The Fourth Protocol (50 page)

The pilot looked at him as if he had just arrived from Mars. The chopper, nose down, whirled southeast with the line of the A1088 to starboard so that Preston could see the line of marchers.

“The RAF Honington demo,” the pilot said. “It’s been in all the papers and on TV.”

Preston, of course, had seen the news coverage of the projected demonstration against the base. He had spent two weeks watching television in Chesterfield. He had just not realized that the base lay down the A1088 between Thetford and Ixworth. In thirty seconds he could see the real thing.

Away to his right the morning sun glinted on the runways of the airbase. A giant American Galaxy transport was taxiing round the perimeter after landing. Outside the base’s several gates were the black
unes
of Suffolk policemen, hundreds of them, backs to the wire, facing the demonstrators.

From the swelling crowd in front of the police cordon, a dark line of marchers, banners flapping and waving above their heads, ran back down the access lane to the A1088, debouched onto that road, and ran southeast toward Ixworth junction.

Straight below him he could look down at Little Fakenham village, with Honington village swimming into view. He could make out the barns of Honington Hall and the red brick of Malting Row across the road. Here the marchers were at their thickest as they swirled around the entrance to the narrow lane leading to the base. His heart gave a thump.

Up the road from the center of Honington village there was a line of cars backed up for half a mile—all drivers who had not realized that the road would be blocked for part of the early morning, or who had hoped to get through in time. There were more than a hundred vehicles.

Farther down, right in the heart of the marching column, he could see the glint of two or three car roofs; evidently they belonged to drivers who had been allowed through just before the road was closed but who had not made Ixworth junction in time to avoid being trapped. There were some in Ixworth Thorpe village and two parked near a small church farther on.

“I wonder,” he whispered.

Valeri Petrofsky saw the policeman who had originally stopped him strolling in his direction. The marching column had thinned a bit; it was the tail end that was passing now.

“Sorry it’s taken so long, sir. Seems there were more of them than foreseen.”

Petrofsky shrugged amiably. “Can’t be helped, Officer. I was a fool to try it. Thought I’d get through in time.”

“Ah, there’s quite a few motorists been caught by it all. Won’t be long now. About ten minutes for the marchers, then there’s a few big broadcast vans bringing up the tail. Soon as they’re past, we’ll open the road again.”

Across the fields in front of them a police helicopter went past in a wide circle. In its open doorway Petrofsky could see the traffic controller talking into his handset.

“Harry, can you hear me? Come in, Harry, it’s John.” Preston was sitting in the doorway of the chopper over Ixworth Thorpe, trying to raise Burkinshaw.

The watcher’s voice came back, scratchy and tinny, from Thetford. “Harry here. Read you, John.”

“Harry, there’s an anti-Cruise demonstration going on down here. There’s a chance, just a chance, that Chummy got caught up in it. Hold on.” He turned to the pilot. “How long’s that been going on?”

“ ’Bout an hour.”

“When did they close the road at Ixworth down there?”

From the rear, the traffic officer leaned forward. “Five-twenty,” he said.

Preston glanced at his watch. Six-twenty-five. “Harry, get the hell down the A134 to Bury St. Edmunds, pick up the A45, and meet me at the junction of the 1088 and the 45 at Elmswell. Use the cop up at the garages as an outrider. And Harry, tell Joe to drive like never in his life.” He tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Take me to Elmswell and set me down in a field near the road junction.”

By air it took only five minutes. As they passed over Ixworth junction, across the A143 Preston could see the long, snaking column of buses parked on the verge, the ones that had brought the bulk of the marchers to this picturesque and sylvan part of the countryside. Two minutes later he could make out the broad A45 running from Bury St. Edmunds to Ipswich.

The pilot banked into a turn, looking for a landing spot. There were meadows near the point where the narrow, lanelike A1088 debouched into the sweep of the A45.

“They could be water meadows,” shouted the pilot. “I’ll hover. You can jump from a couple of feet.”

Preston nodded. He turned to the traffic controller, who was in uniform. “Grab your cap. You’re coming with me.”

“That’s not my job,” protested the sergeant, “I’m traffic control.”

