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“But
why?
”

“Imagine the disruption, my dear old thing. Imagine the blow to capitalism and the deeply un-Marxist doctrine of hereditary monarchy. Remember Franz Ferdinand and Gavrilo Princip, and grenades and guns and processions, and what happened afterward? Remember, and shudder.” De Vere Green sat back in his chair. “Well, it would certainly change the world, we have to give him that.”

De Vere Green, entirely predictably, demanded that Five take over the case, now that it was demonstrably a matter of national security.

Herbert stood firm. He reminded de Vere Green what had happened the last time he had let him ride roughshod, and said that, if he was to hand over control, he would do so only after it had been agreed on both sides.

Then he rang Tyce and apprised him both of what they had found and what de Vere Green wanted. Tyce said that he would be right over. First, however, given the evident gravity of the discovery, he would need to alert the commissioner, Sir Harold Scott.

If the commissioner was coming, then so, too, should Sillitoe, the head man at Five; but he was out of town, and would not be back until Sunday.

In the director-general’s absence, de Vere Green, though clearly unhappy at being outnumbered, deemed himself of suitable rank to represent Five.

At least the urgency and short notice spared both sides the usual welter of bobs and nabobs at such events.
Herbert already had experience of Five’s myriad stagnant layers, and things were no better in Scotland Yard; beneath Scott were rafts of deputy commissioners, assistant commissioners, deputy assistant commissioners, and commanders.

So Herbert and de Vere Green sat for half an hour in a silence that only the charitable could have described as companionable, waiting for the arrival of the Met’s finest. De Vere Green’s efforts at conversation were dashed on the rocks of Herbert’s impassivity, as Herbert’s thoughts tumbled lazily over themselves through eddying currents of connection.

August 1914, Sarajevo. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, traveling in a motorcade along streets lined with heavy crowds, is attacked twice by Serbian nationalists; with grenades, which he survives, and with a gun, which he does not.

In 1917 the Royal Family changes its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor, because a German name is deemed unpatriotic in wartime. Its personnel and lines of descent remain unchanged, however.

July 1918, Yekaterinburg. Tsar Nicholas, Tsarina Alexandra, and the rest of Russia’s last imperial family are shot and bayoneted by a detachment of Bolsheviks.

June 1941. Hitler invades the Soviet Union. Four years later, with millions killed on the Eastern Front, the Third Reich is no more and hatred for Germany is branded on the Soviet psyche.

Add to the mix the fact that communism was by definition godless, whereas monarchies were founded on a divine right to rule; then sprinkle all the points de Vere Green had mentioned—McCarthy’s witch hunts, Stalin’s paranoia, Britain’s newfound nuclear capability—and
Herbert no longer thought the assassination theory absurd. There
was
a logic there; a logic, and therefore a threat.

“Show me what you have,” Scott said, once he and Tyce were installed and coffee had been brought.

Herbert had not been unproductive during the wait. He had made notes on the possibilities raised by Stensness’ map; now he consulted these notes while he spoke.

The Coronation was to take place on 2nd June next year, he said. The route had been decided as follows. The Queen would leave Buckingham Palace at 10:26
A.M.
, the last of five separate processions involving everybody from colonial rulers through prime ministers and princes to the queen mother. She would proceed in a horse-drawn carriage along The Mall, Northumberland Avenue, and the Embankment, arriving at Westminster Abbey at 11:00 on the dot.

The service would then take place, lasting five minutes short of four hours. It would be televised, though the processions before and afterwards would not.

At 2:55, the queen would leave the abbey, proceeding up Parliament Street to Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, where she would arrive at 3:07. From there, she would go along, in order, Pall Mall, St. James’ Street, Piccadilly (3:19), Hyde Park Corner, Park Lane, Marble Arch (3:46), Oxford Street, Oxford Circus (4:00), Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus (4:10), Haymarket, and Trafalgar Square (4:18), before returning up The Mall to Buckingham Palace at 4:31.

Even assuming that no attack could take place inside the abbey itself, where access would be strictly
controlled and security tighter than a drum, that still left two hours of what Herbert, in his military days, would have termed “major exposure;” the monarch on the open roads, in full view of her people.

