John Gardner - Man From Barbarossa

‘Possibly.’ Bond frowned in the dark.

‘Definitely. “Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead/ Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing.” This is definitely Shelley. I read many of your great poets when I first learned English. Wordsworth, Longfellow, Shelley and your last poet of the people, Betjeman. Now him I really enjoyed. Our poets are full of gloom.’

‘Not really up on Shelley, Bory.’ Bond had never been a great one for poetry, unless you counted Homer.

Pete asked again, ‘Where we going, Bory? Or is that too secret even to tell us?’

‘Where do you think? Safe house, of course. Or really a safe dacha.’

‘Ah, we would be talking about something around twenty-five miles west of Moscow then?’

‘About that, yes.’ They were on a main road now, passing through a built-up area and Stepakov’s face was lit up in a strobe effect from the overhead lights. He was smiling and nodding. ‘I think you know the place, James. More coffee?’

Bond was now certain they were heading for either Nikolina Gora, Zhukovka or one of the other communities near them. In the bad old days, these places, west-southwest of the Kremlin, had been the luxury communities, the dachas for favoured writers and artists and the special so-called villages where the Party leaders lived in style. These areas used to be referred to by those in the know as Sovmin or Academic Zhukovka. Sovmin was a well-guarded complex in which Cabinet ministers had their dachas hidden among beautiful woodland below the gentle hills outside Moscow. Bond had no reason to believe that anything had changed in that direction. Maybe the ideology had altered but the leadership would still have its privileges.

‘Just sit back, James, and enjoy the journey.’ Stepakov’s voice took on a soothing tone. ‘You will soon be asked to look at the harder side of life in this winter of discontent we appear to be suffering in Russia. Which means when we turn you loose, you will also suffer a little. Enjoy while you have the chance.’

Bond nodded, sipped his coffee and put his mind into idle. Pete Natkowitz appeared to have fallen asleep.

‘He’s called Boris Stepakov,’ M had said. ‘Boris Ivanovich Stepakov. Forty-five years of age. A career KGB officer with a lot of experience of terrorist groups throughout the world and an expert on dissidents within the Soviet Union. He’s a product of the Andropov Institute also and he knows his stuff.’

Stepakov’s experience ranged from service with the twentieth department of the First Chief Directorate – dealing with emergent, developing countries – to the investigation department of the Second Chief Directorate, which, in the main, oversees internal security and counterintelligence.

Tanner had said Stepakov was ‘a man of awesome knowledge; in some ways, he wrote the book, literally. A KGB internal publication he called The Stray Dogs , an obvious reference to Qaddafi’s infamous 1985 speech when he ranted about “hunting down stray dogs”.’ ‘We have a right’, Qaddafi had said, ‘to take a legitimate and sacred action – an entire people liquidating its opponents at home and abroad in broad daylight.’

The book dealt in great detail with such incidents as the 1969 attempt on Brezhnev’s life, the many unreported hijackings of the seventies and the bombing of the Moscow subway in 1977. Tanner had claimed Stepakov to have been very honest throughout the book, advising his senior officers that KGB should take care when having dealings with terrorist organisations, particularly the PLO and others in the Middle East. He had even chided the KGB hierarchy and the Central Committee for having had dangerous affairs with Arafat and people like Ilich Ramîrez Sánchez, The Jackal .

‘You will find him exceptional,’ the Chief of Staff had said. ‘Personally, I believe he had a great deal to do with the Soviet change of policy towards international terrorism in the 1980s.’

Now, in the back of the Lincoln, rocking its way through the frozen dark towards God knew where, they had come face to face with Boris Stepakov who was to be their case officer, their control in whatever the Russians needed to do in flushing out the Scales of Justice , the Chushi Pravosudia .

‘You wrote a book, Bory. We’ve been told you wrote an excellent book,’ Bond said after they had covered another mile.

The Russian laughed as though this was a joke. ‘Sure, I wrote a book, but it didn’t get into the best-seller lists, except inside KGB. I was young and foolish – well, maybe not so young, and for “foolish” you should read “honest”. For a time, I thought I’d end up counting the trees.’ He repeated the phrase in Russian, ‘ Schitayet derev’ya .’ It meant, in the old Russian argot, being sent to the Gulag.

‘Our people think most highly of it.’

‘They do? Well, it eventually had some success here. I would very much like to be able to write a great novel, but I have been confined to one unpleasant area of life. I am a specialist, so to speak. I was the one who asked for two people from your Service to help us out. There were some here who thought this a very daring move.’ The light caught his face again, for a moment, and Bond thought he saw concern dance across the big Russian’s eyes.

‘We also thought it daring.’ Bond tried to make light of the remark. ‘Some of us thought it insane.’

There was a rumbling chuckle which seemed to come from deep inside Stepakov’s stomach. ‘Perhaps it is insane. Who knows? Personally, I think it’s obvious. We have two English members of this Scales of Justice . Two men who are expected by these people. They are here to do a particular job and we have nobody who could pass themselves off as English. So we come to you.’

‘These two . . .’ Bond began, but Stepakov cut him off.

‘Wait, James. Wait until we can talk in complete security. No, that is not good English. You cannot talk in silence. I mean in absolute security.’ He seemed to glance up and Bond saw that he was looking towards the broad back of the driver who concentrated on the road ahead. ‘He’s silent as a tomb. Been my driver for years. But . . .’

They were in open country now. No lights, just the impression of snow in tall banks, blown from the road to allow free passage of vehicles. Beyond the snowbanks the countryside remained blotted out by darkness. No moon or stars, just a blanket of black like a solid wall. They passed no other vehicles, only the occasional sign of life – a lonely single outpost or a huddle of houses and wooden shacks which made up some village, a small desolate community.

Bond remembered the first time he had driven in the American Midwest. He pictured the vastness of great fields of grain in the Midwest, rippling to the far skyline, knowing that the corn or wheat went on for miles, further than the eye could see. As one who had been born into an island society, he had not been prepared then for the sense of space, and here it was again, even in the darkness – the realisation of being in a country so huge that it could even swallow the vastness of the United States and tuck it away into one corner.

At last they started to slow down and there were signs of life. Buildings and pavements at the sides of the road. Lights, then darkness again. More lights and a sudden turn to the right, taking them on to a broad unmade path where trees suddenly swallowed them up. A security post of some kind and a stunning blast of freezing air as the driver operated his window, threw out a hand and passed a document to a uniformed figure with a submachine gun slung over one shoulder and his face masked against the weather.

They were waved on, and a pair of great metal gates opened ahead of them, leading to a well-made road twisting between trees heavy with snow and ice. The roadway, Bond noticed, was clear and free of ice. Just inside the gates he saw a dark, thick horizontal line signifying the presence of a hidden barrier, probably a tall steel wall which would leap up from the road to stop any attempt at further progress by unauthorised persons.