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Title: From Russia with Love
Author: Fleming, Ian [Ian Lancaster] (1908-1964)
Date of first publication: 1957
Date first posted: 17 January 2016
Date last updated: 17 January 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1296

This ebook was produced by Alex White, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

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                         FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

                              Ian Fleming





                                Contents


                                PART ONE
                                The Plan

                Author's Note
              1 Roseland
              2 The Slaughterer
              3 Post-graduate Studies
              4 The Moguls of Death
              5 Konspiratsia
              6 Death Warrant
              7 The Wizard of Ice
              8 The Beautiful Lure
              9 A Labour of Love
             10 The Fuse Burns

                                PART TWO
                             The Execution

             11 The Soft Life
             12 A Piece of Cake
             13 'BEA Takes You There...'
             14 Darko Kerim
             15 Background to a Spy
             16 The Tunnel of Rats
             17 Killing Time
             18 Strong Sensations
             19 The Mouth of Marilyn Monroe
             20 Black on Pink
             21 Orient Express
             22 Out of Turkey
             23 Out of Greece
             24 Out of Danger
             25 A Tie with a Windsor Knot
             26 The Killing Bottle
             27 Ten Pints of Blood
             28 La Tricoteuse




                             Author's Note


Not that it matters, but a great deal of the background to this story is
accurate.

SMERSH, a contraction of Smiert Spionam--Death to Spies--exists and
remains today the most secret department of the Soviet government.

At the beginning of 1956, when this book was written, the strength of
SMERSH at home and abroad was about 40,000 and General Grubozaboyschikov
was its chief. My description of his appearance is correct.

Today the headquarters of SMERSH are where, in Chapter 4, I have placed
them--at No 13 Sretenka Ulitsa, Moscow. The Conference Room is
faithfully described and the Intelligence chiefs who meet round the
table are real officials who are frequently summoned to that room for
purposes similar to those I have recounted.

                                                                  I. F.





                                PART ONE
                                The Plan


                              1. Roseland

The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool
might have been dead.

He might have been drowned and fished out of the pool and laid out on
the grass to dry while the police or the next-of-kin were summoned. Even
the little pile of objects in the grass beside his head might have been
his personal effects, meticulously assembled in full view so that no one
should think that something had been stolen by his rescuers.

To judge by the glittering pile, this had been, or was, a rich man. It
contained the typical membership badges of the rich man's club--a money
clip, made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece and holding a substantial wad
of banknotes, a well-used gold Dunhill lighter, an oval gold cigarette
case with the wavy ridges and discreet turquoise button that means
Faberg, and the sort of novel a rich man pulls out of the bookcase to
take into the garden--_The Little Nugget_--an old P. G. Wodehouse. There
was also a bulky gold wristwatch on a well-used brown crocodile strap.
It was a Girard-Perregaux model designed for people who like gadgets,
and it had a sweep second-hand and two little windows in the face to
tell the day of the month, and the month, and the phase of the moon. The
story it now told was 2.30 on June 10th with the moon three-quarters
full.

A blue and green dragon-fly flashed out from among the rose bushes at
the end of the garden and hovered in mid-air a few inches above the base
of the man's spine. It had been attracted by the golden shimmer of the
June sunshine on the ridge of fine blond hairs above the coccyx. A puff
of breeze came off the sea. The tiny field of hairs bent gently. The
dragon-fly darted nervously sideways and hung above the man's left
shoulder, looking down. The young grass below the man's open mouth
stirred. A large drop of sweat rolled down the side of the fleshy nose
and dropped glittering into the grass. That was enough. The dragon-fly
flashed away through the roses and over the jagged glass on top of the
high garden wall. It might be good food, but it moved.

The garden in which the man lay was about an acre of well-kept lawn
surrounded on three sides by thickly banked rose bushes from which came
the steady murmur of bees. Behind the drowsy noise of the bees the sea
boomed softly at the bottom of the cliff at the end of the garden.

There was no view of the sea from the garden--no view of anything except
of the sky and the clouds above the twelve-foot wall. In fact you could
only see out of the property from the two upstairs bedrooms of the villa
that formed the fourth side of this very private enclosure. From them
you could see a great expanse of blue water in front of you and, on
either side, the upper windows of neighbouring villas and the tops of
the trees in their gardens--Mediterranean-type evergreen oaks, stone
pines, casuarinas and an occasional palm tree.

The villa was modern--a squat elongated box without ornament. On the
garden side the flat pink-washed faade was pierced by four iron-framed
windows and by a central glass door leading on to a small square of pale
green glazed tiles. The tiles merged into the lawn. The other side of
the villa, standing back a few yards from a dusty road, was almost
identical. But on this side the four windows were barred, and the
central door was of oak.

The villa had two medium-sized bedrooms on the upper floor and on the
ground floor a sitting-room and a kitchen, part of which was walled off
into a lavatory. There was no bathroom.

The drowsy luxurious silence of early afternoon was broken by the sound
of a car coming down the road. It stopped in front of the villa. There
was the tinny clang of a car door being slammed and the car drove on.
The doorbell rang twice. The naked man beside the swimming pool did not
move, but, at the noise of the bell and of the departing car, his eyes
had for an instant opened very wide. It was as if the eyelids had
pricked up like an animal's ears. The man immediately remembered where
he was and the day of the week and the time of the day. The noises were
identified. The eyelids with their fringe of short sandy eyelashes
drooped drowsily back over the very pale blue, opaque, inward-looking
eyes. The small cruel lips opened in a wide jaw-breaking yawn which
brought saliva into the mouth. The man spat the saliva into the grass
and waited.

A young woman carrying a small string bag and dressed in a white cotton
shirt and a short, unalluring blue skirt came through the glass door and
strode mannishly across the glazed tiles and the stretch of lawn towards
the naked man. A few yards away from him, she dropped her string bag on
the grass and sat down and took off her cheap and rather dusty shoes.
Then she stood up and unbuttoned her shirt and took it off and put it,
neatly folded, beside the string bag.

The girl had nothing on under the shirt. Her skin was pleasantly
sun-burned and her shoulders and fine breasts shone with health. When
she bent her arms to undo the side-buttons of her skirt, small tufts of
fair hair showed in her armpits. The impression of a healthy animal
peasant girl was heightened by the chunky hips in faded blue stockinet
bathing trunks and the thick short thighs and legs that were revealed
when she had stripped.

The girl put the skirt neatly beside her shirt, opened the string bag,
took out an old soda-water bottle containing some heavy colourless
liquid and went over to the man and knelt on the grass beside him. She
poured some of the liquid, a light olive oil, scented, as was everything
in that part of the world, with roses, between his shoulder blades and,
after flexing her fingers like a pianist, began massaging the
sternomastoid and the trapezius muscles at the back of the man's neck.

It was hard work. The man was immensely strong and the bulging muscles
at the base of the neck hardly yielded to the girl's thumbs even when
the downward weight of her shoulders was behind them. By the time she
was finished with the man she would be soaked in perspiration and so
utterly exhausted that she would fall into the swimming pool and then
lie down in the shade and sleep until the car came for her. But that
wasn't what she minded as her hands worked automatically on across the
man's back. It was her instinctive horror for the finest body she had
ever seen.

None of this horror showed in the flat, impassive face of the masseuse,
and the upward-slanting black eyes under the fringe of short coarse
black hair were as empty as oil slicks, but inside her the animal
whimpered and cringed and her pulse-rate, if it had occurred to her to
take it, would have been high.

Once again, as so often over the past two years, she wondered why she
loathed this splendid body, and once again she vaguely tried to analyse
her revulsion. Perhaps this time she would get rid of feelings which she
felt guiltily certain were much more unprofessional than the sexual
desire some of her patients awoke in her.

To take the small things first: his hair. She looked down at the round,
smallish head on the sinewy neck. It was covered with tight red-gold
curls that should have reminded her pleasantly of the formalized hair in
the pictures she had seen of classical statues. But the curls were
somehow too tight, too thickly pressed against each other and against
the skull. They set her teeth on edge like fingernails against pile
carpet. And the golden curls came down so low into the back of the
neck--almost (she thought in professional terms) to the fifth cervical
vertebra. And there they stopped abruptly in a straight line of small
stiff golden hairs.

The girl paused to give her hands a rest and sat back on her haunches.
The beautiful upper half of her body was already shining with sweat. She
wiped the back of her forearm across her forehead and reached for the
bottle of oil. She poured about a tablespoonful on to the small furry
plateau at the base of the man's spine, flexed her fingers and bent
forward again.

This embryo tail of golden down above the cleft of the buttocks--in a
lover it would have been gay, exciting, but on this man it was somehow
bestial. No, reptilian. But snakes had no hair. Well, she couldn't help
that. It seemed reptilian to her. She shifted her hands on down to the
two mounds of the gluteal muscles. Now was the time when many of her
patients, particularly the young ones on the football team, would start
joking with her. Then, if she was not very careful, the suggestions
would come. Sometimes she could silence these by digging sharply down
towards the sciatic nerve. At other times, and particularly if she found
the man attractive, there would be giggling arguments, a brief
wrestling-match and a quick, delicious surrender.

With this man it was different, almost uncannily different. From the
very first he had been like a lump of inanimate meat. In two years he
had never said a word to her. When she had done his back and it was time
for him to turn over, neither his eyes nor his body had once shown the
smallest interest in her. When she tapped his shoulder, he would just
roll over and gaze at the sky through half-closed lids and occasionally
let out one of the long shuddering yawns that were the only sign that he
had human reactions at all.

The girl shifted her position and slowly worked down the right leg
towards the Achilles tendon. When she came to it she looked back up the
fine body. Was her revulsion _only_ physical? Was it the reddish colour
of the sunburn on the naturally milk-white skin, the sort of roast meat
look? Was it the texture of the skin itself, the deep, widely spaced
pores in the satiny surface? The thickly scattered orange freckles on
the shoulders? Or was it the sexuality of the man? The indifference of
these splendid, insolently bulging muscles? Or was it spiritual--an
animal instinct telling her that inside this wonderful body there was an
evil person?

The masseuse got to her feet and stood, twisting her head slowly from
side to side and flexing her shoulders. She stretched her arms out
sideways and then upwards and held them for a moment to get the blood
down out of them. She went to her string bag and took out a hand towel
and wiped the perspiration off her face and body.

When she turned back to the man, he had already rolled over and now lay,
his head resting on one open hand, gazing blankly at the sky. The
disengaged arm was flung out on the grass, waiting for her. She walked
over and knelt on the grass behind his head. She rubbed some oil into
her palms, picked up the limp half-open hand and started kneading the
short thick fingers.

The girl glanced nervously sideways at the red-brown face below the
crown of tight golden curls. Superficially it was all right--handsome in
a butcher's-boyish way, with its full pink cheeks, upturned nose and
rounded chin. But, looked at closer, there was something cruel about the
thin-lipped rather pursed mouth, a pigginess about the wide nostrils in
the upturned nose, and the blankness that veiled the very pale blue eyes
communicated itself over the whole face and made it look drowned and
morgue-like. It was, she reflected, as if someone had taken a china doll
and painted its face to frighten.

The masseuse worked up the arm to the huge biceps. Where had the man got
these fantastic muscles from? Was he a boxer? What did he do with his
formidable body? Rumour said this was a police villa. The two
menservants were obviously guards of some sort, although they did the
cooking and the housework. Regularly every month the man went away for a
few days and she would be told not to come. And from time to time she
would be told to stay away for a week, or two weeks, or a month. Once,
after one of these absences, the man's neck and the upper part of his
body had been a mass of bruises. On another occasion the red corner of a
half healed wound had shown under a foot of surgical plaster down the
ribs over his heart. She had never dared to ask about him at the
hospital or in the town. When she had first been sent to the house, one
of the menservants had told her that if she spoke about what she saw she
would go to prison. Back at the hospital, the Chief Superintendent, who
had never recognized her existence before, had sent for her and had said
the same thing. She would go to prison. The girl's strong fingers gouged
nervously into the big deltoid muscle on the point of the shoulder. She
had always known it was a matter of State Security. Perhaps that was
what revolted her about this splendid body. Perhaps it was just fear of
the organization that had the body in custody. She squeezed her eyes
shut at the thought of who he might be, of what he could order to be
done to her. Quickly she opened them again. He might have noticed. But
the eyes gazed blankly up at the sky.

Now--she reached for the oil--to do the face.

The girl's thumbs had scarcely pressed into the sockets of the man's
closed eyes when the telephone in the house started ringing. The sound
reached impatiently out into the quiet garden. At once the man was up on
one knee like a runner waiting for the gun. But he didn't move forward.
The ringing stopped. There was the mutter of a voice. The girl could not
hear what it was saying, but it sounded humble, noting instructions. The
voice stopped and one of the menservants showed briefly at the door,
made a gesture of summons and went back into the house. Half way through
the gesture, the naked man was already running. She watched the brown
back flash through the open glass door. Better not let him find her
there when he came out again--doing nothing, perhaps listening. She got
to her feet, took two steps to the concrete edge of the pool and dived
gracefully in.

Although it would have explained her instincts about the man whose body
she massaged, it was as well for the girl's peace of mind that she did
not know who he was.

His real name was Donovan Grant, or 'Red' Grant. But, for the past ten
years, it had been Krassno Granitski, with the code name of 'Granit'.

He was the Chief Executioner of SMERSH, the murder _apparat_ of the MGB,
and at this moment he was receiving his instructions on the MGB direct
line with Moscow.


                           2. The Slaughterer

Grant put the telephone softly back on its cradle and sat looking at it.

The bullet-headed guard standing over him said, 'You had better start
moving.'

'Did they give you any idea of the task?' Grant spoke Russian
excellently but with a thick accent. He could have passed for a national
of any of the Soviet Baltic provinces. The voice was high and flat as if
it was reciting something dull from a book.

'No. Only that you are wanted in Moscow. The plane is on its way. It
will be here in about an hour. Half an hour for refuelling and then
three or four hours, depending on whether you come down at Kharkov. You
will be in Moscow by midnight. You had better pack. I will order the
car.'

Grant got nervously to his feet. 'Yes. You are right. But they didn't
even say if it was an operation? One likes to know. It was a secure
line. They could have given a hint. They generally do.'

'This time they didn't.'

Grant walked slowly out through the glass door on to the lawn. If he
noticed the girl sitting on the far edge of the pool he made no sign. He
bent and picked up his book, and the golden trophies of his profession,
and walked back into the house and up the few stairs to his bedroom.

The room was bleak and furnished only with an iron bedstead, from which
the rumpled sheets hung down on one side to the floor, a cane chair, an
unpainted clothes cupboard and a cheap washstand with a tin basin. The
floor was strewn with English and American magazines. Garish paperbacks
and hardcover thrillers were stacked against the wall below the window.

Grant bent down and pulled a battered Italian fibre suitcase from under
the bed. He packed into it a selection of well-laundered cheap
respectable clothes from the cupboard. Then he washed his body hurriedly
with cold water, and the inevitably rose-scented soap, and dried himself
on one of the sheets from the bed.

There was the noise of a car outside. Grant hastily dressed in clothes
as drab and nondescript as those he had packed, put on his wristwatch,
pocketed his other belongings and picked up his suitcase and went down
the stairs.

The front door was open. He could see his two guards talking to the
driver of a battered ZIS saloon. 'Bloody fools,' he thought. (He still
did most of his thinking in English.) 'Probably telling him to see I get
on the plane all right. Probably can't imagine that a foreigner would
want to live in their blasted country.' The cold eyes sneered as Grant
put down his suitcase on the doorstep and hunted among the bunch of
coats that hung from pegs on the kitchen door. He found his 'uniform',
the drab raincoat and black cloth cap of Soviet officialdom, put them
on, picked up his suitcase and went out and climbed in beside the
plain-clothes driver, roughly shouldering aside one of the guards as he
did so.

The two men stood back, saying nothing, but looking at him with hard
eyes. The driver took his foot off the clutch, and the car, already in
gear, accelerated fast away down the dusty road.

The villa was on the south-eastern coast of the Crimea, about half way
between Feodosiya and Yalta. It was one of many official holiday
_datchas_ along the favourite stretch of mountainous coastline that is
part of the Russian Riviera. Red Grant knew that he was immensely
privileged to be housed there instead of in some dreary villa on the
outskirts of Moscow. As the car climbed up into the mountains, he
thought that they certainly treated him as well as they knew how, even
if their concern for his welfare had two faces.

The forty-mile drive to the airport at Simferopol took an hour. There
were no other cars on the road and the occasional cart from the
vineyards quickly pulled into the ditch at the sound of their horn. As
everywhere in Russia, a car meant an official, and an official could
only mean danger.

There were roses all the way, fields of them alternating with the
vineyards, hedges of them along the road and, at the approach to the
airport, a vast circular bed planted with red and white varieties to
make a red star against a white background. Grant was sick of them and
he longed to get to Moscow and away from their sweet stench.

They drove past the entrance to the Civil Airport and followed a high
wall for about a mile to the military side of the aerodrome. At a tall
wire gate the driver showed his pass to two tommy-gunned sentries and
drove through on to the tarmac. Several planes stood about, big
camouflaged military transports, small twin-engined trainers and two
Navy helicopters. The driver stopped to ask a man in overalls where to
find Grant's plane. At once a metallic twanging came from the observant
control tower and a loudspeaker barked at them: 'To the left. Far down
to the left. Number V-BO.'

The driver was obediently motoring on across the tarmac when the iron
voice barked again. 'Stop!'

As the driver jammed on his brakes, there sounded a deafening scream
above their heads. Both men instinctively ducked as a flight of four MIG
17s came out of the setting sun and skimmed over them, their squat
wind-brakes right down for the landing. The planes hit the huge runway
one after the other, puffs of blue smoke spurting from their nose-tyres,
and, with jets howling, taxied to the distant boundary line and turned
to come back to the control tower and the hangars.

'Proceed!'

A hundred yards farther on they came to a plane with the recognition
letters V-BO. It was a two-engined Ilyushin 12. A small aluminium ladder
hung down from the cabin door and the car stopped beside it. One of the
crew appeared at the door. He came down the ladder and carefully
examined the driver's pass and Grant's identity papers and then waved
the driver away and gestured Grant to follow him up the ladder. He
didn't offer to help with the suitcase, but Grant carried it up the
ladder as if it had been no heavier than a book. The crewman pulled the
ladder up after him, banged the wide hatch shut and went forward to the
cockpit.

There were twenty empty seats to choose from. Grant settled into the one
nearest the hatch and fastened his seat-belt. A short crackle of talk
with the control tower came through the open door to the cockpit, the
two engines whined and coughed and fired and the plane turned quickly as
if it had been a motor car, rolled out to the start of the north-south
runway, and, without any further preliminaries, hurtled down it and up
into the air.

Grant unbuckled his seat-belt, lit a gold-tipped Troika cigarette and
settled back to reflect comfortably on his past career and to consider
the immediate future.

Donovan Grant was the result of a midnight union between a German
professional weight-lifter and a Southern Irish waitress. The union
lasted for a quarter of an hour on the damp grass behind a circus tent
outside Belfast. Afterwards the father gave the mother half a crown and
the mother walked happily home to her bed in the kitchen of a caf near
the railway station. When the baby was expected she went to live with an
aunt in the small village of Aughmacloy that straddles the border, and
there, six months later, she died of puerperal fever shortly after
giving birth to a twelve-pound boy. Before she died, she said that the
boy was to be called Donovan (the weight-lifter had styled himself 'The
Mighty O'Donovan') and Grant, which was her own name.

The boy was reluctantly cared for by the aunt and grew up healthy and
extremely strong, but very quiet. He had no friends. He refused to
communicate with other children and when he wanted anything from them he
took it with his fists. In the local school he continued to be feared
and disliked, but he made a name for himself boxing and wrestling at
local fairs where the bloodthirsty fury of his attack, combined with
guile, gave him the victory over much older and bigger boys.

It was through his fighting that he came to the notice of the
Sinn-Feiners who used Aughmacloy as a principal pipeline for their
comings and goings with the north, and also of the local smugglers who
used the village for the same purpose. When he left school he became a
strongarm man for both these groups. They paid him well for his work but
saw as little of him as they could.

It was about this time that his body began to feel strange and violent
compulsions around the time of the full moon. When, in October of his
sixteenth year, he first got 'The Feelings' as he called them to
himself, he went out and strangled a cat. This made him 'feel better'
for a whole month. In November, it was a big sheepdog, and, for
Christmas, he slit the throat of a cow, at midnight in a neighbour's
shed. These actions made him 'feel good'. He had enough sense to see
that the village would soon start wondering about the mysterious deaths,
so he bought a bicycle and on one night every month he rode off into the
countryside. Often he had to go very far to find what he wanted and,
after two months of having to satisfy himself with geese and chickens,
he took a chance and cut the throat of a sleeping tramp.

There were so few people abroad at night that soon he took to the roads
earlier, bicycling far and wide so that he came to distant villages in
the dusk when solitary people were coming home from the fields and girls
were going out to their trysts.

When he killed the occasional girl he did not 'interfere' with her in
any way. That side of things, which he had heard talked about, was quite
incomprehensible to him. It was only the wonderful act of killing that
made him 'feel better'. Nothing else.

By the end of his seventeenth year, ghastly rumours were spreading round
the whole of Fermanagh, Tyrone and Armagh. When a woman was killed in
broad daylight, strangled and thrust carelessly into a haystack, the
rumours flared into panic. Groups of vigilantes were formed in the
villages, police reinforcements were brought in with police dogs, and
stories about the 'Moon Killer' brought journalists to the area. Several
times Grant on his bicycle was stopped and questioned, but he had
powerful protection in Aughmacloy and his story of training-spins to
keep him fit for his boxing were always backed up, for he was now the
pride of the village and contender for the North of Ireland
light-heavyweight championship.

Again, before it was too late, instinct saved him from discovery and he
left Aughmacloy and went to Belfast and put himself in the hands of a
broken-down boxing promoter who wanted him to turn professional.
Discipline in the sleazy gymnasium was strict. It was almost a prison
and, when the blood first boiled again in Grant's veins, there was
nothing for it but to half kill one of his sparring partners. After
twice having to be pulled off a man in the ring, it was only by winning
the championship that he was saved from being thrown out by the
promoter.

Grant won the championship in 1945, on his eighteenth birthday, then
they took him for National Service and he became a driver in the Royal
Corps of Signals. The training period in England sobered him, or at
least made him more careful when he had 'The Feelings'. Now, at the full
moon, he took to drink instead. He would take a bottle of whisky into
the woods round Aldershot and drink it all down as he watched his
sensations, coldly, until unconsciousness came. Then, in the early hours
of the morning, he would stagger back to camp, only half satisfied, but
not dangerous any more. If a sentry caught him, it was only a day's CB,
because his commanding officer wanted to keep him happy for the Army
championships.

But Grant's transport section was rushed to Berlin about the time of the
Corridor trouble with the Russians and he missed the championships. In
Berlin, the constant smell of danger intrigued him and made him even
more careful and cunning. He still got dead drunk at the full moon, but
all the rest of the time he was watching and plotting. He liked all he
heard about the Russians, their brutality, their carelessness of human
life, and their guile, and he decided to go over to them. But how? What
could he bring them as a gift? What did they want?

It was the BAOR championships that finally told him to go over. By
chance they took place on a night of the full moon. Grant, fighting for
the Royal Corps, was warned for holding and hitting low and was
disqualified in the third round for persistent foul fighting. The whole
stadium hissed him as he left the ring--the loudest demonstration came
from his own regiment--and the next morning the commanding officer sent
for him and coldly said he was a disgrace to the Royal Corps and would
be sent home with the next draft. His fellow drivers sent him to
Coventry and, since no one would drive transport with him, he had to be
transferred to the coveted motor cycle dispatch service.

The transfer could not have suited Grant better. He waited a few days
and then, one evening when he had collected the day's outgoing mail from
the Military Intelligence Headquarters on the Reichskanzlerplatz, he
made straight for the Russian Sector, waited with his engine running
until the British control gate was opened to allow a taxi through, and
then tore through the closing gate at forty and skidded to a stop beside
the concrete pillbox of the Russian Frontier post.

They hauled him roughly into the guardroom. A wooden-faced officer
behind a desk asked him what he wanted.

'I want the Soviet Secret Service,' said Grant flatly. 'The Head of it.'

The officer stared coldly at him. He said something in Russian. The
soldiers who had brought Grant in started to drag him out again. Grant
easily shook them off. One of them lifted his tommy-gun.

Grant said, speaking patiently and distinctly, 'I have a lot of secret
papers. Outside. In the leather bags on the motor cycle.' He had a
brainwave. 'You will get into bad trouble if they don't get to your
Secret Service.'

The officer said something to the soldiers and they stood back. 'We have
no Secret Service,' he said in stilted English. 'Sit down and complete
this form.'

Grant sat down at the desk and filled in a long form which asked
questions about anyone who wanted to visit the Eastern zone--name,
address, nature of business and so forth. Meanwhile the officer spoke
softly and briefly into a telephone.

By the time Grant had finished, two more soldiers, non-commissioned
officers wearing drab green forage caps and with green badges of rank on
their khaki uniforms, had come into the room. The frontier officer
handed the form, without looking at it, to one of them and they took
Grant out and put him and his motor cycle into the back of a closed van
and locked the door on him. After a fast drive lasting a quarter of an
hour the van stopped, and when Grant got out he found himself in the
courtyard behind a large new building. He was taken into the building
and up in a lift and left alone in a cell without windows. It contained
nothing but one iron bench. After an hour, during which, he supposed,
they went through the secret papers, he was led into a comfortable
office in which an officer with three rows of decorations and the gold
tabs of a full colonel was sitting behind a desk.

The desk was bare except for a bowl of roses.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Ten years later, Grant, looking out of the window of the plane at a wide
cluster of lights twenty thousand feet below, which he guessed was
Kharkov, grinned mirthlessly at his reflection in the Perspex window.

Roses. From that moment his life had been nothing but roses. Roses,
roses, all the way.


                        3. Post-graduate Studies

'So you would like to work in the Soviet Union, Mister Grant?'

It was half an hour later and the MGB colonel was bored with the
interview. He thought that he had extracted from this rather unpleasant
British soldier every military detail that could possibly be of
interest. A few polite phrases to repay the man for the rich haul of
secrets his dispatch bags had yielded, and then the man could go down to
the cells and in due course be shipped off to Vorkuta or some other
labour camp.

'Yes, I would like to work for you.'

'And what work could you do, Mister Grant? We have plenty of unskilled
labour. We do not need truck-drivers and,' the colonel smiled
fleetingly, 'if there is any boxing to be done we have plenty of men who
can box. Two possible Olympic champions amongst them, incidentally.'

'I am an expert at killing people. I do it very well. I like it.'

The colonel saw the red flame that flickered for an instant behind the
very pale blue eyes under the sandy lashes. He thought, the man means
it. He's mad as well as unpleasant. He looked coldly at Grant, wondering
if it was worthwhile wasting food on him at Vorkuta. Better perhaps have
him shot. Or throw him back into the British Sector and let his own
people worry about him.

'You don't believe me,' said Grant impatiently. This was the wrong man,
the wrong department. 'Who does the rough stuff for you here?' He was
certain the Russians had some sort of a murder squad. Everybody said so.
'Let me talk to them. I'll kill somebody for them. Anybody they like.
Now.'

The colonel looked at him sourly. Perhaps he had better report the
matter. 'Wait here.' He got up and went out of the room, leaving the
door open. A guard came and stood in the doorway and watched Grant's
back, his hand on his pistol.

The colonel went into the next room. It was empty. There were three
telephones on the desk. He picked up the receiver of the MGB direct line
to Moscow. When the military operator answered he said, 'SMERSH'. When
SMERSH answered he asked for the Chief of Operations.

Ten minutes later he put the receiver back. What luck! A simple,
constructive solution. Whichever way it went it would turn out well. If
the Englishman succeeded, it would be splendid. If he failed, it would
still cause a lot of trouble in the Western Sector--trouble for the
British because Grant was their man, trouble with the Germans because
the attempt would frighten a lot of their spies, trouble with the
Americans because they were supplying most of the funds for the
Baumgarten ring and would now think Baumgarten's security was no good.
Pleased with himself, the colonel walked back into his office and sat
down again opposite Grant.

'You mean what you say?'

'Of course I do.'

'Have you a good memory?'

Yes.'

'In the British Sector there is a German called Dr Baumgarten. He lives
in Flat 5 at No 22 Kurfrstendamn. Do you know where that is?'

'Yes.'

'Tonight, with your motor cycle, you will be put back into the British
Sector. Your number plates will be changed. Your people will be on the
lookout for you. You will take an envelope to Dr Baumgarten. It will be
marked to be delivered by hand. In your uniform, and with this envelope,
you will have no difficulty. You will say that the message is so private
that you must see Dr Baumgarten alone. Then you will kill him.' The
colonel paused. His eyebrows lifted. 'Yes?'

'Yes,' said Grant stolidly. 'And if I do, will you give me more of this
work?'

'It is possible,' said the colonel indifferently. 'First you must show
what you can do. When you have completed your task and returned to the
Soviet Sector, you may ask for Colonel Boris.' He rang a bell and a man
in plain clothes came in. The colonel gestured towards him. 'This man
will give you food. Later he will give you the envelope and a sharp
knife of American manufacture. It is an excellent weapon. Good luck.'

The colonel reached and picked a rose out of the bowl and sniffed it
luxuriously.

Grant got to his feet. 'Thank you, sir,' he said warmly.

The colonel did not answer or look up from the rose. Grant followed the
man in plain clothes out of the room.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The plane roared on across the Heartland of Russia. They had left behind
them the blast furnaces flaming far away to the east around Stalino and,
to the west, the silver thread of the Dnieper branching away at
Dnepropetrovsk. The splash of light around Kharkov had marked the
frontier of the Ukraine, and the smaller blaze of the phosphate town of
Kursk had come and gone. Now Grant knew that the solid unbroken
blackness below hid the great central Steppe where the billions of tons
of Russia's grain were whispering and ripening in the darkness. There
would be no more oases of light until, in another hour, they would have
covered the last three hundred miles to Moscow.

For by now Grant knew a lot about Russia. After the quick, neat,
sensational murder of a vital West German spy, Grant had no sooner
slipped back over the frontier and somehow fumbled his way to 'Colonel
Boris' than he was put into plain clothes, with a flying helmet to cover
his hair, hustled into an empty MGB plane and flown straight to Moscow.

Then began a year of semi-prison which Grant had devoted to keeping fit
and to learning Russian while people came and went around
him--interrogators, stool-pigeons, doctors. Meanwhile, Soviet spies in
England and Northern Ireland had painstakingly investigated his past.

At the end of the year Grant was given as clean a bill of political
health as any foreigner can get in Russia. The spies had confirmed his
story. The English and American stool-pigeons reported that he was
totally uninterested in the politics or social customs of any country in
the world, and the doctors and psychologists agreed that he was an
advanced manic depressive whose periods coincided with the full moon.
They added that Grant was also a narcissist and asexual and that his
tolerance of pain was high. These peculiarities apart, his physical
health was superb and, though his educational standards were hopelessly
low, he was as naturally cunning as a fox. Everyone agreed that Grant
was an exceedingly dangerous member of society and that he should be put
away.

When the dossier came before the Head of Personnel of the MGB, he was
about to write _Kill him_ in the margin when he had second thoughts.

A great deal of killing has to be done in the USSR, not because the
average Russian is a cruel man, although some of their races are among
the cruellest peoples in the world, but as an instrument of policy.
People who act against the State are enemies of the State, and the State
has no room for enemies. There is too much to do for precious time to be
allotted to them, and, if they are a persistent nuisance, they get
killed. In a country with a population of 200,000,000, you can kill many
thousands a year without missing them. If, as happened in the two
biggest purges, a million people have to be killed in one year, that is
also not a grave loss. The serious problem is the shortage of
executioners. Executioners have a short 'life'. They get tired of the
work. The soul sickens of it. After ten, twenty, a hundred
death-rattles, the human being, however sub-human he may be, acquires,
perhaps by a process of osmosis with death itself, a germ of death which
enters his body and eats into him like a canker. Melancholy and drink
take him, and a dreadful lassitude which brings a glaze to the eyes and
slows up the movements and destroys accuracy. When the employer sees
these signs he has no alternative but to execute the executioner and
find another one.

The Head of Personnel of the MGB was aware of the problem and of the
constant search not only for the refined assassin, but also for the
common butcher. And here at last was a man who appeared to be expert at
both forms of killing, dedicated to his craft and indeed, if the doctors
were to be believed, destined for it.

Head of Personnel wrote a short, pungent minute on Grant's papers,
marked them _SMERSH Otdyel II_ and tossed them into his OUT tray.

Department 2 of SMERSH, in charge of Operations and Executions, took
over the body of Donovan Grant, changed his name to Granitsky and put
him on their books.

The next two years were hard for Grant. He had to go back to school, and
to a school that made him long for the chipped deal desks in the
corrugated-iron shed, full of the smell of little boys and the hum of
drowsy bluebottles, that had been his only conception of what a school
was like. Now, in the Intelligence School for Foreigners outside
Leningrad, squashed tightly among the ranks of Germans, Czechs, Poles,
Balts, Chinese and Negroes, all with serious dedicated faces and pens
that raced across their notebooks, he struggled with subjects that were
pure double-dutch to him.

There were courses in 'General Political Knowledge', which included the
history of Labour movements, of the Communist Party and the Industrial
Forces of the world, and the teachings of Marx, Lenin and Stalin, all
dotted with foreign names which he could barely spell. There were
lessons on 'The Class-enemy we are fighting', with lectures on
Capitalism and Fascism; weeks spent on 'Tactics, Agitation and
Propaganda' and more weeks on the problems of minority peoples, Colonial
races, the Negroes, the Jews. Every month ended with examinations during
which Grant sat and wrote illiterate nonsense, interspersed with scraps
of half-forgotten English history and misspelled Communist slogans, and
inevitably had his papers torn up, on one occasion, in front of the
whole class.

But he stuck it out, and when they came to 'Technical Subjects' he did
better. He was quick to understand the rudiments of Codes and Ciphers,
because he wanted to understand them. He was good at Communications, and
immediately grasped the maze of contacts, cut-outs, couriers and
post-boxes, and he got excellent marks for Fieldwork in which each
student had to plan and operate dummy assignments in the suburbs and
countryside around Leningrad. Finally, when it came to tests of
Vigilance, Discretion, 'Safety First', Presence of Mind, Courage and
Coolness, he got top marks out of the whole school.

At the end of the year, the report that went back to SMERSH concluded
'Political value Nil. Operational value Excellent'--which was just what
Otdyel II wanted to hear.

The next year was spent, with only two other foreign students among
several hundred Russians, at the School for Terror and Diversion at
Kuchino, outside Moscow. Here Grant went triumphantly through courses in
judo, boxing, athletics, photography and radio under the general
supervision of the famous Colonel Arkady Fotoyev, father of the modern
Soviet spy, and completed his small-arms instruction at the hands of
Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolai Godlovsky, the Soviet Rifle Champion.

Twice during this year, without warning, an MGB car came for him on the
night of the full moon and took him to one of the Moscow jails. There,
with a black hood over his head, he was allowed to carry out executions
with various weapons--the rope, the axe, the sub-machine-gun.
Electrocardiograms, blood-pressure and various other medical tests were
applied to him before, during and after these occasions, but their
purpose and findings were not revealed to him.

It was a good year and he felt, and rightly, that he was giving
satisfaction.

In 1949 and '50 Grant was allowed to go on minor operations with Mobile
Groups or _Avanposts_, in the satellite countries. These were
beatings-up and simple assassinations of Russian spies and intelligence
workers suspected of treachery or other aberrations. Grant carried out
these duties neatly, exactly and inconspicuously, and though he was
carefully and constantly watched he never showed the smallest deviation
from the standards required of him, and no weaknesses of character or
technical skill. It might have been different if he had been required to
kill when doing a solo task at the full-moon period, but his superiors,
realizing that at that period he would be outside their control, or his
own, chose safe dates for his operations. The moon period was reserved
exclusively for butchery in the prisons, and from time to time this was
arranged for him as a reward for a successful operation in cold blood.

In 1951 and '52 Grant's usefulness became more fully and more officially
recognized. As a result of excellent work, notably in the Eastern Sector
of Berlin, he was granted Soviet citizenship and increases in pay which
by 1953 amounted to a handsome 5000 roubles a month. In 1953 he was
given the rank of Major, with pension rights backdated to the day of his
first contact with Colonel Boris', and the villa in the Crimea was
allotted to him. Two bodyguards were attached to him, partly to protect
him and partly to guard against the outside chance of his 'going
private', as defection is called in MGB jargon, and, once a month, he
was transported to the nearest jail and allowed as many executions as
there were candidates available.

Naturally Grant had no friends. He was hated or feared or envied by
everyone who came in contact with him. He did not even have any of those
professional acquaintanceships that pass for friendship in the discreet
and careful world of Soviet officialdom. But, if he noticed the fact, he
didn't care. The only individuals he was interested in were his victims.
The rest of his life was inside him. And it was richly and excitingly
populated with his thoughts.

Then, of course, he had SMERSH. No one in the Soviet Union who has
SMERSH on his side need worry about friends, or indeed about anything
whatever except keeping the black wings of SMERSH over his head.

Grant was still thinking vaguely of how he stood with his employers when
the plane started to lose altitude as it picked up the radar beam of
Tushino Airport just south of the red glow that was Moscow.

He was at the top of his tree, the chief executioner of SMERSH, and
therefore of the whole of the Soviet Union. What could he aim for now?
Further promotion? More money? More gold knick-knacks? More important
targets? Better techniques?

There really didn't seem to be anything more to go for. Or was there
perhaps some other man whom he had never heard of, in some other
country, who would have to be set aside before absolute supremacy was
his?


                         4. The Moguls of Death

SMERSH is the official murder organization of the Soviet government. It
operates both at home and abroad and, in 1955, it employed a total of
40,000 men and women. SMERSH is a contraction of 'Smiert Spionam', which
means 'Death to Spies'. It is a name used only among its staff and among
Soviet officials. No sane member of the public would dream of allowing
the word to pass his lips.

The headquarters of SMERSH is a very large and ugly modern building on
the Sretenka Ulitsa. It is No 13 on this wide, dull street, and
pedestrians keep their eyes to the ground as they pass the two sentries
with submachine guns who stand on either side of the broad steps leading
up to the big iron double door. If they remember in time, or can do so
inconspicuously, they cross the street and pass by on the other side.

The direction of SMERSH is carried out from the 2nd floor. The most
important room on the 2nd floor is a very large light room painted in
the pale olive green that is the common denominator of government
offices all over the world. Opposite the sound-proofed door, two wide
windows look over the courtyard at the back of the building. The floor
is close-fitted with a colourful Caucasian carpet of the finest quality.
Across the far left-hand corner of the room stands a massive oak desk.
The top of the desk is covered with red velvet under a thick sheet of
plate glass.

On the left side of the desk are IN and OUT baskets and on the right
four telephones.

From the centre of the desk, to form a T with it, a conference table
stretches diagonally out across the room. Eight straight-backed red
leather chairs are drawn up to it. This table is also covered with red
velvet, but without protective glass. Ashtrays are on the table, and two
heavy carafes of water with glasses.

On the walls are four large pictures in gold frames. In 1955, these were
a portrait of Stalin over the door, one of Lenin between the two windows
and, facing each other on the other two walls, portraits of Bulganin
and, where until January 13th, 1954, a portrait of Beria had hung, a
portrait of Army General Ivan Aleksandrovitch Serov, Chief of the
Committee of State Security.

On the left-hand wall, under the portrait of Bulganin, stands a large
_televisor_, or TV set, in a handsome polished oak cabinet. Concealed in
this is a tape-recorder which can be switched on from the desk. The
microphone for the recorder stretches under the whole area of the
conference table and its leads are concealed in the legs of the table.
Next to the televisor is a small door leading into a personal lavatory
and washroom and into a small projection room for showing secret films.

Under the portrait of General Serov is a bookcase containing, on the top
shelves, the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and more
accessibly, books in all languages on espionage, counter-espionage,
police methods and criminology. Next to the bookcase, against the wall,
stands a long narrow table on which are a dozen large leather-bound
albums with dates stamped in gold on the covers. These contain
photographs of Soviet citizens and foreigners who have been assassinated
by SMERSH.

About the time Grant was coming into land at Tushino Airport, just
before 11.30 at night, a tough-looking, thick-set man of about fifty was
standing at this table leafing through the volume for 1954.

The Head of SMERSH, Colonel General Grubozaboyschikov, known in the
building as 'G.', was dressed in a neat khaki tunic with a high collar,
and dark blue cavalry trousers with two thin red stripes down the sides.
The trousers ended in riding boots of soft, highly polished black
leather. On the breast of the tunic were three rows of medal
ribbons--two Orders of Lenin, Order of Suvorov, Order of Alexander
Nevsky, Order of the Red Banner, two Orders of the Red Star, the Twenty
Years Service medal and medals for the Defence of Moscow and the Capture
of Berlin. At the tail of these came the rose-pink and grey ribbon of
the British CBE, and the claret and white ribbon of the American Medal
for Merit. Above the ribbons hung the gold star of a Hero of the Soviet
Union.

Above the high collar of the tunic the face was narrow and sharp. There
were flabby pouches under the eyes, which were round and brown and
protruded like polished marbles below thick black brows. The skull was
shaven clean and the tight white skin glittered in the light of the
central chandelier. The mouth was broad and grim above a deeply cleft
chin. It was a hard, unyielding face of formidable authority.

One of the telephones on the desk buzzed softly. The man walked with
tight and precise steps to his tall chair behind the desk. He sat down
and picked up the receiver of the telephone marked in white with the
letters VCh. These letters are short for _vysokochastoty_, or high
frequency. Only some fifty supreme officials are connected to the VCh
switchboard, and all are Ministers of State or Heads of selected
Departments. It is served by a small exchange in the Kremlin operated by
professional security officers. Even they cannot overhear conversations
on it, but every word spoken over its lines is automatically recorded.

'Yes?'

'Serov speaking. What action has been taken since the meeting of the
Praesidium this morning?'

'I have a meeting here in a few minutes' time, Comrade General--RUMID,
GRU and of course MGB. After that, if action is agreed, I shall have a
meeting with my Head of Operations and Head of Plans. In case
liquidation is decided upon, I have taken the precaution of bringing the
necessary operative to Moscow. This time I shall myself supervise the
preparations. We do not want another Khoklov affair.'

'The devil knows we don't. Telephone me after the first meeting. I wish
to report to the Praesidium tomorrow morning.'

'Certainly, Comrade General.'

General G. put back the receiver and pressed a bell under his desk. At
the same time he switched on the wire-recorder. His ADC, an MGB captain,
came in.

'Have they arrived?'

'Yes, Comrade General.'

'Bring them in.'

In a few minutes six men, five of them in uniform, filed in through the
door and, with hardly a glance at the man behind the desk, took their
places at the conference table. They were three senior officers, heads
of their departments, and each was accompanied by an ADC. In the Soviet
Union, no man goes alone to a conference. For his own protection, and
for the reassurance of his department, he invariably takes a witness so
that his department can have independent versions of what went on at the
conference and, above all, of what was said on its behalf. This is
important in case there is a subsequent investigation. No notes are
taken at the conference and decisions are passed back to departments by
word of mouth.

On the far side of the table sat Lieutenant-General Slavin, head of the
GRU, the intelligence department of the General Staff of the Army, with
a full colonel beside him. At the end of the table sat
Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky of RUMID, the Intelligence Department
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with a middle-aged man in plain
clothes. With his back to the door, sat Colonel of State Security
Nikitin, Head of Intelligence for the MGB, the Soviet Secret Service,
with a major at his side.

'Good evening, Comrades.'

A polite, careful murmur came from the three senior officers. Each one
knew, and thought he was the only one to know, that the room was wired
for sound, and each one, without telling his ADC, had decided to utter
the bare minimum of words consonant with good discipline and the needs
of the State.

'Let us smoke.' General G. took out a packet of Moskwa-Volga cigarettes
and lit one with an American Zippo lighter. There was a clicking of
lighters round the table. General G. pinched the long cardboard tube of
his cigarette so that it was almost flat and put it between his teeth on
the right side of his mouth. He stretched his lips back from his teeth
and started talking in short clipped sentences that came out with
something of a hiss from between the teeth and the uptilted cigarette.

'Comrades, we meet under instructions from Comrade General Serov.
General Serov, on behalf of the Praesidium, has ordered me to make known
to you certain matters of State Policy. We are then to confer and
recommend a course of action which will be in line with this Policy and
assist it. We have to reach our decision quickly. But our decision will
be of supreme importance to the State. It will therefore have to be a
correct decision.'

General G. paused to allow the significance of his words time to sink
in. One by one, he slowly examined the faces of the three senior
officers at the table. Their eyes looked stolidly back at him. Inside,
these extremely important men were perturbed. They were about to look
through the furnace door. They were about to learn a State secret, the
knowledge of which might one day have most dangerous consequences for
them. Sitting in the quiet room, they felt bathed in the dreadful
incandescence that shines out from the centre of all power in the Soviet
Union--the High Praesidium.

The final ash fell off the end of General G.'s cigarette on to his
tunic. He brushed it off and threw the cardboard butt into the basket
for secret waste beside his desk. He lit another cigarette and spoke
through it.

'Our recommendation concerns a conspicuous act of terrorism to be
carried out in enemy territory within three months.'

Six pairs of expressionless eyes stared at the head of SMERSH, waiting.

