Icebreaker jb-18

by John E. Gardner

  With painful slowness, James Bond took a book of matches from the ashtray by the bed, struck one and set both photograph and note on fire.

  7

  RIVKE

  For years Bond had nurtured the habit of taking cat naps and being able to control his sleep – even under stress. He had also acquired the knack of feeding problems into the computer of his mind, allowing the subconscious to work away while he slept. Usually he woke with a clear mind, sometimes with a new slant on difficulties, inevitably refreshed.

  After the exceptionally long and hard drive from Helsinki, Bond felt natural fatigue, though his mind was active with a maze of conflicting puzzles.

  There was nothing he could do immediately about the break-in, and wrecking, of Paula’s Helsinki apartment. His main concern was for the girl’s safety. In the morning, a couple of telephone calls should establish that.

  Much more worrying was the attack on him by the snow ploughs. Since he had left Madeira quickly, dog-legging his way to Helsinki via Amsterdam, this attempt on his life meant only one thing. Someone was watching all points of entry into Finland. They must have picked him up at the airport and, later, had knowledge of his departure by car.

  Someone obviously wanted him out of the game, just as they had wanted him out before he had even been briefed: hence the knife assault in Paula’s apartment.

  Dudley, who had filled in while M was waiting for Bond’s return, had indicated his mistrust of Kolya Mosolov. Bond himself had other ideas, and the latest development – the discovery that Mossad’s agent, Rivke Ingber, appeared to be the daughter of a wanted Finnish SS officer – was much more alarming.

  Bond allowed these problems to penetrate his thoughts, as he showered and prepared for bed. Momentarily he considered food, then opted against it. Better fast until morning, when he would breakfast with the others – providing they had all arrived at the hotel.

  He seemed to have been asleep for only a few minutes when the tapping broke through his consciousness. His eyes snapped open. The tapping continued – soft double raps at the door.

  Without making a noise, Bond slipped the P7 from under his pillow and crossed the room. The tapping was insistent. The double rap, then a long pause followed by another double rap.

  Keeping to the left of the door, his back against the wall, he whispered, ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Rivke. It’s Rivke Ingber, James. I have to talk to you. Please. Please let me in.’

  His mind cleared. There were several answers to the questions facing Bond when he went to sleep. One was so obvious that he had already taken it into account. If Rivke was, in fact, the daughter of Aarne Tudeer, there could easily be a link between her and the National Socialist Action Army. She must be only thirty years old, thirty-one at the most, which meant that her formative years had probably been spent in some hiding place with her father. If this was so then it was quite possible that Anni Tudeer was a neo-Fascist deep penetration agent working inside Mossad and that she may have been tipped off that the British were close to her true identity. It was also possible that she suspected Bond’s colleagues would not be averse to withholding the information from the CIA and KGB. It had been done before, and Icebreaker was already proving to be an uneasy alliance.

  Bond glanced at the illuminated dial of his Rolex Oyster Perpetual. It was four-thirty in the morning. Psychologically, Rivke could not have chosen a better moment.

  ‘Hang on,’ Bond whispered, recrossing the room to shrug himself into a towelling robe and replace the Heckler & Koch automatic under his pillow.

  When he opened the door, Bond quickly decided she had come unarmed. There were very few places she could manage to hide anything in the outfit she wore: an opalescent white négligé hanging loose over a sheer, clinging matching nightdress. She would have been enough to make any man drop his guard, with her tanned body quite visible through the soft material, and the dazzling contrast of colour, underlined by the blonde shimmer of hair, and the eyes pleading in a hint of fear.

  Bond allowed her into the room, locked the door, and stood back. Well, he thought, his gaze quickly travelling down her body, she is either an ultra-professional or a very natural blonde.

  ‘Didn’t even know you’d got to the hotel,’ he said calmly. ‘Welcome.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She spoke quietly. ‘May I sit down, James? I’m terribly sorry to . . .’

  ‘My pleasure. Please . . .’ He indicated a chair. ‘Can I send for anything? Or do you want a drink from the fridge?’

  Rivke shook her head. ‘This is so silly.’ She looked around as though disorientated. ‘So stupid.’

