“Nuclear technology.”
“Which gave you the impression ...?”
“That Franz Winkler came into this country lit up like a neon sign. And the sign was a message—a message on two legs.”
Sir Nigel’s face was still wreathed in good humor, but some of the twinkle had faded from his eyes.
“And what did this remarkable message say, John?”
“I think it said: I cannot give you the executive illegal agent because I do not know where he is. But follow this man; he will lead you to the transmitter. And he did. So I staked out the transmitter and the agent came to it at last.”
Sir Nigel replaced his knife and fork on the empty plate and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “What, exactly, are you trying to say?”
“I believe, sir, that the operation was blown. It seems to me unavoidable to conclude that someone on the other side deliberately blew it away.”
“What an extraordinary suggestion. Let me recommend the strawberry flan. Had some last week. Different batch, of course. Yes? Two, my dear, if you please. Yes, a little fresh cream.”
“May I ask a question?” said Preston when the plates had been cleared.
Sir Nigel smiled. “I’m sure you will, anyway.”
“Why did the Russian have to die?”
“As I understand it, he was crawling toward a nuclear bomb with every apparent intention of detonating it.”
“I was there,” said Preston as the strawberry flan arrived. They waited until the cream had been poured.
“The man was wounded in the knee, stomach, and shoulder. Captain Lyndhurst could have stopped him with a kick. There was no need to blow his head off.”
“I’m sure the good captain wished to make absolutely sure,” suggested the Master.
“With the Russian alive, Sir Nigel, we would have had the Soviet Union bang to rights, caught in the act. Without him, we have nothing that cannot be convincingly denied. In other words, the whole thing now has to be suppressed forever.”
“How true,” the spymaster replied, masticating thoughtfully on a mouthful of shortcake pastry and strawberries.
“Captain Lyndhurst happens to be the son of Lord Frinton.”
“Indeed. Frinton? Does one know him?”
“Apparently. You were at school together.”
“Really? There were so many. Hard to recall.”
“And I believe Julian Lyndhurst is your godson.”
“My dear John, you do check up on things, don’t you, now?”
Sir Nigel had finished his dessert. He steepled his hands, placed his chin on his knuckles, and regarded the MI5 investigator steadily. The courtesy remained; the good humor was draining away. “Anything else?”
Preston nodded gravely. “An hour before the assault on the house began, Captain Lyndhurst took a call in the hallway of the house across the road. I checked with my colleague who first took the phone. The caller was ringing from a public box.”
“No doubt one of his colleagues.”
“No, sir. They were using radios. And no one outside that operation knew we were inside the house. No one, that is, but a very few in London.”
“May I ask what you are suggesting?”
“Just one more detail, Sir Nigel. Before he died, that Russian whispered one word. He seemed very determined to get that single word out before he went. I had my ear close to his mouth at the time. What he said was: ‘Philby.’ ”
“ ‘Philby’? Good heavens. I wonder what he could have meant by that.”
“I think I know. I think he thought Harold Philby had betrayed him, and I believe he was right.”
“I see. And may I be privileged to know of your deductions?”
The Chiefs voice was soft, but his tone was devoid of all his earlier bonhomie.
Preston took a deep breath. “I deduce that Philby the traitor was a party to this operation, possibly from the outset. If he was, he would have been in a no-lose situation. Like others, I have heard it whispered that he wants to return home, here to England, to spend his last days.
“If the plan had worked, he could probably have earned his release from his Soviet masters and his entry from a new Hard Left government in London. Perhaps a year from now. Or he could tell London the general outline of the plan, then betray it.”
“And which of these two remarkable choices do you suspect he made?”
“The second one, Sir Nigel.”
“To what end, pray?”
“To buy his ticket home. From this end. A trade.”
“And you think I would be a party to that trade?”
“I don’t know what to think, Sir Nigel. I don’t know what else to think. There has been talk ... about his old colleagues, the magic circle, the solidarity of the establishment of which he was once a member ... that sort of thing.”
Preston studied his plate, with its half-eaten strawberries. Sir Nigel gazed at the ceiling for a long time before letting out a profound sigh. “You’re a remarkable man, John. Tell me, what are you doing a week from today?”
“Nothing, I believe.”
“Then please meet me at the door of Sentinel House at eight in the morning of June twenty-sixth. Bring your passport. And now, if you’ll forgive me, I suggest we forgo coffee in the library. ...”
The man at the upper window of the safe house in the Geneva back street stood and watched the departure of his visitor. The head and shoulders of the guest appeared below him; the man walked down the short path to the front gate and stepped into the street, where his car waited. The car’s driver stepped out, came around the vehicle, and opened the door for the senior man. Then he walked back to the driver’s door.
Before he climbed back into the car, Preston raised his gaze to the figure behind the glass in the upper window. When he was behind the steering wheel he asked, “That’s him? That’s really him? The man from Moscow?”
“Yes, that’s him. And now, the airport, if you please,” replied Sir Nigel from the rear seat. They drove away.
“Well, John, I promised you an explanation,” said Sir Nigel a few moments later. “Ask your questions.”
