'Two — something that looks very much like that missing prototype was shipped to Transworld Import/export, an outfit that has a warehouse in the International Zone at Heathrow Airport in London.'
'That way,' April explained, 'any cargo held for transshipment only does not have to pass British customs.'
'Third,' Kurtzman growled on, 'Transworld Ist is a front run by our friends in MI5 — BRITISH Intelligence. And fourth, there is here Kurtzman shuffled through the printouts '4-a 99.3 percent chance that this 'Sir Philip' whose name you saw, Mack, in Charon's datebook is Sir Philip Drummond, a high ranking MI5 official.'
'Wait a minute,' Bolan objected. 'That doesn't make sense.'
Kurtzman smiled with satisfaction. 'It does if you add in point number five.' He held up his hand, palm out, all digits splayed. 'Sir Philip Drummond is a puppet,' he announced. 'And the Kremlin is pulling his strings.'
Bolan's coffee cup was still half-full when he left the War Room. Within an hour, he was in a military jet, clearing the Atlantic coast, racing to meet the incoming twilight.
3
The man sitting alone at the corner table was in his mid-fifties, and wore the years well. He was dressed in an impeccably cut Savile Row three-piece suit, gray with muted gray pin striping, and his full head of silvery hair looked as if it had been styled that morning, every strand in place. He was slim and tall, carried himself with an offhand grace, visible now as he came into the vip lounge on the first floor of the departures section of Terminal Three at Heathrow Airport, London, England.
From his position four tables away, Mack Bolan had a clear line of sight to the elegant man. Two walls of the lounge were glass, looking out on the airport's terminal aprons. Planes with a variety of international markings taxied to or from the building every minute or so; Terminal Three handled intercontinental traffic. A third wall of the lounge was faced by a long table on which a luxurious buffet brunch had been laid out, a complimentary courtesy for the international passengers that the various airlines were most anxious to woo: business people, statesmen, anyone who did a good deal of traveling. The brunch was presided over by a Pakistani chef in livery, as was the cocktail bar tucked up to the fourth wall.
At mid-morning, there were no more than a dozen people in the room. Of the four at the bar, Mack Bolan knew the identities of three. The sandy-haired man at one end was named Voorhis; the man with whom he appeared to be in deep conversation was named McMahon. Both were American Intelligence agents.
At the other end of the bar, a young blond man, hardly twenty-five, appeared to be dawdling over a Guinness stout.
In fact he was an agent of MI5. Like his American colleagues, he was fully briefed on what was to come down.
The distinguished-looking man at the corner table glanced at his watch, then took a sterling silver cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket.
He extracted a slim brown-paper cigarette, produced a lighter that matched the case, drew in flame.
His name was Sir Philip Drummond, and although he did not know it, he was sitting right in the middle of a suck.
A West Indian waiter in immaculate whites approached Bolan's table and refilled his coffee cup. Bolan's protective coloration for this rather refined corner of the human jungle consisted of a lightweight turtleneck and conservative slacks. The coordinated jacket was specially cut to conceal the Detonics mini .45 Associates automatic pistol riding in custom-crafted shoulder leather under his left arm.
On the table next to him was a slimline Samsonite attache-case with combination lock.
Three tables away, Sir Philip stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and glanced impatiently at the lounge's entrance. He did not smile, but his frown relaxed as he rose from his seat. Frederick Charon crossed the room.
The two men shook hands with no particular warmth, then both sat down. Bolan kept them in the corner of his vision. To all appearances, two classier members of a pair of great nations, meeting to discuss something of worth or import within the elegant surroundings to which they had been bred.
In reality, two traitors, pooling resources to sell out those great nations. For all their intelligence, culture, and social status, to Mack Bolan these two men were certainly no less harmful than a pair of fat old Mafia dons who argued obscenely about how to split the profits of their vicious exploitation.
It was all a question of choices. Charon and Sir Philip could have chosen to be leaders, men who enriched the societies to which they had climbed to the top.
Instead they had chosen to be criminals.
The clue to the tie-in had come with the notation on the datebook of Charon's secretary: 'Brunch with Sir Philip.' It was an elementary computer exercise for Aaron Kurtzman: compare that name to all names filed in the Stony Man Farm data banks, with crosscheck to the NSC computer. It had taken exactly 51 seconds — Kurtzman was proud to announce to produce the correct name.
Bolan had studied the printout summary of Sir Philip Drummond's dossier on his transatlantic flight. Now aged fifty-six, he was the only son of a titled family that traced its lineage back to England's famed House of York. He was a member of the House of Lords, and was third-ranked officer below the Minister of Defence. His private school was Eton, after which he read for his baccalaureate at Cambridge University. In addition he held a Master of Arts degree from Oxford.
And for more than thirty years, Sir Philip had been a double agent for the Russian KGB.
This creep had first become involved with communism as a theoretical system, when he joined a socialist student faction at Cambridge. Such an association was not particularly unusual in those days, was considered no more than a harmless intellectual flirtation. Since Sir Philip had renounced it quite quickly, it was no barrier for his entrance into the British Intelligence service, first as a military officer during the Second World War, then with MI5 after mustering out.
That is how the 'old school tie' has always worked in England.
In fact Sir Philip had embraced communism totally.
When an old college chum who had already gone turncoat approached him, Sir Philip signed on with the Soviet cause.
For over twenty-five years he rose through the ranks, in the parlance of the trade a 'sleeper,' an agent-in- place. In carrying out his intelligence duties, he showed only the most scrupulous attention to the best interests of Great Britain.
Then, two years ago, Sir Philip was 'activated' by his Russian masters. A deception that had consumed the man's lifetime was finally to bear fruit.
It turned rotten within a month. That was how long it took MI5 to realize Sir Philip was a 'mole.' Over the years, British Intelligence has had its share of double agents. The most famous was Harold Adrian Russell Philby, better known as Kim, a Soviet double, who rose to become first secretary of the British Embassy in Washington before fleeing to Mother Russia in 1963.
Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean were another pair of traitors, escaping only because Philby tipped them off that they were about to be blown. As a result, MI5 had instituted certain fail-safes, one of which had revealed Sir Philip.
Sir Philip himself had no idea that his perfidy was known, because he had been left in place and allowed to operate. He was also unaware that every piece of British intelligence he passed on to the Kremlin was deliberate misinformation, which was all he was still allowed access to. Today, however, Sir Philip had slipped through to act as go between for highly classified American defense date, sold to Russia by Frederick Charon. In a few minutes that transfer was scheduled to take place.
'It's why I'm here, guy,' Bolan muttered to himself. Present and correct, armed, ready. The Executioner was abroad again.
At the corner table, Charon slipped a hand inside his five-hundred-dollar suitcoat and took out an ordinary letter-sized envelope. Sir Philip did the same. The envelopes changed hands, disappeared into pockets. Sir Philip rose and elegantly crossed the room toward the exit.
The young MI5 agent who had been nursing his stout fell into indiscreet step behind Sir Philip. His name
