Man From Barbarossa

HÔTEL DE LA JUSTICE

Greg Findlay, the SIS resident head of Moscow Station had limited resources at his disposal. While there was a natural tincture of resentment over a former resident, Nigsy Meadows, being attached to the embassy to run Fallen Timbers at his own discretion, Greg was duty bound to give Meadows all possible ‘assistance, succour and help’, as they described it in the textbook jargon. His two juniors, with second secretary cover, did not have need-to-know, so could not be used. Nigsy, however, had pleaded for two of the resident’s four minders. The minders did any dirty work, from the occasional pick-up, to emptying dead-drops, to babysitting, guarding, or even flushing out the competition. Certainly the Cold War was officially over, but you did not abandon regular operations overnight.

Findlay wondered what the Americans were about when he heard reports that certain senators and congressmen actually wanted to disband the CIA. That lunatic measure, he confided in anyone who would listen, was like removing a burglar alarm from your house in Mayfair because the police had caught one thief in Kensington. There were also strange claims being made in much-praised novels about a close co-operation between SIS and KGB. He prayed it was not so. By the shades of Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond, this would have been catastrophic folly on a grand scale.

Findlay also had at his disposal four cipher clerks who dealt with routine embassy work as well as performing extramural activities for the SIS resident. This quartet had to be closely involved with Fallen Timbers, and one of them, Wilson Sharp, was there to field the first catch.

Sharp had the swing shift – four to midnight – so had been on duty for less than three hours when the squirt-transmission came in, a few seconds after six thirty-five. There was no surprise when the needles flicked and the warning went off in his headset. He punched the rewind button, started a new tape on the secondary channel on the main receiver and picked up the telephone, all in three fast moves. Nigsy Meadows was in the communications room within seconds, snatching the tape from Sharp’s hand and going down to the electronics bubble to work the decrypt machines. Ten minutes later he had Bond’s signal en clair:

SoJ to lift self, Tackle plus Brutus’s daughter from Dom Knigi, Kalinina Prospect, seven thirty this night. Fallback nine pip emma Arbat restaurant. Switched on. Please track. Block.

Nigsy was shouting for the car and one of the minders for protection should he need it before the decrypt had finished shredding into the burn bag.

Nigsy’s own car was an old Volga he had bought on the black market during his last stint at the Moscow Embassy. He could have used one of the many British cars in the pool – in fact as SIS resident he was allotted a splendid Rover – but Nigsy felt less visible in the Volga. He had spent much of his spare time working on the vehicle, replacing engine parts and making it generally more roadworthy. When they had moved him on to Tel Aviv, Nigsy had put the Volga in mothballs as he knew some day soon he would return.

His priority, after arriving in Moscow, had been to check out the Volga, draw the dodgy equipment that had been shipped in under diplomatic seal, and install it in the vehicle. The Volga came out of the embassy gates just after seven. It was logged by the KGB surveillance team, who still carried out the routine, in spite of the official cancellation of Cold War activities. They immediately fingered the driver as Bolkonsky Two, their identifier for the former resident, together with a member of the British boyevaya gruppa – their own outdated jargon for a combat team used as a hit squad – riding shotgun.

Even in the snow, which came and went like a tide, Nigsy drove just within the speed limit, turning left, then right, doubling back to get on to the Kamenny Bridge. He could see the floodlit gold onion domes of the Kremlin rising up to his right, for the Kamenny Bridge provides one of the best views of the Kremlin. In the far corner of his mind, Meadows thought that this had once been an ancient stone bridge, the very one Dostoyevsky’s character, Raskolnikov, crossed on that sultry July afternoon in the opening chapter of Crime and Punishment. Everyone did a course of Russian literature, among other things, before being posted to the USSR, but Nigsy’s thought could have been put down to some kind of ESP, for he knew nothing of Bond’s task that night, to buy Crime and Punishment at Dom Knigi.

