been talk ... about his old colleagues, the magic circle, the solidarity of the establishment of which he was once a member ... that sort of thing.”
Preston studied his plate, with its half-eaten strawberries. Sir Nigel gazed at the ceiling for a long time before letting out a profound sigh. “You’re a remarkable man, John. Tell me, what are you doing a week from today?”
“Nothing, I believe.”
“Then please meet me at the door of Sentinel House at eight in the morning of June twenty-sixth. Bring your passport. And now, if you’ll forgive me, I suggest we forgo coffee in the library. ...”
The man at the upper window of the safe house in the Geneva back street stood and watched the departure of his visitor. The head and shoulders of the guest appeared below him; the man walked down the short path to the front gate and stepped into the street, where his car waited. The car’s driver stepped out, came around the vehicle, and opened the door for the senior man. Then he walked back to the driver’s door.
Before he climbed back into the car, Preston raised his gaze to the figure behind the glass in the upper window. When he was behind the steering wheel he asked, “That’s him? That’s really him? The man from Moscow?”
“Yes, that’s him. And now, the airport, if you please,” replied Sir Nigel from the rear seat. They drove away.
“Well, John, I promised you an explanation,” said Sir Nigel a few moments later. “Ask your questions.”
Preston could see the face of the Chief in his rearview mirror. The older man was gazing out at the passing countryside.
“The operation?”
“You were quite right. It was mounted personally by the General Secretary, with the advice and assistance of Philby. It seems it was called Plan Aurora. It
“Why was it blown away?”
Sir Nigel thought for several minutes. “From quite an early stage I believed that you could be right. Both in your tentative conclusions of last December in what is now called the Preston report and in your deductions after the intercept in Glasgow. Even though Harcourt-Smith declined to believe in either. I was not certain the two were linked, but I was not prepared to discount it. The more I looked at it, the more I became convinced that Plan Aurora was not a true KGB operation. It had not the hallmarks, the painstaking care. It looked like a hasty operation mounted by a man or a group who distrusted the KGB. Yet there was little hope of your finding the agent in time.”
“I was floundering in the dark, Sir Nigel. And I knew it. There were no patterns of Soviet couriers showing up on any of our immigration controls. Without Winkler I’d never have got to Ipswich in time.”
They drove for several minutes in silence. Preston waited for the Master to resume in his own time.
“So, I sent a message to Moscow,” said Sir Nigel eventually.
“From yourself?”
“Good Lord, no. That would never have done. Much too obvious. Through another source, one I hoped would be believed. It was not a very truthful message, I’m afraid.
Sometimes one must tell untruths in our business. But it went through a channel I hoped would be believed.”
“And it was?”
“Thankfully, yes. When Winkler arrived I was sure the message had been received, understood, and, above all, believed as true.”
“Winkler was the reply?” asked Preston.
“Yes. Poor man. He believed he was on a routine mission to check on the Stephanides brothers and their transmitter. By the by, he was found drowned in Prague two weeks ago. Knew too much, I suppose.”
“And the Russian in Ipswich?”
“His name, I have just learned, was Petrofsky. A first-class professional, and a patriot.”
“But he, too, had to die?”
“John, it was a terrible decision. But unavoidable. The arrival of Winkler was an offer, a proposal for a trade-off. No formal agreement, of course. Just a tacit understanding. The man Petrofsky could not be taken alive and interrogated. I had to go along with the unwritten and unspoken trade with the man in the window back there at the safe house.”
“If we had got Petrofsky alive, we’d have had the Soviet Union over a barrel.”
“Yes, John, indeed we would. We could have subjected them to a huge international humiliation. And to what end? The USSR could not have taken it lying down. They’d have had to reply somewhere else in the world. What would you have wished? A return to the worst aspects of the Cold War?”
“It seems a pity to lose an opportunity to screw them, sir.”
“John, they’re big and armed and dangerous. The USSR is going to be there tomorrow and next week and next year. Somehow we have to share this planet with them. Better they be ruled by pragmatic and realistic men than hotheads and zealots.”
“And that merits a trade with men like the one in the window, Sir Nigel?”
“Sometimes it has to be done. I’m a professional, so is he. There are journalists and writers who would have it that we in our profession live in a dream world. In reality it’s the reverse. It is the politicians who dream their dreams—sometimes dangerous dreams, like the General Secretary’s dream of changing the face of Europe as his personal monument.
“A top intelligence officer has to be harder-headed than the toughest businessman. One has to trim to the reality, John. When the dreams take command, one ends up with the Bay of Pigs. The first break in the Cuban missiles impasse was suggested by the KGB
rezident in New York. It was Khrushchev, not the professionals, who had gone over the top.”
“So what happens next, sir?”
The old spymaster sighed. “We leave it to them. There will be some changes made.
They will make them in their own inimitable way. The man back there in the house will set them in train. His career will be advanced, those of others broken.”
“And Philby?” asked Preston.
“What about Philby?”
“Is he trying to come home?”
Sir Nigel shrugged impatiently. “For years past,” he said. “And, yes, he’s in touch from time to time, covertly, with my people in our embassy over there. We breed pigeons. ...”
“Pigeons?”
“Very old-fashioned, I know. And simple. But still surprisingly efficient. That’s how he communicates. But
“So far as you are concerned—?”
“He can rot in hell,” said Sir Nigel softly.
They drove for a while in silence.
“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
