“Very well, Mr. Preston,” General Pienaar answered, nodding. “I will talk to Sir Nigel first. Now, what are your plans?”
“There is a flight back to London this evening, sir. I would like to be on it.”
General Pienaar rose and held out his hand. “Good day, Mr. Preston. Captain Viljoen will see you onto the plane. And thank you for your assistance.”
From the hotel, as he packed, Preston made a call to Dennis Grey, who drove up from Johannesburg and took a message for coded transmission to London. Preston had his answer two hours later. Sir Bernard Hemmings would come into the office the next day, Saturday, to meet him.
Preston and Viljoen stood in the departure lounge at just before 8:00 p.m. as the last calls for passengers on the South African Airways flight for London were made. Preston showed his boarding pass and Viljoen his all-purpose ID card. They went through to the cooler darkness of the tarmac.
“I’ll say this for you, Engelsman, you’re a damned good jagdhond.”
“Thank you,” said Preston.
“Do you know what a jagdhond is?”
“I believe,” said Preston carefully, “that the Cape hunting dog is slow, ungainly, but very tenacious.”
It was the first time that week that Captain Viljoen threw back his head and laughed. Then he grew serious. “May I ask you something?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you put a flower on the old man’s grave?”
Preston stared across at the waiting airliner, its cabin lights blazing in the semidarkness twenty yards away. The last passengers were climbing the steps.
“They had taken away his son,” he said, “and then they killed him to stop him from finding out. It seemed the thing to do.”
Viljoen held out his hand. “Good-bye, John, and good luck.”
“Good-bye, Andries.”
Ten minutes later, the flying springbok on the fin of the jetliner tilted its straining nose toward the sky and lifted off for the north and Europe.
Chapter 10
Sir Bernard Hemmings, with Brian Harcourt-Smith at his side, sat in silence and listened to Preston’s report until he had finished.
“Good God,” he said heavily, when Preston was silent, “so it was Moscow after all. There’ll be the devil to pay. The damage must have been huge. Brian, are both men still under surveillance?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep it that way through the weekend. Make no move to close in until the Paragon Committee have had a chance to hear what we have. John, I know you must be tired, but can you have your report written up by tomorrow night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have it on my desk first thing Monday morning. I’ll reach the various committee members at their homes and ask for an urgent meeting for Monday morning.”
When Major Valeri Petrofsky was shown into the sitting room of the elegant dacha at Usovo, he was in a spirit of extreme trepidation. He had never met the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and never had imagined he would do so.
He had had a confusing, even terrifying, four days. Since being detached for special duties by his director, he had been sequestered in a flat in central Moscow, guarded night and day by two men from the Ninth Directorate, the Kremlin Guards. Not unnaturally, he had feared the worst, without having the faintest idea what he was supposed to have done.
Then the abrupt order that Sunday evening to dress in his best suit of civilian clothes and follow the guards downstairs to a waiting Chaika, followed by the silent drive to Usovo. He had not recognized the dacha to which he was brought.
It was only when Major Pavlov had told him, “The Comrade General Secretary will see you now,” that he had realized where he was. His throat was dry as he stepped through the door into the sitting room. He tried to compose himself, telling himself he would answer respectfully and truthfully any accusations leveled at him.
Inside the room he stood rigidly at attention. The old man in the wheelchair observed him silently for several minutes, then raised a hand and beckoned him forward. Petrofsky took four smart steps and stopped again, still at attention. But when the Soviet leader spoke, the whiplash of accusation in his voice was missing. He spoke quite softly.
“Major Petrofsky, you are not a tailor’s dummy. Come forward into the light, where I can see you. And sit down.”