“That’s what I want you for. Come on, let’s go.”

He jumped the two feet from the step of the Bell into thick, tall grass. The police sergeant, holding his flat cap against the draft of the rotors, followed him. The pilot lifted away and turned toward Ipswich and his base.

With Preston in the lead, the pair plodded across the meadow, climbed the fence, and dropped onto the A1088. A hundred yards away it joined the A45. Across the junction they could see the unending stream of traffic heading toward Ipswich.

“Now what?” asked the police sergeant.

“Now you stand here and stop cars coming south down this road. Ask the drivers if they have been on the road from as far north as Honington. If they joined this road south of Ixworth junction, or at it, let ’em go. Tell me when you get the first one to have come through the demonstration

Then Preston walked down to the A45 and looked to the right, toward Bury St. Edmunds. “Come on, Harry. Come on.”

The cars coming south stopped for the police uniform in their path, but all averred that they had joined the road south of the
antinuclear
demonstration. Twenty minutes later, Preston saw the Thetford motorcycle patrolman, siren wailing to clear a path, racing toward him, followed by the two watcher cars. They all screeched to a halt at the entrance to the A1088. The policeman raised his visor.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, sir. I don’t reckon that journey’s ever been done faster. There’s going to be questions.”

Preston thanked him and ordered both his cars a few yards up the narrow secondary road. He pointed to a grassy bank. “Joe, ram it.”

“Do what?”

“Ram it. Not hard enough to wreck the car. Just make it look good.”

The two policemen stared in amazement as Joe forced his car into the bank by the road. The car’s rear end stuck out, blocking half the freeway.

Preston directed the other car to move fifteen yards farther up. “Okay, out,” he ordered the driver. “Come on, lads, all together, now. Heave it onto its side.”

It took seven shoves before the
MI
5 car rolled over. Taking a rock from the hedgerow, Preston smashed a side window on Joe’s car, scooped up handfuls of the crystalline fragments, and scattered them across the road.

“Ginger, lie on the road, here, near Joe’s car. Barney, get a blanket from the trunk and put it over him. Right over. Face and all. Okay, the rest of you, over the hedge, and stay out of sight.”

Preston beckoned the two policemen to him. “Sergeant, there’s been a nasty pileup. I want you to stand by the body and direct the traffic past it. Officer, park your bike, walk up the road, and slow down oncoming traffic as it approaches.”

The two policemen had orders from Ipswich and Norwich, respectively. Cooperate with the men from London. Even if they are maniacs.

Preston sat at the base of the grassy bank, a handkerchief pressed to his face as if to stanch blood from a broken nose.

There is nothing like a body by the roadside to slow down drivers, or cause them to stare through the side window as they crawl past. Preston had made sure Ginger’s “body” was on the driver’s side for cars coming south down the A1088.

Major Valeri Petrofsky was in the seventeenth car. Like the others before it, the modest family hatchback slowed to the patrolman’s flapping hand, then crawled past the crash scene. On the grassy bank, eyes half-closed, the face in the photo in his pocket imprinted on his mind, Preston looked across at the Russian twelve feet away as his sedan swerved slowly past the two cars that almost blocked the road.

From the corner of his eye Preston watched the little hatchback turn left onto the A45, pause for a break in the traffic, and pull into the Ipswich-bound stream. Then he was up and running.

The two drivers and two watchers came back over the hedge at his call. An amazed motorist who was just slowing down saw the “body” leap off the ground and help the others to pull the over-turned car back onto its four wheels, where it landed with a crunch.

Joe climbed behind the wheel of his own car and backed it out of the bank. Barney wiped mud and grass off its headlights before climbing in. Harry Burkinshaw took not one but three strong mints and popped the lot.

Preston approached the motorcycle patrolman. “You’d better get back to Thetford, and many, many thanks for all your help.” To the sergeant on foot he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you here. Your uniform’s too noticeable for you to come with us. But many thanks for your help.” Then the two
MI
5 cars swept away toward the A45 and turned left toward Ipswich.

The bewildered motorist who had seen it all asked the abandoned sergeant, “Are they making a film for the telly?”