  ‘You want to talk about it?’

  A quick nod. ‘Don’t think me a complete fool, James, please. I’m really quite good with men, but Tirpitz . . . well . . .’

  ‘You told me you could handle him, that you could have dealt with him before, when my predecessor thumped him.’

  She was quiet for a moment, then, when she spoke it was a snap, a small explosion: ‘Well, I was wrong, wasn’t I? That’s all there is to it.’ She paused. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, James. I’m supposed to be highly trained and self-reliant. Yet . . .’

  ‘Yet Brad Tirpitz you can’t handle?’

  She smiled at Bond’s mocking timbre replying in kind: ‘He knows nothing of women.’ Then her face tightened, the smile disappearing from the eyes. ‘He really has been most unpleasant. Tried to force his way into my room. Very drunk. Gave the impression he wasn’t going to let up easily.’

  ‘So, you didn’t even hit him with your handbag?’

  ‘He was really scary, James.’

  Bond went over to the bedside table, picked up his cigarette case and lighter, offering the open case to Rivke, who shook her head as Bond lit up, blowing a stream of smoke towards the ceiling.

  ‘It’s out of character, Rivke.’ He sat on the end of the bed, facing her, searching the attractive face for some hint of truth.

  ‘I know.’ She spoke very quickly. ‘I know. But I couldn’t stay alone in my room. You’ve no idea what he was like . . .’

  ‘You’re not a wilting flower, Rivke. You don’t normally come running to the nearest male for protection. That’s back-to-the-cave-dwellers stuff – everything people like you hate, and despise.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She made to get up, her anger almost tangible for a second. ‘I’ll go, and leave you in peace. I just needed company. The rest of this so-called team doesn’t give anyone company.’

  Bond put out a hand, touching her shoulder, quietly pushing her back into the chair. ‘Stay, by all means, Rivke. But please don’t take me for an idiot. You could handle Brad Tirpitz, drunk or sober, with a flick of your eyelashes . . .’

  ‘That’s not quite true.’

  The ploy, Bond thought, dated back to the Garden of Eden, the oldest in the book. But who was he to argue? If a beautiful girl comes to your room in the middle of the night asking for protection – even though she is quite capable of looking after herself – she does so for one reason. But that was in the real world, not this maze of secrets and duplicity in which both Bond and Rivke lived and worked.

  Taking another long pull on his cigarette, he made the vital decision. Rivke Ingber was alone in his room, and he knew who she really was. Before she made any other move it would, perhaps, be best for him to put the cards firmly on the table.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago, Rivke, maybe even less – I seem to have lost all sense of time – did you do anything when Paula Vacker told you I was in Helsinki?’

  ‘Paula?’ She looked genuinely perplexed. ‘James, I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Look, Rivke,’ he leaned forward, taking her hands in his, ‘our business breeds odd friends; and, sometimes, strange enemies. I don’t want to become your enemy. But you need friends, my dear. You see, I know who you are.’

  Her brow creased, the eyes becoming wary. ‘Of course. I’m Rivke Ingber. I work for Mossad; and I’m an Israeli citizen.’

  ‘You don’t
know Paula Vacker?’

  There was no hesitation. ‘I’ve met her. Yes, a long time ago I knew her quite well. But I haven’t seen her for . . . Oh, it must be three, four years.’

  ‘And you haven’t been in touch with her lately?’ Bond heard his own voice, slightly supercilious. ‘You don’t work with her in Helsinki? You didn’t have a dinner date – which Paula cancelled – just before leaving for the Madeira meeting?’

  ‘No.’ Plain; open; straightforward.

  ‘Not even under your real name? Anni Tudeer?’

  She took a deep breath, then exhaled, as though trying to expel every ounce of air from her body. ‘That’s a name I like to forget.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  She quickly pulled her hands away. ‘Please James, I’ll have that cigarette now.’ Bond gave her one of his H. Simmons specials, lighting it for her. She inhaled deeply and allowed the smoke to trickle from her mouth. ‘You seem to know so much; I should let you tell me the story.’ Her voice was cold, all the friendly, even seductive, undertone gone.

