In fact, it is the men of words who go in through the front door; the men of influence tend to use the side. The house called No. 10 stands at ninety degrees to the Cabinet Office block, and the rear corners almost touch each other, enclosing a small lawn behind black railings. Where the corners almost meet, the gap is covered by a passageway leading to a small side door, and it was through this that the Director General of the SIS, accompanied by Sir Julian Flannery, the Cabinet Secretary, passed that last evening of July. The pair were shown straight to the second floor, past the Cabinet Room, to the Prime Minister’s private study.
The Prime Minister had read the transcript of the Politburo tape, passed to her by the Foreign Secretary.
“Have you informed the Americans of this matter?” she asked directly.
“Not yet, ma’am,” Sir Nigel answered. “Our final confirmation of its authenticity is only three days old.”
“I would like you to do it personally,” said the Prime Minister. Sir Nigel inclined his head. “The political perspectives of this pending wheat famine in the Soviet Union are immeasurable, of course, and as the world’s biggest surplus wheat producer, the United States should be involved from the outset.”
“I would not wish the Cousins to move in on this agent of ours,” said Sir Nigel. “The running of this asset may be extremely delicate. I think we should handle it ourselves, alone.”
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“Will they try to move in?” asked the Prime Minister.
“They may, ma’am. They may. We ran Penkovsky jointly, even though it was we who recruited him. But there were reasons why. This time, I think we should go it alone.”
The Prime Minister was not slow to see the value in political terms of controlling such an agent as one who had access to the Politburo transcripts.
“If pressure is brought,” she said, “refer back to me, and I will speak to President Matthews personally about it. In the meantime, I would like you to fly to Washington tomorrow and present them the tape, or at least a verbatim copy of it. I intend to speak to President Matthews tonight in any case.”
Sir Nigel and Sir Julian rose to leave.
“One last thing,” said the Prime Minister. “I fully understand that I am not allowed to know the identity of this agent. Will you be telling Robert Benson who it is?”
“Certainly not, ma’am.” Not only would the Director General of the SIS refuse point-blank to inform his own Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary of the identity of the Russian, but he would not tell them even of Munro, who was running that agent. The Americans would know who Munro was, but never whom he was running. Nor would there be any tailing of Munro by the Cousins in Moscow; he would see to that as well.
“Then presumably this Russian defector has a code name. May I know it?” asked the Prime Minister.
“Certainly, ma’am. The defector is now known in every file simply as the Nightingale.”
It just happened that Nightingale was the first songbird in the N section of the list of birds after which all Soviet agents were code-named, but the Prime Minister did not know this. She smiled for the first time.
“How very appropriate.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JUST AFTER TEN in the morning of a wet and rainy August 1, an aging but comfortable four-jet VC-10 of the Royal Air Force Strike Command lifted out of Lyneham base in Wiltshire and headed west for Ireland and the Atlantic. It carried a small enough passenger complement: one air chief marshal who had been informed the night before that this of all days was the best for him to visit the Pentagon in Washington to discuss the forthcoming USAF-RAF tactical bomber exercises, and a civilian in a shabby mackintosh.
The air chief marshal had introduced himself to the unexpected civilian, and learned in reply that his companion was a Mr. Barrett of the Foreign Office who had business with the British Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue and had been instructed to take advantage of the VC-10 flight to save the taxpayer the cost of a two-way air ticket. The Air Force officer never learned that the purpose of the RAF plane’s flight was in fact the other way around.
On another track south of the VC-10, a Boeing jumbo jet of British Airways left Heathrow, bound for New York. Among its three hundred-plus passengers it bore Azamat Krim, alias Arthur Crimmins, Canadian citizen, heading west on a buying mission, with a back pocket full of money.
Eight hours later, the VC-10 landed perfectly at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, ten miles southeast of Washington. As it closed down its engines on the apron, a Pentagon staff car swept up to the foot of the steps and disgorged a two-star general of the USAF. Two Air Force Security Police snapped to attention as the air chief marshal came down the steps to his welcoming committee. Within five minutes the ceremonies were all over; the Pentagon limousine drove away to Washington, the police “snowdrops” marched off, and the idle and curious of the air base went back to their duties.
No one noticed the modest sedan with nonofficial plates that drove to the parked VC-10 ten minutes later—no one, that is, with enough sophistication to note the odd-shaped aerial on the roof that betrayed a CIA car. No one bothered with the rumpled civilian who trotted down the steps and straight into the car moments later, and no one saw the car leave the air base.
The Company man in the U.S. Embassy on Grosvenor Square, London, had been alerted the night before, and his coded signal to Langley had caused the car to appear. The driver was in civilian clothes, a low-level staffer, but the man in the back who welcomed the guest from London was the chief of the Western European Division, one of the regional subordinates of the Deputy Director for Operations. He had been chosen to meet the Englishman because, having once headed the CIA operation in London, he knew him well. No one likes substitutions.
“Nigel, good to see you again,” he said after confirming to himself that the arrival was indeed the man they expected.
“How good of you to come to meet me, Lance,” responded Sir Nigel Irvine, well aware there was nothing good about it; it was a duty. The talk in the car was of London, family, the weather. No question of “What are you doing here?” The car swept along the Capital Beltway to the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge over the Potomac and headed west into Virginia.
On the outskirts of Alexandria the driver pulled right into the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which fringes the whole western bank of the river. As they cruised past the National Airport and Arlington Cemetery, Sir Nigel Irvine glanced out to his right at the skyline of Washington, where years before he had been the SIS liaison man with the CIA, based in the British Embassy. Those had been tough days, in the wake of the Philby affair, when even the state of the weather was classified information so far as the English were concerned. He thought of what he carried in his briefcase and permitted himself a small smile.
After thirty minutes’ cruising they pulled off the main highway, swung over it again, and headed into the forest. He remembered the small notice saying simply BPR-CIA and wondered again why they had to signpost the place. You either knew where it was or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, you weren’t invited, anyway.
At the security gate in the great seven-foot-high chain-link fence that surrounds Langley, they halted while Lance showed his pass, then drove on and turned left past the awful conference center known as “the Igloo” because that is just what it resembles.