Yes, troops and police would line the route, but even if every soldier and constable in the country stood side by side, they could not be absolutely sure of covering every member of a throng which would surely be several million strong.

As Sir Harold could see, Stensness had circled twelve locations on the map, some of them abbreviated to save on space. In order of their appearance on the procession route, they were: Northumberland Avenue, Victoria Embankment, Parliament Street, Trafalgar Square, Marlborough House, St. James’ Palace, St. James’ Street, Hyde Park Corner, Oxford Street, Regent Street, St. James’ Park, and Piccadilly Circus.

Herbert had gone through them one by one, trying at each turn to put himself in the shoes of a would-be assassin. If
he
wanted to kill the queen, and make
his
getaway, where would
he
choose to strike?

He had divided the locations into three categories: Likely, Possible, and Unlikely.

It depended, he supposed, on what the weapon of choice was.

In such circumstances, it was hard to look beyond either a sniper’s bullet or a bomb thrown from the crowd.

A sniper would want a tall building with uninterrupted views down to the procession, and in particular the royal coach. Government buildings would, or at least should, be harder to access than commercial buildings—unless the plotters had someone on the inside, and with fifty thousand members and thirty MPs at least
partially beholden to them, the CPGB must have fingers in many official pies.

Northumberland Avenue had its fair share of tall buildings, as did Parliament Street, St. James’ Street, Oxford Street, and Regent Street. These five Herbert had classified as “Likely.”

Next came the “Possibles”: Victoria Embankment, Trafalgar Square, Marlborough House, St. James’ Palace, and Piccadilly Circus.

Hyde Park Corner and St. James’ Park he considered “Unlikely.”

A bomber, on the other hand, had an entirely different set of requirements. He had to be close enough to throw his device at the coach, and yet have at least one escape route within easy reach.

In this scenario, Hyde Park Corner and St. James’ Park suddenly became much more attractive propositions; a sufficiently adept, and lucky, bomber would have at least a chance of escaping through the parks themselves.

Herbert had put them in the “Likely” column for the bombers, along with Oxford Street and Regent Street, both of which sprouted warrens of side streets along their length.

In contrast, anyone attempting a bombing at St. James’ Palace, or on Parliament Street, or by Marlborough House, would find themselves hemmed in by the buildings behind them. These three Herbert had therefore classified as “Unlikely.”

This left the remaining five—Northumberland Avenue, Victoria Embankment, Trafalgar Square, St. James’ Street, and Piccadilly Circus—as “Possibles.”

“Well,” Scott said, “it certainly sounds grave
enough. I suppose it’s lucky that we’ve seven months to put a stop to it.”

“By ‘we,’ I presume you mean ‘us,’” de Vere Green said. “As in ‘Five.’ I have never seen an investigation that falls more clearly under our remit.”

“Detective Inspector Smith would be more than happy to help, I’m sure,” Scott said. “He is uniquely placed to liaise between us and you, after all.”

They all recognized the admission for what it was: the renunciation of the Met’s claim to this case, or at least to operational responsibility, which as far as Herbert was concerned amounted to the same thing.

Scott was no policeman, Herbert remembered; he looked every inch the civil servant that he was. A civil servant running the police force, a policeman running the spy service—no wonder the country was in bad shape. At least Scott was not ex-military; the list of his predecessors was littered with brigadier generals, generals, colonels, and lieutenant colonels. He had been commissioner since the end of the war, and rumor had it not only that he was up for replacement soon, but also that his successor would, for the first time, be a serving police officer.

Tyce, for one, would clearly welcome that. He spoke up now.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t accept that.” Give Tyce credit, Herbert thought; one always knew where one was with him. “All this is very interesting, and alarming too, but we’ve no proof that it’s actually linked to the murder.”

“That’s not true,” de Vere Green said.

“No, that
is
true. We have a plot, which is still conjecture, and we have a murder, which is fact. I’m not saying the two are not connected, just that we don’t know for sure. And until we do, this case is still ours.”

