Greenfly (Commander Shaw Book 18)

by Philip McCutchan

  I visualised him scarpering at speed for authority. On the other hand, he just might not – he might keep mum. He hadn’t exactly acted as a hero of the Soviet Union and he could face Siberia, even one of those coffins, if ever he confessed.

  It was desperately cold and now we were hungry. We walked fast to the end of the warehouses and then turned right because it was the only way to go. Soon we plunged into a maze of streets containing high rise flats, workers’ flats, all concrete and no charm, flat faced, utilitarian and forbidding. There were lights in windows and we saw children and mothers in the lower storeys; the fathers were probably already at work or on their way. People passed us, heads down, hurrying through the snow, mostly taking no notice of us, though those that did looked with curiosity: despite the Russian anoraks we were plainly not an integral part of the local scene.

  “We have to get out of this area,” I said to Felicity, “and not just to get away from the railway yard. We’re sticking out. Tourists won’t be coming down this way much.” I thought of the guided tours for foreigners, the earnest persons, women largely, who shepherded the curious around and moved them on before they became too interested and asked awkward questions. Where the workers lived would not be on the itineraries: Moscow had more splendid things to show – the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts on Volkhonka Street; the State L.N. Tolstoi Museum; the USSR State Museum of Revolution; the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements and a lot more besides. I recalled the Intourist blurb: Moscow had more than 150 museums, a bumper day out for bored children. Thirty theatres, plenty of cinemas, palaces of culture and concert halls. It was around those cultural parts that we had to be. There was just one snag: I was lost. I had no knowledge of this part of Moscow. And I wasn’t going to ask the way. We would have to follow our noses to the centre and then find Rybinsk Street, which was where Katrina lived. I knew more or less where that was: a side street off Baumanskya Street on the northeastern side of the city. A long trek … as we passed another high rise block an old crone dressed in seedy black leered from a bottom window, grinning toothlessly and chewing her lips, the grin seeming to say, sooner you than me. We walked on fast through the appalling snowfall and as we came past a railway station and I saw that it was the Kiyevski I realized that our truck had been uncoupled some way farther west, presumably back in the freight yards some distance from the main station.

  *

  We had walked for a long time, an arduous and hazardous trek. Beneath the snow was thick ice; around us the buildings carried more ice that would slip dangerously when the thaw came. We still carried the Ladybirds’ guns; there had been nowhere to dump them. You couldn’t go up to a rubbish bin even if we’d seen one and produce a couple of machine-pistols and casually shove them in. But by this time they were stripped down which made concealment a little easier: we had found some toilets, a ladies and a gents – few and far between in Moscow – and we’d gone into the cubicles. Everything was iced up; and the lights had been vandalised, which didn’t help, and also meant that I couldn’t read the letter and the contents of the wallet I’d removed back up the line. Anyway, from now on we would at least be able to sit down without a barrel appearing in the necks of our anoraks at an inconvenient moment.

  Felicity said she was hungry.

  “So am I,” I said. Once we had come towards the centre, all that culture, we saw eating places. But I still considered the risk too great, even though English tourists could be presumed to eat. There was no point in sticking our necks out at this stage. I said mendaciously, “Not far now. We can eat when we get there.”

  That was when we saw the cop looming through the snow. I felt the increased thump of my heart but the cop didn’t even look up as we went by. He had a fed-up, miserable aspect as he trudged along, hating his snow-filled day. I had a fellow feeling. We went on past a magnificent building the other side of the Borodinski Bridge over the Moscow River – we should have been much farther on but I’d taken a lot of detours back beyond the Kiyevski station, some by intent, some by mistake. Felicity asked, “What’s that?”

  “The Ministry of Foreign Trade.”

  “Oh.”

  Farther on as we came along Volkhonka Street towards Borovitskaya Square I said, “Don’t look now, but there’s the Kremlin. See it?”

