Too Bad to Die (18 page)

He nodded. Hopkins took the basin away. Roosevelt heard the sound of running water and a toilet flushing from the bathroom. Good old Harry. He'd been with him from the start. Whenever he needed someone to be his legs, it wasn't his Vice President or his Secretary of State—it was Hopkins, traveling to London to reassure Churchill, or to Moscow, to glad-hand Uncle Joe. The whole business would be harder when Harry was gone.

Hopkins handed him a handkerchief from his own pocket. Like most things Harry wore, it wasn't particularly clean. Franklin wiped his mouth anyway and sighed.

“I guess the Nazi commandos poisoned you,” Harry joked. “I'll call a press conference and make Uncle Joe's day. You okay?”

“Better, now.”

“Want some water?”

“That'd be grand.”

He drank it down and removed his spectacles, pressing his fingers onto his eyes. “Aside from making me sick as a dog, I'd say the dinner went well.”

“Uncle Joe sure hates the French,” Harry said.

“And the Germans.”

“Don't we all. But Stalin wants to tear apart both countries when the shouting's done. I loved it when Winston said he
couldn't conceive of a civilized world without a
flourishing and lively France
. He'll start World War Three if Stalin ever threatens what really matters—Bordeaux, Champagne, and Burgundy.”

Franklin smiled. “Some people think we started
this
war over Polish vodka.”

A knock. Hopkins crushed out his cigarette and went to the door.

“Sam,” Franklin said, with a feeling of relief. His bodyguard's absence had been troubling him obscurely, a question on the fringes of his mind.

Schwartz crossed the room quickly, a dispatch box in his hands. During this protracted trip, Roosevelt's official business was flown in to every city he visited, for review and signature; Schwartz must have brought today's packet from the legation's diplomatic pouch.

“Put it down on the table, please.”

“Certainly, sir.” Schwartz deposited the box, sliding a single sheet of paper from the interior as he did so. With an eloquent grimace, he gestured toward it. Then he put his finger to his lips.

Frowning, Roosevelt took the sheet.

CAREFUL,
it said in a scrawl of block capitals. HE'S LISTENING TO EVERY WORD YOU SAY.

I
like what you've done with the place.” Ian's eyes roamed over the stone walls of the bazaar's upper chamber. It was lit by two small windows set high near the ceiling, one of a warren of rooms connected by tunnel-like passages. An oil lamp burned on a broad wooden table and a few high-backed chairs were ranged against the walls. A samovar was steaming in the corner, and for an instant he was swept back to London and the Bohemian studios of his mother's friends, the stout talk of world revolution that was such a persistent cliché of the Thirties, the overheated atmosphere and the clouds of pungent smoke. Always there had been a samovar in a corner, a nod to the host's Red sympathies.

Arev had led them swiftly into the NKVD headquarters, which was blocked off from the bazaar's broader humanity by massive wooden doors hinged and locked in iron. Every few yards the greeting party passed an armed sentinel, who saluted their leader. None of these women or men—Ian saw both—wore the NKVD field uniform of sage-green wool. No rank was obvious, except for that lightning-swift salute for the boy swaggering ahead.

It feels more like a rebel band, he thought, than an arm of the Soviet state. He should consider the possibility that Nazir and Siranoush had deceived him about their allegiance, for reasons of their own. For the moment, however, he brushed conspiracy aside and tried to concentrate on the passages, in case he needed to retrace his steps. Hopeless, of course. If events turned against him he would die here in the bowels of Persia, and his body would be discovered weeks later at the bottom of a cistern.

They had fetched up in this room at last, Siranoush standing mutely by Arev's side and Ian flanked by two of Arev's men. In front of them, seated at the broad table in one of the high-backed chairs, was someone who at last looked like a commander. He had Arev's hooked nose but was altogether much fleshier. His grizzled hair and mustache were ragged and untrimmed. He was missing the index finger of his left hand. He did not acknowledge them, but continued to scan a sheaf of papers on the table before him.

A ferret was crouched on his shoulder.

From time to time, he reached up with his mutilated hand and fondled its head.

“Thank you,” he said at last. This was a reply, Ian realized, to his muttered
I like what you've done with the place.
“It is sufficient to our purpose.”

He held the papers to the flame of the oil lamp and tossed them, burning, to the stone floor. No one moved. He rose and poured a glass of tea from the samovar.

“Barer dzez,
Siranoush
. Vonts ek?”
he said, offering her the glass.

She took a sip of it.
“Vochinch.”

He did not offer Ian a drink. He launched instead into what sounded like an interrogation—entirely in this language that was unfamiliar but just might be, Ian thought, Armenian or Kazakh or some other tongue of the Caucasus. One word was thrown repeatedly in his general direction:
Angliatsi.
Englishman?

