“This time, Mr. Brown, will you please stay in touch with the Met.’s squad cars? You do not make arrests in this City. I do. Your car has radio?”
“Sure.”
“Stay on open line, please. We’ll patch in on you and join you if you tell us where you are.”
“No problem. You have my word on it.”
The embassy limousine swept out of Grosvenor Square sixty seconds later. Chuck Moxon drove; his colleague beside him operated the D/F receiver, a small box like a miniature television set, save that on the screen in place of a picture was a single glowing dot. When the antenna now clipped to the metal rim above the passenger door heard the blip emitted from the D/F transmitter in Quinn’s attaché case, a line would race out from the glowing dot to the perimeter of the screen. The car’s driver would have to maneuver so that the line on the screen pointed dead ahead of his car’s nose. He would then be following the direction finder. The device in the attaché case would be activated by remote control from inside the limousine.
They drove fast down Park Lane, through Knightsbridge, and into Kensington.
“Activate,” said Brown. The operator depressed a switch. The screen did not respond.
“Keep activating every thirty seconds until we get lock-on,” said Brown. “Chuck, start to sweep around Kensington.”
Moxon took the Cromwell Road, then headed south down Gloucester Road toward Old Brompton Road. The antenna got a lock.
“He’s behind us, heading north,” said Moxon’s colleague. “Range, about a mile and a quarter.”
Thirty seconds later Moxon was back across the Cromwell Road, heading north up Exhibition Road toward Hyde Park.
“Dead ahead, running north,” said the operator.
“Tell the boys in blue we have him,” said Brown. Moxon informed the embassy by radio, and halfway up Edgware Road a Metropolitan Police Rover closed up behind them.
In the back with Brown were Collins and Seymour.
“Should have known,” said Collins regretfully. “Should have spotted the time gap.”
“What time gap?” asked Seymour.
“You recall that snarl-up in the Winfield House driveway three weeks back? Quinn set off fifteen minutes before me but arrived in Kensington three minutes ahead. I can’t beat a London cabbie in rush-hour traffic. He paused somewhere, made some preparations.”
“He couldn’t have planned this three weeks ago,” objected Seymour. “He didn’t know how things would pan out.”
“Didn’t have to,” said Collins. “You’ve read his file. Been in combat long enough to know about fallback positions in case things go wrong.”
“He’s pulled a right into St. John’s Wood,” said the operator.
At Lord’s roundabout the police car came alongside, its window down.
“He’s heading north up there,” said Moxon, pointing up the Finchley Road. The two cars were joined by another squad car and headed north through Swiss Cottage, Hendon, and Mill Hill. The range decreased to three hundred yards and they scanned the traffic ahead for a tall man wearing no crash helmet, on a small motorcycle.
They went through Mill Hill Circus just a hundred yards behind the bleeper and up the slope to Five Ways Corner. Then they realized Quinn must have changed vehicles again. They passed two motorcyclists who emitted no bleep, and two powerful motorbikes overtook them, but the D/F finder they sought was still proceeding steadily ahead of them. When the bleep turned around Five Ways Corner onto the A.1 to Hertfordshire, they saw that their target was now an open-topped Volkswagen Golf GTi whose driver wore a thick fur hat to cover his head and ears.
The first thing Cyprian Fothergill recalled about the events of that day was that as he headed toward his charming little cottage in the countryside behind Borehamwood he was suddenly overtaken by a huge black car that swerved violently in front of him, forcing him to scream to a stop in a lay-by. Within seconds three big men, he would later tell his open-mouthed friends at the club, had leaped out, surrounded his car, and were pointing enormous guns at him. Then a police car pulled in behind, then another one, and four lovely bobbies got out and told the Americans—well, they must have been Americans, and huge, they were—to put their guns away or be disarmed.
The next thing he knew—by this time he would have the undivided attention of the entire bar—one of the Americans tore his fur hat off and screamed “Okay, craphead, where is he?” while one of the bobbies reached into the open backseat and pulled out an attaché case that he had to spend an hour telling them he had never seen before.
The big gray-haired American, who seemed to be in charge of his party from the black car, grabbed the case from the bobby’s hands, flicked the locks, and looked inside. It was empty. After all that, it was empty. Such a terrifying fuss over an empty case ... Anyway, the Americans were swearing like troopers, using language that he, Cyprian, had never heard before and hoped never to hear again. Then in stepped the British sergeant, who was quite out of this world. ...
At 2:25 P.M. Sergeant Kidd returned to his patrol car to answer the insistent calls coming through for him on the radio.
“Tango Alpha,” he began.
“Tango Alpha, this is Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cramer. Who’s that?”
“Sergeant Kidd, sir. F Division.”