“I shouldn’t be at all bloody surprised,” said the sergeant. “By the way, sir, can you give me a lift into Ipswich?”

The commercial and commuter traffic into Ipswich was dense, and became thicker as they approached the town. It provided good cover for the two watcher cars, which constantly shifted position so they could alternately keep the hatchback in view.

They came into town past Whitton, but short of the town center the small car up ahead took a right into
Chevallier
Street and round the ring to the
Handford
Bridge, where it crossed the River Orwell. South of the river the quarry followed the Ranelagh Road and then took another right.

“He’s heading out of town again,” said Joe, holding station five cars behind the suspect. They were entering Belstead Road, which leaves Ipswich heading south.

Quite suddenly the hatchback pulled to the left and entered a small housing development.

“Steady,” Preston warned Joe, “he mustn’t see us now.”

He told the second car to stay at the junction of the access road and Belstead, in case the quarry came around in a circle and back out again. Joe cruised slowly into the complex of seven cul-de-sacs that make up The Hayes. They went past the entrance to Cherryhayes Close just in time to see the man they were tailing park in front of a small house halfway up the street. The man was now climbing out of his car. Preston ordered Joe to keep going until out of sight, then stop.

“Harry, give me your hat and see if there’s a Conservative rosette in the glove compartment.”

There was—left over from the two weeks when the team had used it to enter and leave the Royston house by the front door without arousing suspicion. Preston pinned it to his jacket, stripped off the raincoat he had worn by the roadside where he had first seen Petrofsky face-to-face, donned Harry’s porkpie hat, and climbed out.

He walked to Cherryhayes Close and strolled up the walk opposite the house of the Soviet agent. Directly facing No. 12 was No. 9. It had a Social Democratic Party poster in the window. He walked to the front door and knocked.

It was opened by a pretty young woman. Preston could hear a child’s voice, then a man’s, inside the house. It was eight o’clock; the family was at breakfast.

Preston raised his hat. “Good morning, madam.”

Seeing his rosette, the woman said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, you’re really wasting your time here. We vote Social Democrat.”

“I perfectly understand, ma’am. But I have a piece of promotional literature which I would be most grateful if you would show to your husband.” He handed her the plastic card that identified him as an officer of MI5.

She did not look at it, but sighed. “Oh, very well. But I’m sure it won’t change anything.”

She left him standing on the doorstep and withdrew into the house; seconds later, Preston heard a whispered conversation from the kitchen in the back. A man came out and walked down the hall, holding the card. A young business executive in dark trousers, white shirt, striped tie. No jacket; that would come when he left for work. He was holding Preston’s card and frowning.

“What on earth’s this?” the householder asked.

“What it seems to be, sir. It’s the identification card of an officer of MI5.”

“It’s not a joke?”

“No, it’s perfectly genuine.”

“I see. Well, what do you want?”

“Would you let me come in and close the door?”

The young man paused for a moment, then nodded. Preston doffed his hat again and stepped over the threshold. He closed the door behind him.

Across the street, Valeri Petrofsky was in his sitting room behind the opaque net curtains. He was tired, and his muscles ached from his long ride. He helped himself to a whisky. Glancing through the curtains, he could see one of the seemingly endless political canvassers talking to the people at No. 9. He had had three himself over the past ten days, and another wad of party literature had been on his doormat when he arrived home. He watched the householder allow the man into his hallway. Another convert, he thought. Fat lot of good it will do them.

Preston sighed with relief. The young man watched him doubtfully while his wife stared from the kitchen door. The face of a small girl of about three appeared around the doorframe at her mother’s knee.

“Are you really from MI5?” asked the man.

“Yes. We don’t have two heads and green ears, you know.”

For the first time the younger man smiled. “No. Of course not. It’s just a surprise. But what do you want with us?”

“Nothing, of course.” Preston grinned. “I don’t even know who you are. My colleagues and I have tailed a man we believe to be a foreign agent, and he has gone into the house across the way. I would like to borrow your phone, and perhaps you would allow a couple of men to observe the suspect from your upstairs bedroom window.”