The Fourth Protocol (43 page)

He proffered the cable. Sir Bernard read it and his eyebrows rose. “Linked? Could they be?”

“Possible.
Winkler, a.k.
a. Hayek, seems to be a courier of some kind. Vienna confirms he’s nominally StB but actually working for the KGB itself. We know that
Marais
went to Vienna twice in the past two years, while he was running Berenson. Each time on cultural jaunts, but—”

“The missing link?”

Sir Nigel shrugged. Never oversell.

“What’s he going to Sheffield for?”

“Who knows, Bernard? Is there another ring up there in Yorkshire? Could
Winkler
be a bagman for more than one ring?”

“What do you want from Five? More watchers?”

“No, John Preston. You’ll recall he tracked down Berenson first, then
Marais.
I liked his style. He’s been on leave for a while. Then he had a dose of the flu, so they tell me. But he’s due to return to work tomorrow. He’s been off so long, he’ll probably have no current cases, anyway. Technically, he’s ports and airports, C5(C). But you know how the
K
boys are always worked off their feet. If he could just have a temporary attachment to K2(B), you could designate him field controller for this one.”

“Well, I don’t know, Nigel. This is really up to Brian. ...”

“I’d be awfully grateful, Bernard. Let’s face it, Preston was on the Berenson hunt from the start. If
Winkler
is part of it all, Preston might even see a face he’s seen before.”

“All right,” said Sir Bernard. “You’ve got it. I’ll issue the instruction from here.”

“I could take it back if you like,” said C. “Save you the trouble. Send my driver up to Charles Street with the chit. ...”

Sir Nigel left with his “chit,” a written order from Sir Bernard Hemmings putting John Preston on temporary assignment to
K
Branch and naming him field controller of the
Winkler
operation once it left the metropolis.

Sir Nigel had two copies made, one for him and one for John Preston. The original went to Charles Street. Brian Harcourt-Smith was out of the office, so the order was left on his desk.

At 7:00 p.m. John Preston left the Chelsea apartment for the last time. He was out in the open again and loved it.

At Sussex Gardens he slipped up behind Harry Burkinshaw. “Hello, Harry.”

“Good Lord. John Preston. What are you doing here?”

“Taking a breath of air.”

“Well, don’t make yourself visible. We’ve got a Joe holed up there across the way.”

“I know. I gather he’s due to leave for Sheffield on the nine-twenty-five.”

“How did you know that?”

Preston produced his copy of Sir Bernard’s instruction. Burkinshaw studied it. “Wow. From the DG himself. Join the party, then. Just stay out of sight.”

“Got an extra radio?”

Burkinshaw nodded down the street. “Round the corner, on Radnor Place. Brown Cortina. There’s a spare in the glove compartment.”

“I’ll wait in the car,” said Preston.

Burkinshaw was puzzled. No one had told him that Preston was joining them as field controller. He had not even known that Preston was in Czech Section. Still, the DG’s signature carried a lot of weight. For his part, he would just get on with his job. He shrugged, popped another mint, and went on watching.

At 8:30
Winkler
left the hotel. He was carrying his suitcase. He hailed a passing cab and gave his instructions to the driver.

When
Winkler
stepped out of the doorway, Burkinshaw called in his team and his two cars. He jumped in the first one and they were a hundred yards behind the cab across Edgware Road. Preston was in the second car. Ten minutes later they knew they were heading east, toward the station. Burkinshaw reported this.

Simon Margery’s voice came back from Cork. “Okay, Harry, our field controller is on his way.”

“We’ve already got a field controller,” said Burkinshaw. “He’s with us.”

This was news to Margery. He asked the controller’s name. When he heard it, he thought there had been a mistake. “He’s not even with K2(B),” he protested.

“He is now,” said Burkinshaw, unfazed. “I’ve seen the chit. Signed by the DG.”

Margery called Charles Street. As the cavalcade cruised east through the dusk, a flap ensued at Charles. The instruction from Sir Bernard was traced and confirmed. Margery threw up his hands in exasperation. “Why can’t the buggers up there in Charles ever make up their minds?” he asked an uncaring world. He called off the colleague he had designated to take over at St.
Paneras
Station. Then he tried to trace Brian Harcourt-Smith to complain.

