Man From Barbarossa

THE SWIMMING CHAMPION

As he worked on their handcuffs with the pick-locks, Bond told them the score, the global danger and the odds. He did not mince matters. They were outnumbered, and the cargoes had almost reached their destination. Between these whispered briefings he raised his voice, talking loudly in Russian, saying that they would, with the exception of Boris Stepakov, be expected to do as they were told.

‘The marshal says you are not co-operative, that you are being like stubborn children,’ he almost shouted, turning his face towards the door.

Stephanie rubbed her wrists, massaging the circulation back. ‘Please, James, don’t shout. You’re hurting my head.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘You say . . .’ she began. Then Stepakov completed the question.

‘You say these containers lie below the waterline?’

He told them, yes, and then described the clever way the hulls of fishing boats had been bolted above. ‘They’re having a pretty rough ride. The things are bobbing like corks in a bottle.’

‘But if they were holed?’ Stephanie glared at Stepakov as though he had behaved very badly at the dinner table.

Boris took no notice. ‘And these things are attached to the minesweeper, this ship, by hawsers?’

Bond nodded, saying they were towing them in line astern.

Rampart asked what firepower was available on the ship.

‘Providing we got lucky and took over?’ Bond shrugged. He was working on Pete Natkowitz’s manacles.

‘But of course.’

‘They’ve got a couple of 45-mms fore and aft in turrets. Also two 25-mms on each side. Midships, port and starboard. Antiaircraft stuff.’

‘Then, technically, we could blow them out of the water with the 45s.’ Natkowitz nodded his thanks as his wrist came clear.

Bond reached inside the combat suit and took out one of the magnetic grenades. ‘This would be better. In fact, I believe if we managed to get off in one of the inflatables – I’ve counted four – we might be able to rig up some way of timing these things. I let Yuskovich go on talking the other night. The containers are vulnerable, being made of a light alloy. The sides are flotation chambers, with some simple mechanism for blowing out the water when they get them inshore.’ He hefted the grenade. ‘Put this on the side of the last in the line and we’ll probably upset the whole damned lot. The cargo’s bloody heavy. When one goes they might all go. Down among the dead men.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Boris assumed a clown’s look of innocence. ‘The cribbage effect.’

‘Domino,’ Stephanie sharply corrected.

Stepakov grinned and asked if he might see one of the grenades. Bond brought them all out and placed them on the deck.

‘Yes, these have a little delay mechanism at the base, so.’ He turned over one of the bombs, pointing to a knurled screw. ‘You can set them for up to five minutes, at one minute increments. No more. No less.’

There was the sound of a boot scraping against the metal deck outside. Rampart was immediately on his feet, making for the side of the hatch. Bond motioned to him, indicating that he would go out.

It was the soldier, back on duty after his smoke. ‘Are they suitably chastened, comrade Lieutenant?’ He smiled to let him know he had heard what Bond had shouted loudly for his benefit.

‘Not really. I know what I’d like to do with them.’

‘Maybe you’ll get the chance, sir.’

‘Oh, the fun will go to the big boils . . .’ He stopped at the sound of another pair of boots coming down the companionway.

‘My duty’s up,’ the soldier sighed, then greeted his replacement who saluted Bond.

‘All well?’ the new man asked.

‘They have to be put in a better mood.’ The guard winked at his comrade. ‘The lieutenant, here, has been telling them bedtime stories about dragons with big boils.’

They both laughed.

‘I’m coming back to give them more.’ Bond looked at the new man. ‘Expect me in a few minutes.’ He nodded and went up the companionway, stopping once he was out on the open deck, checking he could not be seen. Nobody else was about and the sentry just relieved began to come up the companionway, slowly as though tired, like soldiers the world over at the end of a boring guard duty.

Bond took him out with the long killing knife, similar in size and weight to the Sykes-Fairbairn he was used to. The point went into the man’s neck as though it were penetrating butter. He did not even have time to shout. There was a great deal of blood.

When he had dragged the body behind the aft gun turret. Bond went down the companionway again. He smiled cheerily as the sentry came to attention, so the man did not even see the knife coming.

‘There are weapons out there,’ he told Rampart once he was through the hatchway. ‘Pete, there’s a body littering up the deck behind the aft turret. Be a good fellow and move it. Then pass out the goodies. I’m going on a recce. Just to see where everyone’s got to. Then we’ll have a go at launching one of the inflatables. It’s dark enough. We might just be able to deal with the cargo. It’s worth a try.’

Back on the mess deck which Yuskovich had commandeered for his staff, Verber was playing chess with his cousin.

‘Couldn’t sleep?’ Bond asked, and Verber shook his head.

His cousin said the major never slept when there was about to be action.

‘We won’t get any action,’ Bond said. ‘We only have to watch them unload the weapons. Nobody’s going to start shooting.’

