“You recall that file the Cousins lent us a month ago?” asked Sir Nigel. “The photos taken by the Condor satellites?”
“Of course.”
“Check the symptoms against the apparent explanation. What else?”
“The second section comes down to voiceprint analysis,” said Ferndale. “I’d like to chop that section up into bits, so no one need know what is being talked about. The language laboratory at Beaconsfield could check out phraseology, syntax, vernacular expressions, regional dialects, and so forth. But the clincher will be the comparison of voiceprints.”
Sir Nigel nodded. Both men knew that human voices, reduced to a series of electronically registered blips and pulses, are as individual as fingerprints. No two are ever quite alike.
“Very well,” he said, “but Barry, I insist on two things. For the moment, no one knows about this outside of you, me, and Munro. If it’s a phony, we don’t want to raise false hopes; if it’s not, it’s high explosive. None of the technical side must know the whole. Secondly, I don’t want to hear the name of Anatoly Krivoi again. Devise a cover name for this asset and use it in future.”
Two hours later Barry Ferndale called Munro after lunch at his club. The telephone line being open, they used the commercial parlance that was habitual.
“The managing director’s terribly happy with the sales report,” Ferndale told Munro. “He’s very keen that you take a fortnight’s leave to enable us to break it right down and see where we go from here. Have you any ideas for a spot of leave?”
Munro hadn’t, but he made up his mind. This was not a request; it was an order.
“I’d like to go back to Scotland for a while,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to walk during the summer from Lochaber up the coast to Sutherland.”
Ferndale was ecstatic. “The Highlands, the glens of Bonnie Scotland. So pretty at this time of year. Never could stand physical exercise myself, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. Stay in touch with me—say, every second day. You have my home number, don’t you?”
A week later, Miroslav Kaminsky arrived in England on his Red Cross travel papers. He had come across Europe by train, the ticket paid for by Drake, who was nearing the end of his financial resources.
Kaminsky and Krim were introduced, and Kaminsky given his orders.
“You learn English,” Drake told him. “Morning, noon, and night. Books and gramophone records, faster than you’ve ever learned anything before. Meanwhile, I’m going to get you some decent papers. You can’t travel on Red Cross documents forever. Until I do, and until you can make yourself understood in English, don’t leave the flat.”
Adam Munro had walked for ten days through the Highlands of Inverness, Ross, and Cromarty and finally into Sutherland County. He had arrived at the small town of Lochinver, where the waters of the North Minch stretch away westward to the Isle of Lewis, when he made his sixth call to Barry Ferndale’s home on the outskirts of London.
“Glad you called,” said Ferndale down the line. “Could you come back to the office? The managing director would like a word.”
Munro promised to leave within the hour and make his way as fast as possible to Inverness. There he could pick up a flight for London.
At his home on the outskirts of Sheffield, the great steel town of Yorkshire, Norman Pickering kissed his wife and daughter farewell that brilliant late-July morning and drove off to the bank of which he was manager.
Twenty minutes later a small van bearing the name of an electrical appliance company drove up to the house and disgorged two men in white coats. One carried a large cardboard carton up to the front door, preceded by his companion bearing a clipboard. Mrs. Pickering answered the door, and the two men went inside. None of the neighbors took any notice.
Ten minutes later the man with the clipboard came out and drove away. His companion had apparently stayed to fix and test the appliance they had delivered.
Thirty minutes after that, the van was parked
about two corners from the bank, and the driver, without his white coat and wearing a charcoal-gray business suit, carrying not a clipboard but a large attaché case, entered the bank. He proffered an envelope to one of the women clerks, who looked at it, saw that it was addressed personally to Mr. Pickering, and took it in to him. The businessman waited patiently.
Two minutes later the manager opened his office door and looked out. His eye caught the waiting businessman.
“Mr. Partington?” he asked. “Do come in.”
Andrew Drake did not speak until the door had closed behind him. When he did, his voice had no trace of his native Yorkshire, but a guttural edge as if it came from Europe. His hair was carrot-red, and heavy-rimmed, tinted glasses masked his eyes to some extent.
“I wish to open an account,” he said, “and to make a withdrawal in cash.”
Pickering was perplexed; his chief clerk could have handled this transaction.
“A large account, and a large transaction,” said Drake. He slid a check across the desk. It was a bank check, the sort that can be obtained across the counter. It was issued by the Holborn, London, branch of Pickering’s own bank, and was drawn to thirty thousand pounds.
“I see,” said Pickering. That kind of money was definitely the manager’s business. “And the withdrawal?”
“Twenty thousand pounds in cash.”