Death Is Forever

by John Gardner

  Using electronic wizardry, in the shape of short-wave transceivers, little bigger than credit cards, but crammed with smart boards operating on a fixed frequency, every telephone call, and each report to Moonshine – the home base – had been monitored. The transcripts now filled a loose-leaved book almost three inches thick.

  It was like reading a secret diary; or the vigilant correspondence of a pair of clandestine lovers. Vanya and Eagle knew each other’s handwriting backwards. Single words spoken over insecure telephones could be transcribed as clear instructions or intelligence, while sentences of a dozen words were stuffed with volumes of information. They had their own shorthand, and their knowledge of Cabal’s topography – its safe houses, letter boxes, and personal signals – was encyclopaedic.

  Both of the officers had covered all the ground they had worked with Cabal in the past. They followed each other through the well-known haunts at Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin.

  On two occasions they had slipped, separately, into Switzerland, meeting at an old safe house in Zurich where they left the minute transceivers on send while they talked.

  Bond knew the place well, and as he read the transcript of the conversations, he could see the view from the window, out over the Sechseläuten Platz to the lake, with its toy pleasure steamers coming and going. He remembered, from years before, eating dinner with an agent in a small warm café near the lake, and later, in that same safe house, briefing the man who went directly from the affluence of Switzerland to his death behind the Iron Curtain. The agent had died because of incorrect information Bond had been told to give him, and 007’s conscience had been scarred with the memory.

  Now, as they read and discussed, other details were surfacing. Of the original thirty members of Cabal, only ten remained alive. Six had died from natural causes, six were irretrievably missing, presumed dead, and eight – Vanya and Eagle had discovered – had been killed in accidents which could not have been mischances.

  The ten Cabal agents remaining in Europe had left some traces, and together Vanya and Eagle followed trails which went, by turns, hot and cold. On telephones, and at their two meetings in Switzerland, they spoke of the agents only by their exotic work names, Crystal, Ariel, Caliban, Cobweb, Orphan, Tester, Sulphur, Puck, Mab and Dodger. These names, which were folded into the conversations, had to be cross-referenced in M’s office in order to finger the true identities, and, if this were not difficult enough, there was a set of street names used on some of the transcribed telephone conversations.

  At one point the tenacious Puxley came very close to Caliban, while Elizabeth Cearns reported having had sight of, and then losing, Sulphur.

  But the real action came almost as the two case officers met their deaths. Only minutes before Puxley was swatted by the Opel outside the Frankfurter Hof, he took a telephone call in his hotel room.

  ‘Is that Dan?’ asked the pick-up. The voice was male and heavily accented, said the notation by the transcriber.

  ‘Which Dan do you want?’ The sudden excitement and adrenalin rush was almost tangible in the words lying cold on the page.

  ‘Dan Broome. Mr Dan Broome from Magic Mountain Software.’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘It’s Ulricht, Ulricht Voss.’

  There in the darkened office, M cross-referenced what they already knew, the caller was using the identification code of Oscar Vomberg, in straight Cabalspeak, Mab. The sequence – ‘Dan . . . Dan Broome . . . of Magic Mountain Software’ – was distinctive. ‘Only Vomberg would have used that sequence,’ M said quietly. ‘Which means that, if it is not Vomberg – and our voice print people swear it is – then it’s someone using a sequence culled from Oscar, who’s a pretty shrewd old scientist. Worked with the East Germans on drugs – mind control, that kind of thing.’

  Back on the page, Ulricht Voss, who was really Oscar Vomberg – Mab to any inhabitants of Cabal – asked to meet Dan Broome urgently. He gave the name and address of a notorious local clip joint and brothel, Der Mönch, The Monk. Then added, ‘To see Sulphur.’

  The transcript went on to show Puxley’s fast call to Moonshine. ‘For the insurance,’ M said. ‘That’s how fastidious Ford Puxley was. In case his little piece of electronics had not done the job with the incoming call, he wanted home base to know what was happening. “Contact with Mab,” he had said, quickly giving the time and place, then adding, “Meeting Sulphur now at Der Mönch”.’