Years previously he had worked with Bond in Switzerland. Together they had set up a snare for a Soviet agent engaged in laundering money for pay-offs to support networks being organised in the United Kingdom. They had become close, and Meadows often thought he had learned more about fieldwork from the six months in Berne than from any other experience. He had an affinity for Bond which had lasted through the years and prided himself that he could read 007 like an ophthalmologist’s chart at two paces.

They reached Kalinina Prospect via Marksa Prospect, skirting the hill topped by the old Pashkov Palace, now the Lenin Library, its circular belvedere just visible through the snow. As they made the first sweep, Meadows saw a grey MVD security van parking about a hundred metres from the bookshop and another one further down the street. They had all the telltale signs of watchers’ vans – the tall, thick aerials and mirror windows at the rear.

He spoke rapidly to the minder, Dave Fletcher, as they drove, telling him what to look for, describing Bond, giving him the possible location in which the agent might be spotted. He circled the area in imprecise patterns, first left, then right, then doubling back and making an approach from a different direction, knowing he could not keep this up for long, as the MVD vans almost certainly had the licence number of the Volga from the embassy watchers. He did not want the vehicle stopped and scrutinised. It bore no CD plates, in direct contravention of standing orders, and he was also carrying highly illegal electronics – a modified Model 300 receiver, originally made by Winkelmann Security Systems of Surrey – adapted for field use by Service electronics wizards in London.

One of the buttons on Bond’s parka contained a micro-transmitter, a strong homing device designed to talk only with this particular receiver, or one of its clones. The bleep came up just as Meadows thought it was time for them to be safe rather than sure. It showed that Bond was somewhere off to the right of them, behind Kalinina Prospect, moving at around thirty kilometres an hour.

‘You read it,’ he told Fletcher. ‘Just tell me which way to go.’

They lost the signal five times over the next half-hour, but on each occasion it came up again, moving faster now and heading out of the city, going east. By nine o’clock they were out in the countryside, Meadows worrying that they might have problems getting back to the embassy. The snow was thickening, though the signal remained strong. Then, unexpectedly, the track changed, moving very fast indeed, coming towards them as though on a collision course.

Somewhere above the engine noise in the car they both heard the heavy thrum of helicopter motors.

Meadows cursed as he watched helplessly. Within three minutes the signal went out of range, travelling north-west. A couple of hours later, back at the embassy, he checked with Findlay to make certain the ambassador would not wish to know about the operation, and sat down to cipher an ‘eyes only’ to M. All his experience told him that the Scales of Justice almost certainly had Bond out of Russia by now. M’s detailed briefing, delivered in the main by Fanny Farmer in Tel Aviv, had suggested as much. ‘The Old Man doesn’t believe for one moment that these jokers have their main base anywhere near Moscow,’ Farmer had said. ‘His bet is on one of the Scandinavian countries, though it might be even further away.’

If M was on the ball – and when was he not? – Nigsy Meadows thought there would be a flash priority for him to get himself elsewhere first thing in the morning.

James Bond returned to consciousness like a man waking from a perfectly normal doze. There were none of the usual side-effects. No floating to the surface. No dry throat, fuzzed vision or disorientation. He was deeply unconscious one minute and wide awake the next. He smelled wood, and for a second, thought he was back in the relative safety of the dacha. Then his brain leaped again. This was not the same polished scent. This was more like lying in a pine forest. The pleasant odour of the wood enveloped him and he wondered if this was some strange aftereffect of chemicals. He knew they had used some form of drug. He saw the pavement and the car, like a limo, pulling up, heard the giggling of the girls and, clear in his head, a picture of the two young men. He even recalled the glimpse of a female leg, encased in a tight-fitting black leather boot, then Nina’s head slumping onto his lap.

There was no sense of urgency. Bond simply lay there, smelling the wood and sifting through his last memories. Then he recalled the dreams – the incredible colours and the mists swirling around him as he levitated, the great waves of sound as though he were on a beach shrouded in this multicoloured fog with the roar of the sea he tried to see by peering through the murk. It was all real, immediate and vivid in his mind. He could almost believe it had happened. He seldom remembered dreams, so was surprised at the clarity of these images.

