Roy A Higgins

Weekend in Amsterdam Roy A Higgins

A stranger walks up to you in a bar and asks you to spy for a foreign government, Unbelievable? Ray Evans would have thought so too until it happened to him. Based on actual events Ray Evans is on business in The Netherlands. Being young and single he decides to spent the weekend in Amsterdam and sample the delights of the city. While drinking alone, a middle aged man with dyed auburn hair and a face like an unmade bed strikes up a conversation, he tells Ray that he is head of security at a Russian radio station in Amsterdam. Ray envisages a music station playing Russian folk songs to a Dutch audience, perhaps with a little Soviet propaganda thrown in for good measure, as it is currently the height of the Cold War. Ray envisages Vladimir dressed as a uniformed security guard stopping undesirables and people without appointments from entering the radio station, or more likely supervising other uniformed security guards with a similar function. As it turned out this analogy couldn't have been further from the truth. The discussion quickly turns to politics at Vladimirs instigation, and he apotheosizes Russia's intention to annex Europe with the Soviet Union during the next decade. Vladimir is wearing a rather old fashioned double breasted suit, but when he leans forward to pick up his cigarette lighter Ray catches a glimpse of a handgun in a shoulder holster which unnerves him. After the chance meeting Ray has an overwhelming feeling that he is being followed, if Vladimir is carrying a gun in public, he reasons, he must have diplomatic immunity, which means that he must work for the Soviet Embassy, in which case the radio station will not be transmitting music, as he had at first thought, but coded radio signals, which he knew from watching a recent television program came under the jurisdiction of the GRU, or Soviet Military Intelligence, who's other functions, he remembered, included procuring Scientific, technological, and Industrial secrets. When he accidentally bumps into Vladimir for a second time in a week, he has a feeling of dread, and when Vladimir asks him to work for the Soviet Union in an intelligence gathering capacity he is afraid to answer. How do you think you would you respond if a refusal to cooperate could potentially put a target on your back.