“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 MI5 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 MI5 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.”
“Foreign agent?” asked the man. “Jim Ross? He’s not a foreigner.”
“We think he may be. Could I use the phone?”
“Well, yes. I suppose so.” He turned toward his family. “Come on, all back in the kitchen.”
Preston rang Charles Street and was put through to Sir Bernard Hemmings, who was still at Cork. Burkinshaw had already used the police radio net to inform Cork in guarded language that the “client” was at his home in Ipswich and that the “taxis” were in the neighborhood and “on call.”
“Preston?” said the Director-General when he came on the line. “John? Where are you, exactly?”
“A small residential cul-de-sac in Ipswich, called Cherryhayes Close,” said Preston. “We’ve run Chummy to earth. I’m certain this time it’s his base.”
“Do you think it’s time we moved in?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I fear he may be armed. I think you know what I mean. I don’t think it’s one for Special Branch or the local force.” He told his DG what he wanted, then replaced the receiver and put in a call to Sir Nigel at Sentinel House.
“Yes, John, I agree,” said C when he had been given the same information. “If he’s got with him what we think, it had better be as you ask. The SAS.”
Chapter 22
To call in the Special Air Service, Britain’s elite and multirole regiment of experts at deep penetration, observation, and (occasionally) urban assault, is not so easy as the more adventurous television dramas might suggest.
The SAS never operates on its own initiative. Under the Constitution it can, like any part of the armed forces, operate inside the United Kingdom only in support of the civil authority—that is, the police. Thus, ostensibly the local police remain in overall command of the operation. In reality, once the SAS men have been given the “go” order, the local police are well advised to step smartly back.
Under the law, it is the chief constable of a county in which an emergency has arisen—an emergency that the local police are deemed not to be able to handle unassisted—who must make a formal request to the Home Office for the SAS to be brought in. It may be that the chief constable is “advised” to make the request, and it is a bold man indeed who refuses to do so if the “advice” comes from high enough.
When the chief constable has made his formal request to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office, the latter passes the request to his opposite number in Defense, who in turn apprises the director of military operations of the request, and the DMO alerts the SAS at its Hereford base camp.
That the procedure can work within minutes is due in part to the fact that it has been rehearsed over and over again and honed to a fine art, and partly to the fact that the British establishment, when required to move fast, contains enough interpersonal relationships to permit a great deal of procedure to be kept at verbal level, with the inevitable paperwork left to catch up later. British bureaucracy may appear slow and cumbersome to the British, but it is greased lightning compared to its European and American counterparts. In any case, most British chief constables have been to Hereford to meet the unit known simply as “the Regiment” and to be shown exactly what kinds of assistance can be put at their disposal if requested. Few have emerged unimpressed.
That morning the chief constable of Suffolk was told from London of the crisis that had been visited on him in the form of a suspected foreign agent, believed to be armed and perhaps with a bomb, who was holed up in Cherryhayes Close, Ipswich. The chief constable contacted Sir Hubert Villiers in Whitehall, where his call was expected. Sir Hubert briefed his minister and his colleague the Cabinet Secretary, who informed the Prime Minister. Downing Street’s assent having been obtained, Sir Hubert passed the by now politically cleared request to Sir Peregrine Jones at Defense, who knew it all, anyway, because he had had a chat with Sir Martin Flannery. Within sixty minutes of the first contact between the head of the Suffolk constabulary and the Home Office, the director of military operations was talking on a scrambled line to the commanding officer of the SAS at Hereford.
The fighting arm of the SAS is based on units of four. Four men make up a patrol, four patrols a troop, and four troops a squadron. The four “saber” squadrons are A, B, D, and G. They rotate through the various SAS commitments: Northern Ireland, the Middle East, jungle training, and special projects, apart from the continuing NATO tasks and the maintenance of one squadron on standby at Hereford.
The commitments tend to last from six to nine months, and that month it was B Squadron that was based at Hereford. As usual there was one troop on half-hour standby and another at two-hour readiness. The four troops in each squadron are always the air troop (free-fallers), the boat troop (marines trained in canoe and underwater expertise), the mountain troop (climbers), and the mobile troop (in armed Land-Rovers).
