Chapter 7
“Firstly,” I said. “I think that one of the new members in the drama class has been telling his boss about the flow of information. They probably used to get snippets from Vlad, without knowing exactly where he got them from. We can use that to lure the unit to somewhere that is away from oversight, where we can just eliminate them. I saw that the Arrivals Board had a flight that had landed from Belarus. It was Aeroflot, so those duffle bags they were carrying could have been heavy weaponry, they looked bulky enough.”
“I agree,’ nodded X, “We can’t stop them if they want to put an RPG into the theatre, or even through the window of his apartment. We got word from your people that the Russians were in town. We may all be in the Pact, but every spook in town are looking out for them, so we should find out what they’re interested in. That way, we might work out a way to eliminate them.”
We spent three days in the safe house, with our friendly Hungarian feeding us information as it came to him. The first thing we did learn was that his middle name was Xavier, which made the ‘X’ thing mildly funny. With the advance notice that we had been able to give them, nearly every ‘friendly’ embassy was helping. No-one wanted the Russians to do ‘wet work’ in Sofia and upset the even balance. Up until now it had been a place where everyone mixed in and just gained information. No-one trusted the Russians in these times, and even the long-time Pact members were tiring of the hard-nosed tyranny.
The hit squad didn’t have a chance to go anywhere without someone on their tail, and, when they did go out, it was the theatre that was the first call, to buy two tickets for the next play. We had a conference and decided that this would be a look around, rather than a hit in a crowded theatre. Xavier wondered if they would come back, during the day, when there would only be rehearsals going on.
On the night of the play, we were across the street, just hanging out, as they turned up. Two got out the back to go to the entrance, while the other two stayed in the car, driving around the corner to park. Those two stayed in the front of the car the whole time the others were in the theatre. They came out at intermission and went around the corner, got in the back, and left the area. It looked as if that would be the sequence when they came back.
Gregor reported that the few Russians in his group had called in to say that they had a special project to complete, in two days’ time, so wouldn’t be at rehearsal, that afternoon. That was our signal to get ready. We had asked Xavier to supply us with two silenced revolvers that took long cartridge twenty-twos, and to have them loaded with light-load dum-dums.
That afternoon, the theatre contained about ten, heavily armed agents from six different embassies. They were there to scare the Russians off, rather than kill them. Adrianne and I were tarted up to look like a couple of street walkers, with bags big enough to take the guns, and another thing we had asked for.
We stayed out of sight, along with a British agent with a radio. When we heard that the car had stopped by the theatre, we started moving. The car came around the corner and stopped, the engine running. We started arguing as we got near it, me in Bulgarian, her in Russian. Learning it had been something to keep her occupied as she healed, always hoping she would get revenge.
By the car she caught my arm and pulled me around so that I hit the side of the car with my back. The driver put his window down to tell us to go away, and that’s when Adrianne put two dum-dums into his head, with a double tap to the passenger, the guy who had been the one with the shotgun, all those years ago. She had two remaining in her gun, which she emptied into his groin. He wouldn’t feel it, but it gave her closure.
We opened the back door, and I got inside, pulling out two hand grenades from my bag. I pulled the pin from each one and lodged them between the drivers’ body and the car seat. They both had fishing line attached to them, which I carefully tensioned and tied to the closed back door. I then got out and closed the door. We then walked away from the car and along the street, merging with the few shoppers. We were a street away when a double explosion echoed between the buildings.
Back at the safe house, and back into the jeans and tops, we were told that the plan worked as it was meant to. When the two Russians had gone into the theatre, they were faced with a wall of guns pointed at them. They had been told that they had five seconds to leave, or be shot, so turned and left the building in a hurry. As we had hoped, they didn’t look too hard in the car before diving into the back seats, only to be blown to bits two seconds later. When the car was examined by the police, a lot of bits of weapons were found, and, with a helpful hint that the victims were a hit squad, it was quickly decided that they had been killed by accident, from their own explosives. Using revolvers meant that we hadn’t left any unusual brass at the scene.
By that time, Adrianne and I had left the city and had flown back to London, Davina and her assistant taking a few extra days break, should anyone ask. Helen did ask, and she was the only one given the full story, as we sat in the confines of the control room, with the door locked. She hugged Adrianne and told her that she could now think better, with that grudge no longer on her mind. Then we got to work, trying to find the Bonds.
