John Gardner - Man From Barbarossa

‘Must I?’ The colonel general looked at the traffic which, while not heavy by Western standards, was moderately thick.

‘I think it would be best, comrade, if we are not to look a little stupid.’

‘Very well. How far are you behind me?’

‘About five minutes, comrade Colonel General.’

‘I’ll pull over now.’ He leaned forward and tapped his driver on the shoulder, ordering him to get into the slow lane, then off the road altogether. ‘Pull off before the Babushkin exit. Another car will join us,’ he said.

The driver nodded, signalled and started to move over. A couple of minutes later he stopped and glanced around. The colonel general did not even notice the battered old Zil which had drawn up behind him, but the driver saw it and smiled.

‘What are you smiling at?’ the colonel general snapped, seeing the round smooth face of the driver grinning at him.

As he glimpsed the pistol pointing over the driver’s seat, Mechaev realised he had been too busy to notice this was not his usual driver, but he hardly ever paid attention to the lower ranks who drove him, guarded him or saw to his necessary minor needs. As he threw an arm across his face as if to ward off a blow, he also thought to himself that it was not Riuchev’s voice on the phone.

Mechaev’s face was completely blown apart by the two heavy-calibre bullets with hollow points.

Later, when the investigation began, nobody came forward to report a uniformed KGB driver leaving an official car and entering a very dented, limping and ancient Zil.

At seven fifteen, the duty officer at Number Two Dzerzhinsky Square took a telephone call which was later traced to the Kosmos Hotel on Mira Prospekt. The unidentified voice simply gave him the location of Colonel General Mechaev’s car, then said, ‘ Chushi Pravosudia have carried out the execution.’

7

FOUR WALLS

Their aircraft landed a few minutes before eight forty-five local time at Moscow’s central military airport. The Scrivener had provided both of them with British papers. Bond was James Betteridge, the managing director of a firm which dealt in farming machinery, while Pete Natkowitz, with a stroke of the pen, had become Peter Newman, an accountant.

As soon as they were parked with engines stopped in a far corner of the facility, away from executive buildings, two cars drove out accompanied by the maintenance van, halting near the steps which had been manhandled into place by a Russian ground crew. One of the cars was a long black Lincoln with tinted windows and big snow tyres.

Two plain-clothes men came on to the aircraft first, smiling and nodding, approaching Natkowitz and Bond with reassuring gestures.

In English they asked for passports in which they quickly stamped entry visas. ‘When you are ready, please come straight down to the Lincoln,’ one of the men nodded to Bond. ‘He’s waiting for you. Oh, and wear your gloves and parkas. Don’t leave skin uncovered. This is very much Russian winter.’ Another broad smile and a cheery nod.

They went down the steps and walked, bundled in heavy parkas, to the long, comfortable looking Lincoln, ice crystals crunching under their mukluks.

In the darkness, snow seemed to surround them, sparkling in the lights from the cars or humped in high dirty banks on either side of cuttings gouged out to make roads and runways accessible. A driver, padded and fur-hatted, descended from the front of the car as they approached, slung their two flight bags into the boot and made hurrying gestures towards the rear passenger door like a sheepdog rounding up and penning a pair of strays.

The heat in the back of the car hit them like a humid front coming in suddenly in the wake of some unusual winter weather pattern.

‘So, you have come. Good. Pleasure! Pleasure to meet you!’ His accent was almost Oxbridge, but came out in a great boom, the sound of a merrymaker, a man of constant good humour. Bond had a clear view of him for the best part of a minute while the interior lights stayed on.

His first impression was of a large, powerful man, the face long and broad with oddly clownish Slavic features, thin light-coloured hair, one wayward lock falling on to his forehead. The man was alive with goodwill, twinkling eyes and a mobile mouth. Instinctively Bond knew he would be a good mimic and an excellent teller of tales, the kind of person who would do all the accents.

‘Stepakov,’ he said, drawing out the second syllable Ste-paaaa-kov, and clutching Bond’s hand with a paw of very large dimensions. Then again, ‘Stepakov,’ to Natkowitz. ‘Friends call me Bory – Boris – but they call me Bory. Please you also call me this, yes?’

‘Delighted,’ Bond felt there was need to put on a kind of silly-ass accent, though it was uncharacteristic, and he could not have said why he did it. ‘James Betteridge. Friends call me James.’

‘Good, so, James. And you must be Pete. London said to call you Pete.’

Natkowitz nodded in the gloom. ‘Newman,’ he said aloud.

‘ Da , very good. As in feeling like a new man, eh?’ A gust of laughter, and the car began to pull away from the aircraft around which the ground crew was swarming. The pilot had said they would be on their way back within half-an-hour.

‘New man, as in feeling like a, yes? You wish for something hot? Brandy? Stoly? Coffee?’ Stepakov’s face was occasionally lit as they drove past overhead lights.

They chose coffee, and the Russian proudly opened a built-in bar which contained, among a number of bottles, large flasks of coffee, black and scalding hot.

‘You have used the, how do you say it, the facilities on the aircraft, yes? You have had pee?’

They both nodded.

‘Good. If you want to pee again, let me know in good time and we will arrange something. It will have to be at some service stop. No way you can do it in the open unless you wish to have your genders decapitated, so to speak. Frostbite is no respecter of person or personal effects.’

His laughter was infectious and he moved around a lot in the seat, taking up a great deal of room. The Lincoln had obviously been customised. Bond sat next to the Russian, while Pete Natkowitz faced them on one of a pair of jump seats flanking the cocktail bar.

‘You see, we go quite a long way.’ They could feel the man’s smile.

‘Not just into Moscow?’ Bond asked.

‘Oh, no. Definitely not into Moscow. You think we’re going to give you guided tour of Centre?’

‘We had hoped . . .’ Bond began, and the Russian laughed again.

‘You wanted to see the famous Memory Room where we keep pictures of our most famous spies, yes?’

It was Bond’s turn to smile. ‘It might be useful.’

‘Sure,’ Stepakov rumbled. ‘When I come to London you take me to Special Forces Club, eh? Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge. I see some of the pictures there. Then VIP trip around your Century House. Good for a big laugh.’

‘Welcome you with open arms, Bory.’ Natkowitz nodded in the darkness. ‘Where we going, Bory? Just so that we know.’ His voice was even, but with an undertow of something that bordered on threat.

For a few seconds it was silent in the car. When Stepakov spoke again, all traces of the natural good humour had gone. ‘Okay, I put you straight. Is necessary. Tonight the Chushi Pravosudia did what they promised. The body of a senior First Chief Directorate officer was found, near Exit 95 on the ring road. They discovered his regular driver, drugged and unconscious, right inside the Yasenevo headquarters, and even the legendary Houdini couldn’t get in there. So,’ he seemed to take a long, sad, deep breath, ‘so, is very secret all of this. We don’t wish for it to be known, except for a very select number of trusted people, that you are in the country. These Chushi Pravosudia are serious. We’re certain they have a very sophisticated organisation with people inside KGB and maybe even the Central Committee. They are not just hooligan elements. This is very critical business. Maybe affect the entire leadership, actually. So we have to be circumspect. Secret. We must move like ghosts from the enchanter fleeing – this is your poet Shelley, yes?’