by Steve Cole
The Soviet attack was still coming. And since the mere possibility of discovery had triggered such callous violence and loss of life, James could only suppose that its scale was bigger than he would want to imagine.
Anya might be a stranger, but as they walked together across the busy steel congestion of the Krymsky Bridge towards the Metro, James was glad of her arm about him.
17
Sins of the Fathers
FROM HIS HIDING place in a construction site off Gorky Street, hidden by shadows and tarpaulins, James looked longingly at the National Hotel. It was now after midnight, and Moscow’s pale stone facades were aglow in the light of a full moon. All seemed quiet and ordinary: a thin stream of hotel patrons wandering in or visitors to the bar staggering out, the occasional taxi trundling into service. The most excitement there’d been in the last hour was when a small white lorry turned into a side street beside the hotel, only to re-emerge ten minutes later.
‘Laundry truck. They take away the bedclothes for washing.’ Anya shot him a sideways glance. ‘No assassins. And no bar lady.’
‘Not yet,’ said James evenly. His plan was to lie in wait for the exotic Elizaveta, manageress of the American Bar, to finish her shift and close up. She seemed to know Elmhirst well enough, and had helped them before. James still had a good supply of roubles to buy assistance and information, if they could only get to her.
He surveyed the National building longingly. Up on the fifth floor was his unofficial room, with a bed and blankets, fresh clothes, a soft carpet, toothpaste and hot water – every comfort James could dream of right now. But this was the only place his pursuers could be certain he’d make for, sooner or later, and he didn’t dare go inside. Not imagining all the other eyes that could be watching.
No one else is going to die because of me, he swore. He was tired of trying to manage this situation. If only he knew what had happened to Elmhirst! He and Anya could use an ally, an experienced officer to back them up.
‘This Elmhirst may be perfectly well,’ Anya said, ‘and waiting for you to come back. Perhaps I can get inside, take him a message?’
‘These people chased us both halfway across Moscow. You’ll be no safer than me.’
‘Out here, also. There are eyes all around, looking for those who stand out, who break rules, who flout authority.’
James snorted softly. ‘I’m not sure I’d fit in very well here.’
‘You are thinking this could never take place where you live?’ Anya’s smile was more of a sneer. ‘Russia today is filled with those who told themselves, It could not happen here.’
A raucous shout went up from outside the National. Instantly alert, James peered out across the street through a hole in the tarpaulin. A large woman in a blue cocktail dress was struggling in the grasp of two suited men, her wild red hair like a raging storm over her head.
‘Elizaveta,’ James breathed, heart sinking.
‘Now the secret police have her,’ Anya said.
A black limousine parked in the street suddenly grumbled into life – James had thought it empty – and the two men forced the protesting woman into the back seat. A man appeared at the National’s doors; swaying tipsily, he raised his hat in forlorn salute and then tottered back inside. A couple in the street hurried by, heads down, taking care to notice nothing as the limousine pulled away.
Anya seemed unsurprised. ‘This is the way of it. After your friend makes trouble at the hotel, they investigate all who knew him. Or all who know you.’
‘Most probably,’ James agreed. ‘I hadn’t realized there was anyone in that limousine. There could be others watching.’
‘Is there anyone you can call for help? You risk the British Embassy?’
‘There’s a mole there, and the telephone lines aren’t secure.’ James chewed his lip. ‘I have to tell SIS what’s happened to Elmhirst and the little I’ve found out. Go to the airport, get a flight back to London.’
‘You don’t think that the lady in the veil will be expecting this? That there will be agents watching for you there?’
James turned angrily. ‘Well, what the hell else can I do?’
Anya considered. ‘You could sleep. Regain the energy you have spent. Move in the morning when the streets are busy and it is safer.’
‘Sleep?’ James almost laughed. Exhausted as he was, and however much he needed it, slumber here in the fetid dark beneath the tarpaulin seemed unlikely. ‘How about I tell you a bedtime story . . .?’
