He had no idea of the significance of his mission in Britain, nor did he care to find out. His instructions were simple and he followed them to the letter. Passing without difficulty through customs and immigration, he hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the Midland Hotel on New Street. Throughout the journey, and during the check-in procedures, he was careful to favor his left arm, which was encased in a plaster cast. He had been warned, if warning had been necessary, that under no circumstances was he to attempt to pick up his suitcase with the “broken” arm.
Once in his room, he locked the door and went to work on the plaster cast with the tough steel cutters tucked at the bottom of his shaving kit, carefully snipping down the inside of the forearm, along the line of tiny indentations that marked the cutting path.
When the incision was complete, he prised the cast open half an inch and withdrew his arm, wrist, and hand. The empty cast he dropped into the plastic shopping bag he brought with him.
He spent the entire afternoon in his room so that the day staff at the reception desk should not see him with the cast off, and left the hotel only late at night, when a different staff was on duty.
The newspaper kiosk at New Street Station was where they had said the rendezvous would take place, and at the appointed hour a figure in black leather motorcycle clothing approached him. The muttered exchange of identification took seconds, the shopping bag changed hands, and the figure in leather was gone. Neither of them had attracted a passing glance.
At the hour of dawn, when the night staff at the hotel was still on duty, the Dane checked out, took the early train to Manchester, and flew out from that airport, where no one had ever seen him before, with or without a plaster cast. By sundown, via Hamburg, he was back in Berlin, where as a Dane he went through the Wall at Checkpoint
Charlie. His own people met him on the other side, heard his report, and spirited him away. Courier Three had delivered.
John Preston was annoyed and not in the best of humors. The week he had arranged to take off work to be with Tommy was being ruined. Tuesday had been partly taken up with his verbal report to Harcourt-Smith, and Tommy had had to spend the day reading or watching television.
Preston had insisted on keeping their date to go to Madame Tussaud’s waxwork museum on Wednesday morning, but had come into the office in the afternoon to finish his written report. The letter from Crichton in Personnel was on his desk. He read it with something close to disbelief.
It was couched, as ever, in the friendliest terms. A glance at the files had shown that Preston was owed four weeks’ leave; he would be, of course, aware of the rules of the service; backlogging of leave was not encouraged for obvious reasons; necessity to keep all vacation time up to date, blah, blah, blah. In short, he would be required to take his accumulated leave forthwith—that is, as of the following morning.
“Bloody idiots,” he called to the office in general, “some of them couldn’t find their way to the can without a Labrador.”
He called Personnel and insisted on speaking to Crichton personally.
“Tim, it’s me, John Preston. Look, what’s this letter doing on my desk? I can’t take leave now; I’m on a case, right in the middle of it. ... Yes, I know it’s important not to backlog leave, but this case is also important, a damn sight more so, actually.”
He heard out the bureaucrat’s explanation concerning the disruption caused to the system if staffers accumulated too much vacation time, then cut in. “Look, Tim, let’s keep it short. All you have to do is call Brian Harcourt-Smith. He’ll vouch for the importance of the case I’m on. I can take the time in the summer.”
“John,” said Tim Crichton gently, “that letter was written at the express orders of Brian.”
Preston stared at the receiver for several moments. “I see,” he said finally, and put it down.
“Where are you going?” asked Bright as he headed for the door.
“To get a stiff drink,” said Preston.
It was well after the lunch hour and the bar was almost empty. The late-lunch crowd had not yet been replaced by the early-evening thirst-quenchers. There was a couple over from Charles Street having a head-to-head in one corner, so Preston took a stool at the bar. He wanted to be alone. “Whisky,” he said, “a large one.”
“Same for me,” said a voice at his elbow. “And it’s my round.”
Preston turned to see Barry Banks of K7.
“Hello, John,” said Banks, “saw you scooting down here as I was crossing the lobby. Just wanted to say I have something for you. The Master was most grateful.”
“Oh, yes, that. Not at all.”
“I’ll bring it to your office tomorrow,” said Banks.
“Don’t bother,” said Preston angrily. “We are down here to celebrate my four weeks of leave. Beginning as of tomorrow. Enforced. Cheers.”
“Don’t knock it,” said Banks gently. “Most people can’t wait to get away from the place.” He had already noticed that Preston was nursing a grudge of some kind and intended to ease the reason for it from his MI5 colleague. What he was not able to tell Preston was that he had been asked by Sir Nigel Irvine to cultivate Harcourt-Smith’s black sheep and to report back on what he had learned.
An hour and three whiskies later, Preston was still sunk in gloom. “I’m thinking of quitting,” he said suddenly.
Banks, a good listener who interrupted only to extract information, was concerned. “Pretty drastic,” he said. “Are things that bad?”
“Look, Barry, I don’t mind free-falling from twenty thousand feet. I don’t even mind people taking potshots at me when the chute opens. But I get bloody annoyed when the flak’s coming from my own side. Is that unreasonable?”
“Sounds perfectly justified to me,” said Banks. “So who’s shooting?”