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Eighteen Hours of Rain
Date: 8/26/2015, Categories: Historical, Author: flytoomuch, Rating: , Source: LushStories
Everyone knows the name Kim Philby. You all know the notorious Cambridge Five spy ring. Unlike that famous quintet you have never heard this tale before. You have never heard the name, “Jean de Langham,” unless perhaps you are a massive fifties film fan. So sit down, pour a scotch, grab a cigarette if you’re so inclined, and listen up. The Soviet Cheka was more professional than most people realise. Often in Western capitalist made movies their agents are portrayed as brutal, inelegant thugs. Not accurate at all. Soviet spy-craft of the forties and fifties had style. They had at least as much panache as James Bond. Beijing Hotel, August 2015 I am staring at the blinking cursor. I'm upset. Somehow we had a connection. What can I say to him? What does he know about his mother, or about his father? The email I’d received was from Jean Vampilov, her son. Svetlana is dead. The story you are about to hear was told to me in the summer of 1995. I will try my best to recount it accurately. A few years have passed so allow me some poetic licence. The story was delivered across a white pine table in a dreary restaurant turned bar in Kyzyl, southern Siberia. The wooden planks of the restaurant floor were dusted with cedar shavings. The whole dank place reeked of cedar and vodka. A typical Siberian shit hole. Her name was Svetlana. We started talking by mistake--serendipity? Svetlana’s once lush brunette locks had turned grey. Her incredible account of history was rambling. The tale was ...