by John Pearson
‘I am going to leave the decision over an assignment entirely to you. If you accept it – fine. If you refuse, we both forget and never mention it again.’
‘That sounds very fair,’ said Bond and looked at M. M. did not meet his eyes. When M. continued he spoke loudly and impersonally.
‘Four days ago we received a message via Station H in Finland. Apparently a Colonel Botkin of the K.G.B. is anxious to come over. I need hardly tell you how extremely rare it is to have a member of the K.G.B. make such an offer, so I told Station H to go ahead and arrange the terms. They arrived this morning. He wants the usual guarantees, money and so forth – nothing out of the ordinary – except for one thing. He insists that he will surrender to one person only – you.’
Bond lit a cigarette. This also was unusual in M.'s office.
‘Any reason?’ he said dryly.
‘He claims he met you in Berlin two years ago.’
‘He didn't,’ said Bond.
‘We know he didn't.’
‘So why so keen on me?’
‘I think we both know why,’ said M. ‘That's why it must be your decision.’
‘You think this so-called Colonel will be Oborin?’
‘We're pretty sure. Our information makes it clear that Smersh is giving him one chance to correct that mistake he made at Royale-les-Eaux.’
‘But isn't it too obvious? Isn't it clear that everybody here will smell a rat?’
‘Of course,’ M. said quietly. ‘That's what our friends in Smersh are counting on. Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is a private challenge issued from Oborin to you. That's why it must be your decision.’
M. wouldn't let James Bond reply immediately and Bond spent a sleepless night. On the one hand he knew the risks he would be running if he went to Finland. Smersh would not be leaving much to chance, nor would their killer. Bond would be facing almost certain death. On the other hand there was something to be said for meeting a challenge of this sort head-on.
Luckily Bond was not a worrier. He used to repeat a saying of his aunts', ‘Worry is an extra dividend one pays to disaster in advance.’ This he had no intention of doing, so finally he made his decision, closed his mind to it, and slept. Next morning he told M. that he was going.
M. nodded thoughtfully.
‘I thought you would,’ he said.
*
Bond enjoyed his first afternoon in Helsinki. He was expecting a drab icy little city. Instead he found that this whole portion of the eastern Baltic was enjoying its own version of an Indian summer. Birkin, the head of Station F, met him at the airport. He was a tall, much-decorated naval commander with a distinctly ghoulish sense of humour. He wore a monocle, a red cravat and sponge-bag trousers.
‘Well, old chap,’ he said, ‘I trust you've packed your bulletproof pyjamas. Looks as if you'll need ’em.’
‘It's definitely a set-up then?’ said Bond.
‘Frankly, the whole thing stinks. I told M. as much. Clearly he thinks the 00 section needs a little thinning out.’
‘And this man Botkin, from the K.G.B. – you've never seen him?’
Birkin shook his head and grinned.
‘Not on your life. We've just made contact through intermediaries. A lot of unofficial traffic passes in and out of here you know. No, I've not seen the bastard, but he is very anxious for a look at you.’
That evening Birkin insisted on taking Bond out to dinner.
‘Least that I can do in the circumstances. Could be your last good meal on earth. Besides, it'll be a chance to give you your instructions, if you're really going through with it.’
They went to Smourazi, traditionally the best Finnish restaurant in the city. It was just opposite the old cathedral, a prim grey building with a dome like a symmetrical bald head. The restaurant was crowded but the guests were mainly Swedes and somewhat solemn. Bond drank a lot of schnapps and found the clientele improving. Birkin insisted on traditional Finnish food – kalakukko (Finnish fish cakes), Karelian steak (beef and mutton roasted together), and poronkieltä (reindeer tongue). Bond found it disappointing. Birkin ate with relish.
‘The point of Finnish food is that it gives you stamina. You need it in a place like this. Pity you're not staying longer.’
Bond thought he would require something more than Finnish food to keep him in Helsinki.
‘Before we finish off the schnapps,’ he said, ‘just tell me how I contact Colonel Botkin.’