He reached into the battered backpack, pulled out the telegram of the plaintext and the letters and numbers inked across the paper from Chamonix, and shared in more depth the baffling details of Andrew Bond’s coded messages and exploits abroad.
‘Nash marsh,’ Anya read aloud. ‘This means, our march.’
‘Yes, but what does our march mean?’ James shook his head. ‘You see Henson, written there? He was my father’s Latin teacher. He’s a talpid, Latin for mole, in every other reference, but suddenly here he becomes a cardinal.’
Anya had already moved on to study the plaintext telegram. ‘I left chapter and verse Moscow buried in James,’ she read crossly. ‘Why could he not just say what he means?’
‘Because he trusted only his brother to do something about it,’ James supposed. ‘Your father must have given him some very strong evidence of the Soviet plan.’
‘I never found any evidence. I began to think Papa was mad all along.’ She paused. ‘He said he met your father through a mutual friend, a man who was an engineer for the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company at Perlovka, and knew of your father’s links to the British secret service.’
‘Through my uncle. I never knew how strong those links were until a few days ago.’ James paused. ‘I do know that my father would have kept his word and helped Ivan if he possibly could.’
‘So you say. Why? Because you loved him? Because your memories of him are tender and gentle?’ Anya snorted. ‘I loved my papa, and Papa loved me, but he still did what he did.’
‘I’m not a child—’
‘You sound like one.’
James bit his lip. He knew that arguing now, when they were tired and low, would be the worst thing to do; after all, he was trying to build her trust in him. ‘Perhaps I do sound like a child. I suppose I never got to listen to my father speak his innermost thoughts to his pillow at night. I can only imagine how he felt.’
‘That is how it should be,’ Anya said.‘No one should have to hear their papa wake screaming each night.’ She glanced over. ‘You needn’t feel bad for me, James. The screams, the babble in the dark, they upset me at first . . . but by the end it was just one more thing about him to hate.’
‘Don’t hate him,’ James said quietly. ‘Hate the people who did this to him. Who did this to us.’
‘And what should we do to them in turn?’
‘Stop them. However we have to.’
Fine words, Bond! James reflected. But how to put them into practice? What were the Soviet Union’s true ambitions in this affair? Stalin had achieved so much for Russia and its satellite nations, but only through the most terrible means. What fresh targets had caught that implacable red eye?
Time passed, and James felt his eyelids grow lead-heavy. Anya yawned beside him and he found himself joining in. He shifted uncomfortably on the concrete floor. ‘I’ll never complain about my bunk at school again.’
Anya glanced at him. ‘You wish you were there now?’
‘I wish I was just about anywhere else,’ he confessed. ‘How about you?’
‘I picture myself where I always am in my dreams: on a wonderful wooden stage in a marvellous theatre, like the Bolshoi.’ Anya paused. ‘You see, it is not only pain that tells us we are alive. I used to live when I danced. To dance is to feel alive; it is part of tvorchestvo zhizni . . . the creativity of life.’ She paused. ‘You know this too, I think.’
James frowned in the darkness. ‘I don’t dance.’
‘Not true. To m
ove because you must – because you may die if you don’t – this is the dance you do, James Bond.’ Anya’s voice held a weary kind of wonder. ‘The dance with death.’
‘Well . . . if that’s so, I couldn’t ask for a better partner,’ James joked uncomfortably. He remembered her reaction to the young dancers in the park. ‘I . . . saw what was left of your ballet shoes in your room. Is there no hope you will dance again?’
‘My right Achilles tendon was crushed, my ankle broken, the ligaments badly damaged.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact, bled of all emotion. ‘It was the end. The end of everything.’
‘But I’ve seen how quickly you can move—’
‘How quickly you can move, considering, you mean?’ she broke in sharply. ‘You sound like my doctors. “Ah, but you are still swift, maryshka! Keep up with your exercises. Pliés and rises en pointe – yes, I detect an improvement, a sure improvement! Apply yourself, good girl!”’ Bitterness dripped from each syllable. ‘A stray dog can lose a leg and still run. Her blessing is that she does not truly know what she has lost.’