  So, with that final report, Ford Puxley, aka Vanya, dashed down from his room, threw tradecraft to the wind and went out to his death from the Opel car in twilit Frankfurt.

  The transcripts showed a similar series of events leading up to the death of Ms Elizabeth Cearns, aka Libby Macintosh, aka Eagle.

  Following the second meeting with Vanya in Switzerland, it was decided that she should go back to Berlin, where she already claimed to have had sight of Sulphur. ‘Now Sulphur, as you will see from the charts,’ M pointed out, ‘is, in reality, a Bulgarian. She joined Cabal in 1979 when she was only eighteen years old. KGB had recruited her from the Bulgarian service – the old and ruthless DS, the Dajnava Sigurnost. She worked at Karlshorst as a liaison officer between KGB and DS. We bought and paid for her,’ he gave a tiny smile, ‘I should say the American Service bought and paid for her, in 1982. She was fabulous. Hated the Russians, loathed her own people – or at least the then controlling faction of her people. She gave us more than anyone. Very bright, a quick study as they say. The Americans even got her out for two weeks for a crash course. I believe your people, Easy, used the term “A Class Act”. I gather that’s high praise.’

  ‘The highest.’

  ‘Mmmm. Well, if you read this passage you’ll see that your Ms Cearns considered that, should Sulphur surface, she would do so in only the best places. Puxley and Cearns decided that Cearns should show herself at the Kempi.’

  The Kempi is Berlin’s fabled Bristol Hotel Kempinski. It has been said the fate and future of Germany has always been decided at the Kempinski.

  ‘And her real name?’ Bond’s eyes narrowed as he leaned across the desk to peer at the Classified lists of Cabal’s assets.

  ‘Praxi,’ M said quietly, ‘Praxi Simeon.’

  ‘A pretty name, Praxi,’ Bond muttered.

  ‘You think so?’ from Easy who wrinkled her nose as though she found the name distasteful.

  ‘And there you go.’ M flicked over several pages of transcripts, then tapped down on a page with his index finger. ‘The incoming calls to Eagle at the Bristol Kempinski.’

  The first few were direct communications with Moonshine, and included a sobering conversation in which the Moonshine controller broke the news of Vanya’s death. There were several other en clair talks between Moonshine and Eagle, also between Eagle and Duster, who was, M explained, Liz Cearns’ direct controller at Langley.

  ‘Martin de Rosso,’ Easy said. ‘He’s my controller also, as far as this is concerned. What happens next, sir?’

  ‘Day before Eagle’s death.’ M flicked at another page. There was an incoming call at 3.26 p.m. Liz Cearns picked up:

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Can I speak to Gilda?’ Female, the note said, speaking German with slight accent.

  ‘You want Gilda?’

  ‘Gilda von Glocke.’

  ‘Yes, who is that?’

  ‘Ilse. Ilse Schwen.’

  ‘I’m sorry, do you represent a company?’

  ‘Yes. We have met, Frau von Glocke. I work for Herr Maaster. Maaster Designs. You remember?’

  ‘Yes, I vaguely remember you. I’m sorry. But, yes, I am very anxious to speak with Herr Maaster.’

  ‘And he wishes to see you, but he has a very full schedule. He doesn’t want to come to the Kempi. You know what he’s like, Frau von Glocke . . .’

  ‘Yes. Where would he like to meet?’

  ‘He says tomorrow afternoon. Around three at the Hotel Braun.’ She gave the address.

  ‘I’ll be there. Tell him
to ask for me at the desk.’

  ‘Nice to speak with you again, Frau von Glocke.’

  ‘And the sequence is right?’ Bond asked.

  ‘Everything’s right. The voice analysts say it’s definitely Sulphur, that is, Praxi Simeon. The Maaster Designs business was the identifier. The entire sequence is correct.’

  ‘And Herr Maaster was . . . ?’

  ‘There is no Herr Maaster. For a face-to-face Sulphur would choose a place. It was always left to her. She has a great nose for the safest place. The Hotel Braun is nondescript. Eagle called it in, and informed Moonshine as soon as she had moved.’

  ‘And her transceiver?’ Bond asked. ‘It wasn’t on when she . . .’

