Man From Barbarossa

forward and shaking hands without a hint of deference.

Alex was short and plump with a face straight from the Tenniel illustrations of Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Through the Looking Glass. Nicki was slim, dark, good-looking and muscular. He moved like a street fighter, and the same arrogance showed in his eyes. They were both dressed casually, and Bond instinctively tagged them as highly trained muscle, not knuckle-draggers but men with sharp IQs. They certainly worked as a pair, for their movements complemented one another and they seemed to hang on Stepakov’s words in unspoken loyalty.

‘Come, you’ll be hungry.’ Stepakov was now revealed to be dressed as casually as his assistants, in slacks, heavy sweater and a checkered shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. The slacks were baggy and crumpled as though he had slept in them – a man dressed for comfort, or action. The butt of an automatic pistol, tucked firmly into the small of his back, protruded from his waistband. He carried it as though the weapon was part of his body, a sign instantly recognisable to Bond. Now Stepakov led the way past the staircase to double doors which he flung open to reveal a long and wide room dominated by a table piled high with food.

Natkowitz’s eyes slewed towards Bond and he raised one eyebrow, for the spread laid out for them was enough to feed all five men for about a week – plates of pirogi, the glorious pies and pasties famous for their myriad fillings of egg, cabbage, sour cream, cucumber; large assorted plates of zakuski, salmon, herring, caviar, cold meats, salads, great loaves of black bread and salvers of blinis to eat with the smoked fish and caviar.

‘Come, eat and drink. This is the best way we can get to know one another.’ Stepakov strode to a separate table at the far end of the room, where serried ranks of bottles were ranged with military precision – wines from Moldavia to Armenia. ‘We prefer sweet wines, James and Pete. You, from my studies, seem to like a drier variety . . .’

‘I’ll take whatever you have.’ Natkowitz stuck his head forward. With his red hair and gentleman farmer’s face, he looked for a moment like an expectant dog who has heard his master rattle a feeding bowl.

‘This is good. A wine from Fetjaska. Dry. A fresh dry white.’ The Russian showed no finesse, simply sloshing wine into two glasses and handing them to Bond and Natkowitz, while Alex and Nicki began to fill plates for them.

Here, Bond thought, one has to be careful. The notorious drinking habits of the Russians could rebound. M had said, ‘Beware socialising, 007. I don’t have to tell you no matter what favours we’re doing in a spirit of cooperation, those people are still an intelligence-gathering organisation.’ He did not really have to be reminded as he sipped the wine and began to dig into the plate overflowing with fish and meats.

‘We were obviously badly informed,’ Natkowitz took a large swallow of wine. ‘In the West we’re told that Russia is suffering from a dreadful food shortage this winter.’

Stepakov’s face split into a grin. ‘Yes, you will see that soon enough, but you are guests of the Party. As our President has rightly said, there is only one true way to perestroika, and that is through the Communist Party.’ He paused for a second, his eyes glistening with humour. ‘There is not so much difference between the ideologies of capitalism and Communism, you know. The difference is simple. Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man,’ a further pause, ‘and Communism is the reverse.’

Alex and Nicki did not laugh as hard as their boss. They had undoubtedly heard the joke many times before.

As they ate and chatted, Alex and Nicki stood apart, one at each end of the room, like bodyguards. Finally Bond asked, ‘Shouldn’t we start work, Bory? We’re here to do a job after all. I’d like to get at it.’

Stepakov turned his clownish face towards him with a look of sadness. ‘All too soon you will have work to do, my friend. I promise you that. But here we are in four walls. You know what this means. In Russian it is like your saying, walls have ears. To be frank with you, actually, we don’t like this. KGB operational training and all our instincts are against the use of safe houses. Briefings between four walls. But we have made a room here that is as safe as it can be. Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow morning, we shall start. I too need to hurry this along or things won’t work out as we wish. By tomorrow night you’ll both be out there in the cold of a Moscow winter. I promise you.’

