Win, Lose or Die

by John Gardner

  ‘Health depends on strength,’ the younger, dark-haired man smiled as he lifted his cup towards his older companion – a sleek, olive-skinned fellow with broad shoulders and a distinguished grey flecking his temples.

  ‘WIN was a spectacular disaster,’ the older man said. There was no hint of criticism in his voice, only a trace of distaste.

  ‘I apologise,’ his companion bowed his head slightly, ‘I had great confidence. The training was exceptional . . .’

  ‘And cost a small fortune . . .’

  ‘True. But it does prove that if we are to take all of them, when they’re aboard what they like to call Birdsnest Two, we require a much more subtle approach. Even if we had doubled, or maybe trebled the force for WIN there would have been carnage. Birdsnest Two is geared for any kind of attack. They would have taken out our hang-gliders long before they came within 500 feet of the target. Also it will probably have to be done in hard winter weather.’

  The older man nodded, ‘Which means the attack can really only come from within.’

  ‘You mean we should have people on board?’ The dark-haired one sounded alarmed.

  ‘Can you think of a better way?’

  ‘It’s impossible. How can you infiltrate such a service at short notice? We’ve less than twelve months to go. If that had ever been an option we’d have used it, saved a lot of time, and also a great deal of money.’

  On the tapes that were finally studied, the listeners strained their ears through a long pause. In the distance came the sound of an aircraft high and a long way off. Nearer at hand, a dog barked angrily. Then the older man spoke—

  ‘Ah, my friend, so often we go for a complex solution; how would it be if we made this more simple? One man. One man aboard Birdsnest Two would be all we need, for one man could unlock the gates, and let others in. Or even someone in the retinue, a discontented Flag Officer, for instance. One is all we require. A single Trojan Horse.’

  ‘Even one would be . . .’

  ‘Difficult? No, not if he is already there, in place.’

  ‘But we have nobody who . . .’

  ‘Maybe we do have somebody already in place; and maybe even he does not yet know it. Your people are skilled, surely they could tell who this man is, and bring pressure to bear?’

  Again a pause, complete with the barking dog. Then—

  ‘Compromise. Yes, an obvious solution.’

  ‘So obvious that you had to waste the lives of twenty mercenaries, not to mention the finance of training and equipping them. Now, go and find the agent we need. Officer, or enlisted man. Crew or visitor. It doesn’t matter which. Just find him.’

  M tossed the transcript back onto his desk and looked up at his Chief of Staff, Bill Tanner, who appeared to be studying the old Admiral’s face as a strategist would examine the terrain of battle.

  ‘Well,’ M said. It was a grunt from the throat rather than a word clearly spoken. ‘Well, we know who these people are, and we know the target, what we don’t know is the full objective. Any comments, Tanner?’

  ‘Only the obvious, sir.’

  ‘Meaning?’ M was in an unashamedly bellicose mood today.

  ‘Meaning, sir, that we can have things altered. We can have the brass hats moved at the last moment. Put them on a cruiser instead of Birdsnest Two . . .’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tanner, we know Birdsnest Two’s HMS Invincible, so say Invincible.’ HMS Invincible is one of the three remaining aircraft-carriers – capital ships – of the Royal Navy: in fact three of the largest gas turbine-powered warships in the world. All are designated as TDCs – ‘Through Deck Cruiser’ – of the Invincible class, and all had gone through major refits of electronics, weapons and aircraft capabilities since the lessons learned in the Falklands War.

  With only the slightest pause, Tanner continued, ‘Put them – in another ship . . . at the last minute . . .’

  ‘What other ship? A destroyer, or a frigate? There are three of them, Tanner. Three top brass, complete with their staff. I’d say around twelve or fifteen bodies at the least. Use your sense, man, they’d have to share bunks on a frigate or destroyer, and that might be all very well for the Russkies, but I cannot see our American friends, or Sir Geoffrey Gould taking kindly to that.’

  ‘Call it off, sir?’

