His first work of reference was the red-covered Lloyd’s Loading List, a weekly guide to ships loading in European ports for destinations all over the world. From this he learned that there was no regular service from Northern Europe to Odessa, but there was a small, independent, inter-Mediterranean service that also called at several Black Sea ports. It was named the Salonika Line, and listed two vessels.
From there he went to the blue-covered Lloyd’s Shipping Index and scoured the columns until he came to the vessels in question. He smiled. The supposed owners of each vessel trading in the Salonika Line were one-ship companies registered in Panama, which meant beyond much of a doubt that the owning “company” in each case was a single brass plate attached to the wall of a lawyer’s office in Panama City, and no more.
From his third work of reference, a book called the Greek Shipping Directory, he ascertained that the managing agents were listed as a Greek firm and that their offices were in Piraeus, the port of Athens. He knew what that meant. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, when one talks to the managing agents of a Panama-flag ship and they are Greek, one is in effect talking to the ship’s owners. They masquerade as “agents only” in order to take advantage of the fact that agents cannot be held legally responsible for the peccadilloes of their principals. Some of these peccadilloes include inferior rates of pay and conditions for the crew, unseaworthy vessels and ill-defined safety standards but well-defined valuations for “total-loss” insurance, and occasionally some very careless habits with crude-oil spillages.
For all that, Drake began to like the Salonika Line for one reason: a Greek-registered vessel would inevitably be allowed to employ only Greek senior officers, but could employ a cosmopolitan crew with or without official seaman’s books; passports alone would be sufficient And her ships visited Odessa regularly.
Maxim Rudin leaned forward, lay the Russian translation of President Matthews’s negative message as delivered by Ambassador Donaldson on his coffee table, and surveyed his three guests. It was dark outside, and he liked to keep the lights low in his private study at the north end of the Arsenal Building in the Kremlin.
“Blackmail,” said Petrov angrily.
“Of course,” said Rudin. “What were you expecting? Sympathy?”
“That damned Poklewski is behind this,” said Rykov. “But this cannot be Matthews’s final answer. Their own Condors and our offer to buy fifty-five million tons of grain must have told them what position we are in.”
“Will they talk eventually? Will they negotiate after all?” asked Ivanenko.
“Oh, yes, they’ll talk eventually,” said Rykov. “But they’ll delay as long as they can, spin things out, wait until the famine begins to bite, then trade the grain against humiliating concessions.”
“Not too humiliating, I hope,” murmured Ivanenko. “We have only a seven-to-six majority in the Politburo, and I for one would like to hold onto it.”
“That is precisely my problem,” growled Rudin. “Sooner or later I have to send Dmitri Rykov into the negotiating chamber to fight for us, and I don’t have a single damned weapon to give him.”
On the last day of the month, Andrew Drake flew from London to Athens to begin his search for a ship heading toward Odessa.
The same day, a small van, converted into a two-bunk mobile home such as students like to use for a roving Continental holiday, left London for Dover on the Channel coast, and thence to France and Athens by road. Concealed beneath the floor were the guns, ammunition, and image intensifier. Fortunately, most drug consignments head the other way, from the Balkans toward France and Britain. Customs checks were perfunctory at Dover and Calais.
At the wheel was Azamat Krim with his Canadian passport and international driving license. Beside him, with new, albeit not quite regular, British papers, was Miroslav Kaminsky.
CHAPTER SIX
CLOSE BY THE BRIDGE across the Moscow River at Uspenskoye is a restaurant called the Russian Isba. It is built in the style of the timber cottages in which Russian peasants dwell, and which are called isbas. Both interior and exterior are of split nine tree trunks, nailed to timber uprights. The gap between is traditionally filled with river clay, in a fashion not unlike the manner in which North American log cabins are insulated.
These isbas may look primitive, and from the point of view of sanitation often are, but they are much warmer than brick or concrete structures through the freezing Russian winters. The Isba restaurant is snug and warm inside, divided into a dozen small private dining rooms, many of which will seat only one dinner party. Unlike the restaurants of central Moscow, it is permitted a profit incentive linked to staff pay, and as a result, and in even more stark contrast to the usual run of Russian eateries, it has tasty food and fast and willing service.
It was here that Adam Munro had set up his next meeting with Valentina, scheduled for Saturday, September 4. She had secured a dinner date with a male friend and had persuaded him to take her to this particular restaurant. Munro had invited one of the embassy secretaries to dinner, and had booked the table in her name, not in his own. The written reservations record would not, therefore, show that either Munro or Valentina had been present that evening.
They dined in separate rooms, and on the dot of nine o’clock each made the excuse of going to the toilet and left the table. They met in the parking lot, and Munro, whose own car would have been too noticeable with its embassy plates, followed Valentina to her own private Zhiguli sedan. She was subdued and puffed nervously at a cigarette.
Munro had handled two Russian defectors-in-place and knew the incessant strahl that begins to wear at the nerves after a few weeks of subterfuge and secrecy.
“I got my chance,” she said at length. “Three days ago. The meeting of early July. I was nearly caught.”
Munro was tense. Whatever she might think about her being trusted within the Party machine, no one, no one at all, is ever really trusted in Moscow politics. She was walking a high wire; they both were. The difference was, he had a net: his diplomatic status.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Someone came in. A guard. I had just switched off the copying machine and was back at my typewriter. He was perfectly friendly. But he leaned against the machine. It was still warm. I don’t think he noticed anything. But it frightened me. That’s not all that frightened me. I couldn’t read the transcript until I got home. I was too busy feeding it into the copier. Adam, it’s awful.”
She took her car keys, unlocked the glove compartment, and extracted a fat envelope, which she handed to Munro. The moment of handover is usually the moment when the watchers pounce, if they are there; the moment when the feet pound on the gravel, the doors are torn open, the occupants dragged out. Nothing happened.
Munro glanced at his watch. Nearly ten minutes. Too long. He put the envelope in his inside breast pocket.
“I’m going to try for permission to bring you out,” he said. “You can’t
go on like this forever, even for much longer. Nor can you simply settle back to the old life, not now. Not knowing what you know. Nor can I carry on, knowing you are out in the city, knowing that we love each other. I have a leave break next month. I’m going to ask them in London then.”
This time she made no demur, a sign that her nerve was showing the first signs of breaking.