Man From Barbarossa

to have retreated as though the people of which he spoke were too dangerous to laugh at or joke about.

‘We know there was another ring in what used to be East Germany, one in Poland, one in Czechoslovakia. We were also aware of American, British and French connections. We detected this through informants. People we trusted. And this is significant – even those who informed did not know the full reality. From the autumn of 1987 until the autumn of 1988 we followed up on forty-two of these informants. They took us only to the people who made the first approach, the primary contacts. Let me tell you how it worked.

‘It started with a whispering campaign. First, simply the name, Chushi Pravosudia, repeated over and over, passing from ear to ear. It spread through Moscow in a strange, confused manner. Through the more luxurious apartments along the Nevsky Prospect, among students at the university, like wildfire in the eggbox apartments of the workers, in the factories, in the illegal markets and bargaining places, in Gum and the other department stores, inside military barracks, and so into the Kremlin itself. Within days the name was known to everyone except foreign journalists from whom people instinctively kept this strange name. So Chushi Pravosudia became a household word. It also became something tangible. Through the repetition of the name, the organisation took on a life of its own.

‘Then the informers began to pass information which was routed into my relatively new counterterrorist department. They used the MVD and special units of the police, following up on each reported case. But it led to nothing. Dead ends littered the filing cabinets and in-trays of my Banda.

‘It was an exceptionally clever and ingenious ploy, when they ran traces back to those who had contacted the informants they came up against a frustrating wall. For the recruiters had been chosen by the Scales of Justice because of their own innocence. These recruiters fell into several distinct types: they were often people who lived alone, sometimes simpletons with only enough intelligence to carry out easy tasks, sometimes old women whose lives had become barren and useless, people who yearned for some task to keep themselves occupied. The call came to these innocent folk from strangers in a meat line or a bar, even in a group waiting at a bus stop. Those with telephones were contacted quietly, often early in the day, and always there was a promise. This is good work, they were told. Easy work. Work for the State. Nothing criminal. Each was given a name – usually it was someone they knew, even slightly. They had to ask this one person a number of questions: do you wish to serve your country so that life will become better? Are you willing to undertake some special job, for which we believe you are well-suited? Always there were the mystic words, Chushi Pravosudia. Always there was a special promise – a few roubles, a new television set, a food parcel.

‘These simple, mainly good folk were lured into recruiting like men and women in Britain or the United States are offered lucrative work from home – addressing envelopes, canvassing over the telephone. We all know how that works,’ Stepakov said. ‘And the hell of it was that these people received their rewards, the few roubles, the television set, in one case a week’s vacation. These were truly unwitting agents. They had no idea that they were canvassing for an illegal terrorist group. When they had the answers to their set of questions, they would pass them on. They would be told to await a messenger or a telephone call. The messengers were often children they had never seen before or even someone in the very place they had first been approached. All insubstantial. Traces which led nowhere.’

The main worry, during this period – autumn ’87 to autumn ’88 – was that the informers, reporting back to Stepakov’s Banda were obviously only a fraction of those who had been approached.

‘We knew,’ he told them, ‘that the Chushi Pravosudia was now a reality, and we were also aware they had started to spread out of the Soviet Union into the satellite countries of the old Eastern Bloc, even into other Western countries. Our agents caught traces of similar recruiting techniques, and from these we made calculated guesses about the locations and the number of cells. The Scales of Justice was exactly what Winston Churchill once said of the Soviet Union – a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But Churchill also predicted that there might be a key, and there was a key, but one which, initially, took us only a short way. It led us into the ante-room of the Chushi Pravosudia, and what we heard there made our blood run cold.’

It had happened almost by accident. The interrogation section of an MVD unit had hauled in a language professor who taught at Moscow University. He was suspected of what the authorities loosely termed ‘Black Market Activities’, which meant anything from dealing in illegal currency, to luxury items, right on up to straight and unadulterated espionage.

In the case of Vladimir Lyko, a senior professor of English, it was several illegal currency transactions amounting to some $100,000. There were no doubts, the evidence was there, the money had been traced, and one of the professor’s pupils had informed.

‘It was January 1989.’ Stepakov placed his large rear end against the back of a chair, as if settling to tell a good tale. ‘They got me out of bed at one in the morning, and I went straight to Lefortovo. The MVD had a direct instruction to contact me if they ever came across any evidence leading us to Chushi Pravosudia. The officer in charge of the interrogation told me that Lyko had things he would talk about. He wanted to do a deal, and, as you must know, this is strictly against our operational practice.’ He gave a big smile. ‘We never do deals. Except when we will gain much. From tiny acorns . . . Well, Lyko was a very small acorn and he has grown into a very large tree.’

At the airport Bond had considered that the Russian would be a good story-teller. Now, with his mobile clown’s face and a knack of graphic description, Stepakov told them about his first meeting with the professor. Bond had been right. He did all the voices.

Lefortovo is a grim, haunted place at the best of times. In winter it is truly bleak. They had Vladimir Lyko in a small interrogation room. Bare and unfriendly, with a table and two chairs bolted to a hard stone floor. The prisoner sat with his back to a wall, and directly behind him, high in the stone, was a small circular opening. In the old days victims had been shot from that tiny aperture, usually just as the interrogating officer took their signed statement from the table and moved to one side.

Stepakov wore his heavy greatcoat for there was ice on the walls. Lyko looked, rightly, terrified. He was a typical academic from the university. A fussy little man, about forty years of age, with dusty short hair and the thin face of a zealot, in which the once fervent eyes now reflected his terror. His hands shook as Stepakov offered him a cigarette and the KGB man had to hold his wrist to steady him as he lit the smoke for him.

‘Well, Vladi, you’re in a fine pickle now. They tell me over one hundred thousand dollars cash. This is a great deal of money. Enough money to give you one year for every ten dollars. One year for ten in the Gulag. You think this is cold? Wait till you get to one of the camps. This’ll feel like a summer vacation.’ He paused, looking at the dismal, cringing figure who saw himself, at best, as one of the living dead.

‘The boys here will be back. They’ll take your statement, your confession, and you’ll sign it. Then you’ll be up in front of a tribunal, and away you’ll go. Someone who’s had it soft, like yourself, feels bad about that, and the shame will stretch into the very heart of your family.’

For the first time, Lyko spoke, ‘I can provide information.’

‘Good. Provide it. If the information is fact, then you could get fifty years knocked off your sentence.’

‘I am one of the . . .’ he stopped, as though making a huge effort. ‘One of the Chushi Pravosudia.’

‘Really?’ Stepakov evinced surprise. ‘Who are these Chushi Pravosudia? Can’t say I know them.’

‘You know very well what I’m talking about. I can give you a lot of help. Details.’ For a second, Lyko seemed to have tapped a source of inner strength. That was good. This pitiful apology for a human being had found some self-respect.

‘You can give me names?’

‘Names are difficult. But I can give operational procedures; organisation; methods and, best of all, what Chushi Pravosudia is really doing.’

‘Go on then. Talk.’

Little dusty-haired Lyko shook his head. The moment of courage seemed to have put new life into him. ‘I’ll talk to you, even work with you, only if charges are dropped.’

Stepakov slowly got up and began to walk towards the door. Then he turned back. ‘If you have good information about Chushi Pravosudia, you’ll give it to the interrogators here and they will pass it on to me. They’re very good at that kind of thing.’