Preston could see the face of the Chief in his rearview mirror. The older man was gazing out at the passing countryside.
“The operation?”
“You were quite right. It was mounted personally by the General Secretary, with the advice and assistance of Philby. It seems it was called Plan Aurora. It was betrayed, but not by Philby.”
“Why was it blown away?”
Sir Nigel thought for several minutes. “From quite an early stage I believed that you could be right. Both in your tentative conclusions of last December in what is now called the Preston report and in your deductions after the intercept in Glasgow. Even though Harcourt-Smith declined to believe in either. I was not certain the two were linked, but I was not prepared to discount it. The more I looked at it, the more I became convinced that Plan Aurora was not a true KGB operation. It had not the hallmarks, the painstaking care. It looked like a hasty operation mounted by a man or a group who distrusted the KGB. Yet there was little hope of your finding the agent in time.”
“I was floundering in the dark, Sir Nigel. And I knew it. There were no patterns of Soviet couriers showing up on any of our immigration controls. Without Winkler I’d never have got to Ipswich in time.”
They drove for several minutes in silence. Preston waited for the Master to resume in his own time.
“So, I sent a message to Moscow,” said Sir Nigel eventually.
“From yourself?”
“Good Lord, no. That would never have done. Much too obvious. Through another source, one I hoped would be believed. It was not a very truthful message, I’m afraid. Sometimes one must tell untruths in our business. But it went through a channel I hoped would be believed.”
“And it was?”
“Thankfully, yes. When Winkler arrived I was sure the message had been received, understood, and, above all, believed as true.�
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“Winkler was the reply?” asked Preston.
“Yes. Poor man. He believed he was on a routine mission to check on the Stephanides brothers and their transmitter. By the by, he was found drowned in Prague two weeks ago. Knew too much, I suppose.”
“And the Russian in Ipswich?”
“His name, I have just learned, was Petrofsky. A first-class professional, and a patriot.”
“But he, too, had to die?”
“John, it was a terrible decision. But unavoidable. The arrival of Winkler was an offer, a proposal for a trade-off. No formal agreement, of course. Just a tacit understanding. The man Petrofsky could not be taken alive and interrogated. I had to go along with the unwritten and unspoken trade with the man in the window back there at the safe house.”
“If we had got Petrofsky alive, we’d have had the Soviet Union over a barrel.”
“Yes, John, indeed we would. We could have subjected them to a huge international humiliation. And to what end? The USSR could not have taken it lying down. They’d have had to reply somewhere else in the world. What would you have wished? A return to the worst aspects of the Cold War?”
“It seems a pity to lose an opportunity to screw them, sir.”
“John, they’re big and armed and dangerous. The USSR is going to be there tomorrow and next week and next year. Somehow we have to share this planet with them. Better they be ruled by pragmatic and realistic men than hotheads and zealots.”
“And that merits a trade with men like the one in the window, Sir Nigel?”
“Sometimes it has to be done. I’m a professional, so is he. There are journalists and writers who would have it that we in our profession live in a dream world. In reality it’s the reverse. It is the politicians who dream their dreams—sometimes dangerous dreams, like the General Secretary’s dream of changing the face of Europe as his personal monument.
“A top intelligence officer has to be harder-headed than the toughest businessman. One has to trim to the reality, John. When the dreams take command, one ends up with the Bay of Pigs. The first break in the Cuban missiles impasse was suggested by the KGB rezident in New York. It was Khrushchev, not the professionals, who had gone over the top.”
“So what happens next, sir?”
The old spymaster sighed. “We leave it to them. There will be some changes made. They will make them in their own inimitable way. The man back there in the house will set them in train. His career will be advanced, those of others broken.”
“And Philby?” asked Preston.
“What about Philby?”
“Is he trying to come home?”
Sir Nigel shrugged impatiently. “For years past,” he said. “And, yes, he’s in touch from time to time, covertly, with my people in our embassy over there. We breed pigeons. ...”
“Pigeons?”
“Very old-fashioned, I know. And simple. But still surprisingly efficient. That’s how he communicates. But not about Plan Aurora. And even if he had, so far as I am concerned—”
“So far as you are concerned—?”
“He can rot in hell,” said Sir Nigel softly.
They drove for a while in silence.
“What about you, John? Will you stay with Five now?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I’ve had a good run. The DG retires on September first, but he’ll take final leave next month. I don’t fancy my chances under his successor.”
“Can’t take you into Six. You know that. We don’t take late entrants. Thought of returning to Civvy Street?”
“Not the best time for a man of forty-six with no known skills to get a job nowadays,” said Preston.
“I have some friends,” mused the Master. “They’re in asset protection. They might be able to use a good man. I could have a word.”
“Asset protection?”
“Oil wells, mines, deposits, racehorses ... Things people want kept safe from theft or destruction. Even themselves. It would pay well. Enable you to take full care of that son of yours.”
“It seems I’m not the only one who checks up on things,” Preston said, grinning.
