The Devil's Alternative (15 page)

Pickering swallowed hard. Under his desk, a foot from his knee, was a button linked to a silent alarm. He looked at the photograph again and moved his knee away.

“Call your chief clerk,” said Drake, “and instruct him to open the account, credit the check to it, and provide the check for the twenty-thousand-pound withdrawal. Tell him you have telephoned London and all is in order. If he expresses surprise, tell him the sum is for a very big commercial promotion campaign in which prize money will be given away in cash. Pull yourself together and make it good.”

The chief clerk
was
surprised, but his manager seemed calm enough; a little subdued, perhaps, but otherwise normal. And the dark-suited man before him looked relaxed and friendly. There was even a glass of the manager’s sherry before each of them, though the businessman had kept his light gloves on—odd for such warm weather. Thirty minutes later the chief clerk brought the money from the vault, deposited it on the manager’s desk, and left.

Drake packed it calmly into the attaché case.

“There are thirty minutes left,” he told Pickering, “In twenty-five I shall make my phone call. My colleague will leave your wife and child perfectly unharmed. If you raise the alarm before that, he will shoot first and take his chances with the police later.”

When he had gone, Pickering sat frozen for half an hour. In fact, Drake phoned the house five minutes later from a call box. Krim took the call, smiled briefly at the woman on the floor with her

hands and ankles bound with adhesive tape, and left. Neither used the van, which had been stolen the previous day. Krim used a motorcycle parked in readiness farther down the road. Drake took a motorcycle helmet from the van to cover his flaming red hair, and used a second motorcycle parked near the van. Both were out of Sheffield within thirty minutes. They abandoned the vehicles north of London and met again in Drake’s flat, where he washed the red dye out of his hair and crushed the eyeglasses to fragments.

Munro caught the following morning’s breakfast flight south from Inverness. When the plastic trays were cleared away, the hostess offered the passengers newspapers fresh up from London. Being at the back of the aircraft, Munro missed the
Times
and the
Telegraph
, but secured a copy of the
Daily Express
. The headline story concerned two unidentified men, believed to be Germans from the Red Army Faction, who had robbed a Sheffield bank of twenty thousand pounds.

“Bloody bastards,” said the English oilman from the North Sea rigs who was in the seat next to Munro. He tapped the
Express
headline. “Bloody Commies. I’d string them all up.”

Munro conceded that upstringing would definitely have to be considered in future.

At Heathrow he took a taxi almost to the office and was shown straight into Barry Ferndale’s room.

“Adam, my dear chap, you’re looking a new man.” He sat Munro down and proffered coffee.

“Well now, the tape. You must be dying to know. Fact is, m’dear chap, it’s genuine. No doubt about it. Everything checks. There’s been a fearful blowup in the Soviet Agriculture Ministry. Six or seven senior functionaries ousted, including one we think must be that unfortunate fellow in the Lubyanka.

“That helps corroborate it. But the voices are genuine. No doubt, according to the lab boys. Now for the big one. One of our assets working out of Leningrad managed to take a drive out of town. There’s not much wheat grown up there in the north, but there is a little. He stopped his car for a pee and swiped a stalk of the afflicted wheat. It came home in the bag three days ago. I got the report from the lab last night. They confirm there is an excess of this lindane stuff present in the root of the seedling.

“So, there we are. You’ve hit what our American cousins so charmingly call pay dirt. In fact, twenty-four-carat gold. By the way, the Master wants to see you. You’re going back to Moscow tonight.”

Munro’s meeting with Sir Nigel Irvine was friendly but brief.

“Well done,” said the Master. “Now, I understand your next meeting will be in a fortnight.” Munro nodded.

“This might be a long-term operation,” Sir Nigel resumed, “which makes it a good thing you are new to Moscow. There will be no raised eyebrows if you stay on for a couple of years. But just in case this fellow changes his mind, I want you to press for more—everything we can squeeze out Do you want any help, any backup?”

“No, thank you,” said Munro. “Now that he’s taken the plunge, the asset has insisted he’ll talk only to me. I don’t think I want to scare him off at this stage by bringing others in. Nor do I think he can travel, as Penkovsky could. Vishnayev never travels, so there’s no cause for Krivoi to, ei- ther. I’ll have to handle it alone.”