'Comrades,' General G. leant back in his chair and his voice became
expository, 'the foreign policy of the USSR has entered a new phase.
Formerly, it was a "hard" policy--a policy [he allowed himself the joke
of Stalin's name] of steel. This policy, effective as it was, built up
tensions in the West, notably in America, which were becoming dangerous.
The Americans are unpredictable people. They are hysterical. The reports
of our Intelligence began to indicate that we were pushing America to
the brink of an undeclared atomic attack on the USSR. You have read
these reports and you know what I say is true. We do not want such a
war. If there is to be a war, it is we who will choose the time. Certain
powerful Americans, notably the Pentagon Group led by Admiral Radford,
were helped in their firebrand schemes by the very successes of our
"hard" policy. So it was decided that the time had come to change our
methods, while maintaining our aims. A new policy was created--the
"hard-soft" policy. Geneva was the beginning of this policy. We were
"soft". China threatens Quemoy and Matsu. We are "hard". We open our
frontiers to a lot of newspaper men and actors and artists although we
know many of them to be spies. Our leaders laugh and make jokes at
receptions in Moscow. In the middle of the jokes we drop the biggest
test bomb of all time. Comrades Bulganin and Khrushchev and Comrade
General Serov [General G. carefully included the names for the ears of
the tape-recorder] visit India and the East and blackguard the English.
When they get back, they have friendly discussions with the British
Ambassador about their forthcoming goodwill visit to London. And so it
goes on--the stick and then the carrot, the smile and then the frown.
And the West is confused. Tensions are relaxed before they have time to
harden. The reactions of our enemies are clumsy, their strategy
disorganized. Meanwhile the common people laugh at our jokes, cheer our
football teams and slobber with delight when we release a few prisoners
of war whom we wish to feed no longer!'

There were smiles of pleasure and pride round the table. What a
brilliant policy! What fools we are making of them in the West!

'At the same time,' continued General G., himself smiling thinly at the
pleasure he had caused, 'we continue to forge everywhere stealthily
ahead--revolution in Morocco, arms to Egypt, friendship with Yugoslavia,
trouble in Cyprus, riots in Turkey, strikes in England, great political
gains in France--there is no front in the world on which we are not
quietly advancing.'

General G. saw the eyes shining greedily round the table. The men were
softened up. Now it was time to be hard. Now it was time for them to
feel the new policy on themselves. The Intelligence services would also
have to pull their weight in this great game that was being played on
their behalf. Smoothly General G. leaned forward. He planted his right
elbow on the desk and raised his fist in the air.

'But Comrades,' his voice was soft, 'where has there been failure in
carrying out the State Policy of the USSR? Who has all along been soft
when we wished to be hard? Who has suffered defeats while victory was
going to all other departments of the State? Who, with its stupid
blunders, has made the Soviet Union look foolish and weak throughout the
world? WHO?'

The voice had risen almost to a scream. General G. thought how well he
was delivering the denunciation demanded by the Praesidium. How splendid
it would sound when the tape was played back to Serov!

He glared down the conference table at the pale, expectant faces.
General G.'s fist crashed forward on to the desk.

'The whole Intelligence apparat of the Soviet Union, Comrades.' The
voice was now a furious bellow. 'It is we who are the sluggards, the
saboteurs, the traitors! It is we who are failing the Soviet Union in
its great and glorious struggle! We!' His arm swept round the room. 'All
of us!' The voice came back to normal, became more reasonable.
'Comrades, look at the record. _Sookin Sin_ [he allowed himself the
peasant obscenity], son-of-a-bitch, look at the record! First we lose
Gouzenko and the whole of the Canadian apparat and the scientist Fuchs,
then the American apparat is cleaned up, then we lose men like Tokaev,
then comes the scandalous Khoklov affair which did great damage to our
country, then Petrov and his wife in Australia--a bungled business if
ever there was one! The list is endless--defeat after defeat, and the
devil knows I have not mentioned the half of it.'

General G. paused. He continued in his softest voice. 'Comrades, I have
to tell you that unless tonight we make a recommendation for a great
Intelligence victory, and unless we act correctly on that
recommendation, if it is approved, there will be trouble.'

General G. sought for a final phrase to convey the threat without
defining it. He found it. 'There will be,' he paused and looked, with
artificial mildness, down the table, 'displeasure.'


                            5. Konspiratsia

The moujiks had received the knout. General G. gave them a few minutes
to lick their wounds and recover from the shock of the official lashing
that had been meted out.

No one said a word for the defence. No one spoke up for his department
or mentioned the countless victories of Soviet Intelligence that could
be set against the few mistakes. And no one questioned the right of the
Head of SMERSH, who shared the guilt with them, to deliver this terrible
denunciation. The Word had gone out from the Throne, and General G. had
been chosen as the mouthpiece for the Word. It was a great compliment to
General G. that he had been thus chosen, a sign of grace, a sign of
coming preferment, and everyone present made a careful note of the fact
that, in the Intelligence hierarchy, General G., with SMERSH behind him,
had come to the top of the pile.

At the end of the table, the representative of the Foreign Ministry,
Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky of RUMID, watched the smoke curl up
from the tip of his long Kazbek cigarette and remembered how Molotov had
privately told him, when Beria was dead, that General G. would go far.
There had been no great foresight in this prophecy, reflected
Vozdvishensky. Beria had disliked G. and had constantly hindered his
advancement, side-tracking him away from the main ladder of power into
one of the minor departments of the then Ministry of State Security,
which, on the death of Stalin, Beria had quickly abolished as a
Ministry. Until 1952, G. had been deputy to one of the heads of this
Ministry. When the post was abolished, he devoted his energies to
plotting the downfall of Beria, working under the secret orders of the
formidable General Serov, whose record put him out of even Beria's
reach.

Serov, a Hero of the Soviet Union and a veteran of the famous
predecessors of the MGB--the Cheka, the Ogpu, the NKVD and the MVD--was
in every respect a bigger man than Beria. He had been directly behind
the mass executions of the 1930s when a million died, he had been
_metteur en scne_ of most of the great Moscow show trials, he had
organized the bloody genocide in the Central Caucasus in February 1944,
and it was he who had inspired the mass deportations from the Baltic
States and the kidnapping of the German atom and other scientists who
had given Russia her great technical leap forward after the war.

And Beria and all his court had gone to the gallows, while General G.
had been given SMERSH as his reward. As for Army General Ivan Serov, he,
with Bulganin and Khrushchev, now ruled Russia. One day, he might even
stand on the peak, alone. But, guessed General Vozdvishensky, glancing
up the table at the gleaming billiard-ball skull, probably with General
G. not far behind him.

The skull lifted and the hard bulging brown eyes looked straight down
the table into the eyes of General Vozdvishensky. General Vozdvishensky
managed to look back calmly and even with a hint of appraisal.

That is a deep one, thought General G. Let us put the spotlight on him
and see how he shows up on the soundtrack.

'Comrades,' gold flashed from both corners of his mouth as he stretched
his lips in a chairman's smile, 'let us not be too dismayed. Even the
highest tree has an axe waiting at its foot. We have never thought that
our departments were so successful as to be beyond criticism. What I
have been instructed to say to you will not have come as a surprise to
any of us. So let us take up the challenge with a good heart and get
down to business.'

Round the table there was no answering smile to these platitudes.
General G. had not expected that there would be. He lit a cigarette and
continued.

'I said that we have at once to recommend an act of terrorism in the
intelligence field, and one of our departments--no doubt my own--will be
called upon to carry out this act.'

An inaudible sigh of relief went round the table. So at least SMERSH
would be the responsible department! That was something.

'But the choice of a target will not be an easy matter, and our
collective responsibility for the correct choice will be a heavy one.'

Soft-hard, hard-soft. The ball was now back with the conference.

'It is not just a question of blowing up a building or shooting a prime
minister. Such bourgeois horseplay is not contemplated. Our operation
must be delicate, refined and aimed at the heart of the Intelligence
apparat of the West. It must do grave damage to the enemy
apparat--hidden damage which the public will hear perhaps nothing of,
but which will be the secret talk of government circles. But it must
also cause a public scandal so devastating that the world will lick its
lips and sneer at the shame and stupidity of our enemies. Naturally
governments will know that it is a Soviet _konspiratsia_. That is good.
It will be a piece of "hard" policy. And the agents and spies of the
West will know it, too, and they will marvel at our cleverness and they
will tremble. Traitors and possible defectors will change their minds.
Our own operatives will be stimulated. They will be encouraged to
greater efforts by our display of strength and genius. But of course we
shall deny any knowledge of the deed, whatever it may be, and it is
desirable that the common people of the Soviet Union should remain in
complete ignorance of our complicity.'

General G. paused and looked down the table at the representative of
RUMID, who again held his gaze impassively.

'And now to choose the organization at which we will strike, and then to
decide on the specific target within that organization. Comrade
Lieutenant-General Vozdvishensky, since you observe the foreign
intelligence scene from a neutral standpoint [this was a jibe at the
notorious jealousies that exist between the military intelligence of the
GRU and the Secret Service of the MGB], perhaps you would survey the
field for us. We wish to have your opinion of the relative importance of
the Western Intelligence Services. We will then choose the one which is
the most dangerous and which we would most wish to damage.'

General G. sat back in his tall chair. He rested his elbows on the arms
and supported his chin on the interlaced fingers of his joined hands,
like a teacher preparing to listen to a long construe.

General Vozdvishensky was not dismayed by his task. He had been in
intelligence, mostly abroad, for thirty years. He had served as a
'doorman' at the Soviet Embassy in London under Litvinoff. He had worked
with the Tass Agency in New York and had then gone back to London, to
Amtorg, the Soviet Trade Organization. For five years he had been
Military Attach under the brilliant Madame Kollontai in the Stockholm
Embassy. He had helped train Sorge, the Soviet master spy, before Sorge
went to Tokyo. During the war, he had been for a while Resident Director
in Switzerland, or 'Schmidtland', as it had been known in the
spy-jargon, and there he had helped sow the seeds of the sensationally
successful but tragically misused 'Lucy' network. He had even gone
several times into Germany as a courier to the 'Rote Kapelle', and had
narrowly escaped being cleaned up with it. And after the war, on
transfer to the Foreign Ministry, he had been on the inside of the
Burgess and Maclean operation and on countless other plots to penetrate
the Foreign Ministries of the West. He was a professional spy to his
fingertips and he was perfectly prepared to put on record his opinions
of the rivals with whom he had been crossing swords all his life.

The ADC at his side was less comfortable. He was nervous at RUMID being
pinned down in this way, and without a full departmental briefing. He
scoured his brain clear and sharpened his ears to catch every word.

'In this matter,' said General Vozdvishensky carefully, 'one must not
confuse the man with his office. Every country has good spies and it is
not always the biggest countries that have the most or the best. But
Secret Services are expensive, and small countries cannot afford the
co-ordinated effort which produces good intelligence--the forgery
departments, the radio network, the record department, the digestive
apparatus that evaluates and compares the reports of the agents. There
are individual agents serving Norway, Holland, Belgium and even Portugal
who could be a great nuisance to us if these countries knew the value of
their reports or made good use of them. But they do not. Instead of
passing their information on to the larger powers, they prefer to sit on
it and feel important. So we need not worry with these smaller
countries,' he paused, 'until we come to Sweden. There they have been
spying on us for centuries. They have always had better information on
the Baltic than even Finland or Germany. They are dangerous. I would
like to put a stop to their activities.'

General G. interrupted. 'Comrade, they are always having spy scandals in
Sweden. One more scandal would not make the world look up. Please
continue.'

'Italy can be dismissed,' went on General Vozdvishensky, without
appearing to notice the interruption. 'They are clever and active, but
they do us no harm. They are only interested in their own backyard, the
Mediterranean. The same can be said of Spain, except that their
counter-intelligence is a great hindrance to the Party. We have lost
many good men to these Fascists. But to mount an operation against them
would probably cost us more men. And little would be achieved. They are
not yet ripe for revolution. In France, while we have penetrated most of
their Services, the Deuxime Bureau is still clever and dangerous. There
is a man called Mathis at the head of it. A Mends-France appointment.
He would be a tempting target and it would be easy to operate in
France.'

'France is looking after herself,' commented General G.

'England is another matter altogether. I think we all have respect for
her Intelligence Service,' General Vozdvishensky looked round the table.
There were grudging nods from everyone present, including General G.
'Their Security Service is excellent. England, being an island, has
great security advantages and their so-called MI5 employs men with good
education and good brains. Their Secret Service is still better. They
have notable successes. In certain types of operation, we are constantly
finding that they have been there before us. Their agents are good. They
pay them little money--only a thousand or two thousand roubles a
month--but they serve with devotion. Yet these agents have no special
privileges in England, no relief from taxation and no special shops such
as we have, from which they can buy cheap goods. Their social standing
abroad is not high, and their wives have to pass as the wives of
secretaries. They are rarely awarded a decoration until they retire. And
yet these men and women continue to do this dangerous work. It is
curious. It is perhaps the Public School and University tradition. The
love of adventure. But still it is odd that they play this game so well,
for they are not natural conspirators.' General Vozdvishensky felt that
his remarks might be taken as too laudatory. He hastily qualified them.
'Of course, most of their strength lies in the myth--in the myth of
Scotland Yard, of Sherlock Holmes, of the Secret Service. We certainly
have nothing to fear from these gentlemen. But this myth is a hindrance
which it would be good to set aside.'

'And the Americans?' General G. wanted to put a stop to Vozdvishensky's
attempts to qualify his praise of British Intelligence. One day that bit
about the Public School and University tradition would sound well in
court. Next, hoped General G., he will be saying that the Pentagon is
stronger than the Kremlin.

'The Americans have the biggest and richest service among our enemies.
Technically, in such matters as radio and weapons and equipment, they
are the best. But they have no understanding for the work. They get
enthusiastic about some Balkan spy who says he has a secret army in the
Ukraine. They load him with money with which to buy boots for this army.
Of course he goes at once to Paris and spends the money on women.
Americans try to do everything with money. Good spies will not work for
money alone--only bad ones, of which the Americans have several
divisions.'

'They have successes, Comrade,' said General G. silkily. 'Perhaps you
underestimate them.'

General Vozdvishensky shrugged. 'They must have successes, Comrade
General. You cannot sow a million seeds without reaping one potato.
Personally I do not think the Americans need engage the attention of
this conference.' The head of RUMID sat back in his chair and stolidly
took out his cigarette case.

'A very interesting exposition,' said General G. coldly. 'Comrade
General Slavin?'

General Slavin of the GRU had no intention of committing himself on
behalf of the General Staff of the Army. 'I have listened with interest
to the words of Comrade General Vozdvishensky. I have nothing to add.'

Colonel of State Security Nikitin of MGB felt it would do no great harm
to show up the GRU as being too stupid to have any ideas at all, and at
the same time to make a modest recommendation that would probably tally
with the inner thoughts of those present--and that was certainly on the
tip of General G.'s tongue. Colonel Nikitin also knew that, given the
proposition that had been posed by the Praesidium, the Soviet Secret
Service would back him up.

'I recommend the English Secret Service as the object of terrorist
action,' he said decisively. 'The devil knows my department hardly finds
them a worthy adversary, but they are the best of an indifferent lot.'

General G. was annoyed by the authority in the man's voice, and by
having his thunder stolen, for he also had intended to sum up in favour
of an operation against the British. He tapped his lighter softly on the
desk to reimpose his chairmanship. 'Is it agreed then, Comrades? An act
of terrorism against the British Secret Service?'

There were careful, slow nods all round the table.

'I agree. And now for the target within that organization. I remember
Comrade General Vozdvishensky saying something about a myth upon which
much of the alleged strength of this Secret Service depends. How can we
help to destroy the myth and thus strike at the very motive force of
this organization? Where does this myth reside? We cannot destroy all
its personnel at one blow. Does it reside in the Head? Who is the Head
of the British Secret Service?'

Colonel Nikitin's aide whispered in his ear. Colonel Nikitin decided
that this was a question he could and perhaps should answer.

'He is an Admiral. He is known by the letter M. We have a _zapiska_ on
him, but it contains little. He does not drink very much. He is too old
for women. The public does not know of his existence. It would be
difficult to create a scandal round his death. And he would not be easy
to kill. He rarely goes abroad. To shoot him in a London street would
not be very refined.'

'There is much in what you say, Comrade,' said General G. 'But we are
here to find a target who _will_ fulfil our requirements. Have they no
one who is a hero to the organization? Someone who is admired and whose
ignominious destruction would cause dismay? Myths are built on heroic
deeds and heroic people. Have they no such men?'

There was silence round the table while everyone searched his memory. So
many names to remember, so many dossiers, so many operations going on
every day all over the world. Who was there in the British Secret
Service? Who was that man who...?

It was Colonel Nikitin of the MGB who broke the embarrassed silence.

He said hesitantly, 'There is a man called Bond.'


                            6. Death Warrant

'_Y*b**nna mat!_' The gross obscenity was a favourite with General G.
His hand slapped down on the desk. 'Comrade, there certainly is "a man
called Bond" as you put it.' His voice was sarcastic. 'James Bond. [He
pronounced it "Shems".] And nobody, myself included, could think of this
spy's name! We are indeed forgetful. No wonder the Intelligence apparat
is under criticism.'

General Vozdvishensky felt he should defend himself and his department.
'There are countless enemies of the Soviet Union, Comrade General,' he
protested, 'If I want their names, I send to the Central Index for them.
Certainly I know the name of this Bond. He has been a great trouble to
us at different times. But today my mind is full of other names--names
of people who are causing us trouble today, this week. I am interested
in football, but I cannot remember the name of every foreigner who has
scored a goal against the Dynamos.'

'You are pleased to joke, Comrade,' said General G. to underline this
out-of-place comment. 'This is a serious matter. I for one admit my
fault in not remembering the name of this notorious agent. Comrade
Colonel Nikitin will no doubt refresh our memories further, but I recall
that this Bond has at least twice frustrated the operations of SMERSH.
That is,' he added, 'before I assumed control of the department. There
was this affair in France, at that Casino town. The man Le Chiffre. An
excellent leader of the Party in France. He foolishly got into some
money troubles. But he would have got out of them if this Bond had not
interfered. I recall that the Department had to act quickly and
liquidate the Frenchman. The executioner should have dealt with the
Englishman at the same time, but he did not. Then there was this Negro
of ours in Harlem. A great man--one of the greatest foreign agents we
have ever employed, and with a vast network behind him. There was some
business about a treasure in the Caribbean. I forget the details. This
Englishman was sent out by the Secret Service and smashed the whole
organization and killed our man. It was a great reverse. Once again my
predecessor should have proceeded ruthlessly against this English spy.'

Colonel Nikitin broke in. 'We had a similar experience in the case of
the German, Drax, and the rocket. You will recall the matter, Comrade
General. A most important konspiratsia. The General Staff were deeply
involved. It was a matter of High Policy which could have borne decisive
fruit. But again it was this Bond who frustrated the operation. The
German was killed. There were grave consequences for the State. There
followed a period of serious embarrassment which was only solved with
difficulty.'

General Slavin of GRU felt that he should say something. The rocket had
been an Army operation and its failure had been laid at the door of GRU.
Nikitin knew this perfectly well. As usual MGB was trying to make
trouble for GRU--raking up old history in this manner. 'We asked for
this man to be dealt with by your department, Comrade Colonel,' he said
icily. 'I cannot recall that any action followed our request. If it had,
we should not now be having to bother with him.'

Colonel Nikitin's temples throbbed with rage. He controlled himself.
'With due respect, Comrade General,' he said in a loud, sarcastic voice,
'the request of GRU was not confirmed by Higher Authority. Further
embarrassment with England was not desired. Perhaps that detail has
slipped your memory. In any case, if such a request had reached MGB, it
would have been referred to SMERSH for action.'

'My department received no such request,' said General G. sharply. 'Or
the execution of this man would have rapidly followed. However, this is
no time for historical researches. The rocket affair was three years
ago. Perhaps the MGB could tell us of the more recent activities of this
man.'

Colonel Nikitin whispered hurriedly with his aide. He turned back to the
table. 'We have very little further information, Comrade General,' he
said defensively. 'We believe that he was involved in some diamond
smuggling affair. That was last year. Between Africa and America. The
case did not concern us. Since then we have no further news of him.
Perhaps there is more recent information on his file.'

General G. nodded. He picked up the receiver of the telephone nearest to
him. This was the so-called _Kommandant Telefon_ of the MGB. All lines
were direct and there was no central switchboard. He dialled a number.
'Central Index? Here General Grubozaboyschikov. The zapiska of
"Bond"--English spy. Emergency.' He listened for the immediate 'At once,
Comrade General,' and put back the receiver. He looked down the table
with authority. 'Comrades, from many points of view this spy sounds an
appropriate target. He appears to be a dangerous enemy of the State. His
liquidation will be of benefit to all departments of our Intelligence
apparat. Is that so?'

The conference grunted.

'Also his loss will be felt by the Secret Service. But will it do more?
Will it seriously wound them? Will it help to destroy this myth about
which we have been speaking? Is this man a hero to his organization and
his country?'

General Vozdvishensky decided that this question was intended for him.
He spoke up. 'The English are not interested in heroes unless they are
footballers or cricketers or jockeys. If a man climbs a mountain or runs
very fast he also is a hero to some people, but not to the masses. The
Queen of England is also a hero, and Churchill. But the English are not
greatly interested in military heroes. This man Bond is unknown to the
public. If he was known, he would still not be a hero. In England,
neither open war nor secret war is a heroic matter. They do not like to
think about war, and after a war the names of their war heroes are
forgotten as quickly as possible. Within the Secret Service, this man
may be a local hero or he may not. It will depend on his appearance and
personal characteristics. Of these I know nothing. He may be fat and
greasy and unpleasant. No one makes a hero out of such a man, however
successful he is.'

Nikitin broke in. 'English spies we have captured speak highly of this
man. He is certainly much admired in his Service. He is said to be a
lone wolf, but a good-looking one.'

The internal office telephone purred softly. General G. lifted the
receiver, listened briefly and said, 'Bring it in.' There was a knock on
the door. The ADC came in carrying a bulky file in cardboard covers. He
crossed the room and placed the file on the desk in front of the General
and walked out, closing the door softly behind him.

The file had a shiny black cover. A thick white stripe ran diagonally
across it from top right-hand corner to bottom left. In the top
left-hand space there were the letters 'S.S.' in white, and under them
'SOVERSHENNO SEKRETNO', the equivalent of 'Top Secret'.
Across the centre was neatly painted in white letters 'JAMES BOND', and
underneath '_Angliski Spion_'.

General G. opened the file and took out a large envelope containing
photographs which he emptied on to the glass surface of the desk. He
picked them up one by one. He looked closely at them, sometimes through
a magnifying glass which he took out of a drawer, and passed them across
the desk to Nikitin who glanced at them and handed them on.

The first was dated 1946. It showed a dark young man sitting at a table
outside a sunlit caf. There was a tall glass beside him on the table
and a soda-water siphon. The right forearm rested on the table and there
was a cigarette between the fingers of the right hand that hung
negligently down from the edge of the table. The legs were crossed in
that attitude that only an Englishman adopts--with the right ankle
resting on the left knee and the left hand grasping the ankle. It was a
careless pose. The man didn't know that he was being photographed from a
point about twenty feet away.

The next was dated 1950. It was a face and shoulders, blurred, but of
the same man. It was a close-up and Bond was looking with careful,
narrowed eyes at something, probably the photographer's face, just above
the lens. A miniature buttonhole camera, guessed General G.

The third was from 1951. Taken from the left flank, quite close, it
showed the same man in a dark suit, without a hat, walking down a wide
empty street. He was passing a shuttered shop whose sign said
'Charcuterie'. He looked as if he was going somewhere urgently. The
clean-cut profile was pointing straight ahead and the crook of the right
elbow suggested that his right hand was in the pocket of his coat.
General G. reflected that it was probably taken from a car. He thought
that the decisive look of the man, and the purposeful slant of his
striding figure, looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for
something bad that was happening further down the street.

The fourth and last photograph was marked _Passe_. 1953. The corner of
the Royal Seal and the letters '...REIGN OFFICE' in the segment of a
circle showed in the bottom right-hand corner. The photograph, which had
been blown up to cabinet size, must have been made at a frontier, or by
the concierge of an hotel when Bond had surrendered his passport.
General G. carefully went over the face with his magnifying glass.

It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely
down the sun-burned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and
level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black,
parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma
fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to
a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel
mouth. The line of the jaw was straight and firm. A section of dark
suit, white shirt and black knitted tie completed the picture.

General G. held the photograph out at arm's length. Decision, authority,
ruthlessness--these qualities he could see. He didn't care what else
went on inside the man. He passed the photograph down the table and
turned to the file, glancing rapidly down each page and flipping
brusquely on to the next.

The photographs came back to him. He kept his place with a finger and
looked briefly up. 'He looks a nasty customer,' he said grimly. 'His
story confirms it. I will read out some extracts. Then we must decide.
It is getting late.' He turned back to the first page and began to
rattle off the points that struck him.

'First name: JAMES. Height: 183 centimetres, weight: 76 kilograms; slim
build; eyes: blue; hair: black; scar down right cheek and on left
shoulder; signs of plastic surgery on back of right hand (see Appendix
"A"); all-round athlete; expert pistol shot, boxer, knife-thrower; does
not use disguises. Languages: French and German. Smokes heavily (NB:
special cigarettes with three gold bands); vices: drink, but not to
excess, and women. Not thought to accept bribes.'

General G. skipped a page and went on:

'This man is invariably armed with a .25 Beretta automatic carried in a
holster under his left arm. Magazine holds eight rounds. Has been known
to carry a knife strapped to his left forearm; has used steel-capped
shoes; knows the basic holds of judo. In general, fights with tenacity
and has a high tolerance of pain (see Appendix "B").'

General G. riffled through more pages giving extracts from agents'
reports from which this data was drawn. He came to the last page before
the Appendices which gave details of the cases on which Bond had been
encountered. He ran his eye to the bottom and read out: 'Conclusion.
This man is a dangerous professional terrorist and spy. He has worked
for the British Secret Service since 1938 and now (see Highsmith file of
December 1950) holds the secret number "007" in that Service. The double
0 numerals signify an agent who has killed and who is privileged to kill
on active service. There are believed to be only two other British
agents with this authority. The fact that this spy was decorated with
the CMG in 1953, an award usually given only on retirement from the
Secret Service, is a measure of his worth. If encountered in the field,
the fact and full details to be reported to headquarters (see SMERSH MGB
and GRU Standing Orders 1951 onwards).'

General G. shut the file and slapped his hand decisively on the cover.
'Well, Comrades. Are we agreed?'

'Yes,' said Colonel Nikitin, loudly.

'Yes,' said General Slavin in a bored voice.

General Vozdvishensky was looking down at his fingernails. He was sick
of murder. He had enjoyed his time in England. 'Yes,' he said. 'I
suppose so.'

General G.'s hand went to the internal office telephone. He spoke to his
ADC. 'Death Warrant,' he said harshly. 'Made out in the name of "James
Bond".' He spelled the names out. 'Description: Angliski Spion. Crime:
Enemy of the State.' He put the receiver back and leant forward in his
chair. 'And now it will be a question of devising an appropriate
konspiratsia. And one that cannot fail!' He smiled grimly. 'We cannot
have another of those Khoklov affairs.'

The door opened and the ADC came in carrying a bright yellow sheet of
paper. He put it in front of General G. and went out. General G. ran his
eyes down the paper and wrote the words _To be killed.
Grubozaboyschikov_ at the head of the large empty space at the bottom.
He passed the paper to the MGB man who read it and wrote _Kill him.
Nikitin_ and handed it across to the head of GRU who wrote _Kill him.
Slavin._ One of the ADCs passed the paper to the plain-clothes man
sitting beside the representative of RUMID. The man put it in front of
General Vozdvishensky and handed him a pen.

General Vozdvishensky read the paper carefully. He raised his eyes
slowly to those of General G. who was watching him and, without looking
down, scribbled the 'Kill him' more or less under the other signatures
and scrawled his name after it. Then he took his hands away from the
paper and got to his feet.

'If that is all, Comrade General?' he pushed his chair back.

General G. was pleased. His instincts about this man had been right. He
would have to put a watch on him and pass on his suspicions to General
Serov. 'One moment, Comrade General,' he said. 'I have something to add
to the warrant'.

The paper was handed up to him. He took out his pen and scratched out
what he had written. He wrote again, speaking the words slowly as he did
so.

_To be killed_ WITH IGNOMINY. _Grubozaboyschikov._

He looked up and smiled pleasantly to the company. 'Thank you, Comrades.
That is all. I shall advise you of the decision of the Praesidium on our
recommendation. Good night.'

                 *        *        *        *        *

When the conference had filed out, General G. rose to his feet and
stretched and gave a loud controlled yawn. He sat down again at his
desk, switched off the wire-recorder and rang for his ADC. The man came
in and stood beside his desk.

General G. handed him the yellow paper. 'Send this over to General Serov
at once. Find out where Kronsteen is and have him fetched by car. I
don't care if he's in bed. He will have to come. Otdyel II will know
where to find him. And I will see Colonel Klebb in ten minutes.'

'Yes, Comrade General.' The man left the room.

General G. picked up the VCh receiver and asked for General Serov. He
spoke quietly for five minutes. At the end he concluded: 'And I am now
about to give the task to Colonel Klebb and the Planner, Kronsteen. We
will discuss the outlines of a suitable konspiratsia and they will give
me detailed proposals tomorrow. Is that in order, Comrade General?'

'Yes,' came the quiet voice of General Serov of the High Praesidium.
'Kill him. But let it be excellently accomplished. The Praesidium will
ratify the decision in the morning.'

The line went dead. The inter-office telephone rang. General G. said
'Yes' into the receiver and put it back.

A moment later the ADC opened the big door and stood in the entrance.
'Comrade Colonel Klebb,' he announced.

A toad-like figure in an olive green uniform which bore the single red
ribbon of the Order of Lenin came into the room and walked with quick
short steps over to the desk.

General G. looked up and waved to the nearest chair at the conference
table. 'Good evening, Comrade.'

The squat face split into a sugary smile. 'Good evening, Comrade
General.'

The Head of Otdyel II, the department of SMERSH in charge of Operations
and Executions, hitched up her skirts and sat down.


                          7. The Wizard of Ice

The two faces of the double clock in the shiny, domed case looked out
across the chessboard like the eyes of some huge sea monster that had
peered over the edge of the table to watch the game.

The two faces of the chess clock showed different times. Kronsteen's
showed twenty minutes to one. The long red pendulum that ticked off the
seconds was moving in its staccato sweep across the bottom half of his
clock's face, while the enemy clock was silent and its pendulum
motionless down the face. But Makharov's clock said five minutes to one.
He had wasted time in the middle of the game and he now had only five
minutes to go. He was in bad 'time-trouble' and unless Kronsteen made
some lunatic mistake, which was unthinkable, he was beaten.

Kronsteen sat motionless and erect, as malevolently inscrutable as a
parrot. His elbows were on the table and his big head rested on clenched
fists that pressed into his cheeks, squashing the pursed lips into a
pout of hauteur and disdain. Under the wide, bulging brow the rather
slanting black eyes looked down with deadly calm on his winning board.
But, behind the mask, the blood was throbbing in the dynamo of his
brain, and a thick worm-like vein in his right temple pulsed at a beat
of over ninety. He had sweated away a pound of weight in the last two
hours and ten minutes, and the spectre of a false move still had one
hand at his throat. But to Makharov, and to the spectators, he was still
'The Wizard of Ice' whose game had been compared to a man eating fish.
First he stripped off the skin, then he picked out the bones, then he
ate the fish. Kronsteen had been Champion of Moscow two years running,
was now in the final for the third time and, if he won this game, would
be a contender for Grand Mastership.

In the pool of silence round the roped-off top table there was no sound
except the loud tripping feet of Kronsteen's clock. The two umpires sat
motionless in their raised chairs. They knew, as did Makharov, that this
was certainly the kill. Kronsteen had introduced a brilliant twist into
the Meran Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined. Makharov had kept up
with him until the 28th move. He had lost time on that move. Perhaps he
had made a mistake there, and perhaps again on the 31st and 33rd moves.
Who could say? It would be a game to be debated all over Russia for
weeks to come.

There came a sigh from the crowded tiers opposite the Championship game.
Kronsteen had slowly removed the right hand from his cheek and had
stretched it across the board. Like the pincers of a pink crab, his
thumb and forefinger had opened, then they had descended. The hand,
holding a piece, moved up and sideways and down. Then the hand was
slowly brought back to the face.

The spectators buzzed and whispered as they saw, on the great wall map,
the 41st move duplicated with a shift of one of the three-foot placards.
R-Kt8. That must be the kill!

Kronsteen reached deliberately over and pressed down the lever at the
bottom of his clock. His red pendulum went dead. His clock showed a
quarter to one. At the same instant, Makharov's pendulum came to life
and started its loud, inexorable beat.

Kronsteen sat back. He placed his hands flat on the table and looked
coldly across at the glistening, lowered face of the man whose guts he
knew, for he too had suffered defeat in his time, would be writhing in
agony like an eel pierced with a spear. Makharov, Champion of Georgia.
Well, tomorrow Comrade Makharov could go back to Georgia and stay there.
At any rate this year he would not be moving with his family up to
Moscow.

A man in plain clothes slipped under the ropes and whispered to one of
the umpires. He handed him a white envelope. The umpire shook his head,
pointing at Makharov's clock, which now said three minutes to one. The
man in plain clothes whispered one short sentence which made the umpire
sullenly bow his head. He pinged a handbell.

'There is an urgent personal message for Comrade Kronsteen,' he
announced into the microphone. 'There will be a three minutes' pause.'

A mutter went round the hall. Even though Makharov now courteously
raised his eyes from the board and sat immobile, gazing up into the
recesses of the high, vaulted ceiling, the spectators knew that the
position of the game was engraved on his brain. A three minutes' pause
simply meant three extra minutes for Makharov.

Kronsteen felt the same stab of annoyance, but his face was
expressionless as the umpire stepped down from his chair and handed him
a plain, unaddressed envelope. Kronsteen ripped it open with his thumb
and extracted the anonymous sheet of paper. It said, in the large
typewritten characters he knew so well, 'YOU ARE REQUIRED THIS
INSTANT'. No signature and no address.

Kronsteen folded the paper and carefully placed it in his inside breast
pocket. Later it would be recovered from him and destroyed. He looked up
at the face of the plain-clothes man standing beside the umpire. The
eyes were watching him impatiently, commandingly. To hell with these
people, thought Kronsteen. He would _not_ resign with only three minutes
to go. It was unthinkable. It was an insult to the People's Sport. But,
as he made a gesture to the umpire that the game could continue, he
trembled inside, and he avoided the eyes of the plain-clothes man who
remained standing, in coiled immobility, inside the ropes.

The bell pinged. 'The game proceeds.'

Makharov slowly bent down his head. The hand of his clock slipped past
the hour and he was still alive.

Kronsteen continued to tremble inside. What he had done was unheard of
in an employee of SMERSH, or of any other State agency. He would
certainly be reported. Gross disobedience. Dereliction of duty. What
might be the consequences? At the best a tongue-lashing from General G.,
and a black mark on his zapiska. At the worst? Kronsteen couldn't
imagine. He didn't like to think. Whatever happened, the sweets of
victory had turned bitter in his mouth.

But now it was the end. With five seconds to go on his clock, Makharov
raised his whipped eyes no higher than the pouting lips of his opponent
and bent his head in the brief, formal bow of surrender. At the double
ping of the umpire's bell, the crowded hall rose to its feet with a
thunder of applause.

Kronsteen stood up and bowed to his opponent, to the umpires, and
finally, deeply, to the spectators. Then, with the plain-clothes man in
his wake, he ducked under the ropes and fought his way coldly and rudely
through the mass of his clamouring admirers towards the main exit.

Outside the Tournament Hall, in the middle of the wide Pushkin Ulitza,
with its engine running, stood the usual anonymous black ZIK saloon.
Kronsteen climbed into the back and shut the door. As the plain-clothes
man jumped on to the running-board and squeezed into the front seat, the
driver crashed his gears and the car tore off down the street.

Kronsteen knew it would be a waste of breath to apologize to the
plain-clothes guard. It would also be contrary to discipline. After all,
he was Head of the Planning Department of SMERSH, with the honorary rank
of full Colonel. And his brain was worth diamonds to the organization.
Perhaps he could argue his way out of the mess. He gazed out of the
window at the dark streets, already wet with the work of the night
cleaning squad, and bent his mind to his defence. Then there came a
straight street at the end of which the moon rode fast between the onion
spires of the Kremlin, and they were there.

When the guard handed Kronsteen over to the ADC, he also handed the ADC
a slip of paper. The ADC glanced at it and looked coldly up at Kronsteen
with half-raised eyebrows. Kronsteen looked calmly back without saying
anything. The ADC shrugged his shoulders and picked up the office
telephone and announced him.

When they went into the big room and Kronsteen had been waved to a chair
and had nodded acknowledgment of the brief pursed smile of Colonel
Klebb, the ADC went up to General G. and handed him the piece of paper.
The General read it and looked hard across at Kronsteen. While the ADC
walked to the door and went out, the General went on looking at
Kronsteen. When the door was shut, General G. opened his mouth and said
softly, 'Well, Comrade?'

Kronsteen was calm. He knew the story that would appeal. He spoke
quietly and with authority. 'To the public, Comrade General, I am a
professional chess player. Tonight I became Champion of Moscow for the
third year in succession. If, with only three minutes to go, I had
received a message that my wife was being murdered outside the door of
the Tournament Hall, I would not have raised a finger to save her. My
public know that. They are as dedicated to the game as myself. Tonight,
if I had resigned the game and had come immediately on receipt of that
message, five thousand people would have known that it could only be on
the orders of such a department as this. There would have been a storm
of gossip. My future goings and comings would have been watched for
clues. It would have been the end of my cover. In the interests of State
Security, I waited three minutes before obeying the order. Even so, my
hurried departure will be the subject of much comment. I shall have to
say that one of my children is gravely ill. I shall have to put a child
into hospital for a week to support the story. I deeply apologize for
the delay in carrying out the order. But the decision was a difficult
one. I did what I thought best in the interests of the Department.'

General G. looked thoughtfully into the dark slanting eyes. The man was
guilty, but the defence was good. He read the paper again as if weighing
up the size of the offence, then he took out his lighter and burned it.
He dropped the last burning corner on to the glass top of his desk and
blew the ashes sideways on to the floor. He said nothing to reveal his
thoughts, but the burning of the evidence was all that mattered to
Kronsteen. Now nothing could go on his zapiska. He was deeply relieved
and grateful. He would bend all his ingenuity to the matter on hand. The
General had performed an act of great clemency. Kronsteen would repay
him with the full coin of his mind.

'Pass over the photographs, Comrade Colonel,' said General G., as if the
brief court-martial had not occurred. 'The matter is as follows...'

So it is another death, thought Kronsteen, as the General talked and he
examined the dark ruthless face that gazed levelly at him from the
blown-up passport photograph. While Kronsteen listened with half his
mind to what the General was saying, he picked out the salient
facts--English spy. Great scandal desired. No Soviet involvement. Expert
killer. Weakness for women (therefore not homosexual, thought
Kronsteen). Drinks (but nothing is said about drugs). Unbribable (who
knows? There is a price for every man). No expense would be spared. All
equipment and personnel available from all intelligence departments.
Success to be achieved within three months. Broad ideas required now.
Details to be worked out later.

General G. fastened his sharp eyes on Colonel Klebb. 'What are your
immediate reactions, Comrade Colonel?'

The square-cut rimless glass of the spectacles flashed in the light of
the chandelier as the woman straightened from her position of bowed
concentration and looked across the desk at the General. The pale moist
lips below the sheen of nicotine-stained fur over the mouth parted and
started moving rapidly up and down as the woman gave her views. To
Kronsteen, watching the face across the table, the square,
expressionless opening and shutting of the lips reminded him of the
box-like jabber of a puppet.

The voice was hoarse and flat without emotion, '...resembles in some
respects the case of Stolzenberg. If you remember, Comrade General, this
also was a matter of destroying a reputation as well as a life. On that
occasion the matter was simple. The spy was also a pervert. If you
recall...'

Kronsteen stopped listening. He knew all these cases. He had handled the
planning of most of them and they were filed away in his memory like so
many chess gambits. Instead, with closed ears, he examined the face of
this dreadful woman and wondered casually how much longer she would last
in her job--how much longer he would have to work with her.

Dreadful? Kronsteen was not interested in human beings--not even in his
own children. Nor did the categories of 'good' and 'bad' have a place in
his vocabulary. To him all people were chess pieces. He was only
interested in their reactions to the movements of other pieces. To
foretell their reactions, which was the greater part of his job, one had
to understand their individual characteristics. Their basic instincts
were immutable. Self-preservation, sex and the instinct of the herd--in
that order. Their temperaments could be sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric
or melancholic. The temperament of an individual would largely decide
the comparative strength of his emotions and his sentiments. Character
would greatly depend on upbringing and, whatever Pavlov and the
Behaviourists might say, to a certain extent on the character of the
parents. And, of course, people's lives and behaviour would be partly
conditioned by physical strengths and weaknesses.

It was with these basic classifications at the back of his mind that
Kronsteen's cold brain considered the woman across the table. It was the
hundredth time he had summed her up, but now they had weeks of joint
work in front of them and it was as well to refresh the memory so that a
sudden intrusion of the human element in their partnership should not
come as a surprise.

Of course Rosa Klebb had a strong will to survive, or she would not have
become one of the most powerful women in the State, and certainly the
most feared. Her rise, Kronsteen remembered, had begun with the Spanish
Civil War. Then, as a double agent inside POUM--that is, working for the
OGPU in Moscow as well as for Communist Intelligence in Spain--she had
been the right hand, and some sort of a mistress, they said, of her
chief, the famous Andreas Nin. She had worked with him from 1935-37.
Then, on the orders of Moscow, he was murdered and, it was rumoured,
murdered by her. Whether this was true or not, from then on she had
progressed slowly but straight up the ladder of power, surviving
setbacks, surviving wars, surviving, because she forged no allegiances
and joined no factions, all the purges, until, in 1953, with the death
of Beria, the bloodstained hands grasped the rung, so few from the very
top, that was Head of the Operations Department of SMERSH.

And, reflected Kronsteen, much of her success was due to the peculiar
nature of her next most important instinct, the sex instinct. For Rosa
Klebb undoubtedly belonged to the rarest of all sexual types. She was a
neuter. Kronsteen was certain of it. The stories of men and, yes, of
women, were too circumstantial to be doubted. She might enjoy the act
physically, but the instrument was of no importance. For her, sex was
nothing more than an itch. And this psychological and physiological
neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and
sentiments and desires. Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in
an individual. It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with.

In her, the herd instinct would also be dead. Her urge for power
demanded that she should be a wolf and not a sheep. She was a lone
operator, but never a lonely one, because the warmth of company was
unnecessary to her. And, of course, temperamentally, she would be a
phlegmatic--imperturbable, tolerant of pain, sluggish. Laziness would be
her besetting vice, thought Kronsteen. She would be difficult to get out
of her warm, hoggish bed in the morning. Her private habits would be
slovenly, even dirty. It would not be pleasant, thought Kronsteen, to
look into the intimate side of her life, when she relaxed, out of
uniform. Kronsteen's pouting lips curled away from the thought and his
mind hastened on, skipping her character, which was certainly cunning
and strong, to her appearance.

Rosa Klebb would be in her late forties, he assumed, placing her by the
date of the Spanish War. She was short, about five foot four, and squat,
and her dumpy arms and short neck, and the calves of the thick legs in
the drab khaki stockings, were very strong for a woman. The devil knows,
thought Kronsteen, what her breasts were like, but the bulge of uniform
that rested on the table-top looked like a badly packed sandbag, and in
general her figure, with its big pear-shaped hips, could only be likened
to a 'cello.

The _tricoteuses_ of the French Revolution must have had faces like
hers, decided Kronsteen, sitting back in his chair and tilting his head
slightly to one side. The thinning orange hair scraped back to the
tight, obscene bun; the shiny yellow-brown eyes that stared so coldly at
General G. through the sharp-edged squares of glass; the wedge of
thickly-powdered, large-pored nose; the wet trap of a mouth, that went
on opening and shutting as if it was operated by wires under the chin.
Those French women, as they sat and knitted and chatted while the
guillotine clanged down, must have had the same pale, thick chicken's
skin that scragged in little folds under the eyes and at the corners of
the mouth and below the jaws, the same big peasant's ears, the same
tight, hard dimpled fists, like knobkerries, that, in the case of the
Russian woman, now lay tightly clenched on the red velvet table-top on
either side of the big bundle of bosom. And their faces must have
conveyed the same impression, concluded Kronsteen, of coldness and
cruelty and strength as this, yes, he had to allow himself the emotive
word, _dreadful_ woman of SMERSH.

'Thank you, Comrade Colonel. Your review of the position is of value.
And now, Comrade Kronsteen, have you anything to add? Please be short.
It is two o'clock and we all have a heavy day before us.' General G.'s
eyes, bloodshot with strain and lack of sleep, stared fixedly across the
desk into the fathomless brown pools below the bulging forehead. There
had been no need to tell this man to be brief. Kronsteen never had much
to say, but each of his words was worth speeches from the rest of the
staff.

Kronsteen had already made up his mind, or he would not have allowed his
thoughts to concentrate for so long on the woman.

He slowly tilted back his head and gazed into the nothingness of the
ceiling. His voice was extremely mild, but it had the authority that
commands close attention.

'Comrade General, it was a Frenchman, in some respects a predecessor of
yours, Fouch, who observed that it is no good killing a man unless you
also destroy his reputation. It will, of course, be easy to kill this
man Bond. Any paid Bulgarian assassin would do it, if properly
instructed. The second part of the operation, the destruction of this
man's character, is more important and more difficult. At this stage it
is only clear to me that the deed must be done away from England, and in
a country over whose press and radio we have influence. If you ask me
how the man is to be got there, I can only say that if the bait is
important enough, and its capture is open to this man alone, he will be
sent to seize it from wherever he may happen to be. To avoid the
appearance of a trap, I would consider giving the bait a touch of
eccentricity, of the unusual. The English pride themselves on their
eccentricity. They treat the eccentric proposition as a challenge. I
would rely partly on this reading of their psychology to have them send
this important operator after the bait.'

Kronsteen paused. He lowered his head so that he was looking just over
General G.'s shoulder.

'I shall proceed to devise such a trap,' he said indifferently. 'For the
present, I can only say that if the bait is successful in attracting its
prey, we are then likely to require an assassin with a perfect command
of the English language.'

Kronsteen's eyes moved to the red velvet table-top in front of him.
Thoughtfully, as if this was the kernel of the problem, he added: 'We
shall also require a reliable and extremely beautiful girl.'


