“There was one problem. Someone at Defense HQ had sent old farmer Marais a cable to say his son was home at last, having been posted ‘missing, presumed dead.’ To Brandt’s horror a cable arrived—I admit I am guessing here, but it makes sense—urging him to return home. Of course, he could not show himself in Duiwelskloof. He made himself ill again and went into Wynberg Military Hospital.
“The old father would not be put off. He cabled again, to say he was coming all the way to Cape Town. In desperation Brandt appealed to his friends in the Comintern, and the matter was arranged. They ran the old man down on a lonely road in the Mootseki Valley, making it look like a hit-and-run accident while Marais was changing a flat tire. After that it was plain sailing for Brandt. The young man could not get home for the funeral—everyone at Duiwelskloof understood that—and lawyer Benson had no suspicion when he was asked to sell the estate and mail the proceeds to Cape Town.”
The silence in the office was disturbed only by the buzzing of a fly on the windowpane. The general nodded. “It makes sense,” he conceded. “But there’s no proof. We cannot prove the Brandts were not Jewish, let alone that they were Communists. Can you give me anything that puts it beyond doubt?”
Preston reached into his pocket and produced the photograph, which he laid on General Pienaar’s desk. “That is a picture—the last picture—of the real Jan Marais. As you see, he was a useful cricketer in his boyhood. He was a bowler. If you look, you will see that his fingers are gripping the ball in the manner of a spin bowler. You will also notice that he is left-handed. I have spent more than a week studying the Jan Marais in London—at close range, through binoculars. When driving, smoking, eating, drinking, he is right-handed. General, you can do many things to a man to change him; you can change his hair, his speech, his face, his mannerisms. But you cannot turn a left-handed spin bowler into a right-handed man.”
General Pienaar, who had played cricket for half his life, stared down at the photograph. “So what have we got up there in London, Mr. Preston?”
“General, you have got a dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool Communist agent who has worked inside the South African foreign service more than forty years for the Soviet Union.”
General Pienaar lifted his eyes from the desk and gazed out across the valley to the Voortrekker Monument. “I’ll break him,” he whispered, “I’ll break him into tiny pieces and stamp them into the bushveld.”
Preston coughed. “Bearing in mind that we British also have a problem because of this man, could I ask you to restrain your hand until you have talked personally to Sir Nigel Irvine?”
“Very well, Mr. Preston,” General Pienaar answered, nodding. “I will talk to Sir Nigel first. Now, what are your plans?”
“There is a flight back to London this evening, sir. I would like to be on it.”
General Pienaar rose and held out his hand. “Good day, Mr. Preston. Captain Viljoen will see you onto the plane. And thank you for your assistance.”
From the hotel, as he packed, Preston made a call to Dennis Grey, who drove up from Johannesburg and took a message for coded transmission to London. Preston had his answer two hours later. Sir Bernard Hemmings would come into the office the next day, Saturday, to meet him.
Preston and Viljoen stood in the departure lounge at just before 8:00 p.m. as the last calls for passengers on the South African Airways flight for London were made. Preston showed his boarding pass and Viljoen his all-purpose ID card. They went through to the cooler darkness of the tarmac.
“I’ll say this for you, Engelsman, you’re a damned good jagdhond.”
“Thank you,” said Preston.
“Do you know what a jagdhond is?”
“I believe,” said Preston carefully, “that the Cape hunting dog is slow, ungainly, but very tenacious.”
It was the first time that week that Captain Viljoen threw back his head and laughed. Then he grew serious. “May I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you put a flower on the old man’s grave?”
Preston stared across at the waiting airliner, its cabin lights blazing in the semidarkness twenty yards away. The last passengers were climbing the steps.
“They had taken away his son,” he said, “and then they killed him to stop him from finding out. It seemed the thing to do.”
Viljoen held out his hand. “Good-bye, John, and good luck.”
“Good-bye, Andries.”
Ten minutes later, the flying springbok on the fin of the jetliner tilted its straining nose toward the sky and lifted off for the north and Europe.
Chapter 10
Sir Bernard Hemmings, with Brian Harcourt-Smith at his side, sat in silence and listened to Preston’s report until he had finished.
“Good God,” he said heavily, when Preston was silent, “so it was Moscow after all. There’ll be the devil to pay. The damage must have been huge. Brian, are both men still under surveillance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep it that way through the weekend. Make no move to close in until the Paragon Committee have had a chance to hear what we have. John, I know you must be tired, but can you have your report written up by tomorrow night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have it on my desk first thing Monday morning. I’ll reach the various committee members at their homes and ask for an urgent meeting for Monday morning.”
When Major Valeri Petrofsky was shown into the sitting room of the elegant dacha at Usovo, he was in a spirit of extreme trepidation. He had never met the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and never had imagined he would do so.
He had had a confusing, even terrifying, four days. Since being detached for special duties by his director, he had been sequestered in a flat in central Moscow, guarded night and day by two men from the Ninth Directorate, the Kremlin Guards. Not unnaturally, he had feared the worst, without having the faintest idea what he was supposed to have done.
