sighed. It was better than politics.
It had been on scarcely ten minutes when he heard Armitage next door putting out his empty milk bottles. Always the same number and always the same time of night, he thought. Then the old fool was calling to someone across the street. Something on the television caught his eye and he stared in amazement. The interviewer was talking to a lanky man in a flat cap about his passion, which appeared to be pigeons. He was holding one up in front of the camera, a sleek creature with a distinctive cast to its beak and head.
Petrofsky sat bolt-upright, concentrating on the bird with almost all of his attention, listening to the interview with the rest. He was sure the bird was identical to one he had seen somewhere before.
“Is this lovely bird for showing in competition?” the interviewer was asking. She was new, a bit too bright, trying to squeeze more from the interview than it merited.
“Good Lord, no,” said the flat-cap man. “This isn’t a fancy. It’s a Westcott.”
In a bright flash of recall, Petrofsky saw again the room in the guest suite at the General Secretary’s dacha at Usovo. “Found him in the street last winter,” the wizened Englishman had said, and the bird had gazed out of its cage with bright, clever eyes.
“Well, it’s not the sort we would see about the town,” suggested the television interviewer. She was floundering. At that moment the telephone in Petrofsky’s hallway rang. ...
Normally he would have gone to answer it, in case it was a neighbor. To have pretended to be out would have roused suspicions, with the house lights on. And he would not have taken his handgun to the hall. But he stayed and stared at the screen. The phone rang on, insistently. With the television talk, it drowned the soft pad of rubber-soled feet on the pavement.
“I should hope not,” replied the flat-cap man cheerfully. “A Westcott ain’t a ‘streetie,’
neither. It’s probably one of the finest strains of racer there is. This little beauty will always speed back to the loft where it was raised. That’s why they’re more commonly known as homers.”
Petrofsky came out of his chair with a snarl of rage. The big precision-made Sako target pistol that he had kept close by him since he had entered Britain came up with him from its place down the side of the seat cushion. He uttered one short word in Russian.
No one heard him, but the word was
At that moment there was a roar, then another, so close together that they were almost one. With them came the shattering of glass from his front door, two huge bangs from the rear of the house, and the thud of feet in the hall. Petrofsky spun toward the sitting-room door and fired three times. His Sako Triace, made to take three interchangeable barrels, had the heaviest caliber of the three fitted. It also packed five rounds in its magazine. He used only three—he might need the other two for himself. But the three he fired slammed through the flimsy woodwork of the closed door into the hall beyond. ...
The citizens of Cherryhayes Close will describe that night for the rest of their lives, but none will ever get it quite right.
The roar of the Wingmaster, as it tore the hinges off the door, catapulted them all out of their chairs. The moment he had fired, the gunman stepped sideways and back to give room to his mate. One swing of the sledgehammer and the lock, bolt, and chain on the other side flew in all directions. Then he, too, stepped sideways and back. Both men dropped their weapons and flicked their HKs forward and out.
Steve and the corporal had already gone through the gap. The corporal took three bounds to get up the stairs, with the sledgehammer man following on his heels. Steve ran past the ringing telephone, reached the sitting-room door, turned to face it, and was lifted off his feet. The three slugs that ripped across the hallway hit him with an audible
When the shotgun fired, Captain Lyndhurst opened the front door across the street and watched; Preston was behind him. Through the lighted hallway the captain saw his deputy team commander approach the sitting- room door, only to be thrown aside like a rag doll. Lyndhurst started to walk forward; Preston followed.
As the trooper who had fired the two bursts came to his feet and surveyed the inert figure on the carpet, Captain Lyndhurst appeared in the doorway. He took in the scene at a glance, despite the drifting plume of cordite smoke. “Go and help Steve in the hall,” he said crisply. The trooper did not argue. The man on the floor began to move. Lyndhurst drew his Browning from beneath his jacket.
The trooper had been good. Petrofsky had taken one slug in the left knee, one in the lower stomach, and one in the right shoulder. His pistol had been flung across the room.
Despite the distortion caused by the door’s woodwork, the trooper had connected with three out of four slugs. Petrofsky was in hideous pain, but he was alive. He began to crawl. Twelve feet away he could see the gray steel, the flat box on its side, the two buttons, one yellow and one red. Captain Lyndhurst took careful aim and fired once.
John Preston ran past him so fast he jostled the officer’s hip. He went down on his knees beside the body on the floor. The Russian was lying on his side, half the back of his head blown away, his mouth still working as if he were a fish on a slab. Preston bent his head to the dying face. Lyndhurst still had his gun at the aim, but the MI5 man was between him and the Russian. He stepped to one side to get a clearer shot, then lowered the Browning. Preston was rising. There was no need for a second shot.
“We’d better get the wallahs from Aldermaston to have a look at
“I wanted him alive,” said Preston.
“Sorry, old boy. Couldn’t be done,” said the captain.
At that moment both men jumped at the sound of a loud click and a voice speaking to them from the sideboard. They saw that the sound had come from a large radio set, which had switched itself on with a timer device. The voice said:
“Good evening. This is Radio Moscow, the English-language service, and here is the ten o’clock news. In Terry ... I’m sorry, I’ll say that again. In Teheran today, the government stated—”
Captain Lyndhurst stepped over and switched the machine off The man on the floor stared at the carpet with sightless eyes, immune to the coded message meant for him alone.
Chapter 23
The lunch invitation was for one o’clock on Friday, June 19, at Brooks’s Club in St.
James’s. Preston entered the portals at that hour, but even before he could announce himself to the club porter in the booth to his right, Sir Nigel was striding down the marbled hall to meet him. “My dear John, how kind of you to come.”
They adjourned to the bar for a pre-lunch drink, and the conversation was informal.
Preston was able to tell the Chief that he had just returned from Hereford, where he had visited Steve Bilbow in the hospital. The staff sergeant had had a lucky escape. Only when the flattened slugs from the Russian’s gun were removed from his body armor did one of the doctors notice a sticky smear and have it analyzed. The cyanide compound had failed to enter the bloodstream; the SAS man had been saved by the trauma pads.
Otherwise he was heavily bruised, slightly dented, but in good shape.
“Excellent,” said Sir Nigel with genuine enthusiasm, “one does so hate to lose a good man.”
For the rest, most of the bar was discussing the election result and many of those present had been up half the night waiting for the final results in the close-fought contest to come in from the provinces.
At half past the hour they went in to lunch. Sir Nigel had a corner table where they could talk in privacy. On the way in they passed the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Martin Flannery, coming the other way. Although they all knew each other, Sir Martin saw at once that his colleague was “in conference.” The mandarins acknowledged each other’s presence with an imperceptible inclination of the head, sufficient for two scholars of Oxford. Backslapping is best left to foreigners.
“I really asked you here, John,” said C as he spread his linen napkin over his knees, “to offer you my thanks and my congratulations. A remarkable operation and an excellent result. I suggest the rack of lamb, quite delicious
