Win, Lose or Die

by John Gardner

  ‘Just look at each one, and tell me what you see.’ The young man laid the ink blots on the desk one at a time. A butterfly that could be a praying mantis if you were dangerous enough; a kissing couple, which might just be a nasty weapon. Each time Bond told him the blot looked like a woman’s breasts, so when they finished the psychiatrist smiled – ‘You’re extracting the urine, aren’t you, Captain Bond?’

  ‘In a word – yes. Look, doc, I’ve been through worse traumas than this in my time. Yes, I feel as most men do, after the sudden, destructive loss of a woman I’d come to care about. But I do know that it was all quick. Too quick. Immediately afterwards there was sorrow, and a little self-pity. Shock, if you like. Now I just feel very angry. Angry with myself for being such a prat. Angry with them, for setting me up. Natural, isn’t it?’

  The psychiatrist smiled and nodded. ‘On your way, Captain Bond. Anger’s the healthiest reaction, so let’s not waste each other’s time.’

  Bond did not reveal that he had a sneaking suspicion that another few strands of wool were being pulled over his eyes. That would come out in time. Give them enough rope, or wool for that matter.

  Julian was waiting for him. ‘CO would like a word, I think, sir.’

  ‘A word, or several sentences?’

  Julian whinnied, ‘Oh, ya, jolly good. Right. Ya.’

  The buildings were quite long, brick structures, set as though some designer had just thrown six models at random inside the perimeter fencing. They were single storey and, while there were windows down each side, Bond had noted that the interior rooms had no windows at all, the natural light flowing only into corridors. In both the living-quarters and hospital there had been notices in several languages commanding people not to talk in the corridors. The conclusion was obvious. The inner rooms were shielded against all types of sound-stealing.

  As they crossed the compound, he tried to identify the various uses of the buildings. One for staff; one for senior staff; the hospital; one sprouting every kind of antenna known to man, therefore the communications centre; a possible guest suite (the one in which he was quartered) and, at the furthest point from the entrance, the executive offices.

  It sounded about right, as Julian was leading him towards this last building. Julian, Bond thought, was not such a stupid idiot as he had first appeared.

  The Commanding Officer had a large room tucked neatly in the centre of a nest of other rooms within the executive offices. Julian tapped at the door and a voice, distinctly American, possibly southern, called ‘Okay.’ The voice was as slow and smooth as molasses.

  ‘Captain James Bond, Royal Navy, sir.’ Julian brayed. Bond painted a smile on his face and found himself alone in the room with the door closed and Julian left on the outside.

  There were no potted plants here; and no soothing paintings. Two maps covered one large wall – one of the local Italian area, and another of Europe. The second was highly detailed and contained a lot of military symbols. The remaining pictures were very United States gung-ho. Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters figured largely, and the Chinooks had combat-ready troops pouring out of the doors, while mortar bombs burst nearby.

  ‘Come on in, Captain Bond. Pleased to have you here.’ As he came around the desk, the CO looked as though he had stepped straight out of a glossy ad from some very smart magazine which sold clothes in the megadollar bracket. The beige suit had the look of a genuine Battistoni, which you cannot buy on army pay, and certainly not on what you get from any of the Intelligence Services; the shirt was identifiably Jermyn Street irregular; the silk tie was probably made up specially, maybe by Gucci, in the stripes of some United States Army Regiment. The shoes needed no second-guessing: hand-stitched Gucci. No guessing, one hundred out of a possible fifty.

  The man inside the clothes was short, sleek, balding, and, as they say in the sub-titles, some tough hombre, even though he was surrounded by a hint of Hermès cologne. ‘Real good to see you, Captain. Sorry about your trouble earlier today. Not exactly the way to spend the holiday season, but I guess in our business we work, even a few hours, on Christmas Day. I once heard some author say he did that, but maybe he was exaggeratin’. Anyways, welcome to Northanger.’

  ‘Northanger?’ Bond repeated, his tone suggesting disbelief.

  ‘That’s what the secret guidebooks call us. Name’s Toby Lellenberg by the way.’ In spite of his stature it was like shaking hands with a gorilla. ‘Sit down, Captain, we have a coupla things to talk about.’