                         8. The Beautiful Lure

Sitting by the window of her one room and looking out at the serene June
evening, at the first pink of the sunset reflected in the windows across
the street, at the distant onion spire of a church that flamed like a
torch above the ragged horizon of Moscow roofs, Corporal of State
Security Tatiana Romanova thought that she was happier than she had ever
been before.

Her happiness was not romantic. It had nothing to do with the rapturous
start to a love affair--those days and weeks before the first tiny
tear-clouds appear on the horizon. It was the quiet, settled happiness
of security, of being able to look forward with confidence to the
future, heightened by the immediate things, a word of praise she had had
that afternoon from Professor Denikin, the smell of a good supper
cooking on the electric stove, her favourite prelude to _Boris Goudonov_
being played by the Moscow State Orchestra on the radio, and, over all,
the beauty of the fact that the long winter and short spring were past
and it was June.

The room was a tiny box in the huge modern apartment building on the
Sadovaya-Chernogriazskay Ulitza that is the women's barracks of the
State Security Departments. Built by prison labour, and finished in
1939, the fine eight-storey building contains two thousand rooms, some,
like hers on the third floor, nothing but square boxes with a telephone,
hot and cold water, a single electric light and a share of the central
bathrooms and lavatories, others, on the two top floors, consisting of
two- and three-room flats with bathrooms. These were for high-ranking
women. Graduation up the building was strictly by rank, and Corporal
Romanova had to rise through Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major and
Lieutenant-Colonel before she would reach the paradise of the eighth and
Colonels' floor.

But heaven knew she was content enough with her present lot. A salary of
1200 roubles a month (thirty per cent more than she could have earned in
any other Ministry), a room to herself; cheap food and clothes from the
'closed shops' on the ground floor of the building; a monthly allocation
of at least two Ministry tickets to the Ballet or the Opera; a full two
weeks' paid holiday a year. And, above all, a steady job with good
prospects in Moscow--not in one of those dreary provincial towns where
nothing happened month after month, and where the arrival of a new film
or the visit of a travelling circus was the only thing to keep one out
of bed in the evening.

Of course, you had to pay for being in the MGB. The uniform put you
apart from the world. People were afraid, which didn't suit the nature
of most girls, and you were confined to the society of other MGB girls
and men, one of whom, when the time came, you would have to marry in
order to stay with the Ministry. And they worked like the devil--eight
to six, five and a half days a week, and only forty minutes off for
lunch in the canteen. But it was a good lunch, a real meal, and you
could do with little supper and save up for the sable coat that would
one day take the place of the well-worn Siberian fox.

At the thought of her supper, Corporal Romanova left the chair by the
window and went to examine the pot of thick soup, with a few shreds of
meat and some powdered mushroom, that was to be her supper. It was
nearly done and smelled delicious. She turned off the electricity and
let the pot simmer while she washed and tidied, as, years before, she
had been taught to do before meals.

While she dried her hands, she examined herself in the big oval
looking-glass over the washstand.

One of her early boy-friends had said she looked like the young Greta
Garbo. What nonsense! And yet tonight she did look rather well. Fine
dark brown silken hair brushed straight back from a tall brow and
falling heavily down almost to the shoulders, there to curl slightly up
at the ends (Garbo had once done her hair like that and Corporal
Romanova admitted to herself that she had copied it), a good, soft pale
skin with an ivory sheen at the cheekbones; wide apart, level eyes of
the deepest blue under straight natural brows (she closed one eye after
the other. Yes, her lashes were certainly long enough!) a straight,
rather imperious nose--and then the mouth. What about the mouth? Was it
too broad? It must look terribly wide when she smiled. She smiled at
herself in the mirror. Yes, it was wide; but then so had Garbo's been.
At least the lips were full and finely etched. There was the hint of a
smile at the corners. No one could say it was a cold mouth! And the oval
of her face. Was that too long? Was her chin a shade too sharp? She
swung her head sideways to see it in profile. The heavy curtain of hair
swung forward and across her right eye so that she had to brush it back.
Well, the chin was pointed, but at least it wasn't sharp. She faced the
mirror again and picked up a brush and started on the long, heavy hair.
Greta Garbo! She was all right, or so many men wouldn't tell her that
she was--let alone the girls who were always coming to her for advice
about their faces. But a film star--a famous one! She made a face at
herself in the glass and went to eat her supper.

In fact Corporal Tatiana Romanova was a very beautiful girl indeed.
Apart from her face, the tall, firm body moved particularly well. She
had been a year in the ballet school in Leningrad and had abandoned
dancing as a career only when she grew an inch over the prescribed limit
of five feet six. The school had taught her to hold herself well and to
walk well. And she looked wonderfully healthy, thanks to her passion for
figure-skating, which she practised all through the year at the Dynamo
ice-stadium and which had already earned her a place on the first Dynamo
women's team. Her arms and breasts were faultless. A purist would have
disapproved of her behind. Its muscles were so hardened with exercise
that it had lost the smooth downward feminine sweep, and now, round at
the back and flat and hard at the sides, it jutted like a man's.

Corporal Romanova was admired far beyond the confines of the English
translation section of the MGB Central Index. Everyone agreed that it
would not be long before one of the senior officers came across her and
peremptorily hauled her out of her modest section to make her his
mistress, or if absolutely necessary, his wife.

The girl poured the thick soup into a small china bowl, decorated with
wolves chasing a galloping sleigh round the rim, broke some black bread
into it and went and sat in her chair by the window and ate it slowly
with a nice shiny spoon she had slipped into her bag not many weeks
before after a gay evening at the Hotel Moskwa.

When she had finished, she washed up and went back to her chair and lit
the first cigarette of the day (no respectable girl in Russia smokes in
public, except in a restaurant, and it would have meant instant
dismissal if she had smoked at her work) and listened impatiently to the
whimpering discords of an orchestra from Turkmenistan. This dreadful
Oriental stuff they were always putting on to please the kulaks of one
of those barbaric outlying states! Why couldn't they play something
_kulturny_? Some of that modern jazz music, or something classical. This
stuff was hideous. Worse, it was old-fashioned.

The telephone rang harshly. She walked over and turned down the radio
and picked up the receiver.

'Corporal Romanova?'

It was the voice of her dear Professor Denikin. But out of office hours
he always called her Tatiana or even Tania. What did this mean?

The girl was wide-eyed and tense. 'Yes, Comrade Professor.'

The voice at the other end sounded strange and cold. 'In fifteen
minutes, at 8.30, you are required for interview by Comrade Colonel
Klebb, of Otdyel II. You will call on her in her apartment, No1875, on
the eighth floor of your building. Is that clear?'

'But, Comrade, why? What is... What is...?'

The odd, strained voice of her beloved Professor cut her short.

'That is all, Comrade Corporal.'

The girl held the receiver away from her face. She stared at it with
frenzied eyes as if she could wring more words out of the circles of
little holes in the black earpiece. 'Hullo! Hullo!' The empty mouthpiece
yawned at her. She realized that her hand and her forearm were aching
with the strength of her grip. She bent slowly forward and put the
receiver down on the cradle.

She stood for a moment, frozen, gazing blindly at the black machine.
Should she call him back? No, that was out of the question. He had
spoken as he had because he knew, and she knew, that every call, in and
out of the building, was listened to or recorded. That was why he had
not wasted a word. This was a State matter. With a message of this sort,
you got rid of it as quickly as you could, in as few words as possible,
and wiped your hands of it. You had got the dreadful card out of your
hand. You had passed the Queen of Spades to someone else. Your hands
were clean again.

The girl put her knuckles up to her open mouth and bit on them, staring
at the telephone. What did they want her for? What had she done?
Desperately she cast her mind back, scrabbling through the days, the
months, the years. Had she made some terrible mistake in her work and
they had just discovered it? Had she made some remark against the State,
some joke that had been reported back? That was always possible. But
which remark? When? If it had been a bad remark, she would have felt a
twinge of guilt or fear at the time. Her conscience was clear. Or was
it? Suddenly she remembered. What about the spoon she had stolen? Was it
that? Government property! She would throw it out of the window, now,
far to one side or the other. But no, it couldn't be that. That was too
small. She shrugged her shoulders resignedly and her hand dropped to her
side. She got up and moved towards the clothes cupboard to get out her
best uniform, and her eyes were misty with the tears of fright and
bewilderment of a child. It could be none of those things, SMERSH didn't
send for one for that sort of thing. It must be something much, much
worse.

The girl glanced through her wet eyes at the cheap watch on her wrist.
Only seven minutes to go! A new panic seized her. She brushed her
forearm across her eyes and grabbed down her parade uniform. On top of
it all, whatever it was, to be late! She tore at the buttons of her
white cotton blouse.

As she dressed and washed her face and brushed her hair, her mind went
on probing at the evil mystery like an inquisitive child poking into a
snake's hole with a stick. From whatever angle she explored the hole,
there came an angry hiss.

Leaving out the nature of her guilt, contact with any tentacle of SMERSH
was unspeakable. The very name of the organization was abhorred and
avoided. SMERSH, 'Smiert Spionam', 'Death to Spies'. It was an obscene
word, a word from the tomb, the very whisper of death, a word never
mentioned even in secret office gossip among friends. Worst of all,
within this horrible organization, Otdyel II, the Department of Torture
and Death, was the central horror.

And the Head of Otdyel II, the woman, Rosa Klebb! Unbelievable things
were whispered about this woman, things that came to Tatiana in her
nightmares, things she forgot again during the day, but that she now
paraded.

It was said that Rosa Klebb would let no torturing take place without
her. There was a blood-spattered smock in her office, and a low
camp-stool, and they said that when she was seen scurrying through the
basement passages dressed in the smock and with the stool in her hand,
the word would go round, and even the workers in SMERSH would hush their
words and bend low over their papers--perhaps even cross their fingers
in their pockets--until she was reported back in her room.

For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up
close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of
the interrogation table. Then she would squat down on the stool and look
into the face and quietly say 'No1' or 'No10' or 'No25' and the
inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she
would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe
in the screams as if they were perfume. And, depending on the eyes, she
would quietly change the torture, and say 'Now No36' or 'Now No64' and
the inquisitors would do something else. As the courage and resistance
seeped out of the eyes, and they began to weaken and beseech, she would
start cooing softly. 'There, there my dove. Talk to me, my pretty one,
and it will stop. It hurts. Ah me, it hurts so, my child. And one is so
tired of the pain. One would like it to stop, and to be able to lie down
in peace, and for it never to begin again. Your mother is here beside
you, only waiting to stop the pain. She has a nice soft cosy bed all
ready for you to sleep on and forget, forget, forget. Speak,' she would
whisper lovingly. 'You have only to speak and you will have peace and no
more pain.' If the eyes still resisted, the cooing would start again.
'But you are foolish, my pretty one. Oh so foolish. This pain is
nothing. Nothing! You don't believe me, my little dove? Well then, your
mother must try a little, but only a very little, of No87.' And the
interrogators would hear and change their instruments and their aim, and
she would squat there and watch the life slowly ebbing from the eyes
until she had to speak loudly into the ear of the person or the words
would not reach the brain.

But it was seldom, so they said, that the person had the will to travel
far along SMERSH's road of pain, let alone to the end, and, when the
soft voice promised peace, it nearly always won, for somehow Rosa Klebb
knew from the eyes the moment when the adult had been broken down into a
child crying for its mother. And she provided the image of the mother
and melted the spirit where the harsh words of a man would have
toughened it.

Then, after yet another suspect had been broken, Rosa Klebb would go
back down the passage with her camp-stool and take off her newly soiled
smock and get back to her work and the word would go round that all was
over and normal activity would come back to the basement.

Tatiana, frozen by her thoughts, looked again at her watch. Four minutes
to go. She ran her hands down her uniform and gazed once more at her
white face in the glass. She turned and said farewell to the dear,
familiar little room. Would she ever see it again?

She walked straight down the long corridor and rang for the lift.

When it came, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and walked
into the lift as if it was the platform of the guillotine.

'Eighth,' she said to the girl operator. She stood facing the doors.
Inside her, remembering a word she had not used since childhood, she
repeated over and over 'My God--My God--My God.'


                          9. A Labour of Love

Outside the anonymous, cream painted door, Tatiana already smelled the
inside of the room. When the voice told her curtly to come in, and she
opened the door, it was the smell that filled her mind while she stood
and stared into the eyes of the woman who sat behind the round table
under the centre light.

It was the smell of the Metro on a hot evening--cheap scent concealing
animal odours. People in Russia soak themselves in scent, whether they
have had a bath or not, but mostly when they have not, and healthy,
clean girls like Tatiana always walk home from the office, unless the
rain or the snow is too bad, so as to avoid the stench in the trains and
the Metro.

Now Tatiana was in a bath of the smell. Her nostrils twitched with
disgust.

It was her disgust and her contempt for a person who could live in the
middle of such a smell that helped her to look down into the yellowish
eyes that stared at her through the square glass panes. Nothing could be
read in them. They were receiving eyes, not giving eyes. They slowly
moved all over her, like camera lenses, taking her in.

Colonel Klebb spoke:

'You are a fine-looking girl, Comrade Corporal. Walk across the room and
back.'

What were these honeyed words? Taut with a new fear, fear of the
notorious personal habits of the woman, Tatiana did as she was told.

'Take your jacket off. Put it down on the chair. Raise your hands above
your head. Higher. Now bend and touch your toes. Upright. Good. Sit
down.' The woman spoke like a doctor. She gestured to the chair across
the table from her. Her staring, probing eyes hooded themselves as they
bent over the file on the table.

It must be my zapiska, thought Tatiana. How interesting to see the
actual instrument that ordered the whole of one's life. How thick it
was--nearly two inches thick. What could be on all those pages? She
looked across at the open folder with wide, fascinated eyes.

Colonel Klebb riffled through the last pages and shut down the cover.
The cover was orange with a diagonal black stripe. What did those
colours signify?

The woman looked up. Somehow Tatiana managed to look bravely back.

'Comrade Corporal Romanova.' It was the voice of authority, of the
senior officer. 'I have good reports of your work. Your record is
excellent, both in your duties and in sport. The State is pleased with
you.'

Tatiana could not believe her ears. She felt faint with reaction. She
blushed to the roots of her hair and then turned pale. She put out a
hand to the table edge. She stammered in a weak voice, 'I am g-grateful,
Comrade Colonel.'

'Because of your excellent services you have been singled out for a most
important assignment. This is a great honour for you. Do you
understand?'

Whatever it was, it was better than what might have been. 'Yes, indeed,
Comrade Colonel.'

'This assignment carries much responsibility. It bears a higher rank. I
congratulate you on your promotion, Comrade Corporal, on completion of
the assignment, to the rank of Captain of State Security.'

This was unheard of for a girl of twenty-four! Tatiana sensed danger.
She stiffened like an animal who sees the steel jaws beneath the meat.
'I am deeply honoured, Comrade Colonel.' She was unable to keep the
wariness out of her voice.

Rosa Klebb grunted non-committally. She knew exactly what the girl must
have thought when she got the summons. The effect of her kindly
reception, her shock of relief at the good news, her reawakening fears,
had been transparent. This was a beautiful, guileless, innocent girl.
Just what the konspiratsia demanded. Now she must be loosened up. 'My
dear,' she said smoothly. 'How remiss of me. This promotion should be
celebrated in a glass of wine. You must not think we senior officers are
inhuman. We will drink together. It will be a good excuse to open a
bottle of French champagne.'

Rosa Klebb got up and went over to the sideboard where her batman had
laid out what she had ordered.

'Try one of these chocolates while I wrestle with the cork. It is never
easy getting out champagne corks. We girls really need a man to help us
with that sort of work, don't we?'

The ghastly prattle went on as she put a spectacular box of chocolates
in front of Tatiana. She went back to the sideboard. 'They're from
Switzerland. The very best. The soft centres are the round ones. The
hard ones are square.'

Tatiana murmured her thanks. She reached out and chose a round one. It
would be easier to swallow. Her mouth was dry with fear of the moment
when she would finally see the trap and feel it snap round her neck. It
must be something dreadful to need to be concealed under all this
play-acting. The bite of chocolate stuck in her mouth like chewing-gum.
Mercifully the glass of champagne was thrust into her hand.

Rosa Klebb stood over her. She lifted her glass merrily. '_Za vashe
zdarovie_, Comrade Tatiana. And my warmest congratulations!'

Tatiana stitched a ghastly smile on her face. She picked up her glass
and gave a little bow. '_Za vashe zdarovie_, Comrade Colonel.' She
drained the glass, as is the custom in Russian drinking, and put it down
in front of her.

Rosa Klebb immediately filled it again, slopping some over the
table-top. 'And now to the health of your new department, Comrade.' She
raised her glass. The sugary smile tightened as she watched the girl's
reactions.

'To SMERSH!'

Numbly, Tatiana got to her feet. She picked up the full glass. 'To
SMERSH.' The word scarcely came out. She choked on the champagne and had
to take two gulps. She sat heavily down.

Rosa Klebb gave her no time for reflection. She sat down opposite and
laid her hands flat on the table. 'And now to business, Comrade.'
Authority was back in the voice. 'There is much work to be done.' She
leant forward. 'Have you ever wished to live abroad, Comrade? In a
foreign country?'

The champagne was having its effect on Tatiana. Probably worse was to
come, but now let it come quickly.

'No, Comrade. I am happy in Moscow.'

'You have never thought what it might be like living in the West--all
those beautiful clothes, the jazz, the modern things?'

'No, Comrade.' She was truthful. She had never thought about it.

'And if the State required you to live in the West?'

'I would obey.'

'Willingly?'

Tatiana shrugged her shoulders with a hint of impatience. 'One does what
one is told.'

The woman paused. There was girlish conspiracy in the next question.

'Are you a virgin, Comrade?'

Oh, my God, thought Tatiana. 'No, Comrade Colonel.'

The wet lips glinted in the light.

'How many men?'

Tatiana coloured to the roots of her hair. Russian girls are reticent
and prudish about sex. In Russia the sexual climate is mid-Victorian.
These questions from the Klebb woman were all the more revolting for
being asked in this cold inquisitorial tone by a State official she had
never met before in her life. Tatiana screwed up her courage. She stared
defensively into the yellow eyes. 'What is the purpose of these intimate
questions please, Comrade Colonel?'

Rosa Klebb straightened. Her voice cut back like a whip. 'Remember
yourself, Comrade. You are not here to ask questions. You forget to whom
you are speaking. Answer me!'

Tatiana shrank back. 'Three men, Comrade Colonel.'

'When? How old were you?' The hard yellow eyes looked across the table
into the hunted blue eyes of the girl and held them and commanded.

Tatiana was on the edge of tears. 'At school. When I was seventeen. Then
at the Institute of Foreign Languages. I was twenty-two. Then last year.
I was twenty-three. It was a friend I met skating.'

'Their names, please, Comrade.' Rosa Klebb picked up a pencil and pulled
a scribbling pad towards her.

Tatiana covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. 'No,' she
cried between her sobs. 'No, never, whatever you do to me. You have no
right.'

'Stop that nonsense.' The voice was a hiss. 'In five minutes I could
have those names from you, or anything else I wish to know. You are
playing a dangerous game with me, Comrade. My patience will not last for
ever.' Rosa Klebb paused. She was being too rough. 'For the moment we
will pass on. Tomorrow you will give me the names. No harm will come to
these men. They will be asked one or two questions about you--simple
technical questions, that is all. Now sit up and dry your tears. We
cannot have any more of this foolishness.'

Rosa Klebb got up and came round the table. She stood looking down at
Tatiana. The voice became oily and smooth. 'Come, come, my dear. You
must trust me. Your little secrets are safe with me. Here, drink some
more champagne and forget this little unpleasantness. We must be
friends. We have work to do together. You must learn, my dear Tania, to
treat me as you would your mother. Here, drink this down.'

Tatiana pulled a handkerchief out of the waistband of her skirt and
dabbed at her eyes. She reached out a trembling hand for the glass of
champagne and sipped at it with bowed head.

'Drink it down, my dear.'

Rosa Klebb stood over the girl like some dreadful mother duck, clucking
encouragement.

Obediently Tatiana emptied the glass. She felt drained of resistance,
tired, willing to do anything to finish with this interview and get away
somewhere and sleep. She thought, so this is what it is like on the
interrogation table, and that is the voice the Klebb uses. Well, it was
working. She was docile now. She would co-operate.

Rosa Klebb sat down. She observed the girl appraisingly from behind the
motherly mask.

'And now, my dear, just one more intimate little question. As between
girls. Do you enjoy making love? Does it give you pleasure? Much
pleasure?'

Tatiana's hands came up again and covered her face. From behind them, in
a muffled voice, she said, 'Well yes, Comrade Colonel. Naturally, when
one is in love...' Her voice trailed away. What else could she say?
What answer did this woman want?

'And supposing, my dear, you were not in love. Then would love-making
with a man still give you pleasure?'

Tatiana shook her head indecisively. She took her hands down from her
face and bowed her head. The hair fell down on either side in a heavy
curtain. She was trying to think, to be helpful, but she couldn't
imagine such a situation. She supposed... 'I suppose it would depend
on the man, Comrade Colonel.'

'That is a sensible answer, my dear.' Rosa Klebb opened a drawer in the
table. She took out a photograph and slipped it across to the girl.
'What about this man, for instance?'

Tatiana drew the photograph cautiously towards her as if it might catch
fire. She looked down warily at the handsome, ruthless face. She tried
to think, to imagine... 'I cannot tell, Comrade Colonel. He is
good-looking. Perhaps if he was gentle...' She pushed the photograph
anxiously away from her.

'No, keep it, my dear. Put it beside your bed and think of this man. You
will learn more about him later in your new work. And now,' the eyes
glittered behind the square panes of glass, 'would you like to know what
your new work is to be? The task for which you have been chosen from all
the girls in Russia?'

'Yes, indeed, Comrade Colonel,' Tatiana looked obediently across at the
intent face that was now pointing at her like a gun-dog.

The wet, rubbery lips parted enticingly. 'It is a simple, delightful
duty you have been chosen for, Comrade Corporal--a real labour of love,
as we say. It is a matter of falling in love. That is all. Nothing else.
Just falling in love with this man.'

'But who is he? I don't even know him.'

Rosa Klebb's mouth revelled. This would give the silly chit of a girl
something to think about.

'He is an English spy.'

'_Bogou moiou!_' Tatiana clapped a hand over her mouth as much to stifle
the use of God's name as from terror. She sat, tense with the shock, and
gazed at Rosa Klebb through wide, slightly drunk eyes.

'Yes,' said Rosa Klebb, pleased with the effect of her words. 'He is an
English spy. Perhaps the most famous of them all. And from now on you
are in love with him. So you had better get used to the idea. And no
silliness, Comrade. We must be serious. This is an important State
matter for which you have been chosen as the instrument. So no nonsense,
please. Now for some practical details.' Rosa Klebb stopped. She said
sharply, 'And take your hand away from your silly face. And stop looking
like a frightened cow. Sit up in your chair and pay attention. Or it
will be the worse for you. Understood?'

'Yes, Comrade Colonel.' Tatiana quickly straightened her back and sat up
with her hands in her lap as if she was back at the Security Officers'
School. Her mind was in a ferment, but this was no time for personal
things. Her whole training told her that this was an operation for the
State. She was now working for her country. Somehow she had come to be
chosen for an important konspiratsia. As an officer in the MGB, she must
do her duty and do it well. She listened carefully and with her whole
professional attention.

'For the moment,' Rosa Klebb put on her official voice, 'I will be
brief. You will hear more later. For the next few weeks you will be most
carefully trained for this operation until you know exactly what to do
in all contingencies. You will be taught certain foreign customs. You
will be equipped with beautiful clothes. You will be instructed in all
the arts of allurement. Then you will be sent to a foreign country,
somewhere in Europe. There you will meet this man. You will seduce him.
In this matter you will have no silly compunctions. Your body belongs to
the State. Since your birth, the State has nourished it. Now your body
must work for the State. Is that understood?'

'Yes, Comrade Colonel.' The logic was inescapable.

'You will accompany this man to England. There, you will no doubt be
questioned. The questioning will be easy. The English do not use harsh
methods. You will give such answers as you can without endangering the
State. We will supply you will certain answers which we would like to be
given. You will probably be sent to Canada. That is where the English
send a certain category of foreign prisoner. You will be rescued and
brought back to Moscow.' Rosa Klebb peered at the girl. She seemed to be
accepting all this without question. 'You see, it is a comparatively
simple matter. Have you any questions at this stage?'

'What will happen to the man, Comrade Colonel?'

'That is a matter of indifference to us. We shall simply use him as a
means to introduce you into England. The object of the operation is to
give false information to the British. We shall, of course, Comrade, be
very glad to have your own impressions of life in England. The reports
of a highly trained and intelligent girl such as yourself will be of
great value to the State.'

'Really, Comrade Colonel!' Tatiana felt important. Suddenly it all
sounded exciting. If only she could do it well. She would assuredly do
her very best. But supposing she could not make the English spy love
her. She looked again at the photograph. She put her head on one side.
It was an attractive face. What were these 'arts of allurement' that the
woman had talked about? What could they be? Perhaps they would help.

Satisfied, Rosa Klebb got up from the table. 'And now we can relax, my
dear. Work is over for the night. I will go and tidy up and we will have
a friendly chat together. I shan't be a moment. Eat up those chocolates
or they will go to waste.' Rosa Klebb made a vague gesture of the hand
and disappeared with a preoccupied look into the next room.

Tatiana sat back in her chair. So that was what it was all about! It
really wasn't so bad after all. What a relief! And what an honour to
have been chosen. How silly to have been so frightened! Naturally the
great leaders of the State would not allow harm to come to an innocent
citizen who worked hard and had no black marks on her zapiska. Suddenly
she felt immensely grateful to the father-figure that was the State, and
proud that she would now have a chance to repay some of her debt. Even
the Klebb woman wasn't really so bad after all.

Tatiana was still cheerfully reviewing the situation when the bedroom
door opened and 'the Klebb woman' appeared in the opening. 'What do you
think of this my dear?' Colonel Klebb opened her dumpy arms and twirled
on her toes like a mannequin. She struck a pose with one arm
outstretched and the other arm crooked at her waist.

Tatiana's mouth had fallen open. She shut it quickly. She searched for
something to say.

Colonel Klebb of SMERSH was wearing a semi-transparent nightgown in
orange _crpe de chine_. It had scallops of the same material round the
low square neckline and scallops at the wrists of the broadly flounced
sleeves. Underneath could be seen a brassire consisting of two large
pink satin roses. Below, she wore old-fashioned knickers of pink satin
with elastic above the knees. One dimpled knee, like a yellowish
coconut, appeared thrust forward between the half open folds of the
nightgown in the classic stance of the modeller. The feet were enclosed
in pink satin slippers with pompoms of ostrich feathers. Rosa Klebb had
taken off her spectacles and her naked face was now thick with mascara
and rouge and lipstick.

She looked like the oldest and ugliest whore in the world.

Tatiana stammered, 'It's very pretty.'

'Isn't it,' twittered the woman. She went over to a broad couch in the
corner of the room. It was covered with a garish piece of peasant
tapestry. At the back, against the wall, were rather grimy satin
cushions in pastel colours.

With a squeak of pleasure, Rosa Klebb threw herself down in the
caricature of a Rcamier pose. She reached up an arm and turned on a
pink shaded table-lamp whose stem was a naked woman in sham Lalique
glass. She patted the couch beside her.

'Turn out the top light, my dear. The switch is by the door. Then come
and sit beside me. We must get to know each other better.'

Tatiana walked to the door. She switched off the top light. Her hand
dropped decisively to the doorknob. She turned it and opened the door
and stepped coolly out into the corridor. Suddenly her nerve broke. She
banged the door shut behind her and ran wildly off down the corridor
with her hands over her ears against the pursuing scream that never
came.


                           10. The Fuse Burns

It was the morning of the next day.

Colonel Klebb sat at her desk in the roomy office that was her
headquarters in the underground basement of SMERSH. It was more an
operations room than an office. One wall was completely papered with a
map of the Western Hemisphere. The opposite wall was covered with the
Eastern Hemisphere. Behind her desk and within reach of her left hand, a
Telekrypton occasionally chattered out a signal _en clair_, duplicating
another machine in the Cipher Department under the tall radio masts on
the roof of the building. From time to time, when Colonel Klebb thought
of it, she tore off the lengthening strip of tape and read through the
signals. This was a formality. If anything important happened, her
telephone would ring. Every agent of SMERSH throughout the world was
controlled from this room, and it was a vigilant and iron control.

The heavy face looked sullen and dissipated. The chicken-skin under the
eyes was pouched and the whites of the eyes were veined with red.

One of the three telephones at her side purred softly. She picked up the
receiver. 'Send him in.'

She turned to Kronsteen who sat, picking his teeth thoughtfully with an
opened paper-clip, in an armchair up against the left-hand wall, under
the toe of Africa.

'Granitsky.'

Kronsteen slowly turned his head and looked at the door.

Red Grant came in and closed the door softly behind him. He walked up to
the desk and stood looking down, obediently, almost hungrily, into the
eyes of his Commanding Officer. Kronsteen thought that he looked like a
powerful mastiff, waiting to be fed.

Rosa Klebb surveyed him coldly. 'Are you fit and ready for work?'

'Yes, Comrade Colonel.'

'Let's have a look at you. Take off your clothes.'

Red Grant showed no surprise. He took off his coat and, after looking
around for somewhere to put it, dropped it on the floor. Then,
unselfconsciously, he took off the rest of his clothes and kicked off
his shoes. The great red-brown body with its golden hair lit up the drab
room. Grant stood relaxed, his hands held loosely at his sides and one
knee bent slightly forward, as if he was posing for an art class.

Rosa Klebb got to her feet and came round the desk. She studied the body
minutely, prodding here, feeling there, as if she was buying a horse.
She went behind the man and continued her minute inspection. Before she
came back in front of him, Kronsteen saw her slip something out of her
jacket pocket and fit it into her hand. There was a glint of metal.

The woman came round and stood close up to the man's gleaming stomach,
her right arm behind her back. She held his eyes in hers.

Suddenly, with terrific speed and the whole weight of her shoulder
behind the blow, she whipped her right fist, loaded with a heavy brass
knuckle-duster, round and exactly into the solar plexus of the man.

_Whuck!_

Grant let out a snort of surprise and pain. His knees gave slightly, and
then straightened. For a flash the eyes closed tight with agony. Then
they opened again and glared redly down into the cold yellow probing
eyes behind the square glasses. Apart from an angry flush on the skin
just below the breast bone, Grant showed no ill effects from a blow that
would have sent any normal man writhing to the ground.

Rosa Klebb smiled grimly. She slipped the knuckle-duster back in her
pocket and walked to her desk and sat down. She looked across at
Kronsteen with a hint of pride. 'At least he is fit enough,' she said.

Kronsteen grunted.

The naked man grinned with sly satisfaction. He brought up one hand and
rubbed his stomach.

Rosa Klebb sat back in her chair and watched him thoughtfully. Finally
she said, 'Comrade Granitsky, there is work for you. An important task.
More important than anything you have attempted. It is a task that will
earn you a medal'--Grant's eyes gleamed--'for the target is a difficult
and dangerous one. You will be in a foreign country, and alone. Is that
clear?'

'Yes, Comrade Colonel.' Grant was excited. Here was a chance for that
big step forward. What would the medal be? The Order of Lenin? He
listened carefully.

'The target is an English spy. You would like to kill an English spy?'

'Very much indeed, Comrade Colonel.' Grant's enthusiasm was genuine. He
asked nothing better than to kill an Englishman. He had accounts to
settle with the bastards.

'You will need many weeks of training and preparation. On this
assignment you will be operating in the guise of an English agent. Your
manners and appearance are uncouth. You will have to learn at least some
of the tricks,' the voice sneered, 'of a chentleman. You will be placed
in the hands of a certain Englishman we have here. A former chentleman
of the Foreign Office in London. It will be his task to make you pass as
some sort of an English spy. They employ many different kinds of men. It
should not be difficult. And you will have to learn many other things.
The operation will be at the end of August, but you will start your
training at once. There is much to be done. Put on your clothes and
report back to the ADC. Understood?'

'Yes, Comrade Colonel.' Grant knew not to ask any questions. He
scrambled into his clothes, indifferent to the woman's eyes on him, and
walked over to the door, buttoning his jacket. He turned. 'Thank you,
Comrade Colonel.'

Rosa Klebb was writing up her note of the interview. She didn't answer
or look up and Grant went out and closed the door softly behind him.

The woman threw down her pen and sat back.

'And now, Comrade Kronsteen. Are there any points to discuss before we
put the full machinery in motion? I should mention that the Praesidium
has approved the target and ratified the death warrant. I have reported
the broad lines of your plan to Comrade General Grubozaboyschikov. He is
in agreement. The detailed execution has been left entirely in my hands.
The combined planning and operations staff has been selected and is
waiting to begin work. Have you any last minute thoughts, Comrade?'

Kronsteen sat looking up at the ceiling, the tips of his fingers joined
in front of him. He was indifferent to the condescension in the woman's
voice. The pulse of concentration beat in his temples.

'This man Granitsky. He is reliable? You can trust him in a foreign
country? He will not go private?'

'He has been tested for nearly ten years. He has had many opportunities
to escape. He has been watched for signs of itching feet. There has
never been a breath of suspicion. The man is in the position of a drug
addict. He would no more abandon the Soviet Union than a drugger would
abandon the source of his cocaine. He is my top executioner. There is no
one better.'

'And this girl, Romanova. She was satisfactory?'

The woman said grudgingly, 'She is very beautiful. She will serve our
purpose. She is not a virgin, but she is prudish and sexually
unawakened. She will receive instruction. Her English is excellent. I
have given her a certain version of her task and its object. She is
co-operative. If she should show signs of faltering, I have the
addresses of certain relatives, including children. I shall also have
the names of her previous lovers. If necessary, it would be explained to
her that these people will be hostages until her task is completed. She
has an affectionate nature. Such a hint would be sufficient. But I do
not anticipate any trouble from her.'

'Romanova. That is the name of a _buivshi_--of one of the former people.
It seems odd to be using a Romanov for such a delicate task.'

'Her grandparents were distantly related to the Imperial Family. But she
does not frequent buivshi circles. Anyway, all our grandparents were
former people. There is nothing one can do about it.'

'Our grandparents were not called Romanov,' said Kronsteen dryly.
'However, so long as you are satisfied.' He reflected a moment. 'And
this man Bond. Have we discovered his whereabouts?'

'Yes. The MGB English network reports him in London. During the day, he
goes to his headquarters. At night he sleeps in his flat in a district
of London called Chelsea.'

'That is good. Let us hope he stays there for the next few weeks. That
will mean that he is not engaged on some operation. He will be available
to go after our bait when they get the scent. Meanwhile,' Kronsteen's
dark, pensive eyes continued to examine a particular point on the
ceiling, 'I have been studying the suitability of centres abroad. I have
decided on Istanbul for the first contact. We have a good apparat there.
The Secret Service has only a small station. The head of the station is
reported to be a good man. He will be liquidated. The centre is
conveniently placed for us, with short lines of communication with
Bulgaria and the Black Sea. It is relatively far from London. I am
working out details of the point of assassination and the means of
getting this Bond there, after he has contacted the girl. It will be
either in France or very near it. We have excellent leverage on the
French press. They will make the most of this kind of story, with its
sensational disclosures of sex and espionage. It also remains to be
decided when Granitsky shall enter the picture. These are minor details.
We must choose the cameramen and the other operatives and move them
quietly into Istanbul. There must be no crowding of our apparat there,
no congestion, no unusual activity. We will warn all departments that
wireless traffic with Turkey is to be kept absolutely normal before and
during the operation. We don't want the British interceptors smelling a
rat. The Cipher Department has agreed that there is no Security
objection to handing over the outer case of a Spektor machine. That will
be attractive. The machine will go to the Special Devices section. They
will handle its preparation.'

Kronsteen stopped talking. His gaze slowly came down from the ceiling.
He rose thoughtfully to his feet. He looked across and into the
watchful, intent eyes of the woman.

'I can think of nothing else at the moment, Comrade,' he said. 'Many
details will come up and have to be settled from day to day. But I think
the operation can safely begin.'

'I agree, Comrade. The matter can now go forward. I will issue the
necessary directives.' The harsh, authoritative voice unbent. 'I am
grateful for your co-operation.'

Kronsteen lowered his head one inch in acknowledgment. He turned and
walked softly out of the room.

In the silence, the Telekrypton gave a warning ping and started up its
mechanical chatter. Rosa Klebb stirred in her chair and reached for one
of the telephones. She dialled a number.

'Operations Room,' said a man's voice.

Rosa Klebb's pale eyes, gazing out across the room, lit on the pink
shape on the wall-map that was England. Her wet lips parted.

'Colonel Klebb speaking. The konspiratsia against the English spy Bond.
The operation will commence forthwith.'




                                PART TWO
                             The Execution


                           11. The Soft Life

The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were
slowly strangling him. He was a man of war and when, for a long period,
there was no war, his spirit went into a decline.

In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year.
And peace was killing him.

At 7.30 on the morning of Thursday, August 12th, Bond awoke in his
comfortable flat in the plane-tree'd square off the King's Road and was
disgusted to find that he was thoroughly bored with the prospect of the
day ahead. Just as, in at least one religion, _accidie_ is the first of
the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible
circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly
condemned.

Bond reached out and gave two rings on the bell to show May, his
treasured Scottish housekeeper, that he was ready for breakfast. Then he
abruptly flung the single sheet off his naked body and swung his feet to
the floor.

There was only one way to deal with boredom--kick oneself out of it.
Bond went down on his hands and did twenty slow press-ups, lingering
over each one so that his muscles had no rest. When his arms could stand
the pain no longer, he rolled over on his back and, with his hands at
his sides, did the straight leg-lift until his stomach muscles screamed.
He got to his feet and, after touching his toes twenty times, went over
to arm and chest exercises combined with deep breathing until he was
dizzy. Panting with the exertion, he went into the big white-tiled
bathroom and stood in the glass shower cabinet under very hot and then
cold hissing water for five minutes.

At last, after shaving and putting on a sleeveless dark blue Sea Island
cotton shirt and navy blue tropical worsted trousers, he slipped his
bare feet into black leather sandals and went through the bedroom into
the long big-windowed sitting-room with the satisfaction of having
sweated his boredom, at any rate for the time being, out of his body.

May, an elderly Scotswoman with iron grey hair and a handsome closed
face, came in with the tray and put it on the table in the bay window
together with _The Times_, the only paper Bond ever read.

Bond wished her good morning and sat down to breakfast.

'Good morning-s.' (To Bond, one of May's endearing qualities was that
she would call no man 'sir' except--Bond had teased her about it years
before--English kings and Winston Churchill. As a mark of exceptional
regard, she accorded Bond an occasional hint of an 's' at the end of a
word.)

She stood by the table while Bond folded his paper to the centre news
page.

'Yon man was here again last night about the Televeesion.'

'What man was that?' Bond looked along the headlines.

'Yon man that's always coming. Six times he's been here pestering me
since June. After what I said to him the first time about the sinful
thing, you'd think he'd give up trying to sell us one. By hire-purchase,
too, if you please!'

'Persistent chaps these salesmen.' Bond put down his paper and reached
for the coffee pot.

'I gave him a right piece of my mind last night. Disturbing folk at
their supper. Asked him if he'd got any papers--anything to show who he
was.'

'I expect that fixed him.' Bond filled his large coffee cup to the brim
with black coffee.

'Not a bit of it. Flourished his union card. Said he had every right to
earn his living. Electricians Union it was too. They're the Communist
one, aren't they-s?'

'Yes, that's right,' said Bond vaguely. His mind sharpened. Was it
possible _They_ could be keeping an eye on him? He took a sip of the
coffee and put the cup down. 'Exactly what did this man say, May?' he
asked, keeping his voice indifferent, but looking up at her.

'He said he's selling Televeesion sets on commission in his spare time.
And are we sure we don't want one. He says we're one of the only folk in
the square that haven't got one. Sees there isn't one of those aerial
things on the house, I dare say. He's always asking if you're at home so
that he can have a word with you about it. Fancy his cheek! I'm
surprised he hasn't thought to catch you coming in or going out. He's
always asking if I'm expecting you home. Naturally I don't tell him
anything about your movements. Respectable, quiet-spoken body, if he
wasn't so persistent.'

Could be, thought Bond. There are many ways of checking up whether the
owner's at home or away. A servant's appearance and reactions--a glance
through the open door. 'Well, you're wasting your time because he's
away,' would be the obvious reception if the flat was empty. Should he
tell the Security Section? Bond shrugged his shoulders irritably. What
the hell. There was probably nothing in it. Why would _They_ be
interested in him? And, if there was something in it, Security was quite
capable of making him change his flat.

'I expect you've frightened him away this time.' Bond smiled up at May.
'I should think you've heard the last of him.'

'Yes-s,' said May doubtfully. At any rate she had carried out her orders
to tell him if she saw anyone 'hanging about the place'. She bustled off
with a whisper of the old-fashioned black uniform she persisted in
wearing even in the heat of August.

Bond went back to his breakfast. Normally it was little straws in the
wind like this that would start a persistent intuitive ticking in his
mind, and, on other days, he would not have been happy until he had
solved the problem of the man from the Communist union who kept on
coming to the house. Now, from months of idleness and disuse, the sword
was rusty in the scabbard and Bond's mental guard was down.

Breakfast was Bond's favourite meal of the day. When he was stationed in
London it was always the same. It consisted of very strong coffee, from
De Bry in New Oxford Street, brewed in an American Chemex, of which he
drank two large cups, black and without sugar. The single egg, in the
dark blue egg cup with a gold ring round the top, was boiled for three
and a third minutes.

It was a very fresh, speckled brown egg from French Marans hens owned by
some friend of May in the country. (Bond disliked white eggs and,
faddish as he was in many small things, it amused him to maintain that
there was such a thing as the perfect boiled egg.) Then there were two
thick slices of whole-wheat toast, a large pat of deep yellow Jersey
butter and three squat glass jars containing Tiptree 'Little Scarlet'
strawberry jam; Cooper's Vintage Oxford marmalade and Norwegian Heather
Honey from Fortnum's. The coffee pot and the silver on the tray were
Queen Anne, and the china was Minton, of the same dark blue and gold and
white as the egg-cup.

That morning, while Bond finished his breakfast with honey, he
pinpointed the immediate cause of his lethargy and of his low spirits.
To begin with. Tiffany Case, his love for so many happy months, had left
him and, after final painful weeks during which she had withdrawn to a
hotel, had sailed for America at the end of July. He missed her badly
and his mind still sheered away from the thought of her. And it was
August, and London was hot and stale. He was due for leave, but he had
not the energy or the desire to go off alone, or to try and find some
temporary replacement for Tiffany to go with him. So he had stayed on in
the half-empty headquarters of the Secret Service, grinding away at the
old routines, snapping at his secretary and rasping his colleagues.

Even M had finally got impatient with the surly caged tiger on the floor
below, and, on Monday of this particular week, he had sent Bond a sharp
note appointing him to a Committee of Inquiry under Paymaster Captain
Troop. The note said that it was time Bond, as a senior officer in the
Service, took a hand in major administrative problems. Anyway, there was
no one else available. Headquarters were short-handed and the 00 Section
was quiescent. Bond would pray report that afternoon, at 2.30, to Room
412.

It was Troop, reflected Bond, as he lit his first cigarette of the day,
who was the most nagging and immediate cause of his discontent.

In every large business, there is one man who is the office tyrant and
bugbear and who is cordially disliked by all the staff. This individual
performs an unconsciously important role by acting as a kind of
lightning conductor for the usual office hates and fears. In fact, he
reduces their disruptive influence by providing them with a common
target. The man is usually the general manager, or the Head of Admin. He
is that indispensable man who is a watchdog over the small things--petty
cash, heat and light, towels and soap in the lavatories, stationery
supplies, the canteen, the holiday rota, the punctuality of the staff.
He is the one man who has real impact on the office comforts and
amenities and whose authority extends into the privacy and personal
habits of the men and women of the organization. To want such a job, and
to have the necessary qualifications for it, the man must have exactly
those qualities which irritate and abrade. He must be parsimonious,
observant, prying and meticulous. And he must be a strong disciplinarian
and indifferent to opinion. He must be a little dictator. In all
well-run businesses there is such a man. In the Secret Service, it is
Paymaster Captain Troop, RN Retired, Head of Admin., whose job it is, in
his own words, 'to keep the place shipshape and Bristol fashion'.

It was inevitable that Captain Troop's duties would bring him into
conflict with most of the organization, but it was particularly
unfortunate that M could think of no one but Troop to spare as Chairman
for this particular Committee.

For this was yet one more of those Committees of Inquiry dealing with
the delicate intricacies of the Burgess and Maclean case, and with the
lessons that could be learned from it. M had dreamed it up, five years
after he had closed his own particular file on that case, purely as a
sop to the Privy Council Inquiry into the Security Services which the
Prime Minister had ordered in 1955.

At once Bond had got into a hopeless wrangle with Troop over the
employment of 'intellectuals' in the Secret Service.

Perversely, and knowing it would annoy, Bond had put forward the
proposition that, if MI5 and the Secret Service were to concern
themselves seriously with the atom age 'intellectual spy', they must
employ a certain number of intellectuals to counter them. 'Retired
officers of the Indian Army,' Bond had pronounced, 'can't possibly
understand the thought processes of a Burgess or a Maclean. They won't
even know such people exist--let alone be in a position to frequent
their cliques and get to know their friends and their secrets. Once
Burgess and Maclean went to Russia, the only way to make contact with
them again and, perhaps, when they got tired of Russia, turn them into
double agents against the Russians, would have been to send their
closest friends to Moscow and Prague and Budapest with orders to wait
until one of these chaps crept out of the masonry and made contact. And
one of them, probably Burgess, would have been driven to make contact by
his loneliness and by his ache to tell his story to someone.[1] But they
certainly wouldn't take the risk of revealing themselves to some man
with a trench-coat and a cavalry moustache and a beta minus mind.'

'Oh really,' Troop had said with icy calm. 'So you suggest we should
staff the organization with long-haired perverts. That's quite an
original notion. I thought we were all agreed that homosexuals were
about the worst security risk there is. I can't see the Americans
handing over many atom secrets to a lot of pansies soaked in scent.'