‘Perhaps our blessing is that we can find something new to replace it.’
‘Ah, the English boy is so wise.’
‘Your limp isn’t that bad,’ James persisted. ‘At least, when you don’t have time to think about it.’
‘You think this is all in my head?’
‘I only mean . . . I’ve seen you make running like hell look easy. There’s speed and power and precision in you. Maybe you’re capable of more than you think.’
Anya’s face was stone-hard now. ‘Tell me what you have found that replaces your dead parents, James, eh? That backpack you carry like an old teddy bear? Tell me you have not wanted to throw it in the river many times, even as you long for your father to be here beside you to carry it.’
James felt anger prickle along his spine, an itch he couldn’t scratch – because he knew that, on some level, she was right. ‘So, then, did you keep the remains of your ballet shoes just to torture yourself?’
‘It is not so dramatic.’ Her voice grew softer. ‘They were my beautiful pointe shoes from Anello and Davide in Kensington . . . I sewed on the ribbons myself. These shoes, they seemed so wonderful.’ She laughed softly, scornfully. ‘I used to look at them after the operations on my leg and remember: nothing good can last. They were relics. Like me and Papa, like everything and everyone else in that house.’
‘I can see why you think nothing good lasts,’ James said. ‘But perhaps nothing bad will last, either. What we have – all that we ever have – is right now.’
‘Perhaps.’ Anya leaned back against a stack of bricks, and as she did so, pressed closer to him; deliberate or just a shift of position? Her scent – of Parma violets and musk – filled the darkness, and the heat of her body made him feel more conscious of his sweating.
He’d only just met this girl, and here they were! Damaged as she was, there was a darkness in her that he recognized, that he responded to. Life had thrown him together with so many girls. Roan. Boody and Wilder. Jagua, Kelly, Amy . . . Kitty, of course, and that smile of hers . . . He closed his eyes guiltily. In the end each girl became a confusion of friendship and fear, of memories, missed chances and moving on, the tender moments locked away for safety in his head and his heart.
Relics, he thought. You keep the remains to torture yourself . . .
‘I . . . am glad that the old house has burned,’ Anya whispered. ‘Is it still burning, do you think?’
‘The past never stops burning,’ James said.
Worn out, lying under the tarpaulin, James was finally lulled to sleep. He dreamed of his childhood: a Christmas morning, tramping through thick snow with his mother and father . . . Running in a race, their cheers in his ears: ‘Make us proud!’ Dining out, going to the pictures, his father’s hand ruffling his hair, his mother there too, smiling. They were all smiling, as if they knew the moment was perfect: to be cherished in remembrance always.
Less happy memories tumbled out of the darkness, but James reached for those too. He was small, tripping over the kerb, skinning his knee. ‘Don’t make such a meal of things, James.’ There was a fierce burr to Andrew Bond’s deep voice. ‘Don’t show it hurts.’
Then Mimic was standing behind him in the dreamscape, mouthing the words: ‘Don’t show it hurts!’
James turned to run and found he was riding on tweed shoulders through a sunlit forest. His father was laughing, shaking and jumping, pretending to throw James down onto the red-gold riches of the leafy ground. James’s mother was laughing too, running alongside. But she hadn’t noticed the men waiting at the edge of the clearing; only James had seen them from up on high. He opened his mouth ready to scream—
And James jerked awake, the shout escaping into reality, making Anya jump beside him. A stream of rapid Russian. James took in his surroundings: the stained concrete floor, the dirty grey of the tarp, the scraps of pale daylight peeping in through splits in the material.
‘You scared me.’ Breathing shakily, Anya looked out through one of the rips in the fabric and scanned the street. ‘I think no one heard.’
‘I’m sorry.’ James checked his watch, which read almost five thirty, wincing at the stiffness in his limbs. ‘Did you get any sleep?’
‘I watched. I saw nothing.’ She turned back to him. ‘Will you try to get into your room now?’
