The Fourth Protocol Read Free Page B

fifty-eight-facet stones, one pair weighing in at ten carats each, the other pair at twenty carats each.
    Back in London, Cartier had set these stones in white gold, surrounded by a total of forty much smaller stones, to create a suite composed of a tiara with one of the larger of the pear-shaped gems as its centerpiece, a pendant with the other of the larger pair as its centerpiece, and matching earrings comprising the two smaller stones. Before they were ready the Earl’s father, the seventh Duke of Sheffield, died, and the Earl succeeded to the title. The diamonds became known as the Glen Diamonds, after the family name of the house of Sheffield.
    The eighth Duke had passed them on his death in 1936 to his son, and he in turn had had two children, a daughter born in 1944 and a son born in 1949. It was this daughter, now aged forty-two, whose image was beneath Jim Rawlings’s magnifying glass.
    “You won’t be wearing them again, darling,” said Rawlings to himself. Then he once again began checking his equipment for that evening.
    * * *
    Harold Philby slit the envelope with a kitchen knife, extracted the letter, and spread it on the sitting-room table. He was impressed; it was from the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union himself, handwritten in the Soviet leader’s neat, clerkish script and, of course, in Russian.
    Like the matching envelope, the paper was of fine quality and unheaded. He must have written it from his own apartment at Kutuzovsky Prospekt 26, the huge building that since the time of Stalin had contained in its sumptuous quarters the Moscow homes of the very top level of Party hierarchs.
    In the top right-hand corner were the words Wednesday, December 31, 1986, a.m. The text came below. It read:
     
    Dear Philby,
    My attention has been drawn to a remark made by you at a recent dinner party in Moscow. To wit, that “the political stability of Great Britain is constantly overestimated here in Moscow and never more so than at the present time.”
    I would be happy to receive from you an expansion and clarification of this remark. Put this explanation in written form and direct it to me personally, without retaining any copies or using secretaries.
    When it is ready call the number Major Pavlov has given you, ask to speak to him personally, and he will come to your residence to collect it.
    My felicitations upon your birthday tomorrow.
    Sincerely ...
     
    The letter ended with the signature.
    Philby let out his breath slowly. So, Kryuchkov’s dinner on the twenty-sixth for senior officers of the KGB had been bugged after all. He had half suspected it. As First Deputy Chairman of the KGB and head of its First Chief Directorate, Vladimir Alexandrovitch Kryuchkov was the General Secretary’s creature, body and soul. Although styled a colonel-general, Kryuchkov was no military man and not even a professional intelligence officer; he was a Party apparatchik to his bootstraps, one of those brought in by the present Soviet leader when he had been Chairman of the KGB.
    Philby read the letter again, then pushed it away from him. The old man’s style hadn’t changed, he thought. Brief to the point of starkness, clear and concise, devoid of elaborate courtesies, inviting no contradiction. Even the reference to Philby ’s birthday was brief enough simply to show he had called for the file, and little more.
    Still, Philby was impressed. A personal letter from this most glacial and remote of men was unusual and would have had men trembling at the honor. Years ago it had been different. When the present Soviet leader had arrived at the KGB as Chairman, Philby had already been there for years and was considered something of a star, lecturing on the Western intelligence agencies in general and on the British SIS in particular.
    Like all incoming Party men set to command professionals of another discipline, the new Chairman had looked to put his own in key posts. Philby, even though respected