John Preston got his break the following Monday afternoon, May 25.
At just after four o’clock, an Austrian Airlines flight came into Heathrow from Vienna. One of the travelers aboard, who presented himself at the passport desk for non-UK and non-EEC citizens, offered a perfectly authentic Austrian passport that proclaimed its bearer to be one Franz Winkler.
The immigration officer examined the familiar green, plastic-covered Reisepass, fronted by the emblematic gold eagle, with the usual apparent indifference of his profession. It was of current issue, dotted with half a dozen other European entry and exit stamps, and included a valid UK visa.
Beneath his desk the officer’s left hand tapped out the passport number, perforated through every page of the booklet. He glanced at the display screen, closed the passport, and handed it back with a brief smile. “Thank you, sir. And the next, please.”
As Herr Winkler picked up his suitcase and moved through, the officer raised his eyes to a small window twenty feet away. At the same time, his right foot pressed an “alert” button near the floor. From the office window, one of the resident Special Branch men caught his gaze. The immigration officer looked in the direction of Herr Winkler’s back and nodded. The face of the Special Branch detective withdrew from the window and seconds later he and a colleague were slipping quietly after the Austrian. Another Special Branch man was rustling up a car in front of the concourse.
Winkler had no heavy luggage, so he ignored the carousels in the baggage hall and went straight through the green channel of customs. In the concourse he spent some time at the Midland Bank changing traveler’s checks into sterling currency, during which time one of the Special Branch men got a good photograph of him from an upper balcony.
When the Austrian took a cab from the rank in front of Number Two Building, the Special Branch officers piled into their own unmarked car and were right behind him. The driver concentrated on following the taxi; the senior Special Branch detective used the radio to inform Scotland Yard, whence, according to procedure, the information went also to Charles Street. There was a standing order to the effect that Six was also interested in any visitor carrying a “bent” passport, so the tip-off was passed by Charles Street to Sentinel House.
Winkler took his cab as far as Bayswater and paid the driver at the junction of Edgware Road and Sussex Gardens. Then he walked, suitcase in hand, down Sussex Gardens, one side of which is almost entirely taken up with modest bed-and-breakfast boardinghouses of the type favored by commercial travelers and by late arrivals from nearby Paddington Station on modest budgets.
It seemed to the Special Branch officers watching from their car across the street that Winkler had no reservation, for he ambled down the street until he came to a boarding-house with a VACANCIES sign in the window and went in. He must have got a room because he did not emerge.
It was one hour after Winkler’s cab had left Heathrow, and at that time the phone rang in Preston’s Chelsea flat. His contact man at Sentinel, the one ordered by Sir Nigel to liaise with Preston, was on the line.
“There’s a Joe just came in at Heathrow,” said the MI6 man. “It may be nothing, but his passport number came up little red lights on the computer. Name of Franz Winkler, Austrian, off the Vienna flight.”
“They didn’t pick him up, I hope?” said Preston. He was thinking that Austria is conveniently close to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Being neutral, it is also a good jumping-off point for Sovbloc illegals.
“No,” said the man at Sentinel. “According to our standing request they tailed him. ... Hold on.. ..” He came back on the line a few seconds later. “They’ve just ‘housed’ him at a small B-and-B hotel in Paddington.”
“Can you pass me over to C?” asked Preston.
Sir Nigel was in conference, which he left to return to his private office. “Yes, John.”
When Preston had related the basic facts to the Chief of the SIS, Sir Nigel asked, “Do you think he’s the man you’ve been waiting for?”
“He could be a courier,” said Preston. “He’s as good as we’ve had in the past six weeks.”
“What do you want, John?”
“I’d like Six to ask for the watchers to take over. All reports reaching the watchers’ controller at Cork to be monitored by one of your people as and when they come in; same to be fed at once to Sentinel and then to me. If he makes a meet, I’d like both men tailed.”
“All right,” said Sir Nigel. “I’ll ask for the watchers. Barry Banks will sit in at the Cork radio room and pass the developments down the line as they come in.”