  Bond sat. The chair had been converted from an F14 pilot’s seat, and he had to admit it was comfortable. ‘What kind of things, Mr . . . er . . .’

  ‘No rank. Langley don’t really like rank. Just call me Toby. Anyway, this is one of those sideways career offers – Officer Commanding Northanger. All I do is sit on my butt, shiver in winter, sweat in summer and view the passing spies. You, Captain, are one of our VIP passing spies.’

  ‘I really need some evidence of that, Toby. People can get burned by being identified as passing spies.’

  ‘No problem. I call you James, by the way?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Toby went behind his desk and tackled a large, solid steel filing cabinet which appeared to require three keys and two digital touch-pads to open it. For a moment of sheer hellishness, Bond had the urge to sing ‘I did but see a passing spy’ to the tune of ‘There was a lady sweet and kind’. He managed to quell the urge. The whole set-up in this place was so interesting, and unlikely, that it helped to soothe any pain that might still be raging in his emotions.

  ‘There you go. Both versions. Cipher and the en clair I punched out on my own little gizmo in that safe.’

  He took the two proffered sheets and saw the double-check failsafe on the original cipher. It was, undoubtedly, straight from M. The failsafe was unfakeable. The text read—

  FROM CSSUK TO OC NORTHANGER BASE MESSAGE CONTINUES THANK YOU FOR ASSISTANCE REFERENCE OUR PREDATOR STOP WOULD APPRECIATE A DEBRIEF COPY ME ONLY STOP THIS OFFICER MUST BE KEPT IN DOWNLOAD UNTIL JANUARY TWO STOP WILL SIGNAL HOW HE IS TO PROCEED AND JOIN HIS SHIP ON JANUARY THREE STOP. CSS FINIS.

  ‘Happy about that, James?’ The smooth little man was smiling.

  ‘You obviously have the facilities for a debrief.’

  ‘I don’t get the best men in the business, but we do have a representative team here, yes. One of your own guys: fella called Draycott, know him?’

  ‘Heard of but not known.’

  ‘Well, out to grass, like the two guys we got from Langley. One of them’s called Mac – built like a fire-plug – and the other one’s just known as Walter. Walter knows where all the bodies’re buried and won’t tell a soul. Guess that’s why they’ve sent him here. When you get a posting to Northanger don’t expect to see any further active duty. Backwater. But you’ll get a good debrief.’

  ‘Fine, as long as Julian’s not involved.’

  ‘Ha!’ Toby put a brown hand on the corner of his desk, raised his head and barked out a one-note laugh of derision. ‘Julian Tomato. Ha!’ He pronounced it ‘Tom-ay-toe’ like any other red-blooded American, so the play on words did not really work. ‘That Julian. Y’know he couldn’t pour piss outa a boot, even if th’instructions was written on the heel. You fancy some chow, James? We’re havin’ a full old-fashioned Christmas dinner tonight. Turkey ’n’ all the trimmin’s, plum pudding, the entire works.’

  ‘Sounds fun.’ He looked at his watch. ‘But first I should make a call.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Was the suspicion imagined?

  ‘Change of contact code for the day. It’s past time.’

  ‘Of course it is. Sure, use the ’phone here.’ He pointed to one of five different coloured telephones on his desk. ‘You want me to leave?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.’ Bond was already dialling.

  This time London picked up on the fourth ring. ‘Predator,’ said Bond. ‘Day three.’

  ‘Catclaw,’ the voice said from the distant line.
‘Repeat. Catclaw.’

  ‘Acknowledge.’ Bond was about to put down the receiver when the distant voice asked, ‘Is everything smooth?’

  ‘They tell me it is.’

  ‘Acknowledge,’ and the line went dead. So they were still being clever. But this time the code was very much tied to the situation. Dante’s lines once more went through his head—

  Front and centre here, Grizzly and Hellkin . . .

  You too, Deaddog . . .

  Curlybeard, take charge of a squad of ten.

  Take Grafter and Dragontooth along with you.

  Pigfusk, Catclaw, Cramper and Crazyred.