“Mr. Tyce, you have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“No; I have every idea. My job starts and ends with one belief: you can’t go round killing people on British soil and get away with it, no matter who you are—spies included. Dead-letter drops, surveillance, invisible ink, all that clobber, yes, fine with me. Murder, no. Not murder. Every civilized society draws the line there.”

Herbert had never had Tyce down as an orator, but his words had saved the day. Scott had first agreed and then pulled rank, informing de Vere Green that while Five were welcome to assist, the case was both legally and morally still the Met’s.

It was a turf war, simple as that, as atavistic and ineradicable as all conflict. The turf caused the war, and there would always be turf; therefore there would always be war.

Not that Herbert was complaining. This time yesterday, he had been an habitué of procedural backwaters; now, as the one man whose career had straddled both Leconfield House and New Scotland Yard, he seemed all but indispensable.

He wondered whether—hoped that—he was up to it, and reminded himself that things could change back just as quickly.

De Vere Green had a raft of meetings scheduled—for which, Herbert thought, read an afternoon of intriguing; how nice it must be, to have a job which was also one’s hobby—and therefore, with some apparent reluctance, left Herbert to his own devices, asking only to be informed of progress on a regular basis.

Tyce and Scott, having made identical requests, returned to Scotland Yard.

So, Herbert thought, where next?

The simplest option would have been to go round to the
Izvestia
offices and arrest Kazantsev. A charge of burglary would do, let alone suspicion of murder.

Herbert, however, thought that such a course of action might be counterproductive. He had already seen how Kazantsev, when cornered, would lash out. A repeat performance, followed by the inevitable hardening of respective positions, would suit Herbert not at all. He needed answers, not simply the fleeting satisfaction of a criminal charge.

Besides, weren’t the Russians supposed to be devious? Softly, softly, catchee monkey, and all that.

Herbert picked up the early editions of all three evening papers—the
Evening News
, the
Evening Standard
, and the
Star
—from a vendor on Curzon Street whose extravagant cries of “
News, Star, Standard
!” were acting as a sort of aural lighthouse in the fog.

There was nothing in any of the papers about a body in the Long Water, which left him both relieved, for this was a case which in no way needed publicity, and irrationally angry, for Max Stensness had clearly been too small and unimportant for the papers’ news desks—the same news desks who had chosen to give half a page to the statue of Eros at Piccadilly Circus being taken down for cleaning.

It was a minute’s walk from Leconfield House to Herbert’s flat. He put more coal on the fire, aware that he was doing his bit to make the smog worse but knowing that the alternative was freezing away his various appendages, made a cup of coffee, picked up the phone, and rang the
Izvestia
office.

A man answered almost immediately.

“I’m looking for Alexander Kazantsev,” Herbert said.

“Who’s calling?”

It was Kazantsev himself; Herbert knew it was.

“I’ve got your jacket,” Herbert said. And your wallet, he thought, and your press card, and everything you need to move freely around. A Soviet national without papers in London was a man in big trouble. This was the Cold War, after all. Stripped of his documentation, Kazantsev could face expulsion, and that would just be the start of it. Whatever the British could do to him would be merely an appetizer for what awaited him in Moscow.

“Ah,” Kazantsev said wistfully, as though recalling a long-lost love, “that is my favorite jacket. I would be most grateful if you would return it.”

His accent was strong and unmistakably Russian, but there was little wrong with the quality of his English. Herbert decided to play along with him.

“And I would be most pleased to do so. You understand, though, that you attacked a police officer—two, in fact—and that we tend to take a dim view of that.”

“I understand entirely. The view would be much dimmer in my country, I can assure you.”

“So, I would like a little … a little chat with you first.”

Herbert might have wanted answers, but Kazantsev wanted his stuff back, and also to avoid being arrested for what had happened in Cholmeley Crescent; so Kazantsev needed Herbert just as much as Herbert needed him, maybe more.

“Of course.” Kazantsev seemed mildly surprised that Herbert had even felt the need to ask. “You have something I want, I have something you want. The very
essence of communism, no?” He laughed so briefly that Herbert almost missed it, and then was serious again. “I’m free from six thirty onwards. Where shall we meet?”