by Steve Cole
Elmhirst had gone out to contact his superiors with James’s new intelligence. Restless, James left his room and, taking his father’s backpack, walked down the road to the sprawling green oasis of the park at Zinkensdamm. The sun felt warm on his skin. A wide blue channel of water stretched out before him, serene and beautiful, and a breeze riffled his dark hair. It was all a lot more calm and attractive than the bank of the Thames, but James decided he much preferred the grime, grit and thrust of London.
But both here and there are a far cry from old Krakow. James cast his mind back to the book, in case he remembered any more clues. It was a historical novel, as he recalled, about a family fleeing from the Ukraine to settle in the old Polish capital. The story explored the folk tale of a trumpeter in a high tower who was sworn to play a salute every hour on the hour, day or night. When an army of Tartars invaded Krakow, the trumpeter raised the alarm with his playing, and continued through the chaos until cut down by a Tartar arrow through the heart, the fanfare dying on his lips.
Like the trumpeter and his fanfare, James had never reached the end of the story. He’d left it on the shelf, despite his parents’ encouragement, and now felt a deep pang of guilt and melancholy. I must’ve disappointed them. The thought of the old trumpeter, raising his desperate alarm, but ignored by an ungrateful child, sat heavily in his head.
Even so, after so many years of feeling emptiness and loss without his parents, at this moment James felt closer to his father than perhaps he ever had. It was a feeling that brought a balm to his soul that made some of the horrors he’d lived through seem just a little easier.
‘You’re not a traitor, Father,’ James said out loud. He was damn well going to prove it.
9
Spies and Smugglers in Moscow
THE ODYSSEY INTO Red territory continued early the next morning as James and Elmhirst were hefted through the iron-grey skies in a Junkers Ju 52. They arrived in Riga just after noon for a fuelling stop and for some passengers to disembark, then flew on into Russian airspace, landing at Velikiye Luki mid-afternoon before reaching Moscow’s Khodynka Aerodrome just after six in the evening.
‘Take these,’ Elmhirst told James, palming him something as he undid his seatbelt. ‘Stick them down your sock.’
James looked down at a roll of banknotes – roubles and US dollars – then back at Elmhirst. ‘Spending money?’
‘Sorry to turn you into a smuggler on top of everything else.’ Elmhirst made to scratch his ankle, and pushed a similar wad of notes down into his shoe. ‘There are strict limits on how much currency you can take into Russia,’ he explained. ‘The rouble can’t be exchanged for foreign money – the state made it illegal, to protect the economy: they’re investing billions in industry, and can’t afford the value of the rouble to go down on the foreign markets—’ Perhaps he saw James’s eyes starting to glaze over because he grinned and broke off. ‘All you need to know is that in Russia, money talks like nowhere else. There’s pretty much no one we can’t bribe with hard currency . . .’
James nodded and felt a warm rush of adrenalin. ‘What happens if we’re caught?’ he said quietly. ‘If they find out you’re with the British Secret Intelligence Service—’
‘I’m on a fake passport,’ Elmhirst said. ‘Operating secretly.’
‘Are there other British agents here in Moscow who can help us?’
Elmhirst gave a humourless laugh. ‘You really have no idea how underfunded our section is. Spies cost money, and most of our focus is in Germany right now. Out here, a junior at the British Embassy in Smolenskaya bribes clerks on the Congress of Soviets for information and pays local villains to report on what the secret police are up to. But he knows we’re coming; we’ll see what help he can scare up for us.’
Nerves jangling as he neared the customs desk, James tried to adopt the same stooped shoulders and weary expression as most of the travellers in the airport. As it turned out, customs went through his luggage and made him turn out his pockets, but nothing more. The visas Elmhirst had procured passed muster, both with the customs officers and the state representative from Intourist, who not only looked like a bad-tempered boar, but also sweated and stank like one. Heaven forbid that foreign tourists might make their own way through Moscow! The state controlled all, including the impressions that foreigners would take back to their own countries . . . and, according to Elmhirst, the most important impression was that the Bolshevik revolution had turned Russia into a socialist paradise.