There wasn’t much we could do but sift through the reports and ask for CCTV tapes from the airports around that area. We sat, looking at screens, until we could hardly see. There were a couple of reported sightings, but when we put a man at the scene, they turned out to be innocent look-alikes. We earned our pay by doing short-term surveillance jobs within the country, also gaining brownie points with the MI5 guys. The two of us were in demand for our ability to change our looks and blend with whatever crowd we were thrown into. I think some of the guys just wanted to look at us.
Oddly, it was the home spooks that gave us a new lead. The whole list of passport names that we had found in the various hiding places were sent to our local brothers. One of them, from my mothers’ collection, had been used as identification at Dover, a few years ago. It was not a British passport, and Immigration had pulled her aside to check with their lists. They had interviewed her and let her through. In the notes she had told them that she was going to stay in a hotel in Cardiff.
At the Marriott, they were helpful. In fact, they were more than helpful. The ledger showed that the woman who had used that name had stayed in a single room for three days. What caught my eye was another visitor, in the adjoining room, using the most popular given name among my father’s aliases. There was a note alongside that name that the person had only stayed one night and left a case behind, which was still in the lost luggage cupboard. They had a policy to hold lost luggage for five years before sending it to auction. Showing the Special Branch warrants, that we just happened to have with us, was enough to get it transferred to our keeping.
I asked the manager what was happening in Cardiff at that time, and he looked in his old diary. The biggest event had been a rugby international at the Cardiff Arms Park, not far away. We took the case with us and went back to London. A quick check of the files showed that they had both been working in France at the time, in a job where being missing for a few days wasn’t enough to raise an alarm. A check with Emigration found that people with the two names had gone back to France, on the ferry, the day after the woman had checked out of the hotel. So, he had spent two days totally out of sight.
Adrianne posed the question. “If the notion about the bullion delivery was being discussed, could the Bonds have known that they would be part of it?”
I countered with one of my own. “If the Russians were already talking to our less than friendly dictator, could they have put it into his mind to ask us for the bullion? If that was the case, could the whole debacle have been a Russian plot.?”
The case now became an item of interest and was opened with our two extra helpers to oversee the great reveal. Inside, we found clothes in my fathers’ size, all from German stores, as well as pamphlets from Russian beauty spots. All of these were in the southern and Black Sea areas. We spent a day going through them, looking for likely places they may now be living. One thing that stood out was a tourist map of Sukhumi, in Georgia.
Very close inspection with various light wavelengths showed a faint imprint of part of a name of some sort of hospital, or rehabilitation centre. Our specialists on Georgia were adamant that Georgia was not a place to be now. We were late into the eighties and there was a feeling of unrest between the indigenous citizens, the Georgian immigrants, and the Russian overlords. We sat with Helen and discussed the timing. Adrianne was sure that the timing was right. We could go into Georgia as journalists from another Pact member. I had enough Bulgarian to get by and she was good with the Russian, our two visits to Sofia being a good revision for her.
So, a plan was hatched. It would involve the two of us going to Sofia, yet again. There, we would be given new identities as freelance journalists, with links to the local language paper as well as a Russian language paper. We would go to Sochi, then take the train to Sukhumi. Our luggage would be carried in two backpacks, no weapons allowed. We would each have ten rolls of film for the Zenit 35mm SLR cameras that we will be given. These were over twenty years old but had been given a full overhaul. Like most things Russian at that time, they would work in a blizzard.
So, in early 1989, we were off again. At Sofia we were given our new identities, including press passes. We spent two days getting used to the cameras by walking around the city and interviewing strangers about what they thought of the state of the world and taking pictures of them. These would be in the papers once we had left, to give us an extra background. I don’t know how Xavier had fixed this, but I expected that there may be an unofficial old boys’ network going on.
Our travel, from there, was anything but simple. We got on a train to the port at Varna, where we got the next ferry going to Poti. Then, after the more than two-day voyage, we were on a bus to Tbilisi, where we checked in with the Hungarian Embassy to meet our contact. The plan was for him to come to Sukhumi, every two weeks, to pick up our copy for the papers, along with any unprocessed film we had. That would go, by diplomatic bag, to Sofia. Our job would be to convey our progress in a way that looked like part of a genuine story.
