Hard dirty snow packed the gutters and was piled against buildings, leaving only two-thirds of the pavements clear.
Sitting in the back of the old, souped-up Zil, James Bond tried to make sense of the day. Since they left the dacha, he had immersed himself in everything he had seen and heard, his mind circling, buzzard-like, trying to pounce on one fact that made sense. The windshield wipers lazily pushed away the buildup of snow while the inside of the windows started to steam. Lyko swept his open hand across the glass, clearing a view for a few seconds. The road ahead looked bleak, rather than romantic. To Bond, everything looked bleak. He could make no sense of any part of the operation in which he and Natkowitz were engulfed. There was no shape, no form, no logic whichever way he looked at it.
When Stepakov had revealed that Natkowitz was an Israeli and an officer of the Mossad, Pete simply sat back and laughed at him, his face looking even more like that of a gentleman farmer in an English pub. You could almost see the phoney horse-brasses hanging around imitation Tudor beams.
Nicki had moved, blocking the door, his dark face threatening. Alex pushed his Tweedledum figure from the wall against which he had been leaning. Henri Rampart looked at his shoes as if displeased with their shine. The lovely Stephanie Adoré seemed to be posed for a glamorous photograph, her head cocked and one jewelled hand poised under her chin, while Nina Bibikova sat very still, her dark eyes fixed on Boris Stepakov.
‘Look, Bory, I’ve always had great respect for KGB. What makes you think, because my true name is Natkowitz, I’m the Mossad?’
Stepakov guffawed. ‘Because, Pete Natkowitz, your handwriting has been on a hundred operations carried out by the Mossad, some of them against KGB. I know you. I have your dossier. In the Mossad you’re as famous as Bond in his Service. Come on now. We know who you are, and I’m not going to become difficult about it. If the Israelis want to be in bed with the Brits, that’s none of my business. My business is splitting open the Chushi Pravosudia, finding out what makes it tick. I needed two agents from British SIS. I now find I really need three, two men and a woman, but we can provide the woman. I’m not concerned if SIS send us one officer and a member of the Mossad. It’ll be a neat trio – SIS, Mossad, KGB.’
‘If you could provide a woman officer, why not the two men, Bory?’ Bond asked, a whole chain of questions forming in his head.
Stepakov sighed, put one large hand on the chair against which he had earlier leaned, turned it around and sat down, straddling it, his thick arms resting along the back.
‘James,’ his face looked pained, ‘do I have to explain the concerns we have about Chushi Pravosudia? It should be obvious to you that they are very well-organised. It doesn’t take a huge intellect to see them for what they are – hardline, old-guard extremists with a lot of pull. We look over our shoulders all the time. These people have admission through doors we can barely open these days. Have you not yet worked out what Russia is really like now, poised over the abyss of ruin, economically scuppered and with the Neo-Stalinists fighting to regain control? A year ago they said the Revolution had failed, now they tell us perestroika has failed. It’s chaos. The hardliners have agents within KGB, within the Central Committee, they have friends at court. I truly believe they’re everywhere.’
‘So you’re saying they probably hack into the computers at Dzerzhinsky Square and out in the Yasenevo complex . . .’
‘Exactly. I . . .’
‘So they will have all-relevant details of your department, the Stepakov Banda. This means they probably know about this dacha, they have names, dates, photographs, personalities . . .’
‘No!’ Stepakov whip-cracked. ‘No, not quite all.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the important aspects of what insiders call the Stepakov Banda are just not in the computer systems. We made it that way. We organised it in that manner because we consider ourself an elitist force. At the end of 1989 all our records were removed from the data bases. We regrouped, we reorganised . . .’
‘Then why no men? Why nobody who can successfully pose as a British camera crew?’
‘Because we have very few new agents available, James. People like Alex and Nicki, here, were never listed. They were never field agents. We’re long on executive personnel, but very, very short on field people. Those I have are men and women trained since November ’89, and they’re at full stretch. It took eight people to babysit Lyko in London and that was only one fragment of an operation. It hasn’t been easy. I have no spare male bodies, James. I do happen to have one, and only one, female who can do the job off the top of her head. I have Nina because she doesn’t appear on any lists. Nowhere. I told you about that. Even Washington doesn’t list her and as far as current KGB data’s concerned, she doesn’t show because . . .’ he paused, looking towards Nina Bibikova as though awaiting her permission to reveal something about which there was great secrecy. Bond just caught the small nod, the almost imperceptible jerk of her head, allowing Stepakov to continue.
‘She doesn’t show,’ he paused again, swallowing. ‘She doesn’t show . . . because she is dead.’ He was not smiling as he said it.
‘Shall I explain, Bory?’ Nina had the kind of voice that made Bond think of velvet and honey. A voice smooth and deep as a cello. The brief words they had exchanged above ground in the dining room had not prepared him for the instrument that was released now as Boris Stepakov nodded.
‘My father,’ she began, standing unselfconsciously and looking at each person in turn, ‘my father was Mikhail Bibikov, and that probably means nothing to any of you, for you all knew him under another name. Michael Brooks.’
‘Jesus!’ Contradictions, fears, all kinds of devils shrieked in Bond’s head. ‘The Michael Brooks?’ The name stuck in his throat.
‘Yes,’ she smiled, looking directly into his eyes. ‘The Michael Brooks. KGB never released his true name. Not even when he died. He returned to Moscow, followed shortly afterwards by my mother, in 1965. I was born later that year. I don’t know if you knew my mother, Captain Bond?’
‘Barely – as a young recruit.’ His throat was dry, and as he looked at Nina, he suddenly realised where her dark, wondrous looks came from. ‘I certainly remember all the pictures. Emerald Lacy was quite a lady.’
Nina gave him a tiny nod. ‘She was certainly a lady.’
In his mind, he saw the famous photograph of Emerald Lacy hanging in the Rogues Gallery at headquarters, the one used by the press and TV at the time – Emerald leaning over one of the copying machines, chatting to the other girls in the cryptography pool – dark hair, lustrous complexion and the smile old hands said would make you think you were the one person who interested her. Senior officers used to call her the jewel in the crown, she was so good. The whole story returned, complete and unadulterated in all its disturbing detail, an epic film played out on the wide screen of his mind.
Michael Brooks began his career with the Secret Intelligence Service working for the old Special Operations Executive during World War II. He had been a contemporary of Philby, Burgess, Maclean, Blunt and Cairncross – those Cambridge graduates who had so successfully penetrated the British secret world at the behest of their KGB masters – so effective that they were known in the corridors of Dzerzhinsky Square as the Magnificent Five. Michael Brooks’ name had never been associated with them, not even after his story came out – or that part of it which was allowed to be released and put under the public microscope.