The man from Intourist had their luggage transferred into a shining black GAZ-A motor car, which he proceeded to drive for them. To James the car looked much like a Ford Model A, with only the marque badge standing out as different, but the female guide accompanying them to the hotel (as thin as a rake, with long dark hair and a sour expression) assured them that this car was far superior, having been built in the fine Russian city of Gorky. ‘The smoke of chimneys is the breath of Soviet Russia,’ she declaimed.
Smiling awkwardly, James turned to Elmhirst, who was slumped beside him in the back seat, his fedora pulled down over his eyes, and lowered his voice. ‘Why are they taking us to the hotel in person?’
‘To make sure we check in, and that our stories check out.’
‘And will they?’ James knew Elmhirst’s cover story – ‘I’m an international businessman who regularly visits, you’re my nephew and possible apprentice’ – but it sounded thin to him. ‘I know you didn’t have much time to set it up—’
‘I’ve filed corroborating papers in the usual places they search. Just relax.’ Elmhirst tipped his head back to look at James from under the brim, spoke more loudly. ‘Intourist makes sure that foreign visitors receive free transport to their accommodation, the services of guides and interpreters, escorted visits to museums and tourist attractions . . .’
‘Keeping us on a lead,’ James realized.
‘I am not certain of what you speak,’ the female guide said coldly. ‘With foreign espionage committed daily, for your own safety as well as that of our citizens, precautions must be taken.’
‘You take all the precautions you like,’ Elmhirst told her. ‘We’re glad of the care you take of us.’
Of course we are, thought James.
It took almost an hour and a half to reach the centre of Moscow. James stared out of the car window, marvelling at the sheer size of the crowded city. They drove along highways like great grey arteries, pumping cars and motor buses and trams, each thickly covered in dust, all over the city, to squares and canals, across new bridges lined with grand buildings, past wide open parks and fine embankments ornamenting the river; all of them symbols of the city’s greatness and strength. And yet to James, much of Moscow seemed to be a giant building site. He saw crumbling townhouses, fenced off in mid-demolition, standing cheek-by-jowl with modern apartment blocks still in the awkward embrace of scaffolding and tarpaulins.
Their guide in the back seemed mindful of what they saw. ‘We rebuild Moscow now,’ she announced, ‘as the model for proletarians and communists throughout the world, who will be inspired to follow it. Our capital’s glory will reflect the regime that erected it.’
‘I see,’ James said politely. But everywhere he turned he saw people queuing on the busy pavements for newspapers, for food from market stalls, out through the doors of shops and stores.
Their sweating driver called from the front: ‘They wait in line for the latest Soviet goods. They are proud of what their country produces.’
‘Most of them won’t even know what they’re queuing for,’ Elmhirst muttered. ‘They see others lining up and worry they’ll miss out.’
The car turned onto Moscow’s steep main drag. ‘This is the ulitsa Gorkogo, or Gorky Street,’ the guide intoned, ‘named for the great revolutionary writer, Maxim Gorky.’
‘Last time I was here they called it Tverskaia,’ said Elmhirst.
The guide smiled thinly. ‘With the past swept away we build a strong future in its place.’
Shouldn’t the future grow out of the past? James wondered.
Their destination finally came into sight: the opulent, over-ornamented sprawl of the National Hotel, which towered over its single- or two-storeyed neighbours like a mother hen over her chicks. It looked more like a museum than a hotel, James decided, decorated with natural stone and stucco, marble and stained glass. The frivolous frontage was topped by a dynamic socialist mural showing cranes, pylons and a woman in a tractor: a tribute to the Soviet economy’s might.
‘Can I telephone Aunt Charmian?’ James wondered. ‘Tell her we made it?’
‘Of course!’ Elmhirst smiled, but then lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Don’t even think of using the telephone out here. Hopeless service and the censor’s always listening in. They’ll cut off your conversation if they sense any funny business.’ He must’ve noticed James’s disappointed look, for his tone softened. ‘You can call from the British Embassy when we visit tomorrow. Though even that’s not guaranteed clean.’
