Troika

It begins in the deep quiet before sunrise. At 3.55 in the morning John Morrissey takes a taxi to Scotland Yard, hurrying to a meeting about arrests planned for six o'clock. The tension has been building since the plan was first drawn up, and six o'clock will not wait for anyone. The operation carries the codename Troika, and it targets three people who have broken the Official Secrets Act by selling information. The city is barely awake when Special Branch starts to move, and that is what makes the first slip so sharp: before the raid, Greenaway gets a coded message away to Moscow. Cowley, lifted in his own home, tells Jordan he has something valuable to pass on.

Two of the three come in cleanly. Cowley and Morrissey are arrested, and the morning looks like a success, the sort of result that gets written up neatly and filed away. But Greenaway is gone, out through a door dressed as a woman and carrying a fake passport. The escape is embarrassing enough on its own. The identity that comes with it turns embarrassment into alarm, because American Intelligence has news for the Branch: the man they were after is Major Igor Alexandrov, a KGB sleeper agent who has kept one step ahead of the entire operation.

George Markstein wrote it, Mike Vardy directed. Wensley Pithey is Detective Supt. Eden, Derren Nesbitt Det. Chief Insp. Jordan, Jennifer Wilson W. Det. Sgt. Helen Webb, Keith Washington Det. Const. Morrissey and Morris Perry Charles Moxon. David Garth plays the Deputy Commander, Roger Rowland Det. Chief Insp. Felding, Donald Pelmear William Arthur Cowley, Sandra Bryant Christine Morris and Andree Evans Mrs. Cowley.

The dawn raid makes a brisk opening move, and the point lands early: you can arrest everyone on the list and still lose the one man who mattered. And somewhere between the taxi rank and the morning, the man in the dress is already gone.