He heard the voices, urgent, shouting, over the noise of rolling breakers which came ever closer. He had felt himself being lifted up as though floating on an agitated sea. There was no fear of drowning, even when his body was picked up and slammed down again in the boiling ocean. This had gone on in his dream for some time, then suddenly the bumping stopped and quiet came. After that there were moments of erotic awareness, as though his body were wrapped around that of a woman he could neither see nor hear. He had dreamed of the sexual act, knowing that he was performing it with someone for whom he felt great warmth and affection.

The ceiling above him was made of wood, untreated, not finished or varnished, simply plain pine worked into smooth planks which waited to be sealed and painted. Distantly he was aware that the scent emanated from the ceiling and, probably, from other parts of this unfinished room.

Automatically he tried to sit up, and this was the moment when Bond realised all his faculties had not been released from whatever they had inserted into his body. His brain and vision had been returned to him, but his limbs remained captive. It was a strange, not unpleasant, feeling, one which he accepted without really questioning the final outcome.

There was no sense of time passing, so he could not tell how quickly the memories of his dreams altered and became more substantial, but it seemed as though, quite suddenly, he knew some of the memory was not a dream.

The coloured swirling mist had been snow, with blue, green and red lights refracted through the whirl of flakes. He had not levitated. Strong arms had lifted him. The increasing sound of the sea was the steady engine noise of a large helicopter, and the voices were those of the crew, and others, who were strapping him down inside the body of the craft. The roller-coaster ride on the sea was the helicopter flight. Into his mind now came clear pictures, flashes of Pete Natkowitz and Nina Bibikova within the metal hull of a large Medevac chopper.

Lastly, he realised the erotic dream had been no dream. There had, indeed, been drug-induced sex, though he had no clear picture of his partner.

It was as he was pondering this last truth that Bond felt the chemical begin to leave his body, slipping from muscles and flesh, moving downwards. He thought this must be like death in reverse. Does death sometimes take you slowly, so that you feel each part of your physical make-up sliding away until the final enemy, the brain death, overcomes everything, plunging you into the seamless darkness? The unknowing?

He moved a hand, then started to reflex, lifting his head, and finally sitting up, propping himself on one elbow.

The room was large, high with a single, wide, arched window reaching up and almost covering one entire wall. Everything was in the same smooth, unfinished pine, even the long dressing table with mirrors set deeply into the wall behind it. There was a circular table and chairs, two stand chairs at the table and three cushioned chairs with long curving backs. The design of the room and everything in it, from the chairs to the bed on which he was now lying, was modern, functional and very Scandinavian. Not that this meant anything. The Russians had used the Scandinavian countries to supply furniture and design for many of their new hôtels.

He took in the size of the room, the doors – one leading to a bathroom – and the big window, before his mind began to monitor the bed itself, a great king-sized creation, a boxed framework holding a firm comfortable mattress. It somehow did not come as a shock to realise that someone else lay next to him on the bed, or that they were both naked.

Nina Bibikova was stretched out beside him, her large dark eyes dancing with pleasure and her mouth trembling as it puckered into a smile. Neither of them felt embarrassment, and he saw that she lowered her eyes to search his own body just as he also raked her nakedness. She was on her back, the long legs slightly apart, one bent at the knee as though by way of invitation. For a second he took in the dark pelt at the apex of her thighs, then the smooth curve of her belly, with a neat, almost finicky dimple of a navel, and then to her breasts which thrust upwards to the deep dark aureoles and erect pink nipples like wild raspberries. They did not flatten and spread as the breasts of many women do when they lie flat on their backs. Nina’s were firm, poised and hardly moved as she shifted her position.

It was Nina to whom he had made love at some point before his body – could it have been both their bodies – became trapped into immobility?

