Frederick Forsyth - The Fourth Protocol

Barney, standing beside Preston, followed their progress out of sight. “Noisy sods,” he remarked.

“Ah, they always be coming over Thetford,” said the local cop. “Hardly notice them after a while. Come from Lakenheath.”

“London Airport’s bad enough,” said Barney, who lived at Hounslow, “but at least the airliners don’t fly that low. Don’t think I could live with that for long.”

“Don’t mind ’em, just so long as they stay up in the air,” said the policeman, unwrapping a chocolate bar. “Wouldn’t like one to crash, though. They carry atomic bombs, they do. Small, mind.”

Preston turned around slowly. “What did you say?” he asked.

At Cork Street, MI5 had been working fast. Dispensing with the usual liaison from the legal adviser, Sir Bernard Hemmings had personally called both the assistant commissioners (crime) for the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The officer in Norwich was still abed, but in Ipswich his opposite number was already in his office because of the demonstration that was tying up half the Suffolk force.

The assistant commissioner for Norfolk was reached at the same time as the call to him from Thetford police station came through. He authorized complete cooperation; the paperwork could follow later.

Brian Harcourt-Smith was chasing up a helicopter. Britain’s two intelligence agencies have access to a special flight of helicopters, which are held at Northolt, outside London.

It is possible to call one up in a hurry, but normally advance arrangements are made. The Deputy Director-General’s urgent inquiry brought the answer that a chopper could be airborne in forty minutes and could land at Thetford forty minutes after that. Harcourt-Smith asked Northolt to hold on. “Eighty minutes,” he reported to Sir Bernard.

The DG happened to be talking to the assistant commissioner for Suffolk, who was in his Ipswich office. “Would you have a police helicopter available? Right now?” he asked the officer.

There was a pause while the ACC for Suffolk consulted his colleague in traffic control on an internal line. “We have one in the air over Bury St. Edmunds,” he said.

“Please get it to Thetford and take aboard one of our officers,” said Sir Bernard. “It’s a matter of national security, I assure you.”

“I’ll give the order now,” said the ACC for Suffolk.

Preston beckoned the Thetford policeman over to his car. “Point out the American airbases around here,” he said.

The patrolman put a thick finger on the road map. “Well, they’re a bit all over, sir.

There’s Sculthorpe up here in north Norfolk, Lakenheath and Mildenhall out here to the west, Chicksands in Bedfordshire—though I do believe they don’t fly out of there anymore. And then there’s Bentwaters, here on the Suffolk coast, near Wood-bridge.”

It was six o’clock. The marchers swirled around the two cars parked in front of the Church of All Saints, a tiny but beautiful building, as old as the village, thatched with Norfolk reed and without electric light, so that evensong was still held by candlelight.

Petrofsky stood by his car, arms crossed, his face bland, watching them amble by. His private thoughts were venomous. Across the fields behind him, a traffic control helicopter clattered north, but he failed to hear it for the chanting of the marchers.

The driver of the other car, who turned out to be a biscuit salesman returning home from a seminar on the sales appeal of Butter Osbornes, walked over to him. He nodded toward the marchers. “Arseholes,” he muttered above the chant of “No to Cruise—Yanks out.” The Russian smiled and nodded. Getting no verbal reaction, the salesman wandered back to his own car, climbed in, and began to read his stack of promotional literature.

If Valeri Petrofsky had had a more developed sense of humor, he might have smiled at his situation. He was standing in front of the church of a God in whom he did not believe, in a country he was seeking to destroy, giving passage to people he heartily despised.

And yet, if his mission was successful, all the marchers’ demands would be fulfilled. He sighed as he thought of the speedy way his own country’s MVD troops would deal with this march before handing over the ringleaders to the lads in the Fifth Chief Directorate for an extended question-and-answer session down at Lefortovo.

Preston stared down at the map on which he had circled the five American airbases. If I were an illegal, living in a foreign country under deep cover and on a mission, he thought, I would want to hide myself in a large town or city.

In Norfolk there were King’s Lynn, Norwich, and Yarmouth. In Suffolk, Lowestoft, Bury St. Edmunds, Colchester, and Ipswich. To get back to King’s Lynn, close to USAF

Sculthorpe, the man he was chasing would have driven back past him on Gallows Hill.

No one had. That left four bases, three away to the west and one in the south.

He considered the line of the ride that had brought his quarry from Chesterfield to Thetford. Due southeast, all the way. It would be logical to site the point for switching from motorcycle to car somewhere along the line of travel. From Lakenheath and Mildenhall to the transmitter house at Chesterfield, it would have been more logical to rent a garage in Ely or Peterborough, en route to the Midlands.

He took the line southeast from the Midlands to Thetford and extended it farther southeast. It pointed directly at Ipswich. Twelve miles from Ipswich, in a dense forest and close to the shore, was Bentwaters. He recalled from somewhere that they flew F-5s out of there, modern strike bombers with tactical nukes, designed to halt an onslaught by twenty-nine thousand massed tanks.

Behind him the policeman’s radio set crackled into life. The man walked over and answered the call. “There’s a helicopter coming up from the south,” he reported.

“It’s for me,” Preston said.

“Oh ... ah ... where do you want it to land?”

“Is there a flat area nearby?” asked Preston.

“Place we call the Meadows,” said the patrolman. “Down Castle Street by the roundabout. Should be dry enough.”

“Tell him to go down there,” said Preston. “I’ll meet him.” He called to his team, some of whom were dozing in the cars. “Everybody in. We’re going down to the Meadows.”

As they piled into the two cars Preston took his map over to the patrolman. “Tell me. If you were here in Thetford and driving to Ipswich, which way would you go?”

Without hesitation the police motorcyclist pointed to a spot on the map. “I’d take the A1088 straight down to Ixworth, over the junction, and on down to cut into the A45 main road to Ipswich, here at Elmswell village.”

Preston nodded. “So would I. Let’s hope Chummy thinks the same. I want you to stay here and try to trace any other garage tenant who might have seen the missing man’s car.

I need that license-plate number.”

The light Bell helicopter was waiting in the Meadows, by the roundabout. Preston climbed out of the car, taking a portable radio with him.

“Stay here,” he told Harry Burkinshaw. “It’s a long shot. He’s probably miles away—

he’s got at least a fifty-minute start. I’ll go as far as Ipswich and see if I can spot anything. If not, it’s up to that license-plate number. Someone may have seen it. If the Thetford police trace anyone who did, I’ll be up there.”

He ducked under the whirling rotors and climbed into the narrow cabin, showed his ID

card to the pilot, and nodded to the traffic controller, who had squeezed into the back.

“That was fast,” he shouted to the pilot.

“I was airborne already,” the pilot shouted back.

The helicopter lifted off and climbed away from Thetford.