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As the Aeroflot plane began its descent towards Moscow's Sheremetyewo airport, Maille took a look once again at the crinkled blue paper that he had found in the pocket of Dr Hing's henchman. The «bureau» had quickly found out that mentioned «Anna Schukowa» was a former Russian assistant of Koslow, who had quit his service after a bitter quarrel with him and returned to Moscow – address unknown. «Fly over to Moscow and find the woman», Maxi-M had instructed Maille over the telephone. «We must follow every little trace, howsoever faint it may be.» Quite evidently, the department had no inkling how things would proceed. So it had invested its hopes and expectations in Maille and wished him luck, keeping its fingers crossed that the signal from the missing professor's wristwatch would surface again somewhere.

The department had not come up with much after studying the Cyrillic alphabets on the note and the seven encircled letters. A Russian expert who had been roped in to help the department, had also come up with just a vague letter combination, «ДИНОЗАВ» – meaning «dinosaur». But what was Maille to make of this strange word? Moscow was huge and all that the bureau had sent the secret agent was a three-year-old photo that showed Anna Schukowa together with Koslow in the restaurant «Grandbwa» at Palmheim. Where the dickens ought Maille to begin his quest

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