Most large cities of the world have a particular smell or sound. With New York it is sound – that series of man-made caverns which distort traffic noises, and the wail of police or ambulance sirens echo as though they are in low, narrow rocky valleys. In Paris it is smell – a mixture of coffee and strong Gauloise cigarettes. The Irish city of Cork is identifiable by the aroma of fish which grows stronger the nearer you get to the docks. London, in the old days, before the Clean Air Act, had a special scent, sooty and distinctive. Berlin still has the tang of burning wood when it rains, a reminder of the terrible destruction at the end of World War II. Moscow, even in the freezing cold, smells slightly sour. This gets worse in summer and jokers have been known to say that Lenin’s body, lying in state in the Red Square mausoleum, is responsible.

Nigsy Meadows caught the scent as soon as he stepped off the plane from Berlin. He knew that within a day he would have got used to it. It had all been very fast. Fanny Farmer, his replacement, had come in within three hours of receipt of M’s signal. There had been quick exchanges of information, mainly of an operational nature, and an hour later, Nigsy was on a Lufthansa to Berlin, Tegel, and from there direct to Moscow, Sheremetievo.

The Russian passport control officer flicked through his large black book, then raised his head and smiled. ‘Nice to see you back, Mr Meadows,’ was all he said in Russian, but to Meadows the unspoken words were there. ‘Ah, Mr Meadows, British Embassy spook, what’re you doing back in Moscow?’

There was an embassy car waiting, and Owen Gladwyn, the number two to the SIS resident, sat in the back seat. He thrust out a large pugilist’s hand to greet him. ‘Bloody cold weather you’ve brought with you, Nigs. How’s tricks?’

‘Much the same. I hope there’s some spare winter clothing knocking around in the shop.’

‘Doubt it.’ Gladwyn had a battered face, the inheritance from rugby football. It made him look like a first-rate hoodlum, though in fact he was a quiet, unassuming man who always got on with the job and never complained. ‘Give the Centre a bell, they usually have plenty of hard-weather gear to spare. Number’s 91, though nowadays you might even get a Porsche dealer.’

‘Very amusing.’ Nigsy was really unhappy. ‘Is Jupiter at home?’ Jupiter was this month’s crypto for head of Moscow Station.

‘Never goes out. Got a light in the window for you, old boy. Can’t wait.’

An hour later, Meadows was seated across from Jupiter, a rather smooth young man who had come up in the world like a rocket and was known back in the UK as the whizz-kid, for he was certainly uncannily talented. His true name was Gregory Findlay.

They faced each other in one of the two bubbles, as the hygienic rooms were called, deep within the embassy, safe from electronic or any other surveillance.

‘So, I have an operation running on my turf with a big notice stuck to it telling me to keep out.’ Findlay did not sound as peeved as his words indicated.

‘Come on, you don’t have to keep out, Greg. You’ll know everything. I’ll go through you all the way. Fact is . . .’

‘Fact is, old darling, you can override me at any time. That’s what M says, and I presume he has a reason for it.’

‘Fact is,’ Meadows continued, speaking over him, ‘I’m bloody tired, not to mention bereft of any proper clothes for this climate. Also, you have to brief me. Fanny only brought in the rudiments.’

‘Don’t really know what it’s all about.’ Findlay now did sound riled. ‘I have a pile of “eyes only” signals for you and a long one for me which I have to pass on to you immediately on arrival, which is now.’

Meadows nodded.

‘Right. Operation Fallen Timbers. We have two men in the field. Cryptos Block and Tackle, which sounds a bit muddied. I gather, however, that Block is of great operational importance, and word has it that he’s a former 00 Section man. Could even be Bond, for all I know. They are working in close harmony with Centre, which sounds far-fetched but appears to be part of bloody glasnost which is emptying our ricebowls faster than a plague of locusts . . .’

‘It won’t last for ever, Greg. We both know it, so don’t carp. Just give me all the contacts, map refs, signals, words, the usual.’