The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth Page B

committee.

Chapter 5
    Preston sat in the office of a very worried Bertie Capstick and examined the ten photocopied sheets spread out on the desk, reading each carefully. “How many people have handled the envelope?” he inquired.
    “The postman, obviously. God knows how many people in the sorting office. Inside the building, the front-office people, the messenger who brings the morning mail up to the offices, and myself. I can’t see you’ll get much joy out of the envelope.”
    “And the papers inside?”
    “Just myself, Johnny. Of course I didn’t know what they were until I had pulled them out.”
    Preston thought for a while. “Apart from the person who mailed them they might, I suppose, contain the prints of someone else who removed them. I’ll have to ask Scotland Yard to check them out. Don’t have much hope, personally. Now for the contents. It looks like very high-level stuff”
    “The tops,” said Capstick gloomily. “Nothing short of top secret, the lot. Some of it very sensitive, concerning our NATO allies; contingency plans for NATO to counter a variety of Soviet threats—that sort of stuff.”
    “All right,” said Preston, “let’s just run through the possibilities. Bear with me. Supposing this was sent back by a public-spirited citizen who for one reason or another did not want to be identified. It happens; people don’t want to get involved. Where could such a person have got these papers? A briefcase left in a cloakroom, a taxi, a club?”
    Capstick shook his head. “Not legally, Johnny. This stuff should never under any circumstances have left the building, except possibly in the sealed bag to go across to the Foreign Office or the Cabinet Office. There have been no reports of a Registry bag being tampered with. Besides, they are not marked for a destination outside this building, as they would be if they had been taken legitimately. The people who would even begin to have access to this sort of stuff know the rules. No one—but no one—may carry this sort of stuff home to study. Answer your question?”
    “More than somewhat,” said Preston. “It came back from outside the ministry. So it had to be taken outside. Illegally. Gross negligence? Or a deliberate attempt to leak?”
    “Look at the dates of origin,” said Capstick. “These ten sheets cover a full month. There’s no chance they all arrived on a single desk in one day. They had to be collected over a period of time.”
    Preston, using his handkerchief, eased the ten documents back into their envelope of arrival. “I’ll have to take them to Charles Street, Bertie. May I use your phone?”
    He called Charles Street and asked to be put straight through to the office of Sir Bernard Hemmings. The Director-General was in, and after a delay and some insistence from Preston, took the call himself. Preston simply asked for an appointment within minutes and got it. He put down the phone and turned to Brigadier Capstick.
    “Bertie, for the moment don’t do or say anything. To anyone. Just carry on as if this were just another routine day,” said Preston. “I’ll be in touch.”
    It was out of the question to leave the ministry with these documents but without an escort. Brigadier Capstick loaned him one of the front-hall commissionaires, a burly former guardsman,
    Preston left the ministry with the documents in his own briefcase and took a taxi to the Clarges Apartments; he watched the vehicle disappear down Clarges Street before walking the last two hundred yards to Charles and his head office, where he could dismiss his escort. Sir Bernard saw him ten minutes later.
    The old spycatcher looked gray, as if he were in pain, which he frequently was. The disease that was growing deep inside him showed little to the observer, but the medical tests left no doubt. A year, they had said, and not operable. He was due to retire on September 1, which with terminal leave meant he could depart in mid-July, six weeks before his