Icebreaker jb-18

by John E. Gardner

  Kolya gave a kind of secret smile. ‘Von Glöda’, he said very slowly, ‘will be here.’ His finger hovered over the map, then stabbed down at a section marked out in oblongs and squares. The map reference showed it to be just inside the Finnish border, a little to the north of where they would expect to cross and return.

  Both Bond and Tirpitz craned forward, Bond quickly memorising the co-ordinates on the map. Kolya continued talking.

  ‘I am 99 per cent certain that the man your people, Brad, call Glow-worm, will be safely tucked away there tonight; just as I’m sure the convoy from Blue Hare will end up at the same point.’

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent certain?’ Bond raised an eyebrow quizzically, his hand lifting to brush the small comma of hair from his forehead. ‘Why? How?’

  ‘My country . . .’ Kolya Mosolov’s tone contained no jingoism, or especial pride, ‘my country has a slight advantage, from a geographical viewpoint.’ His finger circled the whole area around the red oblong marks on the map. ‘We’ve been able to mount considerable surveillance over the past weeks. It’s also to our advantage that agents on the ground have made exhaustive enquiries. There are of course still a large number of ruined old defensive points along this part of the frontier. You can see the remains of defences in many European countries – in France for instance, even in England. Most are intact but unusable, the bunker walls sound enough but the interiors crumbling. So you can imagine how many blockhouses and fortifications were constructed all along here during the Winter War, and, again, after the Nazi invasion of Russia.’

  ‘I can vouch for that.’ Bond smiled, as though trying to let Kolya know he was not entirely a stranger to this part of theworld.

  ‘My people know about them too.’ Tirpitz was not to be outdone.

  ‘Ah.’ Kolya’s face lit up in what might haved passed for a benign smile.

  Silence, for a good half minute.

  Then Kolya nodded, his strange trick of sudden facial change turning him sage-like. ‘Once we were alerted to what was going on at Blue Hare, our Special Operations Departments were given precise orders. High flying aircraft and satellites were set on new routes. Eventually they came up with these.’ He slid a small, clear plastic folder from under the map and began to pass around a series of photographs. There were a number of pictures, obviously taken from reconnaissance aircraft – probably theRussian Mandrake, Mangrove or Brewer-D, all ideal for the purpose. Even in black and white the photographs clearly showed large areas of disturbed ground. They had been taken during the late summer months or in early autumn before the snows, and on most of them some kind of large concrete bunker entrance was unmistakable.

  The other photographs were also of a type with which both Bond and Brad Tirpitz were familiar: military reconnaissance satellite pictures, taken from miles above the earth, with varied cameras and lenses. The most interesting were those which showed, in vivid colour, changes in geological structure.

  ‘We put one of our Cosmos military intelligence birds on the job. Good, eh?’

  Bond’s eyes flicked from the satellite pictures to the small drawings on the map. The pictures, mostly magnified and blown up, showed that considerable work had taken place under the earth’s surface. The textures and colours made it plain that the building was well-executed, with a great deal of steel and concrete used. It was a highly symmetrical structure with all the signs of a complete and active underground complex.

  ‘You see,’ Kolya continued, ‘I have more than just the photographs.’ He produced yet another folder, containing both plan and elevation drawings of what could only be a very large bunker. ‘We were alerted by the satellite findings. Then our field agents moved in. There were also one or two interesting maps of the area, used at the time of the Winter War, and later. Finnish military engineers built a large, underground arms dump on exactly this spot during the late 1930s. It was big enough to contain at least ten-tracked tanks, as well as ammunition and facilities for repair. The main bunker entrance was large – here,’ he pointed directly to the photographs and the plan view drawing. ‘From our people on the ground, and existing records, we know the bunker was, in fact, never used. However, about two years ago during the summer, much activity was reported in the general area – builders, bulldozers, the usual paraphernalia. It is, without much doubt, von Glöda’s lair.’ His finger started to trace along the drawings. ‘There, you see, theoriginal entrance has been rebuilt and sealed off – large enough to take vehicles, with plenty of room below for storage.’

