The Protector: A gripping, action-packed spy thriller Read online

  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 done Henry, fine job of work.”

  Arnold looked up. “Sorry?”

  “I said well done,” Callows repeated.

  “Thank you, sir, but it’s not over yet… “

  “What are you saying, man?”

  “I’m not sure, Sir Martin. Not yet. Can I stay on it a while?”

  “What’s your angle?” Black asked. He had a profound respect for Arnold’s thought process.

  “Why did she dump the file? It doesn’t make sense. It was like holding up her hand and saying ‘I’m spying…’”

  “I’ve never understood women,” Callows muttered. “No. Go back to pruning roses or whatever you were doing…”

  Arnold smiled. In his spare time he edited sections of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Can I just hang around a bit? See it finished?”

  “If you must.”

  Later that night, the two Directors General agreed to postpone the arrest of Meredith Mortimer to allow the watchers more time to see if a second meeting would take place, and a second group of watchers was placed on the Soviet Diplomat. The fact that he had remained unknown as a KGB staffer for so long made him a real professional, and the chances he had done the tag evasion course were very high, so this was the most experienced team assembled in years. Not that he would dream of trying to lose any watchers he found; he would simply take note of them and be aware that this was not the routine watching of all Soviet diplomats, rather something special just for him. He would then drop all his illegal activities to protect his network and could lie dormant for months – or worse, hand over the function to another case officer. With six hundred Soviets accredited at their Embassy in London, identifying the new controller with MI5’s limited resources would be almost impossible.

  The task to crack Sergi Karmova’s network fell to MI5’s head of ‘D’ – their Counter Intelligence Section – and he quickly gave the Soviet the code name of BIG-EARS to link in the NODDY already flagged on Meredith Jane Mortimer’s file. Hopefully BIG-EARS would lead Five to the others in the network which became TOYTOWN.

  Resources were shifted across to ‘D’ and new faces were brought in. The head of ‘D’ considered asking for Adrian Blacks’ return to Five, but knew it would be like drawing teeth from Sir Martin Callows and left it alone.

  By the end of the third day, the Soviet’s file was three inches thick. There were now over seventy high resolution photos of the man and the watchers were all armed with a set of full frontal portrait, profile view and a batch of walking and talking shots. His flat in the rezendencia had been isolated and it confirmed his status. It was one of the larger three bedroom arrangements in the west wing, the floor plans thoughtfully provided by a window installation contractor who had done a double glazing job the year before and miraculously managed to plant several bugs for King and Country.

  The first formal Inter Service de-brief on the TOYTOWN network was held on the ninth day of the stepped-up surveillance. MI5 bought four people along to sit in with Adrian Black, Sir Martin Callows – and, of course, Henry Arnold from MI6, who had somehow managed to stay on. The meeting was held on neutral ground in a high security area of the Foreign Office annex, a dreary prefabricated structure with dirty windows and cracked linoleum floors.

  Colin Meynard-Smith, head of MI5 ‘D’ Section, opened the meeting with a recap and the first decent profile of BIG-EARS.

  “That’s him,” he said, flicking a colour slide up on the tatty screen at the far end. “Major Sergi Karmova. Directorate IV KGB. A fully fledged grade one Moscow Centre bovva boy.”

  Callows sipped noisily at a cup of tea and made a grunting noise like a wild boar. The Five people shifted uncomfortably. This was a breach of protocol. If they had known the Deputy Director General of MI6 was attending then they would have brought their own. They felt outgunned and outmanned. Black grinned at the illicit pleasure of watching his ex-comrades squirm and looked up at the face on the screen. The Russian was extremely good looking in a matinee idol fashion, with dark eyes, dark hair and a boyish grin.

  Meynard-Smith went on. “He’s been at the London Embassy for five years. A long posting – which is what made us think he may have been clean. Chronologically, that means he would have recruited NODDY sometime that year because her access into your missing file took place after that, along with Christ knows what else…”

  Callows snorted into his cup again, but Meynard-Smith continued valiantly, “We reckon it was a honey trap in reverse. Little cutie Sergi and NODDY.” With that, he changed the slide and Meredith Mortimer appeared life-size on the screen. She was a homely looking woman with large shapeless legs and mousy brown hair, clutching a tired looking handbag. “Let’s just say she is a rather ordinary looking woman. A man like Sergi Karmova, wine, promises of a loving future in a rose covered cottage or a Black Sea dacha or whatever, it would not take much.”

  “Are they on the job?” Adrian Black asked.

  “What?”

  “Is he shafting her man?” Callows barked

  “Yes, they went to a hotel that night. Checked in as a Mrs Thomas,” Meynard-Smith answered succinctly.