'All intellectuals aren't homosexual. And many of them are bald. I'm
just saying that...' and so the argument had gone on intermittently
through the hearings of the past three days, and the other committee
members had ranged themselves more or less with Troop. Now, today, they
had to draw up their recommendations and Bond was wondering whether to
take the unpopular step of entering a minority report.

How seriously did he feel about the whole question. Bond wondered as, at
nine o'clock, he walked out of his flat and down the steps to his car?
Was he just being petty and obstinate? Had he constituted himself into a
one-man opposition only to give his teeth something to bite into? Was he
so bored that he could find nothing better to do than make a nuisance of
himself inside his own organization? Bond couldn't make up his mind. He
felt restless and indecisive, and, behind it all, there was a nagging
disquiet he couldn't put his finger on.

As he pressed the self-starter and the twin exhausts of the Bentley woke
to their fluttering growl, a curious bastard quotation slipped from
nowhere into Bond's mind.

'Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.'

-----

[1] Written in March 1956. I. F.


                          12. A Piece of Cake

As it turned out, Bond never had to make a decision on the Committee's
final report.

He had complimented his secretary on a new summer frock, and was half
way through the file of signals that had come in during the night, when
the red telephone that could only mean M or his Chief-of-Staff gave its
soft, peremptory burr.

Bond picked up the receiver. '007.'

'Can you come up?' It was the Chief-of-Staff.

'M?'

'Yes. And it looks like a long session. I've told Troop you won't be
able to make the Committee.'

'Any idea what it's about?'

The Chief-of-Staff chuckled. 'Well, I have as a matter of fact. But
you'd better hear about it from him. It'll make you sit up. There's
quite a swerve on this one.'

As Bond put on his coat and went out into the corridor, banging the door
behind him, he had a feeling of certainty that the starter's gun had
fired and that the dog days had come to an end. Even the ride up to the
top floor in the lift and the walk down the long quiet corridor to the
door of M's staff office seemed to be charged with the significance of
all those other occasions when the bell of the red telephone had been
the signal that had fired him, like a loaded projectile, across the
world towards some distant target of M's choosing. And the eyes of Miss
Moneypenny, M's private secretary, had that old look of excitement and
secret knowledge as she smiled up at him and pressed the switch on the
intercom.

'007's here, sir.'

'Send him in,' said the metallic voice, and the red light of privacy
went on above the door.

Bond went through the door and closed it softly behind him. The room was
cool, or perhaps it was the Venetian blinds that gave an impression of
coolness. They threw bars of light and shadow across the dark green
carpet up to the edge of the big central desk. There the sunshine
stopped so that the quiet figure behind the desk sat in a pool of
suffused greenish shade. In the ceiling directly above the desk, a big
twin-bladed tropical fan, a recent addition to M's room, slowly
revolved, shifting the thundery August air that, even high up above the
Regent's Park, was heavy and stale after a week of heatwave.

M gestured to the chair opposite him across the red leather desk. Bond
sat down and looked across into the tranquil, lined sailor's face that
he loved, honoured and obeyed.

'Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, James?' M never asked his
staff personal questions and Bond couldn't imagine what was coming.

'No, sir.'

M picked his pipe out of the big copper ashtray and began to fill it,
thoughtfully watching his fingers at work with the tobacco. He said
harshly: 'You needn't answer, but it's to do with your, er, friend, Miss
Case. As you know, I don't generally interest myself in these matters,
but I did hear that you had been, er, seeing a lot of each other since
that diamond business. Even some idea you might be going to get
married.' M glanced up at Bond and then down again. He put the loaded
pipe into his mouth and set a match to it. Out of the corner of his
mouth, as he drew at the jigging flame, he said: 'Care to tell me
anything about it?'

Now what? wondered Bond. Damn these office gossips. He said gruffly,
'Well, sir, we did get on well. And there was some idea we might get
married. But then she met some chap in the American Embassy. On the
Military Attach's staff. Marine Corps major. And I gather she's going
to marry him. They've both gone back to the States, as a matter of fact.
Probably better that way. Mixed marriages aren't often a success. I
gather he's a nice enough fellow. Probably suit her better than living
in London. She couldn't really settle down here. Fine girl, but she's a
bit neurotic. We had too many rows. Probably my fault. Anyway it's over
now.'

M gave one of the brief smiles that lit up his eyes more than his mouth.
'I'm sorry if it went wrong, James,' he said. There was no sympathy in
M's voice. He disapproved of Bond's 'womanizing', as he called it to
himself, while recognizing that his prejudice was the relic of a
Victorian upbringing. But, as Bond's chief, the last thing he wanted was
for Bond to be permanently tied to one woman's skirts. 'Perhaps it's for
the best. Doesn't do to get mixed up with neurotic women in this
business. They hang on your gun-arm, if you know what I mean. Forgive me
for asking about it. Had to know the answer before I told you what's
come up. It's a pretty odd business. Be difficult to get you involved if
you were on the edge of marrying or anything of that sort.'

Bond shook his head, waiting for the story.

'All right then,' said M. There was a note of relief in his voice. He
leant back in his chair and gave several quick pulls on his pipe to get
it going. 'This is what's happened. Yesterday there was a long signal in
from Istanbul. Seems on Tuesday the Head of Station T got an anonymous
typewritten message which told him to take a round ticket on the 8 p.m.
ferry steamer from the Galata Bridge to the mouth of the Bosphorus and
back. Nothing else. Head of T's an adventurous sort of chap, and of
course he took the steamer. He stood up for'ard by the rail and waited.
After about a quarter of an hour a girl came and stood beside him, a
Russian girl, very good-looking, he says, and after they'd talked a bit
about the view and so on, she suddenly switched and in the same sort of
conversational voice she told him an extraordinary story.'

M paused to put another match to his pipe. Bond interjected, 'Who is
Head of T, sir? I've never worked in Turkey.'

'Man called Kerim, Darko Kerim. Turkish father and English mother.
Remarkable fellow. Been Head of T since before the war. One of the best
men we've got anywhere. Does a wonderful job. Loves it. Very intelligent
and he knows all that part of the world like the back of his hand.' M
dismissed Kerim with a sideways jerk of his pipe. 'Anyway, the girl's
story was that she was a Corporal in the MGB. Had been in the show since
she left school and had just got transferred to the Istanbul centre as a
cipher officer. She'd engineered the transfer because she wanted to get
out of Russia and come over.'

'That's good,' said Bond. 'Might be useful to have one of their cipher
girls. But why does she want to come over?'

M looked across the table at Bond. 'Because she's in love.' He paused
and added mildly, 'She says she's in love with you.'

'In love with _me_?'

'Yes, with you. That's what she says. Her name's Tatiana Romanova. Ever
heard of her?'

'Good God, no! I mean, no, sir.' M smiled at the mixture of expressions
on Bond's face. 'But what the hell does she mean? Has she ever met me?
How does she know I exist?'

'Well,' said M. 'The whole thing sounds absolutely ridiculous. But it's
so crazy that it just might be true. This girl is twenty-four. Ever
since she joined the MGB she's been working in their Central Index, the
same as our Records. And she's been working in the English section of
it. She's been there six years. One of the files she had to deal with
was yours.'

'I'd like to see that one,' commented Bond.

'Her story is that she first took a fancy to the photographs they've got
of you. Admired your looks and so on.' M's mouth turned downwards at the
corners as if he had just sucked at a lemon. 'She read up all your
cases. Decided that you were the hell of a fellow.'

Bond looked down his nose. M's face was non-committal.

'She said you particularly appealed to her because you reminded her of
the hero of a book by some Russian fellow called Lermontov. Apparently
it was her favourite book. This hero chap liked gambling and spent his
whole time getting in and out of scraps. Anyway, you reminded her of
him. She says she came to think of nothing else, and one day the idea
came to her that if only she could transfer to one of their foreign
centres she could get in touch with you and you would come and rescue
her.'

'I've never heard such a crazy story, sir. Surely Head of T didn't
swallow it.'

'Now wait a moment,' M's voice was testy. 'Just don't be in too much of
a hurry simply because something's turned up you've never come across
before. Suppose you happened to be a film star instead of being in this
particular trade. You'd get daft letters from girls all over the world
stuffed with Heaven knows what sort of rot about not being able to live
without you and so on. Here's a silly girl doing a secretary's job in
Moscow. Probably the whole department is staffed by women, like our
Records. Not a man in the room to look at, and here she is, faced with
your, er, dashing features on a file that's constantly coming up for
review. And she gets what I believe they call a "crush" on these
pictures, just as secretaries all over the world get crushes on these
dreadful faces in the magazines.' M waved his pipe sideways to indicate
his ignorance of these grisly female habits. 'The Lord knows I don't
know much about these things, but you must admit that they happen.'

Bond smiled at the appeal for help. 'Well, as a matter of fact, sir, I'm
beginning to see there is some sense in it. There's no reason why a
Russian girl shouldn't be just as silly as an English one. But she must
have got guts to do what she did. Does Head of T say if she realized the
consequences if she was found out?'

'He said she was frightened out of her wits,' said M. 'Spent the whole
time on the boat looking round to see if anybody was watching her. But
it seems they were the usual peasants and commuters that take these
boats, and as it was a late boat there weren't many passengers anyway.
But wait a minute. You haven't heard half the story.' M took a long pull
at his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke up towards the slowly turning fan
above his head. Bond watched the smoke get caught up in the blades and
whirled into nothingness. 'She told Kerim that this passion for you
gradually developed into a phobia. She got to hate the sight of Russian
men. In time this turned into a dislike of the rgime and particularly
of the work she was doing for them and, so to speak, against you. So she
applied for a transfer abroad, and since her languages were very
good--English and French--in due course she was offered Istanbul if she
would join the Cipher Department, which meant a cut in pay. To cut a
long story short, after six months' training, she got to Istanbul about
three weeks ago. Then she sniffed about and soon got hold of the name of
our man, Kerim. He's been there so long that everybody in Turkey knows
what he does by now. He doesn't mind, and it takes people's eyes off the
special men we send in from time to time. There's no harm in having a
front man in some of these places. Quite a lot of customers would come
to us if they knew where to go and who to talk to.'

Bond commented: 'The public agent often does better than the man who has
to spend a lot of time and energy keeping under cover.'

'So she sent Kerim the note. Now she wants to know if he can help her.'
M paused and sucked thoughtfully at his pipe. 'Of course Kerim's first
reactions were exactly the same as yours, and he fished around looking
for a trap. But he simply couldn't see what the Russians could gain from
sending this girl over to us. All this time the steamer was getting
further and further up the Bosphorus and soon it would be turning to
come back to Istanbul. And the girl got more and more desperate as Kerim
went on trying to break down her story. Then,' M's eyes glittered softly
across at Bond, 'came the clincher.'

That glitter in M's eyes, thought Bond. How well he knew those moments
when M's cold grey eyes betrayed their excitement and their greed.

'She had a last card to play. And she knew it was the ace of trumps. If
she could come over to us, she would bring her cipher machine with her.
It's the brand new Spektor machine. The thing we'd give our eyes to
have.'

'God,' said Bond softly, his mind boggling at the immensity of the
prize. The Spektor! The machine that would allow them to decipher the
Top Secret traffic of all. To have that, even if its loss was
immediately discovered and the settings changed, or the machine taken
out of service in Russian embassies and spy centres all over the world,
would be a priceless victory. Bond didn't know much about cryptography,
and, for security's sake, in case he was ever captured, wished to know
as little as possible about its secrets, but at least he knew that, in
the Russian Secret Service, loss of the Spektor would be counted a major
disaster.

Bond was sold. At once he accepted all M's faith in the girl's story,
however crazy it might be. For a Russian to bring them this gift, and
take the appalling risk of bringing it, could only mean an act of
desperation--of desperate infatuation if you liked. Whether the girl's
story was true or not, the stakes were too high to turn down the gamble.

'You see, 007?' said M softly. It was not difficult to read Bond's mind
from the excitement in his eyes. 'You see what I mean?'

Bond hedged. 'But did she say how she could do it?'

'Not exactly. But Kerim says she was absolutely definite. Some business
about night duty. Apparently she's on duty alone certain nights of the
week and sleeps on a camp bed in the office. She seemed to have no
doubts about it, although she realized that she would be shot out of
hand if anyone even dreamed of her plan. She was even worried about
Kerim reporting all this back to me. Made him promise he would encode
the signal himself and send it on a one-time-only pad and keep no copy.
Naturally he did as she asked. Directly she mentioned the Spektor, Kerim
knew he might be on to the most important coup that's come our way since
the war.'

'What happened then, sir?'

'The steamer was coming up to a place called Ortakoy. She said she was
going to get off there. Kerim promised to get a signal off that night.
She refused to make any arrangements for staying in touch. Just said
that she would keep her end of the bargain if we would keep ours. She
said goodnight and mixed in the crowd going down the gangplank and that
was the last Kerim saw of her.'

M suddenly leant forward in his chair and looked hard at Bond. 'But of
course he couldn't _guarantee_ that we would make the bargain with her.'

Bond said nothing. He thought he could guess what was coming.

'This girl will only do these things on one condition.' M's eyes
narrowed until they were fierce, significant slits. 'That you go out to
Istanbul and bring her and the machine back to England.'

Bond shrugged his shoulders. That presented no difficulties. But...
He looked candidly back at M. 'Should be a piece of cake, sir. As far as
I can see there's only one snag. She's only seen photographs of me and
read a lot of exciting stories. Suppose that when she sees me in the
flesh, I don't come up to her expectations.'

'That's where the work comes in,' said M grimly. 'That's why I asked
those questions about Miss Case. It's up to you to see that you _do_
come up to her expectations.'


                    13. 'BEA Takes You There...'

The four small, square-ended propellers turned slowly, one by one, and
became four whizzing pools. The low hum of the turbo-jets rose to a
shrill smooth whine. The quality of the noise, and the complete absence
of vibration, were different from the stuttering roar and straining
horsepower of all other aircraft Bond had flown in. As the Viscount
wheeled easily out to the shimmering east-west runway of London Airport,
Bond felt as if he was sitting in an expensive mechanical toy.

There was a pause as the chief pilot gunned up the four turbo-jets into
a banshee scream and then, with a jerk of released brakes, the 10.30 BEA
Flight 130 to Rome, Athens and Istanbul gathered speed and hurtled down
the runway and up into a quick, easy climb.

In ten minutes they had reached 20,000 feet and were heading south along
the wide air-channel that takes the Mediterranean traffic from England.
The scream of the jets died to a low, drowsy whistle. Bond unfastened
his seat-belt and lit a cigarette. He reached for the slim,
expensive-looking attach case on the floor beside him and took out _The
Mask of Dimitrios_ by Eric Ambler and put the case, which was very heavy
in spite of its size, on the seat beside him. He thought how surprised
the ticket clerk at London Airport would have been if she had weighed
the case instead of letting it go unchecked as an 'overnight bag'. And
if, in their turn, Customs had been intrigued by its weight, how
interested they would have been when it was slipped under the
Inspectoscope.

Q Branch had put together this smart-looking little bag, ripping out the
careful handiwork of Swaine and Adeney to pack fifty rounds of .25
ammunition, in two flat rows, between the leather and the lining of the
spine. In each of the innocent sides there was a flat throwing knife,
built by Wilkinsons, the sword-makers, and the tops of their handles
were concealed cleverly by the stitching at the corners. Despite Bond's
efforts to laugh them out of it, Q's craftsmen had insisted on building
a hidden compartment into the handle of the case, which, by pressure at
a certain point, would deliver a cyanide death-pill into the palm of his
hand. (Directly he had taken delivery of the case, Bond had washed this
pill down the lavatory.) More important was the thick tube of Palmolive
shaving cream in the otherwise guileless spongebag. The whole top of
this unscrewed to reveal the silencer for the Beretta, packed in cotton
wool. In case hard cash was needed, the lid of the attach case
contained fifty golden sovereigns. These could be poured out by slipping
sideways one ridge of welting.

The complicated bag of tricks amused Bond, but he also had to admit
that, despite its eight-pound weight, the bag was a convenient way of
carrying the tools of his trade, which otherwise would have to be
concealed about his body.

Only a dozen miscellaneous passengers were on the plane. Bond smiled at
the thought of Loelia Ponsonby's horror if she knew that that made the
load thirteen. The day before, when he had left M and had gone back to
his office to arrange the details of his flight, his secretary had
protested violently at the idea of his travelling on Friday the
thirteenth.

'But it's always best to travel on the thirteenth,' Bond had explained
patiently. 'There are practically no passengers and it's more
comfortable and you get better service. I always choose the thirteenth
when I can.'

'Well,' she had said resignedly, 'it's your funeral. But I shall spend
the day worrying about you. And for heaven's sake don't go walking under
ladders or anything silly this afternoon. You oughtn't to overplay your
luck like this. I don't know what you're going to Turkey for, and I
don't want to know. But I have a feeling in my bones.'

'Ah, those beautiful bones!' Bond had teased her. 'I'll take them out to
dinner the night I get back.'

'You'll do nothing of the sort,' she had said coldly. Later she had
kissed him goodbye with a sudden warmth, and for the hundredth time Bond
had wondered why he bothered with other women when the most darling of
them all was his secretary.

The plane sang steadily on above the endless sea of whipped-cream clouds
that looked solid enough to land on if the engines failed. The clouds
broke up and a distant blue haze, far away to their left, was Paris. For
an hour they flew high over the burned-up fields of France until, after
Dijon, the land turned from a pale to a darker green as it sloped up
into the Juras.

Lunch came. Bond put aside his book and the thoughts that kept coming
between him and the printed page, and, while he ate, he gazed down at
the cool mirror of the Lake of Geneva. As the pine forests began to
climb towards the snow patches between the beautifully scoured teeth of
the Alps, he remembered early skiing holidays. The plane skirted the
great eyetooth of Mont Blanc, a few hundred yards to port, and Bond
looked down at the dirty grey elephant's skin of the glaciers and saw
himself again, a young man in his teens, with the leading end of the
rope round his waist, bracing himself against the top of a rock-chimney
on the Aiguilles Rouges as his two companions from the University of
Geneva inched up the smooth rock towards him.

And now? Bond smiled wryly at his reflection in the Perspex as the plane
swung out of the mountains and over the grosgrained terrazza of
Lombardy. If that young James Bond came up to him in the street and
talked to him, would he recognize the clean, eager youth that had been
him at seventeen? And what would that youth think of him, the secret
agent, the older James Bond? Would he recognize himself beneath the
surface of this man who was tarnished with years of treachery and
ruthlessness and fear--this man with the cold arrogant eyes and the scar
down his cheek and the flat bulge beneath his left armpit? If the youth
did recognize him what would his judgment be? What would he think of
Bond's present assignment? What would he think of the dashing secret
agent who was off across the world in a new and most romantic role--to
pimp for England?

Bond put the thought of his dead youth out of his mind. Never job
backwards. What-might-have-been was a waste of time. Follow your fate,
and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor
salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or
a cripple--or dead.

Gazing down on the sun-baked sprawl of Genoa and the gentle blue waters
of the Mediterranean, Bond closed his mind to the past and focused it on
the immediate future--on this business, as he sourly described it to
himself, of 'pimping for England'.

For that, however else one might like to describe it, was what he was on
his way to do--to seduce, and seduce very quickly, a girl whom he had
never seen before, whose name he had heard yesterday for the first time.
And all the while, however attractive she was--and Head of T had
described her as 'very beautiful'--Bond's whole mind would have to be
not on what she was, but on what she had--the dowry she was bringing
with her. It would be like trying to marry a rich woman for her money.
Would he be able to act the part? Perhaps he could make the right faces
and say the right things, but would his body dissociate itself from his
secret thoughts and effectively make the love he would declare? How did
men behave credibly in bed when their whole minds were focused on a
woman's bank balance? Perhaps there was an erotic stimulus in the notion
that one was ravaging a sack of gold. But a cipher machine?

Elba passed below them and the plane slid into its fifty-mile glide
towards Rome. Half an hour among the jabbering loudspeakers of Ciampino
Airport, time to drink two excellent Americanos, and they were on their
way again, flying steadily down towards the toe of Italy, and Bond's
mind went back to sifting the minutest details of the rendezvous that
was drawing closer at three hundred miles an hour.

Was it all a complicated MGB plot of which he couldn't find the key? Was
he walking into some trap that not even the tortuous mind of M could
fathom? God knew M was worried about the possibility of such a trap.
Every conceivable angle of the evidence, for and against, had been
scrutinized--not only by M, but also by a full-dress operations meeting
of Heads of Sections that had worked all through the afternoon and
evening before. But, which ever way the case had been examined, no one
had been able to suggest what the Russians might get out of it. They
might want to kidnap Bond and interrogate him. But why Bond? He was an
operating agent, unconcerned with the general working of the Service,
carrying in his head nothing of use to the Russians except the details
of his current duty and a certain amount of background information that
could not possibly be vital. Or they might want to kill Bond, as an act
of revenge. Yet he had not come up against them for two years. If they
wanted to kill him, they had only to shoot him in the streets of London,
or in his flat, or put a bomb in his car.

Bond's thoughts were interrupted by the stewardess. 'Fasten your
seat-belts, please.' As she spoke the plane dropped sickeningly and
soared up again with an ugly note of strain in the scream of the jets.
The sky outside was suddenly black. Rain hammered on the windows. There
came a blinding flash of blue and white light and a crash as if an
anti-aircraft shell had hit them, and the plane heaved and bucketed in
the belly of the electric storm that had ambushed them out of the mouth
of the Adriatic.

Bond smelt the smell of danger. It is a real smell, something like the
mixture of sweat and electricity you get in an amusement arcade. Again
the lightning flung its hands across the windows. Crash! It felt as if
they were the centre of the thunder clap. Suddenly the plane seemed
incredibly small and frail. Thirteen passengers! Friday the Thirteenth!
Bond thought of Loelia Ponsonby's words and his hands on the arms of his
chair felt wet. How old is this plane, he wondered? How many flying
hours has it done? Had the death-watch beetle of metal fatigue got into
the wings? How much of their strength had it eaten away? Perhaps he
wouldn't get to Istanbul after all. Perhaps a plummeting crash into the
Gulf of Corinth was going to be the destiny he had been scanning
philosophically only an hour before.

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in
old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly
built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor
and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and
his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they
stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane-room
only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible
action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind
to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single
stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened
nerves for whatever fate had decided for BEA Flight No130.

Almost at once it got lighter in the cabin. The rain stopped crashing on
the Perspex window and the noise of the jets settled back into their
imperturbable whistle. Bond opened the door of his hurricane-room and
stepped out. He slowly turned his head and looked curiously out of the
window and watched the tiny shadow of the plane hastening far below
across the quiet waters of the Gulf of Corinth. He heaved a deep sigh
and reached into his hip-pocket for his gunmetal cigarette case. He was
pleased to see his hands were dead steady as he took out his lighter and
lit one of the Morland cigarettes with the three gold rings. Should he
tell Lil that perhaps she had almost been right? He decided that if he
could find a rude enough postcard in Istanbul he would.

The day outside faded through the colours of a dying dolphin and Mount
Hymettus came at them, blue in the dusk. Down over the twinkling sprawl
of Athens and then the Viscount was wheeling across the standard
concrete airstrip with its drooping windsock and the notices in the
strange dancing letters Bond had hardly seen since school.

Bond climbed out of the plane with the handful of pale, silent
passengers and walked across to the transit lounge and up to the bar. He
ordered a tumbler of ouzo and drank it down and chased it with a
mouthful of ice water. There was a strong bite under the sickly anisette
taste and Bond felt the drink light a quick, small fire down his throat
and in his stomach. He put down his glass and ordered another.

By the time the loudspeakers called him out again it was dusk and the
half moon rode clear and high above the lights of the town. The air was
soft with evening and the smell of flowers and there was the steady
pulsebeat of the cicadas--zing-a-zing-a-zing--and the distant sound of a
man singing. The voice was clear and sad and the song had a note of
lament. Near the airport a dog barked excitedly at an unknown human
smell. Bond suddenly realized that he had come into the East where the
guard-dog howls all night. For some reason the realization sent a pang
of pleasure and excitement into his heart.

They had only a ninety-minute flight to Istanbul, across the dark Aegean
and the Sea of Marmara. An excellent dinner, with two dry Martinis and a
half-bottle of Calvet claret put Bond's reservations about flying on
Friday the thirteenth, and his worries about his assignment, out of his
mind and substituted a mood of pleased anticipation.

Then they were there and the plane's four propellers wheeled to a stop
outside the fine modern airport of Yesilkoy, an hour's drive from
Istanbul. Bond said goodbye and thank you for a good flight to the
stewardess, carried the heavy little attach case through the passport
check into the customs, and waited for his suitcase to come off the
plane.

So these dark, ugly, neat little officials were the modern Turks. He
listened to their voices, full of broad vowels and quiet sibilants and
modified u-sounds, and he watched the dark eyes that belied the soft,
polite voices. They were bright, angry, cruel eyes that had only lately
come down from the mountains. Bond thought he knew the history of those
eyes. They were eyes that had been trained for centuries to watch over
sheep and decipher small movements on far horizons. They were eyes that
kept the knife-hand in sight without seeming to, that counted the grains
of meal and the small fractions of coin and noted the flicker of the
merchant's fingers. They were hard, untrusting, jealous eyes. Bond
didn't take to them.

Outside the customs, a tall rangy man with drooping black moustaches
stepped out of the shadows. He wore a smart dust-coat and a chauffeur's
cap. He saluted and, without asking Bond his name, took his suitcase and
led the way over to a gleaming aristocrat of a car--an old black
basketwork Rolls-Royce coup-de-ville that Bond guessed must have been
built for some millionaire of the '20s.

When the car was gliding out of the airport, the man turned and said
politely over his shoulder, in excellent English, 'Kerim Bey thought you
would prefer to rest tonight, sir. I am to call for you at nine tomorrow
morning. What hotel are you staying at, sir?'

'The Kristal Palas.'

'Very good, sir.' The car sighed off down the wide modern road.

Behind them, in the dappled shadows of the airport parking place, Bond
vaguely heard the crackle of a motor scooter starting up. The sound
meant nothing to him and he settled back to enjoy the drive.


                            14. Darko Kerim

James Bond awoke early in his dingy room at the Kristal Palas on the
heights of Pera and absent-mindedly reached down a hand to explore a
sharp tickle on the outside of his right thigh. Something had bitten him
during the night. Irritably he scratched the spot. He might have
expected it.

When he had arrived the night before, to be greeted by a surly
night-concierge in trousers and a collarless shirt, and had briefly
inspected the entrance hall with the fly-blown palms in copper pots, and
the floor and walls of discoloured Moorish tiles, he had known what he
was in for. He had half thought of going to another hotel. Inertia, and
a perverse liking for the sleazy romance that clings to old-fashioned
Continental hotels, had decided him to stay, and he had signed in and
followed the man up to the third floor in the old rope-and-gravity lift.

His room, with its few sticks of aged furniture and an iron bedstead,
was what he had expected. He only looked to see if there were the blood
spots of squashed bugs on the wallpaper behind the bedhead before
dismissing the concierge.

He had been premature. When he went into the bathroom and turned on the
hot tap it gave a deep sigh, then a deprecating cough, and finally
ejected a small centipede into the basin. Bond morosely washed the
centipede away with the thin stream of brownish water from the cold tap.
So much, he had reflected wryly, for choosing a hotel because its name
had amused him and because he had wanted to get away from the soft life
of big hotels.

But he had slept well, and now, with the reservation that he must buy
some insecticide, he decided to forget about his comforts and get on
with the day.

Bond got out of bed, drew back the heavy red plush curtains and leant on
the iron balustrade and looked out over one of the most famous views in
the world--on his right the still waters of the Golden Horn, on his left
the dancing waves of the unsheltered Bosphorus, and, in between, the
tumbling roofs, soaring minarets and crouching mosques of Pera. After
all, his choice had been good. The view made up for many bedbugs and
much discomfort.

For ten minutes Bond stood and gazed out across the sparkling water
barrier between Europe and Asia, then he turned back into the room, now
bright with sunshine, and telephoned for his breakfast. His English was
not understood, but his French at last got through. He turned on a cold
bath and shaved patiently with cold water and hoped that the exotic
breakfast he had ordered would not be a fiasco.

He was not disappointed. The yoghourt, in a blue china bowl, was deep
yellow and with the consistency of thick cream. The green figs, ready
peeled, were bursting with ripeness, and the Turkish coffee was jet
black and with the burned taste that showed it had been freshly ground.
Bond ate the delicious meal on a table drawn up beside the open window.
He watched the steamers and the caiques criss-crossing the two seas
spread out before him and wondered about Kerim and what fresh news there
might be.

Punctually at nine, the elegant Rolls came for him and took him through
Taksim square and down the crowded Istiklal and out of Asia. The thick
black smoke of the waiting steamers, badged with the graceful crossed
anchors of the Merchant Marine, streamed across the first span of the
Galata Bridge and hid the other shore towards which the Rolls nosed
forward through the bicycles and trams, the well-bred snort of the
ancient bulb horn just keeping the pedestrians from under its wheels.
Then the way was clear and the old European section of Istanbul
glittered at the end of the broad half-mile of bridge with the slim
minarets lancing up into the sky and the domes of the mosques, crouching
at their feet, looking like big firm breasts. It should have been the
Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and
above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it
seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside
in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton
Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera.

Across the bridge, the car nosed to the right down a narrow cobbled
street parallel with the waterfront and stopped outside a high wooden
porte-cochre.

A tough-looking watchman with a chunky, smiling face, dressed in frayed
khaki, came out of a porter's lodge and saluted. He opened the car door
and gestured for Bond to follow him. He led the way back into his lodge
and through a door into a small courtyard with a neatly raked gravel
parterre. In the centre was a gnarled eucalyptus tree at whose foot two
white ring-doves were pecking about. The noise of the town was a distant
rumble and it was quiet and peaceful.

They walked across the gravel and through another small door and Bond
found himself at one end of a great vaulted godown with high circular
windows through which dusty bars of sunshine slanted across a vista of
bundles and bales of merchandise. There was a cool, musty scent of
spices and coffee and, as Bond followed the watchman down the central
passageway, a sudden strong wave of mint.

At the end of the long warehouse was a raised platform enclosed by a
balustrade. On it half a dozen young men and girls sat on high stools
and wrote busily in fat, old-fashioned ledgers. It was like a Dickensian
counting-house and Bond noticed that each high desk had a battered
abacus beside the inkpot. Not one of the clerks looked up as Bond walked
between them, but a tall, swarthy man with a lean face and unexpected
blue eyes came forward from the furthest desk and took delivery of him
from the watchman. He smiled warmly at Bond, showing a set of extremely
white teeth, and led him to the back of the platform. He knocked on a
fine mahogany door with a Yale lock and, without waiting for an answer,
opened it and let Bond in and closed the door softly behind him.

'Ah, my friend. Come in. Come in.' A very large man in a beautifully cut
cream tussore suit got up from a mahogany desk and came to meet him,
holding out his hand.

A hint of authority behind the loud friendly voice reminded Bond that
this was the Head of Station T, and that Bond was in another man's
territory and juridically under his command. It was no more than a point
of etiquette, but a point to remember.

Darko Kerim had a wonderfully warm dry handclasp. It was a strong
Western handful of operative fingers--not the banana skin handshake of
the East that makes you want to wipe your fingers on your coat-tails.
And the big hand had a coiled power that said it could easily squeeze
your hand tighter and tighter until finally it cracked your bones.

Bond was six feet tall, but this man was at least two inches taller and
he gave the impression of being twice as broad and twice as thick as
Bond. Bond looked up into two wide apart, smiling blue eyes in a large
smooth brown face with a broken nose. The eyes were watery and veined
with red, like the eyes of a hound who lies too often too close to the
fire. Bond recognized them as the eyes of furious dissipation.

The face was vaguely gipsy-like in its fierce pride and in the heavy
curling black hair and crooked nose, and the effect of a vagabond
soldier of fortune was heightened by the small thin gold ring Kerim wore
in the lobe of his right ear. It was a startlingly dramatic face, vital,
cruel and debauched, but what one noticed more than its drama was that
it radiated life. Bond thought he had never seen so much vitality and
warmth in a human face. It was like being close to the sun, and Bond let
go the strong dry hand and smiled back at Kerim with a friendliness he
rarely felt for a stranger.

'Thanks for sending the car to meet me last night.'

'Ha!' Kerim was delighted. 'You must thank our friends too. You were met
by both sides. They always follow my car when it goes to the airport.'

'Was it a Vespa or a Lambretta?'

'You noticed? A Lambretta. They have a whole fleet of them for their
little men, the men I call "The Faceless Ones". They look so alike, we
have never managed to sort them out. Little gangsters, mostly stinking
Bulgars, who do their dirty work for them. But I expect this one kept
well back. They don't get up close to the Rolls any more since the day
my chauffeur stopped suddenly and then reversed back as hard as he
could. Messed up the paintwork and bloodied the bottom of the chassis
but it taught the rest of them manners.'

Kerim went to his chair and waved to an identical one across the desk.
He pushed over a flat white box of cigarettes and Bond sat down and took
a cigarette and lit it. It was the most wonderful cigarette he had ever
tasted--the mildest and sweetest of Turkish tobacco in a slim long oval
tube with an elegant gold crescent.

While Kerim was fitting one into a long nicotine-stained ivory holder,
Bond took the opportunity to glance round the room, which smelled
strongly of paint and varnish as if it had just been redecorated.

It was big and square and panelled in polished mahogany, except behind
Kerim's chair where a length of Oriental tapestry hung down from the
ceiling and gently moved in the breeze as if there was an open window
behind it. But this seemed unlikely as light came from three circular
windows high up in the walls. Perhaps, behind the tapestry, was a
balcony looking out over the Golden Horn, whose waves Bond could hear
lapping at the walls below. In the centre of the right-hand wall hung a
gold-framed reproduction of Annigoni's portrait of the Queen. Opposite,
also imposingly framed, was Cecil Beaton's wartime photograph of Winston
Churchill looking up from his desk in the Cabinet Offices like a
contemptuous bulldog. A broad bookcase stood against one wall and,
opposite, a comfortably padded leather settee. In the centre of the room
the big desk winked with polished brass handles. On the littered desk
were three silver photograph frames, and Bond caught a sideways view of
the copperplate script of two Mentions in Dispatches and the Military
Division of the OBE.

Kerim lit his cigarette. He jerked his head back at the piece of
tapestry. 'Our friends paid me a visit yesterday,' he said casually.
'Fixed a limpet bomb on the wall outside. Timed the fuse to catch me at
my desk. By good luck, I had taken a few minutes off to relax on the
couch over there with a young Rumanian girl who still believes that a
man will tell secrets in exchange for love. The bomb went off at a vital
moment. I refused to be disturbed, but I fear the experience was too
much for the girl. When I released her, she had hysterics. I'm afraid
she had decided that my love-making is altogether too violent.' He waved
his cigarette holder apologetically. 'But it was a rush to get the room
put to rights in time for your visit. New glass for the windows and my
pictures, and the place stinks of paint. However.' Kerim sat back in his
chair. There was a slight frown on his face. 'What I cannot understand
is this sudden breach of the peace. We live together very amicably in
Istanbul. We all have our work to do. It is unheard of that my _chers
collgues_ should suddenly declare war in this way. It is quite
worrying. It can only lead to trouble for our Russian friends. I shall
be forced to rebuke the man who did it when I have found out his name.'
Kerim shook his head. 'It is most confusing. I am hoping it has nothing
to do with this case of ours.'

'But was it necessary to make my arrival so public?' Bond asked mildly.
'The last thing I want is to get you involved in all this. Why send the
Rolls to the airport? It only ties you in with me.'

Kerim's laugh was indulgent. 'My friend, I must explain something which
you should know. We and the Russians and the Americans have a paid man
in all the hotels. And we have all bribed an official of the Secret
police at Headquarters and we receive a carbon copy of the list of all
foreigners entering the country every day by air or train or sea. Given
a few more days I could have smuggled you in through the Greek frontier.
But for what purpose? Your existence here has to be known to the other
side so that our friend can contact you. It is a condition she has laid
down that she will make her own arrangements for the meeting. Perhaps
she does not trust our security. Who knows? But she was definite about
it, and she said, as if I didn't know it, that her centre would
immediately be advised of your arrival.' Kerim shrugged his broad
shoulders. 'So why make things difficult for her? I am merely concerned
with making things easy and comfortable for you so that you will at
least enjoy your stay--even if it is fruitless.'

Bond laughed. 'I take it all back. I'd forgotten the Balkan formula.
Anyway I'm under your orders here. You tell me what to do and I'll do
it.'

Kerim waved the subject aside. 'And now, since we are talking of your
comfort, how is your hotel? I was surprised you chose the Palas. It is
little better than a disorderly house--what the French call a
_baisodrome_. And it's quite a haunt of the Russians. Not that that
matters.'

'It's not too bad. I just didn't want to stay at the Istanbul-Hilton or
one of the other smart places.'

'Money?' Kerim reached into a drawer and took out a flat packet of new
green notes. 'Here's a thousand Turkish pounds. Their real value, and
their rate on the black market, is about twenty to the pound. The
official rate is seven. Tell me when you've finished them and I'll give
you as many more as you want. We can do our accounts after the game.
It's muck, anyway. Ever since Croesus, the first millionaire, invented
gold coins, money has depreciated. And the face of the coin has been
debased as fast as its value. First the faces of gods were on the coins.
Then the faces of kings. Then of presidents. Now there's no face at all.
Look at this stuff!' Kerim tossed the money over to Bond. 'Today it's
only paper, with a picture of a public building and the signature of a
cashier. Muck! The miracle is that you can still buy things with it.
However. What else? Cigarettes? Smoke only these. I will have a few
hundred sent up to your hotel. They're the best. _Diplomates._ They're
not easy to get. Most of them go to the Ministries and the Embassies.
Anything else before we get down to business? Don't worry about your
meals and your leisure. I will look after both. I shall enjoy it and, if
you will forgive me, I wish to stay close to you while you are here.'

'Nothing else,' said Bond. 'Except that you must come over to London one
day.'

'Never,' said Kerim definitely. 'The weather and the women are far too
cold. And I am proud to have you here. It reminds me of the war. Now,'
he rang a bell on his desk. 'Do you like your coffee plain or sweet? In
Turkey we cannot talk seriously without coffee or raki and it is too
early for raki.'

'Plain.'

The door behind Bond opened. Kerim barked an order. When the door was
shut, Kerim unlocked a drawer and took out a file and put it in front of
him. He smacked his hand down on it.

'My friend,' he said grimly, 'I do not know what to say about this
case.' He leant back in his chair and linked his hands behind his neck.
'Has it ever occurred to you that our kind of work is rather like
shooting a film? So often I have got everybody on location and I think I
can start turning the handle. Then it's the weather, and then it's the
actors, and then it's the accidents. And there is something else that
also happens in the making of a film. Love appears in some shape or
form, at the very worst, as it is now, between the two stars. To me that
is the most confusing factor in this case, and the most inscrutable one.
Does this girl really love her idea of you? Will she love you when she
sees you? Will you be able to love her enough to make her come over?'

Bond made no comment. There was a knock on the door and the head clerk
put a china eggshell, enclosed in gold filigree, in front of each of
them and went out. Bond sipped his coffee and put it down. It was good,
but thick with grains. Kerim swallowed his at a gulp and fitted a
cigarette into his holder and lit it.

'But there is nothing we can do about this love matter,' Kerim
continued, speaking half to himself. 'We can only wait and see. In the
meantime there are other things.' He leant forward against the desk and
looked across at Bond, his eyes suddenly very hard and shrewd.

'There is something going on in the enemy camp, my friend. It is not
only this attempt to get rid of me. There are comings and goings. I have
few facts,' he reached up a big index finger and laid it alongside his
nose, 'but I have this.' He tapped the side of his nose as if he was
patting a dog. 'But this is a good friend of mine and I trust him.' He
brought his hand slowly and significantly down on to the desk and added
softly, 'And if the stakes were not so big, I would say to you, "Go home
my friend. Go home. There is something here to get away from."'

Kerim sat back. The tension went out of his voice. He barked out a harsh
laugh. 'But we are not old women. And this is our work. So let us forget
my nose and get on with the job. First of all, is there anything I can
tell you that you do not know? The girl has made no sign of life since
my signal and I have no other information. But perhaps you would like to
ask me some questions about the meeting.'

'There's only one thing I want to know,' said Bond flatly. 'What do you
think of this girl? Do you believe her story or not? Her story about me?
Nothing else matters. If she hasn't got some sort of a hysterical crush
on me, the whole business falls to the ground and it's some complicated
MGB plot we can't understand. Now. Did you believe the girl?' Bond's
voice was urgent and his eyes searched the other man's face.

'Ah, my friend,' Kerim shook his head. He spread his arms wide. 'That is
what I asked myself then, and it is what I ask myself the whole time
since. But who can tell if a woman is lying about these things? Her eyes
were bright--those beautiful innocent eyes. Her lips were moist and
parted in that heavenly mouth. Her voice was urgent and frightened at
what she was doing and saying. Her knuckles were white on the guard rail
of the ship. But what was in her heart?' Kerim raised his hands, 'God
alone knows.' He brought his hands down resignedly. He placed them flat
on the desk and looked straight at Bond. 'There is only one way of
telling if a woman really loves you, and even that way can only be read
by an expert.'

'Yes,' said Bond dubiously. 'I know what you mean. In bed.'


                        15. Background to a Spy

Coffee came again, and then more coffee, and the big room grew thick
with cigarette smoke as the two men took each shred of evidence,
dissected it and put it aside. At the end of an hour they were back
where they had started. It was up to Bond to solve the problem of this
girl and, if he was satisfied with her story, get her and the machine
out of the country.

Kerim undertook to look after the administrative problems. As a first
step he picked up the telephone and spoke to his travel agent and
reserved two seats on every outgoing plane for the next week--by BEA,
Air France, SAS and Turkair.

'And now you must have a passport,' he said. 'One will be sufficient.
She can travel as your wife. One of my men will take your photograph and
he will find a photograph of some girl who looks more or less like her.
As a matter of fact, an early picture of Garbo would serve. There is a
certain resemblance. He can get one from the newspaper files. I will
speak to the Consul General. He's an excellent fellow who likes my
little cloak-and-dagger plots. The passport will be ready by this
evening. What name would you like to have?'

'Take one out of a hat.'

'Somerset. My mother came from there. David Somerset. Profession,
Company Director. That means nothing. And the girl? Let us say Caroline.
She looks like a Caroline. A couple of clean-limbed young English people
with a taste for travel. Finance Control Form? Leave that to me. It will
show eighty pounds in traveller's cheques, let's say, and a receipt from
the bank to show you changed fifty while you were in Turkey. Customs?
They never look at anything. Only too glad if somebody has bought
something in the country. You will declare some Turkish
Delight--presents for your friends in London. If you have to get out
quickly, leave your hotel bill and luggage to me. They know me well
enough at the Palas. Anything else?'

'I can't think of anything.'

Kerim looked at his watch. 'Twelve o'clock. Just time for the car to
take you back to your hotel. There might be a message. And have a good
look at your things to see if anyone has been inquisitive.'

He rang the bell and fired instructions at the head clerk who stood with
his sharp eyes on Kerim's and his lean head straining forward like a
whippet's.

Kerim led Bond to the door. There came again the warm powerful
handclasp. 'The car will bring you to lunch,' he said. 'A little place
in the Spice Bazaar.' His eyes looked happily into Bond's. 'And I am
glad to be working with you. We will do well together.' He let go of
Bond's hand. 'And now I have a lot of things to do very quickly. They
may be the wrong things, but at any rate,' he grinned broadly, '_jouons
mal, mais jouons vite!_'

The head clerk, who seemed to be some sort of chief-of-staff to Kerim,
led Bond through another door in the wall of the raised platform. The
heads were still bowed over the ledgers. There was a short passage with
rooms on either side. The man led the way into one of these and Bond
found himself in an extremely well-equipped dark-room and laboratory. In
ten minutes he was out again on the street. The Rolls edged out of the
narrow alley and back again on to the Galata Bridge.

A new concierge was on duty at the Kristal Palace, a small obsequious
man with guilty eyes in a yellow face. He came out from behind the desk,
his hands spread in apology. 'Effendi, I greatly regret. My colleague
showed you to an inadequate room. It was not realized that you are a
friend of Kerim Bey. Your things have been moved to No12. It is the best
room in the hotel. In fact,' the concierge leered, 'it is the room
reserved for honeymoon couples. Every comfort. My apologies, Effendi.
The other room is not intended for visitors of distinction.' The man
executed an oily bow, washing his hands.

If there was one thing Bond couldn't stand it was the sound of his boots
being licked. He looked the concierge in the eyes and said, 'Oh.' The
eyes slid away. 'Let me see this room. I may not like it. I was quite
comfortable where I was.'

'Certainly, Effendi,' the man bowed Bond to the lift. 'But alas the
plumbers are in your former room. The water supply...' the voice
trailed away. The lift rose about ten feet and stopped at the first
floor.

Well, the story of the plumbers makes sense, reflected Bond. And, after
all, there was no harm in having the best room in the hotel.

The concierge unlocked a high door and stood back.

Bond had to approve. The sun streamed in through wide double windows
that gave on to a small balcony. The motif was pink and grey and the
style was mock French Empire, battered by the years, but still with all
the elegance of the turn of the century. There were fine Bokhara rugs on
the parquet floor. A glittering chandelier hung from the ornate ceiling.
The bed against the right-hand wall was huge. A large mirror in a gold
frame covered most of the wall behind it. (Bond was amused. The
honeymoon room! Surely there should be a mirror on the ceiling as well.)
The adjoining bathroom was tiled and fitted with everything, including a
bidet and a shower. Bond's shaving things were neatly laid out.

The concierge followed Bond back into the bedroom, and when Bond said he
would take the room, bowed himself gratefully out.

Why not? Bond again walked round the room. This time he carefully
inspected the walls and the neighbourhood of the bed and the telephone.
Why not take the room? Why would there be microphones or secret doors?
What would be the point of them?

His suitcase was on a bench near the chest-of-drawers. He knelt down. No
scratches round the lock. The bit of fluff he had trapped in the clasp
was still there. He unlocked the suitcase and took out the little
attach case. Again no signs of interference. Bond locked the case and
got to his feet.