  ‘You want an okay from me?’ Toby was adjusting his tie in a wall-mirror overprinted with the cover of Time magazine, so that you got on that coveted cover every time you looked.

  ‘Be mighty civil of you, Toby.’

  Lellenberg gave him a little leer, ‘You bein’ funny, son?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good,’ he grinned. ‘My money today’s on Catclaw.’

  ‘And you’d be right,’ Bond laughed, and they left the office together.

  The party was held in a large room which was obviously used as the officers’ canteen in the senior ranks’ hut. They had it decorated with the kind of stuff you picked up for a small fortune at stores in the US with names like Christmas To Go or Xmas is Us. It all looked lovely and unreal. Magnificent angels held unknown wind instruments to their lips as they shimmered on trees dripping snow; piles of gifts were heaped under the largest, and most magical tree which had ‘Victorian’ trimmings hanging from it, and electric lights that looked like real candles with moving flames.

  Clover Pennington was the only woman present and, when she saw Bond, she detached herself from a handful of young officers and came over to him. She wore a tight little black number that had probably come from Marks and Spencer but looked quite good among the suits.

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ she said, kissing him, a little hard and on the lips. ‘It’s allowed.’ She pointed above him at the dangling mistletoe.

  ‘You’re going to do sterling service tonight, First Officer Pennington.’ Bond smiled but did not unbend.

  ‘Catclaw,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Correct. Catclaw.’

  ‘They’ve put me next to you at dinner, sir. Hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘As long as we don’t talk shop.’

  She nodded, bit her lip, and, together they moved into the crowd.

  During the meal, he did not do much talking. In his time, James Bond had learned around four hundred ways of killing: four hundred and three if you counted gun, knife and strangling rope. He was also au fait with the art of paper-tripping – supplying oneself with necessary documents to survive in a foreign country. Now, he figured out what he could recall of the number of ways he could fake a death. Die, yet not die, at home or abroad. Privately or in full, plain sight. They added up to around a score, though he was in two minds whether he now knew the twenty-first way of doing it. Or was it still wishful thinking?

  The dinner was excellent, and Bond watched his intake of alcohol, though others did not. Julian Farsee was well away, while one or two of the other staff became rowdy. One couple of heavy, battered men even had a row which almost led to a full-scale fight until Toby Lellenberg stepped in, his slow drawl taking on a whiplash quality.

  ‘Just like Christmas at home,’ Bond said, unsmiling, to Clover. ‘You staying here long, by the way?’

  ‘I leave on thirty-first to get the Wren draft ready.’

  ‘Back to RNAS Yeovilton?’

  She nodded, ‘I thought this was a no-shop evening.’ Then, quite suddenly, ‘Can’t we make it up, sir? Sort of start again . . . James? Please.’

  ‘Maybe, when it’s all over. Not yet though. Not until you-know-what’s out of the way.’

  She nodded and looked miserable, though not as miserable as some of the faces Bond saw at breakfast the next morning. The party, they told him, had gone on quite late.

  Braying Julian came over during breakfast and said it would be nice if he could be in Suite Number Three at ten-thirty. ‘The debrief,’ he explained.

  So, at ten-thirty on the dot Bond met the two American officers – Mac and Walter – and the man from his own Service, Draycott, who was not quite what he expected.

  The debrief was exceptionally thorough. Much more so than he had anticipated. Walter was elderly, but had the knack of slipping off into tributary questions which suddenly ended up becoming very searching. Mac, who was, as Toby had suggested, ‘built like a fire-plug’, had one of those faces that remained permanently impassive. Though he did smile a great deal, the face and eyes remained blank, and rather tough: impossible to read. Mac was inclined to chip in with subsidiary questions which turned out to add a lot to Bond’s testimony. Draycott was also deceptive, in the mould of the legendary Scardon: a man who looked very ordinary, as though he would be happier in the English countryside. He smoked a pipe, used to great effect – to add in pauses when he fiddled with it, or to break questions in two halves when he smoked.

