Man From Barbarossa

9

LYKO’S LITTLE ADVENTURE

Stepakov’s effusive greeting and his previous description left none of them in any doubt that the man brought in by Alex was Vladimir Lyko. Indeed, he was almost a caricature of an academic: for one thing, his shabby jacket had leather patches on the elbows, the Western badge of office within the groves of academia. His whole appearance was untidy, a person divorced from the real world, small, cowed, a grey man. Yes, Bond realised, this was the archetypal grey man – the ideal spy – one who had difficulty in catching a waiter’s eye. That was the old definition of the perfect agent. So here he was, the immaculate dissembler, moving into the room.

As Stepakov embraced him, the professor seemed to shrink back as though embarrassed by this show of affection, and his eyes bore that restless quality associated with someone who has suddenly been released from the prison of a library, the jail of study, and is now blinking in the unaccustomed sunlight of the real world.

‘My former prisoner,’ Stepakov boomed, all his heartiness up and operating at full strength, the lick of hair falling across his forehead, the long, clownish face frozen in a look of surprise, eyebrows arched and mouth split like a watermelon segment. ‘My former prisoner, now my long-term penetration agent within Chushi Pravosudia.’ He gave everyone the benefit of the major smile, ushering the small, nervous figure on to centre stage, talking as he did so. ‘Professor Vladi Lyko has much to say. You will be given a chance to question him afterwards, but you, Captain Bond, and you, Pete Newman,’ pause and a laugh, finger stabbing the air in their general direction, ‘you should realise his is the only true briefing you will receive. He has the answers, if you have the questions.’

The dusty-haired little professor cleared his throat, hands moving forward as though to arrange lecture notes on an invisible lectern. When he realised there were neither notes nor lectern, he dropped his arms and, for a few seconds, did not know what to do with his hands. He cleared his throat a second time, then started in with a confidence that seemed at odds with his appearance. He spoke in English, clear and precise, with the hint of a South London accent.

‘General Stepakov will have told you part of my story,’ he began, glancing up, his eyes almost glowering and challenging the assembled company. ‘I was a fool who wanted material gain offered to me by the Scales of Justice. When my folly was revealed, it became clear that my country, and the Party, would be best served by my working undercover.

‘Let me first explain what the general has probably hinted at. Chushi Pravosudia is a truly cunning group. In my time working for them, I have yet actually to meet another senior member of their controlling body face to face.

‘These men and women could have been trained at the greatest espionage schools in the world. During my many debriefings with General Stepakov, it’s become clear that they operate by rules so strict that the innermost cell of the organisation is always at arm’s length.’ He turned to look at Stepakov, asking if he had explained the initial recruiting methods used by the Scales of Justice.

Satisfied, Lyko continued. ‘My first duty with the organisation was, as you know, the collection and dispersal of funds, mainly in US dollars. It was during this phase that the good general showed me the error of my ways.’ Another little bow towards Stepakov.

Bond wondered how much of Lyko’s script had been written for him. In spite of his confidence, the professor seemed intent on making an apologia, a public confession which might even require a public penance.

‘I was able to carry out the duties given to me by Chushi Pravosudia very effectively, especially once the general took over my secret life. He made it easier for me to launder the funds which passed through my hands and I began to make a great impression. Within a few months, the leadership decided that I was ready to organise recruiting for them abroad. Because of my command of English.’ He gave a small self-satisfied smile and then bowed towards Nina Bibikova. ‘Not as brilliant as Nina, of course, for she has an advantage; yet I was good enough and they gave me most detailed instructions. My target would be the United Kingdom, and they were specific about the kind of people they wished to recruit. The most interesting aspect, you will probably agree, is that whenever I was required to go abroad, the necessary documents were always there for me. They were also genuine. Never first-rate forgeries. The passport and visas given to me, together with the other documents, were always the real thing. I have been out of Russia a number of times, but never with the freedom these people gave to me.

‘General Stepakov has rightly drawn attention to this. For it is another indication that Chushi Pravosudia either have powerful assistance from the authorities, or that members of the leadership are themselves high-ranking officers within the military and KGB. This concerns us greatly.’