He washed and went out of the room and down the stairs. No, there had
been no messages for the Effendi. The concierge bowed as he opened the
door of the Rolls. Was there a hint of conspiracy behind the permanent
guilt in those eyes? Bond decided not to care if there was. The game,
whatever it was, had to be played out. If the change of rooms had been
the opening gambit, so much the better. The game had to begin somewhere.

As the car sped back down the hill, Bond's thoughts turned to Darko
Kerim. What a man for Head of Station T! His size alone, in this country
of furtive, stunted little men, would give him authority, and his giant
vitality and love of life would make everyone his friend. Where had this
exuberant shrewd pirate come from? And how had he come to work for the
Service? He was the rare type of man that Bond loved, and Bond already
felt prepared to add Kerim to the half dozen of those real friends whom
Bond, who had no 'acquaintances', would be ready to take to his heart.

The car went back over the Galata Bridge and drew up outside the vaulted
arcades of the Spice Bazaar. The chauffeur led the way up the shallow
worn steps and into the fog of exotic scents, shouting curses at the
beggars and sack-laden porters. Inside the entrance the chauffeur turned
left out of the stream of shuffling, jabbering humanity and showed Bond
a small arch in the thick wall. Turret-like stone steps curled upwards.

'Effendi, you will find Kerim Bey in the far room on the left. You have
only to ask. He is known to all.'

Bond climbed the cool stairs to a small ante-room where a waiter,
without asking his name, took charge and led him through a maze of
small, colourfully tiled, vaulted rooms to where Kerim was sitting at a
corner table over the entrance to the bazaar, Kerim greeted him
boisterously, waving a glass of milky liquid in which ice twinkled.

'Here you are my friend! Now, at once, some raki. You must be exhausted
after your sight-seeing.' He fired orders at the waiter.

Bond sat down in a comfortable-armed chair and took the small tumbler
the waiter offered him. He lifted it towards Kerim and tasted it. It was
identical with ouzo. He drank it down. At once the waiter refilled his
glass.

'And now to order your lunch. They eat nothing but offal cooked in
rancid olive oil in Turkey. At least the offal at the Misir Carsarsi is
the best.'

The grinning waiter made suggestions.

'He says the Doner Kebab is very good today. I don't believe him, but it
can be. It is very young lamb broiled over charcoal with savoury rice.
Lots of onions in it. Or is there anything you prefer? A pilaff or some
of those damned stuffed peppers they eat here? All right then. And you
must start with a few sardines grilled _en papillote_. They are just
edible.' Kerim harangued the waiter. He sat back, smiling at Bond. 'That
is the only way to treat these damned people. They love to be cursed and
kicked. It is all they understand. It is in the blood. All this pretence
of democracy is killing them. They want some sultans and wars and rape
and fun. Poor brutes, in their striped suits and bowler hats. They are
miserable. You've only got to look at them. However, to hell with them
all. Any news?'

Bond shook his head. He told Kerim about the change of room and the
untouched suitcase.

Kerim downed a glass of raki and wiped his mouth on the back of his
hand. He echoed the thought Bond had had. 'Well, the game must begin
sometime. I have made certain small moves. Now we can only wait and see.
We will make a little foray into enemy territory after lunch. I think it
will interest you. Oh, we shan't be seen. We shall move in the shadows,
underground.' Kerim laughed delightedly at his cleverness. 'And now let
us talk about other things. How do you like Turkey? No, I don't want to
know. What else?'

They were interrupted by the arrival of their first course. Bond's
sardines en papillote tasted like any other fried sardines. Kerim set
about a large plate of what appeared to be strips of raw fish. He saw
Bond's look of interest. 'Raw fish,' he said. 'After this I shall have
raw meat and lettuce and then I shall have a bowl of yoghourt. I am not
a faddist, but I once trained to be a professional strong man. It is a
good profession in Turkey. The public loves them. And my trainer
insisted that I should eat only raw food. I got the habit. It is good
for me, but,' he waved his fork, 'I do not pretend it is good for
everyone. I don't care the hell what other people eat so long as they
enjoy it. I can't stand sad eaters and sad drinkers.'

'Why did you decide not to be a strong man? How did you get into this
racket?'

Kerim forked up a strip of fish and tore at it with his teeth. He drank
down half a tumbler of raki. He lit a cigarette and sat back in his
chair. 'Well,' he said with a sour grin, 'we might as well talk about me
as about anything else. And you must be wondering "How did this big
crazy man get into the Service?" I will tell you, but briefly, because
it is a long story. You will stop me if you get bored. All right?'

'Fine.' Bond lit a Diplomate. He leant forward on his elbows.

'I come from Trebizond.' Kerim watched his cigarette smoke curl upwards.
'We were a huge family with many mothers. My father was the sort of man
women can't resist. All women want to be swept off their feet. In their
dreams they long to be slung over a man's shoulder and taken into a cave
and raped. That was his way with them. My father was a great fisherman
and his fame was spread all over the Black Sea. He went after the
swordfish. They are difficult to catch and hard to fight and he would
always outdo all others after these fish. Women like their men to be
heroes. He was a kind of hero in a corner of Turkey where it is a
tradition for the men to be tough. He was a big, romantic sort of
fellow. So he could have any woman he wanted. He wanted them all and
sometimes killed other men to get them. Naturally he had many children.
We all lived on top of each other in a great rambling old ruin of a
house that our "aunts" made habitable. The aunts really amounted to a
harem. One of them was an English governess from Istanbul my father had
seen watching a circus. He took a fancy to her and she to him and that
evening he put her on board his fishing boat and sailed up the Bosphorus
and back to Trebizond. I don't think she ever regretted it. I think she
forgot all the world except him. She died just after the war. She was
sixty. The child before me had been by an Italian girl and the girl had
called him Bianco. He was fair. I was dark. I got to be called Darko.
There were fifteen of us children and we had a wonderful childhood. Our
aunts fought often and so did we. It was like a gipsy encampment. It was
held together by my father who thrashed us, women or children, when we
were a nuisance. But he was good to us when we were peaceful and
obedient. You cannot understand such a family?'

'The way you describe it I can.'

'Anyway so it was. I grew up to be nearly as big a man as my father, but
better educated. My mother saw to that. My father only taught us to be
clean and to go to the lavatory once a day and never to feel shame about
anything in the world. My mother also taught me a regard for England,
but that is by the way. By the time I was twenty, I had a boat of my own
and I was making money. But I was wild. I left the big house and went to
live in two small rooms on the waterfront. I wanted to have my women
where my mother would not know. There was a stroke of bad luck. I had a
little Bessarabian hell-cat. I had won her in a fight with some gipsies,
here in the hills behind Istanbul. They came after me, but I got her on
board the boat. I had to knock her unconscious first. She was still
trying to kill me when we got back to Trebizond, so I got her to my
place and took away all her clothes and kept her chained naked under the
table. When I ate, I used to throw scraps to her under the table, like a
dog. She had to learn who was master. Before that could happen, my
mother did an unheard of thing. She visited my place without warning.
She came to tell me that my father wanted to see me immediately. She
found the girl. My mother was really angry with me for the first time in
my life. Angry? She was beside herself. I was a cruel ne'er-do-well and
she was ashamed to call me son. The girl must immediately be taken back
to her people. My mother brought her some of her own clothes from the
house. The girl put them on, but when the time came, she refused to
leave me.' Darko Kerim laughed hugely. 'An interesting lesson in female
psychology, my dear friend. However, the problem of the girl is another
story. While my mother was fussing over her and getting nothing but
gipsy curses for her pains, I was having an interview with my father,
who had heard nothing of all this and who never did hear. My mother was
like that. There was another man with my father, a tall, quiet
Englishman with a black patch over one eye. They were talking about the
Russians. The Englishman wanted to know what they were doing along their
frontier, about what was going on at Batoum, their big oil and naval
base only fifty miles away from Trebizond. He would pay good money for
information. I knew English and I knew Russian. I had good eyes and
ears. I had a boat. My father had decided that I would work for the
Englishman. And that Englishman, my dear friend, was Major Dansey, my
predecessor as Head of this Station. And the rest,' Kerim made a wide
gesture with his cigarette holder, 'you can imagine.'

'But what about this training to be a professional strong man?'

'Ah,' said Kerim slyly, 'that was only a sideline. Our travelling
circuses were almost the only Turks allowed through the frontier. The
Russians cannot live without circuses. It is as simple as that. I was
the man who broke chains and lifted weights by a rope between my teeth.
I wrestled against the local strong men in the Russian villages. And
some of those Georgians are giants. Fortunately they are stupid giants
and I nearly always won. Afterwards, at the drinking, there was always
much talk and gossip. I would look foolish and pretend not to
understand. Every now and then I would ask an innocent question and they
would laugh at my stupidity and tell me the answer.'

The second course came, and with it a bottle of Kavaklidere, a rich
coarse burgundy like any other Balkan wine. The Kebab was good and
tasted of smoked bacon fat and onions. Kerim ate a kind of Steak
Tartare--a large flat hamburger of finely minced raw meat laced with
peppers and chives and bound together with yolk of egg. He made Bond try
a forkful. It was delicious. Bond said so.

'You ought to eat it every day,' said Kerim earnestly. 'It is good for
those who wish to make much love. There are certain exercises you should
do for the same purpose. These things are important to men. Or at least
they are to me. Like my father, I consume a large quantity of women.
But, unlike him, I also drink and smoke too much, and these things do
not go well with making love. Nor does this work I do. Too many tensions
and too much thinking. It takes the blood to the head instead of to
where it should be for making love. But I am greedy for life. I do too
much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail.
The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of
The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps
they will put on my tombstone "This Man Died from Living Too Much".'

Bond laughed. 'Don't go too soon, Darko,' he said. 'M would be very
displeased. He thinks the world of you.'

'He does?' Kerim searched Bond's face to see if he was telling the
truth. He laughed delightedly. 'In that case I will not let The Crab
have my body yet.' He looked at his watch. 'Come, James,' he said. 'It
is good that you reminded me of my duty. We will have coffee in the
office. There is not much time to waste. Every day at 2.30 the Russians
have their council of war. Today you and I will do them the honour of
being present at their deliberations.'


                         16. The Tunnel of Rats

Back in the cool office, while they waited for the inevitable coffee,
Kerim opened a cupboard in the wall and pulled out sets of engineers'
blue overalls. Kerim stripped to his shorts and dressed himself in one
of the suits and pulled on a pair of rubber boots. Bond picked out a
suit and a pair of boots that more or less fitted him and put them on.

With the coffee, the head clerk brought in two powerful flashlights
which he put on the desk.

When the clerk had left the room Kerim said, 'He is one of my sons--the
eldest one. The others in there are all my children. The chauffeur and
the watchman are uncles of mine. Common blood is the best security. And
this spice business is good cover for us all. M set me up in it. He
spoke to friends of his in the City of London. I am now the leading
spice merchant in Turkey. I have long ago repaid M the money that was
lent me. My children are shareholders in the business. They have a good
life. When there is secret work to be done and I need help, I choose the
child who will be most suitable. They all have training in different
secret things. They are clever and brave. Some have already killed for
me. They would all die for me--and for M. I have taught them he is just
below God.' Kerim made a deprecating wave. 'But that is just to tell you
that you are in good hands.'

'I hadn't imagined anything different.'

'Ha!' said Kerim non-committally. He picked up the torches and handed
one to Bond. 'And now to work.'

Kerim walked over to the wide glass-fronted bookcase and put his hand
behind it. There was a click and the bookcase rolled silently and easily
along the wall to the left. Behind it was a small door, flush with the
wall. Kerim pressed one side of the door and it swung inwards to reveal
a dark tunnel with stone steps leading straight down. A dank smell,
mixed with a faint zoo stench, came out into the room.

'You go first,' said Kerim. 'Go down the steps to the bottom and wait. I
must fix the door.'

Bond switched on his torch and stepped through the opening and went
carefully down the stairs. The light of the torch showed fresh masonry,
and, twenty feet below, a glimmer of water. When Bond got to the bottom
he found that the glimmer was a small stream running down a central
gutter in the floor of an ancient stone-walled tunnel that sloped
steeply up to the right. To the left, the tunnel went on downwards and
would, he guessed, come out below the surface of the Golden Horn.

Out of range of Bond's light there was a steady, quiet, scuttling sound,
and in the blackness hundreds of pinpoints of red light flickered and
moved. It was the same uphill and downhill. Twenty yards away on either
side, a thousand rats were looking at Bond. They were sniffing at his
scent. Bond imagined the whiskers lifting slightly from their teeth. He
had a quick moment of wondering what action they would take if his torch
went out.

Kerim was suddenly beside him. 'It is a long climb. A quarter of an
hour. I hope you love animals,' Kerim's laugh boomed hugely away up the
tunnel. The rats scuffled and stirred. 'Unfortunately there is not much
choice. Rats and bats. Squadrons of them, divisions--a whole air force
and army. And we have to drive them in front of us. Towards the end of
the climb it becomes quite congested. Let's get started. The air is
good. It is dry underfoot on both sides of the stream. But in winter the
floods come and then we have to use frogmen's suits. Keep your torch on
my feet. If a bat gets in your hair, brush him off. It will not be
often. Their radar is very good.'

They set off up the steep slope. The smell of the rats and of the
droppings of bats was thick--a mixture of monkey house and chicken
battery. It occurred to Bond that it would be days before he got rid of
it.

Clusters of bats hung like bunches of withered grapes from the roof and
when, from time to time, either Kerim's head or Bond's brushed against
them, they exploded twittering into the darkness. Ahead of them as they
climbed there was the forest of squeaking, scuffling red pinpoints that
grew denser on both sides of the central gutter. Occasionally Kerim
flashed his torch forward and the light shone on a grey field sown with
glittering teeth and glinting whiskers. When this happened, an extra
frenzy seized the rats, and those nearest jumped on the backs of the
others to get away. All the while, fighting tumbling grey bodies came
sweeping down the central gutter and, as the pressure of the mass higher
up the tunnel grew heavier, the frothing rear rank came closer.

The two men kept their torches levelled like guns on the rear ranks
until, after a good quarter of an hour's climb, they reached their
destination.

It was a deep alcove of newly faced brick in the side wall of the
tunnel. There were two benches on each side of a thick tarpaulin-wrapped
object that came down from the ceiling of the alcove.

They stepped inside. Another few yards' climb, Bond thought, and mass
hysteria must have seized the distant thousands of rats further up the
tunnel. The horde would have turned. Out of sheer pressure for space,
the rats would have braved the lights and hurled themselves down on to
the two intruders, in spite of the two glaring eyes and the threatening
scent.

'Watch,' said Kerim.

There was a moment of silence. Further up the tunnel the squeaking had
stopped, as if at a word of command. Then suddenly the tunnel was a foot
deep in a great wave of hurtling, scrambling grey bodies as, with a
continuous high-pitched squeal, the rats turned and pelted back down the
slope.

For minutes the sleek grey river foamed by outside the alcove until at
last the numbers thinned and only a trickle of sick or wounded rats came
limping and probing their way down the tunnel floor.

The scream of the horde slowly vanished down towards the river, until
there was silence except for the occasional twitter of a fleeing bat.

Kerim gave a non-committal grunt. 'One of these days those rats will
start dying. Then we shall have the plague in Istanbul again. Sometimes
I feel guilty for not telling the authorities of this tunnel so that
they can clean the place up. But I can't so long as the Russians are up
here.' He jerked his head at the roof. He looked at his watch. 'Five
minutes to go. They will be pulling up their chairs and fiddling with
their papers. There will be the three permanent men--MGB, or one of them
may be from army intelligence, GRU. And there will probably be three
others. Two came in a fortnight ago, one through Greece and another
through Persia. Another one arrived on Monday. God knows who they are,
or what they are here for. And sometimes the girl, Tatiana, comes in
with a signal and goes out again. Let us hope we will see her today. You
will be impressed. She is something.'

Kerim reached up and untied the tarpaulin cover and pulled it downwards.
Bond understood. The cover protected the shining butt of a submarine
periscope, fully withdrawn. The moisture glistened on the thick grease
of the exposed bottom joint. Bond chuckled. 'Where the hell did you get
that from, Darko?'

'Turkish Navy. War surplus.' Kerim's voice did not invite further
questions. 'Now Q Branch in London is trying to fix some way of wiring
the damn thing for sound. It's not going to be easy. The lens at the top
of this is no bigger than a cigarette-lighter, end on. When I raise it,
it comes up to floor level in their room. In the corner of the room
where it comes up, we cut a small mousehole. We did it well. Once when I
came to have a look, the first thing I saw was a big mousetrap with a
piece of cheese on it. At least it looked big through the lens.' Kerim
laughed briefly. 'But there's not much room to fit a sensitive pick-up
alongside the lens. And there's no hope of getting in again to do any
more fiddling about with their architecture. The only way I managed to
install this thing was to get my friends in the Public Works Ministry to
turn the Russians out for a few days. The story was that the trams going
up the hill were shaking the foundations of the houses. There had to be
a survey. It cost me a few hundred pounds for the right pockets. The
Public Works inspected half a dozen houses on either side of this one
and declared the place safe. By that time, I and the family had finished
our construction work. The Russians were suspicious as hell. I gather
they went over the place with a toothcomb when they got back, looking
for microphones and bombs and so on. But we can't work that trick twice.
Unless Q Branch can think up something very clever, I shall have to be
content with keeping an eye on them. One of these days they'll give away
something useful. They'll be interrogating someone we're interested in
or something of that sort.'

Alongside the matrix of the periscope in the roof of the alcove there
was a pendulous blister of metal, twice the size of a football. 'What's
that?' said Bond.

'Bottom half of a bomb--a big bomb. If anything happens to me, or if war
breaks out with Russia, that bomb will be set off by radio-control from
my office. It is sad [Kerim didn't look sad] but I fear that many
innocent people will get killed besides the Russians. When the blood is
on the boil, man is as unselective as nature.'

Kerim had been polishing away at the hooded eyepieces between the two
handlebars that stuck out on both sides of the base of the periscope.
Now he glanced at his watch and bent down and gripped the two handles
and slowly brought them up level with his chin. There was a hiss of
hydraulics as the glistening stem of the periscope slid up into its
steel sheath in the roof of the alcove. Kerim bent his head and gazed
into the eyepieces and slowly inched up the handles until he could stand
upright. He twisted gently. He centred the lens and beckoned to Bond.
'Just the six of them.'

Bond moved over and took the handles.

'Have a good look at them,' said Kerim. 'I know them, but you'd better
get their faces in your mind. Head of the table is their Resident
Director. On his left are his two staff. Opposite them are the three new
ones. The latest, who looks quite an important chap, is on the
Director's right. Tell me if they do anything except talk.'

Bond's first impulse was to tell Kerim not to make so much noise. It was
as if he was in the room with the Russians, as if he was sitting in a
chair in the corner, a secretary perhaps, taking shorthand of the
conference.

The wide, all-round lens, designed for spotting aircraft as well as
surface ships, gave him a curious picture--a mouse's eye view of a
forest of legs below the fore-edge of the table, and various aspects of
the heads belonging to the legs. The Director and his two colleagues
were clear--serious dull Russian faces whose characteristics Bond filed
away. There was the studious, professorial face of the Director--thick
spectacles, lantern jaw, big forehead and thin hair brushed back. On his
left was a square wooden face with deep clefts on either side of the
nose, fair hair _en brosse_ and a nick out of the left ear. The third
member of the permanent staff had a shifty Armenian face with clever
bright almond eyes. He was talking now. His face wore a falsely humble
look. Gold glinted in his mouth.

Bond could see less of the three visitors. Their backs were half towards
him and only the profile of the nearest, and presumably most junior,
showed clearly. This man's skin also was dark. He too would be from one
of the southern republics. The jaw was badly shaved and the eye in
profile was bovine and dull under a thick black brow. The nose was
fleshy and porous. The upper lip was long over a sullen mouth and the
beginning of a double chin. The tough black hair was cut very short so
that most of the back of the neck looked blue to the level of the tips
of the ears. It was a military haircut, done with mechanical clippers.

The only clues to the next man were an angry boil on the back of a fat
bald neck, a shiny blue suit and rather bright brown shoes. The man was
motionless during the whole period that Bond kept watch and apparently
never spoke.

Now the senior visitor, on the right of the Resident Director, sat back
and began talking. It was a strong, crag-like profile with big bones and
a jutting chin under a heavy brown moustache of Stalin cut. Bond could
see one cold grey eye under a bushy eyebrow and a low forehead topped by
wiry grey-brown hair. This man was the only one who was smoking. He
puffed busily at a tiny wooden pipe in the bowl of which stood half a
cigarette. Every now and then he shook the pipe sideways so that the ash
fell on the floor. His profile had more authority than any of the other
faces and Bond guessed that he was a senior man sent down from Moscow.

Bond's eyes were getting tired. He twisted the handles gently and looked
round the office as far as the blurring jagged edges of the mousehole
would allow. He saw nothing of interest--two olive green filing
cabinets, a hatstand by the door, on which he counted six more or less
identical grey Homburgs, and a sideboard with a heavy carafe of water
and some glasses. Bond stood away from the eyepiece, rubbing his eyes.

'If only we could hear,' Kerim said, shaking his head sadly. 'It would
be worth diamonds.'

'It would solve a lot of problems,' agreed Bond. Then, 'By the way
Darko, how did you come on this tunnel? What was it built for?'

Kerim bent and gave a quick glance into the eyepieces and straightened
up.

'It's a lost drain from the Hall of Pillars,' he said. 'The Hall of
Pillars is now a thing for tourists. It's up above us on the heights of
Istanbul, near St Sophia. A thousand years ago it was built as a
reservoir in case of siege. It's a huge underground palace, a hundred
yards long and about half as broad. It was made to hold millions of
gallons of water. It was discovered again about four hundred years ago
by a man called Gyllius. One day I was reading his account of finding
it. He said it was filled in winter from "_a great pipe with a mighty
noise_". It occurred to me that there might be another "_great pipe_" to
empty it quickly if the city fell to the enemy. I went up to the Hall of
Pillars and bribed the watchman and rowed about among the pillars all
one night in a rubber dinghy with one of my boys. We went over the walls
with a hammer and an echo-sounder. At one end, in the most likely spot,
there was a hollow sound. I handed out more money to the Minister of
Public Works and he closed the place for a week--"for cleaning". My
little team got busy.' Kerim ducked down again for a look through the
eyepieces and went on. 'We dug into the wall above water-level and came
on the top of an arch. The arch was the beginning of a tunnel. We got
into the tunnel and went down it. Quite exciting, not knowing where we
were going to come out. And, of course, it went straight down the
hill--under the Street of Books where the Russians have their place, and
out into the Golden Horn, by the Galata Bridge, twenty yards away from
my warehouse. So we filled in our hole in the Hall of Pillars and
started digging from my end. That was two years ago. It took us a year
and a lot of survey work to get directly under the Russians.' Kerim
laughed. 'And now I suppose one of these days the Russians will decide
to change their offices. By then I hope someone else will be Head of T.'

Kerim bent down to the rubber eyepieces. Bond saw him stiffen. Kerim
said urgently, 'The door's opening. Quick. Take over. Here she comes.'


                            17. Killing Time

It was seven o'clock on the same evening and James Bond was back in his
hotel. He had had a hot bath and a cold shower. He thought that he had
at last scoured the zoo smell out of his skin.

He was sitting, naked except for his shorts, at one of the windows of
his room, sipping a vodka and tonic and looking out into the heart of
the great tragic sunset over the Golden Horn. But his eyes didn't see
the torn cloth of gold and blood that hung behind the minareted stage
beneath which he had caught his first glimpse of Tatiana Romanova.

He was thinking of the tall beautiful girl with the dancer's long gait
who had walked through the drab door with a piece of paper in her hand.
She had stood beside her Chief and handed him the paper. All the men had
looked up at her. She had blushed and looked down. What had that
expression on the men's faces meant? It was more than just the way some
men look at a beautiful girl. They had shown curiosity. That was
reasonable. They wanted to know what was in the signal, why they were
being disturbed. But what else? There had been slyness and contempt--the
way people stare at prostitutes.

It had been an odd, enigmatic scene. This was part of a highly
disciplined paramilitary organization. These were serving officers, each
of whom would be wary of the others. And this girl was just one of the
staff, with a corporal's rank, who was now going through a normal
routine. Why had they all unguardedly looked at her with this
inquisitive contempt--almost as if she was a spy who had been caught and
was going to be executed? Did they suspect her? Had she given herself
away? But that seemed less likely as the scene played itself out. The
Resident Director read the signal and the other men's eyes turned away
from the girl and on to him. He said something, presumably repeating the
text of the signal, and the men looked glumly back at him as if the
matter did not interest them. Then the Resident Director looked up at
the girl and the other eyes followed his. He said something with a
friendly, inquiring expression. The girl shook her head and answered
briefly. The other men now only looked interested. The Director said one
word with a question mark on the end. The girl blushed deeply, and
nodded, holding his eyes obediently. The other men smiled encouragement,
slyly perhaps, but with approval. No suspicion there. No condemnation.
The scene ended with a few sentences from the Director to which the girl
seemed to say the equivalent of 'Yes, sir' and turned and walked out of
the room. When she had gone, the Director said something with an
expression of irony on his face and the men laughed heartily and the sly
expression was back on their faces, as if what he had said had been
obscene. Then they went back to their work.

Ever since, on their way back down the tunnel, and later in Kerim's
office while they discussed what Bond had seen, Bond had racked his
brains for a solution to this maddening bit of dumb crambo and now,
looking without focus at the dying sun, he was still mystified.

Bond finished his drink and lit another cigarette. He put the problem
away and turned his mind to the girl.

Tatiana Romanova. A Romanov. Well, she certainly looked like a Russian
princess, or the traditional idea of one. The tall, fine-boned body that
moved so gracefully and stood so well. The thick sweep of hair down to
the shoulders and the quiet authority of the profile. The wonderful
Garboesque face with its curiously shy serenity. The contrast between
the level innocence of the big, deep blue eyes and the passionate
promise of a wide mouth. And the way she had blushed and the way the
long eyelashes had come down over the lowered eyes. Had that been the
prudery of a virgin? Bond thought not. There was the confidence of
having been loved in the proud breasts and the insolently lilting
behind--the assertion of a body that knows what it can be for.

On what Bond had seen, could he believe that she was the sort of girl to
fall in love with a photograph and a file? How could one tell? Such a
girl would have a deeply romantic nature. There were dreams in the eyes
and in the mouth. At that age, twenty-four, the Soviet machine would not
yet have ground the sentiment out of her. The Romanov blood might well
have given her a yearning for men other than the type of modern Russian
officer she would meet--stern, cold, mechanical, basically hysterical
and, because of their Party education, infernally dull.

It could be true. There was nothing to disprove her story in her looks.
Bond wanted it to be true.

The telephone rang. It was Kerim. 'Nothing new?'

'No.'

'Then I will pick you up at eight.'

'I'll be ready.'

Bond laid down the receiver and slowly started to put on his clothes.

Kerim had been firm about the evening. Bond had wanted to stay in his
hotel room and wait for the first contact to be made--a note, a
telephone call, whatever it might be. But Kerim had said no. The girl
had been adamant that she would choose her own time and place. It would
be wrong for Bond to seem a slave to her convenience. 'That is bad
psychology, my friend,' Kerim had insisted. 'No girl likes a man to run
when she whistles. She would despise you if you made yourself too
available. From your face and your dossier she would expect you to
behave with indifference--even with insolence. She would want that. She
wishes to court you, to buy a kiss'--Kerim had winked--'from that cruel
mouth. It is with an image she has fallen in love. Behave like that
image. Act the part.'

Bond had shrugged his shoulders. 'All right, Darko. I daresay you're
right. What do you suggest?'

'Live the life you would normally. Go home now and have a bath and a
drink. The local vodka is all right if you drown it with tonic water. If
nothing happens, I will pick you up at eight. We will have dinner at the
place of a gipsy friend of mine. A man called Vavra. He is head of a
tribe. I must anyway see him tonight. He is one of my best sources. He
is finding out who tried to blow up my office. Some of his girls will
dance for you. I will not suggest that they should entertain you more
intimately. You must keep your sword sharp. There is a saying "Once a
King, always a King. But once a Knight is enough!"'

Bond was smiling at the memory of Kerim's dictum when the telephone rang
again. He picked up the receiver. It was only the car. As he went down
the few stairs and out to Kerim in the waiting Rolls, Bond admitted to
himself that he was disappointed.

They were climbing up the far hill through the poorer quarters above the
Golden Horn when the chauffeur half turned his head and said something
in a non-committal voice.

Kerim answered with a monosyllable. 'He says a Lambretta is on our tail.
A Faceless One. It is of no importance. When I wish, I can make a secret
of my movements. Often they have trailed this car for miles when there
has been only a dummy in the back. A conspicuous car has its uses. They
know this gipsy is a friend of mine, but I think they do not understand
why. It will do no harm for them to know that we are having a night of
relaxation. On a Saturday night, with a friend from England, anything
else would be unusual.'

Bond looked back through the rear window and watched the crowded
streets. From behind a stopped tram a motor scooter showed for a minute
and then was hidden by a taxi. Bond turned away. He reflected briefly on
the way the Russians ran their centres--with all the money and equipment
in the world, while the Secret Service put against them a handful of
adventurous, underpaid men, like this one, with his second-hand Rolls
and his children to help him. Yet Kerim had the run of Turkey. Perhaps,
after all, the right man was better than the right machine.

At half past eight they stopped half way up a long hill on the outskirts
of Istanbul at a dingy-looking open-air caf with a few empty tables on
the pavement. Behind it were the tops of trees over a high stone wall.
They got out and the car drove off. They waited for the Lambretta, but
its wasp-like buzz had stopped and at once it was on its way back down
the hill. All they saw of the driver was a glimpse of a short squat man
wearing goggles.

Kerim led the way through the tables and into the caf. It seemed empty,
but a man rose up quickly from behind the till. He kept one hand below
the counter. When he saw who it was, he gave Kerim a nervous white
smile. Something clanged to the floor. He stepped from behind the
counter and led them out through the back and across a stretch of gravel
to a door in the high wall and, after knocking once, unlocked it and
waved them through.

There was an orchard with plank tables dotted about under the trees. In
the centre was a circle of terrazza dancing floor. Round it were strung
fairy lights, now dead, on poles planted in the ground. On the far side,
at a long table, about twenty people of all ages had been sitting
eating, but they had put down their knives and now looked towards the
door. Some children had been playing in the grass behind the table. They
also were now quiet and watching. The three-quarter moon showed
everything up brightly and made pools of membraned shadow under the
trees.

Kerim and Bond walked forward. The man at the head of the table said
something to the others. He got up and came to meet them. The rest
returned to their dinner and the children to their games.

The man greeted Kerim with reserve. He stood for a few moments making a
long explanation to which Kerim listened attentively, occasionally
asking a question.

The gipsy was an imposing, theatrical figure in Macedonian dress--white
shirt with full sleeves, baggy trousers and laced soft leather
top-boots. His hair was a tangle of black snakes. A large
downward-drooping black moustache almost hid the full red lips. The eyes
were fierce and cruel on either side of a syphilitic nose. The moon
glinted on the sharp line of the jaw and the high cheekbones. His right
hand, which had a gold ring on the thumb, rested on the hilt of a short
curved dagger in a leather scabbard tipped with filigree silver.

The gipsy finished talking. Kerim said a few words, forceful and
apparently complimentary, about Bond, at the same time stretching his
hand out in Bond's direction as if he was a compre in a nightclub
commending a new turn. The gipsy stepped up to Bond and scrutinized him.
He bowed abruptly. Bond followed suit. The gipsy said a few words
through a sardonic smile. Kerim laughed and turned to Bond. 'He says if
you are ever out of work you should come to him. He will give you a
job--taming his women and killing for him. That is a great compliment to
a _gajo_--a foreigner. You should say something in reply.'

'Tell him that I can't imagine he needs any help in these matters.'

Kerim translated. The gipsy politely bared his teeth. He said something
and walked back to the table, clapping his hands sharply. Two women got
up and came towards him. He spoke to them curtly and they went back to
the table and picked up a large earthenware dish and disappeared among
the trees.

Kerim took Bond's arm and led him to one side.

'We have come on a bad night,' he said. 'The restaurant is closed. There
are family troubles here which have to be solved--drastically, and in
private. But I am an old friend and we are invited to share their
supper. It will be disgusting but I have sent for raki. Then we may
watch--but on condition that we do not interfere. I hope you understand,
my friend.' Kerim gave Bond's arm an additional pressure. 'Whatever you
see, you must not move or comment. A court has just been held and
justice is to be done--their kind of justice. It is an affair of love
and jealousy. Two girls of the tribe are in love with one of his sons.
There is a lot of death in the air. They both threaten to kill the other
to get him. If he chooses one, the unsuccessful one has sworn to kill
him and the girl. It is an _impasse_. There is much argument in the
tribe. So the son has been sent up into the hills and the two girls are
to fight it out here tonight--to the death. The son has agreed to take
the winner. The women are locked up in separate caravans. It will not be
for the squeamish, but it will be a remarkable affair. It is a great
privilege that we may be present. You understand? We are gajos. You will
forget your sense of the proprieties? You will not interfere? They would
kill you, and possibly me, if you did.'

'Darko,' said Bond. 'I have a French friend. A man called Mathis who is
head of the Deuxime. He once said to me: "_J'aime les sensations
fortes_." I am like him. I shall not disgrace you. Men fighting women is
one thing. Women fighting women is another. But what about the bomb? The
bomb that blew up your office. What did he say about that?'

'It was the leader of the Faceless Ones. He put it there himself. They
came down the Golden Horn in a boat and he climbed up a ladder and fixed
it to the wall. It was bad luck he didn't get me. The operation was well
thought out. The man is a gangster. A Bulgarian "refugee" called
Krilencu. I shall have to have a reckoning with him. God knows why they
suddenly want to kill me, but I cannot allow such annoyances. I may
decide to take action later tonight. I know where he lives. In case
Vavra knew the answer, I told my chauffeur to come back with the
necessary equipment.'

A fiercely attractive young girl in a thick old-fashioned black frock,
with strings of gold coins round her neck and about ten thin gold
bracelets on each wrist, came over from the table and swept a low
jingling curtsey in front of Kerim. She said something and Kerim
replied.

'We are bidden to the table,' said Kerim. 'I hope you are good at eating
with your fingers. I see they are all wearing their smartest clothes
tonight. That girl would be worth marrying. She has a lot of gold on
her. It is her dowry.'

They walked over to the table. Two places had been cleared on either
side of the head gipsy. Kerim gave what sounded like a polite greeting
to the table. There was a curt nod of acknowledgment. They sat down. In
front of each of them was a large plate of some sort of ragout smelling
strongly of garlic, a bottle of raki, a pitcher of water and a cheap
tumbler. More bottles of raki, untouched, were on the table. When Kerim
reached for his and poured himself half a tumblerful, everyone followed
suit. Kerim added some water and raised his glass. Bond did the same.
Kerim made a short and vehement speech and all raised their glasses and
drank. The atmosphere became easier. An old woman next to Bond passed
him a long loaf of bread and said something. Bond smiled and said 'thank
you'. He broke off a piece and handed the loaf to Kerim who was picking
among his ragout with thumb and forefinger. Kerim took the loaf with one
hand and at the same time, with the other, he put a large piece of meat
in his mouth and began to eat.

Bond was about to do the same when Kerim said sharply and quietly, 'With
the right hand, James. The left hand is used for only one purpose among
these people.'

Bond halted his left hand in mid-air and moved it on to grasp the
nearest raki bottle. He poured himself another half tumblerful and
started to eat with his right hand. The ragout was delicious but
steaming hot. Bond winced each time he dipped his fingers into it.
Everyone watched them eat and from time to time the old woman dipped her
fingers into Bond's stew and chose a piece for him.

When they had scoured their plates, a silver bowl of water, in which
rose leaves floated, and a clean linen cloth, were put between Bond and
Kerim. Bond washed his fingers and his greasy chin and turned to his
host and dutifully made a short speech of thanks which Kerim translated.
The table murmured its appreciation. The head gipsy bowed towards Bond
and said, according to Kerim, that he hated all gajos except Bond, whom
he was proud to call his friend. Then he clapped his hands sharply and
everybody got up from the table and began pulling the benches away and
arranging them round the dance floor.

Kerim came round the table to Bond. They walked off together. 'How do
you feel? They've gone to get the two girls.'

Bond nodded. He was enjoying the evening. The scene was beautiful and
thrilling--the white moon blazing down on the ring of figures now
settling on the benches, the glint of gold or jewellery as somebody
shifted his position, the glaring pool of terrazza and, all around, the
quiet, sentinel trees standing guard in their black skirts of shadow.

Kerim led Bond to a bench where the chief gipsy sat alone. They took
their places on his right.

A black cat with green eyes walked slowly across the terrazza and joined
a group of children who were sitting quietly as if someone was about to
come on to the dance floor and teach them a lesson. It sat down and
began licking its chest.

Beyond the high wall, a horse neighed. Two of the gipsies looked over
their shoulders towards the sound as if they were reading the cry of the
horse. From the road came the silvery spray of a bicycle bell as someone
sped down the hill.

The crouching silence was broken by the clang of a bolt being drawn. The
door in the wall crashed back and two girls, spitting and fighting like
angry cats, hurtled through and across the grass and into the ring.


                         18. Strong Sensations

The head gipsy's voice cracked out. The girls separated reluctantly and
stood facing him. The gipsy began to speak in a tone of harsh
denunciation.

Kerim put his hand up to his mouth and whispered behind it. 'Vavra is
telling them that this is a great tribe of gipsies and they have brought
dissension among it. He says there is no room for hatred among
themselves, only against those outside. The hatred they have created
must be purged so that the tribe can live peacefully again. They are to
fight. If the loser is not killed she will be banished for ever. That
will be the same as death. These people wither and die outside the
tribe. They cannot live in our world. It is like wild beasts forced to
live in a cage.'

While Kerim spoke, Bond examined the two beautiful, taut, sullen animals
in the centre of the ring.

They were both gipsy-dark, with coarse black hair to their shoulders,
and they were both dressed in the collection of rags you associate with
shanty-town Negroes--tattered brown shifts that were mostly darns and
patches. One was bigger-boned than the other, and obviously stronger,
but she looked sullen and slow-eyed and might not be quick on her feet.
She was handsome in a rather leonine way, and there was a slow red glare
in her heavy lidded eyes as she stood and listened impatiently to the
head of the tribe. She ought to win, thought Bond. She is half an inch
taller, and she is stronger.

Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther--lithe and quick
and with cunning sharp eyes that were not on the speaker but sliding
sideways, measuring inches, and the hands at her sides were curled into
claws. The muscles of her fine legs looked hard as a man's. The breasts
were small, and, unlike the big breasts of the other girl, hardly
swelled the rags of her shift. She looks a dangerous little bitch of a
girl, thought Bond. She will certainly get in the first blow. She will
be too quick for the other.

At once he was proved wrong. As Vavra spoke his last word, the big girl,
who, Kerim whispered, was called Zora, kicked hard sideways, without
taking aim, and caught the other girl square in the stomach and, as the
smaller girl staggered, followed up with a swinging blow of the fist to
the side of the head that knocked her sprawling on to the stone floor.

'Oi, Vida,' lamented a woman in the crowd. She needn't have worried.
Even Bond could see that Vida was shamming as she lay on the ground,
apparently winded. He could see her eyes glinting under her bent arm as
Zora's foot came flashing at her ribs.

Vida's hands flickered out together. They grasped the ankle and her head
struck into the instep like a snake's. Zora gave a scream of pain and
wrenched furiously at her trapped foot. It was too late. The other girl
was up on one knee, and then standing erect, the foot still in her
hands. She heaved upwards and Zora's other foot left the ground and she
crashed full-length.

The thud of the big girl's fall shook the ground. For a moment she lay
still. With an animal snarl, Vida dived on top of her, clawing and
tearing.

My God, what a hell-cat, thought Bond. Beside him, Kerim's breath hissed
tensely through his teeth.

But the big girl protected herself with her elbows and knees and at last
she managed to kick Vida off. She staggered to her feet and backed away,
her lips bared from her teeth and the shift hanging in tatters from her
splendid body. At once she went in to the attack again, her arms groping
forward for a hold and, as the smaller girl leapt aside, Zora's hand
caught the neck of her shift and split it down to the hem. But
immediately Vida twisted in close under the reaching arms and her fists
and knees thudded into the attacker's body.

This infighting was a mistake. The strong arms clamped shut round the
smaller girl, trapping Vida's hands low down so that they could not
reach up for Zora's eyes. And, slowly, Zora began to squeeze, while
Vida's legs and knees thrashed ineffectually below.

Bond thought that now the big girl must win. All Zora had to do was to
fall on the other girl. Vida's head would crack down on the stone and
then Zora could do as she liked. But all of a sudden it was the big girl
who began to scream. Bond saw that Vida's head was buried deep in the
other's breasts. Her teeth were at work. Zora's arms let go as she
reached for Vida's hair to pull the head back and away from her. But now
Vida's hands were free and they were scrabbling at the big girl's body.

The girls tore apart and backed away like cats, their shining bodies
glinting through the last rags of their shifts and blood showing on the
exposed breasts of the big girl.

They circled warily, both glad to have escaped, and as they circled they
tore off the last of their rags and threw them into the audience.

Bond held his breath at the sight of the two glistening, naked bodies,
and he could feel Kerim's body tense beside him. The ring of gipsies
seemed to have come closer to the two fighters. The moon shone on
glittering eyes and there was the whisper of hot, panting breath.

Still the two girls circled slowly, their teeth bared and their breath
coming harshly. The light glinted off their heaving breasts and stomachs
and off their hard, boyish flanks. Their feet left dark sweat marks on
the white stones.

Again it was the big girl, Zora, who made the first move with a sudden
forward leap and arms held out like a wrestler's. But Vida stood her
ground. Her right foot lashed out in a furious _coup de savate_ that
made a slap like a pistol shot. The big girl gave a wounded cry and
clutched at herself. At once Vida's other foot kicked up to the stomach
and she threw herself in after it.

There was a low growl from the crowd as Zora went down on her knees. Her
hands went up to protect her face, but it was too late. The smaller girl
was astride her, and her hands grasped Zora's wrists as she bore down on
her with all her weight and bent her to the ground, her bared white
teeth reaching towards the offered neck.

'BOOM!'

The explosion cracked the tension like a nut. A flash of flame lit the
darkness behind the dance floor and a chunk of masonry sang past Bond's
ear. Suddenly the orchard was full of running men and the head gipsy was
slinking forward across the stone with his curved dagger held out in
front of him. Kerim was going after him, a gun in his hand. As the gipsy
passed the two girls, now standing wild-eyed and trembling, he shouted a
word at them and they took to their heels and disappeared among the
trees where the last of the women and children were already vanishing
among the shadows.

Bond, the Beretta held uncertainly in his hand, followed slowly in the
wake of Kerim towards the wide breach that had been blown out of the
garden wall, and wondered what the hell was going on.

The stretch of grass between the hole in the wall and the dance floor
was a turmoil of fighting, running figures. It was only as Bond came up
with the fight that he distinguished the squat, conventionally dressed
Bulgars from the swirling finery of the gipsies. There seemed to be more
of the Faceless Ones than of the gipsies, almost two to one. As Bond
peered into the struggling mass, a gipsy youth was ejected from it,
clutching his stomach. He groped towards Bond, coughing terribly. Two
small dark men came after him, their knives held low.

Instinctively Bond stepped to one side so that the crowd was not behind
the two men. He aimed at their legs above the knees and the gun in his
hand cracked twice. The two men fell, soundlessly, face downwards in the
grass.

Two bullets gone. Only six left. Bond edged closer to the fight.

A knife hissed past his head and clanged on to the dance floor.

It had been aimed at Kerim, who came running out of the shadows with two
men on his heels. The second man stopped and raised his knife to throw
and Bond shot from the hip, blindly, and saw him fall. The other man
turned and fled among the trees and Kerim dropped to one knee beside
Bond, wrestling with his gun.

'Cover me,' he shouted. 'Jammed on the first shot. It's those bloody
Bulgars. God knows what they think they're doing.'

A hand caught Bond round the mouth and yanked him backwards. On his way
to the ground he smelled carbolic soap and nicotine. He felt a boot thud
into the back of his neck. As he whirled over sideways in the grass he
expected to feel the searing flame of a knife. But the men, and there
were three of them, were after Kerim, and as Bond scrambled to one knee
he saw the squat black figures pile down on the crouching man, who gave
one lash upwards with his useless gun and then went down under them.

At the same moment as Bond leaped forward and brought his gun butt down
on a round shaven head, something flashed past his eyes and the curved
dagger of the head gipsy was growing out of a heaving back. Then Kerim
was on his feet and the third man was running and a man was standing in
the breach in the wall shouting one word, again and again, and one by
one the attackers broke off their fights and doubled over to the man and
past him and out on to the road.

'Shoot, James, shoot!' roared Kerim. 'That's Krilencu.' He started to
run forward. Bond's gun spat once. But the man had dodged round the
wall, and thirty yards is too far for night shooting with an automatic.
As Bond lowered his hot gun, there came the staccato firing of a
squadron of Lambrettas, and Bond stood and listened to the swarm of
wasps flying down the hill.

There was silence except for the groans of the wounded. Bond listlessly
watched Kerim and Vavra come back through the breach in the wall and
walk among the bodies, occasionally turning one over with a foot. The
other gipsies seeped back from the road and the older women came
hurrying out of the shadows to tend their men.

Bond shook himself. What the hell had it all been about? Ten or a dozen
men had been killed. What for? Whom had they been trying to get? Not
him, Bond. When he was down and ready for the killing they had passed
him by and made for Kerim. This was the second attempt on Kerim's life.
Was it anything to do with the Romanova business? How could it possibly
tie in?

Bond tensed. His gun spoke twice from the hip. The knife clattered
harmlessly off Kerim's back. The figure that had risen from the dead
twirled slowly round like a ballet dancer and toppled forward on his
face. Bond ran forward. He had been just in time. The moon had caught
the blade and he had had a clear field of fire. Kerim looked down at the
twitching body. He turned to meet Bond.