The Chief himself called the director of K Branch and made his request. The head of K contacted his colleagues at A Branch and a standby team of watchers headed for Sussex Gardens. They happened to be led by Harry Burkinshaw.
Preston paced the small apartment in a rage of frustration. He wanted to be out on the streets, or at least at the center of the operation, not tucked away like a deep-cover man in his own country, the pawn in a power game being conducted at a level far above his head.
By seven that evening, Burkinshaw’s men had moved in, taking over the watch from the Special Branch men, who happily went off duty. It was a warm and pleasant evening; the four watchers who formed the “box” took up their unobtrusive stations around the hotel—one up the street, one down, one across, and one in back. The two cars positioned themselves amid scores of others parked along Sussex Gardens, ready to move if Chummy took flight. All six men were in contact via their own communicator sets, and Burkinshaw with head office, the radio room in the basement at Cork. Barry Banks was in Cork also, since this was an operation requested by Six, and they all waited for Winkler to make contact.
The trouble was, he did not. He did nothing. He just sat in his hotel room behind the net curtains and lay low. At eight-thirty he came out, walked to a restaurant on Edgware Road, had a simple supper, and went back again. He made no drop, picked up no instructions, left nothing at his table, spoke to no one in the street.
But he did two things of interest. He stopped sharply in Edgware Road on his way to the restaurant, stared in a shop window for several seconds, then headed back the way he had come. It’s one of the oldest tricks for trying to spot a tail, and not a very good one. On leaving the restaurant he paused at the curb, waited for a gap in the surging traffic, then sprinted across. On the far side he paused again and scanned the street to see if anyone else had hurried across after him. No one had. All Winkler had done was join Burkinshaw’s fourth watcher, who had been on the other side of Edgware Road all the time. While Winkler scanned the traffic to see who might be risking life and limb to pursue him, the watcher was a few feet away, pretending to hail a cab.
“He’s ‘bent,’ all right,” Burkinshaw told Cork. “He’s surveillance-conscious, and not very good.”
Burkinshaw’s judgment reached Preston in his Chelsea hideout. He nodded in relief. It was beginning to look better.
After his gyrations on Edgware Road, Winkler returned to his boardinghouse and spent the rest of the night inside.
Meanwhile, another small operation was taking its inspired course in the basement at Sentinel House. The photos of Winkler taken by the Special Branch men in Heathrow Airport, together with others taken on the street in Bayswater, had been developed and were being placed reverentially before the gaze of the legendary Miss Blodwyn.
Identification of foreign agents, or of foreigners who might possibly be agents, forms a major part of any intelligence organization. To assist in this task, every year hundreds of thousands of pictures are taken by all the services of people who may, or may not, be working for their rivals. Even allies are not excluded from the snapshot albums. Foreign diplomats, members of trade, scientific, and cultural delegations: all are photographed as a matter of course—particularly, but not always, if they come from Communist or sympathizer countries. The archives grow and grow. The portraits often include twenty shots of the same man or woman, taken at different times and in different places. They are never thrown away. What they are used for is to get a “make.”
If a Russian with the name of Ivanov shows up accompanying a Soviet trade delegation to Canada, his photographed face will almost certainly be passed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to their colleagues in Washington, London, and the other NATO capitals. It may well be that the same face, calling itself Kozlov, was snapped five years earlier as a visiting journalist covering the independence celebrations of an African republic. If there is any question as to Ivanov’s real profession as he takes in the beauties of Ottawa, a make like that will dispel all doubts. It tags him as a full-time KGB hood.
The exchange of such photos among the allied intelligence arms—and these include the brilliant Israeli Mossad—is continuous and comprehensive. Very few Sovbloc visitors to the West, or even to the Third World, do not end up gazing from an album of photographs in at least twenty different democratic capitals. Of course, no one enters the Soviet Union without winding up in the Center’s own master gallery of happy snaps.
It is the almost hilarious case, but perfectly true, that while the CIA “cousins” use banks of computers in which are stored millions and millions of facial features to try to match up the incoming daily flow of photographs, Britain uses Blodwyn.