‘Good morning, darling.’ She spoke in the same, almost upper-crust, English she had used at the dacha. ‘Sleep well?’ As she said it, Nina turned on her side, still holding him with her eyes, one hand close to her face, a finger raised, making an almost imperceptible circle, the warning they all used to signify son et lumière, sound and light, audio and video bugs.

‘Like a log. We’ll have to sweep the bark out of the bed.’ He was immediately aware that he was supposed to be Guy, the cameraman, and she was Helen. He raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Where are we?’

The Russian girl devoured him with her eyes. ‘No idea, Guy. But wherever it is, we’re very comfortable. They said there would be a job to do, so I reckon this is where we do it.’ Her hand went to his loins, practised, her fingers knowing and experienced.

At the rap on the door, they flung themselves apart as if they were guilty lovers. Bond called out as the double rap was repeated, then lunged from the bed, looking around for something to cover his body. Their backpacks were placed side by side against one of the more comfortable chairs. They were still fastened as though nobody had touched them or examined the contents. Then he spotted two towelling robes laid out on a long stool at the foot of the bed.

‘Just a moment,’ he called out, as he threw one to cover Nina’s nakedness and wrapped his body in the other, pausing again by the door to ask, ‘Who is it?’

‘Breakfast.’ A male voice, accented, though he could have been from anywhere – Spain, Italy, France.

Bond wondered which one of them had slipped the safety chain in place the previous night. The wood on the door was as smooth as Nina’s skin. He felt it with his palms and then the back of his hand as he took off the chain and opened the door.

The man could have stepped straight from any major European hotel – black pants and a white jacket, swarthy, tanned, smiling and pushing a large room-service trolley.

‘ ’Ope you sleep well, sir, madam. Where you wan’ the breakfast? Over by the win’ow?’

‘That’ll be fine. Thank you.’ Bond expected him to produce a chit to be signed, but the waiter simply opened up the trolley, corrected the place settings on it, and then removed covered dishes from hot boxes stored under one end before reciting the menu. ‘You have bacon, eggs, hash-browns, tomatoes, juice, rolls, toast, confiture, coffee. This okay for you?’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘On the house. Is all on the house.’

Bond blanched slightly. Breakfast was the best meal of the day, though he normally did not eat eggs and bacon. ‘Fine,’ he lied. ‘Splendid. Where are we?’

‘Ah,’ the waiter gave him a bland smile, ‘you are in the complex we call the Hôtel de la Justice, sir. I am to tell you it will be explained.’ He paused to look at his watch. ‘You have plenty time. Is only eight thirty. Your guide will come for you at ten thirty. Is enough time, yes?’

‘Ample, yes. Thank you.’ What else could he say? Intuition told him to behave normally, as though this were an everyday occurrence. As the waiter was bowing himself out, Bond asked, ‘The building? It’s not quite finished?’

The waiter smiled and shook his head. ‘Not quite, sir. No. Soon it will be completed. It was built well, but in a short time. Eventually, they tell me, it will be splendid.’

‘Hôtel de la Splendide Justice,’ Bond muttered, half under his breath, as he looked under one of the plate covers at the pile of beautifully arranged food. ‘Come on, love.’ He grinned at Nina. In the far corner of his head, he realised that he was automatically slipping into the role of Guy, the cameraman. He even thought of the girl as Helen, his London lover, and wondered if, during the strange night journey, they had meddled with his mind.

As he began to tackle the food, he did some mental stocktaking, questioning himself at each turn. He knew exactly who he was, what his orders had been; there was total awareness of Stepakov’s plan and the swap that had been made for the three Londoners.

‘You’re very quiet, Guy?’ She was looking at him in the same disarming manner across the table.

Bond shook his head, as though to rid himself of daydreams. ‘It’s been a remarkable couple of days, Helen. Or are you used to being put under and carted to Lord knows where?’

‘Living with you, darling, has prepared me for anything. I mean messages like “Get your knickers on, we’re off to Saudi in an hour . . .” ’

‘Only once. Only once did we do a trip like that.’