Then the abrupt order that Sunday evening to dress in his best suit of civilian clothes and follow the guards downstairs to a waiting Chaika, followed by the silent drive to Usovo. He had not recognized the dacha to which he was brought.
It was only when Major Pavlov had told him, “The Comrade General Secretary will see you now,” that he had realized where he was. His throat was dry as he stepped through the door into the sitting room. He tried to compose himself, telling himself he would answer respectfully and truthfully any accusations leveled at him.
Inside the room he stood rigidly at attention. The old man in the wheelchair observed him silently for several minutes, then raised a hand and beckoned him forward. Petrofsky took four smart steps and stopped again, still at attention. But when the Soviet leader spoke, the whiplash of accusation in his voice was missing. He spoke quite softly.
“Major Petrofsky, you are not a tailor’s dummy. Come forward into the light, where I can see you. And sit down.”
Petrofsky was stunned. To be seated in the presence of the General Secretary was, for a young major, unheard of. He did as he was told, perching on the edge of the indicated chair, back stiff, knees together.
“Have you any idea why I have sent for you?”
“No, Comrade General Secretary.”
“No, I suppose not. It was necessary that no one know. I will tell you.
“There is a mission that has to be performed. Its outcome will be of quite incalculable importance to the Soviet Union and the victory of the Revolution. If it succeeds, the benefits to our country will be inestimable; if it fails, the damage to us will be catastrophic. I have chosen you, Valeri Alexeivitch, to carry out that mission.”
Petrofsky’s mind whirled. His original fear that he was destined fiar disgrace and exile was replaced by an almost uncontrollable jubilation. As a brilliant scholar at Moscow University, he had been plucked from an intended career in the Foreign Ministry to become one of the First Chief Directorate’s bright young men; ever since he had volunteere
d for and been accepted by the elite Illegals Directorate, he had dreamed of an important mission. But his wildest fantasies had not encompassed anything like this. He allowed himself at last to look the General Secretary straight in the eye. “Thank you, Comrade General Secretary.”
“Others will brief you as to the details,” the General Secretary continued. “Time will be short, but you have already been trained to the peak of our abilities, and you will have all for the mission that you need.
“I have asked to see you for one reason. There is something that must be put to you, and I have chosen to ask it myself. If the operation succeeds—and I have no doubt it will—you will return here to promotion and honors beyond your imaginings. I will see to it.
“But if anything should go wrong, if the police and troops of the country to which you will be sent are seen to be closing in, you will have to take steps without hesitation to ensure that you are not taken alive. Do you understand, Valeri Alexeivitch?”
“Yes, I do, Comrade General Secretary.”
“To be taken alive, to be rigorously interrogated, to be broken—oh, yes, it is possible nowadays, there are no reserves of courage that can resist the chemicals—to be paraded before an international press conference—all this would be a living hell, anyway. But the damage of such a spectacle to the Soviet Union, to this your country, would be beyond estimation and beyond repair.”
Major Petrofsky took a deep breath. “I will not fail,” he said. “But if it comes to it, I will never be taken alive.”
The General Secretary pressed a buzzer beneath the table and the door opened. Major Pavlov stood there.
“Now go, young man. You will be told here in this house, by a man whom you may have seen before, what the mission involves. Then you will go to another place for intensive briefing. We will not meet again—until you return.”
When the door closed upon the two majors of the KGB, the General Secretary stared for a while into the flickering flames of the log fire. Such a fine young man, he thought. Such a pity.
As Petrofsky followed Major Pavlov down two long corridors to the guest wing, he felt as if his ribcage could scarcely contain the emotions of expectation and pride within it.
Major Valeri Alexeivitch Petrofsky was a Russian soldier and a patriot. Steeped in the English language, he had heard the phrase “to die for God, King, and country” and he understood its meaning. He had no God, but he had been entrusted with a mission by the leader of his country, and he was determined, as he walked down that corridor at Usovo, that if the moment should ever come he would not shrink from what had to be done.
Major Pavlov stopped at a door, knocked, and pushed it open. He stood aside to let Petrofsky enter. Then he closed the door and withdrew.
A white-haired man rose from a chair beside a table covered by notes and maps, and came forward. He smiled, holding out his hand. “So you are Major Petrofsky.”
Petrofsky was surprised by the stutter. He knew the face, though they had never met. In the folklore of the FCD this man was one who younger entrants were taught was one of the “Five Stars,” a man to be respected, a man who represented one of the great triumphs of Soviet ideology over capitalism. “Yes, Comrade Colonel,” he said.
Philby had read the file until he knew it perfectly. Petrofsky was only thirty-six and had been trained for a decade to pass for an Englishman. He had twice been in Britain on familiarization trips, each time living under deep cover, each time going nowhere near the Soviet Embassy, and each time undertaking no mission at all. Such familiarization trips were intended simply to enable illegals, before they went operational, to acclimatize themselves to everything they would one day see again; simple things, opening a bank account, having a scrape with another car driver and knowing what to do, using the London Underground, and always improving the use of modern slang phrases.
Philby knew that the young man in front of him not only spoke perfect English but was tone-perfect in four regional accents and had faultless command of Welsh and Irish. He dropped into English himself.
