by John Gardner
‘Look who’s talking?’ She did not quite laugh, but there was a trace of a smile on her face.
The food was run-of-the-mill, though the menu gave few choices. They settled for the conservative dishes: good solid Minestrone, spaghetti and savoury meatballs, followed by chocolate mousse. A drinkable house Chianti helped, and the coffee was real: certainly not gourmet, but neither was it a greasy spoon. ‘When we get to London, I’ll take you to one of the best Italian restaurants in the world.’ He smiled at her over the table with its chi-chi candle stuck in a bottle, and the red and white checked cloth and napkins. He thought of the other place now, in Marylebone High Street and, for a moment, longed to be in dirty old, crowded, unsavoury London. He even smelled its familiar scents and heard the sounds he had loved for so many years.
‘You went away again, James,’ she said. ‘Where this time?’
‘Oh, just showing you my city. It’s like everywhere else nowadays. Expensive, crowded, dangerous.’
‘You weren’t thinking about Wolfgang?’
‘I’d almost forgotten him.’
‘How could you forget?’ It was a half-laugh, full of cynicism.
‘I’d put him away for the night. Tomorrow’s another day.’
They went back to the room and booked a wake-up call for four-fifteen. ‘You have the bed, Praxi, I’ll sleep across the door.’
She came close, almost thrusting her body against him. ‘You don’t have to, James.’
‘No, no, I . . .’
‘Please. If nothing else, I’d like to be held by another human being. Just for a while. It wouldn’t do you any harm either.’
He hesitated, then kissed her, feeling her need transferred to his loins, knowing that she was offering not simply lust, but companionship and a cave in which they could both hide for a few hours.
Now, the gleaming wing of the Gulfstream I dipped as the sun came up, glancing off the metal skin like a fireball reflected in a mirror. ‘All the time in the world,’ he thought, still nervous at having uttered the words out loud. He closed his eyes. Perhaps what had passed between them in the soft, beautiful, loving night had been all their time. If that was so, nothing would be the same ever again.
He sank into a light doze, the words of an old blues song repeating and entwining in his mind:
Baby, Oh baby, won’t you answer me please?
Baby, Oh baby, won’t you answer me please?
All day I stood by your coffin tryin’ to give my poor heart ease.
He knew it was Coffin Blues, but it had come, without warning, as he dreamed he was back in London, sitting in a restaurant with a woman, though he could not see her face behind a flickering candle. In the dim background, a man was saying something about standing room only. Then he woke to hear their pilot saying they would be landing in ten minutes.
Praxi was awake, and he asked if she was all right, then glanced out of the window. It looked cold down there – a clear autumn day. The water of the English Channel gave off little glitters as the sunlight seemed to leap from ripple to ripple.
Calais was on their side of the aircraft, and he could see the great scar that was the huge new Terminal at Coquelles to the West. The place seemed busy, even though the Eurotunnel would not be in service until next year. It was like looking at a well-made model – the roads and rail tracks snaking from platforms, ramps and loading bays, into the wide rectangular mouths of the tunnel entrances. A lot of cars, he thought; and a lot of people out in the new Terminal. Then, it struck him as though some invisible, magic bullet had ripped into him. ‘There’ll be a lot of traffic in the area tomorrow,’ the Aero Tassì operator had said, last night on the telephone.
His stomach turned over, and for a second he thought he might stop breathing.
At last, his mind grasped the missing sentence. He was back in the Faubourg St Honoré, crushed next to Cold Claude Gaspard in the Japanese car.
He heard Big Michelle, in the recent past, say, ‘We would rather you didn’t stay in the country any longer. I would prefer you to be out by tonight, but I have an unfortunate tendency to be soft-hearted.’
Then the man he now knew as Claude Gaspard began to speak, ‘Particularly with Misanthrope coming . . .’ He had seemed to bite off the sentence, as though he had crossed an invisible line.
Misanthrope. Oh, my God. He thought he had said it aloud.