An elderly and often ill-used lady, forever harassed by her younger male colleagues for a quick identification, Blodwyn has been in the job forty years and works underneath Sentinel House, where she presides over the huge archive of pictures that make up MI6’s “mug book.” Not a book at all, it is in fact a cavernous vault where are stored rows and rows of volumes of photographs, of which Blodwyn alone possesses an encyclopedic knowledge.
Her mind is something like the CIA’s computer bank, which she can occasionally defeat. In her memory is stored not the tiniest detail of the Thirty Years’ War or even the Wall Street stock prices; her mind stores faces. Shapes of noses, lines of jaws, casts of eyes; the sag of a cheek, the curve of a lip, the way a glass or cigarette is held, the glint of a capped tooth in a smile taken in an Australian pub and showing up years later in a London supermarket—all are grist to the mill of her remarkable memory.
That night, while Bayswater slept and Burkinshaw’s men hugged the shadows, Blodwyn sat and stared at the face of Franz Winkler. Two silent younger men from Six waited. After an hour she simply said, “Far East,” and went off along the rows of her albums. She had her make in the small hours of Tuesday, May 26.
It wasn’t a good photograph and it was five years old. The hair had been darker then, the waist slimmer. The man was attending a reception at the Indian Embassy, standing beside his own ambassador and smiling deferentially.
One of the younger men stared at the two photographs doubtfully. “Are you sure, Blodwyn?”
If looks could cripple, he would have needed to invest in a wheelchair. He backed away hastily and made for a telephone. “There’s a make,” he said. “He’s a Czech. Five years ago he was a low-level gofer in the Czech Embassy in Tokyo. Name: Jiri Hayek,”
Preston was woken by the telephone at three in the morning. He listened, thanked the caller, and replaced the phone. He smiled happily. “Gotcha,” he said.
At ten in the morning, Winkler was still inside his hotel. Control of the operation at Cork Street had been taken over by Simon Margery, from K2(B), the Soviet Satellites/Czechoslovakia (Operations) desk. After all, a Czech was their affair. Barry Banks, who had slept in the office, was with him, passing developments down the line to Sentinel House.
At the same hour, John Preston made a call to the legal counselor at the American Embassy, a personal contact. The legal counselor at Grosvenor Square is always the London representative of the FBI. Preston made his request and was told he would be called back as soon as the answer came from Washington, probably in five to six hours, bearing in mind the time difference.
At eleven, Winkler emerged from the boardinghouse. He walked to Edgware Road again, hailed a cab, and set off toward Park Lane. At Hyde Park Corner, the cab, tailed by two cars containing the watcher team, went down Piccadilly. Winkler dismissed it in Piccadilly, close to the Circus end, and tried another few basic maneuvers to throw off a tail he had not even spotted.
“Here we go again,” Len Stewart muttered into his lapel. He had read Burkinshaw’s log and expected something similar. Suddenly Winkler shot down an arcade at a near-run, emerged at the other end, scuttled down the sidewalk, and turned to watch the entrance to the arcade from which he had just emerged. No one came out. No one needed to. There was already a watcher at the southern end of the arcade, anyway.
The watchers know London better than any policeman or cabdriver. They know how many exits every major building has, where the arcades and underpasses go, where the narrow passageways are located and where they lead to. Wherever a Joe tries to scuttle, there will always be one man there ahead of him, one coming slowly behind, and two flankers. The “box” never shatters, and it is a very clever Joe who can spot it.
Satisfied he had no tail, Winkler entered the British Rail Travel Center on Lower Regent Street. There he inquired as to the times of trains to Sheffield. The scarved Scottish football fan standing a few feet away and trying to get back to Motherwell was one of the watchers. Winkler paid cash for a second-class round-trip ticket to Sheffield, noted that the last train of the night left St. Paneras Station at nine-twenty-five, thanked the clerk, and left. He had lunch at a café nearby, returned to Sussex Gardens, and stayed there all afternoon.
Preston received the news about the train ticket to Sheffield at just after one o’clock. He caught Sir Nigel Irvine just as C was about to leave for lunch at his club.
