The KGB Directive [antikvár]

1 A chill November wind chased the dead leaves along Kensington Palace Gardens, whirling them in eddies down the avenue. The road sweeper, manipulating a long broom, made a desultory show of clearing the gutters, the collar of his donkey jacket up around his ears, a woollen cap pulled tight down on his skull. He trudged slowly past the Russian Embassy, a gaunt Edwardian edifice behind a wall, and glanced through the gates, noting the registration of a car parked there. When he next bent down to shovel up a pile of leaves, he murmured the number into a miniaturized tape recorder concealed in his coat, then pushed his cart on again. Of the many ways in which the British Security Service kept watch on the Russians this was the most basic. High within the Embassy itself a middle-aged man glanced down through his net-curtained window, saw the sweeper, chuckled gently to himself and returned to reading the document he had just received. As he perused it further the expression on his broad, jowled face hardened and the humour died. Colonel Maxim Petrovich Grigoriev was fifty-six years old and feeling it. He had been in London too long already. During four years he had lost patience with Britain and his tasks there. Now, to add to his burdens, came this infuriating provocation. He looked again at the headline in the newspaper. 7