Winkler
paid off his cab, headed through the brick archway into the vaulted dome of the Victorian railway station, and consulted the departure board. Around him the four watchers and Preston vaporized into the throng of passengers in the brick-and-cast-iron concourse.

The 9:25, calling at Leicester, Derby, Chesterfield, and Sheffield, was at platform two. Having found his train, Winkler walked up the length of it, past the three first-class carriages and the buffet car, to the three blue-upholstered second-class carriages near the front end. He selected the middle one, hefted his suitcase onto the rack, and sat quietly awaiting the train’s departure.

After a few minutes, a young black man with earphones over his head and a Walkman clipped to his belt came in and sat three rows away. Once seated, the man nodded his head in time to the apparent reggae blasting into his ears, closed his eyes, and enjoyed his music. One of Burkinshaw’s team was in place; the earphones were silent of reggae music but were picking up Harry’s instruction on strength five.

One of Burkinshaw’s team took the front carriage, and Harry himself and John Preston the third, so that Winkler was boxed. The fourth man took a first-class seat in the last car in case Winkler did a “runner” down the train to shake off what he thought was a tail.

At 9:25 on the dot the Inter-City 125 hissed out of St.
Paneras
and headed north. At 9:30 Brian Harcourt-Smith was traced to the dining room of his club and called to the phone. It was Simon Margery. What he heard caused the Deputy Director-General of Five to hasten outside, grab a taxi, and race the two miles across the West End to Charles Street. On his desk he found the order written out earlier that afternoon by Sir Bernard Hemmings. He went quite pale with rage.

He was a highly self-disciplined man, and after thinking the matter over for several minutes, he picked up the phone and in his usual courteous manner asked the operator to get the service’s legal adviser at his home. The legal adviser is the man who does most of the liaison between the service and the Special Branch. While the call was going through, Harcourt-Smith checked train times to Sheffield. The legal adviser was plucked from his seat in front of the television in Camberley and came on the line.

“I need Special Branch to make an arrest,” said Harcourt-Smith. “I have reason to believe an illegal immigrant suspected of being a Soviet agent may escape surveillance. Name: Franz
Winkler;
supposed Austrian citizen. Holding charge: suspected false passport. He’ll be arriving by train from London at Sheffield at eleven-fifty-nine. Yes, I know it’s short notice. That’s why it’s urgent. Yes, please get on to the commander of Special Branch at the Yard and ask him to alert his Sheffield operation to make the arrest when the train arrives at Sheffield.”

He put down the phone grimly. John Preston might have been sicced on him as field director of the surveillance team, but an arrest of a suspect was a policy matter, and that was his department.

The train was almost empty. Two carriages instead of six would have amply accommodated the sixty passengers on board. Barney, the watcher in the front carriage, shared the space with ten others, all innocent passengers. He was facing aft, so that he could see the top of Winkler’s head through the window in the intercarriage door.

Ginger, the young black with the headphones who was with
Winkler in
the second carriage, had five other passengers in there with him. There were a dozen sharing sixty seats with Preston and Burkinshaw in the third. For an hour and a quarter,
Winkler
did nothing. He had no reading matter; he just stared out of the window at the dark countryside beyond.

At 10:45, when the train slowed for Leicester, he moved. He took his suitcase off the rack, walked up the carriage, passed out to the toilet area, and pulled down the window of the door giving onto the platform. Ginger informed the rest, who prepared to move at short notice if they had to.

Another passenger pushed past
Winkler
as the train stopped. “Excuse, please, is this Sheffield?”
Winkler
asked.

“No, it’s Leicester,” the man said, and descended to the platform.

“Ah, so. Thank you,” said
Winkler.
He put down his suitcase, but stayed at the open window, looking up and down the platform during the brief stopover. As the train pulled out, he returned to his seat and put his suitcase back on the rack.

At 11:12 he did it again at Derby. This time he asked a porter on the platform of the cavernous concrete hall that forms Derby Station.