“It may be a blind, but it looks as if he’s going out of town,” Preston reported. “He may be heading for his rendezvous. It could be on the train or in Sheffield. Maybe he’s delayed so long because he was early. The point is, sir, if he leaves London we will need a field controller to go with the watcher team. I want to be that controller.”
“Yes, see what you mean. Not easy. Still, I’ll see what I can do.”
Sir Nigel sighed. Bang goes lunch, he thought. He summoned his aide. “Cancel my lunch at White’s. Get my car ready. And take a cable. In that order.”
While the aide tackled the first two tasks, C called Sir Bernard Hemmings at his home number near Farnham, in Surrey. “Sorry to trouble you, Bernard. Something’s cropped up that I’d like your advice on. ... No, better face-to-face. Would you mind if I came down? Lovely day, after all. ... Yes, right, about three, then.”
“The cable?” asked his aide, entering the office.
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“Myself.”
“Certainly. From?”
“Head of station, Vienna.”
“Shall I alert him, sir?”
“No need to bother him. Just arrange with the cipher room for me to receive his cable in three minutes.”
“Of course. And the text?”
Sir Nigel dictated it. Sending himself an urgent message to justify what he wanted to do anyway was an old trick that he had picked up from his onetime mentor, the late Sir Maurice Oldfield. When the cipher room sent it back up in the form in which it would have been received from Vienna, the old mandarin put it in his pocket and went down to his car.
He found Sir Bernard in his garden, enjoying the warm May sunshine, a blanket around his knees.
“Meant to come in today,” said the Director-General of Five with well-feigned joviality. “Be in tomorrow, no doubt.”
“Of course, of course.”
“Now, how can I help?”
“Ticklish,” said Sir Nigel. “Someone has just flown into London from Vienna. Apparent Austrian businessman. But he’s a phony. We got a make on him last night. Czech agent, one of the StB boys. Low-level. We think he’s a courier.”
Sir Bernard nodded. “Yes, I keep in touch, even from here. Heard all about it. My chaps are on top of him, aren’t they?”
“Very much so. The thing is, it looks as if he may be leaving London tonight. For the north. Five will need a field controller to go with the watcher team.”
“Of course. We’ll have one. Brian can handle it.”
“Yes. It’s your operation, of course. Still ... You remember the Berenson affair? We never did discover two things. Does Marais communicate through the rezidentura here in London, or does he use couriers sent in from outside? And was Berenson the only man in the ring run by Marais, or were there others?”
“I recall. We were going to put those questions on ice until we could get a few answers out of Marais.”
“That’s right. Then today I got this message from my head of station in Vienna.”
He proffered the cable. Sir Bernard read it and his eyebrows rose. “Linked? Could they be?”
“Possible. Winkler, a.k.a. Hayek, seems to be a courier of some kind. Vienna confirms he’s nominally StB but actually working for the KGB itself. We know that Marais went to Vienna twice in the past two years, while he was running Berenson. Each time on cultural jaunts, but—”
“The missing link?”
Sir Nigel shrugged. Never oversell.
“What’s he going to Sheffield for?”
“Who knows, Bernard? Is there another ring up there in Yorkshire? Could Winkler be a bagman for more than one ring?”
“What do you want from Five? More watchers?”
“No, John Preston. You’ll recall he tracked down Berenson first, then Marais. I liked his style. He’s been on leave for a while. Then he had a dose of the flu, so they tell me. But he’s due to return to work tomorrow. He’s been off so long, he’ll probably have no current cases, anyway. Technically, he’s ports and airports, C5(C). But you know how the K boys are always worked off their feet. If he could just have a temporary attachment to K2(B), you could designate him field controller for this one.”
“Well, I don’t know, Nigel. This is really up to Brian. ...”
“I’d be awfully grateful, Bernard. Let’s face it, Preston was on the Berenson hunt from the start. If Winkler is part of it all, Preston might even see a face he’s seen before.”
“All right,” said Sir Bernard. “You’ve got it. I’ll issue the instruction from here.”
“I could take it back if you like,” said C. “Save you the trouble. Send my driver up to Charles Street with the chit. ...”