Birkin took his time explaining the arrangements. In the process he chewed reindeer meat, and drank still more schnapps. The plan was basically quite simple. Bond was to go to Kotka, a seaport and the last big town before the Russian border. There he would take a motor-launch – Birkin explained, at length, the trouble he had taken getting it – and sail for a tiny island some ten miles from the frontier. The rendezvous was fixed for four o'clock next afternoon. Botkin would be there – and, if all went to plan, Bond would bring him back – ‘or vice versa,’ Birkin said.
‘Exactly,’ Bond replied.
According to Birkin, the great virtue of getting drunk on schnapps was that it left no hangover. Bond found this theory optimistic but not accurate. He woke in his hotel feeling much the worse for wear. The only consolation was that Birkin looked even worse than he did after breakfast when he called to drive him off to Kotka.
‘Must have been that reindeer tongue, old boy,’ said Birkin. ‘Can't always trust it.’ James Bond nodded.
It was an impressive drive. Most of the way the road kept to the coast with views of pine woods, islands, and the pale blue sea. Birkin told him there were seven thousand islands between Stockholm and the Russian border.
‘So how do I find the one I'm heading for?’ said Bond.
‘Easy,’ he replied. ‘Just stick to the bearing that I'll give you, and you can't miss it. You'll know when you've arrived. A big German battlecruiser called the Lublin was sunk just by the island during the war. They've never shifted her and she's still full of dead Germans. She's on the main channel through to Leningrad. Her superstructure shows for miles.’
Kotka was reached by lunchtime. It was a small bright modern town clustering round a glass works and a mammoth paper mill. The air smelt resinous. It was a crisp autumn day; Bond felt revived. Birkin had screwed his monocle firmly into his eye and proudly showed James Bond the motor-launch that he had hired for him.
‘Cost us a dreadful lot of money. I only hope M. doesn't query it.’
‘I'm sure he won't,’ said Bond.
For Bond there was something of a schoolboy treat about the voyage. He was alone in charge of a small blue boat chugging its way across a tranquil sea. Behind him Kotka belched smoke from its paper mills. Ahead of him lay island after island with lonely buoys marking the sea-lane on to Leningrad. At first there was a yacht or two, and some of the islands seemed inhabited. But soon all sign of human beings ceased. He was alone except for the sea-birds and the impatient chugging of his engine.
The sun sank early and the dusk was gathering when he saw the Lublin. Her masts were standing like a far-away lopsided tree on the pale horizon. Bond steered towards her.
The island lay just half a mile beyond, a chunk of rock, crowned with a scalp of pines.
There were two wooden huts and a small jetty, but no sign of life. Bond steered towards the jetty, tied up and jumped ashore.
He was early and explored the island. It was empty, but, to his surprise, one of the wooden huts was open. He looked in. It had been roughly furnished – chairs, table, blankets on a trestle bed. Bond drew his gun and entered. There was no one there.
Time ticked by and no one came. Bond watched the sea for sign of Botkin's boat, then darkness fell. It started to get very cold. It was a temptation to move into the hut and wait. Bond resisted it. Instead he lit an oil-lamp, plumped up several cushions under the blankets to the rough shape of a sleeping man, then left the hut and hid up in the pine trees, gun in hand. It was the longest night of his life. The cold grew bitter, until hi
s hand froze to the steel of his gun. A bell-buoy by the wreck tolled in the darkness. And all the time the light burned on in the deserted hut. Somehow Bond kept himself awake.
The luminous face on his watch showed nearly three when the men arrived. He counted eight of them. They had approached so silently that they had the hut surrounded before he realized that they were there. One of them called out in English, then they rushed the hut, firing as they went.
Bond had an advantage from where he was and fired at them from the rear, trusting in darkness and confusion to mask his movements. There were shouts, several of the figures seemed to fall and Bond dodged between the trees keeping to the shadows, then staying very still. Some of the men had flashlights, but they soon realized that there was no point searching for him in the darkness. Somebody shouted from the hut, and the men with flashlights moved towards it.
Dawn came late, and suddenly the island was thick with men. There was more shouting now, and Bond could hear the trampling of undergrowth. Then he saw the searchers – Russian sailors working across the island in a line. They found him easily. There seemed to be no point in trying to resist. Three of the sailors grabbed him and as they brought him to the jetty Bond saw a face he recognized, the ‘crag face’ he had glimpsed beneath its mask at Royale-les-Eaux the night that Chiffre was killed – Oborin, his private enemy from Smersh.