  ‘I think there would be rumblings everywhere, including our wonderful Press and TV Defence Correspondents. They’d be asking “why?” before we even concocted a story. In any case, Landsea ’89 is essential. All our combined exercises are essential, and what with this wretched business of glasnost and perestroika, NATO feels it’s doing the decent thing. Letting the Russians in on our war games, eh?’

  ‘We’re not supposed to call them “war games” anymore, sir . . .’

  ‘I know that!’ M thumped his desk heavily. ‘It’s the thin end of the wedge, though, letting the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Fleet in on a combined exercise as complex as this.’

  Bill Tanner sighed, ‘At least our people won’t have to dodge their spy ships all the time. You know, sir, even Churchill thought a sharing of information might be a good thing.’

  ‘That, Chief of Staff, was before the First World War. It was also a sharing with the Germans. Russians are different creatures. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I don’t approve of it.’

  ‘Quite, sir.’

  ‘I’ve been very outspoken with the Joint Intelligence Committee, though a fat lot of good it did me. All friends together, now – so they say. One idiot even quoted Kipling at me: Sisters under their skins and that kind of stuff. No, we have to do something positive.’

  Tanner had walked to the window, and stood looking out at the rain beating down on Regent’s Park. ‘Bodyguards, sir? Well-briefed bodyguards?’

  M made a grumbling noise. Then – ‘We know what these people’re after, Tanner, but we don’t want to tell the world, if only because we don’t know the reason why. Bodyguards would mean widening the circle of knowledge, and as you very well know that’s the first rule in our business – keep the circle small.’ He stopped suddenly, as though struck by a new thought, then said, ‘No!’ loudly, and not to anyone in particular.

  The rain continued to fall on the grass, trees and umbrellas below. In his head Tanner had started to try and recite a piece of doggerel somebody had told him. It was a common theme about security and rumour dating back to the Second World War and it always made him smile—

  ‘Actual evidence I have none,

  But my aunt’s charwoman’s sister’s son,

  Heard a policeman on his beat,

  Say to a nursemaid in Downing Street,

  That he had a cousin, who had a friend,

  Who knows when the war is going to end.’

  It was not until he reached the last line, that Bill Tanner realised he had quoted the lines aloud.

  ‘That’s it!’ M almost bellowed.

  ‘What, sir?’

  ‘Nursemaid, Chief of Staff. We’ll give them a nursemaid. A good naval man. Sound as a bell. A man willing to put his life before the lives of his charges.’ M’s hand reached for the internal telephone which put him directly in touch with his devoted, though long-suffering private secretary. ‘Moneypenny,’ he all but shouted loud enough for her to hear on the other side of the padded door. ‘Get Double-O Seven up here fast.’

  Within ten minutes, James Bond was sitting in M’s holy of holies with his old Chief giving him what he thought of as the ‘fish eye’, and Bill Tanner looking a little uneasy.

  ‘It’s a job,’ M announced. ‘An operation that calls for more than the usual discretion; and certainly one that’ll require you to alter your circumstances a great deal.’

  ‘I’ve worked undercover before, sir.’ Bond leaned back in the armchair in which M had invited him to sit. It was a chair Bond knew well. If you were asked to sit in this, the most comfortable chair in M’s office, the news could only be bad.

  ‘Undercover’s one thing, 007, but ho
w would you feel about going back into the Royal Navy?’

  ‘With respect, sir, I’ve never left the RNVR.’

  M growled again, and James Bond thought he saw a gleam of unusual malice in the old Chief’s eyes. ‘Really?’ M raised his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘How long is it since you stood a Duty Watch, 007? Or had to deal with defaulters; live day and night with the routine and discipline within a capital ship; or even felt a quarterdeck rise and fall sixty feet in a gale?’

  ‘Well, sir . . .’

  ‘The job, 007, will require you to go back to active duty. In turn that’ll mean you’ll have to go on a course, several courses in fact, to bring you up to date with life and warfare in our present-day Royal Navy.’