Sir Nigel left with his “chit,” a written order from Sir Bernard Hemmings putting John Preston on temporary assignment to K Branch and naming him field controller of the Winkler operation once it left the metropolis.
Sir Nigel had two copies made, one for him and one for John Preston. The original went to Charles Street. Brian Harcourt-Smith was out of the office, so the order was left on his desk.
At 7:00 p.m. John Preston left the Chelsea apartment for the last time. He was out in the open again and loved it.
At Sussex Gardens he slipped up behind Harry Burkinshaw. “Hello, Harry.”
“Good Lord. John Preston. What are you doing here?”
“Taking a breath of air.”
“Well, don’t make yourself visible. We’ve got a Joe holed up there across the way.”
“I know. I gather he’s due to leave for Sheffield on the nine-twenty-five.”
“How did you know that?”
Preston produced his copy of Sir Bernard’s instruction. Burkinshaw studied it. “Wow. From the DG himself. Join the party, then. Just stay out of sight.”
“Got an extra radio?”
Burkinshaw nodded down the street. “Round the corner, on Radnor Place. Brown Cortina. There’s a spare in the glove compartment.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” said Preston.
Burkinshaw was puzzled. No one had told him that Preston was joining them as field controller. He had not even known that Preston was in Czech Section. Still, the DG’s signature carried a lot of weight. For his part, he would just get on with his job. He shrugged, popped another mint, and went on watching.
At 8:30 Winkler left the hotel. He was carrying his suitcase. He hailed a passing cab and gave his instructions to the driver.
When Winkler stepped out of the doorway, Burkinshaw called in his team and his two cars. He jumped in the first one and they were a hundred yards behind the cab across Edgware Road. Preston was in the second car. Ten minutes later they knew they were heading east, toward the station. Burkinshaw reported this.
Simon Margery’s voice came back from Cork. “Okay, Harry, our field controller is on his way.”
“We’ve already got a field controller,” said Burkinshaw. “He’s with us.”
This was news to Margery. He asked the controller’s name. When he heard it, he thought there had been a mistake. “He’s not even with K2(B),” he protested.
“He is now,” said Burkinshaw, unfazed. “I’ve seen the chit. Signed by the DG.”
Margery called Charles Street. As the cavalcade cruised east through the dusk, a flap ensued at Charles. The instruction from Sir Bernard was traced and confirmed. Margery threw up his hands in exasperation. “Why can’t the buggers up there in Charles ever make up their minds?” he asked an uncaring world. He called off the colleague he had designated to take over at St. Paneras Station. Then he tried to trace Brian Harcourt-Smith to complain.
Winkler paid off his cab, headed through the brick archway into the vaulted dome of the Victorian railway station, and consulted the departure board. Around him the four watchers and Preston vaporized into the throng of passengers in the brick-and-cast-iron concourse.
The 9:25, calling at Leicester, Derby, Chesterfield, and Sheffield, was at platform two. Having found his train, Winkler walked up the length of it, past the three first-class carriages and the buffet car, to the three blue-upholstered second-class carriages near the front end. He selected the middle one, hefted his suitcase onto the rack, and sat quietly awaiting the train’s departure.
After a few minutes, a young black man with earphones over his head and a Walkman clipped to his belt came in and sat three rows away. Once seated, the man nodded his head in time to the apparent reggae blasting into his ears, closed his eyes, and enjoyed his music. One of Burkinshaw’s team was in place; the earphones were silent of reggae music but were picking up Harry’s instruction on strength five.
One of Burkinshaw’s team took the front carriage, and Harry himself and John Preston the third, so that Winkler was boxed. The fourth man took a first-class seat in the last car in case Winkler did a “runner” down the train to shake off what he thought was a tail.
At 9:25 on the dot the Inter-City 125 hissed out of St. Paneras and headed north. At 9:30 Brian Harcourt-Smith was traced to the dining room of his club and called to the phone. It was Simon Margery. What he heard caused the Deputy Director-General of Five to hasten outside, grab a taxi, and race the two miles across the West End to Charles Street. On his desk he found the order written out earlier that afternoon by Sir Bernard Hemmings. He went quite pale with rage.