After resting up in Tbilisi, we were back on a train to Sochi, a bit of a long way round, but it did not have any border crossing from Russia. We had a week in Sochi, talking to the people that would talk to us, Adrianne sounding more Russian as the days passed. We concentrated on seeking out those who had come into the town recently, following the strong earthquake of December, the previous year, which had displaced a lot of Abkahaz and Shirak families, as well as a number of Armenians. This way, we could get some insight into the area we would be going to next. A few of our interviewees were happy to tell us about their old home, and some had even gone to Sukhumi for holidays.
We would spend our evenings writing out our stories from our notes and adding the lists of the photos we had taken. It was something we found that we enjoyed. At the end of February, we took the train to our destination. We asked, at the station, if there were any places where we could stay, and found a small backpackers hotel. We had a couple of days wandering the town, and, especially, the sea front, the vague location of the hospital that was on the tourist map.
Our specialists were right when they had warned us off. The place was a hotbed of tensions. We spoke to several people who complained about their treatment from everyone else. No-one was left out. Our contact came into town at the end of that week. We met him at a pre-arranged café, and he told us that the situation in Tbilisi wasn’t much better. Tempers were becoming frayed all over the country, and there was a growing anti-Russian movement.
Over the next few weeks, we became totally engrossed in the local affairs. We did find a hospital, well, more a rehabilitation centre, that was beside the sea, just down the road from the site of a planned new hotel. Across the road was a soccer field and swimming pool, and, on the sea front, several bars and even an ice cream seller.
We were at one of the bars, on a sunny but cool day, when the doors of the hospital opened and several orderlies, in white coats, wheeled a dozen or so patients to the edge of the promenade, made sure their chairs were locked, and then went back into the hospital. We finished our drinks, picked up our notebooks and cameras, and wandered along the promenade to see what we could find out. Of the seated patients, only four were well enough to talk to us. One that sat with pinprick eyes, staring at nothing, was my mother!
We spoke to the few who could discuss their life with some clarity. It was a set of wonderful stories about caste discrimination, ageism, and every sort of hardship that one could live through. All these stories, along with the photos, went back to Sofia, and then on to London, with the next visit by our contact. The weather closed down for a couple of weeks after, so we didn’t see the wheelchairs again. Our contact, when we met him, told us that Tbilisi was a powder-keg, just waiting for a torch.
He was right about that. On April 9th, there was a big anti-Soviet protest in Tbilisi, and it was put down in the usual Russian way – by baton and spade. It left over twenty dead and hundreds injured. The action started on the 4th, when tens of thousands of Georgians gathered in front of the Government House. The Commander of the Military District mobilised his troops on the 8th and ordered them to clear the area on the 9th. The excuse was that the protesters had thrown stones at ‘unarmed’ Russian soldiers. The civilians were beaten by baton and severely injured by spade blows. Much of the slaughter was captured on film and led to being evidence in a subsequent hearing into the event. The soldiers even attacked the ambulances brought in to tend the wounded. One short film captured a young boy beating a tank with a piece of wood. This became the rallying image of the Georgian uprising.
In Sukhumi, we were safe from all that, but our movements were seriously hampered by a more active Russian presence. We kept up with our reporting, however, and were able to send back some good stories and pictures of a town where the temperature was rising, and that wasn’t because of the season.
Our contact had something for us with his next visit, two packs of film, and a letter addressed to me, in Bulgarian. When I opened it, I saw a commendation from my friend, Gloria, with the comment that the pin-eyed lady we had sent the picture of, looked as if she didn’t have long for this world, the poor dear.
That was the final decision, my mother had been given a code-red, due to her condition, and it would be up to me to despatch her. We didn’t go near that part of the sea front until a sunny day in May. Then, we made sure that we were there when the wheelchairs came out. They parked them at random, my mother at the end of the row, with only two of the more intelligent ones at the other end. We chatted to the ones who were able, finding out how things were in the hospital. We did our usual routine, making notes and taking a couple of pictures.
We then moved along the row, speaking to those who just sat there with over-the-horizon stares. When we got to the last chair, I quietly took a hypodermic syringe from my pocket. With my time with the SAS, I had been taught how to administer morphine through uniforms, finding a vein and drawing a little blood into the syringe to prove that I was in the right place. Today, however, instead of morphine, all I injected into the vein was air while Adrianne stayed between me and the other patients. It didn’t take long, and I looked into her face as I wished her “God Speed”.