The older man was staring out of the window, as if at something far away and long ago. “Had a son myself once,” he said quietly. “Just the one. Fine lad. Killed in the Falklands. Know how you feel.”
Surprised, Preston glanced at the man in the mirror. It had never occurred to him that this urbane and wily spymaster had once played horse-and-rider with a small boy on a sitting-room carpet.
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I’ll take you up on that.”
They arrived at the airport, turned in the rented car, and flew back to London, as anonymous as they had come.
The man in the window of the safe house watched the Britisher’s car move away. His own driver would not be there for an hour. He turned back to the room and sat down at the desk to study again the folder he had been brought and which he still held in his hands. He was pleased; it had been a good meeting, and the documents he held would secure his future.
As a professional, Lieutenant General Yevgeni Karpov was sorry about Plan Aurora. It had been good—subtle, low-profile, and effective. But as a professional he also knew that once an operation was well and truly burned there was nothing for it but to cancel and repudiate the whole thing before it was too late. To delay would have been utterly disastrous.
He recalled clearly the batch of documents that his bagman had brought from Jan Marais in London, the product of his agent Hampstead. Six had been the usual stuff, top-rate intelligence material such as only a man of the eminence of George Berenson could have acquired. The seventh had caused him to sit transfixed.
It was a personal memorandum from Berenson to Marais, for transmission to Pretoria. In it the Defense Ministry official had told how, as Deputy Chief of Defense Procurement, with special responsibility for nuclear devices, he had been present at a very restricted briefing by the Director-General of MI5, Sir Bernard Hemmings.
The counterintelligence chief had told the small group that his agency had uncovered the existence and most of the details of a Soviet conspiracy to import in kit form, assemble, and detonate a small atomic device inside Britain. The sting was in the tail: MI5 was closing fast upon the Russian illegal in command of the operation in Britain, and was confident of catching him with all the necessary evidence on him.
Entirely because of its source, General Karpov had believed the report completely. There was an immediate temptation to let the British go ahead; but second thoughts showed this to be disastrous. If the British succeeded alone and unaided, there would be no obligation to suppress the horrendous scandal. To create that obligation, he needed to send a message, and to a man who would understand what had to be done, someone he could deal with across the great divide.
Then there was the question of his personal self-advancement. ... It was after a long, lonely walk in the spring-green forests of Peredelkino that he had decided to take the most dangerous gamble of his life. He had decided to pay a discreet visit to the private office of Nubar Gevorkovitch Vartanyan.
He had chosen his man with care. The Politburo member from Armenia was believed to be the man who headed the covert faction inside the Politburo that privately thought it was time for a change at the top.
Vartanyan had listened to him without saying a word, secure that he was far too highly placed for his office to be bugged. He just stared at the KGB general with his black lizard’s eyes as he listened. When Karpov had finished, he had asked, “You are certain your information is correct, Comrade General?”
“I have the full narrative from Professor Krilov on tape,” said Karpov. “The machine was in my briefcase at the time.”
“And the information from London?”
“Its source is impeccable. I have run the man personally for nearly three years.”
The Armenian power broker stared at him for a long time, as if reflecting on many things, not least how this information could be used to advantage.
Karpov had understood. When the man on the pinnacle in Soviet Russia fell, all his own men fell with him. If there were changes at the top, there would be a vacant slot as Chairman of the KGB, a slot that Karpov felt would suit him admirably. But to cobble together his alliance of Party forces, Vartanyan would need proof, more proof, solid, irrefutable, documentary proof, that the act of recklessness had almost brought disaster. No one had ever forgotten that Mikhail Suslov had toppled Khrushchev in 1964 on charges of adventurism over the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Shortly after the meeting, Karpov had sent in Winkler, the most bumbling agent his files could unearth. His message had been read and understood. Now he held in his hands the proof his Armenian patron needed. He looked through the documents again.
The report of the mythical interrogation and the confession of Major Valeri Petrofsky to the British would need some amendment, but he had people out at Yasyenevo who could accomplish that. The interrogation report forms were absolutely authentic—that was the main thing. Even Preston’s reports on his progress, suitably amended to exclude any mention of Winkler, were photocopies of the originals.
The General Secretary would not be able or willing to save the traitor Philby; nor, later, would he be able to save himself. Vartanyan would see to that, and he would not be ungrateful.
Karpov’s car came to take him to Zurich and the Moscow plane. He rose. It had been a good meeting. And as always it had been rewarding to negotiate with Chelsea.
Epilogue
Sir Bernard Hemmings formally retired on September 1, 1987, although he had been on leave since mid-July. He died in November of that year, his pension rights assured to the benefit of his wife and stepdaughter.
Brian Harcourt-Smith did not succeed him as Director-General. The “Wise Men” took their soundings, and though it was agreed there was nothing in the least sinister in Harcourt-Smith’s attempts to pass the Preston report no further, or to discount the significance of the Glasgow intercept, one could not avoid concluding that these constituted two serious errors of judgment. There being no other discernible successor inside Five, a man was brought in from outside as Director-General. Harcourt-Smith resigned some months later and joined the board of a merchant bank in the City.
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