He was a highly self-disciplined man, and after thinking the matter over for several minutes, he picked up the phone and in his usual courteous manner asked the operator to get the service’s legal adviser at his home. The legal adviser is the man who does most of the liaison between the service and the Special Branch. While the call was going through, Harcourt-Smith checked train times to Sheffield. The legal adviser was plucked from his seat in front of the television in Camberley and came on the line.
“I need Special Branch to make an arrest,” said Harcourt-Smith. “I have reason to believe an illegal immigrant suspected of being a Soviet agent may escape surveillance. Name: Franz Winkler; supposed Austrian citizen. Holding charge: suspected false passport. He’ll be arriving by train from London at Sheffield at eleven-fifty-nine. Yes, I know it’s short notice. That’s why it’s urgent. Yes, please get on to the commander of Special Branch at the Yard and ask him to alert his Sheffield operation to make the arrest when the train arrives at Sheffield.”
He put down the phone grimly. John Preston might have been sicced on him as field director of the surveillance team, but an arrest of a suspect was a policy matter, and that was his department.
The train was almost empty. Two carriages instead of six would have amply accommodated the sixty passengers on board. Barney, the watcher in the front carriage, shared the space with ten others, all innocent passengers. He was facing aft, so that he could see the top of Winkler’s head through the window in the intercarriage door.
Ginger, the young black with the headphones who was with Winkler in the second carriage, had five other passengers in there with him. There were a dozen sharing sixty seats with Preston and Burkinshaw in the third. For an hour and a quarter, Winkler did nothing. He had no reading matter; he just stared out of the window at the dark countryside beyond.
At 10:45, when the train slowed for Leicester, he moved. He took his suitcase off the rack, walked up the carriage, passed out to the toilet area, and pulled down the window of the door giving onto the platform. Ginger informed the rest, who prepared to move at short notice if they had to.
Another passenger pushed past Winkler as the train stopped. “Excuse, please, is this Sheffield?” Winkler asked.
“No, it’s Leicester,” the man said, and descended to the platform.
“Ah, so. Thank you,” said Winkler. He put down his suitcase, but stayed at the open window, looking up and down the platform during the brief stopover. As the train pulled out, he returned to his seat and put his suitcase back on the rack.
At 11:12 he did it again at Derby. This time he asked a porter on the platform of the cavernous concrete hall that forms Derby Station.
“Derby,” sang out the porter. “Sheffield is the one after next.”
Again, Winkler spent the stopover gazing out of the open window, then returned to his seat and tossed his suitcase onto the rack. Preston was watching him through the intercarriage door.
At 11:43 they rolled into Chesterfield, a Victorian station that is beautifully maintained with bright paintwork and hanging baskets of flowers. This time Winkler left his suitcase where it was, but went to lean out of the window as two or three passengers left the train and hurried through the ticket barrier. The platform was empty before the train began to roll. When it did, Winkler snapped open the door, jumped to the concrete, and slammed the door closed with a backward movement of his arm.
Burkinshaw was very rarely caught off balance by a Joe, but he later admitted that Winkler had got him cold. All four of the watchers could easily have made the platform, but there was not an iota of cover on that strip of stone. Winkler would have seen them and aborted his rendezvous, wherever it was.
Preston and Burkinshaw ran forward to the boarding platform, where they were joined by Ginger from the carriage in front. The window was still open. Preston stuck his head out and looked back. Winkler, satisfied at last that he had no tail, was striding briskly down the platform with his back to the train.
“Harry, get back here with the team by car,” shouted Preston. “Get me on the radio when you’re in range. Ginger, close the door after me.” Then he shoved the door open, stepped to the running board, dropped into the paratrooper’s landing position, and jumped.
