Man From Barbarossa

‘Course not. Sit down and go through it with us. I want the minutiae.’

So he talked, giving them the whole story from the moment Wilson Sharp fielded Bond’s squirt-transmission until it was over. They put a spiral-bound map of Moscow and environs on the table for him to trace every move, and M constantly interrupted. He had said he wanted the trivia and he pressed for it – other cars in the vicinity, the exact holding patterns Meadows had driven while trying to lock on.

‘The MVD surveillance vans,’ M growled. ‘You get their numbers?’

Meadows surprised himself by rattling off the licence plates without even thinking. That kind of thing was second nature to a good field man. In training, at the SIS prep school, they spent hours playing a complicated version of Kim’s Game – the one where a tray of objects was uncovered for a minute, then the subject was asked to write a list of everything on the tray. In their field games they learned mnemonics to aid memory and stored away licence and telephone numbers like jackdaws.

M circled his finger around the streets Nigsy had driven with the minder, Dave Fletcher. ‘You went quite close to the Moscow State University. That annexe they have downtown, not the main buildings out in Leninsky Gory.’

‘Within a block, yes.’

‘Nothing untoward? No oddities? Cars driving in a strange manner?’

‘Everyone was moving slowly. At times it snowed quite hard.’

‘You didn’t see an ancient Zil?’ M repeated a plate number, and Meadows shook his head.

‘You were very near to a violent death. Did they report a murder before you left Moscow?’

‘Not that I know. There are always murders in Moscow. Every night. It’s getting like Washington.’

M grunted.

‘Something special?’ Nigsy asked.

‘A professor in English from the university had half his face blown off. Sitting in a parked car. Man called Lyko. Vladimir Ilich, if I’ve got it right. It’s possible he was the driver who brought them into town for the contact. The Scales of Justice have done another one as well.’

‘They seem to keep their promises.’

‘This was a double event, as they say. One of the foreign policy advisers. They garotted him and his wife right in their dacha. It was his day off.’

‘What a way to spend a vacation.’ Meadows had always been prone to making sick remarks which slipped out before he could stop them.

M scowled at him, his faced twisted like a man who has tasted spoiled fish. ‘They scrawled Chushi Pravosudia over the mirror with the woman’s lipstick. I blame these serial-killer films for all the sensationalism.’ Then he turned to Bill Tanner. ‘I think we should ask Bory to come up. Make sure he knows we had no ulterior motive in keeping him waiting. I’d hate him to think we were pulling a psyop on him.’ By psyop, M meant psychological operation.

While Tanner was away, M told Meadows whom they were about to meet. ‘Boris Ivanovich Stepakov,’ he filled in the details, ‘head of their counterterrorist department. Lives outside the law, as it were. Reports only to the top. Has no dealings with the rest of the KGB. None of his files are on Centre’s mainframe computers. This is the man who asked for our help, and I trust him eighty per cent of the way.’

‘What about the other twenty per cent?’ Meadows asked.

‘We must always leave room for doubts. If there were no X factors, we would be obsolete. Accountants could do our work.’

‘I sometimes think accountants are taking over the world.’

‘Perhaps they are,’ M replied, and at that moment Bill Tanner returned, bringing with him the tall man with the long clownish face and a lick of blond hair which he constantly kept brushing back from his forehead.

‘You mind if I smoke?’ Boris Stepakov pulled a packet of Marlboro from the pocket of his shabby crumpled suit and lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter. The lighter had the sword and shield KGB crest affixed to one side in gold and red. Stepakov threw it in the air and caught it. ‘A friend brought it in from LA,’ he laughed. ‘We couldn’t get such a thing, not even in the new Russia. Anyway, the crest is incorrect. We’ve removed the sword.’

‘Yes, but for how long?’ M asked.

Stepakov shrugged. ‘Who knows? History teaches us that man is basically a psychopath. He never learns. This is why history is circular. One day the sword will return.’

He did not want to talk in the hotel suite, and they understood that, for it was against all his training, so they went outside and walked along the quay in front of the hotel. M’s people surrounded them at a distance and Stepakov’s two men – the street fighter and the one who looked like Tweedledum – stayed very close, though just out of earshot.

‘We also tried to follow them,’ Stepakov said. ‘We had vans and two surveillance teams followed you,’ he nodded towards Nigsy Meadows. ‘The helicopter was large and powerful, a new version of the Mil Mi-12. What NATO calls a Homer. Its range is nearly seven hundred kilometres. They were very efficient. They even took out the man who drove your agents into Moscow.’

‘Mine, and yours, Bory.’ M had his head down as a chill wind blew along the quay. ‘You also infiltrated the operation.’

Stepakov nodded, then continued. ‘Lyko was murdered within half-an-hour of the drop, which means Chushi Pravosudia have close inside knowledge. It is also clear their links go right into the military and, almost certainly, as I have feared, KGB itself. Probably the Politburo and Central Committee also. But I still hold strong cards. There is a man, one of my men, who works deep within the military air traffic control. I think we have the flight plan of the Homer. Therefore, I think I know where they are.’

‘Out of Russia? Somewhere not far from here? One of the Scandinavian countries?’

Stepakov shook his head. ‘No, they are in Russia. But only just. In the forests close to the Finnish frontier. In the Arctic Circle.’

He told them the exact location. Two years ago, he continued, the Red Army had started to build a luxury hotel protected by forest high in the Arctic Circle. It was to have been used for officers of the special forces who do much training there under harsh winter conditions. ‘It was never completed – one of those things phased out even though a fortune had been spent, and many people had been relocated to work in the place. The army calls it the “Lost Horizon”. Intourist didn’t really want it, but it was passed to them. They did nothing. The staff lived there, but it was not a functional, going concern. Then Mosfilm asked to use it for a movie. They had many technicians flown up. A few stayed. I suspect these people are still there. Some, I believe, are controlled by Chushi Pravosudia. It makes a wonderful safe house. I should imagine they’re holding the poor Mr Penderek up there.’

‘Can we mount any kind of rescue from here?’ M asked, as though he already knew the answer.

‘I doubt if we can mount a rescue from anywhere. The only way in is by helicopter until the spring. The place is isolated. It looks like a monastery from the Middle Ages, but built of wood, not stone.’

‘Have you no way?’

Stepakov shrugged, tossing his head, holding it against the breeze as though to let the wind run through it to tame the unruly lock which fell across his forehead. ‘Only if I can convince some Spetsnaz senior officer to go – how do you say it? Out on a limb?’ The Spetsnaz are the Soviet Troops of Special Designation. The real elite, equal to SAS or Delta. Once more, Stepakov tossed his head in the wind. ‘But they are controlled by GRU, Military Intelligence.’

‘You have no levers?’ M’s voice was suddenly urgent. Stepakov shook his head.

‘I might be able to help you there.’ This time M sounded almost self-satisfied.

Several years before, James Bond had travelled to Los Angeles with orders to kill a man. This was both unusual and highly illegal in the great game played by superpowers. Contrary to popular belief, intelligence services are not in the assassination business, for it is counter-productive. If you know about an agent, or the leader of some network, there are more sophisticated things you can do to neutralise the threat. The first rule, however, is, better to live with the enemy you know than remove him with violence and risk a more cunning, undiscovered person succeeding him.

Certainly there have been revenge killings, but they are squalid affairs. Yes, there was foolish talk by officers of the CIA, putting up many ridiculous ways in which Fidel Castro could have been assassinated. But, in the main, killing is not an option.