Frederick Forsyth - The Fourth Protocol

The Special Branch men stepped over the melee, had a quick glance through the first-floor rooms, called to the two men in the back garden, who had seen no one emerge, and ran up the stairs. The bedrooms were empty. They found Spiridon in the tiny attic beneath the eaves. The transmitter was on the floor; it was plugged into a wall socket, and a small red light on the console glowed. Spiridon came quietly.

At Menwith Hill the GCHQ listening post intercepted a single squirt from the covert transmitter and logged it at two-fifty-eight on the morning of Thursday, June 11. Triangulation was immediate and pointed to a spot in the western end of the town of Chesterfield. The police station there was alerted at once and the call was patched through to the car being used by Superintendent Robin King. He took the call and told Menwith Hill, “I know. We’ve got them.”

In Moscow, the warrant officer radio operator removed his headphones and nodded toward the teleprinter. “Faint but clear,” he said.

The printer began to chatter, sending out a screed of paper covered with a jumble of meaningless letters. When it fell silent, the officer beside the radio tore off the sheet and fed it through the decoder, already set to the formula of the agreed one-time pad. The decoder absorbed the sheet, its computer ran through the permutations, and it delivered the message in clear. The officer read the text and smiled. He telephoned a number, identified himself, checked the identity of the man he was addressing, and said: “Aurora is ‘go.’ ”

After Newark the countryside flattened and the wind increased. The pursuit entered the gently rolling woods of Lincolnshire and the arrow-straight roads that lead into the fen country. The flashing blip was steady and strong, leading Preston’s two cars down the A17 past Sleaford and toward the Wash and the county of Norfolk.

Southeast of Sleaford, Petrofsky stopped again and scanned the dark horizon behind him for lights. There were none. A mile behind him the pursuers waited in darkened silence. When the blip began to move up the oscilloscope screen, they followed again.

At the village of Sutterton there was another moment of confusion. Two roads led out of the far side of the sleeping township; the A16, due south for Spalding, and the A17, southeast for Long Sutton and King’s Lynn, across the border in Norfolk. It took two minutes to discern that the flashing blip was moving down the A17, toward Norfolk. The gap had increased to three miles.

“Close up,” ordered Preston, and Joe kept the speedometer needle on ninety until the gap was reduced to a mile and a half.

South of King’s Lynn they crossed the spread of the River Ouse, and seconds later the blip took the road due south from the bypass toward Downham Market and Thetford.

“Where the hell’s he going?” grumbled Joe.

“He’s got a base down there somewhere,” said Preston from behind him. “Just keep tracking.”

To their left a flush of pink dusted the eastern horizon, and the silhouettes of the passing trees became clearer. Joe went from headlights to sidelights.

Far to the south, the lights were also dimmed on the columns of buses that growled on choked roads through the Suffolk market town of Bury St. Edmunds. There were two hundred of them, converging from a variety of different directions across the country, packed to the windows with peace marchers. Other demonstrators came in cars, on motorcycles and bicycles, and on foot. The slow cavalcade, hung with its banners and placards, moved out of the town and up the A143 to come to rest at Ixworth junction. The buses could go no farther down the narrow lanes. They stopped on the verge of the main road close to the junction and discharged their yawning cargoes into the brightening dawn of the Suffolk countryside. The marshals then began to urge and cajole the throng into some semblance of a column while the Suffolk police sat astride their motorcycles and watched.

In London, the lights were still burning. Sir Bernard Hemmings had been driven from his home, having been alerted, as he had requested, when the watcher teams in Chesterfield began to follow their man. He was in the basement radio room at Cork Street, with Brian Harcourt-Smith beside him.

Across the city, Sir Nigel Irvine, also roused at his own request, was in his office at Sentinel House. Beneath him, in the basement, Blodwyn had sat for half the night and stared at the face of a man beneath a streetlamp in a small Derbyshire town. She had been driven from her Camden Town home in the small hours, and had agreed to come only at the personal request of Sir Nigel himself. He had greeted her with flowers; for him she would walk over broken glass, but for no one else.

“He’s never been here before,” Blodwyn had said as soon as she set eyes on the photograph, “and yet ...”

After an hour it was to the Middle East that she turned her attention, and at four in the morning she had him. It was a contribution from the Israeli Mossad; it was six years old, a bit blurred, and only the one picture. Even the Mossad had not been sure; the accompanying text made plain it was just a suspicion.

One of their men had taken the photograph on the streets of Damascus. The subject had called himself Timothy Donnelly then, and represented himself as a salesman for Waterford crystal. On a hunch the Mossad had snapped him and checked with their people in Dublin. Timothy Donnelly existed, but he was not in Damascus. By the time this was learned, the man in the picture had vanished. He had never surfaced again.

“That’s him,” Blodwyn said. “The ears prove it. He should have worn a hat.’

Sir Nigel called the basement radio room at Cork Street. “We think we have a make, Bernard,” he said. “We can run you off a print and send it over.”

They almost lost him six miles south of King’s Lynn. The pursuit cars were heading south to Downham Market when the blip began to drift, imperceptibly at first, then more definitely, toward the east. Preston consulted his road map.

“He turned off back there onto the A134,” he said. “Heading for Thetford. Take a left here.”

They got on the tail again at Stradsett, and then it was a straight run through the thickening forests of beech, oak, and pine to Thetford. They had reached the top of Gallows Hill and could see the ancient market town spread out ahead of them in the dim light of dawn when Joe slewed to a halt.

“He’s stopped again.”

Another check for a tail? He had always done that in open countryside before.

“Where is he?”

Joe studied the range indicator and pointed ahead. “Right in the heart of the town, John.”

Preston conned the map. Apart from the road they were on, there were five others leading out of Thetford in the configuration of a star. The daylight was growing. It was five o’clock. Preston yawned. “We’ll give him ten.”

The blip never moved for ten minutes, or another five. Preston sent his second car around the ring road. From four points the second car triangulated with the first; the blip was right in the center of Thetford. Preston picked up the hand mike.

“Okay, I think we have his base. We’re moving in.”

The two cars closed on the center of town. They converged on Magdalen Street, and at five-twenty-five found the hollow square of garages. Joe maneuvered the nose of the car until it pointed unswervingly at one of the doors. The tension among the men began to mount.

“He’s in there,” said Joe. Preston climbed out. He was joined by Barney and Ginger from the other car.

“Ginger, can you lose that door handle?”

For answer Ginger took a crowbar from the toolkit in one of the cars, slipped it over the garage door handle and jerked it sharply. There was a crack inside the lock. He looked at Preston, who nodded. Ginger swept the up-and-over garage door open and stood hastily back.