“May I keep this?” asked Preston.
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Winter.
“Did your late brother ever talk to you about Mr. Marais?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “They were very good friends for many years.”
“Did your brother ever say what he died of?”
She frowned. “Didn’t they tell you at the lawyer’s office? Tut. Old Cedric must be losing his wits. It was a hit-and-run accident, Joop told me. It seems old Marais had stopped to repair a puncture and he was hit by a passing truck. At the time it was thought to be some drunken kaffirs—oops”—her hand flew to her mouth and she looked at Viljoen with embarrassment—“I’m not supposed to say that anymore. Well, anyway, they never found out who was driving the truck.”
On the way back down the hill to the main road, they passed the graveyard. Preston asked Viljoen to stop. It was a pleasant, quiet plot, high above the town, fringed by pine and fir, dominated in its center by an old mwataba tree with a cleft trunk, and enclosed by a hedge of poinsettia. In one corner they found a moss-covered stone. Scraping away the moss, Preston found the epitaph carved in the granite: Laurens Marais 1879-1946. Beloved husband of Mary and father of Jan. Always with God. RIP.
Preston strolled across to the hedge, plucked a sprig of flaming poinsettia, and laid it by the stone. Viljoen looked at him oddly.
“Pretoria next, I think,” said Preston.
As they were climbing the Buffelberg on the road out of the Mootseki, Preston turned to look back across the valley. Dark gray stormclouds had built up behind the Devil’s Gap. As he watched they closed in, blotting out the little town and its macabre secret, known only to a middle-aged Englishman in a retreating car. Then he put his head back and fell asleep.
That evening, Harold Philby was escorted from the dacha’s guest suite to the sitting room of the General Secretary, where, the Soviet leader awaited him. Philby laid several documents in front of the old man. The General Secretary read them and laid them down.
“There are not many people involved,” he said.
“Permit me to make two important points, Comrade General Secretary. First, because of the extreme confidentiality of Plan Aurora I have thought it wise to keep the number of participants to an absolute minimum. On a need-to-know basis, even fewer would know what is really intended. Second, because of the extreme shortness of time there will have to be some cutting of corners. The weeks, even months, of briefing habitually required for an important ‘active measure’ will have to be telescoped into days.”
The General Secretary nodded slowly. “Explain why you need these men.”
“The key to the whole operation,” Philby continued, “is the executive officer, the man who will actually go into Britain and live there for weeks as a Britisher, and who will finally carry out Aurora.
“Supplying him with what he needs will be twelve couriers, or ‘mules.’ They will have to smuggle the items in, either through a customs point or, on occasion, through an unchecked entry point. Each will know nothing of what he is carrying, or why. Each will have memorized a rendezvous, and another as fallback in case of a nonconnect. Each will hand over the package to the executive officer and then return to our territory, to pass immediately into total quarantine. There will be one other man, apart from the executive officer, who will never return. But neither of these men should know this.
“Commanding the couriers will be the dispatching officer, with responsibility to ensure that the consignments reach the executive officer in Britain. He will be supported by a procurement/supply officer charged with securing the packages for delivery. This man will have four subordinates, each with one specialty.
“One of the subordinates will furnish the couriers’ documentation and transportation; another will concern himself with obtaining the high technology materials required; the third will provide the milled and engineered artifacts; and the fourth will assure communications. It is vital that the executive officer be able to inform us of progress, problems, and, above all, of the moment he is operationally ready; and we must be able to inform him of any change of plan, and, of course, give him the order to execute the plan.
“In the matter of communications there is one more thing to say. Because of the time element, it will not be possible to proceed through normal channels of mailed letters or personal meetings. We will communicate with the executive officer by coded Morse signals sent on Radio Moscow’s commercial wavebands, using one-time pads. But for him to reach us urgently, he is going to need a transmitter somewhere in Britain. It’s an old-fashioned and risky system, mainly intended for use in time of war. But it will have to be. You will see I have made mention of it.”
The General Secretary studied the documents again, identifying the operatives that the plan would need. Finally he looked up.
“You will get your men,” he said. “I will have them traced one by one, the very best we have, and transferred to special duties. One last thing. I do not wish anyone connected with Aurora to make contact in any form with the KGB people inside our rezidentura at the embassy in London. One never knows who is under surveillance, or—”
Whatever his other fear, he left it unsaid.
“That is all.”
Chapter 9
Preston and Viljoen convened in their office on the third floor of Union Building the next morning, at the Englishman’s request. As it was a Sunday, they had the building almost to themselves.
“Well, what next?” asked Captain Viljoen.
“I lay awake last night, thinking,” said Preston, “and there’s something that doesn’t fit.”
“You slept all the way back from the north,” said Viljoen grimly. “I had to drive.”
“Ah, but you’re so much fitter,” said Preston. That p
leased Viljoen, who was proud of his physique, which he exercised regularly. He unbent somewhat. “I want to trace the other soldier,” Preston went on.