James Bond: The Authorised Biography (30 page)

‘Where are you?’ Bond asked.

‘All in good time,’ the voice replied, and Bond realized that it was coming from a loudspeaker hidden by the light.

‘First, I must introduce myself. I am the man who is going to kill you, Mr Bond. As you know, I slipped up at Royale-les-Eaux. This time there will be no mistake.’

‘If you're so keen on killing me, why not last night?’ said Bond. ‘You had me at your mercy.’

‘It would have been too easy,’ said the voice. ‘Besides, I have my orders. My masters want you back alive. That's why we had to have that little pantomime last night on the island, and that's why you're here.’

‘But where is here?’ said Bond.

‘I thought you realized. You are aboard the
Lublin
. It is good that these old warships still have their uses and that all those sailors did not die in vain. She is a useful outpost for my country. We converted her when we still occupied this part of Finland during the war. She was originally an observation post to give warning of attack on Leningrad. We had much equipment hidden on her. There is an air-lock well below the waterline so that a submarine can relieve her crew. That's how you are due to leave, sometime this afternoon. The submarine is on her way.’

‘Why is the door open then?’ said Bond.

‘A good question. I'll do my best to answer you. Feel under your left armpit, Mr Bond.’

Bond did. To his surprise he found his gun was there.

‘Examine it, please.’

Again Bond did as he was told. The magazine had been reloaded after the shots he had fired last night.

‘Now do you understand? My orders are to bring you back alive, but just for once I don't intend to follow them. You've caused me too much trouble, Mr Bond. I want to kill you. And to have that pleasure, I'm giving you a chance. Not a very big chance, but a better one than you'll get in Moscow. We are alone here on this wreck. The sailors who brought you here have gone. You have a gun. Use it, Mr Bond. Escape.’

There was a loud metallic click. The voice switched off. Bond lay where he was, planning what to do.

His cabin was evidently below the waterline, and from where he lay he could see a brightly lit corridor with steps at the far end. Somewhere along that corridor or up the steps, Oborin was waiting. It was the perfect killing ground, the carefully setup site for a private execution. At first Bond thought he had no chance, but then he realized that Oborin's whole scheme for killing him depended for its certainty on one thing – light. If he could only plunge that corridor outside in darkness he might just have a chance. Everything depended now on whether the corridor lights and the light inside his cabin were on the same electric circuit. With luck they would be.

He used one precious bullet to shoot out the light. The glass cover shattered, and, although he cut his fingers, he managed to unscrew the base of the light bulb from its socket. He had a small stainless-steel comb. He insulated one end with its plastic holder then thrust it hard into the socket. There was the flash of a short-circuit – the lights in the corridor outside went out.

Bond hurled himself towards the steps and as he did so, two shots whistled through the darkness. Bond grabbed the steel rung and hauled himself up. A third shot caught his arm. And then he fired, instinctively. There was no real target – only a darker patch against the surrounding darkness. But Bond had practised in exactly these conditions in the cellars beneath Regent's Park Headquarters. He heard the cough of his Beretta followed by the eerie twanging of a ricochetting bullet in the darkness. But with his second bullet there was no ricochet.

Bond stood quite still and listened. There was a cough. Bond fired again directly at the sound. He heard a thud and then a stifled groan followed by the choking sound of someone fighting for breath. He fired twice more. The choking stopped. Even then, Bond took no chances but waited several minutes more. There was no noise now but the sound of his own breathing. He fired again and then moved slowly forward until he reached the body. He nearly stumbled over it. The murderer with the craglike face was very dead.

It took Bond some while to find his way out. He was in a corridor with a steel ladder at the far end. Groping his way up he found a bulkhead door. He wrenched it open and found himself out on the tilting deck of the
Lublin
. The Russian had been right – the wrecked battleship was quite deserted. So was the island. At the jetty Bond could see the small blue boat he had arrived on still tied up where he had left it. There was something lifeless and depressing in the scene. Bond thought of the drowned sailors for whom this rusting warship was still a communal coffin. It was time to go before the Russian submarine arrived.

But first he had to make sure that The
Lublin
’s usefulness was over and forced himself down past Oborin's body to explore the ship. The Russians had sealed off a section of the hold and carefully installed their radio equipment, quarters for a crew and a whole range of electronic monitors. There was the air-lock where the submarine would dock and deep in the hold Bond found what he was looking for – the
Lublin
’s sea-cocks. These required all his strength to turn. He heaved and then he heard the rush of water. He took one last look round at this hidden watcher's world – then gratefully got back on deck.

The Baltic was colder than he had ever thought water could be. After his dive from the
Lublin
’s stern he swam the half-mile to the jetty, but he was nearly caught by cramp within the icy waters. Luckily, there were still blankets in the hut. He dried himself on them, then swathed himself and climbed aboard the boat. The engines started. There were two jerry-cans of fuel. He swung the blue boat's bows out to the open sea. As he passed the
Lublin
the great rusting monster seemed to lurch. The stern and barnacle-encrusted rudder rose from the water as the ship tipped further on its side and settled in the mud. By the time the Russian submarine arrived, Bond was safely back in Kotka.

‘Well, bless my soul,’ said Birkin when he saw him. ‘Somehow I never thought that
you'd
be back.’

*

Bond was hoping that the death of Oborin would have settled his private score with Smersh, and for a while it seemed as if it had. Winter began – the ceaseless business of Bond's department seemed to increase in volume. There was a three-day visit to Cairo at the end of November. A British businessman's life was threatened by a group of extremist Arabs and an important trade agreement hinged on his safety. Within three hours of his arrival in Cairo, Bond knew the names of the would-be assassins and by that evening all of them had been persuaded to leave town. He also had a trip to Washington conferring with the C.I.A. about an anonymous threat to the life of the U.S. President on his forthcoming tour of Europe. Both these assignments passed off without a hitch. Then came Bond's visit to Milan.

