Midnight in Moscow

Dicky and Duggy left the building together. They walked the short distance to the tube station at Vauxhall Bridge before Dicky turned to Duggy saying,

“You are one of us now.”

“What do on earth do you mean?”

“I will explain later, let’s get back to the Marble Arch Office and we can talk further. I have ordered some sandwiches, including cheese and Branston pickle your favourite,” explained Dicky. Duggy loved Branston pickle, a delight made known to him by his future mother-in-law, Hanorah.

Sure enough, a coffee table in front of Dicky’s desk had been laden with not just the sandwiches, but various crispy snacks, fruit juices, Jacob chocolate biscuits and a Mocha coffee pot complete with a sugar bowl and cream jug. Lunchtime had well past and so Duggy knew immediately this was not going to be a 10-minute wrap up chat before catching the train back home from St. Pancras.

They both walked in to sit on a pair of red leather sofas adjoining a low coffee table.

“When I said one of us, I meant you are now a full member of the operational team,” said Dicky.

“I thought I already was, given my contract. You are not suggesting I was just an intern did you,” asked Duggy?

“No, your contract was with the Department of Trade, but you have now earnt a place as an official operative. I am aware you have had a few exciting experiences; all that was unplanned. In an odd way that gave us the growing conviction of your potential for the security services,” Dicky adding some explanation.

“I am no secret agent,” said Duggy.

“I realise that, forget the James Bond stories and all those seductive ladies, we don’t work like that, never have. Most of the work is boring, repetitive and mind numbing and worst of all, the ladies you are likely to encounter are as ugly as sin and lethal. Stick to your girlfriend if I were you. Your contract remains with the Department of Trade, but from now on you need to expect to be pulled-in at short notice for the odd mission or two,” continued Dicky.

“Are there personal risks,” asked Duggy?

“No more than is usually the case. Where there may be some risk, you will operate under full diplomatic immunity,” answered Dicky.

“The opportunity for you is that it will open up an invaluable network of highly influential figures in government and international companies; perhaps for an outside career later on.”?

“That’s a relief, I was beginning to become concerned,” responded Duggy excited by the level of work and opportunities for advancement but concerned at the scope of the latent potential dangers.

“As a Brucie Bonus your salary will be doubled together with a guaranteed pension at 50 as recognition of your value.

As you know I came from a discipline in chemistry and biology. I have a fellowship at two of Oxfords’ Colleges and had a successful career as an entrepreneur exploiting their research. So great has been my success in turning research into successful commercial ventures that I am considered the greatest private benefactor to Oxford University’s research programmes since Henry VIII. My work has led me involuntary into an area of vital national interest, the defence of the realm. Even Prime Ministers must understand our national defence is his or her prime responsibility.

I need to share with you a grave concern held by many at senior level. We have been made aware that the Russians have been working on a weapon that is so lethal it dwarfs the effect of any nuclear bomb.? Unlike any other weapon of mass destruction, the benefit for any aggressor is, that after its use, it has the capability of subjugating a whole nation without destroying its physical assets. The ultimate weapon if you like. We have been following the same development path as them but have run into the same brick wall as they have. We can produce the nerve gas agent chemical formulation, but it is highly unstable. It lasts a few minutes and then a series of chain chemical reactions sets in that almost neutralises its full potency.

In parallel, I had been working on a cancer vaccine. I too had encountered the same kind of issue until it transpires, I found by accident a molecular safety trigger that acted as a blocking off-switch. That’s where you and I get intimately involved. We have a cunning plan, more a cunning a plan than the professor of cunning at Cambridge University could devise.

What I am about to tell you is of such vital strategic importance that it involves the defence of the West. Our work will be reported directly to the Prime Minister and the President of the USA,” said Dicky seemingly for the first time more engaged in an area in which he had an expertise and had an intense personal interest.

“Now you are really beginning to scare me,” responded Duggy.

Dicky, continued unabated,

“Don’t be, let me go on. My research discovered a molecular mutation I had not expected. I hadn’t, I fully admit, recognised its value until someone from Porton Down suddenly came into my research laboratory in Oxford unannounced.

Porton had beaten the Russkie’s into producing a nerve gas agent of such power that if delivered in an appropriate way would be more powerful than their attempted version. Their unresolvable problem was that their substance too was also highly volatile and acutely unstable, the substance once fully formed, disintegrated within minutes of creation. A chemical block was needed to stabilise it, and apparently, I had been the one by accident to discover the solution.