‘James, what’s the matter?’ Praxi grabbed his arm, her eyes wide, and concern written across her face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s the date?’ He could not even remember what day it was.
‘October 14th. Wednesday. James . . . ?’
‘God help us.’ He sounded as though he really was praying. Then he looked at his watch. Ten thirty. They might just be in time. In his head he saw the pink file on his desk back at the Regent’s Park headquarters. It was flagged Most Secret, and there were only half a dozen names neatly initialled on the cover. The cover also said Misanthrope. No wonder something had clicked and jangled when Gaspard nearly bit his tongue out. It was not surprising that, since the moment in the car, Bond had constantly searched his mind for what the Frenchman had said.
The Eurotunnel, running under the English Channel, would not be in service until well into next year, 1993, but it would see a train pass through it today. This morning. At eleven o’clock. Misanthrope was the operation’s cipher, and it would have remained secret until the previous night, October 13th. A news bulletin was to be issued during the evening, to give the Press and television just enough time to get crews there. That was why the pilot had known, when they talked on the telephone, that there would be a lot of air traffic around Calais.
It had been decided not to announce the European Community leaders’ short train ride through the tunnel until hours before, as a tight security measure. The Press would have time to get there, but no terrorist organisation would have time to set up any complex operation – except for Wolfgang Weisen, of course. He had known, probably from one of his intelligence sources.
The train leaving the Coquelles Terminal for the British Terminal near Folkestone would have around one hundred people on board: all the heads of the twelve countries which made up the EC, together with most of their ministers and members of their cabinets, advisers and closest confidants. Prime Ministers, Presidents, Chancellors, Ministers, Cabinet Ministers. Even M was supposed to be travelling in the British PM’s party, together with the Director-General of the Security Service.
A Gala Day. The first train to travel through that extraordinary feat of engineering – in fact three tunnels – which now ran below the English Channel. Below the sea itself, for fifty kilometres, the train would bear the leaders and governments of Europe from France to England and back.
Now Bond knew, with a terrible thunder in his head, that somewhere in the tunnel Wolfgang Weisen’s men and women waited. Maybe Weisen himself would be there, to see the total leadership of Europe die in one awful moment deep below water.
As he unbuckled his seat belt, he had already begun to yell at the two pilots who were concentrating on landing at the small airstrip east of Calais.
21
DEATH UNDER WATER
The narrow door to the flight deck had remained open for the entire flight. The Gulfstream I is not a large aircraft, and on charters the two-man crew did not have to worry overmuch with security matters. Bond leaned in, shouting his message, and the captain in the left hand seat moved his head slightly, annoyed at being interrupted during the most crucial stage of any aircraft operation: the landing.
Even with the engine noise, he could hear the constant chatter emanating from the headsets of both men. The second pilot, who looked young enough to be still in school, turned, one hand lifting the left pad of his earphones.
‘You’re in contact with the tower?’ Bond shouted.
‘But of course.’ The pilot looked as angry as the man who was actually flying the plane. ‘If you would sit down . . .’
‘I’ve
got to get a message to Coquelles. To the Eurotunnel Terminal. Security.’
‘We’ll be down in ten minutes. Can’t . . . ?’
‘No, it can’t wait! Get the tower to call up Terminal Security. I am an officer of the British Intelligence Service. Tell them to check with Admiral Sir Miles Messervy – he should be with the British PM’s party. Message from Predator. Abort Misanthrope. Urgent and Essential. Use those words, please. If the Admiral isn’t available, get Colonel Tanner. Say Predator needs to be picked up at the airfield. Again use the words Urgent and Essential.’
The young man appeared to be taking him seriously for he was scribbling on a clipboard. ‘I’ll do what I can, sir. It might have to wait until we’re down, though.’
‘Send it now.’ Bond looked at his watch again. Ten thirty-five. ‘There isn’t much time.’
‘If you’d go back to your seat, sir.’