There was no sign of recognition in those hooded eyes, but there was a brief command. Bond spun round. Oborin's right arm lifted and a blow like a steel bar caught him below the ear. A fountain of bright scarlet jetted through his brain – then total blackness.
It seemed like centuries later when he woke. He was in a small, white painted room lit by a steel grille light screwed to the ceiling. There were no windows. The floor was iron. There was a steel bulkhead door. Bond tried it. It was firmly shut.
His whole body ached and the pain in his head caused him to faint. When he came to, the bulkhead door was open. For a while Bond lay where he was. Then a voice said, ‘Good morning, Mr Bond. It's good to see you.’
‘Where are you?’ Bond asked.
‘All in good time,’ the voice replied, and Bond realized that it was coming from a loudspeaker hidden by the light.
‘First, I must introduce myself. I am the man who is going to kill you, Mr Bond. As you know, I slipped up at Royale-les-Eaux. This time there will be no mistake.’
‘If you're so keen on killing me, why not last night?’ said Bond. ‘You had me at your mercy.’
‘It would have been too easy,’ said the voice. ‘Besides, I have my orders. My masters want you back alive. That's why we had to have that little pantomime last night on the island, and that's why you're here.’
‘But where is here?’ said Bond.
‘I thought you realized. You are aboard the Lublin. It is good that these old warships still have their uses and that all those sailors did not die in vain. She is a useful outpost for my country. We converted her when we still occupied this part of Finland during the war. She was originally an observation post to give warning of attack on Leningrad. We had much equipment hidden on her. There is an air-lock well below the waterline so that a submarine can relieve her crew. That's how you are due to leave, sometime this afternoon. The submarine is on her way.’
‘Why is the door open then?’ said Bond.
‘A good question. I'll do my best to answer you. Feel under your left armpit, Mr Bond.’
Bond did. To his surprise he found his gun was there.
‘Examine it, please.’
Again Bond did as he was told. The magazine had been reloaded after the shots he had fired last night.
‘Now do you understand? My orders are to bring you back alive, but just for once I don't intend to follow them. You've caused me too much trouble, Mr Bond. I want to kill you. And to have that pleasure, I'm giving you a chance. Not a very big chance, but a better one than you'll get in Moscow. We are alone here on this wreck. The sailors who brought you here have gone. You have a gun. Use it, Mr Bond. Escape.’
There was a loud metallic click. The voice switched off. Bond lay where he was, planning what to do.
His cabin was evidently below the waterline, and from where he lay he could see a brightly lit corridor with steps at the far end. Somewhere along that corridor or up the steps, Oborin was waiting. It was the perfect killing ground, the carefully setup site for a private execution. At first Bond thought he had no chance, but then he realized that Oborin's whole scheme for killing him depended for its certainty on one thing – light. If he could only plunge that corridor outside in darkness he might just have a chance. Everything depended now on whether the corridor lights and the light inside his cabin were on the same electric circuit. With luck they would be.
He used one precious bullet to shoot out the light. The glass cover shattered, and, although he cut his fingers, he managed to unscrew the base of the light bulb from its socket. He had a small stainless-steel comb. He insulated one end with its plastic holder then thrust it hard into the socket. There was the flash of a short-circuit – the lights in the corridor outside went out.
Bond hurled himself towards the steps and as he did so, two shots whistled through the darkness. Bond grabbed the steel rung and hauled himself up. A third shot caught his arm. And then he fired, instinctively. There was no real target – only a darker patch against the surrounding darkness. But Bond had practised in exactly these conditions in the cellars beneath Regent's Park Headquarters. He heard the cough of his Beretta followed by the eerie twanging of a ricochetting bullet in the darkness. But with his second bullet there was no ricochet.
Bond stood quite still and listened. There was a cough. Bond fired again directly at the sound. He heard a thud and then a stifled groan followed by the choking sound of someone fighting for breath. He fired twice more. The choking stopped. Even then, Bond took no chances but waited several minutes more. There was no noise now but the sound of his own breathing. He fired again and then moved slowly forward until he reached the body. He nearly stumbled over it. The murderer with the craglike face was very dead.
