“I believe Mr. Berenson was alerting his controller to a pending ‘drop,’ probably using a code to indicate the time and place.”
“Have you any proof of that?” asked Sir Hubert Villiers of the Home Office.
“No, sir.”
Preston went on to describe the visit to the ice-cream parlor, the abandonment of the Daily Telegraph, and the fact that it was cleared away by the proprietor himself.
“Did you manage to recover the paper?” asked Sir Paddy Strickland.
“No, sir. To have raided the ice-cream shop then might have caused the arrest of Mr. Benotti, and perhaps of Mr. Berenson, but Benotti could have pleaded complete innocence that there was anything inside the newspaper, and Berenson could have pleaded that he had made a terribly careless mistake.”
“But you believe that visit to the ice-cream shop was the drop?” asked Sir Anthony Plumb.
“I’m sure of it,” said Preston. He went on to describe the delivery of one-gallon tubs of ice cream to a dozen customers the next morning, how he had obtained voice samples of eleven of them, and Berenson’s receipt of a wrong-number call that same evening. “The voice that dialed him that evening and established that the caller had obtained a wrong number, apologized, and rang off was the voice of one of the recipients of the ice cream.”
There was silence around the table.
“Could it have been a coincidence?” asked Sir Hubert Villiers doubtfully. “There are an awful lot of perfectly innocent wrong numbers dialed in this city. Get ’em myself, all the time.”
“I checked with a friend yesterday who has access to a computer,” said Preston levelly. “The chances of a man in a city of twelve million going into an ice-cream parlor for a sundae, of that ice-cream parlor’s delivering to twelve customers the next morning, and of one of those customers speaking through a wrong number to the ice-cream eater by midnight are more than a million to one. The telephone call on Friday evening was an acknowledgment of safe receipt.”
“Let me see if I understand,” said Sir Perry Jones. “Berenson recovered from his colleagues their photocopies of my fictitious paper and pretended to shred them all. In fact, he retained one. He folded it inside his newspaper and left it in the ice-cream shop. The proprietor collected the paper, plastic-wrapped the classified document, and delivered it next morning to the controller in a tub of ice cream. The controller then alerted Berenson that he had got it.”
“That is what I believe happened,” said Preston.
“Chances of a million to one,” mused Sir Anthony Plumb. “Nigel, what do you think?”
The Chief of the SIS shook his head. “I don’t believe in chances of a million to one,” he said. “Not in our work—eh, Bernard? No, it was a drop, all right, from the source to the controller via a cutout, Signor Benotti. John Preston has got it right. My congratulations. Berenson’s our man.”
“What has happened since you made this connection, Mr. Preston?” asked Sir Anthony.
“I have switched the surveillance from Berenson to the controller,” said Preston. “I’ve identified him. In fact, this morning I joined the watchers and followed him from his Marylebone flat, where he lives alone as a bachelor, to his office. He is a foreign diplomat. His name is Jan Marais.”
“Jan? Sounds Czech,” said Sir Perry Jones.
“Not quite,” said Preston somberly. “Jan Marais is an accredited diplomat on the staff of the embassy of the Republic of South Africa.”
There was a stunned, disbelieving silence. Sir Paddy Strickland, in language not habitually favored by diplomats, muttered, “Bloody hell.” All eyes turned on Sir Nigel I
rvine.
He sat at the end of the table, badly shaken. If it’s true, he thought privately, I’ll have his balls for cocktail olives. He was thinking of General Henry Pienaar, head of South Africa’s National Intelligence Service, successor to the late, unlamented Bureau of State Security. For the South Africans to hire a few London crooks to burgle the archives of the African National Congress was one thing; to run a spy ring inside the British Defense Ministry was, between services, a declaration of war.
“I think, gentlemen, with your indulgence I am going to have to ask for a few days to investigate this matter a little further,” said Sir Nigel.
Two days later, on March 4, one of the senior Cabinet ministers in whom Mrs. Thatcher had confided her desire to go for an early general election was having breakfast with his wife in their handsome town house in Holland Park, London. The wife was browsing through a sheaf of holiday brochures.
“Corfu is nice,” she said, “or Crete.” There was no response, so she pressed her point. “Darling, we should try to get away for a fortnight of complete rest this summer. It’s been nearly two years, after all. What about June? Before the crush but when the weather is at its best.”
“Not June,” said the minister, without looking up.
“But June’s beautiful,” she protested.
“Not June,” he repeated, “anything but June.”
Her eyes widened. “What’s so important about June?”
“Never mind.”