He nodded and returned to Praxi who looked bewildered. ‘Please, James, what is it?’ She clutched his arm as the aircraft gave a little buck, hitting some kind of thermal as it began the long descent on finals.
‘It’s Weisen: or maybe just his people. Every single ruling member of the EC is going to be on a train, going through the Tunnel in about twenty minutes from now. Wolfgang knew, and he was due to come here for it. He might even be here.’ His hands rose and fell in a gesture of hopelessness.
Praxi said something which was lost in the noise from the engines, and the gear coming down with a whine and thump.
‘If he’s planning to do what I think, there’ll be chaos in Europe. Every single major political figure in the EC’ll be wiped off the face of the map. I can’t think of a worse situation . . .’
He remembered Wolfgang Weisen’s words. Only yesterday he had said, ‘Tomorrow, the whole structure of Europe will be changed. Altered out of all recognition.’
If the train entered the Eurotunnel, it would be changed: blown apart. There is nothing more dangerous to a country than a political vacuum, he thought, and Weisen was attempting to create the ultimate political vacuum. Tiny fingers of ice crept up the short hairs on the nape of his neck.
They touched down at ten forty-one, and the co-pilot came back, stooping as he walked towards them along the narrow aisle.
‘You’ll be picked up.’ He looked at Bond with a hint of suspicion. ‘They told me that you are both to remain by the buildings until somebody arrives for you.’
‘Who did you speak to?’
‘The tower passed a message to Head of Security at the Terminal. They are coming to get you, sir. You and the lady.’
Bond nodded, peering out of the little window. The airstrip which serves Calais looks more like a flying club than a fullblown airport, but he could clearly see a row of important-looking aircraft lined up near the low, white buildings. The leaders of the European Community had flown in only a matter of hours before. They expected to be flying back to their various capitals very shortly. He prayed they would need the aircraft in which they had arrived.
By the time the Gulfstream reached the little cluster of huts, with its engines stopped and parking brakes on, it was eight minutes to eleven. Outside, despite the bright sunlight, it was a cold morning, and as they left the aircraft, both passengers and crew hunched their shoulders against the chill.
Bond thanked the crew, and the co-pilot again stressed they were to remain outside. He paced around, not speaking to Praxi, except to make the occasional ‘Where the hell are they?’ remark. He felt impotent, his nerves strung out, and a growing sense of desperation invading mind and body. It was like drowning in anxiety, he thought.
She tried to calm him, but it was no use. For once in his life, James Bond had lost complete control of the business in which he excelled. At two minutes to eleven a little French military helicopter came in low from the West. It hovered on the edge of the field to allow a Cessna to come bustling in, then it dipped, heading towards the buildings, chopping in, sending a wild downdraught of air which made both Praxi and Bond turn their backs as the rotor blades wound down.
‘James? Everything okay?’ Bill Tanner, M’s Chief of Staff, dressed in the Whitehall uniform of dark suit, white shirt and regimental tie, climbed from the helicopter with a cheerful grin. ‘It’s good to see you. Quite a surprise.’
‘Did you stop the bloody train?’ Bond hurled the words at him, as though speech could kill.
‘Stop it?’ Tanner’s eyes opened wide.
‘I sent a message. Abort Misanthrope. Weisen. He’s on the loose, and his people’re in the Tunnel.’
‘Abort . . . ?’
‘You didn’t get my signal?’
‘Just your code name. Reference to M, and that you needed to be picked up here.’
‘I sent you an “Urgent and Essential”.’ He looked around to see the younger of the two Gulfstream pilots coming back towards the aircraft.
‘I said they’d pick you up.’
‘Did you not send the signal as I instructed?’
‘It was probably garbled, but yes. I said you needed picking up; I gave the funny name and the bit about an admiral . . .’
Bond felt the colour drain from him, as though he had become a ghost in less time than it took to click your fingers. Suddenly he was awash with the fatigue of the past few days. Like the previous evening, part of him was saying forget it. Give up and get some sleep. Then the old adrenalin pump took over. ‘Bill, for Christ’s sake, stop the bloody train from leaving, and get us all back to the Terminal.’
