“What about you, John? Will you stay with Five now?”
“I don’t think so, sir. I’ve had a good run. The DG retires on September first, but he’ll take final leave next month. I don’t fancy my chances under his successor.”
“Can’t take you into Six. You know that. We don’t take late entrants. Thought of returning to Civvy Street?”
“Not the best time for a man of forty-six with no known skills to get a job nowadays,” said Preston.
“I have some friends,” mused the Master. “They’re in asset protection. They might be able to use a good man. I could have a word.”
“Asset protection?”
“Oil wells, mines, deposits, racehorses ... Things people want kept safe from theft or destruction. Even themselves. It would pay well. Enable you to take full care of that son of yours.”
“It seems I’m not the only one who checks up on things,” Preston said, grinning.
The older man was staring out of the window, as if at something far away and long ago. “Had a son myself once,” he said quietly. “Just the one. Fine lad. Killed in the Falklands. Know how you feel.”
Surprised, Preston glanced at the man in the mirror. It had never occurred to him that this urbane and wily spymaster had once played horse-and-rider with a small boy on a sitting-room carpet.
“I’m sorry. Perhaps I’ll take you up on that.”
They arrived at the airport, turned in the rented car, and flew back to London, as anonymous as they had come.
The man in the window of the safe house watched the Britisher’s car move away. His own driver would not be there for an hour. He turned back to the room and sat down at the desk to study again the folder he had been brought and which he still held in his hands. He was pleased; it had been a good meeting, and the documents he held would secure his future.
As a professional, Lieutenant General Yevgeni Karpov was sorry about Plan Aurora. It had been good—subtle, low-profile, and effective. But as a professional he also knew that once an operation was well and truly burned there was nothing for it but to cancel and repudiate the whole thing before it was too late. To delay would have been utterly disastrous.
He recalled clearly the batch of documents that his bagman had brought from Jan Marais in London, the product of his agent Hampstead. Six had been the usual stuff, top-rate intelligence material such as only a man of the eminence of George Berenson could have acquired. The seventh had caused him to sit transfixed.
It was a personal memorandum from Berenson to Marais, for transmission to Pretoria. In it the Defense Ministry official had told how, as Deputy Chief of Defense Procurement, with special responsibility for nuclear devices, he had been present at a very restricted briefing by the Director-General of MI5, Sir Bernard Hemmings.
The counterintelligence chief had told the small group that his agency had uncovered the existence and most of the details of a Soviet conspiracy to import in kit form, assemble, and detonate a small atomic device inside Britain. The sting was in the tail: MI5 was closing fast upon the Russian illegal in command of the operation in Britain, and was confident of catching him with all the necessary evidence on him.
Entirely because of its source, General Karpov had believed the report completely. There was an immediate temptation to let the British go ahead; but second thoughts showed this to be disastrous. If the British succeeded alone and unaided, there would be no obligation to suppress the horrendous scandal. To create that obligation, he needed to send a message, and to a man who would understand what had to be done, someone he could deal with across the great divide.
Then there was the question of his personal self-advancement. ... It was after a long, lonely walk in the spring-green forests of Peredelkino that he had decided to take the most dangerous gamble of his life. He had decided to pay a discreet visit to the private office of Nubar Gevorkovitch Vartanyan.
He had chosen his man with care. The Politburo member from Armenia was believed to be the man who headed the covert faction inside the Politburo that privately thought it was time for a change at the top.
Vartanyan had listened to him without saying a word, secure that he was far too highly placed for his office to be bugged. He just stared at the KGB general with his black lizard’s eyes as he listened. When Karpov had finished, he had asked, “You are certain your information is correct, Comrade General?”
“I have the full narrative from Professor Krilov on tape,” said Karpov. “The machine was in my briefcase at the time.”
“And the information from London?”
“Its source is impeccable. I have run the man personally for nearly three years.”
The Armenian power broker stared at him for a long time, as if reflecting on many things, not least how this information could be used to advantage.
r /> “If what you say is true, there has been recklessness and adventurism at the highest level in our country. If such could be proved—of course, one would need the proof—there might have to be changes at the top. Good day to you.”
Karpov had understood. When the man on the pinnacle in Soviet Russia fell, all his own men fell with him. If there were changes at the top, there would be a vacant slot as Chairman of the KGB, a slot that Karpov felt would suit him admirably. But to cobble together his alliance of Party forces, Vartanyan would need proof, more proof, solid, irrefutable, documentary proof, that the act of recklessness had almost brought disaster. No one had ever forgotten that Mikhail Suslov had toppled Khrushchev in 1964 on charges of adventurism over the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Shortly after the meeting, Karpov had sent in Winkler, the most bumbling agent his files could unearth. His message had been read and understood. Now he held in his hands the proof his Armenian patron needed. He looked through the documents again.
The report of the mythical interrogation and the confession of Major Valeri Petrofsky to the British would need some amendment, but he had people out at Yasyenevo who could accomplish that. The interrogation report forms were absolutely authentic—that was the main thing. Even Preston’s reports on his progress, suitably amended to exclude any mention of Winkler, were photocopies of the originals.
The General Secretary would not be able or willing to save the traitor Philby; nor, later, would he be able to save himself. Vartanyan would see to that, and he would not be ungrateful.