He continued to talk for some twenty minutes on the type of persons targeted for recruitment in the United Kingdom. All were fervently left-wing in political outlook, and the accent was on assisting towards a better understanding of freedom within the Communist countries. It was also noteworthy that people with special skills were marked as high-priority objectives. Men with military experience, particularly those who had been trained for the modern electronic battlefield, also journalists, certain specialist doctors and nurses and people with experience of theatre – actors, make-up artists and designers. The reason for the inclusion of such a wide variety of specialists was hard to determine, and if the little professor was to be believed, he enrolled a fair-sized network, even though it was sprinkled with notional non-existent recruits – a trick as old as the trade itself.

‘None of us working within the general’s Banda could come up with reasons, or any logical scenario, which would call for people of such variegated abilities. However, we now stand at a most urgent point, for with the latest events there is a chance that, with your help, we can break through into the command structure and so discover the final aims of Scales of Justice. So far, the main objective, as you know, has been money – terrorist mercenary operations taken on and carried out solely for gain. You might not agree with me, but I have the distinct impression that, with this present action, we are seeing a change, a move towards some possibly ghastly end game.

‘It started,’ he told them, ‘with what Chushi Pravosudia designated Operation Daniel. The prime object was to shame the Soviet President and the Central Committee into mounting a full-scale war crimes trial similar in nature to the Eichmann case. When Adolf Eichmann was finally tried in Israel back in 1961/62, the world applauded, and saw the trial and subsequent execution as true justice. It was put to me in very clear terms,’ Lyko continued, ‘that the arrest of Josif Vorontsov, formerly a Russian citizen, and his return to the Soviet Union would force the Kremlin to conduct a fair and absolute trial against a war criminal who was guilty of committing appalling crimes against Russian Jews during World War II. The very fact of a trial would signal to the world that the Central Committee – the Government of the USSR – was serious, and that its attitude of active and passive anti-Semitism had changed. For me, it began when I was informed, in a message brought to me at night, that the criminal Vorontsov was about to be arrested and brought back to Russia. This was a week before Joel Penderek was abducted in America.’

Carefully, Lyko went through the various stages of Operation Daniel. The abduction, followed by Chushi Pravosudia’s demand and deadline. ‘Naturally, I knew nothing of the operational arrangements,’ he told them. ‘But, from the moment they alerted me to the impending kidnap, I was told to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Even before the facts were made known to the world, I was equipped with documents and tickets so that I could travel to London, make contact with two of my recruits and bring them into Helsinki prior to seeing them safely transported to Moscow. They gave me the code word Optimum. As soon as I received this word, I was to follow rigid procedures.’ He looked closely at Bond and then turned his eyes on Natkowitz. ‘I received Optimum on the day after the deadline was delivered to the Kremlin, and there are two impressions which have remained vividly in my mind. I stress that they are only impressions and I cannot back them up with any hard facts. First, I am ninety-nine per cent certain that Chushi Pravosudia is not being paid to carry out this Operation Daniel. In other words, this is not another piece of contract terrorism but something devised solely by the organisation. It is as though much of the money made from previous acts of terrorism is now being used solely for a long-term plan. Secondly, I believe that the inner circle of leadership fully expected their demands to be rejected by the Kremlin. That rejection, as you all know, came yesterday. It was followed at great speed by a political assassination. General Stepakov agrees with me on these points and we both await a further act of terrorism in the name of the Scales of Justice – probably within the present twenty-four hours.

‘Now, it is very important for you to understand that at this moment, as far as my controllers in Chushi Pravosudia are concerned, I am not in Russia, but sitting in the comfort of the Hotel Hesperia in Helsinki, waiting for our British contacts to join me.’ For the first time he smiled in a way which indicated that inside the reserved, serious, somewhat self-important shell, there was humour in the man.

‘The British recruits are, in fact, hidden not far from here. Yet, when Chushi Pravosudia contact me, as they do practically every day, they firmly believe that I am still in Finland.’ He gave them a bold, conspiratorial wink. ‘Naturally, we have to thank General Stepakov for these clever deceptions, and I should tell you what has happened in some detail, for your own lives might well depend on the things we have done and the lessons that have been learned.’ He paused as though suddenly short of breath.

‘So, I went into London on Friday, December 28th last year, two days after Joel Penderek was snatched from Hawthorne, New Jersey . . .’

