He drove home faster than usual, arriving at the flat a full eight minutes earlier than his established habit would have permitted. His wife noticed the drawn look in his face and the tension about his eyes. For the first time in his adult life he was experiencing fear. It was a fear of the unknown. Of a strange city of millions of people, but where one man, or two, or three, or four, had a solitary and inflexible purpose, the destruction of David Sokarev, of himself. He had seen the photographs of these men in the Jerusalem Post and the afternoon paper, Yediot Ahar-onot; they were on their backs, broken and spent, cut down by gunfire, surrounded by some circle of elated soldiers. They always died, always seemed to end their missions dragged by the ankles to an army jeep, flung on to a bloody stretcher with the reverence of a turnip sack.
Garbage. But there was no reason that Sokarev could see to believe their commitment would be any the less in a foreign capital.
She brought him his meal. Some liver, the money for it dug deep from the housekeeping purse, and watched the way he toyed with the meat, eating to please her. He told her nothing of Mackowicz and Elkin, and what they had said inside the office.
FOUR
A city is a vulnerable, flaccid target for an act of terrorism.
Huge and preoccupied and indifferent — the ideal hunting ground, and never more so than if the stalkers are a small, motivated group of men whose numbers can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In time of war a city can be mobilized, organized and put into uniform with specific tasks to perform. But when peace reigns it absorbs the danger, turns the other cheek, has too much with which to concern itself to be agitated by the tiny cancer flowing at will in its body.
The Provisional IRA proved conclusively how defenceless is a great international capital. One hundred and forty-eight bombs in twenty-two months and the mighty carcase barely knew it was under attack. Cars packed with gelignite disintegrating among shopping crowds, duffle-bags exploding on busy railway platforms, mutilated bodies ferried away in fleets of ambulances. But the next time the sirens went the crowds still gathered to watch, sometimes amused, always interested, never involved.
Where eight million people are gathered together over an area of some four hundred square miles everyone is a stranger. For the terrorist there is anonymity here, the opportunity to blend into whatever background he chooses. If he has funds he will take a smart flat — Mayfair or Belgravia — where a porter will salute as he goes out, but will ask no questions. Otherwise he can turn to the myriad of small hotels behind the big railway termini of North London, pay when he registers, and be left in total privacy. In the big city the man who is careful and patient, and skilled in the art of guerrilla warfare, should survive.
He can blame only himself if he fails.
The forces ranged against him are meagre. The principal and most obvious bastion that he must avoid is the civilian police force, with its headquarters at Scotland Yard, close to Victoria Station. Confronted with the increasing problems of conventional crime, serious and minor, of public apathy and lack of manpower, the metropolitan police have been forced into a crash-course in combating international violence. They started without experience and it was a hard road to make up ground when the luxury of time was not permitted. The whole concept of fighting such an enemy had been far from officials' minds when they moved their offices and files and laboratories into a towering, glass-faced structure so vulnerable to car-bomb attack that policemen had to patrol the pavement outside to prevent any vehicle parking unattended within fifty feet of its walls. But, of the hundreds of detectives who scurry in and out of the main swing doors, flashing their warrant cards at the bemedalled commissionaires, relatively few are engaged in anti-terrorist operations. Those that are belong to Special Branch, the wing formed close on a hundred years ago to counter the Irish Fenian threat.
The Irish problem still dominates their work — tying men down on the long-drawn-out surveillance of buildings, meetings, pubs, airports and homes, along with the constant search for reliable informers.
The Branch men have also to concern themselves with the potential of subversion, and keep their paperwork up to date on the fringe anarchist groups, the most militant of the background trade union officials, the activities of the Iron Curtain-bloc diplomats. They are responsible for the protection of principal Britons, from the Prime Minister downwards, and also of foreign persons of rank arriving in the country. They are not generously endowed with funds, or with manpower. Less than five hundred men, and the country to cover.
They had been informed of the planned visit of David Sokarev to Britain, but with four days to go to his arrival at Heathrow Airport they were unaware of his crucial importance to Israel, and of the extent of the threat against him. At a later stage there would be a discussion over the telephone between the Middle East desk and the Security Attache at the Israeli embassy, probably the night before the professor flew in. In the normal way of things the decision on the need for protection would be taken then, with consideration given to the availability of officers, and more pressing priorities.
But for the survival of David Sokarev on his journey through London there was another group of men far more important than the officers of the Special Branch. They worked from little-known premises in one of the most fashionable districts of the capital. Close to the Playboy Club, the London Hilton and the Londonderry Hotel, is a gaunt five-storey building. It is in need of fresh paint, pointing and general repairs. The windows, in the uniform metal-rimmed rows so beloved by architects of the twenties and thirties, are shielded by lace curtains; those on the lower floors are protected by half-inch thick concertina steel meshes. Side entrances to the block have been bricked up, as have upper windows at the corners of the building that still show the rifle-aiming slits, hurriedly fitted in 1940. There is no plaque on the walls beside the main doorway to give a clue to the occupation of those who work in the building. The parking meters set into the pavements outside the front entrance are masked by red plastic hoods to prevent the casual motorist from leaving his car there. Above the doorway, and needing the attention of the cleaners, are the words 'Leconfield House'. The building carries no other visual identification. It is the nerve-centre of the country's most secret organization, the one responsible for deep undercover counter-espionage and counter-terrorist operations; the British Security Service works from here.
Eleven hours after the tape recording of Ciaran McCoy's conversation with the Arab diplomat had been completed the spools were on the desk of a man who used a small office on the second floor of Leconfield House. A transcript had been taken by the duty clerks, who were the first to listen to the play-back, and that too lay on the high-polished oakwood surface. The room occupied by Philip Willoughby-Jones was bare to the point of starkness. A regulation square of carpet, determined by his Civil Service grade, covered the centre of the floor and was surrounded by ageing though systematically polished linoleum. The door to the room was set opposite the only window; on the third wall was a calendar sent out by a firm that specialized in the postal sales of garden bulbs; against the fourth was a steel filing cabinet. Grouped in a semi-circle in front of the desk were four chairs, framed in metal tubing, seats covered with yellow plastic, not designed for comfort but for working men who would leave them when their business was completed. The chair behind the desk offered only a slight concession in two vaguely-cushioned armrests.