  It was a very clear, and convincing, batch of evidence. The complex seemed large, divided into two areas: one for vehicles and stores, the other a vast honeycomb of living quarters. At least three hundred people would be able to live underground in this place, year in and year out. The bigger entrance lay parallel to a smaller access and both sloped down similar gradients to a depth of some three hundred metres, which, as Tirpitz said, was ‘deep enough to bury a lot of bodies’.

  ‘We believe it is where all the bodies are buried.’ Kolya showed no sign of humour. ‘I personally think it constitutes the headquarters, and planning control command post, of the National Socialist Action Army. The place has also become a major staging point for the arms and munitions stolen from Red Army bases. That refurbished bunker, in my opinion, is the heart of the NSAA.’

  ‘So all we have to do’, Tirpitz glanced at Kolya, the sarcasm practically tangible, ‘is take some pretty pictures of your army people betraying their country, then follow the vehicles back to here,’ finger on the map, ‘to the bunker. Their cosy little Ice Palace.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Just like that. Three of us – with me, I presume, acting as a backstop on the frontier, where any hairbrained asshole could pick me off like a jack-rabbit.’

  ‘Not if you’re as good as they tell me,’ Kolya said, returning like for like. ‘For my part, I’ve taken the liberty of bringing in another of my people – simply because there are two crossing points.’ He indicated another line, slightly farther north than the route he and Bond would be taking, explaining that both border crossings should be covered. ‘Originally I wanted Rivke up there, just in case. We need a spare, so I’ve arranged it.’

  There was a brief pause. Then Bond said, ‘Kolya, I want toknow something.’

  ‘Go ahead.’ The face lifted towards him, open and frank.

  ‘If this runs to plan – if we get the evidence, and we follow the convoy back to the bunker you say is here,’ Bond pointed at the map, ‘when we’ve done all that, what’s the next move?’

  Kolya did not even stop to think. ‘We make certain we have our proof. After that, we do one of two things. Either we report back to our respective agencies, or, if it looks feasible, we finish the job ourselves.’

  Bond made no further comment. Kolya had signalled an interesting endgame. If he was, in fact, involved in any KGB-Red Army conspiracy, the action of ‘finishing the job ourselves’ would be as good a method as any to cover things up for ever. The more so, Bond calculated, if Kolya Mosolov saw to it that Bond and Tirpitz did not return. Meanwhile, if the conspiracy theory held any water, the NSAA command headquarters could already be set to move out to another hiding place; another bunker.

  They talked on, going over the minutiae: where the snow scooters were hidden, the kind of cameras they would be using, the exact point at which Tirpitz would take up his post and the position of Kolya’s new agent, identified solely by the cryptonym Mujik, a little joke of Kolya’s, or so he maintained, a mujik being in old Russia a peasant, regarded by the law as a minor.

  After an hour or so of this close briefing, Kolya handed out maps to both Tirpitz and Bond. They covered the entire area, were as near to Ordnance Survey standard of cartography as you could get, and had the routes over the frontier marked in thin pencil, together with the position of Blue Hare, and the same series of oblongs denoting the underground complex of what they had taken to calling the Ice Palace. Blue Hare and the Ice Palace, Kolya
maintained, were drawn in to exact scale.

  They synchronised their watches, and were to meet at midnight at the RV point – which meant leaving the hotel, individually, between eleven-thirty and eleven-forty.

  Bond re-entered his room silently, taking out the VL34 to check the entire suite again. Gone were the days, he thought in passing, when you could keep a watch on your room by leaving tiny slivers of matchstick in the door, or wedged into drawers. In the old days, a small piece of cotton would do wonders; but now, in the age of the micro-chip, life had become more sophisticated, and considerably more difficult.