Bizarrely, the man from Porton Down didn’t arrive on his own. Accompanying him were twenty fully armed 3rd Parachute Regiment Troopers. All my stock was removed, and I was escorted to Porton Down for an interrogation in spite of my high security status, such was its importance.”

“I understand the importance, but why are sharing this stuff with me,” asked Duggy?

“Because young man in the initial stage of my mission you are going to be part of the cunning plan, and I need you to play along. I had thought about holding it from you, but the risk was you, smart as you have shown, would become suspicious and the mission could fail as a result.

You are going to accompany me to Moscow as part of a mutual exchange, you will be under full diplomatic cover, ostensibly to check out the Russkie’s chemical arsenals they have assured us they have disposed of under an international non-proliferation pact,” said Dicky.

“I wouldn’t know one end of a test tube from another,” said Duggy.

“The Russkies know I am a respected international chemical expert and they either know or could easily find out you work for me. They would expect I would come with a colleague. Everything must look normal. We don’t want to arouse any undue suspicions so you will be going as my bag carrier,” said Dicky.

“I see, I always wanted to visit Russia having had two years of earache at my further education college of its virtues,” said Duggy.

“Yes, we know all about your friend Peter,” said Dicky.

“Is there anything else you don’t know about my background,” asked Duggy?

“Not much,” replied, Dicky.

“Do you remember when your cricketing pal Phillip invited you over to see his sister’s G.I. boyfriend and to have a look at his brand-new Chevrolet Impala car? Well, while you were busy admiring the car, the G.I. was over to your mother chatting to her about you and the neighbourhood, including Norma your secret admirer.”

“Blimey you are thorough,” said Duggy somewhat surprised by the intimacy of the intelligence gathering.

It slowly dawned on Duggy that he had been na?ve. The sequence of events from the time he left school was no haphazard chain of events. There were others masterminding his future with him acting as a puppet on a string. He didn’t feel resentful since he was being allowed to escape from the fate of Arthur Seaton to grab all those many new opportunities or challenges coming his way. Guys from his social background could only dream of what he was doing.

“When do we go?”

“Next week, so take a few days deserved rest while I sort out your passport, visa and diplomatic clearances.”

Duggy was expecting to take the flight from Heathrow on a BOAC flight but awaiting them after passing through the departures gate was an Ilyushin airliner carrying some red Russian writing and clearly marked were the bold initials CCCP. Their suitcases safely stored in the hold; both clutched their locked briefcases carrying the important papers bearing the crown crest. On the flight they placed them in the overhead locker. Duggy was about to remove his overcoat when Dicky said,

“Don’t bother with that, you will need it, the heating is pathetic.”

Sure enough, it was freezing, and the only refreshment was a thick black tiny cup of coffee, not even some milk to calm it down and a few nibbles to snack on.

The arrival on touchdown after freezing in a metal tube for a couple of hours was unlike any other experience, even for Duggy’s limited familiarity of air travel. As soon as their feet touched the ground at Moscow Airport they were met on the tarmac and beckoned away by two gentlemen in long black leather coats to a VIP segregated arrival area. No documentation checks, they were quickly ushered into an enormous black car carrying an official flag on its bonnet and driven out of the airport to a five-star hotel right in the centre of Moscow.

The hotel couldn’t have been any closer to the Kremlin located on the Rue Tverskaia. It was no normal hotel; guests were duly selected and vetted for short stays and no doubt the premises were peppered with various hidden cameras and microphones tuned into every action and word. Even the privacy of a toilet could not be guaranteed. On each floor there was a security guard, most of them were fat ugly women in drab overcoats; the heating didn’t extend to the corridors.

Dicky suggested they first had dinner in the hotel. There was no abundance of readily available alternative restaurants amongst all the grey stone buildings and sparse commercial signs. The traffic lights seemed to be the only source of colour other than the profusion of red flags and posters of the Russian President. Afterwards, perhaps they would take an evening stroll around the fortress walls of the Kremlin and take a short diversion to the Lenin Mausoleum before turning in. At least they could be out of earshot or possibly even prying eyes. They couldn’t be too late turning in. The time of the first meeting was set at 8,30am so they needed to be ready by 8.00am to be escorted into the Kremlin for the meeting with a certain Andrei Gromyko, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The next morning and still clutching their briefcases, handcuffed to their hands all night whilst asleep, Dicky and Duggy were summoned into the hotel reception and a driver waiting whisked them the very short distance to the Kremlin. For Duggy, used to the trolleybuses running to Trent Bridge via Market Square passing the Romanesque fa?ade of the Nottingham Council House, this was a completely different and strange looking world. Surrounding the Kremlin were constructed very high red brick walls guarded outside its perimeter by ornate buildings more akin to an Asian skyline rather than a European one.