When Brigadier Jeremy Cripps finished his call from London, it was to Seven Troop, the free-fall parachute men of B Squadron, that the task fell of going to Ipswich.
“What is your normal routine at this hour?” asked Preston of the Cherryhayes Close householder, whose name was Adrian. The young executive had just finished a phone conversation with the ACC for Suffolk, who was in his office at Ipswich police headquarters. If there had been any lingering doubt in Adrian’s mind as to the authenticity of his unexpected guest of half an hour earlier, it had been dispelled. Preston had suggested that Adrian make the call himself, and the young man was now rightly convinced that the Suffolk police were backing the MI5 officer in his sitting room. He had also been told that the man across the street might be armed and dangerous, and that an arrest would have to be made later in the day.
“Well, I drive to work at about quarter to nine—that’s in ten minutes. At about ten, Lucinda takes Samantha to playschool. She usually does her shopping, picks up Samantha at midday, and returns home. On foot. I get back from work around six-thirty—by car, of course.”
“I’d like you to take the day off work,” said Preston. “Ring your office now and say you are not well. But leave the house at the usual time. You will be met at the top of the road, where Belstead Road joins the access to The Hayes, by a police car.”
“What about my wife and child?”
“I’d like Mrs. Adrian to wait here until the usual hour, then leave with Samantha and shopping basket, walk up there, and join you. Is there any place you can go for the day?”
“There’s my mother at Felixstowe,” said Lucinda Adrian nervously.
“Could you spend the day with her? Perhaps even tonight?”
“What about our house?”
“I assure you, Mr. Adrian, nothing will happen to it,” said Preston optimistically. He might have added it would either be unharmed or, if things went wrong, vaporized. “I must ask you to let me and my colleagues use it as an observation post to watch the man across the way. We will come and go via the back. We will do absolutely no damage.”
“What do you think, darling?” Adrian asked his wife.
She nodded. “I just want to get Samantha out of here,” she said.
“In one hour, I promise you,” said Preston. “We know that Mr. Ross has been up all night because we have been tailing him. He’s probably asleep, and in any case no police move against the house will take place before the afternoon, maybe the early evening.”
“All right,” said Adrian, “we’ll do it.”
He made his call to the office to excuse himself for the day, and drove off at eight-forty-five. From his upstairs bedroom window, Valeri Petrofsky saw him go. The Russian was preparing to catch a few hours’ sleep. There was nothing unusual going on in the street. Adrian always left for work at this hour.
Preston noted that there was an empty lot behind the Adrians’ house. He radioed Harry Burkinshaw and Barney, who came in thr
ough the back, nodded to a startled Lucinda Adrian, and went upstairs to adopt again their profession in life—watching. Ginger had found a patch of high ground a quarter of a mile away from which he could see both the estuary of the Orwell, with the docks on its banks, and the small housing development spread out below. With binoculars he could monitor the rear of 12 Cherryhayes Close.
“It backs onto the rear garden of another house, on Brackenhayes,” Ginger told Preston on his radio. “No sign of movement in house or garden. All windows closed— that’s odd in this weather.”
“Keep watching,” said Preston. “I’ll be here. If I have to go, Harry will take over.”
An hour later, Lucinda and Samantha walked calmly out of the house and away.
In the town itself another operation was moving up through the gears. The chief constable, who had risen through the uniformed branch, had handed the details of the pending operation to his assistant, Chief Superintendent Peter Low.
Low had dispatched two detectives to the town hall, where they had elicited the information that the target house was owned by a certain Mr. Johnson but that bills were to be sent to Oxborrows, the real-estate agents. A call to Oxborrows revealed that Mr. Johnson was away in Saudi Arabia and the house had been rented to a Mr. James Duncan Ross. A second picture of Ross, alias Timothy Donnelly of the streets of Damascus, was telexed to Ipswich and shown to the agent at Oxborrows, who identified the tenant.
The town hall housing department also came up with the names of the architects who had designed the development called The Hayes, and from this partnership were obtained detailed floor plans of the property at 12 Cherryhayes Close. The architects were even more helpful; other houses, identical in design to the last detail, had been built elsewhere in Ipswich, and one was found to be standing empty. It would be useful for the SAS assault team; they would know the exact geography of the house when they went in.
Fourth Protocol Page 39