  ‘Two calls. Both to the United States,’ M pointed to the log. ‘Then it was as though she just switched it off. Something she would not do under normal circumstances.’

  ‘A lover?’

  ‘It had crossed everybody’s mind, but there’s nothing to back it up.’

  ‘Her lover lived in DC,’ Easy supplied. She had been very silent during the past few minutes. ‘Unless she had met someone . . . No, that’s not in character. Liz was the most faithful of women.’

  ‘Yet someone clobbered her with a cyanide pistol, and she was in the room dressed only in her underwear.’ Bond bit his bottom lip. ‘No sign of a struggle. Nothing odd.’

  M shook his head. ‘Teaser, isn’t it? Well, you’ll both have to go out there and find out exactly what happened.’ He pushed his chair back. ‘Before tonight’s out I want you to memorise everything. Agents’ cryptos, their street names, all the sequences, the word codes, the body language, the safe houses, letter boxes, street meets. Everything.’

  ‘That’s an awful lot . . .’ Easy began.

  ‘I know,’ M said coldly. ‘I know it’s asking an awful lot, Easy, but that’s life in our business. As far as we can tell, there are ten former Cabal agents out there, and two of them – Oscar Vomberg, Mab; and Praxi Simeon, Sulphur – might be tainted goods. We’ve done the necessary. Put the ads in the local papers; broadcast on the correct frequencies at the right times; published in a couple of magazines Cabal used to contact. You, James, are the new Vanya, while you, Easy, must assume Eagle’s mantle. We’ll all stay here for the night and work with you, but I want the pair of you on flights to Berlin no later than tomorrow night.’

  ‘Back-up, sir?’ Bond asked. He already felt that strange mixture of excitement and fear fluttering and firing in his belly.

  ‘I want both of you to learn, and then think, deduce, try and find the answer to the puzzle of your predecessors’ deaths. Up to it, are you?’

  Bond gave a grim nod, while Easy swallowed before saying ‘Yes,’ though the word stuck for a second in her throat.

  3

  RESPONSIBLE FOR A DEATH

  From the moment he went through passport and customs control at Berlin’s Tegel Airport, James Bond knew he was being followed. He arrived on the late afternoon flight from Heathrow – Easy St John would follow on the evening service – and at first it seemed that little had changed since he was last in Berlin, before the incredible events which had altered not only the landscape but also the hearts and minds of a newly united people. Tegel, with its calm sense of Germanic order, did not appear to be any different.

  As for Berlin itself, the Wall had gone; the city was whole again. You could almost touch the regenerated freedom in the air; but it was only when the taxi turned onto the Ku’damm that he saw the streets had undergone a subtle change, and that the glittering store windows had shifted infinitesimally.

  In the old, bold days, the sidewalks of the Ku’damm were filled with a mixture of affluent Berliners, military personnel and strolling tourists. Now the crowds seemed larger. The Berlin matrons still sported their little hats with perky feathers; a great deal of fur and leather adorned people’s bodies. But moving along, next to the familiar, there were other pedestrians, less well heeled, shabbier, and with looks on their faces which reflected envy. The poor cousins of the old East Berlin were slowly integrating with their more comfortable relatives. It was a fleeting message, and Bond did not linger on it for he was more concerned with the surveillance which had picked him up at the airport.

  He had been particularly careful at Tegel. For one thing, he had only managed three hours sleep in the past twenty-four. In a profession such as Bond’s, physical fatigue enhances the senses. It is as though the fear that exhaustion might cause some terrible error, forces intuition to go into overdrive; eyes and ears seek out the unusual as if operating on intensified perception; while touch and smell become almost painful.

  He spotted a couple of possibles as he came onto the main level of the terminal. A man and woman talking beside the hexagonal information booth. The man, a mousy, pockmarked person, was short and fat, with restless eyes which took in Bond through one fast glance, leaving a strange sense of nakedness in its wake. The woman appeared wary and nervous.

  Of one thing Bond was certain, they did not belong to each other. The pair gave off vibrations which said they had only recently met, and had yet to become comfortable as a pair. His intuition, though, said they were part of a larger team. They could be simple criminals – pickpockets – but he thought not. The way they stood, talked and moved, spoke of a different kind of felony: the theft of political souls.