Sir Nigel nodded. “Very well, you’ve got it.”

When Munro had gone, Sir Nigel Irvine turned over the file on his desk, which was Munro’s personal record. He had his misgivings. The man was a loner, ill at ease working in a team. A man who walked alone in the mountains of Scotland for relaxation.

There was an adage in the Firm: there are old agents and there are bold agents, but there are no old, bold agents. Sir Nigel was an old agent, and he appreciated caution. This opportunity had come swinging in from the outfield, unexpected, unprepared for. And it was moving fast. But then, the tape was genuine, no doubt of it. So was the summons on his desk to see the Prime Minister that evening at Downing Street. He had of course informed the Foreign Secretary when the tape had passed muster, and this was the outcome.

The black door of No. 10 Downing Street, residence of the British Prime Minister, is perhaps one of the best-known doors in the world. It stands on the right, two-thirds down a small cul-de-sac off Whitehall, an alley almost, sandwiched between the imposing piles of the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office.

In front of this door, with its simple white figure 10 and brass knocker, attended by a single, unarmed police constable, the tourists gather to take each other’s photograph and watch the comings and goings of the messengers and the well-known.

In fact, it is the men of words who go in through the front door; the men of influence tend to use the side. The house called No. 10 stands at ninety degrees to the Cabinet Office block, and the rear corners almost touch each other, enclosing a small lawn behind black railings. Where the corners almost meet, the gap is covered by a passageway leading to a small side door, and it was through this that the Director General of the SIS, accompanied by Sir Julian Flannery, the Cabinet Secretary, passed that last evening of July. The pair were shown straight to the second floor, past the Cabinet Room, to the Prime Minister’s private study.

The Prime Minister had read the transcript of the Politburo tape, passed to her by the Foreign Secretary.

“Have you informed the Americans of this matter?” she asked directly.

“Not yet, ma’am,” Sir Nigel answered. “Our final confirmation of its authenticity is only three days old.”

“I would like you to do it personally,” said the Prime Minister. Sir Nigel inclined his head. “The political perspectives of this pending wheat famine in the Soviet Union are immeasurable, of course, and as the world’s biggest surplus wheat producer, the United States should be involved from the outset.”

“I would not wish the Cousins to move in on this agent of ours,” said Sir Nigel. “The running of this asset may be extremely delicate. I think we should handle it ourselves, alone.”

“Will they try to move in?” asked the Prime Minister.

“They may, ma’am. They may. We ran Penkovsky jointly, even though it was we who recruited him. But there were reasons why. This time, I think we should go it alone.”

The Prime Minister was not slow to see the value in political terms of controlling such an agent as one who had access to the Politburo transcripts.

“If pressure is brought,” she said, “refer back to me, and I will speak to President Matthews personally about it. In the meantime, I would like you to fly to Washington tomorrow and present them the tape, or at least a verbatim copy of it. I intend to speak to President Matthews tonight in any case.”

Sir Nigel and Sir Julian rose to leave.

“One last thing,” said the Prime Minister. “I fully understand that I am not allowed to know the identity of this agent. Will you be telling Robert Benson who it is?”

“Certainly not, ma’am.” Not only would the Director General of the SIS refuse point-blank to inform his own Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary of the identity of the Russian, but he would not tell them even of Munro, who was running that agent. The Americans would know

who Munro was, but never whom he was running. Nor would there be any tailing of Munro by the Cousins in Moscow; he would see to that as well.

“Then presumably this Russian defector has a code name. May I know it?” asked the Prime Minister.

“Certainly, ma’am. The defector is now known in every file simply as the Nightingale.”

It just happened that Nightingale was the first songbird in the
N
section of the list of birds after which all Soviet agents were code-named, but the Prime Minister did not know this. She smiled for the first time.

“How very appropriate.”