It took Bond some while to find his way out. He was in a corridor with a steel ladder at the far end. Groping his way up he found a bulkhead door. He wrenched it open and found himself out on the tilting deck of the Lublin. The Russian had been right – the wrecked battleship was quite deserted. So was the island. At the jetty Bond could see the small blue boat he had arrived on still tied up where he had left it. There was something lifeless and depressing in the scene. Bond thought of the drowned sailors for whom this rusting warship was still a communal coffin. It was time to go before the Russian submarine arrived.
But first he had to make sure that The Lublin’s usefulness was over and forced himself down past Oborin's body to explore the ship. The Russians had sealed off a section of the hold and carefully installed their radio equipment, quarters for a crew and a whole range of electronic monitors. There was the air-lock where the submarine would dock and deep in the hold Bond found what he was looking for – the Lublin’s sea-cocks. These required all his strength to turn. He heaved and then he heard the rush of water. He took one last look round at this hidden watcher's world – then gratefully got back on deck.
The Baltic was colder than he had ever thought water could be. After his dive from the Lublin’s stern he swam the half-mile to the jetty, but he was nearly caught by cramp within the icy waters. Luckily, there were still blankets in the hut. He dried himself on them, then swathed himself and climbed aboard the boat. The engines started. There were two jerry-cans of fuel. He swung the blue boat's bows out to the open sea. As he passed the Lublin the great rusting monster seemed to lurch. The stern and barnacle-encrusted rudder rose from the water as the ship tipped further on its side and settled in the mud. By the time the Russian submarine arrived, Bond was safely back in Kotka.
‘Well, bless my soul,’ said Birkin when he saw him. ‘Somehow I never thought that you'd be back.’
&nb
sp; *
Bond was hoping that the death of Oborin would have settled his private score with Smersh, and for a while it seemed as if it had. Winter began – the ceaseless business of Bond's department seemed to increase in volume. There was a three-day visit to Cairo at the end of November. A British businessman's life was threatened by a group of extremist Arabs and an important trade agreement hinged on his safety. Within three hours of his arrival in Cairo, Bond knew the names of the would-be assassins and by that evening all of them had been persuaded to leave town. He also had a trip to Washington conferring with the C.I.A. about an anonymous threat to the life of the U.S. President on his forthcoming tour of Europe. Both these assignments passed off without a hitch. Then came Bond's visit to Milan.
This occurred during the annual Trade Fair. These international affairs with entries from both sides of the Iron Curtain tended to become a field day for the Secret Service. Bond was quite used to them, and on this occasion he had to keep his eye on a technical adviser from a British electronics firm who was suspected of illicit contacts with the East. For Bond it was very much a routine operation. For cover he had arranged to be attached to a British firm of turbine engineers and duly took his place, complete with dark suit and exhibitor's lapel badge, on their stand. He knew enough to talk convincingly about turbine generators, and also managed to observe the man he wanted. In fact, nothing happened: the man was either innocent, or else aware that he was being watched. And Bond was free to enjoy the exotic pleasures of Milan. He liked the city. Unlike so much of Italy, it made no attempt to thrust culture and antiquity down his throat, and he enjoyed its zest and its prosperity. He liked the Milanese too – with their large fast cars and pampered women – and ate well, drank wines like Inferno and Lambrusco, and in place of his customary vodka martinis found himself enjoying what he called ‘musical comedy drinks’ – Campari sodas and Americanos.
During the four days of the Fair he had a double room at the Hotel Principe e Savoia. He approved of this as well. The hotel was solid and discreet; the barman poured generous measures and knew all the gossip of the city. It was in the bar too that Bond met the girl who saved his life. She was called Melissa. She was English, recently divorced and staying in Milan to meet her Italian lover. He was delayed in Rome; she was obviously lonely. Bond gave her dinner at one of the finest restaurants in Italy – Gianino's in the Via Sciesa where they ate artichokes and osso buco alle milanese – and spent the night with her. After the grappa and the gorgonzola this seemed the perfect ending to a perfect evening.