  “Yes,” she said, and I sensed her shiver. The snow lay thick, the silence that it brought held sudden menace as the high, blank walls of the Kremlin rose ahead of us, the many towers standing like anti-Western sentinels to keep out the taint of capitalism. There was something awesome about the white-covered starkness: in there was world power, in there were the men who could keep the peace or break it in nuclear thunder and destruction, and the imminence of something like that struck me more forcibly than ever. WUSWIPP and Greenfly and the Russian leadership in the Kremlin … what was going on in those men’s minds?

  Perhaps, when the meeting with this Katrina took place, I would find out.

  Suddenly Felicity gave a giggle and I asked her what she found funny.

  “Russians,” she said. “Not the ordinary Russians. The leadership. All those grim faces, all the lack of normal humanity – men like Molotov and Stalin, Bulganin, Gromyko, Andropov. You can’t imagine them doing the humdrum things of life.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, you know what I mean … getting tight, enjoying themselves – ”

  “I can. Remember Kruschev?”

  “There’s always the exception. I can’t imagine them, well, fornicating. Going to the lavatory. Taking the kids for a walk. Having a nap after lunch. Forgetting to post a letter. I bet they spend all their time planning production norms and going round all those dreary museums. When not planning war, that is.”

  “They’re not all bad,” I said. I was thinking of Gorbachev. He seemed human; he had quite a twinkle in his eye when seen on television – not always, but sometimes. I could see him doing all the things Felicity had mentioned. In fact I rather wished I’d thought of him when I was in the hands of those ESP boyos back west of Moscow. It would have rocked them if they’d seen the Comrade Chairman stripping for action …

  We skirted the Kremlin. The streets were busy now, at any rate with pedestrians. The traffic was thin, by London standards of rush-hour non-existent. Somehow that added to the feeling of gloom and doom. We went by way of Manejnaya Street and Red Square into 25th October Street, past the Monument to Dzerzhinsky and the Central Post Office, glad to leave the looming Kremlin behind.

  But I had a strong feeling I hadn’t seen the last of it. I turned to look back from the vicinity of another monument, this time to Griboyedov. Felicity asked, “What is it?”

  I told her.

  She said, “I feel the same. Are we going to come out of this?”

  I just shrugged: if I said yes she would know I was only pushing out the encouragement. We turned again, and walked on.

  *

  Rybinsk Street was, like back by the freight yard, largely high rise flats but of slightly better quality – not a lot but slightly. It was a difference in the atmosphere that struck me: hereabouts lived those upon whom the Soviet smiled and rewarded – the apparatchiks, the Party leaders and full-time Party officials, also to a lesser extent the doctors, the teachers, the engineers, the writers, the latter just so long as they wrote what the leadership required. Olga Menshikova hadn’t told me what Katrina’s profession was, or even whether she was married in which case her status would be due to her husband rather than herself. In fact, apart from the code name, I was entirely in the dark. I was also far from unaware of the risks inherent in approaching unknown persons in Moscow; but there had been something about Olga Menshikova that made me trust her. Part of that something was her concern for old man Melensky, retainer of the Menshikovs of yore. So that when we reached Katrina’s block and had climbed by the stairs, not trusting the shaky-looking lift, and had knocked at the door on the eighth floor, and this had been quickly opened, and loud music had come ou
t, I was not unduly worried. The woman who opened the door fitted the given description. She was tall and angular, long thin nose, large spectacles, flat chest, narrow hips and an austere expression. I put her down as possibly a teacher.

  I asked, “Katrina?”

  The response was in Russian. “Who enquires?”

  I answered indirectly. I said, “I come from a friend, west of Moscow. A lady.” I hesitated. “Where the birds sing.” This was the password given me by Olga Menshikova. The door came wider open and we were invited in. The radio stayed on, drowning bugs. We went into a narrow passage off which three doors opened. There was no carpet in the passage, just bare concrete. Even the smiled-upon were not accorded luxury; only the politicals got that, and the military.