  He shrugged. ‘I know only who you are. I also know Paula Vacker. She told me she’d confided in you that we were meeting in Helsinki. I went to Paula’s apartment. There were a couple of knife experts keeping an eye on her and ready to treat me like a prime joint.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Paula hasn’t spoken to me in years. Apart from knowing my old name, and, presumably, the fact that I’m a former SS officer’s daughter, what do you really know?’

  Bond smiled. ‘Only that you’re very beautiful. I know nothing about you, except what you call your old name.’

  She nodded, face set, mask-like. ‘I thought so. All right, Mr James Bond, let me tell you the full story, so that you can set the record straight. After that, I think we’d both better try to find out what’s going on – I mean what happened at Paula’s . . . I’d like to know where Paula Vacker fits into all this.’

  ‘Paula’s flat was done over. I went there before leaving Helsinki yesterday. There was also a slight altercation with three – four – snow ploughs on my way here. The snow ploughs indicated they wanted to remodel my car, with me inside it. Somebody does not want me here, Anni Tudeer, or Rivke Ingber, whichever is your real name.’

  Rivke frowned. ‘My father was – is – Aarne Tudeer; that’s true. You know his history?’

  ‘That he was on Mannerheim’s staff, and took the Nazis up on an offer to become an SS officer. Brave; ruthless; a wanted war criminal.’

  She nodded. ‘I didn’t know about that part until I was around twelve years old.’ She spoke very softly, but with a conviction Bond felt was genuine. ‘When my father left Finland he took several of his brother officers, and some enlisted men, with him. In those days, as you know, there was a fair assortment of camp followers. On the day he left Lapland, my father proposed to a young widow. Good birth, had large holdings of land – forest mainly – in Lapland. My mother was part Lapp. She accepted, and volunteered to go with him, so becoming a kind of camp follower herself. She went through horrors you’d hardly believe.’ She shook her head, as though still not crediting her own mother’s actions. Tudeer had married on the day after leaving Finland, and his wife stayed near him until the collapse of the Third Reich. Together they had escaped.

  ‘My first home was in Paraguay,’ Rivke told him. ‘I knew nothing, of course. It wasn’t until later I realised that I spoke four languages almost from the beginning – Finnish, Spanish, German and English. We lived in a compound in the jungle. Quite comfortable really, but the memories of my father are not pleasant.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Bond said. Little by little, he coaxed it out of her. It was, in fact, an old tale. Tudeer had been autocratic, drunken, brutal, and sadistic.

  ‘I was ten years old before we escaped – my mother and I. To me it was a kind of game: dressed up as an Indian child. We got away by canoe, and then, with the help of some Guarani, made it to Asunción. My mother was a very unhappy lady. I don’t know how it was managed, but she got passports for both of us, Swedish passports, and some kind of grant. We were flown to Stockholm, where we stayed for six months. Every day my mother would go to the Finnish Embassy, and, eventually, we were granted our Finnish passports. Mother spent the first year in Helsinki getting a divorce and compensation for her lost land – up here, in the Circle. We lived in Helsinki, and I got my first taste of schooling. That’s where I met Paula. We became very good friends. That’s about it.’

  ‘It?’ Bond repeated, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘Well, the rest was predictable enough.’

  It was while she was at school that Rivke began to learn the facts about her father. ‘By the age of fourteen I knew it all, and was horrified; disgusted that my own father had left his country to become part of the SS. I suppose it was an obsession – a complex. By the time I was fifteen, I knew what had to be done as far as my life went.’

  Bond had heard many confessions during interrogations. After years of experience you develop a sense about them. He would have put money on Rivke’s being a true story – if only because it came out fast, with the minimum of detail. People operating under a deep cover often give you too much.

  ‘Revenge?’ he asked.

  ‘A kind of revenge. No, that’s the wrong word. My father had nothing to do with what Himmler called the Final Solution – the Jewish problem – but he was associated, he was a wanted criminal. I began to identify with the race that lost six million souls, in the gas chambers and the camps. Many people have told me I over-reacted, I wanted to do something concrete.’

  ‘You became a Jew?’

