Young Bond

by Steve Cole

  ‘You could say so.’ James shuddered at the memory. He turned his mind back to the present. ‘Fifty pounds in each box. It said Hexogen on the side, I think.’

  ‘Hexogen, yes. Also known as cyclonite.’ Elmhirst lifted the kettle and joined in with its whistle. ‘It’s a new military explosive, more powerful and stable than TNT, and still on the secret list. A Blade-Rise lorry transporting the stuff to an ammo dump was hijacked last year . . . We found the driver’s corpse but not the explosives.’

  ‘Until today,’ James said with a frown; clearly Karachan’s group were as ruthless as they were well organized. He watched Elmhirst pour hot water over the grounds in the mugs, and breathed in the treacly coffee aroma. ‘What do you think they’re planning to do with it?’

  ‘And why do you suppose they’ve been waiting for so long?’ Elmhirst said. ‘This plot’s been years in the making. Until we found Karachan had smuggled himself into the country, everyone assumed that this big Soviet plot was hot air; ancient history – which you can bet is exactly what Karachan and his comrades wanted.’ A few grounds were floating in the coffee; Elmhirst carefully sank them with drops of tap water trickled over a teaspoon, and then pushed a mug across the counter to James. When he spoke again, he shuffled awkwardly. ‘I said I had intelligence that you didn’t . . . Look, I won’t coat it in chocolate, Bond. Back in ’32, when your parents died, the high-ups at SIS were asking: was Andrew Bond in Moscow trying to blow the whistle on a Red plot . . . or was he helping to get one started?’

  James felt a spike jam through his ribs. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Elmhirst’s face was heavy as he blew on his coffee. ‘After their deaths, evidence was collected from your parents’ chalet in Chamonix. Evidence that was . . . inconclusive.’

  ‘But you saw what my father wrote!’

  ‘All can be brought down with one blow,’ Elmhirst reminded him, ‘and: a great effect on London.’

  ‘He was trying to warn Uncle Max!’ James said hotly.

  ‘Max was under suspicion himself. There’s a theory that he got your father involved as a scapegoat.’ Elmhirst put down his coffee, looking grave. ‘Some thought that your mum and dad’s climbing accident was a suicide pact – Andrew Bond knew he was going to be found out, and he couldn’t bear the disgrace—’

  ‘Shut up!’ James stormed over to the door. ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

  Elmhirst tossed the key down on the counter. ‘I know you’re angry. But here’s Rule One, Bond – you don’t act without thinking. And you can’t think straight till you know all the facts.’ He gestured to the mug on the counter. ‘Or till you’ve had a slug of good coffee.’

  Shoulders slumped, James turned back to face Elmhirst. ‘My father and Uncle Max would never betray their country.’

  ‘I told you it was a theory – not that I believed it. Hear me out, all right?’ Elmhirst picked up his mug. ‘Max was kept under surveillance for a time, but there was no hard proof. Then he got sick, he died, and that was that. Or so we thought.’

  ‘Did anyone ever see the postcard Father sent him?’

  ‘Max showed me. Said it had him stumped.’ Elmhirst shrugged. ‘He insisted that he’d only used your father now and then to liaise with his informants abroad on routine matters. As a salesman for a well-known firm travelling around the world, he had a good cover. Apparently they’d agreed a simple substitution cipher for communications, and the fact that your dad didn’t use that code in his postcard suggests two possibilities – one, the information he had was highly sensitive, or two . . . he reckoned that someone was on to them.’

  James felt a dismal feeling building in his chest. ‘Perhaps that’s why he took Mother straight to Chamonix when he got back from Russia.’

  ‘Red agents were looking for him,’ Elmhirst agreed. ‘For him and perhaps for something important he’d left hidden in Moscow.’

  ‘What you’ll find in Moscow will have a great effect,’ James quoted slowly.

  ‘And when he wrote: All can be brought down with a single blow, perhaps he was talking about this Red plot – you know?’ Elmhirst pulled a folded manila envelope from inside his jacket and passed it to James. ‘Something that could bring the whole long-game crashing down, even after years of preparation, and clear the Bond family name into the bargain.’

  James stared down at the envelope. ‘And I can help find it?’

