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.