  “You are not Russian,” Katrina said flatly.

  “No.”

  “You are from London?” She was speaking English now, heavily accented.

  “Yes,” I said. Then I asked, “How much do you know?”

  “Enough for me to understand. I shall not ask your name but I shall ask some questions. Please come in and sit down.”

  She opened the nearer door and went through. We followed; the austerity was everywhere. Here there was a thin carpet but little else. A hard-looking sofa and two barely upholstered chairs not to be described as easy, a polished table, a bookcase filled with what seemed to be learned works, an electric fire the single bar of which gave little heat, though the contrast with the outside air was welcome enough. Over this fire, set beneath an ornament-bare shelf doing duty as a mantelpiece, was a large photograph of Comrade Gorbachev. All very stark, like Katrina herself. I put her down as unmarried; certainly there was no ring and she had the look of someone to whom sex was anathema. The hips were scarcely child-bearing ones.

  “The questions?” I said as Felicity and I sat on the hard-looking chairs. Katrina remained standing, staring down at us.

  “The telling. By you.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of all, please. From the start. You may trust me.”

  Because of Olga Menshikova I thought I could. In any case, I had little option and I believed that Katrina held the key that I needed. So, with reservations, of course, about 6D2 and Whitehall, I told her the lot, right up to the train lift into Moscow. The advent of Storvac following upon the abortive border crossing near Braunlage in West Germany, the journey to Minsk, the crucifixion, the arrival of Comrade Grulke after the marsh interment, the sojourn with the ESP and the drugs – just as I had told Olga Menshikova. She listened intently and when I had finished she remained deep in thought, still standing, looking not at us now but out of the window at the continuing snowfall and the iron-hard sky tinged ominously with red as it lowered itself onto the Kremlin towers. I broke into her thoughts.

  “Olga Menshikova,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “She’s a communist, genuinely?”

  “She is a communist, yes. Convincedly. A patriot.”

  “In spite of her background?”

  “Perhaps because of it. Naturally, one of her age does not herself remember the old days. But although she never took part in the terror and slavery on the one hand, the arrogance and the luxury on the other, she is aware of history as we all are. Do you understand, Comrade?”

  I said, “Yes, I think I do. She’s ashamed of her background?”

  “Certain aspects of it only – yes. And she wishes to make amends. But not in the way that Greenfly does. Comrade Menshikova, I say again, is a patriot, and does not wish to see the Soviets at war, in which so many citizens will die and there will be so much destruction.” Olga Menshikova had herself said something similar. I was about to probe further when Katrina lifted a hand to stop me. She said, “There was news on the radio this morning. Bodies were found by the railway line. These will be the ones you have told me of.”

  “Yes,” I said, and waited for her to go on. I felt in my inside pocket for the wallet and the letter I had taken from the dead man. I meant to read them in privacy, even though I trusted Katrina. It’s never a bad idea to have some knowledge kept to oneself whatever the trust, when you’re right out on a limb in a land like Russia. That was, if any knowledge lay in the letter.

  Katrina said, “That was all, the bare statement.”

  “No prognostications?”

  “None.”

  “But the authorities will be looking for – someone.”

  “Yes. You must conceal yourselves until it is safe for you to start your journey back to London.”

  I felt a surge of blood. I said, “With the required information. The information the Ladybirds wished to pass but couldn’t. What is it, Comrade Katrina?”

  “I shall show you. Then you must leave here – I shall tell you where it is safe to go. First, you look hungry.”

  I saw the look of sheer relief on Felicity’s face and I said, “We are, very – ”

  “I shall prepare food. It will not take long.” She left the room and I heard her footsteps on the concrete floor of the passage and the opening of a door. I brought out the wallet and letter. I opened the wallet first: the usual clutter, some rouble notes, an identity card – not KGB – what looked like a personal letter in scratchy writing, photographs of what could be a wife and two children, a reminder to me of the tragedy that came from intrigue, espionage and undercover activity generally, a widow and orphans to mourn a breadwinner. Then I came upon other things in the back compartment of the wallet: more photographs, this time pornographic. All sorts of poses and acts, some of them in close-up. It was lucky for the dead man’s reputation that I’d nicked them before they landed up with his effects in his wife’s hands.