We walked, in silence, along the promenade for a while, and then came back, just as the attendants came out to take the chairs back inside. I could tell from the reeling back, when they got to her, that she had lost control of her bowels, no doubt as she died from the embolism. We stayed well away, while Adrianne changed to her longer lens. I talked to her, keeping between her and the orderlies, while she took photos and kept up a running commentary. They sent one back into the building and he returned with a gurney. They laid the body bag on the ground and, no doubt holding their breath, lifted her off the chair and on the open bag. When she was lifted onto the gurney, they took it, and the chair, back to the entrance. The gurney was taken inside, while the chair was hosed down over a garden bed. The roses could be good this summer. Back at the hostel, I put the needle in the sharps box, rinsed the syringe with hot water and put it back in the drawer of the first aid kit, where I had taken it from, this morning.
That evening, and then over the next few days, we stayed around the vicinity. We were rewarded on the third day, when a car parked in the side road, and my father walked into the hospital. This was something that we had planned for. When we had first found my mother, we had asked our contact to bring us a tracking bug and a receiver, made to look like a transistor radio. We had also acquired a small scooter.
We wandered past the car, and I dropped my bag, fitting the bug under the rear wheel arch. It had a range of about five kilometres, so we could hang back. We went back to the bar and waited until he came out again, standing at the main doors and talking to a rather large man, before shaking hands and going to his car to drive away. My camera was on the table, pointed their way, and I took several pictures.
We drained our glasses and walked to where we had parked the scooter. I drove while Adrianne turned the receiver on, put the bud in her ear and then fixed her helmet. The sound from the bug would be louder as we got closer, so I could just steer the scooter until Adrianne tapped my shoulder and told me that we were going away. I turned around and ten minutes later I saw her hand in front of my eyes with the thumb up.
It took a while, but eventually we found ourselves on the main road south, with the bug keeping the same distance in front. The road is just inland from a railway track, the main line along the coast and a popular tourist route. This remained the situation as we crossed the Dziguta Bridge and approached the Abkahazian University when Adrianne tapped my shoulder, and her hand came into my vision with the thumb down. I turned us around and we went back along the road, more slowly.
The signal was obviously coming from our right, and we stopped at a roadway that led off that way. We went slowly on the side-road, past some building sites, and climbed a little. There were woods to our right, and the houses to our left. We didn’t need the tracker signal when we saw the car parked in one of them, a detached house, set slightly back from the road. We went past, and then turned around several hundred metres further on, easing back past the house in neutral while Adrianne took pictures as we coasted by.
I considered it a good day, so we celebrated with a meal out. It wasn’t fancy, but it was cheap and filling. On top of that, we were spoken to by a couple of local guys we had met before and allowed them to take us home with them. I arrived at our lodgings around midnight, my guy having taken me back to the café to collect the scooter. Adrianne got home about half an hour later, and we both slept like contented cats until morning.
The next few days were damp and overcast, so we went to our fall-back jobs to keep the cover going. We had been ticking off visits to all the ancient sites, museums, and attractions, putting together stories about the town. These went off, with the rest of our copy, and was a good excuse to be here. If anyone asked, we were putting together a series that would promote the area, once summer arrived, and that we would be doing this through Spring, to get the full range of colours of the resort.
It also allowed us to talk, privately, out in the open air, often drowned out by the traffic or construction noise. The morning after our night out, Adrianne mentioned that her guy was involved with the separatist movement and had warned her that there was a lift in the tensions. She said that it seemed that many of the separatists were starting to talk about violence. There had been a declaration of Independence back in March, which had led to the massacre in Tbilisi in April. During all of this time, there was a great deal of tension between Georgia and the Abkhaz people. The Georgians were sure that Abkhazia was part of Georgia, while the Abkhaz people had never accepted this.
There had been skirmishes while we had been here, and we had even managed to get pictures of some of the fighting, but it had not intruded into our own task. Most took us as outsiders, here to promote the city, and were usually friendly. Our old lady friends on the esplanade were back on the first sunny day, so we had a stroll and spoke to the regulars who would speak to us. Well, I say ‘us’, but it was Adrianne who could converse in Russian, with me picking up the odd word or two.
That sunny day, we found out a lot more than we expected.
Marianne Gregory © 2023