  As he stepped outside into the queue for taxis, Bond spotted a tall man in a leather coat, pacing to and fro, as though waiting for an arriving passenger. This one held a rolled newspaper which he thumped rhythmically against his thigh as though irritated by the delay.

  Thoughts of Ford Puxley’s flyswatting ran through his mind. How someone had raised his hand as a signal for the Opel to come hurtling out – a bullet on four wheels, deadly as a rocket – and he half expected to see leather coat go through the same performance.

  He remembered a description in a novel: a target had been hit by a car. The victim had been holding a newspaper, and as the car struck so the paper popped up in his hand, opening like a stage magician’s trick bouquet of flowers.

  Joining the orderly line of new arrivals, Bond saw leather coat turn away and go back into the terminal. A second later, the woman from the information booth came out alone and joined the taxi queue. Perhaps, he thought, this was early paranoia – and why not? To be in the field again meant putting on the invisible coat of suspicion: being aware of everything; seeing ghosts in shadows; threats in innocent loiterers; evil in a passing glance. It was that sixth sense which could turn blameless men and women into assassins or informers: the stuff of his dying art, the tools of a craft as old as time, the invisible card index a spy carries for life.

  Then, as he entered the cab and told the driver to get him to the Kempi, he saw the movement, on the periphery of his vision. Not leather coat, but the young woman, placed two persons behind him in the line. A distinctive motion: her right hand coming up, clutching a cheap leather handbag, which covered her face for a second as she ran the back of her hand across her brow. It was the kind of body language beloved of watchers.

  As the cab took him towards the Bristol Kempinski, Bond tried to watch the rear without alerting the leeches by shifting around in his seat. He leaned forward, craning to catch glimpses in the wing mirrors and, after a mile, thought he had made the surveillance vehicle. A maroon VW Golf with a driver and a passenger riding shotgun. The car nipped in and out of the traffic behind them: dropping back, then catching up, driving erratically. Not a trained pro, he considered, but certainly someone intent on seeing where he was heading.

  When they arrived at the hotel the VW had gone, but whoever was interested certainly knew by this time where he was staying. Normally, Bond would have instructed the cabbie to take him to the Gerhus, or even the Intercontinental, so that he could dummy the shadows and hitch another cab to the Kempi. But M had said they were to play it out in the open. ‘Puxley and Cearns both used all the angles,’ the Old Man had told them. ‘Yet Puxley and Cearns were fin
gered and put away, neat as butterflies in a killing jar. So let them see you. Whoever they are.’

  ‘Will you be backstopping us?’ Bond asked.

  ‘If we are, you won’t see them,’ the Chief had snapped, meaning that any cavalry riding to the rescue would already know where they would be setting up headquarters.

  M explained that people on the spot had put out every alert known to the old members of Cabal. ‘Any elements of the network still trying to make contact will know who to look for.’ He made a little grimace, as though signalling that the posted alerts – the newspaper and magazine ads, together with the whole gamut of chalk marks and similar physical indicators – might also be known to those who appeared bent on the complete annihilation of Cabal: whoever they were.

  Both Easy St John and Bond brooded over who they – the main enemy – could be, going through all the obvious questions. Had someone sold out on Cabal before the Wall came down, and the new order made itself felt? Had any Cabal op gone awry, leaving dissatisfied elements calling for revenge? Who was Cabal’s most natural enemy?

  To this last, M had said the obvious: Markus Wolf – known as Mischa to his colleagues – Spymaster General to the old HVA, the foreign intelligence agency of the former DDR. But Wolf had truly come in from his cold, giving himself up in the hope that he had enough friends at court to allow him an old age untroubled by vengeance.

  Then M had tapped out a little ruffle with his fingertips on the arm of his chair. ‘Of course, there’s always Mischa Wolf’s deputy.’ He gazed at the ceiling, his face hidden in the darkness outside the bright circle of his desk lamp. ‘Nobody writes about him. The newshawks appear to have forgotten his existence, but then they’re all being a mite selective as far as the old regime’s concerned.’