Duggy mused that this was the very place Napoleon so triumphantly entered, right into the heart of the Russian Empire, at what was to be at an enormous cost. Not very often does someone from the Broxtowe council estate get so near the major military powers of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Napoleon must have seated himself on the very chair that had been so recently vacated by the almighty Tsar Alexander 1 of all the Russia republics, urgently departing while his General Kutuzov set the whole city ablaze.

Literally a pyrrhic victory leading to an horrendous and deathly return to Paris, abandoning in the return trek over 70,000 of his troops either starving or dying in the freezing cold winter. A very hard lesson for a doomed strategy carried out with courageous military tactics. The Nazis had tried the same, but decided knowing the history had headed southwards, at their own tragic cost, the Ukrainian oilfields instead. Waiting for them the deathly meat grinder of Stalingrad.

These thoughts passed through Duggy’s mind as their black limousine entered a wide-open gate, close to one of the many towers dividing sections of the high fortress red walls. Duggy sensed a feeling of real fear and trepidation. Is this how the Christians felt, sent into the Roman Coliseum to be used as the spectator sport for the senators and baying citizens of Rome?

This was the epicentre of a feared military power, noted for its ruthlessness, suspicion of foreigners and no respecter of the individual, nor democracy. These were no gentle intellectuals, they were pitiless in their pursuit of their grip on power, no doubt instilled into their DNA by the communist revolutionaries of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin. The first two were intellectuals, but Stalin wasn’t, he was just a peasant thug, driven by an iron will for power at whatever cost. The human sacrifice of his own people on an industrial scale went to justify the hardship to achieve his ‘ideology’.

It was plainly evident this was no idle exchange meeting between state officials, they were seeing probably the most second most powerful man of the Russian Council next to Leonid Brezhnev. Duggy turned his glance to Dicky who sat on the wide black divan leather seat totally relaxed, still clutching his briefcase on his lap, the mass of his body bouncing to the rhythm of the car’s over-soft suspension. His eyes were transfixed on the road ahead. So tranquil was his demeanour it wouldn’t have seemed at all odd if he had produced a bucket of popcorn, plunge his mighty fists into it, like a crane grabbing handfuls of the toffee covered popcorn whilst watching a film at the cinema. In a peculiar way Duggy was able to draw strength by his calm and bulky presence.

The car made a rumbled arrival over the cobblestones, somewhat different to those rough irregular lumpy versions in the housing estate of Radford. These were smooth and geometric and neatly laid out in fan-like patterns. As soon as they arrived a hidden hand opened the rear barn door of a bullet and bombed-proof car for a sentry to utter the words,

“Пожалуйста, следуй за мной джентльмен.”

Duggy hadn’t a clue what was said, but Dicky turned to Duggy and just said, “Follow me, young man.”

Through the main entrance steel doors, they walked along a deep piled red carpet running along a light grey marble floor adorned on either side by a great expanse of cream painted walls with elaborate gold ornate carvings. The vast expanse of the floor and walls was broken by enormous oil paintings depicting various heroic scenes from the 1917 Revolution. At the end of the corridor, he saw two sentries dressed in what appeared to be toy soldier uniforms, exaggerated tall hats, guarding enormous double cream doors liberally covered again in gold leaf. They must have been fifteen-foot high; the doors that is. Their leading escort, as they approached the door, suddenly did an 180° about turn and placed his arm outstretched into their faces beckoning them to stop exactly where they stood. Their escort knocked on the door and Duggy could just hear a muffled voice coming from inside. The doors were opened in unison by the two sentries and all three marched into what Duggy felt was a huge ballroom with several crystal chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. A sort of very upmarket Sherwood Rooms Dance Hall he had gone to on his first date with his future wife. At the far end was an enormous mahogany office desk in front of a statue of another double headed golden eagle. Placed to one side a bare red leather covered boardroom table with seating for at least ten people.

It occurred to Duggy that interpreters might be required, but there were no other people in the room other than their host once their ‘commissionaire’ had left. He needn’t have worried, the man lifted his gaze and rose from his desk and said in perfect English,

“Welcome comrades to my humble abode, please take a seat at the table. Would you like a coffee or perhaps some Russian Kusmi tea, the preferred version of our Czar Nicolas? Sorry we seemed to have run out of the Yorkshire variety.”

