Frederick Forsyth - The Devil's Alternative

Munro caught the following morning’s breakfast flight south from Inverness. When the plastic trays were cleared away, the hostess offered the passengers newspapers fresh up from London. Being at the back of the aircraft, Munro missed the Times and the Telegraph , but secured a copy of the Daily Express . The headline story concerned two unidentified men, believed to be Germans from the Red Army Faction, who had robbed a Sheffield bank of twenty thousand pounds.

“Bloody bastards,” said the English oilman from the North Sea rigs who was in the seat next to Munro. He tapped the Express headline. “Bloody Commies. I’d string them all up.”

Munro conceded that upstringing would definitely have to be considered in future.

At Heathrow he took a taxi almost to the office and was shown straight into Barry Ferndale’s room.

“Adam, my dear chap, you’re looking a new man.”

He sat Munro down and proffered coffee.

“Well now, the tape. You must be dying to know. Fact is, m’dear chap, it’s genuine. No doubt about it. Everything checks. There’s been a fearful blowup in the Soviet Agricul­ture Ministry. Six or seven senior functionaries ousted, in­cluding one we think must be that unfortunate fellow in the Lubyanka.

“That helps corroborate it. But the voices are genuine. No doubt, according to the lab boys. Now for the big one. One of our assets working out of Leningrad managed to take a drive out of town. There’s not much wheat grown up there in the north, but there is a little. He stopped his car for a pee and swiped a stalk of the afflicted wheat. It came home in the bag three days ago. I got the report from the lab last night. They confirm there is an excess of this lindane stuff present in the root of the seedling.

“So, there we are. You’ve hit what our American cousins so charmingly call pay dirt. In fact, twenty-four-carat gold. By the way, the Master wants to see you. You’re going back to Moscow tonight.”

Munro’s meeting with Sir Nigel Irvine was friendly but brief.

“Well done,” said the Master. “Now, I understand your next meeting will be in a fortnight.”

Munro nodded.

“This might be a long-term operation,” Sir Nigel resumed, “which makes it a good thing you are new to Moscow. There will be no raised eyebrows if you stay on for a couple of years. But just in case this fellow changes his mind, I want you to press for more—everything we can squeeze out Do you want any help, any backup?”

“No, thank you,” said Munro. “Now that he’s taken the plunge, the asset has insisted he’ll talk only to me. I don’t think I want to scare him off at this stage by bringing others in. Nor do I think he can travel, as Penkovsky could. Vishnayev never travels, so there’s no cause for Krivoi to, ei­ther. I’ll have to handle it alone.”

Sir Nigel nodded. “Very well, you’ve got it.”

When Munro had gone, Sir Nigel Irvine turned over the file on his desk, which was Munro’s personal record. He had his misgivings. The man was a loner, ill at ease working in a team. A man who walked alone in the mountains of Scotland for relaxation.

There was an adage in the Firm: there are old agents and there are bold agents, but there are no old, bold agents. Sir Nigel was an old agent, and he appreciated caution. This op­portunity had come swinging in from the outfield, unexpected, unprepared for. And it was moving fast. But then, the tape was genuine, no doubt of it. So was the summons on his desk to see the Prime Minister that evening at Downing Street. He had of course informed the Foreign Secretary when the tape had passed muster, and this was the outcome.

The black door of No. 10 Downing Street, residence of the British Prime Minister, is perhaps one of the best-known doors in the world. It stands on the right, two-thirds down a small cul-de-sac off Whitehall, an alley almost, sandwiched between the imposing piles of the Cabinet Office and the For­eign Office.

In front of this door, with its simple white figure 10 and brass knocker, attended by a single, unarmed police con­stable, the tourists gather to take each other’s photograph and watch the comings and goings of the messengers and the well-known.

In fact, it is the men of words who go in through the front door; the men of influence tend to use the side. The house called No. 10 stands at ninety degrees to the Cabinet Office block, and the rear corners almost touch each other, enclos­ing a small lawn behind black railings. Where the corners al­most meet, the gap is covered by a passageway leading to a small side door, and it was through this that the Director General of the SIS, accompanied by Sir Julian Flannery, the Cabinet Secretary, passed that last evening of July. The pair were shown straight to the second floor, past the Cabinet Room, to the Prime Minister’s private study.

The Prime Minister had read the transcript of the Polit­buro tape, passed to her by the Foreign Secretary.

“Have you informed the Americans of this matter?” she asked directly.

“Not yet, ma’am,” Sir Nigel answered. “Our final confir­mation of its authenticity is only three days old.”

“I would like you to do it personally,” said the Prime Min­ister. Sir Nigel inclined his head. “The political perspectives of this pending wheat famine in the Soviet Union are im­measurable, of course, and as the world’s biggest surplus wheat producer, the United States should be involved from the outset.”

“I would not wish the Cousins to move in on this agent of ours,” said Sir Nigel. “The running of this asset may be extremely delicate. I think we should handle it ourselves, alone.”

“Will they try to move in?” asked the Prime Minister.

“They may, ma’am. They may. We ran Penkovsky jointly, even though it was we who recruited him. But there were rea­sons why. This time, I think we should go it alone.”

The Prime Minister was not slow to see the value in politi­cal terms of controlling such an agent as one who had access to the Politburo transcripts.

“If pressure is brought,” she said, “refer back to me, and I will speak to President Matthews personally about it. In the meantime, I would like you to fly to Washington tomorrow and present them the tape, or at least a verbatim copy of it. I intend to speak to President Matthews tonight in any case.”

Sir Nigel and Sir Julian rose to leave.

“One last thing,” said the Prime Minister. “I fully under­stand that I am not allowed to know the identity of this agent. Will you be telling Robert Benson who it is?”

“Certainly not, ma’am.” Not only would the Director Gen­eral of the SIS refuse point-blank to inform his own Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary of the identity of the Rus­sian, but he would not tell them even of Munro, who was running that agent. The Americans would know who Munro was, but never whom he was running. Nor would there be any tailing of Munro by the Cousins in Moscow; he would see to that as well.

“Then presumably this Russian defector has a code name. May I know it?” asked the Prime Minister.

“Certainly, ma’am. The defector is now known in every file simply as the Nightingale.”

It just happened that Nightingale was the first songbird in the N section of the list of birds after which all Soviet agents were code-named, but the Prime Minister did not know this. She smiled for the first time.

“How very appropriate.”

JUST AFTER TEN in the morning of a wet and rainy Au­gust 1, an aging but comfortable four-jet VC-10 of the Royal Air Force Strike Command lifted out of Lyneham base in Wiltshire and headed west for Ireland and the Atlantic. It carried a small enough passenger complement: one air chief marshal who had been informed the night before that this of all days was the best for him to visit the Pentagon in Wash­ington to discuss the forthcoming USAF-RAF tactical bom­ber exercises, and a civilian in a shabby mackintosh.