CHAPTER FIVE

JUST AFTER TEN in the morning of a wet and rainy August 1, an aging but comfortable four-jet VC-10 of the Royal Air Force Strike Command lifted out of Lyneham base in Wiltshire and headed west for Ireland and the Atlantic. It carried a small enough passenger complement: one air chief marshal who had been informed the night before that this of all days was the best for him to visit the Pentagon in Washington to discuss the forthcoming USAF-RAF tactical bomber exercises, and a civilian in a shabby mackintosh.

The air chief marshal had introduced himself to the unexpected civilian, and learned in reply that his companion was a Mr. Barrett of the Foreign Office who had business with the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue and had been instructed to take advantage of the VC-10 flight to save the taxpayer the cost of a two-way air ticket. The Air Force officer never learned that the purpose of the RAF plane’s flight was in fact the other way around.

On another track south of the VC-10, a Boeing jumbo jet of British Airways left Heathrow, bound for New York. Among its three hundred-plus passengers it bore Azamat Krim, alias Arthur Crimmins, Canadian citizen, heading west on a buying mission, with a back pocket full of money.

Eight hours later, the VC-10 landed perfectly at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, ten miles southeast of Washington. As it closed down its engines on the apron, a Pentagon staff car swept up to the foot of the steps and disgorged a two-star general of the USAF. Two Air Force Security Police snapped to attention as the air chief marshal came down the steps to his welcoming committee. Within five minutes the ceremonies were all over; the Pentagon limousine drove away to Washington, the police “snowdrops” marched off, and the idle and curious of the air base went back to their duties.

No one noticed the modest sedan with nonofficial plates that drove to the parked VC-10 ten minutes later—no one, that is, with enough sophistication to note the odd-shaped aerial on the roof that betrayed a CIA car. No one bothered with the rumpled civilian who trotted down the steps and straight into the car moments later, and no one saw the car leave the air base.

The Company man in the U.S. Embassy on Grosvenor Square, London, had been alerted the night before, and his coded signal to Langley had caused the car to appear. The driver was in civilian clothes, a low-level staffer, but the man in the back who welcomed the guest from London was the chief of the Western European Division, one of the regional subordinates of the Deputy Director for Operations. He had been chosen to meet the Englishman because, having once headed the CIA operation in London, he knew him well. No one likes substitutions.

“Nigel, good to see you again,” he said after confirming to himself that the arrival was indeed the man they expected.

“How good of you to come to meet me, Lance,” responded Sir Nigel Irvine, well aware there was nothing good about it; it was a duty. The talk in the car was of London, family, the weather. No question of “What are you doing here?” The car swept along the Capital Beltway to the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge over the Potomac and headed west into Virginia.

On the outskirts of Alexandria the driver pulled right into the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which fringes the whole western bank of the river. As they cruised past the National Airport and Arlington Cemetery, Sir Nigel Irvine glanced out to his right at the skyline of Washington, where years before he had been the SIS liaison man with the CIA, based in the British

Embassy. Those had been tough days, in the wake of the Philby affair, when even the state of the weather was classified information so far as the English were concerned. He thought of what he carried in his briefcase and permitted himself a small smile.

After thirty minutes’ cruising they pulled off the main highway, swung over it again, and headed into the forest. He remembered the small notice saying simply BPR-CIA and wondered again why they had to signpost the place. You either knew where it was or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, you weren’t invited, anyway.

At the security gate in the great seven-foot-high chain-link fence that surrounds Langley, they halted while Lance showed his pass, then drove on and turned left past the awful conference center known as “the Igloo” because that is just what it resembles.

The Company’s headquarters consists of five blocks, one in the center and one at each corner of the center block, like a rough St. Andrews cross. The Igloo is stuck onto the corner block nearest the main gate. Passing the recessed center block, Sir Nigel noticed the imposing main doorway and the great seal of the United States paved in terrazzo into the ground in front of it. But he knew this front entrance was for congressmen, senators, and other undesirables. The car swept on, past the complex, then pulled to the right and drove around to the back.

Here there is a short ramp, protected by a steel portcullis, running down one floor to the first basement level. At the bottom is a select garage for no more than ten cars. The black sedan came to a halt, and the man called Lance handed Sir Nigel over to his superior, Cubarles (“Chip”) Allen, the Deputy Director for Operations. They, too, knew each other well.