The move came later, at Ixworth Thorpe. Petrofsky had just cleared the village itself and was approaching its church on the right-hand side when he saw the motorcycle leaning against the hedge and the figure of the patrolman in the center of the road, a radio held to his mouth and an arm raised to stop him. He began to slow, his right hand dropping to the map pocket inside the door panel where, under a rolled woolen sweater, lay the Finnish automatic.
If it was a trap, he was boxed from behind. But the policeman seemed to be alone. There was no one else nearby. Petrofsky slowed to a halt. The towering figure in black vinyl strolled to the car window and bent down. Petrofsky found himself confronting a ruddy Suffolk face with no hint of guile in it.
“Could I ask you to pull over to the side of the road, please, sir? Just there in front of the church. Then you’ll come to no ’arm.”
So it was a trap. The threat was thinly veiled. But why was there no one else about?
“What seems to be the trouble, Officer?”
“ ’Fraid the road’s blocked a bit farther down, sir. We’ll have it clear directly.”
Truth or trick? There might be an overturned tractor down there. He decided not to shoot the policeman and make a dash for it. Not yet. He nodded, let in the clutch, and pulled over in front of the church. Then he waited. In his rearview mirror he could see the policeman taking no more notice of him, but signaling another motorist to stop. This could be it, he thought. Counterintelligence. But there was only one man in the other car. It pulled up behind him. The man climbed out.
“What’s going on?” he called to the policeman. Petrofsky could hear them through his open window.
“Ain’t you ’eard, sir? It’s the demonstration. Been in all the papers. And on the telly.”
“Oh, hell,” said the other driver, “I didn’t realize it was this road. Or at this hour.”
“They won’t take long to pass,” said the policeman comfortingly. “No more ’n an hour.”
At that moment the head of the column came into sight from around the bend. With disgust and contempt, Petrofsky gazed at the distant banners and heard the faint shouts. He climbed out to watch.
The hollow square of tarmac off Magdalen Street with its thirty garages was becoming crowded. Minutes after the discovery of the abandoned motorcycle, Preston had sent Barney and the second car racing up Grove Lane to the police station to ask for help. There had been a duty constable in the front office at that hour, and a sergeant having tea in the back.
Simultaneously Preston had called London on the police network, and even though it was an open circuit and he would normally have used the cover parlance of a car-rental agent, he threw caution to the winds and spoke in clear to Sir Bernard himself.
“I need backup from the police forces of Norfolk and Suffolk,” he said. “Also a chopper, sir. Very fast. Or it’s all over.” He had spent the last twenty minutes studying the large-scale road map of East Anglia, spread on the hood of Joe’s car.
After five minutes a Thetford motorcycle patrolman, raised by his station sergeant, drifted into the yard, shut off his engine, and parked his bike. He walked over to Preston, easing off his helmet as he did so. “You the gentlemen from London?” he asked. “Anything I can do to help?”
“Not unless you’re a magician,” sighed Preston.
Barney arrived back from the police station. “Here’s the photograph, John. Came through while I was talking to the duty sergeant.”
Preston studied the handsome young face photographed on a Damascus street. “You bastard,” he muttered. His words were drowned, so no one else heard. Two American F-111 strike bombers raced across the sky in tight formation, low, heading east. The howl of their engines broke the calm of the waking borough. The policeman did not glance up.
Barney, standing beside Preston, followed their progress out of sight. “Noisy sods,” he remarked.
“Ah, they always be coming over Thetford,” said the local cop. “Hardly notice them after a while. Come from Lakenheath.”
“London Airport’s bad enough,” said Barney, who lived at Hounslow, “but at least the airliners don’t fly that low. Don’t think I could live with that for long.”
“Don’t mind ’em, just so long as they stay up in the air,” said the policeman, unwrapping a chocolate bar. “Wouldn’t like one to crash, though. They carry atomic bombs, they do. Small, mind.”
Preston turned around slowly. “What did you say?” he asked.
At Cork Street, MI5 had been working fast. Dispensing with the usual liaison from the legal adviser, Sir Bernard Hemmings had personally called both the assistant commissioners (crime) for the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. The officer in Norwich was still abed, but in Ipswich his opposite number was already in his office because of the demonstration that was tying up half the Suffolk force.
The assistant commissioner for Norfolk was reached at the same time as the call to him from Thetford police station came through. He authorized complete cooperation; the paperwork could follow later.
Brian Harcourt-Smith was chasing up a helicopter. Britain’s two intelligence agencies have access to a special flight of helicopters, which are held at Northolt, outside London. It is possible to call one up in a hurry, but normally advance arrangements are made. The Deputy Director-General’s urgent inquiry brought the answer that a chopper could be airborne in forty minutes and could land at Thetford forty minutes after that. Harcourt-Smith asked Northolt to hold on. “Eighty minutes,” he reported to Sir Bernard.
The DG happened to be talking to the assistant commissioner for Suffolk, who was in his Ipswich office. “Would you have a police helicopter available? Right now?” he asked the officer.
There was a pause while the ACC for Suffolk consulted his colleague in traffic control on an internal line. “We have one in the air over Bury St. Edmunds,” he said.
“Please get it to Thetford and take aboard one of our officers,” said Sir Bernard. “It’s a matter of national security, I assure you.”