The guide regarded them coldly as they conducted their muttered conversation. ‘Do you require any further information?’ she broke in.
‘I don’t think so,’ Elmhirst said. ‘But if anything occurs, we can ask you tomorrow on our tour of Red Square, can’t we?’
‘Red Square?’ James queried.
‘The centre of Moscow,’ Elmhirst explained. ‘Where you’ll find the Kremlin, Lenin’s tomb—’
‘Yes, but why are we going there?’
‘Since you may be working out here, nephew,’ Elmhirst said heavily, ‘I thought you’d like to get a feel for the place.’
‘Oh, I would.’ James nodded eagerly. ‘Thank you.’
‘You will enjoy it,’ the guide said firmly.
James and Elmhirst followed her inside the ostentatious hotel and across the mosaic floor of the lobby. The man at the desk spent many minutes carefully checking the visitors from England into adjoining rooms, and the Intourist guide went away, apparently satisfied that her charges were staying put.
‘Telegram for you, Mr Elmhirst,’ the man at the desk announced, passing over a white envelope.
Elmhirst stuffed the telegram into his jacket pocket and winked at James. ‘That’ll be from my SIS-ter.’
James’s heart jumped. A translation of the ciphertext?
Elmhirst glanced around the lobby then back to the man at the desk. ‘Er, the lift . . .?’
‘The elevator does not work, sir.’ The man signalled to a young man at the concierge’s desk. ‘Allow my colleague here to assist you.’
The porter was scrawny, with a moustache like a sick caterpillar, but insisted on taking all three of their bags before leading them up the marble staircase. Fine furniture and large vases littered the landings, and James wondered if the decorations had been seized from Russian aristocrats and left here to encourage decadent foreigners to consider the follies of their ways. There was a chemical stink of insecticide that grew stronger the further they went along the carpeted corridor. James took in the dull pastoral paintings on the wall, in their tarnished frames; he felt they were present less to entice the eye than to hold up the wallpaper.
The porter stopped outside a white oak door and put down the bags. Suddenly a man burst out of the doorway opposite and smashed the porter face-first into the door. He was paunchy, dark and bearded; James recognized him at once, and swore.
It was Karachan from the Mechta Academy.
Karachan grabbed the young man by the shoulders and threw him at James. James glimpsed the porter’s terrified bloody face flying into his own, then he was down in a tumble of limbs, dropping his backpack as he fell. He heard a terrific thump of impact close by, struggled out from beneath the groaning porter and saw that Karachan had Elmhirst by the throat, up against the wall. Elmhirst’s eyes were rolling back in his head and his breath sounded thick in his throat.
Before James could even blurt out a warning, Karachan produced a flick-knife and, catching the sharp point in the lining of Elmhirst’s jacket, jerked the blade upwards, ripping the fabric so that the contents of his pocket spilled onto the floor.
He’s found out about the telegram, James realized. About Father’s clues to what the Russians are doing.
James grabbed for the envelope, but Karachan stamped a heavy boot down on his wrist. James shouted and snatched his hand away. But as Karachan stooped to grab the telegram, Elmhirst slumped over on top of it, apparently out cold. At the same time James kicked out with his foot and knocked the knife from Karachan’s grip.
The porter was crawling away, screaming for help. A door opened and a man in a dressing gown peered out, frowning.
Karachan didn’t hesitate. He scooped up James’s backpack, then turned and raced away along the corridor.
‘No! Give that back!’ James scrambled up as the man in the dressing gown came out to help. James pointed him towards Elmhirst and the porter, then sprinted after Karachan. The lifts are out of order, James recalled. Perhaps I can knock him down the stairs and grab the backpack—
But Karachan clearly had other ideas. He stood in front of the open doors to the lift shaft, pulling on black leather gloves. With the gloves in place, he hurled the backpack into the abyss.
‘No!’ James shouted. He had precious few things to remember his father by as it was; no one was taking that from him!