  ‘Which must be why Karachan wanted you out of the way. Bet he was spitting when old Madame Radek swanned along and called the coppers on you.’ Elmhirst smiled. ‘When I ran into you last year, and saw how well you could handle yourself, even in the big leagues – well, I telephoned a few of the SIS boys who worked on the case to see how they’d feel about bringing you out to Moscow for some answers.’

  ‘Truly?’ James felt his cheeks prickle with pride. ‘You didn’t say anything.’

  ‘They reckoned you were too young. I didn’t want to push it.’ He shrugged. ‘Now, a year later, and after all that’s happened today, I reckon pushing it’s the only option left.’

  ‘Pushing it all the way to Moscow,’ James breathed, his heart skittering in his chest. Trouble had a knack for finding him, but here it felt as if the invitation to danger was official: partnering one of His Majesty’s Secret Service officers to the austere capital of the Soviet Union! He looked over at Elmhirst. ‘Chasing the answers to dangerous questions has become a bit of a habit.’

  ‘I saw the way you were back in LA, Bond. Some habits aren’t meant to be broken.’ Elmhirst leaned forward, suddenly fervent. ‘When you find something that stirs your soul the way danger stirs yours . . . something out of the ordinary that gives you purpose . . . keep hold, ’cos life’s a long old stretch without it. Sure, you’ll chase after gold and you’ll chase after love – but when you get them, and keep them, the thrill goes, Bond. It rots into comfort. Danger, on the other hand . . . Danger won’t let you catch it. You can chase it your whole life, but it’ll never be done with you.’

  Lost for words, James nodded slowly. He felt overwhelmed, like he was standing on a precipice. ‘This is all so sudden.’

  ‘You’re damned right it is. There’s a flight at nine thirty tomorrow morning from Croydon Airport – provided I get the travel documents we’ll need.’

  ‘But Aunt Charmian’s bound to hit the roof if I tell her I’m going to Moscow.’

  ‘Without even a change of underwear!’ Elmhirst chuckled. ‘I’ll square things with her tonight from Broadway if you like.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘I reckon she’ll be all right. I’ll be giving you my personal protection. I’ve been assigned to protect the King of England himself at the Opera House next week; if that doesn’t impress her, what will? If it’s good enough for His Majesty . . . And you can telephone her yourself from the airport tomorrow.’ Elmhirst grabbed the keys from the counter and unlocked the door. ‘I’d best be off. Stay here, nice and quiet, and see if you can make sense of any of those documents I gave you, eh? Be sure to lock the door behind me.’

  James heard the click of the door and stood in the anonymous room, lost in thought. His father had told so many tales of his travels around the world, but it was the murky intrigues of Russia that had most fired James’s imagination: a land where free enterprise was frowned upon, a socialist state where the government decided what you earned, controlled what you watched and read and heard, and decreed what was good for you. Where the rich were detested and the secret police could take a man away simply on the spiteful say-so of a neighbour, never to be seen again . . . Now it seemed that James was to be thrown into the frightening wellspring of these stories, and the thought of it left him thrilled – as if fate was pulling him forward, while his father’s ghost, and Max’s too, pushed at his back.

  ‘I’ll clear your names,’ James whispered, ‘for good.’

  He locked the door as Elmhirst had instructed, then sat down at the counter and swigged from the mug of coffee. He slid hi
s finger under the manila flap of the envelope and got to work.

  8

  Code Above the Clouds

  THE FLIGHT TO Moscow from Croydon Airport would take two days and cost almost fifty pounds for them both – a small fortune. James sat in a comfortable leather seat aboard the sleek, gleaming all-metal Douglas DC-2. Her two 875-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines enabled her to fly at speeds of 200 miles per hour. James loved the sensation of speed and the way the DC-2 roared through the sky at 10,000 feet, riding the frequent turbulence like a wayward bronco, did not disappoint.

  He hadn’t slept well in the safe-house bed, replaying events in his mind, and he was doing it still. Last night Elmhirst had telephoned Charmian and reassured her that the trip was a necessary one and that James would be well looked after. He’d also advised her to stay out of town for a few days, in case anyone came seeking her nephew. James had called her from the airport on the number she’d given Elmhirst – that of an archaeologist friend in Maidstone.

  Charmian sounded stoic and a little husky. ‘Running headlong into danger again, then, James?’

