drill to bore five holes in the side of the steel cabinet near the top. The center hole was for the wires out of the back of the timer, which he fed through. The other four were for thin bolts with which he fixed the timer to the exterior of the cabinet. This done, he linked the wires from the batteries and detonator to those from the timer, according to their color coding. Petrofsky held his breath.

“Don’t worry,” said Vassiliev, who had noticed his apprehension. “This timer was repeatedly tested back home. The cutout, or circuit breaker, is inside, and it works.”

He stowed the last of the wires, insulated the joins heavily, and lowered the lid of the cabinet, locking it securely and tossing the key to Petrofsky.

“So, Comrade Ross, there it is. You can wheel it on the dolly and put it in the rear of the hatchback, and it will not be damaged. You can drive where you wish—the vibration will not disturb it. One last thing. The yellow button, here, if pushed firmly, will start the timer, but it will not complete the electrical circuit. The timer will do that two hours later.

Press this yellow button and you have two hours to get the hell out. The red button is a manual override. Press that and you get instant detonation.”

He did not know he was wrong. He really believed what he had been told. Only four men in Moscow knew that both buttons were set for instant detonation. It was now evening.

“Now, friend Ross, I want to eat, drink a little, sleep well, and go home tomorrow morning. If that is all right with you.”

“Sure,” said Petrofsky. “Let’s get the cabinet into the corner here, between the sideboard and the drinks table. Help yourself to a whisky, and I’ll rustle up some supper.”

They set off for Heathrow in Petrofsky’s small car at ten the next morning. At a place southwest of Colchester where the dense woods come close to the road, Petrofsky stopped the car and got out to relieve himself. Seconds later, Vassiliev heard a sharp cry of alarm and ran to investigate. The assembler ended his life with an expertly broken neck behind a screen of trees. The body, stripped of all identification, was laid in a shallow ditch and covered with fresh branches. It would probably be discovered in a day or so, maybe later. Police inquiries would eventually involve a photograph in the local papers, which Petrofsky’s neighbor Armitage might or might not see, and might or might not recognize. It would be too late, anyway. Petrofsky drove back to Ipswich.

He had no qualms. His orders had been quite clear on the matter of the assembler. How Vassiliev had ever thought he would be allowed to go home, Petrofsky could not imagine. In any case, he had other problems. Everything was ready, but time was short.

He had visited Rendlesham Forest and picked his spot; in dense cover but hardly a hundred yards from the perimeter wire of the USAF base at Bentwaters. There would be no one there at four in the morning when he pressed the yellow button to initiate detonation for six o’clock. Fresh branches would cover the cabinet while the minutes ticked away and he drove hard toward London.

The only thing he did not know was which morning it would be. The signal to go operational would, he knew, come on the Radio Moscow English-language-service news at ten o’clock of the preceding evening. It would be in the form of a deliberate word-fluff by the broadcaster in the first news item. But since Vassiliev could not tell them, Petrofsky still had to inform Moscow that all was in readiness. This meant a last message by radio. After that, the Stephanides brothers would be expendable. In the dusk of a warm June evening he left Cherryhayes Close and drove sedately north toward Thetford and his motorcycle. At nine o’clock, having changed clothes and vehicles, he began to ride northwest into the British Midlands.

The boredom of an ordinary evening for the watchers in the second-floor-front bedroom of the Royston house was broken at just after ten when Len Stewart came on the air from the police station.

“John, one of my lads was eating in the kebab place just now. The phone rang twice, then the caller hung up. It rang again twice, and he hung up again. Then he did it a third time. The listeners confirm it.”

“Did the Greeks try to answer it?”

“They didn’t reach it in time the first occasion it rang.

After that, they didn’t try for it. Just went on serving. … Hold on. ... John, are you there?”

“Yes, of course.”

“My people outside report one of the brothers is leaving. Through the back. He’s going for his car.”

“Two cars and four men to follow,” ordered Preston. “Remaining two to stay with the restaurant. The runner may be leaving town.”

But he was not. Andreas Stephanides drove back to Compton Street, parked the car, and let himself in. Lights went on behind the curtains. Nothing else happened. At eleven-twenty, earlier than usual, Spiridon closed the restaurant and walked home, arriving at a quarter to twelve.

Preston’s tiger came just before the hour of midnight. The street was very quiet.

Almost all the lights were out. Preston had scattered his four cars and their crews far and wide, and nobody saw him come. The first they knew, there was a mutter from one of Stewart’s men.

“There’s a man at the top end of Compton Street, junction of Cross Street.”

“Doing?” asked Preston.

“Nothing. Standing motionless in the shadows.”

“Wait.”

It was pitch-dark in the Roystons’ upstairs bedroom. The curtains were back, the men standing away from the window. Mungo crouched behind the camera, which was wearing its infrared lens. Preston held his small radio close to one ear. Stewart’s team of six and Burkinshaw’s two drivers with their cars were out there somewhere, all linked by radio.

A door opened down the street as someone put a cat out. It closed again.

“He’s moving,” the radio muttered. “Down toward you. Slowly.”

“Got him,” hissed Ginger, who was at one of the side windows. “Medium height and build. Dark, long raincoat.”

“Mungo, can you get him under that streetlight, just before the Greeks’ house?” asked Burkinshaw.

Mungo turned the lens a fraction. “I’m focused on the pool of light,” he said.

“He’s got ten yards to go,” said Ginger.

Without a sound the figure in the raincoat entered the glow cast by the streetlamp.

Mungo’s camera threw off five fast exposures. The man passed out of the light and arrived at the gate to the Stephanides house. He went up the short path and tapped, instead of ringing, at the door. It opened at once. There was no light in the hall. The dark raincoat passed inside. The door closed.

In the Roystons’ bedroom the tension broke.

“Mungo, get that film out of there and over to the police lab. I want it developed and passed straight to Scotland Yard. Immediate transmission to Charles and Sentinel. I’ll tell them to be ready to try to get a make.”

Something was bothering Preston. Something about the way the man had walked. It was a warm night—why a raincoat? To keep dry? The sun had shone all day. To cover something? Pale clothing, distinctive clothing?

“Mungo, what was he wearing? You saw him in close-up.”

Mungo was halfway out the door. “A raincoat,” he said. “Dark. Long.”

“Under that.”

Ginger whistled. “Boots. I remember them now. Ten inches of jackboot.”

“Shit, he’s on a motorcycle,” said Preston. He spoke into the radio. “Everyone out on the streets. On foot only. No car engines. Every street in the district except Compton.