  Black sat back, trying to imagine the pair in bed: sweaty sheets, grunts and moans and whispered endearments, elephantine thighs wrapped round the slims hips of the matinee man.

  “I reckon he earned whatever he got then,” he said.

  One of the Five people looked up. She was an attractive woman in her late twenties, with a Hermes scarf through her hair and a pair of sunglasses pushed up on her head. She had been studying the contents of her cup a
s if something alive might crawl out. “That was sexist and uncalled for,” she said primly.

  “Bollocks!” Callows roared, a huge grin across his face. “I agree with him. Bloody Russian deserves a medal for humping this thing.” His head swung back to Meynard-Smith. “Carry on. So who else is he working then?”

  This was the nitty gritty. Was he working any other agents? The KGB paymasters may have considered Meredith Mortimer worthy enough for a dedicated controller. If so, they could arrest her now.

  “We haven’t been able to establish that yet. It’s way too soon.”

  Callows expected nothing else. He knew how exhaustive the work would be. Every time BIG-EARS stopped to scratch his nose, the team would be looking for a possible recipient of the potential signal. Every time he stopped to eat or buy a paper or have a drink, they would be watching for a signal or a drop-box or a dead letter pick-up location. Just because he’d been caught red-handed with one of his cell didn’t mean he was that open with all – and, as Meynard-Smith had pointed out, he couldn’t work the honey trap with dead letter letters and cut-outs.

  “How long do you want to give it?”

  “About six months to be sure,” Meynard-Smith answered. “He would have to contact even his most distant agents in six months.”

  “Try one,” Callows answered.

  “Impossible!”

  “One. No discussion. I have a traitor in my department. Bad enough that we may have to swallow the fact that she’s been passing material from registry for four years, without it going on for any longer than absolutely necessary.” His voice had a deep timbre now. He spoke quickly and eloquently, as he did when deadly earnest. Those who knew him knew that this was the time when you simply shut up and listened. “Now, you and I know that, if he doesn’t make a mistake in a month, then he may not for six or a year or two years. So let’s give it a month. If nothing breaks, you people arrest her – or I will do it myself under Clause Seventeen of the Official Secrets Act Amendment.”

  “Sir Martin...” Meynard-Smith began.

  “Don’t worry about your D-D G. I will phone him as soon as this meeting is over. But you must leave here understanding that you have one month only to nail BIG-EARS with anything extra. Then we look at the other alternatives, but either way Meredith Mortimer is done for.”

  “If we move too fast, we may have a job proving it in court…”

  “I think not. If this is really a honey trap, you’ll be going to court with an admission and a full confession, and tears on the pillow and the-bastard-promised-to-marry-me.”

  “And if not? If we’re wrong and the vetting didn’t work and we have a communist here?”

  “She’s no communist,” Callows said with surprising compassion. “She’s a lonely spinster helping the only man who ever looked at her twice. That’s why honey traps work and that’s why they will always work.”

  With the meeting seemingly over, they all stood, and the woman in the Hermes scarf studying Sir Martin Callows with a new respect.

  “When we pick her up, I would like to talk to her,” Arnold said. It had been the first time he had spoken.

  Meynard-Smith was collecting his slides from the carousel. “Sorry Henry, that’s SB’s bailiwick.”

  “Who do I talk to there?”

  “Chief Inspector Conners. He’s all right, buy him a scotch or something.” He didn’t look up from his little slide box, so Arnold wrote the man’s name down and walked out to get a ride back to Milburn with Adrian Black.

  Three weeks later, the watchers had to admit that they were unlikely to nail the Soviet in the given month. If he had other agents in his network then he made no mistakes – and he hadn’t seen Meredith Mortimer again. The MI5 Deputy Director General had made token protests about Sir Martin Callows’ ultimatum but, in the end, he had to agree he had a point.

  It was with three days to run that Special Branch reluctantly agreed to make the arrest. Henry Arnold joined the arresting officers and the rummage team that would take the Datchet house apart. Now, he sat in the front seat of a large four door saloon, the dusk settling over the river while, behind him, two officers argued the merits of Wolverhampton’s football team. The man at his side was listening to the awkward scratchy chat on the radio.

  None of them had seen the man watching from the riverbank where he sat with a fishing rod and thermos of something hot.

  In the car, Arnold leant forward to wind down the window; the cigarette smoke wafting over from the back seat was making him cough.

  “You all right?” someone in the back asked.

  “Yes, fine,” he answered. “Just the smoke.”

  “Won’t be long now. She’s never much later than this.”

  As if that were the cue, the radio hissed and the driver leant forward to turn up the volume.

  “Right, that’s it,” he said, “, she’s coming…”

  Arnold tensed in the seat. This was it.