‘Okay.’ She sipped coffee, then took a mouthful of bacon and eggs, a little yolk escaping from her lower lip, running down her chin so that she had to mop it off quickly with the crisp, starched white napkin. ‘Okay, so only once to Saudi . . .’ another mouthful swallowed. ‘But you’ve dashed all over the country at the drop of some producer’s whim. That’s why I was such a bitch about this trip.’ She tossed out the last sentence lightly as though laughing at herself.

Bond shrugged. He was taking his cues directly from her. It was quite possible that she had watched the tapes of the real Guy and Helen, locked away in the other dacha they heard so much about.

‘Remember when you forgot to tell me you’d left for the Hebrides?’

‘It was the Isle of Skye as I recall.’

‘Hebrides, you dolt. “Back in the morning, love,” and I’m sitting there like a lemon for three days.’

‘You knew what the job was like before you moved in. Love me, love my job. Never held out on you. Couldn’t afford to pass up work. Still can’t.’

They kept up a pretence of bickering while demolishing the bacon and eggs; then through the toast and coffee, Nina leading him like a dance partner, making sharp comments about their supposed London lifestyle, even accusing him of being in league with George, the sound tech.

‘I know George was covering for you when you were tripping the light fantastic with that dusky bit in Liverpool. George lied his head off for you. Lied to me – “He’s still working, setting up shots for the morning. Out with the director, Helen.” I know, Guy . . .’

‘There was no dusky maiden in Liverpool.’

‘No? Right. She was no maiden, Guy. But I forgave you, so you’re bloody lucky.’

Finally, she rose, leaned over and ruffled his hair, saying she was going to take a shower.

‘Well clean out your ears. That might help you to hear the truth for a change,’ Bond called out, and a few minutes later she shouted from the bathroom, asking if he’d like to scrub her back.

Naked, in the shower, they soaped each other’s bodies, standing very close. This was, possibly, the only place they could have some clandestine conversation as long as they both kept their heads turned towards the steaming tiles so that watchers could not lip read. Certainly sophisticated equipment could filter out running water which, in the old days, was a perfect foil for audio bugs, but if they whispered, there was a good chance that tiny amounts of information could be passed between them.

‘Any ideas?’ His lips brushed her ear and she shook her head, camouflaging the action as she washed away soap.

‘I don’t know where we are, but it can’t be good. The whole thing stinks.’ She had her chin resting on his shoulder, standing on tiptoe to accomplish it.

‘Really stinks?’

‘The entire operation. Bory never levelled with you. He certainly didn’t tell me everything, and my intuition says we’ve been measured for our coffins. I thought that from the moment they brought you in.’

They were able to talk like this by shielding their mouths, moving themselves so that it simply looked like lovers sharing a shower, allowing lips and ears to connect, then shift away. A couple of sentences and they would change position, soaping, turning their bodies to get the spray of the shower on one part or another. It was like a carefully choreographed, complex and strange surreal ballet.

‘You ever sit in on the interrogations?’ he asked.

‘Which ones?’

‘The real Guy and Helen – George.’

‘I didn’t even see them.’

‘Then we don’t know if they exist.’

‘I only know some of the things Lyko and Bory told me. I’ve been trying to feed you some of the audio. They let me listen to one tape.’

‘Like going to Saudi at a moment’s notice?’

‘That was on it. Bory said they argued about his work all the time. She was almost hysterically jealous. Didn’t trust him out of her sight. With good reason probably. That’s why she insisted on coming on this trip. That’s what he said. What Bory said.’

‘You offered to do the job – this job?’

‘More or less.’

‘How much more and how little less?’

‘It was a direct order, but there is another reason.’

‘What?’

She ran her face under the spray, then shook her head, allowing it to touch his cheek. ‘I want to be with my parents.’

So, he thought. Everything began to fit into place. It was as though fragments of a jigsaw, hidden away secretly in his head for years, had suddenly come together and formed at least part of a cohesive picture.