Tanner stood for a second, then he saw the look on Bond’s face and turned back to the helicopter, calling to the pilot who reached out to fire up his radio and began talking rapidly.
‘Get in!’ Tanner shouted, and they started to climb aboard as the rotors turned. The Chief of Staff always went straight to the heart of matters. He did not even ask Bond about the exact situation. After their long association in the British Intelligence Service, he did not need a lengthy briefing. Talk about detail was simply an unnecessary waste of time.
The helicopter shuddered, then rose smoothly, dipped its nose and began to hustle its way west. They had been airborne for just over a minute when the pilot turned his head and said something to Tanner.
‘The train’s gone!’ Tanner yelled into Bond’s ear.
‘Then get the bloody thing back. Stop it!’
Bill Tanner began to shout the instruction at the pilot when Bond cut in. ‘No, don’t bring it back. Just stop it. Cut the power to the rails if necessary, but just stop the thing dead.’
His mind was covering all the basics. It was safer to simply get the train to a standstill than reverse it from the depths of the tunnel. He did not know if Weisen’s men would even be in the tunnel, so there was a possibility that the train itself had been rigged with some kind of bomb. What would he have done in Weisen’s shoes? The best way to blow the train and its precious passengers to kingdom come would be an explosive device with a mercury-activated trigger. The bomb would become active after the vehicle had moved over a certain distance: a mile or so. Then there would be a point of no return: a specific amount of time – two, ten or fifteen minutes – before it exploded.
‘Stop the train. Cut off the power and instruct the VIPs to leave and walk back through the tunnel. It’s the only safe way.’
Tanner nodded and shouted to the pilot who again began to talk into his headset. Through the bubble they could see the Coquelles Terminal coming up fast. Images blurred in Bond’s mind. He saw a military band, standing around at ease near one of the long platforms, talking, laughing, looking at their instruments. He was aware of one of the branch lines and the great slab-sided rolling stock that would eventually transport heavy lorries from Britain to the Continent and back again. Another line held sleek passenger and private car carriages.
For centuries, he thought, Britain had been in many ways protected by the English Channel. That short strip of water had stopped Napoleon from invading in the early nineteenth century, and again
it had been the sticking point in 1940, when Hitler and his legions had overrun the rest of Europe. At the Channel, Hitler paused, then lost the battle for air superiority, and had to abort his Operation Sealion – the full scale invasion of the United Kingdom.
Many people in Britain regarded those twenty-five miles or so of water as a natural barrier, a defence against aggressors, but in spite of history, the political leaders of France and Britain had set in motion something which had been on the drawing board for decades: a tunnel, linking Britain to the Continent. In December 1987 ground had first been broken, and within three years the British and French tunnellers met, carving their way through the rock and clay under water to form the first ever land connection on December 1st 1990. Since then the whole face of the European transport system had been changed. This was certainly an historic and momentous day, even though the best part of a year still had to pass before any regular service would be established.
If ever, Bond thought. If today exploded into a moment of wrath and terror, the result could be far worse than anything that had happened in war-torn Europe during this century – or any century in its long history.
The pilot shouted something back at Tanner, who craned forward to listen.
‘The train is stopped.’ He cupped his hands around Bond’s ear, and the words seemed to lift a great weight from him: as though his entire body had been released from gigantic pressure.
The helicopter nosed down towards a landing pad, around which a gaggle of Special Forces troops were drawn up near two dark grey, squat, ugly-looking armoured Saviem/Creusot-Loire paramilitary vehicles.
At least the French had been prepared, Bond thought. These were GIGN Special Forces troops: members of the elite, low-key anti-terrorist unit, trained in all types of overt and covert operations. As they touched down, a young officer ran, crouching, to the door, which he wrenched open, calling up to Bill Tanner. ‘Colonel, you are required in the Operations Room. I am to take you and your colleagues there immediately.’