  They took Bond back to the beginning, telling him the stalking-horse theory of the operation, just so that he would know they were pretty well-briefed themselves. On the fifth day, the trio walked off with practically every second Bond had spent in Ischia accounted for: naughties and all.

  When the debrief was complete all three of his interrogators seemed to vanish. At least Bond did not set eyes on them again.

  On December 31st, Clover came to his quarters to announce that she was leaving. He did not keep her long, though she obviously wanted to linger. ‘See you on board, then,’ was his final, sharp word, and he thought Clover’s eyes were moist. She was either very much for real, or had become one hell of an actor.

  Two days later it was Bond’s turn. Toby showed him M’s latest signal and he repeated the contents so that Northanger’s CO was satisfied he was word perfect.

  They took him in the elderly helicopter to Rome where he went to the Alitalia desk and they provided him with tickets and a baggage claim check.

  The flight from Rome to Stockholm was uneventful. He had one hour’s wait for the military transport that ferried him to the West German naval base at Bremmerhaven where he stayed for one night.

  On the morning of January 3rd, James Bond, in uniform, stepped aboard a Sea King helicopter which took him out to Invincible and her gaggle of escorts which lay twenty miles offshore. By the following night they were one hundred miles into the North Sea, cruising slowly and waiting for the orders to be opened which would start Operation Landsea.

  They were loading staff at Northanger into innocent-looking buses within four hours of Bond’s departure. Julian Farsee, dressed in olive drab trousers and a military sweater complete with reinforced shoulder and elbow pads, walked into the CO’s office, not even knocking. The CO was shredding documents and hardly turned to look at his Second-in-Command as he came and sat on the desk.

  ‘Well? You think they bought it?’ asked Ali Al Adwan, Farsee’s true name. In the hierarchy of BAST, Adwan was the ‘Snake’ to Bassam Baradj’s ‘Viper’.

  ‘Of course. All the incoming signals were dealt with. Nobody queried a thing.’

  Adwan scowled. ‘Except me. I query your judgment.’

  Baradj smiled and fed more paper into the shredder. ‘Yes? I thought you were unhappy, though you played your part to perfection. What really worried you, Ali?’

  ‘You know what worried me. Bond should have been killed. Here, on the spot, while we had him. What was the point of bringing him here at all, if not to kill him?’

  ‘Already we have made two botched attempts on Bond’s life. The first was one of those things that just went wrong – the wrong kind of missile, the fact that Bond is obviously a good pilot.’ He shrugged, a wide, unhappy gesture. ‘Then, Ali, we tried again, and that was disaster. We went for Bond and killed . . .’ This time his lips clamped together as though he had become upset at the thought.
Then, throwing it off, he spoke again, ‘I made the decision, Ali. No more assassination attempts until we get nearer to our true targets. There will be plenty of chances then. His sudden death, after the wretched Ischia business, might even have jeopardised the entire operation. They could even have called it off.’

  ‘Then why bring people like him here at all?’

  Baradj smiled, patiently. ‘It was necessary. After Ischia they would have moved him here anyway. They would have wanted him close and confined. We want him confident, so that the blow will fall very unexpectedly. This has been excellent psychology. We have had a chance to know him and be close. Don’t you think that you know the man better?’

  ‘I know he’s dangerous, but yes. Yes, I think I know him now. But have we really deceived everyone?’

  ‘All who had to be deceived were deceived. Nobody from any other base, or from London showed any sign that they were concerned. The other regular staff will wake from their enforced sleep in the morning, and I don’t suppose they will question the strange loss of time they will all have suffered. They will eventually realise that in some strange way they all missed Christmas and the week after, but the hypnotics Hamarik supplied should keep the true facts at bay for a week, maybe even ten days. By then, my dear friend, we will have the superpowers, the United States of America and Russia, together with the United Kingdom, on their knees begging for mercy.’

  Adwan, whose leathery dark complexion seemed now more apparent, smiled and nodded: his attitude changing. ‘Yes, you are right. In the end of it all we will have a great deal to thank you for, Bassam.’

  ‘What is money compared to this?’

  ‘Ah, but you proved to be a fine actor also.’

  Bassam Baradj chuckled, ‘You were very convincing yourself.’