  The thought struck home. Bond’s life in the Service had, many times, caused him to work at full-stretch, but on the whole there were long periods of relaxation. To go back to active service in the Royal Navy would be a return to the old disciplines, and a re-honing of skills almost forgotten. A series of pictures flickered through his head. They were rather what he had always imagined a dying man saw: his life many years ago, in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve on active service. The images in his brain did not attract him as much as they had done when he was a young midshipman. ‘Why?’ he asked lamely. ‘I mean why should I go back to active service, sir?’

  M smiled and nodded, ‘Because, 007, in the late winter of next year, the Royal Navy, together with élite troops, air forces, and the navies of all the NATO powers, including the United States Navy, will be carrying out an exercise: Landsea ’89. There will be observers: Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Geoffrey Gould; Admiral Gudeon, United States Navy; and Admiral Sergei Yevgennevich Pauker, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy – a post unknown in any other navy in the world.’ M took a deep breath. ‘The latter has been invited because of the current thawing in relationships between East and West. Glasnost, perestroika, that kind of thing.’

  ‘They will be . . . ?’ Bond began.

  ‘They will be in Invincible. They will have with them, like Gilbert and Sullivan’s Sir Joseph Porter, all their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. They will also be in danger. Almost certainly attempted abduction. At worst, murder. You will be there, in Invincible, to see it does not happen.’

  ‘Can you explain about the danger, sir?’ The trigger of magnetic interest had been squeezed deep in Bond’s mind.

  M smiled like a man who has just hooked the biggest fish in the river. ‘Certainly, James. Bill and I will a tale unfold. It begins with that little problem in the Straits of Hormuz – the Japanese tanker, Son of Hitachi, or whatever it’s called . . .’

  The Chief of Staff corrected the tanker’s name, and for his pains received a venomous glare from M, who barked, ‘You want to tell it, Tanner?’

  ‘No, sir, you carry on, sir.’

  ‘Good of you, Tanner. Thank you.’ M’s mood was not only bellicose this morning, but sarcastic. He fixed Bond with the same, cold fish-eye look. ‘Ever heard of BAST?’

  ‘Anagram for stab, sir?’

  ‘No, 007, I mean BAST. B-A-S-T, and this is no laughing matter.’

  The smile on Bond’s face disappeared quickly. M was being too serious and prickly for jokes. ‘No, sir. BAST is news to me. What is it?’

  With a wave of his hand and a vocal sound meant to signify deep displeasure, M motioned to his Chief of Staff to explain.

  ‘James,’ Tanner came over and leaned against the desk, ‘this really is a very serious and alarming business. BAST is a group; an organisation. The name hasn’t been circulated as yet, simply because we didn’t have many leads or details at first. The name’s pretty puerile, that’s why nobody took it very seriously to begin with. But BAST appears to be an acronym for Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terror.’

  ‘Sounds like a poor man’s SPECTRE to me.’ Bond’s brow wrinkled and there was concern in his eyes.

  ‘At first we thought it might be a splinter group of the old SPECTRE, but it appears this is something new, and oddly unpleasant,’ Tanner continued. ‘You recall the small bomb incidents in October of ’87? All on one day; all co-ordinated? There were fire bombs in a couple of London stores . . .’

  ‘The ones put down to animal rights activists?’

  Tanner nodded, ‘But the others were not so easily explained. One small plastique near the Vatican; another one which destroyed an American military transport – on the ground at Edwards Airforce Base: no casualties; one in Madrid; another, a car bomb, premature, shattering the French Minister of Defence’s car; and a large one in Moscow: near the Kremlin Gate, and not generally reported.’

  ‘Yes, I saw the file.’

  ‘Then you know the file said it was co-ordinated, but nobody had taken responsibility.’

  Bond nodded.

  ‘The file was lying by omission,’ Tanner sounded grave now. ‘There was a long letter, circulated to all the countries concerned. In brief it said the incidents had been co-ordinated by the Brotherhood of Anarchy and Secret Terror, to be referred to as BAST. Everyone did some back-tracking, because these kinds of groups do have a tendency to choose high-falutin names. The damage from those first incidents was small and there were no deaths, but those who advise on international terrorism told us to take them damned seriously, if only because BAST is a demonic name. BAST, it seems, is a word that comes from Ancient Egypt: sometimes known as Aini or Aym. BAST is said to appear as a three-headed demon – head of a snake, head of a cat, head of a man – mounted on a viper. The demon BAST is connected with incendiarism, and we now have little doubt that the Brotherhood chose the name because of its demonic connotations.’

