One of the younger five chaps stood up, offering his hands in a conciliatory manner.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, we have a spy to catch. Can I suggest we leave the bickering to our Lords and masters, and get on with the job?”
The watchers numbered thirty-six in total, six teams of six members each. The first team were, or at least appeared to be, a mother with baby, granny doing the shopping, telephone repair man, punk rocker, tow truck driver – and the leader a completely non-descript looking West Indian woman out with her man. They would follow and watch every move made by the suspect until further notice, recording all the details, photographing every meeting and painstakingly identifying every person the suspect met, spoke to or even brushed past. Every waking minute she would be shadowed.
Bit by bit, the routine fell into place. On workday mornings she walked to the Station, usually buying a paper at the tobacconist on the way and catching the 7:52 into Waterloo Station. From there she took the underground and walked the rest of the way to Century House, arriving normally at about 8:50. She lunched in the building in the canteen and headed home, trying for the 18:02 – and, once in Datchet, walked straight home. Her mother usually had dinner on, the watchers being able to identify the food on the plates, and the pair watched television till about ten.
The fifth evening, the suspect went straight to a play, throwing the watchers into momentary dismay when she by-passed the Station heading for the West End, and an extra team was brought in in case her rendezvous was in the theatre.
Saturday morning was her shopping day, and two of the team followed her around Sainsbury’s, watching her load frozen kippers and tinned new potatoes into her trolley.
It was the second Saturday that she seemed to break her habitual routine. Today she left the house wearing makeup and took a taxi into Windsor. The watchers followed her into a wine bar, where she greeted and sat down with a man.
Out on the street, a woman walking her dog bent her head forward, listening carefully to the fast chat in her secreted ear-piece receiver, crossed to a parked van and quickly climbed into the back. “Camera quick,” she said, passing the small confused dog to the man bent over the radio set.
He scooped up a maroon coloured handbag.
“In the bas. They have fixed it with the lens out of the crack in the end now. Viewfinder’s up and the power winder is a noisy bastard – so be careful.”
“Shit! I thought that was fixed!” she snapped. It had been a long day.
Three minutes later she wandered into the wine bar, placing the bag on the bar under her arm. Waiting for the noise from the kitchen to roll out with the opening of the swing doors, she began photographing the couple at the table. Inside ten minutes she had thirty-six shots exposed, paid for her drink, looked angrily at her watch like a stranded date and stalked out onto the street.
No-one on the team could identify the man she was with, so the film was rushed into MI5’s lab for immediate developing, and a couple of counter intelligence people brought in to study the pictures and try and identify the stranger.
Meanwhile, the watchers stayed on the couple.
“So who the bloody hell is he?” Callows barked.
“Five are running ID checks now, Sir Martin,” Adrian Black answered.
“Bloody Five. They want everything done to death. Run the bugger in to Scotland Yard,” he mumbled angrily.
He paced the room like a polar bear, back and forth, his leonine head swinging as he moved.
At that moment, Henry Arnold was admitted from the anteroom.
“Ha! Arnold. You’re here!”
“Yes, Sir Martin,” he answered, “I came as soon as I got the call. Are we on then?”
“Looks like it. The treacherous bitch is sipping plonk in some wine bar in Windsor with an as yet unidentified man…”
Callows’ fury was something to behold, and Black – ever appreciative of real drama – knew instinctively that Arnold was about to fan the flames.
“It’s too soon,” Arnold said disappointedly.
“What?” Callows snapped
“It’s too soon. These things take months to unravel. If we have caught a Soviet agent within two weeks of watching, then she is no Mata Hari. Either that or we’ve just had the damnedest luck.”
“Luck! Luck! You bloody cretin! Six years that conniving lying black-hearted bitch has been in Central Registry. Six bloody years, dammit!”
“Well,” Arnold offered, “it could have been ten or twenty, and she could have been on an active desk rather than just filing dead material.”
“Thank God for small mercies, I suppose.”
The telephone rang and Black scooped it from the desk with one fluid move. He listened for ten seconds, before replacing the handset, a small smile playing his lips.
“Film quality not good. Bad light. Lousy file shots, but we have a make... Yet to be confirmed, but we have a make. The man is Peytor Minsky a.k.a Sergi Karmova. He is down as Second Cultural Attaché under the Minsky name. I know him. We’ve never really understood his role, but there’s no doubt about it. He is hard core KGB and we have just cracked into his network.”
“I’ll hang the bitch!” Callows roared. Behind him, Arnold nodded to himself, thinking: that’s fine, but the two issues are still not synonymous. Delighted with the success so far, he said a silent prayer for the watchers and Special Branch who would now have to make the case. But even now he could not help feeling that it was all too simple.
“Sir Martin, I feel I should warn you that, now Five has him pegged as a Kilo fisherman, they may want to leave things and see who else he has on the hook.”
“Over my dead body,” Callows stated flatly, his voice betraying his acceptance that it may well be the case, and his anger dying as fast at it had flared. He looked at Arnold. “Well