“Sit down,” he said. “Now, I am simply going to describe to you the broad outlines of the mission. Others will give you all the details. Time will be short, desperately short, so you will have to absorb everything faster than ever before in your life.”
As they talked, Philby realized that after thirty years away from his native land, and despite reading every newspaper and magazine from Britain that he could lay hands on, it was he who was out of practice, he whose phraseology was stilted and old-fashioned. The young Russian spoke like a modern Englishman of his age.
It took two hours for Philby to outline the plan called Aurora and what it involved. Petrofsky drank in the details. He was excited and amazed by the audacity of it.
“You will spend the next few days with a team of four men only. They will brief you on a whole range of names, places, dates, transmission times, rendezvous, and backup rendezvous. You will memorize them all. The only thing you will have to take in with you will be a block of one-time pads. Well, that’s it.”
Petrofsky sat nodding at what he had been told. “I have promised the Comrade General Secretary that I will not fail,” he said. “It will be done, as required and on time. If the components arrive, it will be done.”
Philby rose. “Good, then I will have you driven back to Moscow to the place where you will spend the time remaining until your departure.”
As Philby crossed the room to the house phone, Petrofsky was startled by a loud coo from the corner. He turned to see a large cage from which a handsome pigeon with a splint on one leg was regarding them. Philby grinned apologetically. “I call him Hopalong,” he said as he dialed for Major Pavlov to return. “Found him in the street last winter with a broken wing and leg. The wing has mended but the leg keeps giving trouble.”
Petrofsky crossed to the cage and scratched the bars with a fingernail. But the pigeon waddled away to the far side. The door opened to admit Major Pavlov. As usual he said nothing, but gestured Petrofsky to follow him.
“Until we meet again, good luck,” said Philby.
On Monday, March 23, the members of the Paragon Committee assembled to read Preston’s report.
“So,” said Sir Anthony Plumb, opening the discussion, “now at least we know what, where, when, and who. We still don’t know why.”
“Nor how much,” interposed Sir Patrick Strickland. “The damage assessment is still unattempted and we simply have got to inform our allies. Even though nothing sensitive—save for one fictitious paper—has gone on its way to Moscow since January.”
“Agreed,” said Sir Anthony. “All right, gentlemen, I think we must concur that the time for further investigation is over. How do we handle this man? Any ideas? Brian?”
Brian Harcourt-Smith was without his Director-General, and represented MI5 alone. He chose his words carefully. “We take the view that with Berenson, Marais, and the cutout Benotti the ring is complete. It seems to the Security Service that it is unlikely there were more agents being run by this one ring. Berenson would have been so important, it seems to us likely the entire ring was set up to handle him alone.”
There were nods of agreement around the table.
“And your recommendation?” asked Sir Anthony.
“That we pick them all up, roll up the whole ring,” said Harcourt-Smith.
“There’s a foreign diplomat involved,” objected Sir Hubert Villiers of the Home Office.
“I think Pretoria may be prepared to waive immunity in this case,” said Sir Patrick Strickland. “General Pienaar must have reported all this to Mr. Botha by now. They’ll no doubt want Marais when we have had a chat with him.”
“Well, that seems decisive enough,” said Sir Anthony. “How about you, Nigel?”
Sir Nigel Irvine had been staring at the ceiling as if lost in thought. At the question he seemed to wake up. “I was just wondering,” he said quietly. “We pick them up. Then what?”
“Interrogation,”
said Harcourt-Smith crisply. “We can begin damage assessment and inform our allies of the roundup of the entire ring to sweeten the pill a bit.”
“Yes,” said Sir Nigel, “it’s good. But what after that?” He began to address the secretaries of the three ministries and the Cabinet. “It seems to me we have four choices. We can pick up Berenson and formally charge him under the Official Secrets Act, which we’ll have to do if we arrest him. But do we actually have a case that will stand up in court? We know we are right, but can we prove it against a first-class legal defense? Apart from anything else, a formal arrest and charge would cause a major scandal, which would be certain to rebound against the government.”
Sir Martin Flannery, the Cabinet Secretary, took the point. Unlike anyone else in the room, he knew of the intention to hold a snap summer election, because the Prime Minister had told him in strictest confidence. A lifelong civil servant of the old school, Sir Martin had offered his total loyalty to the present government, as he had to three previous governments, two of them Labour. He would offer that same loyalty to any democratically elected successor government. He pursed his lips.
“Then,” resumed Sir Nigel, “we could leave Berenson and Marais in place, but seek to feed Berenson doctored documents to pass on to Moscow. But that wouldn’t work for long. Berenson is too highly placed and knowledgeable to be fooled by that.”
Sir Peregrine Jones nodded. He knew that on that point Sir Nigel was right.
“Or we could pick Berenson up and try to get his complete cooperation in damage assessment by offering him immunity from prosecution. Personally, I hate immunity for traitors. You never know whether they have told you the whole truth or have tricked you, as Blunt did. And it always gets out eventually, with an even worse scandal.”
Fourth Protocol Page 18