  ‘This time, I hope I’m running from it.’

  ‘Well, this is one mystery the family needs to have solved,’ she said. ‘I wish you luck.’

  ‘Is . . . that it?’ James was glad in a way but also surprised. ‘I was afraid you’d be cross.’

  ‘Just come back safe. Goodbye, James.’

  James had put down the receiver. ‘I think she’s more upset than she’s letting on.’

  ‘Course she is.’ As he’d led the way over to passport control, Elmhirst had clicked his fingers. ‘I forgot to say – Charmian told me she’d worked out who Henson is – you know, the fella your dad mentions. Apparently he and Max, they both had the same Latin master, Nathaniel Henson. The scourge of Eton, they used to call him . . .’

  The plane jumped suddenly with fresh turbulence, and James was jogged back to the moment. Why would Father throw in his old Latin tutor’s name? he wondered. To draw attention to ‘talpid’ being Latin for mole, I suppose . . .

  He stared down at his father’s old backpack, which he’d taken into the cabin as carry-on luggage. All last night he’d puzzled over the subtle paradoxes of the words and phrasing of both the letter and the postcard – and the extra materials Elmhirst had secured.

  One was a typewritten sheet of paper, headed:

  Left for collection. Nash marsh!

  James and Cardinal Henson

  Beneath the title were scattered gibberish groups of letters and numbers:

  Sep 42 Ori 33 Sep 31 Occ 57 Mer 21

  Ori 18 PLAMIA 47 Occ 62

  Sep 59 IUNOSHEI 45 . . .

  On the list went, its entries baffling and impenetrable.

  What to make of it? Nash marsh meant ‘our march’ in Russian, so Elmhirst said, while plamia meant ‘flame’ and iunoshei meant ‘youths’. There was the mysterious Henson again, apparently a cardinal this time; a cardinal was someone high up in the Roman Catholic Church . . . As for what the rest of the words and numbers meant, James had no idea. But he figured that what had been left ‘for collection’ could mean only one thing: the evidence that could supposedly bring down the plot with one blow . . .

  Or bring down London.

  Last night, in the quiet of the safe house, James had stared at his father’s documents until Elmhirst came back, four hours later, under cover of the dark, with a small trunk full of fresh clothes for James (‘If they don’t fit, how quickly can you lose some weight?’), and entry visas and documents to give them diplomatic immunity. James could tell the agent was disappointed that Andrew Bond’s papers hadn’t made perfect sense at a glance, but he reassured James that the answers would surely come in the end if he could only think . . . think . . .

  Jolted by fresh turbulence, James realized he’d been starting to drift off to sleep, and shook his head crossly. This experience was too exciting to doze through! He loved the engine’s hard-pounding buzz through his bones, the sensation of being tossed in the air. Cheerful blue curtains framed the incredible vista through the windows: endless sea below, and a sky that could outstretch heaven. Last October KLM had entered a DC-2 just like this one in the London-to-Melbourne air race, and it had nearly won. James imagined himself a pilot, making some record-breaking flight from one glamorous, far-flung location to another, racing all comers, forcing himself and his machine to the limit as they blurred as one through the sky.

  Blurred is right, James thought dourly. His eyes were still sore and stinging, and he looked around for the flight attendant. The DC-2’s cabin was built to house fourteen passengers, seated in single rows of seven on either side of the wide black stripe of the aisle, but only eleven were flying today. James had no one sitting behind him while Elmhirst was seated to his left, smoking a cigarette. The stewardess, a tanned platinum blonde with eyes wider than her bee-stung mouth, walked past and he asked her to fetch him a wet flannel.

  Elmhirst stubbed out his cigarette and smiled at James, but James sensed a tension behind the look. He pulled out the other two pieces of paper and placed them on his lap. The first seemed total gibberish:

  READ T O K Amat victoria curam

  14 – 4/376 – 11/5232 – 7/353 – 21/1 . . .

  The combinations of numbers scurried over the paper on legs of black, handwritten ink; to James they meant precisely nothing. Read to K, play with James – the long-lost letter had instructed Max to do as much. Polish instrument in James’s case to bring it all down.

  ‘Your uncle never asked about this instrument case of yours?’ Elmhirst enquired. James shook his head. ‘Suppose he felt you’d suffered enough after . . . what happened.’

