Icebreaker

4

MADEIRA CAKE

‘They were definitely professionals?’ M had already asked the question three times.

‘No doubt on that score,’ Bond answered, just as he had done before, ‘And I stress again, sir, that I was the target.’

M grunted.

They were seated in M’s office on the ninth floor of the building: M, Bond, and M’s Chief-of-Staff, Bill Tanner.

Immediately on entering the building Bond had taken the lift straight up to the ninth floor, where he lurched into the outer office, the domain of M’s neatly efficient PA, Miss Moneypenny.

She looked up and at first smiled with pleasure. ‘James . . .’ she began, then saw Bond totter, and ran from her desk to help him into a chair.

‘That’s wonderful, Penny,’ Bond said, dizzy from pain and fatigue. ‘You smell great. All woman.’

‘No, James, all Chanel; while you’re a mixture of sweat, antiseptic and a hint of something, I think, by Patou.’

M was out, at a Joint Intelligence Committee briefing, so within ten minutes, with Miss Moneypenny’s help, Bond was down in the sick bay, being tended by the two permanent nurses. The duty doctor was already on the way.

Paula had been right: the wound needed attention, antibiotics as well as stitches. By three in the afternoon, Bond was feeling a good deal better, well enough to be taken back for an interrogation by M and the Chief-of-Staff.

M never used strong language, but his look now was of a man ready to give way to the temptation. ‘Tell me about the girl again. This Vacker woman.’ He leaned across the desk, loading his pipe by feel alone, the grey eyes hard – as though Bond was not to be trusted.

Bond painstakingly went through everything he knew about Paula.

‘And the friend? The one she mentioned?’

‘Anni Tudeer. Works for the same agency; similar grade to Paula. They’re apparently co-operating on a special account at the moment, promoting a chemical research organisation based up in Kemi. In the North, but this side of the Circle.’

‘I know where Kemi is,’ M almost snarled. ‘You have to land there en route to Rovaniemi and all places north.’ He inclined his head towards Tanner. ‘Chief-of-Staff, would you run the names through the computers for me? See if we have anything. You can even go hat in hand to Five: ask them if there’s anything on their books.’

Bill Tanner gave a deferential nod and left the office.

Once the door was closed, M leaned back in his chair. ‘So, what’s your personal assessment, 007?’ The grey eyes glittered, and Bond thought to himself that M probably had the truth already locked away in his head, together with a thousand other secrets.

Bond chose his words carefully. ‘I think I was marked – fingered – either during the exercise in the Arctic, or when I got back to Helsinki. Somehow they got a wire on to my hotel phone. It’s either that, or Paula – which I would find hard to believe – or someone she spoke to. It was certainly a random operation, because even I didn’t know I was going to stay until we landed in Helsinki. But they moved fast, and undoubtedly they were out to put me away.’

M took the pipe from his mouth, stabbing it towards Bond like a baton, ‘Who are they?’

Bond shrugged, and his shoulder gave a twinge at the movement. ‘Paula said they spoke to her in good Finnish. They tried Russian on me – terrible accents. Paula thought they were Scandinavian, but not Finnish.’

‘Not the answer, 007. I asked who are they?’

‘People able to hire local non-Finnish talent – professional blackout merchants.’

‘But why the hiring, then?’ M sat quite still, his voice calm.

‘I don’t make friends easily.’

‘Without the frivolity, 007.’

‘Well.’ Bond sighed. ‘I suppose it could have been a contract. Remnants of SPECTRE. Certainly not KGB – or unlikely. Could be one of a dozen half-baked groups.’

‘Would you call the National Socialist Action Army a half-baked group?’

‘Not their style, sir. They go for Communist targets – the big bang, complete with publicity handouts.’

M allowed himself a thin smile. ‘They could be using an agency, couldn’t they, 007? An advertising agency, like the one your Ms Vacker works for.’

‘Sir.’ Flat, as though M had become crazed.

‘No, Bond. Not their style, unless they wanted the quick termination of someone they saw as a threat.’

‘But I’m not . . .’

‘They weren’t to know that. They weren’t to know you had stopped off in Helsinki for some playboy nonsense – a role which becomes increasing tiresome, 007. You were instructed to get straight back to London when the exercise in the Arctic was completed, were you not?’

‘Nobody was insisting on it. I thought . . .’

‘Don’t care a jot what you thought, 007. We wanted you back here. Instead you go gadding around Helsinki. May have compromised the Service, and yourself.’

‘I . . .’

‘You weren’t to know.’ M appeared to have softened a little. ‘After all, I simply sent you off to do a cold weather exercise, an acclimatisation. I take the responsibility. Should’ve been more explicit.’

‘Explicit?’

