John Gardner - Man From Barbarossa

His priority, after arriving in Moscow, had been to check out the Volga, draw the dodgy equipment that had been shipped in under diplomatic seal, and install it in the vehicle. The Volga came out of the embassy gates just after seven. It was logged by the KGB surveillance team, who still carried out the routine, in spite of the official cancellation of Cold War activities. They immediately fingered the driver as Bolkonsky Two, their identifier for the former resident, together with a member of the British boyevaya gruppa – their own outdated jargon for a combat team used as a hit squad – riding shotgun.

Even in the snow, which came and went like a tide, Nigsy drove just within the speed limit, turning left, then right, doubling back to get on to the Kamenny Bridge. He could see the floodlit gold onion domes of the Kremlin rising up to his right, for the Kamenny Bridge provides one of the best views of the Kremlin. In the far corner of his mind, Meadows thought that this had once been an ancient stone bridge, the very one Dostoyevsky’s character, Raskolnikov, crossed on that sultry July afternoon in the opening chapter of Crime and Punishment. Everyone did a course of Russian literature, among other things, before being posted to the USSR, but Nigsy’s thought could have been put down to some kind of ESP, for he knew nothing of Bond’s task that night, to buy Crime and Punishment at Dom Knigi.

Years previously he had worked with Bond in Switzerland. Together they had set up a snare for a Soviet agent engaged in laundering money for pay-offs to support networks being organised in the United Kingdom. They had become close, and Meadows often thought he had learned more about fieldwork from the six months in Berne than from any other experience. He had an affinity for Bond which had lasted through the years and prided himself that he could read 007 like an ophthalmologist’s chart at two paces.

They reached Kalinina Prospect via Marksa Prospect, skirting the hill topped by the old Pashkov Palace, now the Lenin Library, its circular belvedere just visible through the snow. As they made the first sweep, Meadows saw a grey MVD security van parking about a hundred metres from the bookshop and another one further down the street. They had all the telltale signs of watchers’ vans – the tall, thick aerials and mirror windows at the rear.

He spoke rapidly to the minder, Dave Fletcher, as they drove, telling him what to look for, describing Bond, giving him the possible location in which the agent might be spotted. He circled the area in imprecise patterns, first left, then right, then doubling back and making an approach from a different direction, knowing he could not keep this up for long, as the MVD vans almost certainly had the licence number of the Volga from the embassy watchers. He did not want the vehicle stopped and scrutinised. It bore no CD plates, in direct contravention of standing orders, and he was also carrying highly illegal electronics – a modified Model 300 receiver, originally made by Winkelmann Security Systems of Surrey – adapted for field use by Service electronics wizards in London.

One of the buttons on Bond’s parka contained a micro-transmitter, a strong homing device designed to talk only with this particular receiver, or one of its clones. The bleep came up just as Meadows thought it was time for them to be safe rather than sure. It showed that Bond was somewhere off to the right of them, behind Kalinina Prospect, moving at around thirty kilometres an hour.

‘You read it,’ he told Fletcher. ‘Just tell me which way to go.’

They lost the signal five times over the next half-hour, but on each occasion it came up again, moving faster now and heading out of the city, going east. By nine o’clock they were out in the countryside, Meadows worrying that they might have problems getting back to the embassy. The snow was thickening, though the signal remained strong. Then, unexpectedly, the track changed, moving very fast indeed, coming towards them as though on a collision course.

Somewhere above the engine noise in the car they both heard the heavy thrum of helicopter motors.

Meadows cursed as he watched helplessly. Within three minutes the signal went out of range, travelling north-west. A couple of hours later, back at the embassy, he checked with Findlay to make certain the ambassador would not wish to know about the operation, and sat down to cipher an ‘eyes only’ to M. All his experience told him that the Scales of Justice almost certainly had Bond out of Russia by now. M’s detailed briefing, delivered in the main by Fanny Farmer in Tel Aviv, had suggested as much. ‘The Old Man doesn’t believe for one moment that these jokers have their main base anywhere near Moscow,’ Farmer had said. ‘His bet is on one of the Scandinavian countries, though it might be even further away.’

If M was on the ball – and when was he not? – Nigsy Meadows thought there would be a flash priority for him to get himself elsewhere first thing in the morning.

James Bond returned to consciousness like a man waking from a perfectly normal doze. There were none of the usual side-effects. No floating to the surface. No dry throat, fuzzed vision or disorientation. He was deeply unconscious one minute and wide awake the next. He smelled wood, and for a second, thought he was back in the relative safety of the dacha. Then his brain leaped again. This was not the same polished scent. This was more like lying in a pine forest. The pleasant odour of the wood enveloped him and he wondered if this was some strange aftereffect of chemicals. He knew they had used some form of drug. He saw the pavement and the car, like a limo, pulling up, heard the giggling of the girls and, clear in his head, a picture of the two young men. He even recalled the glimpse of a female leg, encased in a tight-fitting black leather boot, then Nina’s head slumping onto his lap.

There was no sense of urgency. Bond simply lay there, smelling the wood and sifting through his last memories. Then he recalled the dreams – the incredible colours and the mists swirling around him as he levitated, the great waves of sound as though he were on a beach shrouded in this multicoloured fog with the roar of the sea he tried to see by peering through the murk. It was all real, immediate and vivid in his mind. He could almost believe it had happened. He seldom remembered dreams, so was surprised at the clarity of these images.

He heard the voices, urgent, shouting, over the noise of rolling breakers which came ever closer. He had felt himself being lifted up as though floating on an agitated sea. There was no fear of drowning, even when his body was picked up and slammed down again in the boiling ocean. This had gone on in his dream for some time, then suddenly the bumping stopped and quiet came. After that there were moments of erotic awareness, as though his body were wrapped around that of a woman he could neither see nor hear. He had dreamed of the sexual act, knowing that he was performing it with someone for whom he felt great warmth and affection.

The ceiling above him was made of wood, untreated, not finished or varnished, simply plain pine worked into smooth planks which waited to be sealed and painted. Distantly he was aware that the scent emanated from the ceiling and, probably, from other parts of this unfinished room.

Automatically he tried to sit up, and this was the moment when Bond realised all his faculties had not been released from whatever they had inserted into his body. His brain and vision had been returned to him, but his limbs remained captive. It was a strange, not unpleasant, feeling, one which he accepted without really questioning the final outcome.

There was no sense of time passing, so he could not tell how quickly the memories of his dreams altered and became more substantial, but it seemed as though, quite suddenly, he knew some of the memory was not a dream.