He stepped from the shower, towelled himself down, then went through to get his shaving gear from the backpack. Before leaving the dacha he had taken the usual precautions. Just before closing up the top of the pack he had lined up the rear pocket of a pair of thick jeans with a crease he had made, tacking the material lightly with cotton. There were also two thin threads, laid across one another, over the clothing.

The searchers had been careful. The threads were back almost exactly as he had laid them, but the pocket and the crease were a long way apart, and it could not have happened by accident as they were hefting the packs around.

He went to the louvred doors of a built-in closet and found his parka neatly put away on a plastic hanger. It looked as though the transmitter and notebook computer had not been detected. They were skilfully hidden. Unless you knew exactly where to get into the parka’s hood and lining, they were protected by the heavy windproofing of the garment. Nobody appeared to have played with the micro-transmitting button either. But he must assume someone had done so. At least he was not carrying a weapon. Stepakov was adamant that no weapons should be taken. Reluctantly he had left the ASP back at the dacha.

He heard the hairdryer come on in the bathroom. Certainly the Hôtel de la Justice complex was equipped with every convenience. Why, he wondered, as he pulled his toilet gear from the backpack, had they left the wood unfinished? Not enough time? Had the place been purpose-built, and the schedule had proved either too tight or was changed suddenly because of events? The questions would remain until they saw more of the building.

He paused by the window on his way back to the bathroom. Outside it was murky and dawnlike which meant they were far north, for it was almost nine fifteen. The room looked down into a kind of courtyard which had four trees set symmetrically, as though landscaped. All was covered in snow, and icicles dangled from the trees. They were some five storeys up, and the other three walls surrounding the courtyard, or garden, appeared identical. There were rows of tall arched windows like this one, sets of rooms and suites rising up to seven levels. The entire structure appeared to be wooden, carefully built on a great framework of thick beams. He could see, even in this light, that some of the beams were intricately carved. The entire exterior reminded him of something, though he could not reach over the horizon of his mind to grasp what it was. There was a familiarity about the building which he found disturbing.

Only at ground level did things change. Down there the windows were high and close, as if a wooden cloister had been preserved by glazing. There were tall arches joined along their vertexes by long carved struts. He could see lights behind these windows and caught sight of a group of people walking along a corridor – about ten men and women, carrying clipboards and talking to one another. Very normal, relaxed and civilised.

Nina was coming out of the bathroom, her hair in a towelling turban, as he went in. She stopped for a moment and put her face up to be kissed, then her arms went around him and she whispered, ‘We’re a very loving couple, I’m told.’

Twenty minutes later Bond emerged from the bathroom still wearing the robe, his face stinging from aftershave.

Nina sat at the dressing table, wearing only a clean change of underwear. She fiddled with her hair, oblivious that he watched her from the door. She was not a true beauty, he thought, but her face had incredible mobility. A lover would have to spend much time with her before he could accurately detect the sea-changes of her moods.

Now, she took a long strand of hair and pulled it down, holding it under her nose. ‘Jawohl, Herr Oberst,’ she muttered, and Bond began to laugh.

She stood and opened her arms to him. ‘Come here,’ she said, and her voice sounded as loving as any newlywed.

They held each other close. Then she guided him to the bed where he stripped her of the flimsy garments. It was a time of great passion, with Nina’s legs wrapped around him, crying out for him to be harder as they rode towards their climax.

Bond felt she needed him for some purpose of her own. A release, perhaps, from dark fears, or a way to bolster her confidence. She had, after all, told him what she really wanted – ‘. . . to be with my parents.’

She cried out as she reached fulfilment, the cry of someone who might be looking towards the last uncharted land beyond the grave.

When it was over, they were silent for some time. Bond got up at last, glancing at his watch, to see that it was almost time for their guide, as the waiter had called him, to arrive. He washed again, and dressed, still worrying at the view from the window and, at the same time, trying to arrange his thoughts.