James Bond’s concentration did not waver. His mind, trained to seek out key words at briefings like this, had automatically picked up and logged the serious facts. In some ways he had leaped ahead and could already divine a few of the things that had happened. He listened with all his senses to what Vladimir Lyko now said, as though living the little professor’s adventure with him.

Vladimir Lyko had received a thick envelope, dropped through the letterbox of his apartment sometime during the dark hours of Christmas night. He had not made any attempt to watch for the messenger, though he knew that one of Stepakov’s Banda was probably keeping the block under surveillance. They had done so before, and to little effect. Those who carried messages for Chushi Pravosudia were usually picked off the street, or from a bar. They were people chosen at random, like winners in a sweepstake, their prize a few roubles and the assurance that they were not breaking the law. Stepakov’s people had yet to hit a jackpot of hard information concerning the random communications network. No courier was ever selected twice, and should the messages arrive by telephone, the conversation always lasted for less than two minutes. With the wire-tapping facilities of KGB, coupled with Moscow’s telephone service, a good five minutes plus was required to trace the source of an incoming call.

The package contained a thick wad of traveller’s cheques, some cash in English and Finnish notes, a valid American Express card, plus a Visa card issued by one of the major German banks, air tickets, travel documents and a passport which said Lyko was a German computer programmer. Other papers and pocket litter suggested he was en route to London for a course due to begin at the British offices of a multinational software firm, on January 2nd. Lyko’s new name was Dieter Frobe. As ever, the professor’s wife, an untidy, listless, heavy drinker, remained in the dark about her husband’s double life. She asked no questions as long as there was a good supply of Stoly in the apartment. The activator, Optimum, came, over the telephone, at 2 a.m. Friday, December 28th. The flight left at 8.40 a.m.

Herr Frobe came into Heathrow on time, passed through immigration and customs without setting off any bells or whistles, and took a taxi to one of those richly named, utilitarian hotels which litter the warren of streets around the junction of the Edgware Road and Oxford Street. This one, which he had never used before, lay behind the large department store, Selfridges. By midday, he had walked into Oxford Street itself and eaten a meal of shrimp cocktail, rump steak and trifle at an Angus Steak House near Marble Arch. At three in the afternoon he made his first telephone call, from a public box in Orchard Street.

A woman answered, her voice immediately recognisable. The moment he heard it, Lyko became obsessed with the idea that there might be a problem.

‘Can I speak to Guy?’

‘Sorry, Guy’s out. I’ll take a message . . . Hey, is that Brian?’

‘Yes, it’s Brian. Will he be long, Guy, I mean?’

‘No idea, Brian. Where’ve you been hiding yourself?’

‘Helen, I need to speak with him, it’s . . .’

‘He’s over at the Beeb. Something to do with a job. Seeing some producer who says he can use him. Is this urgent? Is it . . . ?’

‘Yes. Very urgent.’

The Beeb, Lyko knew, was the way people spoke of the British Broadcasting Corporation. He cursed, silently. If Guy was at the Beeb, heaven knew when he would be back. The Beeb often used freelance cameramen like Guy on overseas documentaries or with second units for drama series. They could call a freelance and within a couple of hours he would find himself at the other side of the country. Again Lyko told Helen that this was extremely urgent. ‘Tell him Lazarus.’ This was the activator agreed with all the British recruits. ‘We have to go tomorrow. Say I called. Just tell him, Helen.’

‘Lazarus? Really?’ Her voice had become breathy. Oh, God, he thought, Helen should have been kept out of it. He had told Stepakov that the woman was possibly a weak link. Mouthy, he had called her, meaning she was insecure. Stepakov said that was Chushi Pravosudia’s problem.

‘Can he phone you? I’ll get him to give you a bell the minute he gets in.’ She was obviously excited, knowing her lover was committed to the cause of a new Communist freedom. You could sense that she felt Lazarus also included her.

‘No. I have to be out,’ he said, very quickly. ‘Out now, in fact. But this is urgent. Ask him to stay by the dog, would you?’ Lyko was particularly proud of this last. As often as not, someone from South London would call the telephone the dog. Rhyming slang, dog and bone, phone.

‘I walked along Oxford Street, turned left, and made my way through to Marylebone High Street,’ he told the silent, slightly cynical audience in the sterile room below the Russian forest. ‘Give them the tradecraft,’ Stepakov had instructed him. ‘Don’t elaborate. They’ll want to hear you did the job well. These people believe in the rituals. They’re old Cold War veterans and won’t be impressed by your usual flamboyant lecture style. And no shoddiness, Vladi. Understand?’