  The wallet was useless: I tried the envelope quickly, before Katrina came back into the room. The contents were brief and to the point, a single typed sheet of paper, official paper bearing the insignia of the Soviet Defence Ministry and containing orders. Simple, direct orders: an Englishman and an Englishwoman were known to be inside Russia. The names were given: Shaw and Mandrake, which made us look like a firm of estate agents or solicitors. We were to be apprehended, alive if possible. The ‘if possible’, I knew, didn’t mean a lot. I dare say something showed in my face; Felicity asked what was in the envelope. I didn’t want to say it was our death warrant, signed, sealed and delivered. I shrugged, and said it was official bumph, but she wasn’t deceived.

  “It’s more than that,” she said.

  “All right, it is. But I’m not too worried.” That was true; I wasn’t, basically. It was only to be expected. We had both known the risks all along. It was just that it had been a shade startling to see it in cold type …

  Katrina came back with food. Timewise the hour was half way between breakfast and lunch; the food was coarse, and it was cold. Some tough meat, cold sliced potatoes, the ubiquitous black bread, but we wolfed it down. Katrina brought coffee, rather acorn-like but very welcome and we lit cigarettes after asking permission. Katrina gave it but didn’t seem to like it much; ostentatiously she waved smoke away with her hand, a large and bony one.

  I decided, after all, to show her the letter, or warrant.

  She read it, not seeming surprised. She said, “Shaw and Mandrake, that is you. I know the signature. Comrade Vasyutin.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Vasyutin is a member of Greenfly. This is official only to Greenfly. Not to the Supreme Soviet.”

  I was puzzled and said so. Katrina said Greenfly had members in all the Ministries and inside the seats of power in the Kremlin, men who were believed by the Soviet leadership to be straightforward members of the officially-approved WUSWIPP. That they were members of WUSWIPP was true, but Greenfly were a break-away group within WUSWIPP.

  “I know that,” I said. “But – ”

  “The time has come to tell you the facts,” Katrina said.

  *

  It was a strange story and a gripping one. Put very shortly, the Soviet Union was about to mount a pre-emptive strike against the
West. No warning; the missiles were set to go. Great Britain would be attacked and so would West Germany, with the Russian and East German armoured divisions ready to cross the frontier all the way along as soon as it was safe fall-out-wise to do so. BAOR would be decimated, Bonn, Paris, and the other NATO capitals made untenable. The Soviet nuclear-powered and missile-armed submarines off the American coast would mount their attacks on Washington and New York.

  I asked exactly when this was to happen.

  Katrina didn’t know but repeated her belief that it was imminent. She said the official Soviet leadership didn’t want it to happen, that they were fighting what had turned into a rearguard action against those of their number who did want it to happen.

  “Greenfly?” I asked.

  “Yes. Greenfly wishes to use the know-how of WUS-WIPP to bring to an end the East-West conflict, to settle it for all time. But the leadership in the Kremlin knows very well that the West will not be easily subdued and that Russia will suffer – as I have said. Nevertheless, when Greenfly wins, the strike will commence.”

  “You think they will win?”

  Katrina was positive. She said, “Yes, they will win. It is a question of time only.”

  “And I’m expected to stop it?” I asked rather sourly, seeing myself as an unlikely preventer of war all on my own.

  “No. To take the facts to your country, to your Prime Minister. That was what one of our Ladybirds was attempting to do when – ”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know that. Why hasn’t it been possible to get the word through long before now? Why wait for me?”

  She gave a bitter smile. “You do not know the Soviets! All the time everyone is watched, I for one – ”