Berzin’s voice came from behind him, ‘Not unless you try something, Englishman.’

Bond spun around.

‘Ah,’ Berzin stood in the doorway, ‘so it is the Englishman. I was concerned. The moustache fooled me.’

‘What’re you talking about?’ Bond looked him straight in the eye. ‘Comrade General, you are accusing me of something? I don’t understand.’ He spoke as though the Russian had made some disgusting slander concerning his mother.

Berzin locked eyes with him, his slim, leathery face held no expression. It was as though he had been bled of all sympathy, humanity and compassion. ‘I just cannot place you, Batovrin. You worry me. Yes, I even think you might possibly be the dead Englishman. You believe in ghosts?’

‘No, General Berzin. The only kind of spooks I understand are KGB and GRU.’

‘Mmmmm.’ Berzin’s face did not alter and his eyes reflected not an ounce of feeling. ‘I have seen most of the current Spetsnaz officers through the training school, some of them even at the airborne school at Ryazan. I knew a Batovrin. Younger than you, and he had no moustache. It’s worried me since the marshal put you on to his staff. I know your name, but . . .’

Bond smiled. ‘You’re thinking of my young brother, Grigori, comrade General. I’m Sergei.’ As he spoke, he edged towards the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Verber and his cousin had stopped playing chess. They lounged back in their chairs, pretending to be mildly interested, but Bond could see the tautness of their muscles as they prepared to spring at a second’s notice. There was a new tension in the air. He could almost smell it, as an animal smells fear on a human.

‘Really, Batovrin? If it is so, you look nothing like your brother.’

‘He takes after my father’s side of the family.’

‘Really?’ Berzin repeated.

Bond laughed, ‘Yes, really, comrade General.’

The strap was still in place on Berzin’s holster, but now, at last, the eyes flickered. He was more certain of his ground. In a moment he would call Bond’s bluff again; after that it would not take long. Rampart and Pete would be armed by now, but the odds were with Yuskovich’s people.

‘So, your brother takes after my very good friend Colonel General Petros Batovrin. And you favour my equally good friend, the Colonel General’s wife, Anna Batovrin. Strange, they never mentioned that there was an elder son. And I was at the Frunze with Petros Batovrin.’

Bond turned sideways, hands on his hips, his right palm flat. He could reach the pistol quickly if necessary, but with three of them, there was little chance that he would get off the mess deck alive. ‘Where is the comrade Marshal, sir? I think he should be here. I am a true and loyal member . . .’ It sounded lame, like words put into the mouth of an actor in some bad film. But he did not have to complete the sentence.

‘Where do you think he is, Englishman? He’s with his little whore. The lovely Nina. Or didn’t you know, like every Spetsnaz officer, that the marshal and Nina were . . .’

Bond hardly heard the three pops. He smelled the cordite before the noise registered in his ears. Berzin’s eyes widened and his arms went up, hands scrabbling for his back before he crumpled.

Bond was aware of Verber and his cousin moving. His hand went down to his own holstered pistol, but the adjutant and his doomed relative had simply been slung back against their chairs by the force of the bullets.

‘Thought you might need help.’ Natkowitz stood in the doorway. He did not look at all like a gentleman farmer now. He seemed at last to have lost the look of innocence and the foolish smile had disappeared. ‘Damned good these PRIs,’ he said. ‘I think we should move. Bory was getting difficult. He wanted to be a hero.’

‘Oh, Christ.’ Bond was through the door, not even bothering about noise any more. If it came to a fire fight, they would have to take their chances. He followed Natkowitz along the deck, knowing they would have to use the gun in the aft turret. If they could hold off Yuskovich’s men for long enough, they might just be able to blow the infernal floating cargoes out of the water.

When they got down to the hold, Rampart was on the deck nursing his neck, and Stephanie looked on the point of screaming.

‘What the hell . . . ?’ Bond began.

‘Bory,’ she said, looking wild. ‘He’s trying to swim it. Said it was his country and his duty. Said he was in the Dynamo Sports Club!’

Rampart cursed. For the first time since they had met, Bond thought he even looked half-human. ‘He caught me by surprise. I’m sorry. The imbecile.’ The Frenchman shook his head and squeezed his eyes.

‘He’ll never last in that water.’ Bond started for the door. He knew the Dynamo Sports Club was KGB’s crack field and swimming team.

‘He just might.’ Stephanie was helping Rampart to his feet. ‘He said he’d been in KGB’s swimming team, and he’d done the course of cold water survival. He said he was 1988 swimming champion. He went on about very cold water slowing the heart rate, and if you stuck with it, you could ward off hypothermia for a long . . .’

The explosion was followed by a lurch. The ship’s deck seemed to move, and the klaxons began to howl almost immediately.