Bond stopped in his tracks. 'You bloody fool,' he said angrily. 'Why the
hell can't you take more care! You ought to have a nurse.' Most of
Bond's anger came from knowing that it was he who had brought a cloud of
death around Kerim.

Darko Kerim grinned shamefacedly. 'Now it is not good, James. You have
saved my life too often. We might have been friends. Now the distance
between us is too great. Forgive me, for I can never pay you back.' He
held out his hand.

Bond brushed it aside. 'Don't be a damn fool, Darko,' he said roughly.
'My gun worked, that's all. Yours didn't. You'd better get one that
does. For Christ's sake tell me what the hell this is all about. There's
been too much blood splashing about tonight. I'm sick of it. I want a
drink. Come and finish that raki.' He took the big man's arm.

As they reached the table, littered with the remains of the supper, a
piercing, terrible scream came out of the depths of the orchard. Bond
put his hand on his gun. Kerim shook his head. 'We shall soon know what
the Faceless Ones were after,' he said gloomily. 'My friends are finding
out. I can guess what they will discover. I think they will never
forgive me for having been here tonight. Five of their men are dead.'

'There might have been a dead woman too,' said Bond unsympathetically.
'At least you've saved her life. Don't be stupid, Darko. These gipsies
knew the risks when they started spying for you against the Bulgars. It
was gang warfare.' He added a dash of water to two tumblers of raki.

They both emptied the glasses at one swallow. The head gipsy came up,
wiping the tip of his curved dagger on a handful of grass. He sat down
and accepted a glass of raki from Bond. He seemed quite cheerful. Bond
had the impression that the fight had been too short for him. The gipsy
said something, slyly.

Kerim chuckled. 'He said that his judgment was right. You killed well.
Now he wants you to take on those two women.'

'Tell him even one of them would be too much for me. But tell him I
think they are fine women. I would be glad if he would do me a favour
and call the fight a draw. Enough of his people have been killed
tonight. He will need these two girls to bear children for the tribe.'

Kerim translated. The gipsy looked sourly at Bond and said a few bitter
words.

'He says that you should not have asked him such a difficult favour. He
says that your heart is too soft for a good fighter. But he says he will
do what you ask.'

The gipsy ignored Bond's smile of thanks. He started talking fast to
Kerim, who listened attentively, occasionally interrupting the flow with
a question. Krilencu's name was often mentioned. Kerim talked back.
There was deep contrition in his voice and he refused to allow himself
to be stopped by protests from the other. There came a last reference to
Krilencu. Kerim turned to Bond.

'My friend,' he said drily. 'It is a curious affair. It seems the
Bulgars were ordered to kill Vavra and as many of his men as possible.
That is a simple matter. They knew the gipsy had been working for me.
Perhaps, rather drastic. But in killing, the Russians have not much
finesse. They like mass death. Vavra was a main target. I was another.
The declaration of war against me personally I can also understand. But
it seems that you were not to be harmed. You were exactly described so
that there should be no mistake. That is odd. Perhaps it was desired
that there should be no diplomatic repercussions. Who can tell? The
attack was well planned. They came to the top of the hill by a
roundabout route and free-wheeled down so that we should hear nothing.
This is a lonely place and there is not a policeman for miles. I blame
myself for having treated these people too lightly.' Kerim looked
puzzled and unhappy. He seemed to make up his mind. He said, 'But now it
is midnight. The Rolls will be here. There remains a small piece of work
to be done before we go home to bed. And it is time we left these
people. They have much to do before it is light. There are many bodies
to go into the Bosphorus and there is the wall to be repaired. By
daylight there must be no trace of these troubles. Our friend wishes you
very well. He says you must return, and that Zora and Vida are yours
until their breasts fall. He refuses to blame me for what has happened.
He says that I am to continue sending him Bulgars. Ten were killed
tonight. He would like some more. And now we will shake him by the hand
and go. That is all he asks of us. We are good friends, but we are
gajos. And I expect he does not want us to see his women weeping over
their dead.'

Kerim stretched out his huge hand. Vavra took it and held it and looked
into Kerim's eyes. For a moment his own fierce eyes seemed to go opaque.
Then the gipsy let the hand drop and turned to Bond. The hand was dry
and rough and padded like the paw of a big animal. Again the eyes went
opaque. He let go of Bond's hand. He spoke rapidly and urgently to Kerim
and turned his back on them and walked away towards the trees.

Nobody looked up from his work as Kerim and Bond climbed through the
breach in the wall. The Rolls stood, glittering in the moonlight, a few
yards down the road opposite the caf entrance. A young man was sitting
beside the chauffeur. Kerim gestured with his hand. 'That is my tenth
son. He is called Boris. I thought I might need him. I shall.'

The youth turned and said, 'Good evening, sir.' Bond recognized him as
one of the clerks in the warehouse. He was as dark and lean as the head
clerk, and his eyes also were blue.

The car moved down the hill. Kerim spoke to the chauffeur in English.
'It is a small street off the Hippodrome Square. When we get there we
will proceed softly. I will tell you when to stop. Have you got the
uniforms and the equipment?'

'Yes, Kerim Bey.'

'All right. Make good speed. It is time we were all in bed.'

Kerim sank back in his seat. He took out a cigarette. They sat and
smoked. Bond gazed out at the drab streets and reflected that sparse
street-lighting is the sure sign of a poor town.

It was some time before Kerim spoke. Then he said, 'The gipsy said we
both have the wings of death over us. He said that I am to beware of a
son of the snows and you must beware of a man who is owned by the moon.'
He laughed harshly. 'That is the sort of rigmarole they talk. But he
says that Krilencu isn't either of these men. That is good.'

'Why?'

'Because I cannot sleep until I have killed that man. I do not know if
what happened tonight has any connection with you and your assignment. I
do not care. For some reason, war has been declared on me. If I do not
kill Krilencu, at the third attempt he will certainly kill me. So we are
now on our way to keep an appointment with him in Samarra.'


                    19. The Mouth of Marilyn Monroe

The car sped through the deserted streets, past shadowy mosques from
which dazzling minarets lanced up towards the three-quarter moon, under
the ruined Aqueduct and across the Ataturk Boulevard and north of the
barred entrances to the Grand Bazaar. At the Column of Constantine the
car turned right, through mean twisting streets that smelled of garbage,
and finally debouched into a long ornamental square in which three stone
columns fired themselves like a battery of space-rockets into the
spangled sky.

'Slow,' said Kerim softly. They crept round the square under the shadow
of the lime trees. Down a street on the east side, the lighthouse below
the Seraglio Palace gave them a great yellow wink.

'Stop.'

The car pulled up in the darkness under the limes. Kerim reached for the
door handle. 'We shan't be long, James. You sit up front in the driver's
seat and if a policeman comes along just say "_Ben Bey Kerim'in
ortagiyim_". Can you remember that? It means "I am Kerim Bey's partner".
They'll leave you alone.'

Bond snorted. 'Thanks very much. But you'll be surprised to hear I'm
coming with you. You're bound to get into trouble without me. Anyway I'm
damned if I'm going to sit here trying to bluff policemen. The worst of
learning one good phrase is that it sounds as if one knew the language.
The policeman will come back with a barrage of Turkish and when I can't
answer he'll smell a rat. Don't argue, Darko.'

'Well, don't blame me if you don't like this.' Kerim's voice was
embarrassed. 'It's going to be a straight killing in cold blood. In my
country you let sleeping dogs lie, but when they wake up and bite, you
shoot them. You don't offer them a duel. All right?'

'Whatever you say,' said Bond. 'I've got one bullet left in case you
miss.'

'Come on then,' said Kerim reluctantly. 'We've got quite a walk. The
other two will be going another way.'

Kerim took a long walking-stick from the chauffeur, and a leather case.
He slung them over his shoulder and they started off down the street
into the yellow wink of the lighthouse. Their footsteps echoed hollowly
back at them from the iron-shuttered shop frontages. There was not a
soul in sight, not a cat, and Bond was glad he was not walking alone
down this long street towards the distant baleful eye.

From the first, Istanbul had given him the impression of a town where,
with the night, horror creeps out of the stones. It seemed to him a town
the centuries had so drenched in blood and violence that, when daylight
went out, the ghosts of its dead were its only population. His instinct
told him, as it has told other travellers, that Istanbul was a town he
would be glad to get out of alive.

They came to a narrow stinking alley that dived steeply down the hill to
their right. Kerim turned into it and started gingerly down its cobbled
surface. 'Watch your feet,' he said softly. 'Garbage is a polite word
for what my charming people throw into their streets.'

The moon shone whitely down the moist river of cobbles. Bond kept his
mouth shut and breathed through his nose. He put his feet down one after
the other, flat-footedly, and with his knees bent, as if he was walking
down a snow-slope. He thought of his bed in the hotel and of the
comfortable cushions of the car under the sweetly smelling lime trees,
and he wondered how many more kinds of dreadful stench he was going to
run into during his present assignment.

They stopped at the bottom of the alley. Kerim turned to him with a
broad white grin. He pointed upwards at a towering block of black
shadow. 'Mosque of Sultan Ahmet. Famous Byzantine frescoes. Sorry I
haven't got time to show you more of the beauties of my country.'
Without waiting for Bond's reply, he cut off to the right and along a
dusty boulevard, lined with cheap shops, that sloped down towards the
distant glint that was the Sea of Marmara. For ten minutes they walked
in silence. Then Kerim slowed and beckoned Bond into the shadows.

'This will be a simple operation,' he said softly. 'Krilencu lives down
there, beside the railway line.' He gestured vaguely towards a cluster
of red and green lights at the end of the boulevard. 'He hides out in a
shack behind a bill-hoarding. There is a front door to the shack. Also a
trapdoor to the street through the hoarding. He thinks no one knows of
this. My two men will go in at the front door. He will slip out through
the hoarding. Then I shoot him. All right?'

'If you say so.'

They walked on down the boulevard, keeping close to the wall. After ten
minutes, they came in sight of the twenty-foot-high hoarding that formed
a facing wall to the T intersection at the bottom of the street. The
moon was behind the hoarding and its face in the shadow. Now Kerim
walked even more carefully, putting each foot softly in front of him.
About a hundred yards from the hoarding the shadows ended and the moon
blazed whitely down on the intersection. Kerim stopped in the last dark
doorway and stationed Bond in front of him, up against his chest. 'Now
we must wait,' he whispered. Bond heard Kerim fiddling behind him. There
came a soft plop as the lid of the leather case came off. A thin, heavy
steel tube, about two feet long, with a bulge at each end, was pressed
into Bond's hand. 'Sniperscope. German model,' whispered Kerim.
'Infra-red lens. Sees in the dark. Have a look at that big film
advertisement over there. That face. Just below the nose. You'll see the
outline of a trapdoor. In direct line down from the signal box.'

Bond rested his forearm against the door jamb and raised the tube to his
right eye. He focused it on the patch of black shadow opposite. Slowly
the black dissolved into grey. The outline of a huge woman's face and
some lettering appeared. Now Bond could read the lettering. It said:
NIYAGARA. MARILYN MONROE VE JOSEPH COTTEN and underneath,
the cartoon feature, BONZO FUTBOLOU. Bond inched the glass down the vast
pile of Marilyn Monroe's hair, and the cliff of forehead, and down the
two feet of nose to the cavernous nostrils. A faint square showed in the
poster. It ran from below the nose into the great alluring curve of the
lips. It was about three feet deep. From it, there would be a longish
drop to the ground.

Behind Bond there sounded a series of soft clicks. Kerim held forward
his walking-stick. As Bond had supposed, it was a gun, a rifle, with a
skeleton butt which was also a twist breech. The squat bulge of a
silencer had taken the place of the rubber tip.

'Barrel from the new 88 Winchester,' whispered Kerim proudly. 'Put
together for me by a man in Ankara. Takes the .308 cartridge. The short
one. Three of them. Give me the glass. I want to get that trapdoor lined
up before my men go in at the front. Mind if I use your shoulder as a
rest?'

'All right.' Bond handed Kerim the Sniperscope. Kerim clipped it to the
top of the barrel and slid the gun along Bond's shoulder.

'Got it,' whispered Kerim. 'Where Vavra said. He's a good man that.' He
lowered his gun just as two policemen appeared at the right-hand corner
of the intersection. Bond stiffened.

'It's all right,' whispered Kerim. 'That's my boy and the chauffeur.' He
put two fingers in his mouth. A very quick, very low-pitched whistle
sounded for a fraction of a second. One of the policemen lifted his hand
to the back of his neck. The two policemen turned and walked away, their
boots ringing loudly on the paving stones.

'Few minutes more,' whispered Kerim. 'They've got to get round the back
of that hoarding.' Bond felt the heavy barrel of the gun slip into place
along his right shoulder.

The moonstruck silence was broken by a loud iron clang from the signal
box behind the hoarding. One of the signal arms dropped. A green
pinpoint of light showed among the cluster of reds. There was a soft
slow rumble in the distance, away to the left by Seraglio Point. It came
closer and sorted itself into the heavy pant of an engine and the
grinding clangour of a string of badly coupled goods trucks. A faint
yellow glimmer shone along the embankment to the left. The engine came
labouring into view above the hoarding.

The train slowly clanked by on its hundred-mile journey to the Greek
frontier, a broken black silhouette against the silver sea, and the
heavy cloud of smoke from its cheap fuel drifted towards them on the
still air. As the red light on the brake van glimmered briefly and
disappeared, there came the deeper rumble as the engine entered a
cutting, and then two harsh, mournful whoops as it whistled its approach
to the little station of Buyuk, a mile further down the line.

The rumble of the train died away. Bond felt the gun press deeper into
his shoulder. He strained his eyes into the target of shadow. In the
centre of it, a deeper square of blackness showed.

Bond cautiously lifted his left hand to shade his eyes from the moon.
There came a hiss of breath from behind his right ear. 'He's coming.'

Out of the mouth of the huge, shadowed poster, between the great violet
lips, half open in ecstasy, the dark shape of a man emerged and hung
down like a worm from the mouth of a corpse.

The man dropped. A ship going up towards the Bosphorus growled in the
night like a sleepless animal in a zoo. Bond felt a prickle of sweat on
his forehead. The barrel of the rifle depressed as the man stepped
softly off the pavement towards them.

When he's at the edge of the shadow, he'll start to run, thought Bond.
You damn fool, get the sights further down.

Now. The man bent for a quick sprint across the dazzling white street.
He was coming out of the shadow. His right leg was bent forward and his
shoulder was twisted to give him momentum.

At Bond's ear there was the clunk of an axe hitting into a tree-trunk.
The man dived forward, his arms outstretched. There was a sharp 'tok' as
his chin or his forehead hit the ground.

An empty cartridge tinkled down at Bond's feet. He heard the click of
the next round going into the chamber.

The man's fingers scrabbled briefly at the cobbles. His shoes knocked on
the road. Then he lay absolutely still.

Kerim grunted. The rifle came down off Bond's shoulder, Bond listened to
the noises of Kerim folding up the gun and putting away the Sniperscope
in its leather case.

Bond looked away from the sprawling figure in the road, the figure of
the man who had been, but was no more. He had a moment of resentment
against the life that made him witness these things. The resentment was
not against Kerim. Kerim had twice been this man's target. In a way it
had been a long duel, in which the man had fired twice to Kerim's once.
But Kerim was the cleverer, cooler man, and the luckier, and that had
been that. But Bond had never killed in cold blood, and he hadn't liked
watching, and helping, someone else do it.

Kerim silently took his arm. They walked slowly away from the scene and
back the way they had come.

Kerim seemed to sense Bond's thoughts. 'Life is full of death, my
friend,' he said philosophically. 'And sometimes one is made the
instrument of death. I do not regret killing that man. Nor would I
regret killing any of those Russians we saw in that office today. They
are hard people. With them, what you don't get from strength, you won't
get from mercy. They are all the same, the Russians. I wish your
government would realize it and be strong with them. Just an occasional
little lesson in manners like I have taught them tonight.'

'In power politics, one doesn't often have the chance of being as quick
and neat as you were tonight, Darko. And don't forget it's only one of
their satellites you've punished, one of the men they always find to do
their dirty work. Mark you,' said Bond, 'I quite agree about the
Russians. They simply don't understand the carrot. Only the stick has
any effect. Basically they're masochists. They love the knout. That's
why they were so happy under Stalin. He gave it them. I'm not sure how
they're going to react to the scraps of carrot they're being fed by
Khrushchev and Co. As for England, the trouble today is that carrots for
all are the fashion. At home and abroad. We don't show teeth any
more--only gums.'

Kerim laughed harshly, but made no comment. They were climbing back up
the stinking alley and there was no breath for talk. They rested at the
top and then walked slowly towards the trees of the Hippodrome Square.

'So you forgive me for today?' It was odd to hear the longing for
reassurance in the big man's usually boisterous voice.

'Forgive you? Forgive what? Don't be ridiculous.' There was affection in
Bond's voice. 'You've got a job to do and you're doing it. I've been
very impressed. You've got a wonderful set-up here. I'm the one who
ought to apologize. I seem to have brought a great deal of trouble down
on your head. And you've dealt with it. I've just tagged along behind.
And I've got absolutely nowhere with my main job. M will be getting
pretty impatient. Perhaps there'll be some sort of message at the
hotel.'

But when Kerim took Bond back to the hotel and went with him to the desk
there was nothing for Bond. Kerim clapped him on the back. 'Don't worry,
my friend,' he said cheerfully. 'Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty
of it. I will send the car in the morning and if nothing has happened I
will think of some more little adventures to pass the time. Clean your
gun and sleep on it. You both deserve a rest.'

Bond climbed the few stairs and unlocked his door and locked and bolted
it behind him. Moonlight filtered through the curtains. He walked across
and turned on the pink-shaded lights on the dressing-table. He stripped
off his clothes and went into the bathroom and stood for a few minutes
under the shower. He thought how much more eventful Saturday the
fourteenth had been than Friday the thirteenth. He cleaned his teeth and
gargled with a sharp mouthwash to get rid of the taste of the day and
turned off the bathroom light and went back into the bedroom.

Bond drew aside one curtain and opened wide the tall windows and stood,
holding the curtains open and looking out across the great boomerang
curve of water under the riding moon. The night breeze felt wonderfully
cool on his naked body. He looked at his watch. It said two o'clock.

Bond gave a shuddering yawn. He let the curtains drop back into place.
He bent to switch off the lights on the dressing-table. Suddenly he
stiffened and his heart missed a beat.

There had been a nervous giggle from the shadows at the back of the
room. A girl's voice said, 'Poor Mister Bond. You must be tired. Come to
bed.'


                           20. Black on Pink

Bond whirled round. He looked over to the bed, but his eyes were blind
from gazing at the moon. He crossed the room and turned on the
pink-shaded light by the bed. There was a long body under the single
sheet. Brown hair was spread out on the pillow. The tips of fingers
showed, holding the sheet up over the face. Lower down the breasts stood
up like hills under snow.

Bond laughed shortly. He leaned forward and gave the hair a soft tug.
There was a squeak of protest from under the sheet. Bond sat down on the
edge of the bed. After a moment's silence a corner of the sheet was
cautiously lowered and one large blue eye inspected him.

'You look very improper.' The voice was muffled by the sheet.

'What about you! And how did you get here?'

'I walked down two floors. I live here too.' The voice was deep and
provocative. There was very little accent.

'Well, I'm going to get into bed.'

The sheet came quickly down to the chin and the girl pulled herself up
on the pillows. She was blushing. 'Oh no. You mustn't.'

'But it's my bed. And anyway you told me to.' The face was incredibly
beautiful. Bond examined it coolly. The blush deepened.

'That was only a phrase. To introduce myself.'

'Well I'm very glad to meet you. My name's James Bond.'

'Mine's Tatiana Romanova.' She sounded the second 'a' of Tatiana and the
first 'a' of Romanova very long. 'My friends call me Tania.'

There was a pause while they looked at each other, the girl with
curiosity, and with what might have been relief. Bond with cool surmise.

She was the first to break the silence. 'You look just like your
photographs,' she blushed again. 'But you must put something on. It
upsets me.'

'You upset me just as much. That's called sex. If I got into bed with
you it wouldn't matter. Anyway, what have _you_ got on?'

She pulled the sheet a fraction lower to show a quarter-inch black
velvet ribbon round her neck. 'This.'

Bond looked down into the teasing blue eyes, now wide as if asking if
the ribbon was inadequate. He felt his body getting out of control.

'Damn you, Tania. Where are the rest of your things? Or did you come
down in the lift like that?'

'Oh no. That would not have been kulturny. They are under the bed.'

'Well, if you think you are going to get out of this room without...'

Bond left the sentence unfinished. He got up from the bed and went to
put on one of the dark blue silk pyjama coats he wore instead of
pyjamas.

'What you are suggesting is not kulturny.'

'Oh isn't it,' said Bond sarcastically. He came back to the bed and
pulled up a chair beside it. He smiled down at her. 'Well I'll tell you
something kulturny. You're one of the most beautiful women in the
world.'

The girl blushed again. She looked at him seriously. 'Are you speaking
the truth? I think my mouth is too big. Am I as beautiful as Western
girls? I was once told I look like Greta Garbo. Is that so?'

'More beautiful,' said Bond. 'There is more light in your face. And your
mouth isn't too big. It's just the right size. For me, anyway.'

'What is that--"light in the face"? What do you mean?'

Bond meant that she didn't look to him like a Russian spy. She seemed to
show none of the reserve of a spy. None of the coldness, none of the
calculation. She gave the impression of warmth of heart and gaiety.
These things shone out through the eyes. He searched for a non-committal
phrase. 'There is a lot of gaiety and fun in your eyes,' he said lamely.

Tatiana looked serious. 'That is curious,' she said. 'There is not much
fun and gaiety in Russia. No one speaks of these things. I have never
been told that before.'

Gaiety? She thought, after the last two months? How could she be looking
gay? And yet, yes, there was a lightness in her heart. Was she a loose
woman by nature? Or was it something to do with this man she had never
seen before? Relief about him after the agony of thinking about what she
had to do? It was certainly much easier than she had expected. He made
it easy--made it fun, with a spice of danger. He was terribly handsome.
And he looked very clean. Would he forgive her when they got to London
and she told him? Told him that she had been sent to seduce him? Even
the night on which she must do it and the number of the room? Surely he
wouldn't mind very much. It was doing him no harm. It was only a way for
her to get to England and make those reports. 'Gaiety and fun in her
eyes'. Well, why not? It was possible. There was a wonderful sense of
freedom being alone with a man like this and knowing that she would not
be punished for it. It was really terribly exciting.

'You are very handsome,' she said. She searched for a comparison that
would give him pleasure. 'You are like an American film star.'

She was startled by his reaction. 'For God's sake! That's the worst
insult you can pay a man!'

She hurried to make good her mistake. How curious that the compliment
didn't please him. Didn't everyone in the West want to look like a film
star? 'I was lying,' she said. 'I wanted to give you pleasure. In fact
you are like my favourite hero. He's in a book by a Russian called
Lermontov. I will tell you about him one day.'

One day? Bond thought it was time to get down to business.

'Now listen, Tania.' He tried not to look at the beautiful face on the
pillow. He fixed his eyes on the point of her chin. 'We've got to stop
fooling and be serious. What is all this about? Are you really going to
come back to England with me?' He raised his eyes to hers. It was fatal.
She had opened them wide again in that damnable guilelessness.

'But of course!'

'Oh!' Bond was taken aback by the directness of her answer. He looked at
her suspiciously. 'You're sure?'

Yes.' Her eyes were truthful now. She had stopped flirting.

'You're not afraid?'

He saw a shadow cross her eyes. But it was not what he thought. She had
remembered that she had a part to play. She was to be frightened of what
she was doing. Terrified. It had sounded so easy, this acting, but now
it was difficult. How odd! She decided to compromise.

'Yes. I am afraid. But not so much now. You will protect me. I thought
you would.'

'Well, yes, of course I will.' Bond thought of her relatives in Russia.
He quickly put the thought out of his mind. What was he doing? Trying to
dissuade her from coming? He closed his mind to the consequences he
imagined for her. 'There's nothing to worry about. I'll look after you.'
And now for the question he had been shirking. He felt a ridiculous
embarrassment. The girl wasn't in the least what he had expected. It was
spoiling everything to ask the question. It had to be done.

'What about the machine?'

Yes. It was as if he had cuffed her across the face. Pain showed in her
eyes, and the edge of tears.

She pulled the sheet over her mouth and spoke from behind it. Her eyes
above the sheet were cold.

'So that's what you want.'

'Now listen.' Bond put nonchalance in his voice. 'This machine's got
nothing to do with you and me. But my people in London want it.' He
remembered security. He added blandly, 'It's not all that important.
They know all about the machine and they think it's a wonderful Russian
invention. They just want one to copy. Like your people copy foreign
cameras and things.' God, how lame it sounded!

'Now you're lying,' a big tear rolled out of one wide blue eye and down
the soft cheek and on to the pillow. She pulled the sheet up over her
eyes.

Bond reached out and put his hand on her arm under the sheet. The arm
flinched angrily away.

'Damn the bloody machine,' he said impatiently. 'But for God's sake,
Tania, you must know that I've got a job to do. Just say one way or the
other and we'll forget about it. There are lots more things to talk
about. We've got to arrange our journey and so on. Of course my people
want it or they wouldn't have sent me out to bring you home with it.'

Tatiana dabbed her eyes with the sheet. Brusquely she pulled the sheet
down to her shoulders again. She knew that she had been forgetting her
job. It had just been that... Oh well. If only he had said the
machine didn't matter to him so long as she would come. But that was too
much to hope for. He was right. He had a job to do. So had she.

She looked up at him calmly. 'I will bring it. Have no fear. But do not
let us mention it again. And now listen.' She sat up straighter on the
pillows. 'We must go tonight.' She remembered her lesson. 'It is the
only chance. This evening I am on night duty from six o'clock. I shall
be alone in the office and I will take the Spektor.'

Bond's eyes narrowed. His mind raced as he thought of the problems that
would have to be faced. Where to hide her. How to get her out to the
first plane after the loss had been discovered. It was going to be a
risky business. They would stop at nothing to get her and the Spektor
back. Roadblock on the way to the airport. Bomb in the plane. Anything.

'That's wonderful, Tania.' Bond's voice was casual. 'We'll keep you
hidden and then we'll take the first plane tomorrow morning.'

'Don't be foolish.' Tatiana had been warned that here would be some
difficult lines in her part. 'We will take the train. This Orient
Express. It leaves at nine tonight. Do you think I haven't been thinking
this thing out? I won't stay a minute longer in Istanbul than I have to.
We will be over the frontier at dawn. You must get the tickets and a
passport. I will travel with you as your wife.' She looked happily up at
him. 'I shall like that. In one of those coups I have read about. They
must be very comfortable. Like a tiny house on wheels. During the day we
will talk and read and at night you will stand in the corridor outside
our house and guard it.'

'Like hell I will,' said Bond, 'But look here, Tania. That's crazy.
They're bound to catch up with us somewhere. It's four days and five
nights to London on that train. We've got to think of something else.'

'I won't,' said the girl flatly. 'That's the only way I'll go. If you
are clever, how can they find out?'

Oh God, she thought. Why had they insisted on this train? But they had
been definite. It was a good place for love, they had said. She would
have four days to get him to love her. Then, when they got to London,
life would be easy for her. He would protect her. Otherwise, if they
flew to London, she would be put straight into prison. The four days
were essential. And, they had warned her, we will have men on the train
to see you don't get off. So be careful and obey your orders. Oh God. Oh
God. Yet now she longed for those four days with him in the little house
on wheels. How curious! It had been her duty to force him. Now it was
her passionate desire.

She watched Bond's thoughtful face. She longed to stretch out a hand to
him and reassure him that it would be all right; that this was a
harmless konspiratsia to get her to England: that no harm could come to
either of them, because that was not the object of the plot.

'Well, I still think it's crazy,' said Bond, wondering what M's reaction
would be. 'But I suppose it may work. I've got the passport. It will
need a Yugoslav visa,' he looked at her sternly. 'Don't think I'm going
to take you on the part of the train that goes through Bulgaria, or I
shall think you want to kidnap me.'

'I do.' Tatiana giggled. 'That's exactly what I want to do.'

'Now shut up, Tania. We've got to work this out. I'll get the tickets
and I'll have one of our men come along. Just in case. He's a good man.
You'll like him. Your name's Caroline Somerset. Don't forget it. How are
you going to get to the train?'

'Karolin Siomerset,' the girl turned the name over in her mind. 'It is a
pretty name. And you are Mister Siomerset.' She laughed happily. 'That
is fun. Do not worry about me. I will come to the train just before it
leaves. It is the Sirkeci Station. I know where it is. So that is all.
And we do not worry any more. Yes?'

'Suppose you lose your nerve? Suppose they catch you?' Suddenly Bond was
worried at the girl's confidence. How could she be so certain? A sharp
tingle of suspicion ran down his spine.

'Before I saw you, I was frightened. Now I am not.' Tatiana tried to
tell herself that this was the truth. Somehow it nearly was. 'Now I
shall not lose my nerve, as you call it. And they cannot catch me. I
shall leave my things in the hotel and take my usual bag to the office.
I cannot leave my fur coat behind. I love it too dearly. But today is
Sunday and that will be an excuse to come to the office in it. Tonight
at half-past eight I shall walk out and take a taxi to the station. And
now you must stop looking so worried.' Impulsively, because she had to,
she stretched out a hand towards him. 'Say that you are pleased.'

Bond moved to the edge of the bed. He took her hand and looked down into
her eyes. God, he thought. I hope it's all right. I hope this crazy plan
will work. Is this wonderful girl a cheat? Is she true? Is she real? The
eyes told him nothing except that the girl was happy, and that she
wanted him to love her, and that she was surprised at what was happening
to her. Tatiana's other hand came up and round his neck and pulled him
fiercely down to her. At first the mouth trembled under his and then, as
passion took her, the mouth yielded into a kiss without end.

Bond lifted his legs on to the bed. While his mouth went on kissing her,
his hand went to her left breast and held it, feeling the peak hard with
desire under his fingers. His hand strayed on down across her flat
stomach. Her legs shifted languidly. She moaned softly and her mouth
slid away from his. Below the closed eyes the long lashes quivered like
humming birds' wings.

Bond reached up and took the edge of the sheet and pulled it right down
and threw it off the end of the huge bed. She was wearing nothing but
the black ribbon round her neck and black silk stockings rolled above
her knees. Her arms groped up for him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Above them, and unknown to both of them, behind the gold-framed false
mirror on the wall over the bed, the two photographers from SMERSH sat
close together in the cramped cabinet de voyeur, as, before them, so
many friends of the proprietor had sat on a honeymoon night in the
stateroom of the Kristal Palas.

And the view-finders gazed coldly down on the passionate arabesques the
two bodies formed and broke and formed again, and the clockwork
mechanism of the cine-cameras whirred softly on and on as the breath
rasped out of the open mouths of the two men and the sweat of excitement
trickled down their bulging faces into their cheap collars.


                           21. Orient Express

The great trains are going out all over Europe, one by one, but still,
three times a week, the Orient Express thunders superbly over the 1400
miles of glittering steel track between Istanbul and Paris.

Under the arc-lights, the long-chassied German locomotive panted quietly
with the laboured breath of a dragon dying of asthma. Each heavy breath
seemed certain to be the last. Then came another. Wisps of steam rose
from the couplings between the carriages and died quickly in the warm
August air. The Orient Express was the only live train in the ugly,
cheaply architectured burrow that is Istanbul's main station. The trains
on the other lines were engineless and unattended--waiting for tomorrow.
Only Track No3, and its platform, throbbed with the tragic poetry of
departure.

The heavy bronze cipher on the side of the dark blue coach said,
COMPAGNIE INTERNATIONALE DES WAGON-LITS ET DES GRANDS EXPRESS
EUROPENS. Above the cipher, fitted into metal slots, was a flat
iron sign that announced, in black capitals on white, ORIENT EXPRESS,
and underneath, in three lines:

            ISTANBUL          THESSALONIKI          BEOGRAD
                         VENEZIA          MILAN
                        LAUSANNE          PARIS

James Bond gazed vaguely at one of the most romantic signs in the world.
For the tenth time he looked at his watch. 8.51. His eyes went back to
the sign. All the towns were spelled in the language of the country
except MILAN. Why not MILANO? Bond took out his handkerchief and wiped
his face. Where the hell was the girl? Had she been caught? Had she had
second thoughts? Had he been too rough with her last night, or rather
this morning, in the great bed?

8.55. The quiet pant of the engine had stopped. There came an echoing
whoosh as the automatic safety-valve let off the excess steam. A hundred
yards away, through the milling crowd, Bond watched the stationmaster
raise a hand to the engine driver and fireman and start walking slowly
back down the train, banging the doors of the third-class carriages up
front. Passengers, mostly peasants going back into Greece after a
weekend with their relatives in Turkey, hung out of the windows and
jabbered at the grinning crowd below.

Beyond, where the faded arc-lights stopped and the dark blue night and
the stars showed through the crescent mouth of the station, Bond saw a
red pinpoint turn to green.

The stationmaster came nearer. The brown uniformed wagon-lit attendant
tapped Bond on the arm. '_En voiture, s'il vous plat._' The two
rich-looking Turks kissed their mistresses--they were too pretty to be
wives--and, with a barrage of laughing injunctions, stepped on to the
little iron pedestal and up the two tall steps into the carriage. There
were no other wagon-lit travellers on the platform. The conductor, with
an impatient glance at the tall Englishman, picked up the iron pedestal
and climbed with it into the train.

The stationmaster strode purposefully by. Two more compartments, the
first- and second-class carriages, and then, when he reached the guard's
van, he would lift the dirty green flag.

There was no hurrying figure coming up the platform from the _guichet_.
High up above the guichet, near the ceiling of the station, the minute
hand of the big illuminated clock jumped forward an inch and said
'Nine'.

A window banged down above Bond's head. Bond looked up. His immediate
reaction was that the black veil was too wide-meshed. The intention to
disguise the luxurious mouth and the excited blue eyes was amateurish.

'Quick.'

The train had begun to move. Bond reached for the passing handrail and
swung up on to the step. The attendant was still holding open the door.
Bond stepped unhurriedly through.

'Madam was late,' said the attendant. 'She came along the corridor. She
must have entered by the last carriage.'

Bond went down the carpeted corridor to the centre coup. A black 7
stood above a black 8 on the white metal lozenge. The door was ajar.
Bond walked in and shut it behind him. The girl had taken off her veil
and her black straw hat. She was sitting in the corner by the window. A
long, sleek sable coat was thrown open to show a natural coloured
shantung dress with a pleated skirt, honey-coloured nylons and a black
crocodile belt and shoes. She looked composed.

'You have no faith, James.'

Bond sat down beside her. 'Tania,' he said, 'if there was a bit more
room I'd put you across my knee and spank you. You nearly gave me heart
failure. What happened?'

'Nothing,' said Tatiana innocently. 'What could happen? I said I would
be here, and I am here. You have no faith. Since I am sure you are more
interested in my dowry than in me, it is up there.'

Bond looked casually up. Two small cases were on the rack beside his
suitcase. He took her hand. He said, 'Thank God you're safe.'

Something in his eyes, perhaps the flash of guilt, as he admitted to
himself that he had been more interested in the girl than the machine,
reassured her. She kept his hand in hers and sank contentedly back in
her corner.

The train screeched slowly round Seraglio Point. The lighthouse lit up
the roofs of the dreary shacks along the railway line. With his free
hand Bond took out a cigarette and lit it. He reflected that they would
soon be passing the back of the great billboard where Krilencu had
lived--until less than twenty-four hours ago. Bond saw again the scene
in every detail. The white crossroads, the two men in the shadows, the
doomed man slipping out through the purple lips.

The girl watched his face with tenderness. What was this man thinking?
What was going on behind those cold level grey-blue eyes that sometimes
turned soft and sometimes, as they had done last night before his
passion had burned out in her arms, blazed like diamonds. Now they were
veiled in thought. Was he worrying about them both? Worrying about their
safety? If only she could tell him that there was nothing to fear, that
he was only her passport to England--him and the heavy case the Resident
Director had given her that evening in the office. The Director had said
the same thing. 'Here is your passport to England, Corporal,' he had
said cheerfully. 'Look.' He had unzipped the bag: 'A brand-new Spektor.
Be certain not to open the bag again or let it out of your compartment
until you get to the other end. Or this Englishman will take it away
from you and throw you on the dust-heap. It is this machine they want.
Do not let them take it from you, or you will have failed in your duty.
Understood?'

A signal box loomed up in the blue dusk outside the window. Tatiana
watched Bond get up and pull down the window and crane out into the
darkness. His body was close to her. She moved her knee so that it
touched him. How extraordinary, this passionate tenderness that had
filled her ever since she had seen him last night standing naked at the
window, his arms up to hold the curtains back, his profile, under the
tousled black hair, intent and pale in the moonlight. And then the
extraordinary fusing of their eyes and their bodies. The flame that had
suddenly lit between them--between the two secret agents, thrown
together from enemy camps a whole world apart, each involved in his own
plot against the country of the other, antagonists by profession, yet
turned, and by the orders of their governments, into lovers.

Tatiana stretched out a hand and caught hold of the edge of the coat and
tugged at it. Bond pulled up the window and turned. He smiled down at
her. He read her eyes. He bent and put his hands on the fur over her
breasts and kissed her hard on the lips. Tatiana leant back, dragging
him with her.

There came a soft double knock on the door. Bond stood up. He pulled out
his handkerchief and brusquely scrubbed the rouge off his lips. 'That'll
be my friend Kerim,' he said. 'I must talk to him. I will tell the
conductor to make up the beds. Stay here while he does it. I won't be
long. I shall be outside the door.' He leant forward and touched her
hand and looked at her wide eyes and at her rueful, half-open lips. 'We
shall have all the night to ourselves. First I must see that you are
safe.' He unlocked the door and slipped out.

Darko Kerim's huge bulk was blocking the corridor. He was leaning on the
brass guard-rail, smoking and gazing moodily out towards the Sea of
Marmara that receded as the long train snaked away from the coast and
turned inland and northwards. Bond leaned on the rail beside him. Kerim
looked into the reflection of Bond's face in the dark window. He said
softly, 'The news is not good. There are three of them on the train.'

'Ah!' An electric tingle ran up Bond's spine.

'It's the three strangers we saw in that room. Obviously they're on to
you and the girl.' Kerim glanced sharply sideways. 'That makes her a
double. Or doesn't it?'

Bond's mind was cool. So the girl had been bait. And yet, and yet. No,
damn it. She couldn't be acting. It wasn't possible. The cipher machine?
Perhaps after all it wasn't in that bag. 'Wait a minute,' he said. He
turned and knocked softly on the door. He heard her unlock it and slip
the chain. He went in and shut the door. She looked surprised. She had
thought it was the conductor come to make up the beds.

She smiled radiantly. 'You have finished?'

'Sit down, Tatiana. I've got to talk to you.'

Now she saw the coldness in his face and her smile went out. She sat
down obediently with her hands in her lap.

Bond stood over her. Was there guilt in her face, or fear? No, only
surprise and a coolness to match his own expression.

'Now listen, Tatiana,' Bond's voice was deadly. 'Something's come up. I
must look into that bag and see if the machine is there.'

She said indifferently. 'Take it down and look.' She examined the hands
in her lap. So now it was going to come. What the Director had said.
They were going to take the machine and throw her aside, perhaps have
her put off the train. Oh God! This man was going to do that to her.

Bond reached up and hauled down the heavy case and put it on the seat.
He tore the zip sideways and looked in. Yes, a grey japanned metal case
with three rows of squat keys, rather like a typewriter. He held the bag
open towards her. 'Is that a Spektor?'

She glanced casually into the gaping bag. 'Yes.'

Bond zipped the bag shut and put it back on the rack. He sat down beside
the girl. 'There are three MGB men on the train. We know they are the
ones who arrived at your centre on Monday. What are they doing here,
Tatiana?' Bond's voice was soft. He watched her, searched her with all
his senses.

She looked up. There were tears in her eyes. Were they the tears of a
child found out? But there was no trace of guilt in her face. She only
looked terrified of something.

She reached out a hand and then drew it back. 'You aren't going to throw
me off the train now you've got the machine?'

'Of course not,' Bond said impatiently. 'Don't be idiotic. But we must
know what these men are doing. What's it all about? Did you know they
were going to be on the train?' He tried to read some clue in her
expression. He could only see a great relief. And what else? A look of
calculation? Of reserve? Yes, she was hiding something. But what?

Tatiana seemed to make up her mind. Brusquely she wiped the back of her
hand across her eyes. She reached forward and put the hand on his knee.
The streak of tears showed on the back of the hand. She looked into
Bond's eyes, forcing him to believe her.

'James,' she said. 'I did not know these men were on the train. I was
told they were leaving today. For Germany. I assumed they would fly.
That is all I can tell you. Until we arrive in England, out of reach of
my people, you must not ask me more. I have done what I said I would. I
am here with the machine. Have faith in me. Do not be afraid for us. I
am certain these men do not mean us harm. Absolutely certain. Have
faith.' (Was she so certain, wondered Tatiana? Had the Klebb woman told
her all the truth? But she also must have faith--faith in the orders she
had been given. These men must be the guards to see that she didn't get
off the train. They could mean no harm. Later, when they got to London,
this man would hide her away out of reach of SMERSH and she would tell
him everything he wanted to know. She had already decided this in the
back of her mind. But God knew what would happen if she betrayed _Them_
now. _They_ would somehow get her, and him. She knew it. There were no
secrets from these people. And _They_ would have no mercy. So long as
she played out her role, all would be well.) Tatiana watched Bond's face
for a sign that he believed her.

Bond shrugged his shoulders. He stood up. 'I don't know what to think,
Tatiana,' he said. 'You are keeping something from me, but I think it's
something you don't know is important. And I believe you think we are
safe. We may be. It may be a coincidence that these men are on the
train. I must talk to Kerim and decide what to do. Don't worry. We will
look after you. But now we must be very careful.'

Bond looked round the compartment. He tried the communicating door with
the next coup. It was locked. He decided to wedge it when the conductor
had gone. He would do the same for the door into the passage. And he
would have to stay awake. So much for the honeymoon on wheels! Bond
smiled grimly to himself and rang for the conductor. Tatiana was looking
anxiously up at him. 'Don't worry, Tania,' he said again. 'Don't worry
about anything. Go to bed when the man has gone. Don't open the door
unless you know it's me. I will sit up tonight and watch. Perhaps
tomorrow it will be easier. I will make a plan with Kerim. He is a good
man.'

The conductor knocked. Bond let him in and went out into the corridor.
Kerim was still there gazing out. The train had picked up speed and was
hurtling through the night, its harsh melancholy whistle echoing back at
them from the walls of a deep cutting against the sides of which the
lighted carriage windows flickered and danced. Kerim didn't move, but
his eyes in the mirror of the window were watchful.

Bond told him of the conversation. It was not easy to explain to Kerim
why he trusted the girl as he did. He watched the mouth in the window
curl ironically as he tried to describe what he had read in her eyes and
what his intuition told him.

Kerim sighed resignedly. 'James,' he said, 'you are now in charge. This
is your part of the operation. We have already argued most of this out
today--the danger of the train, the possibility of getting the machine
home in the diplomatic bag, the integrity, or otherwise, of this girl.
It certainly appears that she has surrendered unconditionally to you. At
the same time you admit that you have surrendered to her. Perhaps only
partially. But you have decided to trust her. In this morning's
telephone talk with M he said that he would back your decision. He left
it to you. So be it. But he didn't know we were to have an escort of
three MGB men. Nor did we. And I think that would have changed all our
views. Yes?'

'Yes.'

'Then the only thing to do is eliminate these three men. Get them off
the train. God knows what they're here for. I don't believe in
coincidences any more than you. But one thing is certain. We are not
going to share the train with these men. Right?'

'Of course.'

'Then leave it to me. At least for tonight. This is still my country and
I have certain powers in it. And plenty of money. I cannot afford to
kill them. The train would be delayed. You and the girl might get
involved. But I shall arrange something. Two of them have sleeping
berths. The senior man with the moustache and the little pipe is next
door to you--here in No6.' He gestured backwards with his head. 'He is
travelling on a German passport under the name of "Melchior Benz,
salesman". The dark one, the Armenian, is in No12. He, too, has a German
passport--"Kurt Goldfarb, construction engineer". They have through
tickets to Paris. I have seen their documents. I have a police card. The
conductor made no trouble. He has all the tickets and passports in his
cabin. The third man, the man with a boil on the back of his neck, turns
out also to have boils on his face. A stupid, ugly looking brute. I have
not seen his passport. He is travelling sitting up in the first-class,
in the next compartment to me. He does not have to surrender his
passport until the frontier. But he has surrendered his ticket.' Like a
conjurer, Kerim flicked a yellow first-class ticket out of his coat
pocket. He slipped it back. He grinned proudly at Bond.

'How the hell?'

Kerim chuckled. 'Before he settled down for the night, this dumb ox went
to the lavatory. I was standing in the corridor and I suddenly
remembered how we used to steal rides on the train when I was a boy. I
gave him a minute. Then I walked up and rattled the lavatory door. I
hung on to the handle very tight. "Ticket collector," I said in a loud
voice. "Tickets please." I said it in French and again in German. There
was a mumble from inside. I felt him try to open the door. I hung on
tight so that he would think the door had stuck. "Do not derange
yourself, Monsieur," I said politely. "Push the ticket under the door."
There was more fiddling with the door handle and I could hear heavy
breathing. Then there was a pause and a rustle under the door. There was
the ticket. I said, "_Merci, Monsieur_" very politely. I picked up the
ticket and stepped across the coupling into the next carriage.' Kerim
airily waved a hand. 'The stupid oaf will be sleeping peacefully by now.
He will think that his ticket will be given back to him at the frontier.
He is mistaken. The ticket will be in ashes and the ashes will be on the
four winds,' Kerim gestured towards the darkness outside. 'I will see
that the man is put off the train, however much money he has got. He
will be told that the circumstances must be investigated, his statements
corroborated with the ticket agency. He will be allowed to proceed on a
later train.'

Bond smiled at the picture of Kerim playing his private-school trick.
'You're a card, Darko. What about the other two?'

