The Devil's Alternative

“Is this genuine?” he asked.

Barry Ferndale had dropped his bonhomie. He had known Nigel Irvine for years as a colleague, and the elevation of his friend to the supreme post and a knighthood had changed nothing between them.

“Don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s going to take a lot of checking out. It’s possible. Adam told me he met this Krivoi briefly at a reception at the Czech Embassy just over two weeks ago. If Krivoi was thinking of coming over, that would have been his chance. Penkovsky did exactly the same; met a diplomat on neutral ground and established a secret meeting later. Of course he was regarded with intense suspi­cion until his information checked out. That’s what I want to do here.”

“Spell it out,” said Sir Nigel.

Ferndale began polishing his glasses again. The speed of his circular movements with handkerchief on the lenses, so went the folklore, was in direct proportion to the pace of his thinking, and now he polished furiously.

“Firstly, Munro,” he said. “Just in case it is a trap and the second meeting is to spring the trap, I would like him to take furlough here until we have finished with the tape. The Op­position might, just might, be trying to create an incident be­tween governments.”

“Is he owed leave?” asked Sir Nigel.

“Yes, he is, actually. He was shifted to Moscow so fast at the end of May, he is owed a fortnight’s summer holiday.”

“Then let him take it now. But he should keep in touch. And inside Britain, Barry. No wandering abroad until this is sorted out.”

“Then there’s the tape itself,” said Ferndale. “It breaks down into two parts: the Yakovlev report and the voices of the Politburo. So far as I know, we have never heard Ya­kovlev speak. So no voiceprint tests will be possible with him. But what he says is highly specific. I’d like to check that out with some experts in chemical seed-dressing techniques. There’s an excellent section in the Ministry of Agriculture who deal with that sort of thing. No need for anyone to know why we want to know, but I’ll have to be convinced this accident with the lindane hopper valve is feasible.”

“You recall that file the Cousins lent us a month ago?” asked Sir Nigel. “The photos taken by the Condor satellites?”

“Of course.”

“Check the symptoms against the apparent explanation. What else?”

“The second section comes down to voiceprint analysis,” said Ferndale. “I’d like to chop that section up into bits, so no one need know what is being talked about. The language laboratory at Beaconsfield could check out phraseology, syn­tax, vernacular expressions, regional dialects, and so forth. But the clincher will be the comparison of voiceprints.”

Sir Nigel nodded. Both men knew that human voices, reduced to a series of electronically registered blips and pulses, are as individual as fingerprints. No two are ever quite alike.

“Very well,” he said, “but Barry, I insist on two things. For the moment, no one knows about this outside of you, me, and Munro. If it’s a phony, we don’t want to raise false hopes; if it’s not, it’s high explosive. None of the technical side must know the whole. Secondly, I don’t want to hear the name of Anatoly Krivoi again. Devise a cover name for this asset and use it in future.”

Two hours later Barry Ferndale called Munro after lunch at his club. The telephone line being open, they used the commercial parlance that was habitual.

“The managing director’s terribly happy with the sales re­port,” Ferndale told Munro. “He’s very keen that you take a fortnight’s leave to enable us to break it right down and see where we go from here. Have you any ideas for a spot of leave?”

Munro hadn’t, but he made up his mind. This was not a request; it was an order.

“I’d like to go back to Scotland for a while,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to walk during the summer from Lochaber up the coast to Sutherland.”

Ferndale was ecstatic. “The Highlands, the glens of Bonnie Scotland. So pretty at this time of year. Never could stand physical exercise myself, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Stay in touch with me—say, every second day. You have my home number, don’t you?”

A week later, Miroslav Kaminsky arrived in England on his Red Cross travel papers. He had come across Europe by train, the ticket paid for by Drake, who was nearing the end of his financial resources.

Kaminsky and Krim were introduced, and Kaminsky given his orders.

“You learn English,” Drake told him. “Morning, noon, and night. Books and gramophone records, faster than you’ve ever learned anything before. Meanwhile, I’m going to get you some decent papers. You can’t travel on Red Cross documents forever. Until I do, and until you can make your­self understood in English, don’t leave the flat.”

Adam Munro had walked for ten days through the Highlands of Inverness, Ross, and Cromarty and finally into Sutherland County. He had arrived at the small town of Lochinver, where the waters of the North Minch stretch away westward to the Isle of Lewis, when he made his sixth call to Barry Ferndale’s home on the outskirts of London.

“Glad you called,” said Ferndale down the line. “Could you come back to the office? The managing director would like a word.”

Munro promised to leave within the hour and make his way as fast as possible to Inverness. There he could pick up a flight for London.

At his home on the outskirts of Sheffield, the great steel town of Yorkshire, Norman Pickering kissed his wife and daughter farewell that brilliant late-July morning and drove off to the bank of which he was manager.

Twenty minutes later a small van bearing the name of an electrical appliance company drove up to the house and dis­gorged two men in white coats. One carried a large card­board carton up to the front door, preceded by his companion bearing a clipboard. Mrs. Pickering answered the door, and the two men went inside. None of the neighbors took any notice.

Ten minutes later the man with the clipboard came out and drove away. His companion had apparently stayed to fix and test the appliance they had delivered.

Thirty minutes after that, the van was parked about two corners from the bank, and the driver, without his white coat and wearing a charcoal-gray business suit, carrying not a clip­board but a large attache case, entered the bank. He prof­fered an envelope to one of the women clerks, who looked at it, saw that it was addressed personally to Mr. Pickering, and took it in to him. The businessman waited patiently.

Two minutes later the manager opened his office door and looked out. His eye caught the waiting businessman.

“Mr. Partington?” he asked. “Do come in.”

Andrew Drake did not speak until the door had closed be­hind him. When he did, his voice had no trace of his native Yorkshire, but a guttural edge as if it came from Europe. His hair was carrot-red, and heavy-rimmed, tinted glasses masked his eyes to some extent.

“I wish to open an account,” he said, “and to make a with­drawal in cash.”

Pickering was perplexed; his chief clerk could have handled this transaction.

“A large account, and a large transaction,” said Drake. He slid a check across the desk. It was a bank check, the sort that can be obtained across the counter. It was issued by the Holborn, London, branch of Pickering’s own bank, and was drawn to thirty thousand pounds.

“I see,” said Pickering. That kind of money was definitely the manager’s business. “And the withdrawal?”

“Twenty thousand pounds in cash.”

“Twenty thousand pounds in cash?” asked Pickering. He reached for the phone. “Well, of course I shall have to call the Holborn branch and—”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Drake, and pushed a copy of that morning’s London Times over the desk. Pickering stared at it. What Drake handed him next caused him to stare even more. It was a photograph, taken with a Polaroid camera. He recognized his wife, whom he had left ninety minutes earlier, sitting round-eyed with fear in his own fireside chair. He could make out a portion of his own