  ‘Suppose,’ James agreed. But the suffering went on. Think! he told himself.

  You’ve got to find whatever Father hid so you can clear his name – and learn what Karachan and his friends are really up to . . .

  The Latin James recognized, at least, even without a Henson to drum it in: it meant, Victory favours those who take pains.

  In the early hours of the morning, over bread, cheese and beer, Elmhirst had explained that the message bearing that expression used an old intelligence trick called a book cipher. The words in the message to be sent were substituted with the location of those same words in a particular book: so ‘14 – 4/3’ should refer to the third word of the fourth line on page 14. If a particular word could not be found in the book, then the first letters of different words could be used to spell it out. The important thing was that both the sender and the receiver of the code needed not only the same book, but the same edition, to be sure that the precise position of the words tallied.

  ‘At SIS we spent an age trying to work out which book your old man was using,’ Elmhirst went on. ‘When Max was in the field, he always used the King James Bible: widely available, with chapters and verses clearly marked. But the Bible doesn’t work as the key here. That’s obviously not what James’s case refers to. Whatever that message is, he must’ve thought it too important to trust to a regular cipher.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘It’s a shame I’ve never read the Bible properly in my life. I could try praying.’

  James sighed. ‘Polish instrument in James’s case . . . That seems to tie in with the instruction to play with James in the postcard.’

  ‘Play an instrument,’ Elmhirst agreed. ‘Or polish it, like the old genie lamp in the stories . . .’

  ‘Perhaps the French memory is a song?’ James said with sudden inspiration. ‘A song I loved when I was little?’

  Elmhirst stared at him. ‘Where did you keep your gramophone records?’

  ‘With my books, on a—’ He stopped dead. ‘James’s case. What if it’s a bookcase!’

  ‘And the key is something you kept there – the liner notes on a record sleeve maybe? Or a book about music?’ Elmhirst shifted forward in his seat. ‘It would have to be something he could get hold of easily, either in Moscow or Chamonix – if it was a different copy, the position of the
words wouldn’t match and the code couldn’t be cracked.’

  ‘My old bookcase was crammed with books and 78s. But they sold our flat back in 1932, and Aunt Charmian got me different furniture.’

  ‘Think, James.’ Elmhirst leaned closer. ‘Try to list the ones you remember. The ones your dad would remember. One your uncle Max could’ve read to someone called K, or Kay, or whose name started with K . . .’

  ‘Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson?’ James suggested. ‘That starts with a K. I had a record of someone reading bits from The Water Babies . . . there was an adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde that was much more exciting than the original . . .’ Then inspiration sparked and James sat up straight. ‘Hold on. What if it’s not Read to K? What if . . . what if it’s, Read T.O.K.!’

  ‘I’ll bite. T.O.K.?’

  ‘The Trumpeter of Krakow! It’s an American novel set in Poland. Father brought it back from New York in 1930; it had won some big book prize, the Newbery Medal, so he thought I’d like it.’

  ‘T.O.K. – Trumpeter. Of. Krakow.’ Elmhirst nodded slowly. ‘That’s your musical instrument, James. A Polish one!’

  ‘And that line in the postcard about the broken note!’ James felt gooseflesh prickle his arms. ‘The trumpeter never finishes his warning fanfare; he’s killed suddenly in the middle of playing the note.’

  ‘It fits.’ Elmhirst’s smile spread slowly. ‘A big prize-winning book would have a good shelf life – and a good chance of getting into travel bookshops.’ He took a deep puff on his cigarette and stubbed it out, as the stewardess returned with the wet towel for James. ‘Good work, Bond. When we stop in Sweden, I’ll speak to SIS and see if we can track down a copy.’

  The aeroplane stopped at Amsterdam and Copenhagen before landing at Stockholm at three fifty p.m. The journey would not resume until nine a.m. the next morning, when they’d catch a flight with Aeroflot, the Russian state airline.

  Elmhirst had booked them rooms at the Hotel Hellstens Malmgard at Södermalm, in the heart of the Swedish capital. It was a converted eighteenth-century mansion, with sash windows bright white against walls of olive and ochre. It had been built around a quiet cobbled courtyard with an old, gnarled chestnut tree that sent branches looming over the windows of James’s small but comfortable room.