Although it was possible he had given him the wrong phone book, they had still somehow matched their code words through a baffling exchange. Schiller thought things had probably gone like this.
On the phone, Oliver had somehow convinced the Soviets to trust him. Out of an agent's necessary caution, they would definitely have asked Oliver to meet in person. Oliver had not known it was an agent rendezvous, so he went without any guard up.
Thus, the two sides had collided by sheer coincidence. Once they started talking, it turned out they really had made contact.
Schiller felt that he had not said anything at all. Yet his act of handing over a phone book that happened to contain the KGB's number might have been understood by Oliver as: I suggest you rent a place in Moscow.
Oliver had thought, since he did not plan to return to Mexico for the time being and Gotham was not exactly a place where he could spread his wings, he might as well go see what Moscow was like.
In truth, Moscow needed Oliver more. Calling the current Soviet Union barely alive would have been an insult to the human respiratory system. Aside from still being called the Soviet Union, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the real Soviet Union. It was, at best, an ordinary great power.
But that did not mean they did not want to survive. The United States had pushed them too hard, and compromise offered no way out. As always, they needed inspiring good news. They needed a hero. They needed people to understand that someone was still holding on, that they could not give up, so the government could continue to endure.
Oliver's appearance was like a traveler on the verge of dying from thirst