So he said nothing of what was going on in his head. Nothing about the pain of coming to England and only spending time in London. Lyko had learned, studied and taught English for the best part of his life. He loved, lived, and breathed Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott, the poets Wordsworth and Shelley. He had even instilled a love for Shelley in the clown-faced Stepakov. In England he wanted to visit the libraries, the old sites. He wanted to take a train to Stratford-upon-Avon and see the views that Shakespeare had seen. His mind was always on the great writers and poets when he was in England, but he told them none of this.

Lyko walked on into Marylebone High Street where he used another public telephone to call George. George was in and said, ‘Yes, yes, of course. God, I thought this would never come. When do we leave?’

‘As soon as I can get hold of Guy.’

‘I’ll stay in. Let me know as soon as you’ve got it organised.’

‘I’ll call you sometime tonight.’

Lyko walked back into Oxford Street, hailed a cab and asked to be dropped at the Hilton. He had not spotted the surveillance, but knew it would be there. Stepakov’s people were good, and they were everywhere. He relied on them to pick up any watchers Chushi Pravosudia might have on his back. There had never been any sign of people following him, and Stepakov’s men and women had come almost to second guess the little professor. They certainly knew his haunts and his morals. He had given no signal of success, so they would probably be in the Curzon Street/Shepherd Market area before him. ‘All the time,’ he told them in the sterile room, ‘I doubled back. I lingered at shop windows. I detected no surveillance. I even spent half-an-hour in the Selfridges department store. People were returning gifts that were sub-standard, or broken. I saw a lot of women returning underwear.’ A schoolboy snigger. ‘Then I checked the street again.’

In telling the story, the professor was as honest as possible, though he clouded the next hour and a half by simply stating baldly, ‘I went with a whore to pass the time.’

There was a splutter from Stepakov who was well aware of the way in which Vladimir Lyko passed the time with whores. He did it regularly on Chushi Pravosudia money whenever he got out of the country. His favourite was a tall black girl with immense breasts who worked the Shepherd Market area blatantly, unconcerned by the laws that banned prostitutes from the streets. Stepakov knew all about her. How they called her Shiner, and how she specialised in helping men like Lyko live out their fantasies. Stepakov’s people had even bugged her little work apartment near Curzon Street and heard her tell of the client who liked to crawl around on all fours while she pelted him with oranges. He even brought the oranges with him while she provided the strange leather underwear on which he insisted. Stepakov considered this a great waste of oranges and was pleased that Lyko’s sexual fantasies were more comprehensible. Why, he could supply Vladi with lastochka who owned whips and chains, right there in Moscow.

By six on that bitter cold evening, the professor was back in Oxford Street and called Guy again, from another telephone kiosk. This time the cameraman was in, and elated by the news. They set up the meet for Gatwick airport the following afternoon.

‘Where’re we going?’ Guy asked.

‘You’ll see soon enough. Tomorrow. Three o’clock.’

The professor glossed over the following hours, leaping ahead to the next afternoon. ‘Here it began to get difficult. Helen turned up with the two men. They all insisted on her being with them. I had no papers for her. No visa. Nothing.’

This was real trouble. His instructions were clear. You will bring in the cameraman and sound assistant, they had told him. Now the two major players would not move without Helen who had often worked with them in the past. They argued that she was one of the team, so Lyko aborted that day’s departure, returned to London and made a crash call to Sweden.

At ten o’clock the following morning a special delivery reached him at the hotel, direct from Stockholm. These people were very efficient. He thought they must have prepared documents for all the recruits, for the package contained a visa stamp and extra papers for Helen.

‘You must understand that Chushi Pravosudia recruits from Britain, or anywhere else, were to use their own valid passports. They provided visas and other control documents. I was very concerned about being watched, because they seemed to have everything so tightly sewn up. Knew everything. So I made the next move quickly.’

He telephoned Sweden again, saying he was heading into place. Helsinki. The group would follow as he instructed them. They met at Gatwick, and he gave them the tickets, all rescheduled by telephone, once more from a public kiosk.

