Secrets of London parks

Spies surrounded by children

Anyone who has been to London knows how wonderful the metropolitan parks are. Sometimes they are even difficult to call parks. They are launched, like a wasteland, the majestic, like an oak tree, romantic, like a grove. It is easy to get lost in them and is equally easy to find a saving path or an alley. And how in a korolevsky London generous to parks and gardens! Well, what other city on Earth is ready to yield to trees, shrubs, grass dozens of square miles of priceless land? All these Hyde, Holland, Rigents, Greenwich, Richmond, St. James Parks are London ozonators. That is why the air of this seven-million city is clean and fresh.

Once I met in the London Square of Corn Fields with a man, thanks to whom I saw London parks in a new way. This man was a former double agent. He kindly agreed to talk with me, a radio journalist, and my tape recorder in the square, where he once carried out "secret operations". That's what he told me. It turns out that spies are apprehension of meetings in London parks, since two men can take homosexuals. But there is a way out. You can always take your children for the operation. They don’t even have to be taught: two or three children are already a watga of Cossacks and a gang of robbers, the devil will break his head, any surveillance of the coils will move. So, in this very Corn Field Square, my interlocutor once laid a cache for the Soviet illegal. The cache was an artificial brick made by a specialist in operachics. Eight thousand pounds were hidden in the middle of the brick. According to a previously developed plan, my interlocutor had to put a brick on a path under a tree. Under the cross -crushed cries of children, he walked along the alley, pulled a brick from a plastic supermarket bag, quickly threw it under a tree and slowly followed. Leaving the square, he left a label on the column in the column so that he was illegal to know that the brick was in place. "And what happened next?" - I could not stand it. The interlocutor grinned condescendingly. “Further? ... They walked him. There was a whole brigade of the British, also with children, with strollers, stuffed with cameras, Sarah circled on a bicycle, Jim launched an air snake ... They grabbed the illegal, sat on his tail, but he nervous, and not to throw a shadow at me, they let him go.

We walked along the square, breathing in fragrant air. I turned off the tape recorder. My interlocutor excitedly asked: “Do you know how much in 1985 there were KGB and GRU officers in London? Up to two thousand! If they went out for the operation at the same time, then up to two hundred restaurants and bars, hundreds of buses, kebabs, metro trains, river trams ...” could be involved on this day.

In front of my mental gaze, images of catering and urban transport enterprises flashed, they flickered before their eyes, ran into each other, screeching and growling. I thought about parks teeming with agents, illegal immigrants, bacons ...

Each time, returning to London, I walk for a long time in the Hampsted Park. Sometimes I take a granddaughter with me. What is it a charming wasteland, especially on the way to the Haiga cemetery. Birds soar over us, squirrels jump, and molars rustle underfoot. Yes, only granddaughter, I, birds, squirrels, snakes. And no more soul.