Slowly James nodded. ‘I think I have to. My aunt is staying at a friend’s and her telephone number there is in my trunk.’ He got up with a fresh comprehension of the expression ‘bone-weary’. ‘If I can tell her what’s happened, she’ll call SIS and get their advice on what to do next, I’m sure.’
‘You will speak to her in code, perhaps?’
He scowled at the sarcasm. ‘My uncle would’ve solved this puzzle if he’d received all the pieces. And I’ll crack it yet.’ He took a look out at the street for himself. Anya was right – the area was deserted; if they were going to risk getting inside, now was as good a time as any.
With Anya just behind him, James stepped out of the building site into the side alley; the suspicion that he was going to be caught at last made his legs heavy.
That was before he even saw the black NAZ-A parked at the other end of the alley. Before he saw the man with the bruised face and the black suit step out from the cover of some dustbins, just a few yards away.
The same glowering man who’d bundled him into a car outside the National yesterday. His kidnapper had returned.
18
Cardinal Sins
THE MAN’S BLACK brush of a moustache twitched as he spoke angrily in Russian.
‘Finally, I find you,’ Anya translated, holding herself tense as the man strode forward, still talking. ‘He says that, to him, you are not worth the bother—’
A gunshot shattered the dawn stillness and the man’s head jerked backwards as if tugged by an invisible wire. He twisted round, feeling for his spine with both hands. The fingers came away bloody.
Shot from behind? James instantly grabbed Anya and pushed her back through the gap in the tarpaulin. A second shot echoed off the alley walls, and Anya gasped as the man crashed through the ripped fabric after them. His eyes were glazed, his heart pumping gore over his shirtfront as he pitched forward face-first onto the concrete.
James recoiled in disgust. Who had killed this man, and where had they—?
‘Bloody hell, Bond, get out here,’ came the earthy East End holler. ‘You waiting for a signed invitation?’
‘Elmhirst!’ James could’ve yelled with relief as the SIS agent burst through the tarpaulin, a worn-out grin on his face, grey fedora still jammed on his head.
He held out his hand to help James up. ‘What time d’you call this?’
‘Time to leave?’
‘You’re not wrong.’
‘After what happened in the lobby . . .’
‘Not here. We need to go. We’ll take his car.’ Elmhirst seemed to notice Anya for the first time. ‘Wh
o’s your friend?’
‘I am Anya Kalashnikova, and I am coming too.’ She stepped over the corpse without a downward glance. ‘Shall we?’
With a wry look at James, Elmhirst took the lead, making for the black car at the end of the alley. James followed with fresh hope in his heart that they might actually finish the job and make it out of Moscow alive. However, his optimism snagged on the sight of Elmhirst heaving out a corpse from behind the steering wheel. Looking up from the knife wound in the man’s chest, James realized it was the dead man’s driver accomplice from the day before.
‘You did this?’ Anya asked coldly.
‘Both these men were watching the National for you, James, same as I was. When the first got out to investigate your shout, I took my chance. We need a motor, don’t we? We’d stand out a mile on foot.’ Elmhirst left the body face down in the dirt. ‘Come on, those gunshots are bound to bring unwanted attention. Get in the back.’
James obeyed, remembering the rough feel of the old leather against his cheek. ‘This is the car I was snatched in yesterday,’ he announced, ‘just after that man fell out through the National’s doors with his throat slit.’
‘All part of the same gang, the Vorovsky brotherhood. Proper psychopaths – so vicious, even the secret police balk at using them – officially, at least. Karachan must’ve put them on to us after he failed to do the job himself.’ Elmhirst started the car and pulled away. ‘Those two I went up to in the lobby, they were tooled up with Party specials – Nagant red star revolvers.’ He turned left onto the main drag. ‘I used a fruit knife I’d taken from breakfast on one of them, and nearly got blown away by the other.’
Anya sat stiffly, gripping the seat beneath her as if expecting the car to take off at any moment. ‘You killed him also?’
‘Needs must.’
With a shiver James thought back to his jump from the car yesterday. It sounded as if his escape had been narrower than he’d known.