He flew out to Helsinki that night, direct by Finnair from Heathrow. Stepakov’s people picked him up at Vantaa. ‘The most delicate part was about to begin. If we pulled it off, we would be very close to penetrating the Scales of Justice’s inner circle.’

The man who checked into the Hesperia Hotel under the name Dieter Frobe was not Lyko, but a trusted Stepakov agent, a former First Chief Directorate field agent who physically resembled the professor. They had briefed him thoroughly, and it was this man – in the sterile room they simply called him Dove – who had next made a crash call to the Swedish number, telling them there was a hold-up. The pigeons, he said, had been delayed. He would let them know as soon as they started to fly.

‘Sweden appeared to accept this calmly at first.’ Lyko was standing straighter, occasionally walking up and down as he went through the story of his little adventure. ‘By two days ago they had started to get frantic.’

‘We need the pigeons. We need them now.’ The voice from Sweden was sharp, commanding.

‘It’s no fault of mine,’ Dove told them, whining and laying it on with a trowel. ‘I’ve ordered them. It is a domestic matter. Be patient.’

‘The window is not large,’ by which they meant there was a serious time-scale problem, a window of opportunity.

The people whom Dove talked of as the pigeons were, in fact, long gone. All three, two men and a woman.

Lyko waited for them as they came off the Finnair flight from London. There was a car outside, he told them. He even helped them with the luggage. ‘We must make a short helicopter trip,’ he said.

‘Never been in a helicopter.’ Helen was more excited than the others, and was almost like a child once they were in the car which took them to the private flying area at the far corner of Vantaa airport.

The chopper was a big Mil Mi-26 with Aeroflot markings. The Finns were quite used to Aeroflot making unscheduled flights in and out. As always, they had co-operated with the request for his flight plan.

‘They suspected nothing.’ Lyko meant the ‘pigeons’ and gave a self-satisfied smirk. ‘Within three hours we were here, or within a few miles from here.’ He turned deferentially to Stepakov who motioned him to one side as though swatting an insect out of the way.

‘Captain Bond, Mr Newman, you will now become Guy and George. Nina would pass as an English girl anywhere, being half-Scottish. That is correct, yes?’ Bond nodded, and Stepakov laughed. ‘I read bad English sometimes. Some people say Scotch.’

‘Which is a drink,’ Bond supplied grittily. Concern, the possibility of duplicity and a regiment of problems had already marched through his mind.

‘Right, Scotch is a drink. You won’t see much Scotch where you’re going, I fear, Captain Bond. Chushi Pravosudia have instructed that you should be at the Dom Knigi bookshop on Kalinina Prospect at seven thirty tonight. All three of you will enter and purchase a copy of Crime and Punishment – apt, huh? You will linger for a short time, and then leave. If contact is not made, there is a fallback at Arbat restaurant, nine o’clock. We shall be following you all the way. I have enough forces at my disposal to make absolutely certain that you are tracked wherever they take you. Now,’ he put his head back and glanced from one to the other, ‘you must have many questions. You have also to spend time getting to know Nina, and we have to talk about signals, codewords and the usual trappings of an operation like this. There is much to do before seven thirty when you enter the most secret circle of the Scales of Justice. Questions?’

As James Bond opened his mouth to frame his initial concern, he knew they were in over their heads.

‘What if you lose us?’ He wanted to let Stepakov know he was not happy with the small amount of information. He wanted the Russian to feel he was anxious, if only to make the man more fearful, to pause and reflect. He repeated. ‘What if you lose us?’

‘Then you will be – what is the English slang? You will be in dead lumber? Is this correct?’

Bond nodded. ‘I’m not ecstatic about the dead part. And what of our two French friends?’

‘What indeed?’ Stepakov made his clownish features go blank.

Then Natkowitz spoke, leaning back, looking lazy and unperturbed. ‘Before we take this on, can you tell us your own assessment of the situation? The general objective of the Scales of Justice? What they expect to accomplish?’

There was a long pause during which Bond counted to ten.

‘Yes,’ Stepakov’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘Operation Daniel might hold a clue. I think Chushi Pravosudia are planning what terrorists nowadays call a world-shattering spectacular, and I think you, and Captain Bond, and Nina here are going to be at the vortex of that spectacular. It might be that they know exactly what we’re doing. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re pulling our strings. Does that help you, Mr Peter Natkowitz? Please let’s dispense with the Newman rubbish.’