He smiled as he said it, obviously believing the intended self-deprecating humour would not be lost on his English guests. This was not what Duggy had expected, here was a man, very charming, highly intelligent, and well at ease with the enormous power he wielded. Duggy had seen him on newsreels, he, and the other sombre characters like a clan of godfathers in the mafia, standing in line on parade in the Red Square watching the military parade and the missiles on their carriers. This was a world away from that.

The tea duly arrived with some digestive biscuits embossed with of all things, ‘McVities.’ Duggy remained tight-lipped, leaving the meeting entirely in Dicky’s hands, after all he was just the bag carrier. It was then that Andrei got down to business and asked the first question,

“Where is your list? Let me review it.”

Dicky had already unlocked the security lock on his briefcase in the car and immediately flicked the switch for the clasp to spring open and he pulled out from the open case just one A4 piece of paper. He slid it over having checked the list for himself and Andrei perused what appeared to be a list of five addresses and then said.

“I see you Mi6 guys are still on top of their job. That’s the very list we have already organised for you and your colleague to visit. We will drive you to the first site today and the remainder tomorrow and the following day. You will be transported by an official car and some of the distant others by train. I will furnish you with the necessary high-level security passes. The passes will give you the same entry rights as any one of our politburo ministers and you will be able to ask any questions of our scientists if it is in the presence of one of our representatives.”

“How will I know the representatives who need to be present,” asked Dicky?

“That’s easy, they will be dressed in long black leather coats and will be carrying a Kalashnikov rifle,” he replied giggling as he said it.

“Take as long as you like, and perhaps, we can meet again before you leave in case you wish to ask any further questions while you are here. Possibly, we can have five minutes with comrade Leonid, in-between him retargeting our nuclear warheads,” continued Andrei breaking out into more vigorous fit of giggles.

Dicky responded by saying with a wry smile,

“As long the coordinates don’t correspond to my home address.”

At this Andrei handed back the paper as though it was the wife’s shopping list for Tesco’s and the commissionaire duly arrived on queue to escort them back to the waiting car.

Nothing was said as they visited the first site on the list close-by and then they returned to the hotel knowing full well, they could be overheard, or their conversation recorded. They decided to have another walk around the Kremlin that evening, but this time by the river Moskova. First, they had dinner at the hotel and slipped out into the cool evening air. It was colder than they thought as their breath formed vapour trails around their faces.

“What do you think to our meeting and first visit,” asked Duggy?

“They are lying, there is another site they built 18-months ago and didn’t volunteer to correct our list. They have cleaned the sites out and most of their senior scientists have been moved out along with the sensitive measuring equipment,” said Dicky.

“How do you know that,” asked Duggy.

“Because I dropped in a couple of nonsense chemical assumptions with the so-called scientists at our first venue and they never corrected me. It wasn’t because they were scared to give away state secrets, they were basic errors that anyone reading public academic journals should have alerted them to my deliberate error,” answered Dicky.

The next four visits, some of them sat in a railway carriage with two armed guards stood in the corridor throughout the journey, went as the others before. Except on the last visit there were KGB agents dressed as Andrei had described. Perhaps a little final joke on his part. On the evening of the last visit, just as they had finished their dinner in the hotel, was interrupted by the sound of a major bustle in the reception as though a coachload of tourists had just arrived. As they left the dining room, they could see Andrei striding across the massive reception area heading directly their way saying loudly,

“How about a nightcap my friends at the cocktail bar, I have organised a meeting for 10.30am tomorrow before you go back to London on the afternoon flight?”

“Don’t mind if we do,” replied Dicky.

Sat together at the cocktail bar Andrei opened first by saying,

“We can talk business tomorrow, but I hope you enjoyed your visit, and you are now able to report your findings to your lords and masters.”

Delivered again with a quick fit of the giggles. Duggy couldn’t help but feel this was utterly surreal. Not only were they meeting one of the most powerful men in the world, but in a setting totally alien to anything Duggy had experienced before. It was though they were guys having a friendly chat at the Bell Inn pub in Nottingham instead of a mission to verify capabilities of annihilation of each other’s country using their massive chemical arsenals. He wasn’t quite sure who were the most intimidating, the usual Bell Inn Saturday night crowd or this lot. This was truly Alice in Wonderland. Any minute the ‘Mad Hatter’ would arrive.