  ‘I went to Israel on my twentieth birthday. My mother died two years later. The last time I saw her was the day I left Helsinki. Within six months I made the first steps to conversion. Now I’m as Jewish as any Gentile-born can be. In Israel they tried everything in the book to put me off, but I stuck it out – even military service. It was that which finally clinched it.’ Her smile was one of pride this time. ‘Zamir himself sent for me, interviewed me. I couldn’t believe it when they told me who he was – Colonel Zwicka Zamir, the head of Mossad. He arranged everything, I was an Israeli citizen already. Now I went for special training, for Mossad. I had a new name . . .’

  ‘And the revenge part, Rivke? You had atoned, but what about the revenge?’

  ‘Revenge?’ Her eyes opened wide. Then she frowned, anxiety crossing her face. ‘James, you do believe me, don’t you?’

  In the couple of seconds which passed before he replied, Bond’s mind ran through the facts. Either Rivke was the best deception artist he had ever met, or, as he had earlier decided, completely honest. These feelings had to be put next to his long and intimate knowledge of Paula Vacker. From their first meeting, Bond had never suspected Paula of being anything but a charming, intelligent, hard-working girl. Now, if Rivke was telling the truth, Paula became a liar and possibly an accessory to attempted murder. The knife artists had cornered him in Paula’s flat, yet she had taken care of him, had driven him to the airport. Someone obviously had fingered him on the road to Salla. That could only have been done from Helsinki. Paula?

  Bond switched back to the Paula connection. ‘There’re reasons why I shouldn’t believe you, Rivke,’ he began. ‘I’ve known Paula for a long time. When I last saw her, when she told me she’d confided in you, Anni Tudeer, she was very specific. She said Anni Tudeer worked with her in Helsinki.’

  Rivke slowly shook her head. ‘Unless someone else is using my name . . .’

  ‘You’ve never worked in her world? In advertising?’

  ‘You’re joking. I’ve said no already. I’ve told you the story of my life. I knew Paula at school.’

  ‘And did she know who you were? Who your father was?’

  ‘Yes.’ Softly. ‘James, you can easily settle it. Call her office, check with them; ask if they have an Anni Tudeer working for them. If so, then there are two Anni Tudeers – or Paula’s lying.’ She leaned closer, speaking very distinctly,
‘I’m telling you, James, there are not two Anni Tudeers. Paula’s lying, and I would like to know why.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bond nodded. ‘Yes, so would I.’

  ‘Then you believe me?’

  ‘There’s no point in you lying to me, when all the facts can be checked. I thought I knew Paula very well, but now . . . well, my instincts tell me to believe you. We can run traces, even from here, certainly from London. London already says that you’re Anni Tudeer.’ He smiled at her. She was, at close proximity, a very lovely young woman. ‘I believe you, Rivke Ingber. You’re straight Mossad, and you’ve only left one thing out – the question of vengeance. I can’t believe you simply want to atone for your father’s actions. You either want him in the bag or dead. Which is it?’

  She gave a provocative little shrug. ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it? Whichever way it goes, Aarne Tudeer will die.’ The musical voice altered for a second, steel hard, then back once more to its softness, and a small laugh. ‘I’m sorry, James. I shouldn’t have tried to play games with you. Brad Tirpitz was a nuisance tonight, but, yes, I could’ve taken care of him. Maybe I’m not the professional I thought I was. I was naive enough to imagine I could con you. Lure you.’

  ‘Lure? Into what web?’ Bond, 99 per cent sure of Rivke’s motives and claims, still kept that tiny 1 per cent of wariness in reserve.

  ‘Not a web, exactly.’ She put out a hand, fingers resting in Bond’s palm. ‘To be honest, I don’t feel safe with either Tirpitz or Kolya. I wanted to be sure you’d be on my side.’

  Bond let go of her hand, placing his own fingers lightly on her shoulders. ‘We’re in the business of trust, Rivke; and we both need it from someone, because I’m not happy with this set-up any more than you are. First things first, though. I have to ask you this, simply because I suspect it: do you know, for certain, that your father’s mixed up with the NSAA?’