He heard Natkowitz revert briefly to his gentleman farmer mode, saying, ‘That’s torn it,’ and by the time he reached the deck there were two searchlights trained on the water behind the ship. As he looked aft, Bond saw the rearmost fishing boat overturned in the sea with the container on its side, the whole contraption wallowing and starting to sink.

My god, he’s done it, he thought. Then he felt the jerk and pull again, and realised his earlier prediction had been sound. The great weight of the rearmost pair of Scamps and Scapegoats was starting to pull at the next container. Already the bows of the second makeshift fishing boat were out of the water, disclosing the square bulk of the huge metal box beneath. If it continued, the total weight would draw the last container and then the minesweeper down with it.

For a brief and stupid moment, Bond considered using some of the DRX he had brought from the cache in his denim jacket. It would cut through the hawser like a child breaking a thread of cotton. Then he realised that what had happened would be best in the end. Let the Scamps and Scapegoats act as anchors to drag the whole diabolical crew to the bottom of the sea. It was almost poetic.

He turned to Natkowitz. ‘There are a couple of inflatables on each side,’ he shouted. ‘I’m going to deal with the ones here. You rip up the pair on the port side.’

‘Never mind,’ Rampart was already running. ‘I have a knife.’

As Bond reached the forward of the two inflatables, the middle container exploded. A yellow flash, outlined in orange, as the oblong box with its boat hull on top tilted over, turning turtle and already starting to slide into the dark water.

There was confusion on the deck and shouts coming from among both crew and Yuskovich’s remaining troops as he ripped the thick rubber of one inflatable and turned his attention to the other. But Stephanie and Pete Natkowitz had it half over the side. He saw Pete tug at the lanyard and the black shape floated down, hissing as it filled with air.

Natkowitz grabbed Stephanie by the shoulders and hauled her up over the rail. ‘Jump! Get down there!’ he shouted at her, and she disappeared with a little squeal of fear. Natkowitz followed her a second later, and Bond, poised for the drop towards the inflatable, suddenly saw with horror that the searchlights from the bridge had both centred on one small circle of ocean.

There, in the middle of the silver puddle, Boris Stepakov swam with long, lazy strokes towards the nearest fishing boat, its submerged cargo container already coming out of the water as the other sinking Scamps and Scapegoats dragged at it.

It seemed as though the weapons were firing from a long way off and a lazy stream of tracer floated towards the little figure who was now so close to his final target. The water boiled around him and his body was lifted half out of the sea by the impact. But, in his last seconds, Stepakov continued to go through the motions of swimming and his right hand came up in a great arc, his left rising to meet it, then pulling away with the grenade’s pin.

The next burst of fire threw him against the metal side of the container, and at that moment the third grenade exploded, tearing a long gash in the metal. Stepakov disappeared in the smoke, water and spray.

As Bond fell towards the water, he thought sadly that the man was certainly a swimming champion now. The icy flow rushed up to meet him, then Pete Natkowitz’s hands were around his shoulders, hauling him into the boat. At the rear, Stephanie wrestled with the motor, and Natkowitz’s face was turned upwards, his mouth open, shouting to Henri Rampart poised on the rail above.

The searchlights fluttered down, along the rail, chased by a clatter of bullets which ripped into the French major, knocking him along for six or seven feet before throwing him sideways. As he hit the water, the noise of helicopter engines seemed suddenly to blast from the sky. It was like the unexpected arrival of a violent thunderstorm on a clear day.

Stephanie had the inflatable’s motor going, and they began slowly to draw away from the minesweeper’s side. Other searchlights probed the ship now and Bond at first thought it must be the Iraqi Mi-10s arriving early.

Then he heard the Russian voice through a loud hailer from somewhere above. ‘Heave to, Two-Fifty-Two. Cease firing and we will take you off.’ The voice repeated its message three times, but all it got for its pains was a stuttering snarl of fire from the starboard 25s.

Bond heard Pete yelling to Stephanie, telling her to open the throttles, and he felt the craft move and buck in the water. They were about sixty yards away when another helicopter came in from for’ard, hurling death from a pair of rocket launchers. The inflatable keeled over to one side, swung and bobbed back as the rockets hit and the ship seemed to burst like a great rose, a centrepiece of scarlet leaping from amidships. As it bloomed in vivid crimson, reds and then pink at the extremities, Bond could have sworn he saw the long shape of Marshal Yuskovich entwined with Nina Bibikova hurtling upwards in the very centre of the fire, as though new-born from chaos.

They felt the hot blast, and a rain of metal, wood and spray fell all around them. Then the first chopper was heading back, hovering over them, the detached Russian voice coming through the loud hailer ‘Is that the English? Good, is it the English and French?’

They waved weakly, not knowing what to expect. Then the voice called, ‘Is Captain Bond with you? He has an important meeting in Moscow.’