John Gardner - Man From Barbarossa

So, now here they were, Guy, George and Helen, a British camera crew, climbing from Lyko’s car. Thanking him in Russian, laughing among themselves, they waved goodbye as they lugged their backpacks towards the Dom Knigi bookshop where they would purchase a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel, Crime and Punishment. Bond wondered what irony lay at the heart of that choice by Chushi Pravosudia: the tale of Raskolnikov’s demonic self-will, the murder he commits out of contempt for his fellow men and his redemption through the prostitute, Sonya.

Inside, the shop was warm, though the assistants looked bored, and only half-a-dozen people browsed among the books – two men and four women, dressed well enough in furs. He saw the flash of diamonds on the hand of one woman as she readied forward to take a foreign language espionage novel from the shelves.

The men, he thought, would be the ones to make contact. But the two quiet, studious-looking men took no notice of the trio. One was in his early twenties, the other old with straggling hair and bottle-thick glasses.

They spent almost ten minutes deciding on the copy of Crime and Punishment they would buy, and it took a further fifteen minutes for the listless saleswoman to stir herself, take their money, check the copy and wrap it for them.

So it would be the fall-back, Bond thought. The Arbat restaurant at nine o’clock. They had a lot of time to kill in the cold outside. But, as they left the shop, close together, turning right, looking as though they had a purpose in their walk, three young women closed in upon them from the street. One wore a magnificent fur with the collar turned high, the others had long, waisted coats, also with high collars. They looked like film extras from Anna Karenina. All of them wore fur hats and they giggled as they jostled close. Their black leather boots seemed to send sparks showering from the snow. Three girls out for a good time.

Natkowitz first thought they were high-class whores. Bond saw light-coloured curls peeping from under one of the fur hats. Then, between the giggles, the girl closest to them muttered, ‘Turn right and keep walking until a car reaches us.’ She spoke in English with no trace of an accent. The girls dropped back a little, still laughing and bumping shoulders. For a second, Bond and Nina were separated from Natkowitz, and Nina slid her hand through Bond’s arm, nudging close and whispering, ‘Trust nobody. Please trust none of them, not even Bory. We must talk . . . later.’ Then she just hung on as the long black car pulled up in front of them, doors opening and two men on the pavement barring their way, stopping them gently, urging them to get in. The trio of girls was close behind, crowding in, pushing them into the car, laughing and giggling as though it were a great lark. The car resembled a stretch limo.

‘Come. Fast,’ one of the men, who looked like a tough bouncer for an illegal nightclub, hissed at them in bad English. ‘Fast. You must be fast.’

‘Quickly,’ one of the girls cried, between giggles. ‘Wake up! Quickly! You haven’t got all night!’

‘Listen to the sergeant major,’ another of the girls said, and they all thought this was real wit.

The interior of the car smelled of garlic and cheap wine. Bond had hardly seated himself when they pulled away and he felt all reality spinning into a whirl of darkness. The last thing he remembered was Nina Bibikova’s head falling towards his lap.

Professor Vladimir Lyko drove straight on after dropping the three at the bookshop. The snow was not too bad and he peered towards the pavement, looking for the familiar figure he knew would be there. Never had he let him down. When he said he would be at a certain spot, he would inevitably appear, like a genie.

There he was. Lyko would have recognised the walk anywhere. He pulled the car over towards the pavement, leaned across and opened the door for him to get in.

‘There,’ his passenger said brightly. ‘There was no need to worry. Like clockwork, Vladi. I’m like clockwork.’

‘Where do I go?’

‘Keep driving. I’ll show you. I’m your guardian angel, Vladi. You know that, don’t you?’

The little professor nodded energetically as he concentrated on driving, following his friend’s directions. As they neared the Moscow State University buildings, the streets became deserted.

‘Pull over here,’ the guardian angel told him, and Lyko had scarcely put on the handbrake when the bullet took off his face. The car filled with the smell from the pistol and from Lyko’s bodily reaction. There had been no sound, only the light plop from the noise-reduction device on the gun.

Lyko’s guardian angel had performed his last service. He stepped from the car and vanished quickly into the snowy Moscow night.

11

HÔTEL DE LA JUSTICE

Greg Findlay, the SIS resident head of Moscow Station had limited resources at his disposal. While there was a natural tincture of resentment over a former resident, Nigsy Meadows, being attached to the embassy to run Fallen Timbers at his own discretion, Greg was duty bound to give Meadows all possible ‘assistance, succour and help’, as they described it in the textbook jargon. His two juniors, with second secretary cover, did not have need-to-know, so could not be used. Nigsy, however, had pleaded for two of the resident’s four minders. The minders did any dirty work, from the occasional pick-up, to emptying dead-drops, to babysitting, guarding, or even flushing out the competition. Certainly the Cold War was officially over, but you did not abandon regular operations overnight.

Findlay wondered what the Americans were about when he heard reports that certain senators and congressmen actually wanted to disband the CIA. That lunatic measure, he confided in anyone who would listen, was like removing a burglar alarm from your house in Mayfair because the police had caught one thief in Kensington. There were also strange claims being made in much-praised novels about a close co-operation between SIS and KGB. He prayed it was not so. By the shades of Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond, this would have been catastrophic folly on a grand scale.

Findlay also had at his disposal four cipher clerks who dealt with routine embassy work as well as performing extramural activities for the SIS resident. This quartet had to be closely involved with Fallen Timbers , and one of them, Wilson Sharp, was there to field the first catch.

Sharp had the swing shift – four to midnight – so had been on duty for less than three hours when the squirt-transmission came in, a few seconds after six thirty-five. There was no surprise when the needles flicked and the warning went off in his headset. He punched the rewind button, started a new tape on the secondary channel on the main receiver and picked up the telephone, all in three fast moves. Nigsy Meadows was in the communications room within seconds, snatching the tape from Sharp’s hand and going down to the electronics bubble to work the decrypt machines. Ten minutes later he had Bond’s signal en clair:

SoJ to lift self, Tackle plus Brutus’s daughter from Dom Knigi, Kalinina Prospect, seven thirty this night. Fallback nine pip emma Arbat restaurant. Switched on. Please track. Block.

Nigsy was shouting for the car and one of the minders for protection should he need it before the decrypt had finished shredding into the burn bag.

Nigsy’s own car was an old Volga he had bought on the black market during his last stint at the Moscow Embassy. He could have used one of the many British cars in the pool – in fact as SIS resident he was allotted a splendid Rover – but Nigsy felt less visible in the Volga. He had spent much of his spare time working on the vehicle, replacing engine parts and making it generally more roadworthy. When they had moved him on to Tel Aviv, Nigsy had put the Volga in mothballs as he knew some day soon he would return.