  They had been at it again during the briefing. Not just the automatic ‘infinity’ in the telephone this time, but a whole screen of listening devices as back-ups: one behind the mirror in the bathroom; another in the curtains, neatly sewn in place; a third disguised as a button in the small ‘housewife’ pack of needles and thread tucked into its pocket inside the hotel stationery folder, and another bug ingeniously fitted within a new lamp bulb by the bed.

  Bond treble-swept the place. Whoever was doing the surveillance certainly knew the job. As he destroyed the various items, he even wondered if the new infinity bug in the telephone was merely a dummy, placed there in the hope he would not continue the search after finding it.

  Once he was assured that the room was clean, Bond spread out his map. From the briefcase he had already removed a military pocket compass which he intended to carry that night. Using a small pad of flimsies and a credit card as a ruler, Bond started to make calculations and trace the routes on to the map – noting the exact compass bearings they would have to follow to get across the border and locate Blue Hare, then the bearings out from Blue Hare, following both the route in and its alternative.

  He also took care to check angles and bearings that would lead them to the Ice Palace. All the time he worked, Bond felt uneasy – a sense he had experienced more than once since the Madeira meeting. He was aware of the basic cause: from time to time he had worked in conjunction with another member of either his own, or a sister, service. But Icebreaker was different. Now he had been forced to act with a team and Bond was not a team man – especially not a team that blatantly contained grave elements of mistrust.

  His eyes searched the map, as though looking for a clue and, quite suddenly, without his really trying to find it, an answer stared back at him.

  Ripping off one of the flimsies from his small pad, Bond carefully placed it over the Ice Palace markings and traced in the pencil lines showing the extent of the underground bunker. Then he added in the local topography. When this tracing was completed, Bond slid the flimsy in a northeasterly direction on the map, covering the equivalent of around fifteen kilometres.

  The diagonal move carried the Ice Palace across the frontier zone into Russia. What was more, the local topography fitted exactly, down to the surrounding ground levels, wooded areas, and summer river-lines. The topography in general was all very similar, but this was quite extraordinary. Either the maps had been specially printed, or there really were two locations – one on either side of the frontier – exact in every topographical detail.

  With the same concentration, Bond copied the possible secondary position of the Ice Palace on to his map. He then made one or two further compass bearings. It was possible that von Glöda’s headquarters, and the first stage of the arms convoy, lay not in Finland, but still on the Russian side of the frontier. Even bearing in mind the similarity of the landscape at any point along this part of the border, it was a strange coincidence to find two exactly identical locations within fifteen kilometres of one another.

  He now thought about the position of the main bunker entrances at the Ice Palace. Both faced towards the Russian side. If it was on the Russian side of the border, he had to remember that this section of the Soviet Union had once belonged to Finland – before the great clash of the Winter War of 1939–40. But either way, for the entrances of the original fortifications to face towards Russia was odd; particularly if the bunkers were built before the Russo-Finnish war of 1939; not so odd if they were erected after the peace, when large tracts of land, including much of this zone, were handed over to the Soviet Union, following the Finnish surrender of March 13th, 1940.

  To Bond, it was a definite possibility that the Ice Palace was of Russian origin. If it truly was the headquarters of the Fascist National Socialist Action Army, then it showed two things: the leader of the NSAA was even more cunning than Bond had thought, and the coercion, and betrayal, within the Red Army, GRU and KGB, might be more widespread than anyone had first imagined.

  Bond’s next job was to get some form of message out to M. Technically, he could simply dial London on his room telephone. Certainly it was now free of listening devices, but who knew if calls were also being monitored via the hotel exchange?

  Quickly, Bond committed the compass bearings, and co-ordinates, to memory, using his well-tried form of mnemonics. He then tore up the flimsies from his pad – removing several of the back sheets at the same time – and flushed them down the lavatory, waiting for a few moments to make certain they had all been carried away.

