where gossips tweak at lace curtains and watch with glee while lovers and petty villains go through sly charades, obvious for all to see. Tradecraft for the sake of tradecraft, an experienced instructor had told Bond years before, eventually becomes a nervous tic.
All the time, Stepakov maintained his people would have them covered. ‘However fast
During the late afternoon, while they were getting their various items of gear together, Bond, dressed in his outdoor cold-weather clothes, excused himself and made for the nearest bathroom.
He checked the place as well as possible, screening himself from any mirrors, examining walls and ceiling for any hint of the pinhole lens of a fibre optic camera. When he was satisfied, he unzipped the inner lining of his parka, found the hidden studs and opened the lining which contained a miniature shortwave transmitter, complete with a tiny tape recorder, all held in place by strong velcro straps. From the lining of the parka’s hood he removed a notebook-size computer, no larger than a deck of cards, and half the thickness of a packet of cigarettes. There was no form of disk drive in the notebook computer. All the programs were stored on tiny chips. There was, however, a space at the back which accommodated a minute tape recorder.
Sliding the minicassette into place, he switched on the battery-powered notebook, then carefully typed in a message, using his fingernails to hit the keys accurately. The tape slowly moved, copying his input. When he completed the message, he rewound the tape, returned the notebook computer to its hiding place and put the tape back into the transmitter, which he set to the required frequency before that was also slipped back into the parka’s lining.
He made a last check, to be sure his finger could reach the concealed transmitter. Then he went back to join the others.
They left at around four thirty, and it was only when they reached the suburbs of Moscow that Bond slid his hand into the parka. He pressed the transmit button as they passed through Vosstanya Square with the barbarous twenty-four-storey building, the Gastronome grocery store, lit but empty, with little on its shelves, the cinema with a dejected line of people waiting for the next performance. The Vosstanya, he remembered, had been one of the great sites for barricades during the Revolution. He wondered how the old comrades of 1905 and 1917 viewed this tawdry, ugly place now.
He was certain the range would be right as the sudden two-second squirt-transmission leaped silently and invisibly into the air, guided straight to the heart of the British Embassy. He wondered what good it would do, and whether anyone really cared.
‘We’re half-an-hour early, what shall I do?’ Lyko asked, sudden panic in his voice as they came up to the Dom Knigi, Moscow’s famous bookshop.
‘Keep on driving, Vladi,’ Nina snapped. She could have been talking to an unresponsive horse.
‘Someone’ll pick us up, if we just drive around aimlessly. I’ll let you out.’
‘Drive!’ she all but shouted. ‘But don’t drive aimlessly. Do what you’ve been taught. Do a couple of blocks to the left, then go west again another two blocks. God, Vladi, hasn’t Bory taught you anything?’
The professor hunched over the wheel and did not speak again until, at just before seven thirty, they drew up in front of the shop.
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,
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
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
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