M remained silent for a full minute. Above him, Robert Taylor’s original ‘Trafalgar’ set the whole tone of M’s determination and character. That painting had lasted two years. Before, there had been Cooper’s ‘Cape St Vincent’, on loan from the National Maritime Museum, and before that . . . Bond could not recall, but they were always paintings of Britain’s naval victories. M was the possessor of that essential arrogance which put allegiance to country first, and a firm belief in the invincibility of Britain’s fighting forces, no matter what the odds, or how long it took.

At last M spoke. ‘We have an operation of some importance going on in the Arctic Circle at this moment, 007. The exercise was a warm-up – if I dare use that expression. A warm-up for you. To put it in a nutshell, you are to join that operation.’

‘Against?’ Bond expected the answer.

‘The National Socialist Action Army.’

‘In Finland?’

‘Close to the Russian border.’ M hunched himself even further forward, like a man anxious not to be overheard. ‘We already have a man there – or I should say we had a man there. He’s on his way back. No need to go into details just now. Personality clashes with our allies, mainly. The whole team’s coming out to regroup, and meet you, put you in the picture. You get a briefing from me first, of course.’

‘The whole team being?’

‘Being strange bedfellows, 007. Strange bedfellows. And now we may have lost some tactical surprise, I fear, by your dalliance in Helsinki. We had hoped you’d go in unnoticed. Join the team without tipping off these neo-Fascists.’

‘The team?’ Bond repeated.

M coughed, playing for time. ‘A joint operation, 007; an unusual operation, set up at the request of the Soviet Union.’

Bond frowned. ‘We’re playing with Moscow Centre?’

M gave a curt nod. ‘Yes’ – as though he also disapproved. ‘And not only Moscow Centre. We’re also involved with Langley and Tel Aviv.’

Bond gave a low whistle, which brought raised eyebrows and a tightening of M’s lips. ‘I said strange bedfellows, 007.’

Bond muttered, as though he could hardly believe it, ‘Ourselves, the KGB, CIA, and Mossad – the Israelis.’

‘Precisely.’ Now that the cat was out of the bag, M warmed to his subject. ‘Operation Icebreaker. The Americans named it, of course. The Soviets went along with it because they were the supplicants . . .’

‘The KGB asked for co-operation?’ Bond still sounded incredulous.

‘Through secret channels, yes. When we first heard the news, the few of us in the know were dubious. Then I had an invitation to step over to Grosvenor Square.’

‘And they’d been asked?’

‘Yes, and naturally, being the Company, they knew Mossad had been asked too. Within a day we had arranged a tripartite conference.’

Bond gestured, asking wordlessly if he could smoke. M went on speaking, giving a tiny motion of his hand as permission, pausing only now and again to light and relight his pipe. ‘We looked at it from all sides. Searched for the traps – and there are some, of course – examined the options if it went sour, then decided to nominate field officers. We wanted at least three each. Soviets heel-tapped on three: too many, the need to contain, and all that kind of thing. Finally we met the KGB’s negotiator, Anatoli Pavlovich Grinev . . .’

Bond nodded, knowingly. ‘Colonel of the First Directorate, Third Department. With cover as First Secretary, Trade, in KPG.’

‘Got him,’ said M. KPG meant Kensington Palace Gardens and, more specifically, Number 13 – the Russian Embassy. The Third Department of the KGB’s First Directorate dealt entirely with intelligence operations concerning the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia. ‘Got him. Little fellow, Toby jug ears.’ That was a good description of the wily Colonel Grinev. Bond had dealt with the gentleman before and trusted him as he would trust a faulty land mine.

‘And he explained?’ Bond was not really asking. ‘Explained why the KGB would want ourselves, the CIA and Mossad, to combine in a covert op. on Finnish territory? Surely they’re on good enough terms with SUPO to deal direct?’ SUPO was Finnish Intelligence.

‘Not quite,’ M replied. ‘You’ve read everything we have on the NSAA, 007?’

Bond nodded, adding, ‘What precious little there is – the detailed reports of their thirty-odd assassination successes. There’s not much more than that . . .’

‘There’s the Joint Intelligence Analysis. You’ve studied those fifty pages, I trust?’

Bond said he had read them. ‘They elevate the National Socialist Action Army from a small fanatical terrorist organisation to something more sinister. I’m not certain the conclusions are correct.’

‘Really?’ M sniffed. ‘Well, I am certain, 007. The NSAA are fanatics, but the leading intelligence communities, and security arms, are in agreement: the NSAA are led, and nurtured, on old Nazi principles. They mean what they say; and it seems as though they’re pulling more people into the net every day. The indications are that their leaders see themselves as the architects of the Fourth Reich. The target, at present, is organised Communism. But two other elements have recently appeared.’

‘Which are?’

‘Recent outbreaks of anti-semitism throughout Europe and the United States . . .’