“Derby,” sang out the porter. “Sheffield is the one after next.”

Again,
Winkler
spent the stopover gazing out of the open window, then returned to his seat and tossed his suitcase onto the rack. Preston was watching him through the intercarriage door.

At 11:43 they rolled into Chesterfield, a Victorian station that is beautifully maintained with bright paintwork and hanging baskets of flowers. This time
Winkler
left his suitcase where it was, but went to lean out of the window as two or three passengers left the train and hurried through the ticket barrier. The platform was empty before the train began to roll. When it did,
Winkler
snapped open the door, jumped to the concrete, and slammed the door closed with a backward movement of his arm.

Burkinshaw was very rarely caught off balance by a Joe, but he later admitted that
Winkler
had got him cold. All four of the watchers could easily have made the platform, but there was not an iota of cover on that strip of stone.
Winkler
would have seen them and aborted his rendezvous, wherever it was.

Preston and Burkinshaw ran forward to the boarding platform, where they were joined by Ginger from the carriage in front. The window was still open. Preston stuck his head out and looked back.
Winkler,
satisfied at last that he had no tail, was striding briskly down the platform with his back to the train.

“Harry, get back here with the team by car,” shouted Preston. “Get me on the radio when you’re in range. Ginger, close the door after me.” Then he shoved the door open, stepped to the running board, dropped into the paratrooper’s landing position, and jumped.

Paratroopers hit the deck at about eleven miles per hour; sideways speed depends on the wind. The train was doing thirty when Preston slammed into the embankment, praying he would not hit a concrete post or a large stone. He was lucky. The thick May grass took some of the shock; then he was rolling, knees together, elbows in, head down. Harry told him later he couldn’t watch. Ginger said he was bouncing like a toy along the embankment and down toward the spinning wheels. When he finally stopped, he was lying in the gully between the grass and the roadbed. He hauled himself to his feet, turned, and began to jog back toward the lights of the station.

When he appeared at the ticket barrier, the guard was closing for the night. He looked with amazement at the grazed apparition in the torn coat.

“The last man through here,” gasped Preston, “short, stocky, gray mackintosh. Where did he go?”

The guard nodded toward the front of the station, and Preston ran. Too late, the guard realized he had not collected the ticket. At the same time, Preston was watching the taillights of a taxi sweeping out of the station and toward the town. It was the last taxi. He could, he knew, get the local police to trace the driver and ask where he had taken that fare, but he had no doubt
Winkler
would dismiss the cab short of his ultimate destination and walk the rest. A few feet away, a railway porter was kick-starting his moped.

“I need to borrow your bike,” said Preston.

“Bog off,” said the porter. There was no time for identification or argument; the lights of the taxi were passing under the new ring road and out of sight. So Preston hit him—just
once
—on the jaw. The porter crashed over. Preston caught the falling moped, jerked it free of the man’s legs, straddled it, and rode off.

He was lucky with the traffic lights. The cab had gone up Corporation Street, and Preston would never have caught it on his tiny-engined putt-putt except that the lights outside the central library were red. When the taxi rolled down Holywell Street and into Saltergate, he was a hundred yards behind, and then he lost more ground as the bigger engine outpaced him for the straight half mile of that highway. If
Winkler
had been taken out into the countryside due west of Chesterfield, Preston could never have caught him.

Fortunately the taxi’s brakelights flashed on when it was a speck in the distance.
Winkler was
paying the driver where Saltergate becomes Ashgate Road. As Preston closed the gap, he could see
Winkler
beside the cab, looking up and down the street. There was no other traffic; Preston realized there was nothing for it but to keep going. He puttered past the halted taxi like a late homegoer about his business, swerved into Foljambe Road, and stopped.

Winkler
crossed the road on foot; Preston followed.
Winkler
never looked back again. He just strolled around the boundary wall of Chesterfield’s football stadium and entered Compton Street. Here he approached a house and knocked on the door. Moving between patches of shadow, Preston had reached the corner of the street and was hidden behind a bush in the garden of the corner house.