  ‘Demons?’ Bond raised his eyes towards the ceiling.

  ‘Yes, demons.’ M, who was far from being a superstitious man, appeared to be taking the entire thing very seriously. ‘A lot of research has been done on this. Now, we know that there are indeed three leaders – like the snake, man and cat – and a prime leader upon which they all ride and exist. The viper, if you like, comes by the name of Bassam Baradj, a former ranking member of the PLO, a former friend of Arafat’s, and a wealthy man in his own right. Baradj is certainly paymaster and mastermind.’

  Tanner nodded and said that other intelligence had pinpointed three associates of Baradj, all one-time members of Middle-Eastern paramilitary political groups. ‘Abou Hamarik; Ali Al Adwan; and a young woman, Saphiis Boudai – the man, the snake and the cat. Apparently those are their key names: street names. They’re all experienced in the arts of terrorism, they’re also disenchanted with all the old causes.

  ‘They’ve embraced the idea of anarchy with one thought only. They believe that Napoleon’s definition of anarchy is the one and only true definition – “Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power”.’

  Bond felt a tingling chill down his spine. He had fought against fanatical shadows before.

  ‘Y’see, James,’ M appeared to have softened, ‘these people who sound so childish with their BAST signature, are far from childish. Baradj can lay his hands on billions; he is also a shrewd and cunning strategist. The other leaders are trained soldiers in the terrorist wars. They can teach skills, and, through Baradj, they can buy and sell as many mercenaries as they need. Mad as it might seem, these people are pledged against practically all political and religious ideologies. They have their own ideal – to gain absolute power. What they do with that power once they’ve got it, heaven only knows. But that’s what they’re after, and, if recent activities are anything to go by, they’re going to be a nasty poisoned thorn in the sides of all nations and all types and conditions of government for some time to come.’

  ‘And how do we know they’re after the little band of naval brass?’ Bond asked.

  M explained. He spoke at length about the voice prints they had on three of the leading members of BAST; how they had also stumbled across the organisation’s call-sign or password, ‘Health depends on strength.’

  ‘The problem is,’ M wen
t on, ‘that these people appear to be so flaky, as our American brothers-in-arms would say, that one is inclined not to take them seriously. We have to take them seriously. That strange and almost ridiculous attack on the Japanese tanker was their doing, and that was a rehearsal, carried out in cold blood. A supertanker, James, is not altogether unlike an aircraft-carrier. They wanted to see if they could take out a tanker, in order to test the feasibility of a similar assault on Invincible.’

  ‘But how do we know that?’ Bond pressed.

  ‘We plucked two voices from the air.’ M smiled for the first time since Bond had entered the room. ‘We got voice prints on Baradj and Abou Hamarik. It appears the latter organised the event – they coded it Operation WIN, incidentally – and Hamarik’s trying to plant, or compromise someone either already serving in Invincible, or on the staff of one of our visiting Admirals. The ones to whom you, 007, will act as Nanny.’

  ‘Delighted, sir.’ Bond’s lips curved into one of the cruellest smiles M had ever seen. Later the Chief was to say that, to use a Biblical expression, ‘Iron had entered into 007’s soul.’ He was not far wrong.

  Bond’s thoughts turned to Napoleon again and he remembered that he had also said, ‘A love of country, a spirit of enthusiasm, and a sense of honour, will operate upon young soldiers with advantage.’ Not only young soldiers, James Bond considered, but naval officers with a history of matters secret as well.

  Many people in the intelligence world who knew Bond, were surprised a month later to read in the London Gazette—

  BOND, James. Commander RNVR. Relieved of current liaison duties at the Foreign Office. Promoted to the substantive rank of Captain RN and returned to active service forthwith.