‘There’s no proved connection . . .’

M silenced him with a hand raised. ‘. . . And, secondly, we have one of them in the bag.’

‘A member of the NSAA? Nobody’s . . .’

‘Announced it, or spoken, no. Under wraps tighter than a mummy’s shroud.’

Bond asked if M’s statement that ‘we’ had one meant literally the United Kingdom.

‘Oh yes. He’s here, in this very building. In the guest wing.’ M made a single stabbing downward motion, to indicate the large interrogation centre in the basement. The Headquarters had been redesigned when government defence cuts had denied the Service its ‘place in the country’, where interrogations used to take place.

M continued, saying they had taken the man concerned ‘after the last bit of business in London’, which referred to the slaughter six months ago, in broad daylight, of three British Civil Servants who had just left the Soviet Embassy after some trade discussions. One of the assassins had tried to shoot himself as members of the SPG closed in.

‘His aim was off.’ M smiled without humour. ‘We saw to it that he lived. Most of what we know is built around what he’s told us.’

‘He’s talked?’

‘Precious little.’ M shrugged. ‘But what he has said allows us to read between the lines. Very few people know about any of it, 007. I’m only telling you this much so that you won’t doubt we’re on the right track. We are 80 per cent certain that the NSAA is global, growing and, if not stopped at this stage, will eventually lead to an open movement, one which might become tempting to the electorates of many democracies. The Soviets have a vested interest, of course.’

‘Why go along with them, then?’

‘Because no intelligence service, from the Bundesnachrichtendienst to the SDECE, has come up with any other clues . . .’

‘So . . . ?’

‘Nobody, that is, except the KGB.’

Bond did not move a muscle.

‘They don’t know what we’ve got, naturally,’ M continued. ‘But they’ve provided a clue of some magnitude. The NSAA armourer.’

Bond inclined his head. ‘They’ve always used Russian stuff, so I presume . . .’

‘Presume nothing, 007, that’s one of the first rules of strategy. The KGB have persuasive evidence that the NSAA’s equipment is cunningly stolen within the Soviet Union and shipped out, probably by a Finnish national, to various pick-up points. That’s the reason they wanted it clandestine: without knowledge of the Finnish government.’

‘And why us?’ Bond was beginning to see light.

‘They say’, M began, ‘it’s because there has to be back-up from countries other than the Eastern bloc. The Israelis are pretty obvious, because Israel could be the next target. Britain and America would present a formidable front to the world if they were seen to be involved. They also say that it is in our common interest to share.’

‘You believe them, sir?’

M gave a bland, unsmiling look. ‘No. Not altogether; but I don’t think it’s meant to be anything sinister, like some complicated entrapment of three intelligence services.’

‘And how long’s Operation Icebreaker been running?’

‘Six weeks. They asked for you particularly at the outset, but I wanted to test the ice, if you see what I mean.’

‘And it’s firm?’

‘It’ll carry your weight, 007. Or I think it will. After what happened in Helsinki, of course, there is a new danger.’

There was silence for a full minute. Far away, behind the heavy door, a telephone rang.

‘The man you put in . . . ?’ Bond broke the silence.

‘Two men, really. Each organisation has a resident director holed up in Helsinki. It’s the field man we’re pulling out. Dudley. Clifford Arthur Dudley. Resident in Stockholm for some time.’

‘Good man.’ Bond lit another cigarette. ‘I’ve worked with him.’ Indeed, they had done a complicated surveillance and character assassination on a Romanian diplomat in Paris a couple of years before. ‘Very nimble,’ Bond added. ‘Good all-rounder. You say there was a personality clash . . . ?’

M did not look at Bond directly. He rose and walked over to the window, clasping his hands behind his back as he gazed down across Regent’s Park. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. Punched our American ally in the mouth.’

‘Cliff Dudley?’

M turned. He wore his sly look. ‘Oh, he did it on my instructions. Playing for time, like I said, testing the ice – and waiting for you to get acclimatised, if you follow.’

Again a silence, broken by Bond. ‘And I’m to join the team.’

‘Yes.’ M seemed to have gone a little absent-minded. ‘Yes, yes. They’ve all pulled out. You’re to meet them as soon as possible. I’ve chosen the rendezvous, incidentally. How do you fancy Reid’s Hotel in Funchal, Madeira?’

‘Better than a Lapp kota in the Arctic Circle, sir.’

‘Good. Then we’ll give you a full briefing here, and if you’re up to it, we’ll speed you on your way tomorrow night. I’m afraid the Arctic’ll be your next stop after Madeira, though. Now, there’s a lot of work to be done. You must realise this thing’s not going to be a piece of cake, as they used to say in World War Two.’

‘Not even Madeira cake?’ asked Bond.

M actually gave a short laugh.