Duggy could hardly sleep that night so exhilarated was he by the magnitude of the events unfolding around him. He did manage to get some spurts of unconsciousness so didn’t feel too rough the next morning. The same routine was followed on their last day as on their first meeting with Andrei. Again, over tea, but this time with a selection of ginger nuts and custard cream biscuits. Andrei asked for a report on their visit and whether there were any questions.

To Duggy’s surprise Dicky did ask whether the list he had prepared was complete and that the personnel was a full complement at the various establishments. Andrei replied in the affirmative, except to say there were a few senior people who had gone down with the Asian flu and a couple had gone on a skiing holiday in Bulgaria, but other than that, what they saw was the normal contingent.

Just as Duggy bit into his first ginger biscuit the door opened and in walked Leonid Brezhnev unsmiling and looking extremely stern emphasised by his bushy eyebrows almost meeting over his nose. Andrei introduced them, and in Russian, Duggy assumed he gave him a quick summary of the visit. Leonid then half-smiled at each of them in turn, turned to Andrei and said a few words in Russian and walked away giving Dicky a hard stare. Duggy was metaphorically pinching himself at the encounter, sad that he wouldn’t be able to relay the experience to his father.

On their return to London, again an official car, a Black Humber Snipe, was waiting at Heathrow and they were driven straightaway to Whitehall and the Ministry of Defence. The same routine, but on this occasion in very rudimentary furnishings, they were shown into the Minister’s office where he was waiting with a senior civil servant standing at his side holding a brown file. Dicky gave a full account of the visit and his conclusions.

Basically, the message was there was nothing to worry about concerning their chemical research and production establishments, the equipment was basic and their scientific knowledge likewise. He did add, however, that the absence of some personnel, despite the explanation, and the poor apparatus down to cracked test-tubes indicated they were working on a new nerve agent elsewhere evidenced by the absence of modern laboratory testing equipment.

At the end Dicky also said that Leonid had told Andrei to keep an eye on him and that there was more to me than Andrei thought. He knew more than he was letting on. That was certainly true as Dicky casually dropped into the conversation that he had spotted he believed an Arthur Scargill leaving with a large group in the hotel just as he came down to reception early. A bit clumsy on the Russkie’s part to commit such a faux par. The Russians were funding the miners for their impending coal strike.

Blimey Duggy thought, this guy doesn’t miss anything. Dicky understood Russian perfectly and possibly Leonid was making sure Dicky knew he was onto him! Dicky and Duggy returned to the Marble Arch office allowing Dicky to give Duggy a greater insight into the whole mission.

This time Betty brought a huge selection of Jacob chocolate biscuits which Duggy duly devoured as Dicky, feet on the desk went through the gaps in information to give Duggy a better understanding of the huge issues at stake.

“The Russians were as active on the nerve gas as the UK was. Our policy would be to formulate a defence strategy, but the Russkie’s have no such moral constraints. If the circumstances arose, they would have no hesitation of deploying such a weapon and neutralising countries of the West. Their facilities maybe rudimentary, but their new establishment could be a state-of-the-art laboratory. They certainly know we are doing the same and now it was a race to get to a final product before the other side perfects their technology.”

Then came the astonishing announcement,

“Somehow, we have got to let them have our samples of nerve gas, but tamper with the formula by a different fixing agent.”

“And what would that achieve,” asked Duggy?

“Stop looking at the present, think beyond, we are playing chess here, but for high stakes. They are determined to produce a stable version of what we have, but we must divert them from their objective. We must be able to tamper with their efforts and effectively neutralise them without them knowing it,” continued Dicky.

“Sorry to be slow but I don’t get this,” said Duggy.

“Look,” said Dicky showing slight irritation at Duggy’s slowness of thought. “They know we are close to perfecting our own version, but they don’t know yet whether we have been able to fully stabilise the random reactions. Let’s give them a stabiliser, but one which has a delayed time trigger that degrades the chemical agent’s acute capabilities within a couple of months.

The Russkie’s of course will test their first batch of production, but because this is nasty stuff will be impatient to store it as soon as they can until such time, they feel forced to use it. It will appear everything is alright after the first few hours, but our hidden trigger will be within a few days secretly working away disarming all their stocks without them knowing it.”

“Nice idea, but how on earth do we get to them acquire our samples and formula for the stabilising agent and how can we convince them they have the real McCoy,” asked Duggy?

“You see you are not as dumb as you think you are. That’s your next mission,” said Dicky casually.

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