  Climbing into his outdoor gear, Bond left the room and went down to his car. Among the many pieces of secret equipment he now carried in the Saab, there was one only recently fitted by Q Branch. In front of the gear lever there nestled what seemed to be a perfectly normal radio telephone, an instrument which was useless unless it had a base unit somewhere within about twenty-five miles radius. But twenty-five miles was no good to Bond, any more than a normal telephone was any good to him, in the present circumstances. The Saab car phone had two great advantages. The first of these was a small black box, from which hung a pair of terminals. The box was not much larger than a pair of cassettes stacked one on top of the other, and Bond took it from its hiding place, in a panel behind the glove compartment.

  Reactivating the sensor alarms, he trudged through the hard, iced snow, back to the hotel and his room. Taking no chances, Bond did a quick sweep with the VL34, and was relieved to find the room still clean after his short absence. Quickly he unscrewed the underside plate on the telephone. He then connected the terminals of the small box and removed the receiver from its rests, placing it close at hand. The advanced electronics contained in that small box ensured that he now had an easily available base unit from which to operate the car telephone. Access to the outside world, illegally using the Finnish telephone service, was assured.

  There was, moreover, the car phone’s second advantage. On returning to the Saab, Bond pressed one of the unmarked square black buttons on the dashboard. A panel slid down behind the telephone housing, revealing a small computer keyboard and a minute screen – a telephone scrambler of infinite complexity, which could be used to shield the voice or send messages which would be printed out on a compatible screen in the building overlooking Regent’s Park.

  Bond pressed the requisite keys to link the car phone with his base unit. Tapping the get-out code from Finland and the dial-in code for London, he followed on with the London code and the number for the Headquarters of his Service. He then fed in the required cipher of the day and began to tap out his message in clear language. It came up on his screen, as it would at the Headquarters building, in a jumble of grouped letters. It wouldbe deciphered rapidly to read out on the HQ screen in clear language.

  The whole transmission took around fifteen minutes, with Bond bent inside the dark car lit only by the glow from the tiny screen, very conscious of the ice build-up on the windows. Outside there was a light wind and the temperature continued to drop. When the whole message had been sent, Bond closed up, reactivated the sensors and returned to the hotel. Once more, playing it safe, he quickly swept the room, then removed the base unit from the hotel telephone.

  He had only just packed away the base unit in his briefcase – intending to return it to the Saab before the real business of the night began – when there was a knock at the door. Now playing everything by the book
, Bond picked up the P7 and went to the door, slipping the chain on before asking who was there.

  ‘Brad,’ the answer came back. ‘Brad Tirpitz.’

  ‘Bad’ Brad Tirpitz looked a shade shaken as he came into the room. Bond noticed a distinct pallor, and a wariness around the big American’s eyes.

  ‘Bastard Kolya,’ Tirpitz spat.

  Bond gestured towards the armchair. ‘Sit down, get it off your chest. The room’s clean now. I had to delouse again after we had the meeting with Kolya.’

  ‘Me too.’ A slow smile spread over Tirpitz’s face, stopping short, as always, at the eyes. It was as though a sculptor had worked slowly at the rocky features and suddenly given up. ‘I caught Kolya in the act though. Did you figure out who’s working for whom yet?’

  ‘Not exactly. Why?’

  ‘I left a small memento in Kolya’s room after the briefing. Just stuffed it down behind the chair cushion. I’ve been listening inever since.’

  ‘And heard no good of yourself, I’ll warrant.’ Bond opened the fridge, asking if Tirpitz wanted a drink.

  ‘Whatever you’re having. Yeah, you’re right. It’s true what they say – you never hear good of yourself.’

  Bond quickly mixed a brace of martinis, handing one to Tirpitz.

  ‘Well.’ Tirpitz took a sip, raising his eyebrows in a complimentary movement. ‘Well, old buddy, Kolya made several telephone calls. Switched languages a lot and I couldn’t figure most of it – double-talk on the whole. The last one I did understand, though. He talked to someone without beating about the bush. Straight Russian. Tonight’s trip, friend, is taking us to the end of the line.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yep. Me they’re giving the Rivke treatment – right on the border, to make it look like a land mine. I even know the exact spot.’

  ‘The exact spot?’ Bond queried.