The priorities, as he saw them, were to find out the exact location of this so-called Hôtel de la Justice, to be certain members of the inner circle, the leaders of Chushi Pravosudia, were there, then to extract, by direct observation or clandestine methods, the reasons for their presence. Lastly, armed with all this information, to get away, warn, bring down the wrath of Stepakov’s Banda upon this strange and divergent terrorist group. Maybe that would also entail calling in the secret power of his own Service.

He still stood gazing down at the high wooden structures which formed four sides of the frozen garden when Nina came up behind him, dressed now, like himself, in heavy jeans, rubber-soled boots and a thick, enveloping cable-knit pullover which threatened to swamp her. He wore one of his favourite heavy-duty sea-island cotton rollnecks under a thick denim jacket, reinforced with leather at shoulders and elbows. It was a jacket he had chosen especially before leaving London, for it carried a few surprises he was certain would not have been detected in even the most rigorous search.

‘Thank you, Guy,’ she said, one hand on his arm. He wondered for a second if the lovely Nina had any devious reason for seducing him as she had done – last night, under the influence of drugs, or this morning when all defences were down. It was too late to worry about the possible consequences now, and as he looked into her eyes, he thought he could see some great sadness lurking like a tiny, dangerous, quiescent dragon behind her irises.

Then there was a firm knock at the door, a sound as commanding as that of a drill sergeant.

Bond opened up to find Pete Natkowitz, looking very fit and bright, standing next to a tall young woman with exceptionally long legs encased in tight jeans. She had short blonde hair which had been teased into a row of curls above her forehead and he knew that this was one of the giggling trio who had pressed them into the car near the Dom Knigi on the previous night.

‘Hi, Guy.’ Natkowitz’s face was filled with a kind of devilish glee, and his short stature, topped by the unruly red hair, made him look like an errant teenager out for roguery. He nodded at Nina. ‘Morning, Helen, this is Natasha. She’s in charge of us. Going to show us where all the goodies are.’

‘We’ve already met,’ Natasha also looked as though she shared some secret with the Israeli, ‘though neither of you probably remember. George certainly didn’t.’ She looked down at Natkowitz’s perky face and her hand drifted, like a feather, tracing fingers down his jawline. ‘I think we should go.’ The hand made a small gesture towards the corridor. ‘They’ll probably be waiting for us. Clive said ten forty-five and, as a director, Clive is a martinet where time’s concerned.’

As they walked down the passageway, Bond wondered at the normality of the place. It appeared to be like any other hotel. Doors were open while maids worked inside, and you could peep into suites and rooms like the one they had just vacated – all in the same condition, the woodwork smooth and unfinished.

At the end of the corridor they came to a bank of three elevators. Three other people waited – two elderly women and a man, talking in voluble Russian.

‘I have no doubt, as I said to Rebecca,’ one of the women said. ‘He was the man. I saw him every day for almost two years. You think I could forget that one? He killed my sister. Little Zarah he killed. Shot her there in the mud because she laughed.’ Tears welled in the old eyes which seemed to look back with loathing to another place and another hated time.

‘I wish to hear him speak,’ the man replied. He was stooped, a short person who seemed bowed now with a terrible weight. ‘I am not certain, not until I hear his voice. They will let us hear his voice, surely?’

‘Most certainly,’ the other woman said, more calmly than her companions. ‘You’re both well in character. You’ve worked hard and that is good. Stay in character. Remain there the whole time, for the camera will be on your faces. It will use your expressions, eyes, mouths, to gauge the truth.’

‘I could never forget Zarah,’ the first woman said.

They did not speak again as they rode down in the elevator cage, to find themselves emerging into a large room filled with people. Most of them elderly, some of them very old. The conversation rose and fell, a babble of languages swarming around the ears.

Natasha motioned them to follow her, and Bond soon realised they were walking along the inside of the wooden well, the part which looked like a cloister. He tried to make a ground plan in his head, so he could work out exactly which way they were heading. With concentration, he divined they had traversed one wall of the four when they reached another large room, like the foyer of a hôtel. This time, though, the wall furthest from them was not a wall, but two vast metal doors. There was a small entrance, set into the doors to the right of where the doors met, and next to it, a pair of lights, red and green. The green was on and Natasha went straight for the smallest door, ushering them through.