Darko Kerim shrugged his massive shoulders. 'Something will occur to
me,' he said confidently. 'The way to catch Russians is to make them
look foolish. Embarrass them. Laugh at them. They can't stand it. We
will somehow make these men sweat. Then we will leave it to the MGB to
punish them for failing in their duty. Doubtless they will be shot by
their own people.'

While they were talking, the conductor had come out of No7. Kerim turned
to Bond and put a hand on his shoulder. 'Have no fear, James,' he said
cheerfully. 'We will defeat these people. Go to your girl. We will meet
again in the morning. We shall not sleep much tonight, but that cannot
be helped. Every day is different. Perhaps we shall sleep tomorrow.'

Bond watched the big man move off easily down the swaying corridor. He
noticed that, despite the movement of the train, Kerim's shoulders never
touched the walls of the corridor. Bond felt a wave of affection for the
tough, cheerful professional spy.

Kerim disappeared into the conductor's cabin. Bond turned and knocked
softly on the door of No7.


                           22. Out of Turkey

The train howled on through the night. Bond sat and watched the hurrying
moonlit landscape and concentrated on keeping awake.

Everything conspired to make him sleep--the hasty metal gallop of the
wheels, the hypnotic swoop of the silver telegraph wires, the occasional
melancholy, reassuring moan of the steam whistle clearing their way, the
drowsy metallic clatter of the couplings at each end of the corridor,
the lullaby creak of the woodwork in the little room. Even the deep
violet glimmer of the nightlight above the door seemed to say, 'I will
watch for you. Nothing can happen while I am burning. Close your eyes
and sleep, sleep.'

The girl's head was warm and heavy on his lap. There was so obviously
just room for him to slip under the single sheet and fit close up
against her, the front of his thighs against the backs of hers, his head
in the spread curtain of her hair on the pillow.

Bond screwed up his eyes and opened them again. He cautiously lifted his
wrist. Four o'clock. Only one more hour to the Turkish frontier. Perhaps
he would be able to sleep during the day. He would give her the gun and
wedge the doors again and she could watch.

He looked down at the beautiful sleeping profile. How innocent she
looked, this girl from the Russian Secret Service--the lashes fringing
the soft swell of the cheek, the lips parted and unaware, the long
strand of hair that had strayed untidily across her forehead and that he
wanted to brush back neatly to join the rest, the steady slow throb of
the pulse in the offered neck. He felt a surge of tenderness and the
impulse to gather her up in his arms and strain her tight against him.
He wanted her to wake, from a dream perhaps, so that he could kiss her
and tell her that everything was all right, and see her settle happily
back to sleep.

The girl had insisted on sleeping like this. 'I won't go to sleep unless
you hold me,' she had said. 'I must know you're there all the time. It
would be terrible to wake up and not be touching you. Please James.
Please _duschka_.'

Bond had taken off his coat and tie and had arranged himself in the
corner with his feet up on his suitcase and the Beretta under the pillow
within reach of his hand. She had made no comment about the gun. She had
taken off all her clothes, except the black ribbon round her throat, and
had pretended not to be provocative as she scrambled impudically into
bed and wriggled herself into a comfortable position. She had held up
her arms to him. Bond had pulled her head back by her hair and had
kissed her once, long and cruelly. Then he had told her to go to sleep
and had leant back and waited icily for his body to leave him alone.
Grumbling sleepily, she had settled herself, with one arm flung across
his thighs. At first she had held him tightly, but her arm had gradually
relaxed and then she was asleep.

Brusquely Bond closed his mind to the thought of her and focused on the
journey ahead.

Soon they would be out of Turkey. But would Greece be any easier? No
love lost between Greece and England. And Yugoslavia? Whose side was
Tito on? Probably both. Whatever the orders of the three MGB men, either
they already knew Bond and Tatiana were on the train or they would soon
find out. He and the girl couldn't sit for four days in this coup with
the blinds drawn. Their presence would be reported back to Istanbul,
telephoned from some station, and by the morning the loss of the Spektor
would have been discovered. Then what? A hasty dmarche through the
Russian embassy in Athens or Belgrade? Have the girl taken off the train
as a thief? Or was that all too simple? And if it was more
complicated--if all this was part of some mysterious plot, some tortuous
Russian conspiracy--should he dodge it? Should he and the girl leave the
train at a wayside station, on the wrong side of the track, and hire a
car and somehow get a plane to London?

Outside, the luminous dawn had begun to edge the racing trees and rocks
with blue. Bond looked at his watch. Five o'clock. They would soon be at
Uzunkopru. What was going on down the train behind him? What had Kerim
achieved?

Bond sat back, relaxed. After all there was a simple, commonsense answer
to his problem. If, between them, they could quickly get rid of the
three MGB agents, they would stick to the train and to their original
plan. If not, Bond would get the girl and the machine off the train,
somewhere in Greece, and take another route home. But, if the odds
improved, Bond was for going on. He and Kerim were resourceful men.
Kerim had an agent in Belgrade who was going to meet the train. There
was always the Embassy.

Bond's mind raced on, adding up the pros, dismissing the cons. Behind
his reasoning, Bond calmly admitted to himself that he had an insane
desire to play the game out and see what it was all about. He wanted to
take these people on and solve the mystery and, if it was some sort of a
plot, defeat it. M had left him in charge. He had the girl and the
machine under his hand. Why panic? What was there to panic about? It
would be mad to run away and perhaps only escape one trap in order to
fall into another one.

The train gave a long whistle and began to slacken speed.

Now for the first round. If Kerim failed. If the three men stayed on the
train...

Some goods trucks, led by a straining engine, filed by. The silhouette
of sheds showed briefly. With a jolt and a screech of couplings, the
Orient Express took the points and swerved away from the through line.
Four sets of rails with grass growing between them showed outside the
window, and the empty length of the down platform. A cock crowed. The
express slowed to walking speed and finally, with a sigh of hydraulic
brakes and a noisy whoosh of let-off steam, ground to a stop. The girl
stirred in her sleep. Bond softly shifted her head on to the pillow and
got up and slipped out of the door.

It was a typical Balkan wayside station--a faade of dour buildings in
over-pointed stone, a dusty expanse of platform, not raised, but level
with the ground so that there was a long step down from the train, some
chickens pecking about and a few drab officials standing idly, unshaven,
not even trying to look important. Up towards the cheap half of the
train, a chattering horde of peasants with bundles and wicker baskets
waited for the customs and passport control so that they could clamber
aboard and join the swarm inside.

Across the platform from Bond was a closed door with a sign over it
which said POLIS. Through the dirty window beside the door Bond thought
he caught a glimpse of the head and shoulders of Kerim.

'_Passeports. Douanes!_'

A plain-clothes man and two policemen in dark green uniform with pistol
holsters at their black belts entered the corridor. The wagon-lit
conductor preceded them, knocking on the doors.

At the door of No12 the conductor made an indignant speech in Turkish,
holding out the stack of tickets and passports and fanning through them
as if they were a pack of cards. When he had finished, the plain-clothes
man, beckoning forward the two policemen, knocked smartly on the door
and, when it was opened, stepped inside. The two policemen stood guard
behind him.

Bond edged down the corridor. He could hear a jumble of bad German. One
voice was cold, the other was frightened and hot. The passport and
ticket of Herr Kurt Goldfarb were missing. Had Herr Goldfarb removed
them from the conductor's cabin? Certainly not. Had Herr Goldfarb in
truth ever surrendered his papers to the conductor? Naturally. Then the
matter was unfortunate. An inquiry would have to be held. No doubt the
German Legation in Istanbul would put the matter right (Bond smiled at
this suggestion). Meanwhile, it was regretted that Herr Goldfarb could
not continue his journey. No doubt he would be able to proceed tomorrow.
Herr Goldfarb would get dressed. His luggage would be transported to the
waiting-room.

The MGB man who erupted into the corridor was the dark Caucasian-type
man, the junior of the 'visitors'. His sallow face was grey with fear.
His hair was awry and he was dressed only in the bottom half of his
pyjamas. But there was nothing comical about his desperate flurry down
the corridor. He brushed past Bond. At the door of No6 he paused and
pulled himself together. He knocked with tense control. The door opened
on the chain and Bond glimpsed a thick nose and part of a moustache. The
chain was slipped and Goldfarb went in. There was silence, during which
the plain-clothes man dealt with the papers of two elderly French women
in Nos9 and 10, and then with Bond's.

The officer barely glanced at Bond's passport. He snapped it shut and
handed it to the conductor. 'You are travelling with Kerim Bey?' he
asked in French. His eyes were remote.

'Yes.'

'_Merci, Monsieur. Bon voyage._' The man saluted. He turned and rapped
sharply on the door of No6. The door opened and he went in.

Five minutes later the door was flung back. The plain-clothes man, now
erect with authority, beckoned forward the policemen. He spoke to them
harshly in Turkish. He turned back to the coup. 'Consider yourself
under arrest, Mein Herr. Attempted bribery of officials is a grave crime
in Turkey.' There was an angry clamour in Goldfarb's bad German. It was
cut short by one hard sentence in Russian. A different Goldfarb, a
Goldfarb with madman's eyes, emerged and walked blindly down the
corridor and went into No12. A policeman stood outside the door and
waited.

'And _your_ papers, Mein Herr. Please step forward. I must verify this
photograph.' The plain-clothes man held the green-backed German passport
up to the light. 'Forward please.'

Reluctantly, his heavy face pale with anger, the MGB man who called
himself Benz stepped out into the corridor in a brilliant blue silk
dressing-gown. The hard brown eyes looked straight into Bond's, ignoring
him.

The plain-clothes man slapped the passport shut and handed it to the
conductor. 'Your papers are in order, Mein Herr. And now, if you please,
the baggage.' He went in, followed by the second policeman. The MGB man
turned his blue back on Bond and watched the search.

Bond noticed the bulge under the left arm of the dressing-gown, and the
ridge of a belt round the waist. He wondered if he should tip off the
plain-clothes man. He decided it would be better to keep quiet. He might
be hauled in as a witness.

The search was over. The plain-clothes man saluted coldly and moved on
down the corridor. The MGB man went back into No6 and slammed the door
behind him.

Pity, thought Bond. One had got away.

Bond turned back to the window. A bulky man, wearing a grey Homburg, and
with an angry boil on the back of his neck, was being escorted through
the door marked POLIS. Down the corridor a door slammed. Goldfarb,
escorted by the policeman, stepped down off the train. With bent head,
he walked across the dusty platform and disappeared through the same
door.

The engine whistled, a new kind of whistle, the brave shrill blast of a
Greek engine-driver. The door of the wagon-lit carriage clanged shut.
The plain-clothes man and the second policeman appeared walking over to
the station. The guard at the back of the train looked at his watch and
held out his flag. There was a jerk and a diminishing crescendo of
explosive puffs from the engine and the front section of the Orient
Express began to move. The section that would be taking the northern
route through the Iron Curtain--through Dragoman on the Bulgarian
frontier, only fifty miles away--was left beside the dusty platform,
waiting.

Bond pulled down the window and took a last look back at the Turkish
frontier, where two men would be sitting in a bare room under what
amounted to sentence of death. Two birds down, he thought. Two out of
three. The odds looked more respectable.

He watched the dead, dusty platform, with its chickens and the small
black figure of the guard, until the long train took the points and
jerked harshly on to the single main line. He looked away across the
ugly, parched countryside towards the golden guinea sun climbing out of
the Turkish plain. It was going to be a beautiful day.

Bond drew his head in out of the cool, sweet morning air. He pulled up
the window with a bang.

He had made up his mind. He would stay on the train and see the thing
through.


                           23. Out of Greece

Hot coffee from the meagre little buffet at Pithion (there would be no
restaurant car until midday), a painless visit from the Greek customs
and passport control, and then the berths were folded away as the train
hurried south towards the Gulf of Enez at the head of the Aegean.
Outside, there was extra light and colour. The air was drier. The men at
the little stations and in the fields were handsome. Sunflowers, maize,
vines and racks of tobacco were ripening in the sun. It was, as Darko
had said, another day.

Bond washed and shaved under the amused eyes of Tatiana. She approved of
the fact that he put no oil on his hair. 'It is a dirty habit,' she
said. 'I was told that many Europeans have it. We would not think of
doing it in Russia. It dirties the pillows. But it is odd that you in
the West do not use perfume. All our men do.'

'We wash,' said Bond dryly.

In the heat of her protests, there came a knock on the door. It was
Kerim. Bond let him in. Kerim bowed towards the girl.

'What a charming domestic scene,' he commented cheerfully, lowering his
bulk into the corner near the door. 'I have rarely seen a handsomer pair
of spies.'

Tatiana glowered at him. 'I am not accustomed to Western jokes,' she
said coldly.

Kerim's laugh was disarming. 'You'll learn, my dear. In England, they
are great people for jokes. There it is considered proper to make a joke
of everything. I also have learned to make jokes. They grease the
wheels. I have been laughing a lot this morning. Those poor fellows at
Uzunkopru. I wish I could be there when the police telephone the German
Consulate in Istanbul. That is the worst of forged passports. They are
not difficult to make, but it is almost impossible to forge also their
birth certificate--the files of the country which is supposed to have
issued them. I fear the careers of your two comrades have come to a sad
end, Mrs Somerset.'

'How did you do it?' Bond knotted his tie.

'Money and influence. Five hundred dollars to the conductor. Some big
talk to the police. It was lucky our friend tried a bribe. A pity that
crafty Benz next door,' he gestured at the wall, 'didn't get involved. I
couldn't do the passport trick twice. We will have to get him some other
way. The man with the boils was easy. He knew no German and travelling
without a ticket is a serious matter. Ah well, the day has started
favourably. We have won the first round, but our friend next door will
now be very careful. He knows what he has to reckon with. Perhaps that
is for the best. It would have been a nuisance having to keep you both
under cover all day. Now we can move about--even have lunch together, as
long as you bring the family jewels with you. We must watch to see if he
makes a telephone call at one of the stations. But I doubt if he could
tackle the Greek telephone exchange. He will probably wait until we are
in Yugoslavia. But there I have my machine. We can get reinforcements if
we need them. It should be a most interesting journey. There is always
excitement on the Orient Express.' Kerim got to his feet. He opened the
door, 'And romance.' He smiled across the compartment. 'I will call for
you at lunch-time! Greek food is worse than Turkish, but even my stomach
is in the service of the Queen.'

Bond got up and locked the door. Tatiana snapped, 'Your friend is not
kulturny! It is disloyal to refer to your Queen in that manner.'

Bond sat down beside her. 'Tania,' he said patiently, 'that is a
wonderful man. He is also a good friend. As far as I am concerned he can
say anything he likes. He is jealous of me. He would like to have a girl
like you. So he teases you. It is a form of flirting. You should take it
as a compliment.'

'You think so?' she turned her large blue eyes on his. 'But what he said
about his stomach and the head of your State. That was being rude to
your Queen. It would be considered very bad manners to say such a thing
in Russia.'

They were still arguing when the train ground to a halt in the
sun-baked, fly-swarming station of Alexandropolis. Bond opened the door
into the corridor and the sun poured in across a pale mirrored sea that
married, almost without horizon, into a sky the colour of the Greek
flag.

They had lunch, with the heavy bag under the table between Bond's feet.
Kerim quickly made friends with the girl. The MGB man called Benz
avoided the restaurant car. They saw him on the platform buying
sandwiches and beer from a buffet on wheels. Kerim suggested they ask
him to make a four at bridge. Bond suddenly felt very tired and his
tiredness made him feel that they were turning this dangerous journey
into a picnic. Tatiana noticed his silence. She got up and said that she
must rest. As they went out of the wagon-restaurant they heard Kerim
calling gaily for brandy and cigars.

Back in the compartment, Tatiana said firmly, 'Now it is you who will
sleep.' She drew down the blind and shut out the hard afternoon light
and the endless baked fields of maize and tobacco and wilting
sunflowers. The compartment became a dark green underground cavern. Bond
wedged the doors and gave her his gun and stretched out with his head in
her lap and was immediately asleep.

The long train snaked along the north of Greece below the foothills of
the Rhodope Mountains. Nanthi came, and Drama, and Serrai, and then they
were in the Macedonian highlands and the line swerved due south towards
Salonica.

It was dusk when Bond awoke in the soft cradle of her lap. At once, as
if she had been waiting for the moment, Tatiana took his face between
her hands and looked down into his eyes and said urgently, '_Duschka_,
how long shall we have this for?'

'For long.' Bond's thoughts were still luxurious with sleep.

'But for how long?'

Bond gazed up into the beautiful, worried eyes. He cleared the sleep out
of his mind. It was impossible to see beyond the next three days on the
train, beyond their arrival in London. One had to face the fact that
this girl was an enemy agent. His feelings would be of no interest to
the interrogators from his Service and from the Ministries. Other
intelligence services would also want to know what this girl had to tell
them about the machine she had worked for. Probably at Dover she would
be taken away to 'The Cage', that well-sentried private house near
Guildford, where she would be put in a comfortable, but oh so well-wired
room. And the efficient men in plain clothes would come one by one and
sit and talk with her, and the recorder would spin in the room below and
the records would be transcribed and sifted for their grains of new
fact--and, of course, for the contradictions they would trap her into.
Perhaps they would introduce a stool-pigeon--a nice Russian girl who
would commiserate with Tatiana over her treatment and suggest ways of
escape, of turning double, of getting 'harmless' information back to her
parents. This might go on for weeks or months. Meanwhile Bond would be
tactfully kept away from her, unless the interrogators thought he could
extract further secrets by using their feelings for each other. Then
what? The changed name, the offer of a new life in Canada, the thousand
pounds a year she would be given from the secret funds? And where would
he be when she came out of it all? Perhaps the other side of the world.
Or, if he was still in London, how much of her feeling for him would
have survived the grinding of the interrogation machine? How much would
she hate or despise the English after going through all this? And, for
the matter of that, how much would have survived of his own hot flame?

'_Duschka_,' repeated Tatiana impatiently. 'How long?'

'As long as possible. It will depend on us. Many people will interfere.
We shall be separated. It will not always be like this in a little room.
In a few days we shall have to step out into the world. It will not be
easy. It would be foolish to tell you anything else.'

Tatiana's face cleared. She smiled down at him. 'You are right. I will
not ask any more foolish questions. But we must waste no more of these
days.' She shifted his head and got up and lay down beside him.

An hour later, when Bond was standing in the corridor, Darko Kerim was
suddenly beside him. He examined Bond's face. He said slyly, 'You should
not sleep so long. You have been missing the historic landscape of
northern Greece. And it is time for the _premier service_.'

'All you think about is food,' said Bond. He gestured back with his
head. 'What about our friend?'

'He has not stirred. The conductor has been watching for me. That man
will end up the richest conductor in the wagon-lit company. Five hundred
dollars for Goldfarb's papers, and now a hundred dollars a day retainer
until the end of the journey.' Kerim chuckled. 'I have told him he may
even get a medal for his services to Turkey. He believes we are after a
smuggling gang. They're always using this train for running Turkish
opium to Paris. He is not surprised, only pleased that he is being paid
so well. And now, have you found out anything more from this Russian
princess you have in there? I still feel disquiet. Everything is too
peaceful. Those two men we left behind may have been quite innocently
bound for Berlin as the girl says. This Benz may be keeping to his room
because he is frightened of us. All is going well with our journey. And
yet, and yet...' Kerim shook his head. 'These Russians are great
chess players. When they wish to execute a plot, they execute it
brilliantly. The game is planned minutely, the gambits of the enemy are
provided for. They are foreseen and countered. At the back of my mind,'
Kerim's face in the window was gloomy, 'I have a feeling that you and I
and this girl are pawns on a very big board--that we are being allowed
our moves because they do not interfere with the Russian game.'

'But what is the object of the plot?' Bond looked out into the darkness.
He spoke to his reflection in the window. 'What can they want to
achieve? We always get back to that. Of course we have all smelt a
conspiracy of some sort. And the girl may not even know that she's
involved in it. I know she's hiding something, but I think it's only
some small secret she thinks is unimportant. She says she'll tell me
everything when we get to London. Everything? What does she mean? She
only says that I must have faith--that there is no danger. You must
admit, Darko,' Bond looked up for confirmation into the slow crafty
eyes, 'that she's lived up to her story.'

There was no enthusiasm in Kerim's eyes. He said nothing.

Bond shrugged. 'I admit I've fallen for her. But I'm not a fool, Darko.
I've been watching for any clue, anything that would help. You know one
can tell a lot when certain barriers are down. Well they are down, and I
know she's telling the truth. At any rate ninety per cent of it. And I
know she thinks the rest doesn't matter. If she's cheating, she's also
being cheated herself. On your chess analogy, that is possible. But you
still get back to the question of what it's all in aid of.' Bond's voice
hardened. 'And, if you want to know, all I ask is to go on with the game
until we find out.'

Kerim smiled at the obstinate look on Bond's face. He laughed abruptly.
'If it was me, my friend, I would slip off the train at Salonica--with
the machine, and, if you like, with the girl also, though that is not so
important. I would take a hired car to Athens and get on the next plane
for London. But I was not brought up "to be a sport".' Kerim put irony
into the words. 'This is not a game to me. It is business. For you it is
different. You are a gambler. M also is a gambler. He obviously is, or
he would not have given you a free hand. He also wants to know the
answer to this riddle. So be it. But I like to play safe, to make
certain, to leave as little as possible to chance. You think the odds
look right, that they are in your favour?' Darko Kerim turned and faced
Bond. His voice became insistent. 'Listen, my friend,' he put a huge
hand on Bond's shoulder. 'This is a billiard table. An easy, flat, green
billiard table. And you have hit your white ball and it is travelling
easily and quietly towards the red. The pocket is alongside. Fatally,
inevitably, you are going to hit the red and the red is going into that
pocket. It is the law of the billiard table, the law of the billiard
room. But, outside the orbit of these things, a jet pilot has fainted
and his plane is diving straight at that billiard room, or a gas main is
about to explode, or lightning is about to strike. And the building
collapses on top of you and on top of the billiard table. Then what has
happened to that white ball that could not miss the red ball, and to the
red ball that could not miss the pocket? The white ball could not miss
according to the laws of the billiard table. But the laws of the
billiard table are not the only laws, and the laws governing the
progress of this train, and of you to your destination, are also not the
only laws in this particular game.'

Kerim paused. He dismissed his harangue with a shrug of the shoulders.
'You already know these things, my friend,' he said apologetically. 'And
I have made myself thirsty talking platitudes. Hurry the girl up and we
will go and eat. But watch for surprises, I beg of you.' He made a cross
with his finger over the centre of his coat. 'I do not cross my heart.
That is being too serious. But I cross my stomach, which is an important
oath for me. There are surprises on the way for both of us. The gipsy
said to watch out. Now I say the same. We can play the game on the
billiard table, but we must both be on guard against the world outside
the billiard room. My nose,' he tapped it, 'tells me so.'

Kerim's stomach made an indignant noise like a forgotten telephone
receiver with an angry caller on the other end. 'There,' he said
solicitously. 'What did I say? We must go and eat.'

They finished their dinner as the train pulled into the hideous modern
junction of Thessaloniki. With Bond carrying the heavy little bag, they
went back down the train and parted for the night. 'We shall soon be
disturbed again,' warned Kerim. 'There is the frontier at one o'clock.
The Greeks will be no trouble, but those Yugoslavs like waking up anyone
who is travelling soft. If they annoy you, send for me. Even in their
country there are some names I can mention. I am in the second
compartment in the next carriage. I have it to myself. Tomorrow I will
move into our friend Goldfarb's bed in No12. For the time being, the
first-class is an adequate stable.'

Bond dozed wakefully as the train laboured up the moonlit valley of the
Vardar towards the instep of Yugoslavia. Tatiana again slept with her
head in his lap. He thought of what Darko had said. He wondered if he
could not send the big man back to Istanbul when they had got safely
through Belgrade. It was not fair to drag him across Europe on an
adventure that was outside his territory and with which he had little
sympathy. Darko obviously suspected that Bond had become infatuated with
the girl and wasn't seeing the operation straight any more. Well, there
was a grain of truth in that. It would certainly be safer to get off the
train and take another route home. But, Bond admitted to himself, he
couldn't bear the idea of running away from this plot, if it was a plot.
If it wasn't, he equally couldn't bear the idea of sacrificing the three
more days with Tatiana. And M had left the decision to him. As Darko had
said, M also was curious to see the game through. Perversely, M too
wanted to see what this whole rigmarole was about. Bond dismissed the
problem. The journey was going well. Once again, why panic?

Ten minutes after they had arrived at the Greek frontier station of
Idomeni there was a hasty knocking on the door. It woke the girl. Bond
slipped from under her head. He put his ear to the door. 'Yes?'

'_Le conducteur, Monsieur._ There has been an accident. Your friend
Kerim Bey.'

'Wait,' said Bond fiercely. He fitted the Beretta into its holster and
put on his coat. He tore open the door.

'What is it?'

The conductor's face was yellow under the corridor light. 'Come.' He ran
down the corridor towards the first-class.

Officials were clustered round the open door of the second compartment.
They were standing, staring.

The conductor made a path for Bond. Bond reached the door and looked in.

The hair stirred softly on his head. Along the right-hand seat were two
bodies. They were frozen in a ghastly death-struggle that might have
been posed for a film.

Underneath was Kerim, his knees up in a last effort to rise. The taped
hilt of a dagger protruded from his neck near the jugular vein. His head
was thrust back and the empty bloodshot eyes stared up at the night. The
mouth was contorted into a snarl. A thin trickle of blood ran down the
chin.

Half on top of him sprawled the heavy body of the MGB man called Benz,
locked there by Kerim's left arm round his neck. Bond could see a corner
of the Stalin moustache and the side of a blackened face. Kerim's right
arm lay across the man's back, almost casually. The hand ended in a
closed fist and the knob of a knife-hilt, and there was a wide stain on
the coat under the hand.

Bond listened to his imagination. It was like watching a film. The
sleeping Darko, the man slipping quietly through the door, the two steps
forward and the swift stroke at the jugular. Then the last violent spasm
of the dying man as he flung up an arm and clutched his murderer to him
and plunged the knife down towards the fifth rib.

This wonderful man who had carried the sun with him. Now he was
extinguished, totally dead.

Bond turned brusquely and walked out of sight of the man who had died
for him.

He began, carefully, non-committally, to answer questions.


                           24. Out of Danger

The Orient Express steamed slowly into Belgrade at three o'clock in the
afternoon, half an hour late. There would be an eight hours' delay while
the other section of the train came in through the Iron Curtain from
Bulgaria.

Bond looked out at the crowds and waited for the knock on the door that
would be Kerim's man. Tatiana sat huddled in her sable coat beside the
door, watching Bond, wondering if he would come back to her.

She had seen it all from the window--the long wicker baskets being
brought out to the train, the flash of the police photographer's bulbs,
the gesticulating _chef de train_ trying to hurry up the formalities,
and the tall figure of James Bond, straight and hard and cold as a
butcher's knife, coming and going.

Bond had come back and had sat looking at her. He had asked sharp,
brutal questions. She had fought desperately back, sticking coldly to
her story, knowing that now, if she told him everything, told him for
instance that SMERSH was involved, she would certainly lose him for
ever.

Now she sat and was afraid, afraid of the web in which she was caught,
afraid of what might have been behind the lies she had been told in
Moscow--above all afraid that she might lose this man who had suddenly
become the light in her life.

There was a knock on the door. Bond got up and opened it. A tough
cheerful India-rubbery man, with Kerim's blue eyes and a mop of tangled
fair hair above a brown face, exploded into the compartment.

'Stefan Trempo at your service,' the big smile embraced them both. 'They
call me "Tempo". Where is the Chef?'

'Sit down,' said Bond. He thought to himself, I know it. This is another
of Darko's sons.

The man looked sharply at them both. He sat down carefully between them.
His face was extinguished. Now the bright eyes stared at Bond with a
terrible intensity in which there was fear and suspicion. His right hand
slipped casually into the pocket of his coat.

When Bond had finished, the man stood up. He didn't ask any questions.
He said, 'Thank you, sir. Will you come, please. We will go to my
apartment. There is much to be done.' He walked into the corridor and
stood with his back to them, looking out across the rails. When the girl
came out he walked down the corridor without looking back. Bond followed
the girl, carrying the heavy bag and his little attach case.

They walked down the platform and into the station square. It had
started to drizzle. The scene, with its sprinkling of battered taxis and
vista of dull modern buildings, was depressing. The man opened the rear
door of a shabby Morris Oxford saloon. He got in front and took the
wheel. They bumped their way over the cobbles and on to a slippery
tarmac boulevard and drove for a quarter of an hour through wide, empty
streets. They saw few pedestrians and not more than a handful of other
cars.

They stopped half way down a cobbled side-street. Tempo led them through
a wide apartment-house door and up two flights of stairs that had the
smell of the Balkans--the smell of very old sweat and cigarette smoke
and cabbage. He unlocked a door and showed them into a two-roomed flat
with nondescript furniture and heavy red plush curtains drawn back to
show the blank windows on the other side of the street. On a sideboard
stood a tray with several unopened bottles, glasses and plates of fruit
and biscuits--the welcome to Darko and to Darko's friends.

Tempo waved vaguely towards the drinks. 'Please, sir, make yourself and
Madam at home. There is a bathroom. No doubt you would both like to have
a bath. If you will excuse me, I must telephone!' The hard faade of the
face was about to crumble. The man went quickly into the bedroom and
shut the door behind him.

There followed two empty hours during which Bond sat and looked out of
the window at the wall opposite. From time to time he got up and paced
to and fro and then sat down again. For the first hour, Tatiana sat and
pretended to look through a pile of magazines. Then she abruptly went
into the bathroom and Bond vaguely heard water gushing into the bath.

At about 6 o'clock, Tempo came out of the bedroom. He told Bond that he
was going out. 'There is food in the kitchen. I will return at nine and
take you to the train. Please treat my flat as your own.' Without
waiting for Bond's reply, he walked out and softly shut the door. Bond
heard his foot on the stairs and the click of the front door and the
self-starter of the Morris.

Bond went into the bedroom and sat on the bed and picked up the
telephone and talked in German to the long-distance exchange.

Half an hour later there was the quiet voice of M.

Bond spoke as a travelling salesman would speak to the managing director
of Universal Export. He said that his partner had gone very sick. Were
there any fresh instructions?

'Very sick?'

'Yes, sir, very.'

'How about the other firm?'

'There were three with us, sir. One of them caught the same thing. The
other two didn't feel well on the way out of Turkey. They left us at
Uzunkopru--that's the frontier.'

'So the other firm's packed up?'

Bond could see M's face as he sifted the information. He wondered if the
fan was slowly revolving in the ceiling, if M had a pipe in his hand, if
the Chief-of-Staff was listening on the other wire.

'What are your ideas? Would you and your wife like to take another way
home?'

'I'd rather you decided, sir. My wife's all right. The sample's in good
condition. I don't see why it should deteriorate. I'm still keen to
finish the trip. Otherwise it'll remain virgin territory. We shan't know
what the possibilities are.'

'Would you like one of our other salesmen to give you a hand?'

'It shouldn't be necessary, sir. Just as you feel.'

'I'll think about it. So you really want to see this sales campaign
through?'

Bond could see M's eyes glittering with the same perverse curiosity, the
same rage to know, as he himself felt. 'Yes, sir. Now that I'm half way,
it seems a pity not to cover the whole route.'

'All right then. I'll think about giving you another salesman to lend a
hand.' There was a pause on the end of the line. 'Nothing else on your
mind?'

'No, sir.'

'Goodbye, then.'

'Goodbye, sir.'

Bond put down the receiver. He sat and looked at it. He suddenly wished
he had agreed with M's suggestion to give him reinforcements, just in
case. He got up from the bed. At least they would soon be out of these
damn Balkans and down into Italy. Then Switzerland, France--among
friendly people, away from the furtive lands.

And the girl, what about her? Could he blame her for the death of Kerim?
Bond went into the next room and stood again by the window, looking out,
wondering, going back over everything, every expression and every
gesture she had made since he had first heard her voice on that night in
the Kristal Palas. No, he knew he couldn't put the blame on her. If she
was an agent, she was an unconscious agent. There wasn't a girl of her
age in the world who could have played this role, if it was a role she
was playing, without betraying herself. And he liked her. And he had
faith in his instincts. Besides, with the death of Kerim, had not the
plot, whatever it was, played itself out? One day he would find out what
the plot had been. For the moment he was certain. Tatiana was not a
conscious part of it.

His mind made up, Bond walked over to the bathroom door and knocked.

She came out and he took her in his arms and held her to him and kissed
her. She clung to him. They stood and felt the animal warmth come back
between them, feeling it push back the cold memory of Kerim's death.

Tatiana broke away. She looked up at Bond's face. She reached up and
brushed the black comma of hair away from his forehead.

Her face was alive. 'I am glad you have come back, James,' she said. And
then, matter-of-factly, 'And now we must eat and drink and start our
lives again.'

Later, after Slivovic and smoked ham and peaches. Tempo came and took
them to the station and to the waiting express under the hard lights of
the arcs. He said goodbye, quickly and coldly, and vanished down the
platform and back into his dark existence.

Punctually at nine the new engine gave its new kind of noise and took
the long train out on its all-night run down the valley of the Sava.
Bond went along to the conductor's cabin to give him money and look
through the passports of the new passengers.

Bond knew most of the signs to look for in forged passports, the blurred
writing, the too exact imprints of the rubber stamps, the trace of old
gum round the edges of the photograph, the slight transparencies on the
pages where the fibres of the paper had been tampered with to alter a
letter or a number, but the five new passports--three American and two
Swiss--seemed innocent. The Swiss papers, favourites with the Russian
forgers, belonged to a husband and wife, both over seventy, and Bond
finally passed them and went back to the compartment and prepared for
another night with Tatiana's head on his lap.

Vincovci came and Brod and then, against a flaming dawn, the ugly sprawl
of Zagreb. The train came to a stop between lines of rusting locomotives
captured from the Germans and still standing forlornly amongst the grass
and weeds on the sidings. Bond read the plate on one of them--BERLINER
MASCHINENBAU GMBH--as they slid out through the iron cemetery. Its long
black barrel had been raked with machine-gun bullets. Bond heard the
scream of the dive-bomber and saw the upflung arms of the driver. For a
moment he thought nostalgically and unreasonably of the excitement and
turmoil of the hot war, compared with his own underground skirmishings
since the war had turned cold.

They hammered into the mountains of Slovenia where the apple trees and
the chalets were almost Austrian. The train laboured its way through
Ljubliana. The girl awoke. They had breakfast of fried eggs and hard
brown bread and coffee that was mostly chicory. The restaurant car was
full of cheerful English and American tourists from the Adriatic coast,
and Bond thought with a lift of the heart that by the afternoon they
would be over the frontier into western Europe and that a third
dangerous night was gone.

He slept until Sezana. The hard-faced Yugoslav plain-clothes men came on
board. Then Yugoslavia was gone and Poggioreale came and the first smell
of the soft life with the happy jabbering Italian officials and the
carefree upturned faces of the station crowd. The new diesel-electric
engine gave a slap-happy whistle, the meadow of brown hands fluttered,
and they were loping easily down into Venezia, towards the distant
sparkle of Trieste and the gay blue of the Adriatic.

We've made it, thought Bond. I really think we've made it. He thrust the
memory of the last three days away from him. Tatiana saw the tense lines
in his face relax. She reached over and took his hand. He moved and sat
close beside her. They looked out at the gay villas on the Corniche and
at the sailing-boats and the people water-skiing.

The train clanged across some points and slid quietly into the gleaming
station of Trieste. Bond got up and pulled down the window and they
stood side by side, looking out. Suddenly Bond felt happy. He put an arm
around the girl's waist and held her hard against him.

They gazed down at the holiday crowd. The sun shone through the tall
clean windows of the station in golden shafts. The sparkling scene
emphasized the dark and dirt of the countries the train had come from,
and Bond watched with an almost sensuous pleasure the gaily dressed
people pass through the patches of sunshine towards the entrance, and
the sunburned people, the ones who had had their holidays, hasten up the
platform to get their seats on the train.

A shaft of sun lit up the head of one man who seemed typical of this
happy, playtime world. The light flashed briefly on golden hair under a
cap, and on a young golden moustache. There was plenty of time to catch
the train. The man walked unhurriedly. It crossed Bond's mind that he
was an Englishman. Perhaps it was the familiar shape of the dark green
Kangol cap, or the beige, rather well-used mackintosh, that badge of the
English tourist, or it may have been the grey-flannelled legs, or the
scuffed brown shoes. But Bond's eyes were drawn to him, as if it was
someone he knew, as the man approached up the platform.

The man was carrying a battered Revelation suitcase and, under the other
arm, a thick book and some newspapers. He looks like an athlete, thought
Bond. He has the wide shoulders and the healthy, good-looking bronzed
face of a professional tennis player going home after a round of foreign
tournaments.

The man came nearer. Now he was looking straight at Bond. With
recognition? Bond searched his mind. Did he know this man? No. He would
have remembered those eyes that stared out so coldly under the pale
lashes. They were opaque, almost dead. The eyes of a drowned man. But
they had some message for him. What was it? Recognition? Warning? Or
just the defensive reaction to Bond's own stare?

The man came up with the wagon-lit. His eyes were now gazing levelly up
the train. He walked past, the crpe-soled shoes making no sound. Bond
watched him reach for the rail and swing himself easily up the steps
into the first-class carriage.

Suddenly Bond knew what the glance had meant, who the man was. Of
course! This man was from the Service. After all M had decided to send
along an extra hand. That was the message of those queer eyes. Bond
would bet anything that the man would soon be along to make contact.

How like M to make absolutely sure!


                     25. A Tie with a Windsor Knot

To make the contact easy, Bond went out and stood in the corridor. He
ran over the details of the code of the day, the few harmless phrases,
changed on the first of each month, that served as a simple recognition
signal between English agents.

The train gave a jerk and moved slowly out into the sunshine. At the end
of the corridor the communicating door slammed. There was no sound of
steps, but suddenly the red and gold face was mirrored in the window.

'Excuse me. Could I borrow a match?'

'I use a lighter.' Bond produced his battered Ronson and handed it over.

'Better still.'

'Until they go wrong.'

Bond looked up into the man's face, expecting a smile at the completion
of the childish 'Who goes there? Pass, Friend' ritual.

The thick lips writhed briefly. There was no light in the very pale blue
eyes.

The man had taken off his mackintosh. He was wearing an old
reddish-brown tweed coat with his flannel trousers, a pale yellow
Viyella summer shirt, and the dark blue and red zigzagged tie of the
Royal Engineers. It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone
who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was
often the mark of a cad. Bond decided to forget his prejudice. A gold
signet ring, with an indecipherable crest, glinted on the little finger
of the right hand that gripped the guard rail. The corner of a red
bandana handkerchief flopped out of the breast pocket of the man's coat.
On his left wrist there was a battered silver wrist-watch with an old
leather strap.

Bond knew the type--a minor public school and then caught up by the war.
Field Security perhaps. No idea what to do afterwards, so he stayed with
the occupation troops. At first he would have been with the military
police, then, as the senior men drifted home, there came promotion into
one of the security services. Moved to Trieste where he did well enough.
Wanted to stay on and avoid the rigours of England. Probably had a girl
friend, or had married an Italian. The Secret Service had needed a man
for the small post that Trieste had become after the withdrawal. This
man was available. They took him on. He would be doing routine
jobs--have some low-grade sources in the Italian and Yugoslav police,
and their intelligence networks. A thousand a year. A good life, without
much being expected from him. Then, out of the blue, this had come
along. Must have been a shock getting one of those Most Immediate
signals. He'd probably be a bit shy of Bond. Odd face. The eyes looked
rather mad. But so they did in most of these men doing secret work
abroad. One had to be a bit mad to take it on. Powerful chap, probably
on the stupid side, but useful for this kind of guard work. M had just
taken the nearest man and told him to join the train.

All this went through Bond's mind as he photographed an impression of
the man's clothes and general appearance. Now he said, 'Glad to see you.
How did it happen?'

'Got a signal. Late last night. Personal from M. Shook me I can tell
you, old man.'

Curious accent. What was it? A hint of brogue--cheap brogue. And
something else Bond couldn't define. Probably came from living too long
abroad and talking foreign languages all the time. And that dreadful
'old man' at the end. Shyness.

'Must have,' said Bond sympathetically. 'What did it say?'

'Just told me to get on the Orient this morning and contact a man and a
girl in the through carriage. More or less described what you look like.
Then I was to stick by you and see you both through to Gay Paree. That's
all, old man.'

Was there defensiveness in the voice? Bond glanced sideways. The pale
eyes swivelled to meet his. There was a quick red glare in them. It was
as if the safety door of a furnace had swung open. The blaze died. The
door to the inside of the man was banged shut. Now the eyes were opaque
again--the eyes of an introvert, of a man who rarely looks out into the
world but is for ever surveying the scene inside him.

There's madness there all right, thought Bond, startled by the sight of
it. Shell-shock perhaps, or schizophrenia. Poor chap, with that
magnificent body. One day he would certainly crack. The madness would
take control. Bond had better have a word to Personnel. Check up on his
medical. By the way, what was his name?

'Well I'm very glad to have you along. Probably not much for you to do.
We started off with three Redland men on our tail. They've been got rid
of, but there may be others on the train. Or some more may get on. And
I've got to get this girl to London without trouble. If you'd just hang
about. Tonight we'd better stay together and share watches. It's the
last night and I don't want to take any chances. By the way, my name's
James Bond. Travelling as David Somerset. And that's Caroline Somerset
in there.'

The man fished in his inside pocket and produced a battered notecase
which seemed to contain plenty of money. He extracted a visiting card
and handed it to Bond. It said 'Captain Norman Nash', and, in the
left-hand bottom corner, 'Royal Automobile Club'.

As Bond put the card in his pocket he slipped his finger across it. It
was engraved. 'Thanks,' he said. 'Well, Nash, come and meet Mrs
Somerset. No reason why we shouldn't travel more or less together.' He
smiled encouragingly.

Again the red glare quickly extinguished. The lips writhed under the
young golden moustache. 'Delighted, old man.'

Bond turned to the door and knocked softly and spoke his name.

The door opened. Bond beckoned Nash in and shut the door behind him.

The girl looked surprised.

'This is Captain Nash, Norman Nash. He's been told to keep an eye on
us.'

'How do you do.' The hand came out hesitantly. The man touched it
briefly. His stare was fixed. He said nothing. The girl gave an
embarrassed little laugh, 'Won't you sit down?'

'Er, thank you.' Nash sat stiffly on the edge of the banquette. He
seemed to remember something, something one did when one had nothing to
say. He groped in the side pocket of his coat and produced a packet of
Players. 'Will you have a, er, cigarette?' He prized open the top with a
fairly clean thumbnail, stripped down the silver paper and pushed out
the cigarettes. The girl took one. Nash's other hand flashed forward a
lighter with the obsequious speed of a motor salesman.

Nash looked up. Bond was standing leaning against the door and wondering
how to help this clumsy, embarrassed man. Nash held out the cigarettes
and the lighter as if he was offering glass beads to a native chief.
'What about you, old man?'

'Thanks,' said Bond. He hated Virginia tobacco, but he was prepared to
do anything to help put the man at ease. He took a cigarette and lit it.
They certainly had to make do with some queer fish in the Service
nowadays. How the devil did this man manage to get along in the
semi-diplomatic society he would have to frequent in Trieste?

Bond said lamely. 'You look very fit, Nash. Tennis?'

'Swimming.'

'Been long in Trieste?'

There came the brief red glare. 'About three years.'

'Interesting work?'

'Sometimes. You know how it is, old man.'

Bond wondered how he could stop Nash calling him 'old man'. He couldn't
think of a way. Silence fell.

Nash obviously felt it was his turn again. He fished in his pocket and
produced a newspaper cutting. It was the front page of the _Corriere de
la Sera_. He handed it to Bond. 'Seen this, old man?' The eyes blazed
and died.

It was the front-page lead. The thick black lettering on the cheap
newsprint was still wet. The headlines said:

                    TERRIBILE ESPLOSIONE IN ISTANBUL
                      UFFICIO SOVIETICO DISTRUTTO
                        TUTTI I PRESENTI UCCISI

Bond couldn't understand the rest. He folded the cutting and handed it
back. How much did this man know? Better treat him as a strongman arm
and nothing else. 'Bad show,' he said. 'Gas main I suppose.' Bond saw
again the obscene belly of the bomb hanging down from the roof of the
alcove in the tunnel, the wires that started off down the damp wall on
their way back to the plunger in the drawer of Kerim's desk. Who had
pressed the plunger yesterday afternoon when Tempo had got through? The
'Head Clerk'? Or had they drawn lots and then stood round and watched as
the hand went down and the deep roar had gone up in the Street of Books
on the hill above. They would all have been there, in the cool room.
With eyes that glittered with hate. The tears would be reserved for the
night. Revenge would have come first. And the rats? How many thousand
had been blasted down the tunnel? What time would it have been? About
four o'clock. Had the daily meeting been on? Three dead in the room. How
many more in the rest of the building? Friends of Tatiana, perhaps. He
would have to keep the story from her. Had Darko been watching? From a
window in Valhalla? Bond could hear the great laugh of triumph echoing
round its walls. At any rate Kerim had taken plenty with him.

Nash was looking at him. 'Yes, I daresay it was a gas main,' he said
without interest.

A handbell tinkled down the corridor, coming nearer. '_Deuxime Service.
Deuxime Service. Prenez vos places, s'il vous plat._'

Bond looked across at Tatiana. Her face was pale. In her eyes there was
an appeal to be saved from any more of this clumsy, non-kulturny man.
Bond said, 'What about lunch?' She got up at once. 'What about you,
Nash?'

Captain Nash was already on his feet. 'Had it, thanks old man. And I'd
like to have a look up and down the train. Is the conductor--you
know...?' he made a gesture of fingering money.

'Oh yes, he'll co-operate all right,' said Bond. He reached up and
pulled down the heavy little bag. He opened the door for Nash. 'See you
later.'

Captain Nash stepped into the corridor. He said, 'Yes, I expect so, old
man.' He turned left and strode off down the corridor, moving easily
with the swaying of the train, his hands in his trouser pockets and the
light blazing on the tight golden curls at the back of his head.