This occurred during the annual Trade Fair. These international affairs with entries from both sides of the Iron Curtain tended to become a field day for the Secret Service. Bond was quite used to them, and on this occasion he had to keep his eye on a technical adviser from a British electronics firm who was suspected of illicit contacts with the East. For Bond it was very much a routine operation. For cover he had arranged to be attached to a British firm of turbine engineers and duly took his place, complete with dark suit and exhibitor's lapel badge, on their stand. He knew enough to talk convincingly about turbine generators, and also managed to observe the man he wanted. In fact, nothing happened: the man was either innocent, or else aware that he was being watched. And Bond was free to enjoy the exotic pleasures of Milan. He liked the city. Unlike so much of Italy, it made no attempt to thrust culture and antiquity down his throat, and he enjoyed its zest and its prosperity. He liked the Milanese too – with their large fast cars and pampered women – and ate well, drank wines like Inferno and Lambrusco, and in place of his customary vodka martinis found himself enjoying what he called ‘musical comedy drinks’ – Campari sodas and Americanos.

During the four days of the Fair he had a double room at the Hotel Principe e Savoia. He approved of this as well. The hotel was solid and discreet; the barman poured generous measures and knew all the gossip of the city. It was in the bar too that Bond met the girl who saved his life. She was called Melissa. She was English, recently divorced and staying in Milan to meet her Italian lover. He was delayed in Rome; she was obviously lonely. Bond gave her dinner at one of the finest restaurants in Italy – Gianino's in the Via Sciesa where they ate artichokes and
osso buco alle milanese –
and spent the night with her. After the
grappa
and the gorgonzola this seemed the perfect ending to a perfect evening.

Luckily, they chose her room. At 4 a.m. the hotel was shaken by an explosion. Bond's empty double room was totally destroyed. As the
carabiniere
told him later, the bomb had been put underneath his bed.

‘Fortunately,’ said Bond, ‘I sometimes sleep in other people's.’

The
maresciallo
from the
carabiniere
laughed, but before he left Milan, Bond sent the girl a golden bracelet with his heartfelt thanks; on this occasion he felt justified in charging it to his expenses.

But Bond was more disturbed than he let anybody see; especially when he had to give a personal report upon the incident to M. M. had nodded and said little. A few days later, May found a parcel in the post addressed to Bond which worried her. Something was loose inside it. Bond rang Scotland Yard; their experts later found that it contained sufficient thermite to have blown his head off. Again, M. was informed of what had happened.

Then came the final incident. Bond had been dining with his favourite married woman at the White Tower Restaurant in Percy Street. He had the Bentley and, as he drove her back to Chelsea, he noticed a small grey Austin in front which refused to let him pass. He hooted and flashed his lights, but the car stuck to the middle of the road. Bond swore. He was impatient to get home, and then, just by the exit from the park, the car jammed on its brakes and swung across the road. Another car was double-parked ahead and, as Bond struggled to avoid it, there was a rattle of machine-gun fire. The Bentley skidded to a halt. Bond was unhurt, but the woman beside him had been hit. Bond spent the next half hour seeing her safely into St George's hospital, and then coping with the police. There was a lot of coping to be done, and the evening ended, shortly before midnight, with a hurried conference with M. at the Regent's Park Headquarters.

It was the first time Bond had known him appear at such an hour, but the Chief of Staff had summoned him from home. Both of them looked grim when Bond appeared.

‘And how is the woman, Chief of Staff?’ said M.

‘The hospital say they've just removed the bullet from her pelvis. She's been in pain but she will live.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said M. ‘And her husband – did you succeed in quietening him down?’

‘Extremely difficult,’ said Chief of Staff. ‘Until I rang you, he was threatening to see the Home Secretary.’

‘Just tell me one thing, 007,’ said M. ‘If you must have these affairs of yours, why on earth do it with an M.P.'s wife? Isn't life difficult enough without bringing in the House of Commons?’

‘I thought,’ replied Bond stiffly, ‘that my private life remained my own.’

‘Private life?’ M. snorted. ‘When will you learn that while you work for me you
have
no private life.’

By next morning, things had calmed down, but M. still took a gloomy view of James Bond's future in the Secret Service.

‘We must face facts, James. This is a vendetta. Since you killed Oborin, Smersh have been out to get you. They have made you a marked man, and won't rest until they have totally destroyed you. It is a situation I have faced occasionally before. And I am afraid there's nothing to be done about it, James. I have no alternative but to suspend you from the 00 section, and get you some foreign posting until it all blows over. We'll have to discuss a suitable place for you. Where do you enjoy? The Bahamas? Strangways needs to be replaced in Jamaica – will that suit you?

Bond appreciated the attempt at kindness. But in a way it made the situation worse.

He knew that he was finished, just as he was getting into his stride. Smersh had beaten him – and he would never know whether the feud would rest. He would always be waiting for the bullet in the night, the poisoned cup of coffee. After the Vatican, Smersh possessed the longest memory in Europe.

Those next few days of semi-relegation were perhaps the bitterest of his life. He had to hand in his Beretta, that battered but efficient friend of many an assignment. And he no longer had that special status, that sense of being part of an lite. The way that everyone appeared so understanding simply made it worse. He began the melancholy business of packing – there seemed nothing else to do. Prepare expenses, close the files, make sure at least that everything is left in decent order.

He would store the Bentley when it was repaired – he couldn't bear the thought of selling it. And there would be no trouble subleasing the flat. He would have to pick his moment to tell May that he was leaving. He had never thought of her as a sensitive woman. One of her virtues was that she had always kept her life and worries quite apart from him, and left him free. She never varied.