‘Ah, here, I sincerely hope, come our blessed camera crew, and about time too, ’Tasha darling. What’ve you been doing with them? Doesn’t anybody realise we’re on the tightest of schedules here. Tighter than your little backside, ’Tasha.’ He was a tall and willowy man in dark pants and a shirt. Long hair flowed to his shoulders, his hands danced, playing invisible arpeggios on the air, and he was accompanied by three smaller men who seemed to hang on every word. They looked, Bond thought, like trained whippets ready to streak away the moment their master commanded them.

‘Come along, then, let’s all get moving. You’re Guy, I suppose.’ His small eyes looked up over a pair of granny glasses straight at Bond. ‘See, I’m right. I’m always right. I can spot a cameraman at fifty paces in me high heels. So you,’ to Natkowitz, ‘must be the sound tech.’ His head whipped round to settle his eyes on Nina. ‘Oh, but Lord knows what we’re going to do with the pretty lady, and she won’t tell, will she?’

‘Clive,’ Natasha muttered by way of introduction.

But Bond was hardly listening to this stream of words which seemed unstoppable. Instead, he was taking in the sight which had greeted them on passing through the door. The area was vast and hot from the huge lighting gantries which ran above them. Cables snaked across the floors and at the far end there was a massive set which was immediately recognisable as an immaculate replica of a real courtroom.

‘Now, Guy,’ the tone was high, peevish and irritable. ‘I hope to goodness you’ve worked with Ikegami equipment before, because if you haven’t you’re going to be no use to me.’

They stood on a very real sound stage which was almost certainly an exact copy of one of the major Hollywood studio sound stages. The only thing missing was the mass of technicians and assistants usually associated with sound stages during the shooting of movies. Only Clive, his three stooges and a handful of assorted men and women – Bond counted six – who fiddled with cables and were doing things to the lighting gantries.

Clive saw the look and plunged straight in. ‘Yes, I know, Guy dear. I do know what you’re thinking. There aren’t nearly enough people here to shoot a major movie, but it’s make do and mend time as they used to say in the navy, and I had plenty of experience both making do and mending. We just have to go with what we’ve got, and I only hope, in the name of Ossie Morris, that you’re at least competent with a camera.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Bond looked round, still taken aback by the scale of the sound stage. ‘Oh, I’m competent. Just tell me what you want and I’ll do it.’

‘Ah,’ Clive gave a little dance, two steps forward and two back. ‘Ah, so we have a pro. Thank heaven for small mercies as my old mother used to say. Now, perhaps we can get on with the bloody picture.’

‘What’s it called and have you got a shooting script?’ Bond asked.

‘No, dear. No script. We have to make it up as we go along. As for the title, weeeellll, I suppose we could call it Death of a Salesman but I suppose Arthur Miller’d be a bit miffed. Let’s make up a name – after all we are making up a movie. Let’s call it Death With Everything, because that just about sums up the plot. Grisly, dears, just too grisly.’ He gave an almost sly pout in Nina’s direction. ‘Hope you’ve got a strong tummy, dear. The people in this epic aren’t exactly your normal cosy down-memory-lane folks.’ He paused, sadly only for a quick breath. ‘These good people do go down memory lane, only all the mementos are mori, as it were. It’s as amusing as an evening with grim-visaged death, as the Bard would have said.’ He sighed, raising his eyes to heaven. ‘Lord how I miss Stratford,’ then in an aside to Bond, ‘I was there with Peter, you know. And how that boy’s got on, bless him. Get him now? Oh, well, we can’t all be visited by a good fairy in our cradles, can we? I think they let Karabos into my nursery.’

At the far end of the sound stage, people had begun to drift in, and even at a distance, a cold chill descended blotting out the heat from the lights.