Bond followed Tatiana up the train. The carriages were crowded with
holiday-makers going home. In the third-class corridors people sat on
their bags chattering and munching at oranges and at hard-looking rolls
with bits of Salami sticking out of them. The men carefully examined
Tatiana as she squeezed by. The women looked appraisingly at Bond,
wondering whether he made love to her well.

In the restaurant car. Bond ordered Americanos and a bottle of Chianti
Broglio. The wonderful European hors d'oeuvres came. Tatiana began to
look more cheerful.

'Funny sort of man,' Bond watched her pick about among the little
dishes. 'But I'm glad he's come along. I'll have a chance to get some
sleep. I'm going to sleep for a week when we get home.'

'I do not like him,' the girl said indifferently. 'He is not kulturny. I
do not trust his eyes.'

Bond laughed. 'Nobody's kulturny enough for you.'

'Did you know him before?'

'No. But he belongs to my firm.'

'What did you say his name is?'

'Nash. Norman Nash.'

She spelled it out. 'N.A.S.H.? Like that?'

'Yes.'

The girl's eyes were puzzled. 'I suppose you know what that means in
Russian. _Nash_ means "ours". In our Services, a man is nash when he is
one of "our" men. He is _svoi_ when he is one of "theirs"--when he
belongs to the enemy. And this man calls himself Nash. That is not
pleasant.'

Bond laughed. 'Really, Tania. You do think of extraordinary reasons for
not liking people. Nash is quite a common English name. He's perfectly
harmless. At any rate he's tough enough for what we want him for.'

Tatiana made a face. She went on with her lunch.

Some _tagliatelli verdi_ came, and the wine, and then a delicious
escalope. 'Oh it is so good,' she said. 'Since I came out of Russia I am
all stomach.' Her eyes widened. 'You won't let me get too fat, James.
You won't let me get so fat that I am no use for making love? You will
have to be careful, or I shall just eat all day long and sleep. You will
beat me if I eat too much?'

'Certainly I will beat you.'

Tatiana wrinkled her nose. He felt the soft caress of her ankles. The
wide eyes looked at him hard. The lashes came down demurely. 'Please
pay,' she said. 'I feel sleepy.'

The train was pulling into Maestre. There was the beginning of the
canals. A cargo gondola full of vegetables was moving slowly along a
straight sheet of water into the town.

'But we shall be coming into Venice in a minute,' protested Bond. 'Don't
you want to see it?'

'It will be just another station. And I can see Venice another day. Now
I want you to love me. Please, James.' Tatiana leaned forward. She put a
hand over his. 'Give me what I want. There is so little time.'

Then it was the little room again and the smell of the sea coming
through the half-open window and the drawn blind fluttering with the
wind of the train. Again there were the two piles of clothes on the
floor, and the two whispering bodies on the banquette, and the slow
searching hands. And the love-knot formed, and, as the train jolted over
the points into the echoing station of Venice, there came the final lost
despairing cry.

Outside the vacuum of the tiny room there sounded a confusion of echoing
calls and metallic clanging and shuffling footsteps that slowly faded
into sleep.

Padua came, and Vicenza, and a fabulous sunset over Verona flickered
gold and red through the cracks of the blind. Again the little bell came
tinkling down the corridor. They woke. Bond dressed and went into the
corridor and leant against the guard rail. He looked out at the fading
pink light over the Lombardy Plain and thought of Tatiana and of the
future.

Nash's face slid up alongside his in the dark glass. Nash came very
close so that his elbow touched Bond's. 'I think I've spotted one of the
oppo, old man,' he said softly.

Bond was not surprised. He had assumed that, if it came, it would come
tonight. Almost indifferently he said, 'Who is he?'

'Don't know what his real name is, but he's been through Trieste once or
twice. Something to do with Albania. May be the Resident Director there.
Now he's on an American passport. "Wilbur Frank." Calls himself a
banker. In No9, right next to you. I don't think I could be wrong about
him, old man.'

Bond glanced at the eyes in the big brown face. Again the furnace door
was ajar. The red glare shone out and was extinguished.

'Good thing you spotted him. This may be a tough night. You'd better
stick by us from now on. We mustn't leave the girl alone.'

'That's what I thought, old man.'

They had dinner. It was a silent meal. Nash sat beside the girl and kept
his eyes on his plate. He held his knife like a fountain pen and
frequently wiped it on his fork. He was clumsy in his movements. Half
way through the meal, he reached for the salt and knocked over Tatiana's
glass of Chianti. He apologized profusely. He made a great show of
calling for another glass and filling it.

Coffee came. Now it was Tatiana who was clumsy. She knocked over her
cup. She had gone very pale and her breath was coming quickly.

'Tatiana!' Bond half rose to his feet. But it was Captain Nash who
jumped up and took charge.

'Lady's come over queer,' he said shortly. 'Allow me.' He reached down
and put an arm round the girl and lifted her to her feet. 'I'll take her
back to the compartment. You'd better look after the bag. And there's
the bill. I can take care of her till you come.'

'Is all right,' protested Tatiana with the slack lips of deepening
unconsciousness. 'Don' worry, James, I lie down.' Her head lolled
against Nash's shoulder. Nash put one thick arm round her waist and
manoeuvred her quickly and efficiently down the crowded aisle and out of
the restaurant car.

Bond impatiently snapped his fingers for the waiter. Poor darling. She
must be dead beat. Why hadn't he thought of the strain she was going
through? He cursed himself for his selfishness. Thank heavens for Nash.
Efficient sort of chap, for all his uncouthness.

Bond paid the bill. He took up the heavy little bag and walked as
quickly as he could down the crowded train.

He tapped softly on the door of No7. Nash opened the door. He came out
with his finger on his lips. He closed the door behind him. 'Threw a bit
of a faint,' he said. 'She's all right now. The beds were made up. She's
gone to sleep in the top one. Been a bit much for the girl I expect, old
man.'

Bond nodded briefly. He went into the compartment. A hand hung palely
down from under the sable coat. Bond stood on the bottom bunk and gently
tucked the hand under the corner of the coat. The hand felt very cold.
The girl made no sound.

Bond stepped softly down. Better let her sleep. He went into the
corridor.

Nash looked at him with empty eyes. 'Well, I suppose we'd better settle
in for the night. I've got my book.' He held it up. '_War and Peace._
Been trying to plough through it for years. You take the first sleep,
old man. You look pretty flaked out yourself. I'll wake you up when I
can't keep my eyes open any longer.' He gestured with his head at the
door of No9. 'Hasn't shown yet. Don't suppose he will if he's up to any
monkey tricks.' He paused. 'By the way, you got a gun, old man?'

'Yes. Why, haven't you?'

Nash looked apologetic. ''Fraid not. Got a Luger at home, but it's too
bulky for this sort of job.'

'Oh, well,' said Bond reluctantly. You'd better take mine. Come on in.'

They went in and Bond shut the door. He took out the Beretta and handed
it over. 'Eight shots,' he said softly. 'Semi-automatic. It's on safe.'

Nash took the gun and weighed it professionally in his hand. He clicked
the safe on and off.

Bond hated someone else touching his gun. He felt naked without it. He
said gruffly, 'Bit on the light side, but it'll kill if you put the
bullets in the right places.'

Nash nodded. He sat down near the window at the end of the bottom bunk.
'I'll take this end,' he whispered. 'Good field of fire.' He put his
book down on his lap and settled himself.

Bond took off his coat and tie and laid them on the bunk beside him. He
leant back against the pillows and propped his feet on the bag with the
Spektor that stood on the floor beside his attach case. He picked up
his Ambler and found his place and tried to read. After a few pages he
found that his concentration was going. He was too tired. He laid the
book down on his lap and closed his eyes. Could he afford to sleep? Was
there any other precaution they could take?

The wedges! Bond felt for them in the pocket of his coat. He slipped off
the bunk and knelt and forced them hard under the two doors. Then he
settled himself again and switched off the reading light behind his
head.

The violet eye of the nightlight shone softly down.

'Thanks, old man,' said Captain Nash softly.

The train gave a moan and crashed into a tunnel.


                         26. The Killing Bottle

The light nudge at his ankle woke Bond. He didn't move. His senses came
to life like an animal's.

Nothing had changed. There were the noises of the train--the soft iron
stride, pounding out the kilometres, the quiet creak of the woodwork, a
tinkle from the cupboard over the washbasin where a toothglass was loose
in its holder.

What had woken him? The spectral eye of the nightlight cast its deep
velvet sheen over the little room. No sound came from the upper bunk. By
the window, Captain Nash sat in his place, his book open on his lap, a
flicker of moonlight from the edge of the blind showing white on the
double page.

He was looking fixedly at Bond. Bond registered the intentness of the
violet eyes. The black lips parted. There was a glint of teeth.

'Sorry to disturb you, old man. I feel in the mood for a talk!'

What was there new in the voice? Bond put his feet softly down to the
floor. He sat up straighter. Danger, like a third man, was standing in
the room.

'Fine,' said Bond easily. What had there been in those few words that
had set his spine tingling? Was it the note of authority in Nash's
voice? The idea came to Bond that Nash might have gone mad. Perhaps it
was madness in the room, and not danger, that Bond could smell. His
instincts about this man had been right. It would be a question of
somehow getting rid of him at the next station. Where had they got to?
When would the frontier come?

Bond lifted his wrist to look at the time. The violet light defeated the
phosphorous numerals. Bond tilted the face towards the strip of
moonlight from the window.

From the direction of Nash there came a sharp click. Bond felt a violent
blow on his wrist. Splinters of glass hit him in the face. His arm was
flung back against the door. He wondered if his wrist had been broken.
He let his arm hang and flexed his fingers. They all moved.

The book was still open on Nash's lap, but now a thin wisp of smoke was
coming out of the hole at the top of its spine and there was a faint
smell of fireworks in the room.

The saliva dried in Bond's mouth as if he had swallowed alum.

So there had been a trap all along. And the trap had closed. Captain
Nash had been sent to him by Moscow. Not by M. And the MGB agent in No9,
the man with an American passport, was a myth. And Bond had given Nash
his gun. He had even put wedges under the doors so that Nash would feel
more secure.

Bond shivered. Not with fear. With disgust.

Nash spoke. His voice was no longer a whisper, no longer oily. It was
loud and confident.

'That will save us a great deal of argument, old man. Just a little
demonstration. They think I'm pretty good with this little bag of
tricks. There are ten bullets in it--.25 dumdum, fired by an electric
battery. You must admit the Russians are wonderful chaps for dreaming
these things up. Too bad that book of yours is only for reading, old
man.'

'For God's sake stop calling me "old man".' When there was so much to
know, so much to think about, this was Bond's first reaction to utter
catastrophe. It was the reaction of someone in a burning house who picks
up the most trivial object to save from the flames.

'Sorry, old man. It's got to be a habit. Part of trying to be a bloody
gentleman. Like these clothes. All from the wardrobe department. They
said I'd get by like this. And I did, didn't I, old man? But let's get
down to business. I expect you'd like to know what this is all about. Be
glad to tell you. We've got about half an hour before you're due to go.
It'll give me an extra kick telling the famous Mister Bond of the Secret
Service what a bloody fool he is. You see, old man, you're not so good
as you think. You're just a stuffed dummy and I've been given the job of
letting the sawdust out of you.' The voice was even and flat, the
sentences trailing away on a dead note. It was as if Nash was bored by
the act of speaking.

'Yes,' said Bond. 'I'd like to know what it's all about. I can spare you
half an hour.' Desperately he wondered: was there any way of putting
this man off his stride? Upsetting his balance?

'Don't kid yourself, old man,' the voice was uninterested in Bond, or in
the threat of Bond. Bond didn't exist except as a target. 'You're going
to die in half an hour. No mistake about it. I've never made a mistake
or I wouldn't have my job.'

'What is your job?'

'Chief Executioner of SMERSH.' There was a hint of life in the voice, a
hint of pride. The voice went flat again. You know the name I believe,
old man.'

SMERSH. So that was the answer--the worst answer of all. And this was
their chief killer. Bond remembered the red glare that flickered in the
opaque eyes. A killer. A psychopath--manic depressive, probably. A man
who really enjoyed it. What a useful man for SMERSH to have found! Bond
suddenly remembered what Vavra had said. He tried a long shot. 'Does the
moon have any effect on you, Nash?'

The black lips writhed. 'Clever aren't you, Mister Secret Service. Think
I'm barmy. Don't worry. I wouldn't be where I am if I was barmy.'

The angry sneer in the man's voice told Bond that he had touched a
nerve. But what could he achieve by getting the man out of control?
Better humour him and gain some time. Perhaps Tatiana...

'Where does the girl come into all this?'

'Part of the bait,' the voice was bored again. 'Don't worry. She won't
butt in on our talk. Fed her a pinch of chloral hydrate when I poured
her that glass of wine. She'll be out for the night. And then for every
other night. She's to go with you.'

'Oh really.' Bond slowly lifted his aching hand on to his lap, flexing
the fingers to get the blood moving, 'Well, let's hear the story.'

'Careful, old man. No tricks. No Bulldog Drummond stuff'll get you out
of this one. If I don't like even the smell of a move, it'll be just one
bullet through the heart. Nothing more. That's what you'll be getting in
the end. One through the centre of the heart. If you move it'll come a
bit quicker. And don't forget who I am. Remember your wrist-watch? I
don't miss. Not ever.'

'Good show,' said Bond carelessly. 'But don't be frightened. You've got
my gun. Remember? Get on with your story.'

'All right, old man, only don't scratch your ear while I'm talking. Or
I'll shoot it off. See? Well, SMERSH decided to kill you--at least I
gather it was decided even higher up, right at the top. Seems they want
to take one good hard poke at the Secret Service--bring them down a peg
or two. Follow me?'

'Why choose _me_?'

'Don't ask me, old man. But they say you've got quite a reputation in
your outfit. The way you're going to be killed is going to bust up the
whole show. It's been three months cooking, this plan, and it's a beaut.
Got to be. SMERSH has made one or two mistakes lately. That Khoklov
business for one. Remember the explosive cigarette case and all that?
Gave the job to the wrong man. Should have given it to me. I wouldn't
have gone over to the Yanks. However, to get back. You see, old man,
we've got quite a planner in SMERSH. Man called Kronsteen. Great chess
player. He said vanity would get you and greed and a bit of craziness in
the plot. He said you'd all fall for the craziness in London. And you
did, didn't you, old man?'

_Had_ they? Bond remembered just how much the eccentric angles of the
story had aroused their curiosity. And vanity? Yes, he had to admit that
the idea of this Russian girl being in love with him had helped. And
there had been the Spektor. That had decided the whole thing--plain
greed for it. He said non-committally: 'We were interested.'

'Then came the operation. Our Head of Operations is quite a character.
I'd say she's killed more people than anyone in the world--or arranged
for them to be killed. Yes, it's a woman. Name of Klebb--Rosa Klebb.
Real swine of a woman. But she certainly knows all the tricks.'

Rosa Klebb. So at the top of SMERSH there was a woman! If he could
somehow survive this and get after her! The fingers of Bond's right hand
curled softly.

The flat voice in the corner went on: 'Well, she found this Romanova
girl. Trained her for the job. By the way, how was she in bed? Pretty
good?'

No! Bond didn't believe it. That first night must have been staged. But
afterwards? No. Afterwards had been real. He took the opportunity to
shrug his shoulders. It was an exaggerated shrug. To get the man
accustomed to movement.

'Oh, well. Not interested in that sort of thing myself. But they got
some nice pictures of you two.' Nash tapped his coat pocket. 'Whole reel
of 16 millimetre. That's going into her handbag. It'll look fine in the
papers.' Nash laughed--a harsh, metallic laugh. 'They'll have to cut
some of the juiciest bits, of course.'

The change of rooms at the hotel. The honeymoon suite. The big mirror
behind the bed. How well it all fitted! Bond felt his hands wet with
perspiration. He wiped them down his trousers.

'Steady, old man. You nearly got it then. I told you not to move,
remember?'

Bond put his hands back on the book in his lap. How much could he
develop these small movements? How far could he go? 'Get on with the
story,' he said. 'Did the girl know these pictures were being taken? Did
she know SMERSH was involved in all this?'

Nash snorted. 'Of course she didn't know about the pictures. Rosa didn't
trust her a yard. Too emotional. But I don't know much about that side.
We all worked in compartments. I'd never seen her until today. I only
know what I picked up. Yes, of course the girl knew she was working for
SMERSH. She was told she had to get to London and do a bit of spying
there.'

The silly idiot, thought Bond. Why the hell hadn't she told him that
SMERSH was involved? She must have been frightened even to speak the
name. Thought he would have her locked up or something. She had always
said she would tell him everything when she got to England. That he must
have faith and not be afraid. Faith! When she hadn't the foggiest idea
herself what was going on. Oh, well. Poor child. She had been as fooled
as he had been. But any hint would have been enough--would have saved
the life of Kerim, for instance. And what about hers and his own?

'Then this Turk of yours had to be got rid of. I gather that took a bit
of doing. Tough nut. I suppose it was his gang that blew up our Centre
in Istanbul yesterday afternoon. That's going to create a bit of a
panic.'

'Too bad.'

'Doesn't worry me, old man. My end of the job's going to be easy.' Nash
took a quick glance at his wristwatch. 'In about twenty minutes we go
into the Simplon tunnel. That's where they want it done. More drama for
the papers. One bullet for you. As we go into the tunnel. Just one in
the heart. The noise of the tunnel will help in case you're a noisy
dier--rattle and so forth. Then one in the back of the neck for
her--with your gun--and out of the window she goes. Then one more for
you with _your_ gun. With your fingers wrapped round it, of course.
Plenty of powder on your shirt. Suicide. That's what it'll look like at
first. But there'll be two bullets in your heart. That'll come out
later. More mystery! Search the Simplon again. Who was the man with the
fair hair? They'll find the film in her bag, and in your pocket there'll
be a long love letter from her to you--a bit threatening. It's a good
one. SMERSH wrote it. It says that she'll give the film to the
newspapers unless you marry her. That you promised to marry her if she
stole the Spektor...' Nash paused and added in parenthesis, 'As a
matter of fact, old man, the Spektor's booby-trapped. When your cipher
experts start fiddling with it, it's going to blow them all to glory.
Not a bad dividend on the side.' Nash chuckled dully. 'And then the
letter says that all she's got to offer you is the machine and her
body--and all about her body and what you did with it. Hot stuff, that
part! Right? So what's the story in the papers--the Left Wing ones that
will be tipped off to meet the train? Old man, the story's got
everything. Orient Express. Beautiful Russian spy murdered in Simplon
tunnel. Filthy pictures. Secret cipher machine. Handsome British spy
with career ruined murders her and commits suicide. Sex, spies, luxury
train, Mr and Mrs Somerset...! Old man, it'll run for months! Talk
of the Khoklov case! This'll knock spots off it. And what a poke in the
eye for the famous Intelligence Service! Their best man, the famous
James Bond. What a shambles. Then bang goes the cipher machine! What's
your chief going to think of you? What's the public going to think? And
the Government? And the Americans? Talk about security! No more atom
secrets from the Yanks.' Nash paused and let it all sink in. With a
touch of pride he said, 'Old man, this is going to be the story of the
century!'

Yes, thought Bond. Yes. He was certainly right about that. The French
papers would give it such a send-off there'd be no stopping it. They
wouldn't mind how far they went with the pictures or anything else.
There wasn't a press in the world that wouldn't pick it up. And the
Spektor! Would M's people or the Deuxime have the sense to guess it was
booby-trapped? How many of the best cryptographers in the West would go
up with it? God, he must get out of this jam! But how?

The top of Nash's _War and Peace_ yawned at him. Let's see. There would
be the roar as the train went into the tunnel. Then at once the muffled
click and the bullet. Bond's eyes stared into the violet gloom,
measuring the depth of the shadow in his corner under the roof of the
top bunk, remembering exactly where his attach case stood on the floor,
guessing what Nash would do after he had fired.

Bond said: 'You took a bit of a gamble on my letting you team up at
Trieste. And how did you know the code of the month?'

Nash said patiently, 'You don't seem to get the picture, old man. SMERSH
is good--really good. There's nothing better. We know your code of the
month for every year. If anyone in your show noticed these things,
noticed the pattern of them, like my show does, you'd realize that every
January you lose one of your small chaps somewhere--maybe Tokyo, maybe
Timbuktu. SMERSH just picks one and takes him. Then they screw the code
for the year out of him. Anything else he knows, of course. But it's the
code they're after. Then it's passed round the Centres. Simple as
falling off a log, old man.'

Bond dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

'As for picking you up at Trieste, old man, I didn't. Rode down with
you--in the front of the train. Got out as we stopped and walked back up
the platform. You see, old man, we were waiting for you in Belgrade.
Knew you'd call your Chief--or the Embassy or someone. Been listening in
on that Yugoslav's telephone for weeks. Pity we didn't understand the
codeword he shot through to Istanbul. Might have stopped the firework
display, or anyway saved our chaps. But the main target was you, old
man, and we certainly had you sewn up all right. You were in the killing
bottle from the minute you got off that plane in Turkey. It was only a
question of when to stuff the cork in.' Nash took another quick glance
at his watch. He looked up. His grinning teeth glistered violet. 'Pretty
soon now, old man. It's just cork-hour minus fifteen.'

Bond thought: we knew SMERSH was good, but we never knew they were as
good as this. The knowledge was vital. Somehow he must get it back. He
MUST. Bond's mind raced round the details of his pitifully thin,
pitifully desperate plan.

He said: 'SMERSH seems to have thought things out pretty well. Must have
taken a lot of trouble. There's only one thing...' Bond let his voice
hang in the air.

'What's that, old man?' Nash, thinking of his report, was alert.

The train began to slow down. Domodossola. The Italian frontier. What
about customs? But Bond remembered. There were no formalities for the
through carriages until they got to France, to the frontier, Vallorbes.
Even then not for the sleeping cars. These expresses cut straight across
Switzerland. It was only people who got out at Brigue or Lausanne who
had to go through customs in the stations.

'Well, come on, old man.' Nash sounded hooked.

'Not without a cigarette.'

'Okay. Go ahead. But if there's a move I don't like, you'll be dead.'

Bond slipped his right hand into his hip-pocket. He drew out his broad
gunmetal cigarette case. Opened it. Took out a cigarette. Took his
lighter out of his trouser pocket. Lit the cigarette and put the lighter
back. He left the cigarette case on his lap beside the book. He put his
left hand casually over the book and the cigarette case as if to prevent
them slipping off his lap. He puffed away at his cigarette. If only it
had been a trick one--magnesium flare, or anything he could throw in the
man's face! If only his Service went in for those explosive toys! But at
least he had achieved his objective and hadn't been shot in the process.
That was a start.

'You see.' Bond described an airy circle with his cigarette to distract
Nash's attention. His left hand slipped the flat cigarette case between
the pages of his book. 'You see, it looks all right, but what about you?
What are you going to do after we come out of the Simplon? The conductor
knows you're mixed up with us. They'll be after you in a flash.'

'Oh that,' Nash's voice was bored again. 'You don't seem to have hoisted
in that the Russians think these things out. I get off at Dijon and take
a car to Paris. I get lost there. A bit of "Third Man" stuff won't do
the story any harm. Anyway it'll come out later when they dig the second
bullet out of you and can't find the second gun. They won't catch up
with me. Matter of fact, I've got a date at noon tomorrow--Room 204 at
the Ritz Hotel, making my report to Rosa. She wants to get the kudos for
this job. Then I turn into her chauffeur and we drive to Berlin. Come to
think of it, old man,' the flat voice showed emotion, became greedy, 'I
think she may have the Order of Lenin for me in her bag. Lovely grub, as
they say.'

The train began to move. Bond tensed. In a few minutes it would come.
What a way to die, if he was going to die. Through his own
stupidity--blind, lethal stupidity. And lethal for Tatiana. Christ! At
any moment he could have done something to dodge this shambles. There
had been no lack of opportunity. But conceit and curiosity and four days
of love had sucked him along on the easy stream down which it had been
planned that he should drift. That was the damnable part of the whole
business--the triumph for SMERSH, the one enemy he had always sworn to
defeat wherever he met it. We will do this, and he will do that.
'Comrades, it is easy with a vain fool like this Bond. Watch him take
the bait. You will see. I tell you he's a fool. All Englishmen are
fools.' And Tatiana, the lure--the darling lure. Bond thought of their
first night. The black stockings and the velvet ribbon. And all the time
SMERSH had been watching, watching him go through his conceited paces,
as it had been planned that he would, so that the smear could be built
up--the smear on him, the smear on M who had sent him to Istanbul, the
smear on the Service that lived on the myth of its name. God, what a
mess! If only... if only his tiny grain of a plan might work!

Ahead, the rumble of the train became a deep boom.

A few more seconds. A few more yards.

The oval mouth between the white pages seemed to gape wider. In a second
the dark tunnel would switch out the moonlight on the pages and the blue
tongue would lick out for him.

'Sweet dreams, you English bastard.'

The rumble became a great swift clanging roar.

The spine of the book bloomed flame.

The bullet, homing on Bond's heart, flashed over its two quiet yards.

Bond pitched forward on to the floor and lay sprawled under the funereal
violet light.


                         27. Ten Pints of Blood

It had all depended on the man's accuracy. Nash had said that Bond would
get one bullet through the heart. Bond had taken the gamble that Nash's
aim was as good as he said it was. And it had been.

Bond lay like a dead man lies. Before the bullet, he had recalled the
corpses he had seen--how their bodies had looked in death. Now he lay
totally collapsed, like a broken doll, his arms and legs carefully
outflung.

He explored his sensations. Where the bullet had crashed into the book,
his ribs were on fire. The bullet must have gone through the cigarette
case and then through the other half of the book. He could feel the hot
lead over his heart. It felt as if it was burning inside his ribs. It
was only a sharp pain in his head where it had hit the woodwork, and the
violet sheen on the scuffed toecaps against his nose, that said he
wasn't dead.

Like an archologist, Bond explored the carefully planned ruin of his
body. The position of the sprawled feet. The angle of the half-bent knee
that would give purchase when it was needed. The right hand that seemed
to be clawing at his pierced heart, was within inches, when he could
release the book, of the little attach case--within inches of the
lateral stitching that held the flat-bladed throwing-knives, two edged
and sharp as razors, that he had mocked when Q Branch had demonstrated
the catch that held them. And his left hand, outflung in the surrender
of death, rested on the floor and would provide upward leverage when the
moment came.

Above him there sounded a long, cavernous yawn. The brown toecaps
shifted. Bond watched the shoe-leather strain as Nash stood up. In a
minute, with Bond's gun in his right hand, Nash would climb on to the
bottom bunk and reach up and feel through the curtain of hair for the
base of the girl's neck. Then the snout of the Beretta would nuzzle in
after the probing fingers, Nash would press the trigger. The roar of the
train would cover the muffled boom.

It would be a near thing. Bond desperately tried to remember simple
anatomy. Where were the mortal places in the lower body of a man? Where
did the main artery run? The Femoral. Down the inside of the thigh. And
the External Iliac, or whatever it was called, that became the Femoral?
Across the centre of the groin. If he missed both, it would be bad. Bond
had no illusions about being able to beat this terrific man in unarmed
combat. The first violent stab of his knife had to be decisive.

The brown toecaps moved. They pointed towards the bunk. What was the man
doing? There was no sound except the hollow iron clang as the great
train tore through the Simplon--through the heart of the Wasenhorn and
Monte Leone. The toothglass tinkled. The woodwork creaked comfortably.
For a hundred yards on both sides of the little death cell rows of
people were sleeping, or lying awake, thinking of their lives and loves,
making little plans, wondering who would meet them at the Gare de Lyon.
And, all the while, just along the corridor, death was riding with them
down the same dark hole, behind the same great Diesel, on the same hot
rails.

One brown shoe left the floor. It would have stepped half across Bond.
The vulnerable arch would be open above Bond's head.

Bond's muscles coiled like a snake's. His right hand flickered a few
centimetres to the hard stitching on the edge of the case. Pressed
sideways. Felt the narrow shaft of the knife. Drew it softly half way
out without moving his arm.

The brown heel lifted off the ground. The toe bent and took the weight.

Now the second foot had gone.

Softly move the weight here, take the purchase there, grasp the knife
hard so that it wouldn't turn on a bone, and then...

In one violent corkscrew of motion, Bond's body twisted up from the
floor. The knife flashed.

The fist with the long steel finger, and all Bond's arm and shoulder
behind it, lunged upwards. Bond's knuckles felt flannel. He held the
knife in, forcing it further.

A ghastly wailing cry came down to him. The Beretta clattered to the
floor. Then the knife was wrenched from Bond's hand as the man gave a
convulsive twist and crashed down.

Bond had planned for the fall, but, as he sidestepped towards the
window, a flailing hand caught him and sent him thudding on to the lower
bunk. Before he could recover himself, up from the floor rose the
terrible face, its eyes shining violet, the violet teeth bared. Slowly,
agonizingly, the two huge hands groped for him.

Bond, half on his back, kicked out blindly. His shoe connected; but then
his foot was held and twisted and he felt himself slipping downwards.

Bond's fingers scrabbled for a hold in the stuff of the bunk. Now the
other hand had him by the thigh. Nails dug into him.

Bond's body was being twisted and pulled down. Soon the teeth would be
at him. Bond hammered out with his free leg. It made no difference. He
was going.

Suddenly Bond's scrabbling fingers felt something hard. The book! How
did one work the thing? Which way up was it? Would it shoot him or Nash?
Desperately Bond held it out towards the great sweating face. He pressed
at the base of the cloth spine.

'Click!' Bond felt the recoil. 'Click-click-click-click.' Now Bond felt
the heat under his fingers. The hands on his legs were going limp. The
glistening face was drawing back. A noise came from the throat, a
terrible gurgling noise. Then, with a slither and a crack, the body fell
forward on to the floor and the head crashed back against the woodwork.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Bond lay and panted through clenched teeth. He stared up at the violet
light above the door. He noticed that the loop of the filament waxed and
waned. It crossed his mind that the dynamo under the carriage must be
defective. He blinked his eyes to focus the light more closely. The
sweat ran into them and stung. He lay still, doing nothing about it.

The galloping boom of the train began to change. It sounded hollower.
With a final echoing roar, the Orient Express sped out into the
moonlight and slackened speed.

Bond lazily reached up and pulled at the edge of the blind. He saw
warehouses and sidings. Lights shone brightly, cleanly on the rails.
Good, powerful lights. The lights of Switzerland.

The train slid quietly to a stop.

In the steady, singing silence, a small noise came from the floor. Bond
cursed himself for not having made certain. He quickly bent down,
listening. He held the book forward at the ready, just in case. No
movement. Bond reached and felt for the jugular vein. No pulse. The man
was quite dead. The corpse had been settling.

Bond sat back and waited impatiently for the train to move again. There
was a lot to be done. Even before he could see to Tatiana, there would
have to be the cleaning up.

With a jerk the long express started softly rolling. Soon the train
would be slaloming fast down through the foothills of the Alps into the
Canton Valais. Already there was a new sound in the wheels--a hurrying
lilt, as if they were glad the tunnel was past.

Bond got to his feet and stepped over the sprawling legs of the dead man
and turned on the top light.

What a shambles! The place looked like a butcher's shop. How much blood
did a body contain? He remembered. Ten pints. Well, it would soon all be
there. As long as it didn't spread into the passage! Bond stripped the
bedclothes off the bottom bunk and set to work.

At last the job was done--the walls swabbed down around the covered bulk
on the floor, the suitcases ready for the get-away to Dijon.

Bond drank down a whole carafe of water. Then he stepped up and gently
shook the shoulder of fur.

There was no response. Had the man lied? Had he killed her with the
poison?

Bond thrust his hand in against her neck. It was warm. Bond felt for the
lobe of an ear and pinched it hard. The girl stirred sluggishly and
moaned. Again Bond pinched the ear, and again. At last a muffled voice
said, 'Don't.'

Bond smiled. He shook her. He went on shaking until Tatiana slowly
turned over on her side. Two doped blue eyes gazed into his and closed
again. 'What is it?' The voice was sleepily angry.

Bond talked to her and bullied her and cursed her. He shook her more
roughly. At last she sat up. She gazed vacantly at him. Bond pulled her
legs out so that they hung down over the edge. Somehow he manhandled her
down on to the bottom bunk.

Tatiana looked terrible--the slack mouth, the upturned, sleep-drunk
eyes, the tangle of damp hair. Bond got to work with a wet towel and her
comb.

Lausanne came and, an hour later, the French frontier at Vallorbes. Bond
left Tatiana and went out and stood in the corridor, just in case. But
the customs and passport men brushed past him to the conductor's cabin,
and, after five inscrutable minutes, went on down the train.

Bond stepped back into the compartment. Tatiana was asleep again. Bond
looked at Nash's watch, which was now on his own wrist. 4.30. Another
hour to Dijon. Bond set to work.

At last Tatiana's eyes opened wide. Her pupils were more or less
centred. She said, 'Stop it now, James.' She closed her eyes again. Bond
wiped the sweat off his face. He took the bags, one by one, to the end
of the corridor and piled them against the exit. Then he went along to
the conductor and told him that Madame was not well and that they would
be leaving the train at Dijon.

Bond gave the conductor a final tip. 'Do not derange yourself,' he said.
'I have taken the luggage out so as not to disturb Madame. My friend,
the one with fair hair, is a doctor. He has been sitting up with us all
night. I have put him to sleep in my bunk. The man was exhausted. It
would be kind not to waken him until ten minutes before Paris.'

'_Certainement, Monsieur._' The conductor had not been showered with
money like this since the good days of travelling millionaires. He
handed over Bond's passport and tickets. The train began to slacken
speed. '_Voil que nous y sommes._'

Bond went back to the compartment. He dragged Tatiana to her feet and
out into the corridor and shut the door on the white pile of death
beside the bunk.

At last they were down the steps and on to the hard, wonderful,
motionless platform. A blue-smocked porter took their luggage.

The sun was beginning to rise. At that hour of the morning there were
very few passengers awake. Only a handful in the third-class, who had
ridden 'hard' through the night, saw a young man help a young girl away
from the dusty carriage with the romantic names on its side towards the
drab door that said 'SORTIE'.


                           28. La Tricoteuse

The taxi drew up at the Rue Cambon entrance to the Ritz Hotel.

Bond looked at Nash's watch. 11.45. He must be dead punctual. He knew
that if a Russian spy was even a few minutes early or late for a
rendezvous the rendezvous was automatically cancelled. He paid off the
taxi and went through the door on the left that leads into the Ritz bar.

Bond ordered a double vodka martini. He drank it half down. He felt
wonderful. Suddenly the last four days, and particularly last night,
were washed off the calendar. Now he was on his own, having his private
adventure. All his duties had been taken care of. The girl was sleeping
in a bedroom at the Embassy. The Spektor, still pregnant with explosive,
had been taken away by the bomb-disposal squad of the Deuxime Bureau.
He had spoken to his old friend Ren Mathis, now head of the Deuxime,
and the concierge at the Cambon entrance to the Ritz had been told to
give him a pass key and to ask no questions.

Ren had been delighted to find himself again involved with Bond in _une
affaire noire_. 'Have confidence, _cher_ James,' he had said. 'I will
execute your mysteries. You can tell me the story afterwards. Two
laundry-men with a large laundry basket will come to Room 204 at 12.15.
I shall accompany them dressed as the driver of their camion. We are to
fill the laundry basket and take it to Orly and await an RAF Canberra
which will arrive at two o'clock. We hand over the basket. Some dirty
washing which was in France will be in England. Yes?'

Head of Station F had spoken to M on the scrambler. He had passed over a
short written report from Bond. He had asked for the Canberra. No, he
had no idea what it was for. Bond had only shown up to deliver the girl
and the Spektor. He had eaten a huge breakfast and had left the Embassy
saying he would be back after lunch.

Bond looked again at the time. He finished his martini. He paid for it
and walked out of the bar and up the steps to the concierge's lodge.

The concierge looked sharply at him and handed over a key. Bond walked
over to the lift and got in and went up to the third floor.

The lift door clanged behind him. Bond walked softly down the corridor,
looking at the numbers.

204. Bond put his right hand inside his coat and on to the taped butt of
the Beretta. It was tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He could
feel the metal of the silencer warm across his stomach.

He knocked once with his left hand.

'Come in.'

It was a quavering voice. An old woman's voice.

Bond tried the handle of the door. It was unlocked. He slipped the pass
key into his coat-pocket. He pushed the door open with one swift motion
and stepped in and shut it behind him.

It was a typical Ritz sitting-room, extremely elegant, with good Empire
furniture. The walls were white and the curtains and chair covers were
of a small patterned chintz of red roses on white. The carpet was
wine-red and close-fitted.

In a pool of sunshine, in a low armed chair beside a Directoire writing
desk, a little old woman sat knitting.

The tinkle of the steel needles continued. The eyes behind light-blue
tinted bifocals examined Bond with polite curiosity.

'_Oui, Monsieur?_' The voice was deep and hoarse. The thickly powdered,
rather puffy face under the white hair showed nothing but well-bred
interest.

Bond's hand on the gun under his coat was taut as a steel spring. His
half-closed eyes flickered round the room and back to the little old
woman in the chair.

Had he made a mistake? Was this the wrong room? Should he apologize and
get out? Could this woman possibly belong to SMERSH? She looked so
exactly like the sort of respectable rich widow one would expect to find
sitting by herself in the Ritz, whiling the time away with her knitting.
The sort of woman who would have her own table, and her favourite
waiter, in a corner of the restaurant downstairs--not, of course, the
grill room. The sort of woman who would doze after lunch and then be
fetched by an elegant black limousine with white side-walled tyres and
be driven to the tea room in the rue de Berri to meet some other rich
crone. The old-fashioned black dress with the touch of lace at the
throat and wrists, the thin gold chain that hung down over the shapeless
bosom and ended in a folding lorgnette, the neat little feet in the
sensible black-buttoned boots that barely touched the floor. It couldn't
be Klebb! Bond had got the number of the room wrong. He could feel the
perspiration under his arms. But now he would have to play the scene
through.

'My name is Bond, James Bond.'

'And I, Monsieur, am the Comtesse Metterstein. What can I do for you?'
The French was rather thick. She might be German Swiss. The needles
tinkled busily.

'I am afraid Captain Nash has met with an accident. He won't be coming
today. So I came instead.'

Did the eyes narrow a fraction behind the pale blue spectacles?

'I have not the pleasure of the Captain's acquaintance, Monsieur. Nor of
yours. Please sit down and state your business.' The woman inclined her
head an inch towards the high-backed chair beside the writing desk.

One couldn't fault her. The graciousness of it all was devastating. Bond
walked across the room and sat down. Now he was about six feet away from
her. The desk held nothing but a tall old-fashioned telephone with a
receiver on a hook, and, within reach of her hand, an ivory-buttoned
bellpush. The black mouth of the telephone yawned at Bond politely.

Bond stared rudely into the woman's face, examining it. It was an ugly
face, toadlike, under the powder and under the tight cottage-loaf of
white hair. The eyes were so light brown as to be almost yellow. The
pale lips were wet and blubbery below the fringe of nicotine-stained
moustache. Nicotine? Where were her cigarettes? There was no ashtray--no
smell of smoke in the room.

Bond's hand tightened again on his gun. He glanced down at the bag of
knitting, at the shapeless length of small-denier beige wool the woman
was working on. The steel needles. What was there odd about them? The
ends were discoloured as if they had been held in fire. Did knitting
needles ever look like that?

'_Eh bien, Monsieur?_' Was there an edge to the voice? Had she read
something in his face?

Bond smiled. His muscles were tense, waiting for any movement, any
trick. 'It's no use,' he said cheerfully, gambling. 'You are Rosa Klebb.
And you are Head of Otdyel II of SMERSH. You are a torturer and a
murderer. You wanted to kill me and the Romanov girl. I am very glad to
meet you at last.'

The eyes had not changed. The harsh voice was patient and polite. The
woman reached out her left hand towards the bellpush. 'Monsieur, I am
afraid you are deranged. I must ring for the _valet de chambre_ and have
you shown to the door.'

Bond never knew what saved his life. Perhaps it was the flash of
realization that no wires led from the bellpush to the wall or into the
carpet. Perhaps it was the sudden memory of the English 'Come in' when
the expected knock came on the door. But, as her finger reached the
ivory knob, he hurled himself sideways out of the chair.

As Bond hit the ground there was a sharp noise of tearing calico.
Splinters from the back of his chair sprayed around him. The chair
crashed to the floor.

Bond twisted over, tugging at his gun. Out of the corner of his eye he
noticed a curl of blue smoke coming from the mouth of the 'telephone'.
Then the woman was on him, the knitting needles glinting in her clenched
fists.

She stabbed downwards at his legs. Bond lashed out with his feet and
hurled her sideways. She had aimed at his legs! As he got to one knee,
Bond knew what the coloured tips of the needles meant. It was poison.
Probably one of those German nerve poisons. All she had to do was
scratch him, even through his clothes.

Bond was on his feet. She was coming at him again. He tugged furiously
at his gun. The silencer had caught. There was a flash of light. Bond
dodged. One of the needles rattled against the wall behind him and the
dreadful chunk of woman, the white bun of wig askew on her head, the
slimy lips drawn back from her teeth, was on top of him.

Bond, not daring to use his naked fists against the needles, vaulted
sideways over the desk.

Panting and talking to herself in Russian, Rosa Klebb scuttled round the
desk, the remaining needle held forward like a rapier. Bond backed away,
working at the stuck gun. The back of his legs came against a small
chair. He let go the gun and reached behind him and snatched it up.
Holding it by the back, with its legs pointing like horns, he went round
the desk to meet her. But she was beside the bogus telephone. She swept
it up and aimed it. Her hand went to the button. Bond leapt forward. He
crashed the chair down. Bullets sprayed into the ceiling and plaster
pattered down on his head.

Bond lunged again. The legs of the chair clutched the woman round the
waist and over her shoulders. God she was strong! She gave way, but only
to the wall. There she held her ground, spitting at Bond over the top of
the chair, while the knitting needle quested towards him like a long
scorpion's sting.

Bond stood back a little, holding the chair at arms' length. He took aim
and high-kicked at the probing wrist. The needle sailed away into the
room and pinged down behind him.

Bond came in closer. He examined the position. Yes, the woman was held
firmly against the wall by the four legs of the chair. There was no way
she could get out of the cage except by brute force. Her arms and legs
and head were free, but the body was pinned to the wall.

The woman hissed something in Russian. She spat at him over the chair.
Bond bent his head and wiped his face against his sleeve. He looked up
and into the mottled face.

'That's all, Rosa,' he said. 'The Deuxime will be here in a minute. In
an hour or so you'll be in London. You won't be seen leaving the hotel.
You won't be seen going into England. In fact very few people will see
you again. From now on you're just a number on a secret file. By the
time we've finished with you you'll be ready for the lunatic asylum.'

The face, a few feet away, was changing. Now the blood had drained out
of it, and it was yellow. But not, thought Bond, with fear. The pale
eyes looked levelly into his. They were not defeated.

The wet, shapeless mouth lengthened in a grin.

'And where will you be when I am in the asylum, Mister Bond?'

'Oh, getting on with my life.'

'I think not, Angliski spion.'

Bond hardly noticed the words. He had heard the click of the door
opening. A burst of laughter came from the room behind him.

'_Eh bien_,' it was the voice of delight that Bond remembered so well.
'The 70th position! Now, at last, I have seen everything. And invented
by an Englishman! James, this really is an insult to my countrymen.'

'I don't recommend it,' said Bond over his shoulder. 'It's too
strenuous. Anyway, you can take over now. I'll introduce you. Her name's
Rosa. You'll like her. She's a big noise in SMERSH--she looks after the
murdering, as a matter of fact.'

Mathis came up. There were two laundry-men with him. The three of them
stood and looked respectfully into the dreadful face.

'Rosa,' said Mathis thoughtfully. 'But, this time, a Rosa Malheur. Well,
well! But I am sure she is uncomfortable in that position. You two,
bring along the _panier de fleurs_--she will be more comfortable lying
down.'

The two men walked to the door. Bond heard the creak of the laundry
basket.

The woman's eyes were still locked in Bond's. She moved a little,
shifting her weight. Out of Bond's sight, and not noticed by Mathis, who
was still examining her face, the toe of one shiny buttoned boot pressed
under the instep of the other. From the point of its toe there slid
forward half an inch of thin knife blade. Like the knitting needles, the
steel had a dirty bluish tinge.

The two men came up and put the big square basket down beside Mathis.

'Take her,' said Mathis. He bowed slightly to the woman. 'It has been an
honour.'

'_Au revoir_, Rosa,' said Bond.

The yellow eyes blazed briefly.

'Farewell, Mister Bond.'

The boot, with its tiny steel tongue, flashed out.

Bond felt a sharp pain in his right calf. It was only the sort of pain
you would get from a kick. He flinched and stepped back. The two men
seized Rosa Klebb by the arms.

Mathis laughed. 'My poor James,' he said, 'Count on SMERSH to have the
last word.'

The tongue of dirty steel had withdrawn into the leather. Now it was
only a harmless bundle of old woman that was being lifted into the
basket.

Mathis watched the lid being secured. He turned to Bond. 'It is a good
day's work you have done, my friend,' he said. 'But you look tired. Go
back to the Embassy and have a rest because this evening we must have
dinner together. The best dinner in Paris. And I will find the loveliest
girl to go with it.'

Numbness was creeping up Bond's body. He felt very cold. He lifted his
hand to brush back the comma of hair over his right eyebrow. There was
no feeling in his fingers. They seemed as big as cucumbers. His hand
fell heavily to his side.

Breathing became difficult. Bond sighed to the depth of his lungs. He
clenched his jaws and half closed his eyes, as people do when they want
to hide their drunkenness.

Through his eyelashes he watched the basket being carried to the door.
He prised his eyes open. Desperately he focused Mathis.

'I shan't need a girl, Ren,' he said thickly.

Now he had to gasp for breath. Again his hand moved up towards his cold
face. He had an impression of Mathis starting towards him.

Bond felt his knees begin to buckle.

He said, or thought he said, 'I've already got the loveliest...'

Bond pivoted slowly on his heel and crashed headlong to the wine-red
floor.






[End of From Russia with Love, by Ian Fleming]
