The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth Read Free Book Online

sequence resumes with E) covers international Communism and its adherents who may wish to visit Britain for nefarious reasons, or the homegrown variety who may wish to go abroad for the same purposes. Also inside E, the Far East section maintains liaison officers in Hong Kong, New Delhi, Canberra, and Wellington, while the section called All Regions does the same in Washington, Ottawa, the West Indies, and other friendly capitals.
    Finally, “F” Branch, to which John Presten belonged, at least until that morning, covers political parties (extreme left and right wings), research, and agents.
    F Branch lives at Gordon, on the fourth floor, and it was to his office there that John Preston made his way that January morning. He might not have thought his report of three weeks earlier would establish him as Brian Harcourt-Smith’s flavor of the month, but he still believed his report would go to the desk of the Director-General, Sir Bernard Hemmings.
    Sir Bernard, Preston was confident, would feel able to impart its information—and, admittedly, partly conjectural findings—to the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee or to the Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office, the political ministry commanding MI5. A good PUS would probably feel his minister should glance at it, and the Home Secretary could have drawn the attention of the Prime Minister to it.
    The memorandum on Preston’s desk when he arrived indicated this was not going to happen. After reading the sheet he sat back, lost in thought. He was prepared to stand by that report, and if it had gone higher there would have been questions to answer. He could have answered them—would have answered them, for he was convinced he was right. He could have answered them, that is, as head of F1(D), but not after being transferred to another department.
    After his transfer, it would be the new head of F1(D) who would be the one to raise the issue of the Preston report, and Preston was satisfied the man appointed to succeed him, almost certain to be one of Harcourt-Smith’s most loyal protégés, would do no such thing.
    He made one call to Registry. Yes, the report had been filed. He noted the file number, just for future reference, if any. Then: “What do you mean, NFA?” he asked incredulously. “All right. ... Sorry. ... Yes, I know it’s not up to you, Charlie. I was just asking. A bit surprised, that’s all.”
    He replaced the receiver and sat back, thinking deeply. Thoughts a man should not think about his superior officer, even if there was no personal empathy between them. But the thoughts would not go away. It was possible, he conceded, that if his report had gone higher, its general burden might eventually have been imparted to Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party opposition in Parliament, who might not have been pleased.
    It was also possible that at the next election, due within seventeen months at the outside, Labour could win and that Brian Harcourt-Smith was entertaining the hope that one of the new government’s first acts would be to confirm him as Director-General of MI5. His not offending powerful politicians in office, or those who might come to office, was nothing new. For a man of weak and tremulous disposition or of vaulting ambition, refusal to impart bad news could be a powerful motive for inertia.
    Everyone in the service recalled the affair of a former Director-General, Sir Roger Hollis. Even to this day, the mystery had never been completely solved, though partisans on both sides had their convinced opinions.
    Back in 1962 and 1963, Roger Hollis had known almost from the outset of the business the full details of the Christine Keeler affair, as it came to be known. He had had on his desk, weeks if not months before the scandal blew open, reports of the Cliveden parties, of Stephen Ward, who provided the girls and who was in any case reporting back, of Soviet attaché Ivanov’s sharing the favors of the same girl as Britain’s