With unexpected agility, Karachan jumped into the shaft, grabbed hold of the lift’s winching cable with his gauntleted hands and started to slide down like a fireman on his pole. With a muttered curse and no hesitation, James leaped after him. He gasped as the cable’s thick metal twine bit into his bare palms. Vibrations whipped through it as Karachan descended the wire, hand over hand into the blackness.
James knew he had no choice. Blood roaring in his temples, he wrapped his forearms around the cable and dropped, gritting his teeth as friction seared his flesh. His heart seemed to jump into his throat; he was as good as falling.
Then his feet crashed down onto Karachan’s broad shoulders, jarring the big man loose. Triumph and fear flared through James’s senses as he lost his grip too and plummeted through space. He heard a metallic crash echo around the lift shaft, and a moment later he’d landed hard on something that rang like steel under the impact. The top of the lift car, he realized in a daze. The backpack must have landed here, ready for Karachan to collect. With fresh desperation, James groped for it blindly with stinging fingers.
But what he found was Karachan. Pain screamed through his head as a boot connected with his cheekbone, sent him rolling over the lift’s roof. Something long and hard-edged dug into his side. The cover to the inspection hatch, James thought dimly. The way inside the lift through the roof.
He kicked out blindly, hoping to land a lucky blow. Yellow light bled up into the shaft from the lift car as Karachan yanked up the inspection cover. Lit from below, his coronet of hair and dark beard gave him the look of the devil, wild shadows dancing about him as he threw the backpack down inside the lift car.
James scissored his legs around Karachan’s left leg and then twisted hard. The big man lost his balance, tumbled against the wall. James slithered down into the lift car, landing awkwardly on the metal floor. He looked up, panting for breath, and saw Karachan jump through the hatch, ready to use James’s ribs for a soft landing.
Desperately James flung himself to one side and the huge, heavy boots slammed into the floor, missing him by inches. Without hesitation, Karachan stooped for the backpack – but James kicked it away. The big man raised the back of his hand and tried to swat him as he would a fly.
Instead of recoiling, James fought instinct and, leaping to his feet, lunged past Karachan, ducking under the blow. From behind, James closed his forearm around Karachan’s neck. Karachan made a thick, choking, spluttering sound, but James clung on, supporting his chokehold by grabbing his right fist with his left and squeezing it towards him, intensifying the pressure on his assailant’s neck.
Gasping, Ka
rachan pushed hard against the lift doors, trying to crush James against the metal wall. But James would not let go, shouting in anger to give himself strength.
Suddenly the doors were wrenched open with a protesting screech. Two porters flanked a startled concierge, who broke into angry Russian. Thrown off balance by the opening doors, Karachan managed to shake James free and made a final grab for the backpack, but one of the straps had caught around James’s ankle. With a groan of frustration, Karachan gave up on it and charged through the three hotel workers like a wing-forward making for the goal line, demolishing his opposition.
The concierge ordered his porters after Karachan in pursuit, then loomed angrily over James, who lay exhausted on the floor, desperate for breath.
‘Get away from me,’ James snarled, clutching the backpack to his chest. The concierge was gesticulating in outrage, harsh-sounding words bursting from his lips, when another figure ran up.
James closed his eyes, fearing the worst and trying to summon strength enough to face it, when he heard a familiar voice: ‘Hold up, Bond. You’re all right now.’
‘Elmhirst?’ James’s eyes snapped open. ‘Thank God . . .’ He watched as the agent put an arm around the concierge’s shoulders and steered him to one side, speaking Russian in a low voice and tucking a small roll of banknotes into the man’s top pocket. The concierge looked doubtful, but only for a moment – he turned, clapped his hands, and ushered the gawping onlookers away.
As Elmhirst turned back to him, James got wearily to his knees and then to his feet.
‘You all right, son? What the hell were you thinking, taking the plunge like that?’
‘I just couldn’t lose this backpack,’ James clutched it close as Elmhirst guided him away across the lobby. ‘Are you OK?’