Paratroopers hit the deck at about eleven miles per hour; sideways speed depends on the wind. The train was doing thirty when Preston slammed into the embankment, praying he would not hit a concrete post or a large stone. He was lucky. The thick May grass took some of the shock; then he was rolling, knees together, elbows in, head down. Harry told him later he couldn’t watch. Ginger said he was bouncing like a toy along the embankment and down toward the spinning wheels. When he finally stopped, he was lying in the gully between the grass and the roadbed. He hauled himself to his feet, turned, and began to jog back toward the lights of the station.
When he appeared at the ticket barrier, the guard was closing for the night. He looked with amazement at the grazed apparition in the torn coat.
“The last man through here,” gasped Preston, “short, stocky, gray mackintosh. Where did he go?”
The guard nodded toward the front of the station, and Preston ran. Too late, the guard realized he had not collected the ticket. At the same time, Preston was watching the taillights of a taxi sweeping out of the station and toward the town. It was the last taxi. He could, he knew, get the local police to trace the driver and ask where he had taken that fare, but he had no doubt Winkler would dismiss the cab short of his ultimate destination and walk the rest. A few feet away, a railway porter was kick-starting his moped.
“I need to borrow your bike,” said Preston.
“Bog off,” said the porter. There was no time for identification or argument; the lights of the taxi were passing under the new ring road and out of sight. So Preston hit him—just once—on the jaw. The porter crashed over. Preston caught the falling moped, jerked it free of the man’s legs, straddled it, and rode off.
He was lucky with the traffic lights. The cab had gone up Corporation Street, and Preston would never have caught it on his tiny-engined putt-putt except that the lights outside the central library were red. When the taxi rolled down Holywell Street and into Saltergate, he was a hundred yards behind, and then he lost more ground as the bigger engine outpaced him for the straight half mile of that highway. If Winkler had been taken out into the countryside due west of Chesterfield, Preston could never have caught him.
Fortunately the taxi’s brakelights flashed on when it was a speck in the distance. Winkler was paying the driver where Saltergate becomes Ashgate Road. As Preston closed the gap, he could see Winkler beside the cab, looking up and down the street. There was no other traffic; Preston realized there was nothing for it but to keep going. He puttered past the halted taxi like a late homegoer about his business, swerved into Foljambe Road, and stopped.
Winkler crossed the road on foot; Preston followed. Winkler never looked back again. He just strolled around the boundary wall of Chesterfield’s football stadium and entered Compton Street. Here he approached a house and knocked on the door. Moving between patches of shadow, Preston had reached the corner of the street and was hidden behind a bush in the garden of the corner house.
Up the street he saw lights come on in a darkened house. The door opened, there was a brief conversation on the doorstep, and Winkler went inside. Preston sighed and settled behind his bush for a night-long vigil. He could not read the number of the house Winkler had entered, nor could he watch the rear of the place as well, but he could see the towering wall of the football stadium behind the house, so perhaps there was no feasible exit on that side.
At two in the morning, he heard the faint noise of his communicator as Burkinshaw came back into range. He identified himself and gave his position. At half past two he heard the soft pad of footsteps and hissed to give his location. Burkinshaw joined him in the shrubbery.
“You all right, John?”
“Yes. He’s housed up there, second beyond the tree, with a light behind the curtain.”
“Got it. John, there was a reception party at Sheffield. Two Special Branch and three uniformed. Drummed up by London. Did you want an arrest?”
“Absolutely not. Winkler’s a courier. I want the big fish. He might be inside that house. What happened to the Sheffield party?”
Burkinshaw laughed. “Thank God for the British police. Sheffield is Yorkshire; this is Derbyshire. They’re going to have to sort it out between their chief constables in the morning. It gives you time.”
“Yeah. Where are the others?”
“Down the street. We came back by taxi and dismissed it. John, we’ve got no wheels. Also, come the dawn, this street’s got no cover.”
“Put two at the top of the street and two down here,” said Preston. “I’m going back into the town to find the police station and ask for a bit of backup. If Chummy leaves, tell me. But shadow him with two of the team— keep two on that house.”
He left the garden and walked back into central Chesterfield looking for the police station, which he found on Beetwell Street. As he walked, a thought kept repeating itself in his head. There was something about Winkler’s performance that did not make sense.