  Someone tapped on the window and, winding it down, he looked out at a hard looking young man in a leather jacket.

  “The boss says, if you want in with the first lads, then you better join us…”

  Arnold nodded and climbed from the car, stretching as he did so. Then he walked back the forty feet to the second car, where three men were climbing from the darkened interior. One had a sledge hammer in his hands and another put a pistol in his pocket.

  A big man in a tired looking overcoat began to speak.

  “Right. We ring the bell. Sergeant, you in first. If she tries anything silly, stop her. She may have a shooter, you never know – but just make your point, don’t go doing a Wyatt Earp all right?”

  The man with the pistol nodded, almost bored. He must have done a few of these, Arnold thought.

  “Now, watch out for ‘er old mum. We don’t know if she’s in on the muck so treat ‘er nice while she treats us nice. Who’s got the warrant?”

  “Me, DI,” someone said.

  “Let’s go then.” He turned to look at Arnold. “Just stay behind the lads till we know who’s home.”

  “Isn’t this a little dramatic for a spinster and her mother?” Arnold asked.

  “Myra Hindly was a spinster,” he said – and, seeing Arnold wasn’t following, he carried on, “Look, I’ve had a granny pour hot oil down the stairs on me. I’ve had a mother with a baby in one hand and a machete in the other, and a nice little old dear in Clapham fire a sawn-off at me when I nicked her son. Men are predictable. Women? They are bloody dangerous. Believe me.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Arnold said and, feeling stupid, he followed the small group up the street to the house.

  The Sergeant watched the man to his left discreetly place the sledge hammer against the wall, then pressed the bell which rang shrilly through the glass door.

  Through the frosted glass they could see a figure make its way slowly up the hall and, with complete trust, opened it wide, revealing a lined cheerful face beneath a coppery woolly hat.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you Mrs Mortimer?” the Sergeant asked loudly, leaning forward in case she was deaf.

  “Yes,” she replied. “Who are you?”

  “I’m from the Police Station. Mind if we come in for a chat?”

  “Ooh. Yes that should be all right. I’ll make some tea, shall I?” she said swinging open the door.

  The Sergeant moved past her in a fluid motion, his right hand still in his pocket, the other officer going for the kitchen, the Detective Inspector straight into the living room. The last man moved up the stairs quickly, leaving Arnold awkwardly in the hall.

  Meredith Mortimer stood before the cold fireplace, solid and still as stone, the blood draining from her face as the realisation set in.

  “Miss Meredith Jane Mortimer?” the Detective Inspector asked.

  She just nodded once, swallowing silently.

  “I think you know why we are here.”

  She nodded again.

  The old woman bustled importantly i
n, smiling at one and all.

  “I’ll just put the kettle on, shall I?”

  Arnold could see the shock settling on the daughter’s face, and was relieved when the Sergeant stepped forward, gently taking the old woman’s arm.

  “That would be nice. Let me help you. Kitchen out this way, is it darling?” And he lead her out of the room.

  The Detective Inspector waited until they were clear before taking his coat off.

  “Miss Mortimer, I am Detective Inspector Romney. Special Branch. I have a warrant for your arrest.” He let that sink in for a moment before continuing, “Now, we can do this the easy nice way, or we can do it the sad way. The easy nice way is if you co-operate and make a statement, and help your people sort out the mess you’ve made. Then we can talk a light sentence. The sad way is: you leave here in handcuffs, your mother in tears, spend four months in remand prison and then go to trial at the Old Bailey, and with what we have on you, you will go down for a long one in some horrible place. The sentence for high treason, in case you’ve forgotten, is twenty five years without remission.” He paused. “So what’s it to be, Miss Mortimer?”

  She began to cry big silent tears down her powdery dry cheeks.

  “It was just old stuff,” she eventually mumbled through her sobs. Arnold found it all rather pitiful.

  Her debrief was given over to Mrs Hogan, the interrogator who had provided the first clue from the ‘FRUITGUM’ case. Meredith Mortimer had signed an interim confession the night of her arrest and the job was now to establish her motive, technique and the scope of her treason. It had been agreed already that there would be no attempt to turn her into a double agent by feeding false information back through her. Her work in registry dealt only with past issues and the Soviets would smell a rat immediately if she were upgraded into a current operational position, supplying hot data.

  They sat in a dreary drab green room in the high security remand area of the Royal Military Police facility outside Aldershot.

  “It’s over Meredith,” Mrs Hogan said gently. “He will be going home in disgrace with all the publicity we can manage. He will never be allowed out of Russia again because every Intelligence Service in the world will have him flagged. He had a less subtle warning last night from a couple of the Fairies.”