Siranoush remained self-possessed. Unruffled. She drank her tea between answers.

The men at Ian's side moved closer. He felt claustrophobic, hemmed in by these watchers as he'd been in the bazaar—at any second he might crack from the tension and bolt for the door.

Bond waited for the precise second when the partisan chief's back was turned, then swiftly grasped his guards by the neck and smashed their heads together. They fell senseless at his feet. Two more were swiftly upon him, but he . . .

He'd probably get a bullet in the back.

Ian kept his eyes on Siranoush. She seemed controlled and impassive, a different girl from the gunner with the crooked smile. Doubt coiled in his gut. Could he trust her?

Suddenly the commander—for he must be a commander—wheeled and pulled a knife. The ferret dove off his shoulder, chittering, and vanished in a blur. The guards grasped Ian's shoulders, forcing his arms backward. He drew a sharp breath as his wounded shoulder screamed.

The commander walked toward him, knife foremost. He slid the blade under Ian's chin.

“You are Bond?”

“James Bond,” he agreed. His passport was one of the first things Arev had taken from him.

“Did you talk, Mr. Bond?”

“In general, or on a particular occasion?”

The knife jibbed against his throat.

“It's just that talking's rather a habit of mine. Difficult to break.”

He was speaking in his toniest drawl, all Eton and Sandhurst. The British
pukka sahib.
Whether the commander understood the words or not, he caught the sneer in Ian's voice.

The knife snicked his skin.

“You betrayed Nazir.
You talked.
He died. Yes?”

“No.” Ian glanced over the commander's shoulder. Siranoush's green eyes were watchful. She expected to see his throat slit right in front of her. But she wasn't particularly pleased about it, Ian thought. That was comforting.

“Our friend meets with you. He trusts you with our secrets. Pouf! His throat is cut and thirty years of work in Cairo betrayed. Yes?”

The knife pressed wetly into his skin.

“No,” he croaked. “When I left Nazir he was alive. I was attacked myself before I had a chance to speak to anybody. By the time I regained consciousness, Nazir was dead. I assume the same man attacked us both.”

“Then why are you alive, Bond?” The commander grasped Ian's hair and wrenched his head back. The knife snicked a little deeper.

I have no idea, Ian thought. The contradiction, again. Turing's exception that was supposed to explain everything. Only it didn't.

Siranoush said something in her language. Urgency in her voice.

The commander looked at her. He smiled unpleasantly and turned back to Ian.

“You hear what she says?
A man cannot knife himself in the back. He cannot smash his own skull.
” He released Ian and stepped back, uttering a terse command in that foreign tongue. The men grasping Ian unfastened his uniform coat. The commander walked slowly around him as though appraising an indifferent horse. Ian felt his broad hands lifting his shirt. The same hand probed the back of his skull. He winced.

“True, insofar as it goes,” the commander said grudgingly. “Tell me, where did you meet Nazir? In his shop?”

“At Shepheard's Hotel.”

“In the Long Bar?”

“Yes.”

The man muttered something like a curse under his breath. He came around to face Ian. “The Swiss was there? The barman?”

“Joe's always there.” Ian wished he could massage his neck or stanch the trickle of blood, but his arms were still held in a vise.

“Of course. Because he's a Nazi spy.” The commander said it carelessly as he set down his knife. He snapped his fingers. From the shadows at the corner of the room, the ferret streaked upward to balance on his shoulder. He lifted his mangled hand to caress it. “But he will not be much longer. Arev, my son—take our guests to their rooms. They will want to change their clothes.”

—

I
AN WAS GIVEN
a dark suit, abominably cut, and a white dress shirt. From the weight of the fabric and the overall style, he concluded these were of Soviet make.

“Arev says you're too tall and too pale to dress like an Irani,” Siranoush translated, amused. “It's enough to get you out of that uniform.”

“I could be court-martialed for not wearing it.”

“Only if you're caught.”

He must not be caught.

She rejoined them in a drab wool dress. Her bright gold hair was pulled severely into a bun. There were circles under her eyes, and Ian thought, not for the last time, how frail she seemed. As though she had been denied sleep from an early age.

“Arev says you are to be trusted, Bond,” she told him.

“What does that mean?”

“Not very much.”

Could he come and go at will? Wander into the Park Hotel, where Hudson had planned to stay, and ask loudly for his friend? Even if Arev and his pack of NKVD dogs allowed Ian out of their sight, he'd be running a risk. Too many of the Americans lodged with Hudders would know him. Bump into even one of them, and he could kiss his rogue operation goodbye.

“Russians never really trust anybody,” Siranoush added, “and the NKVD is beyond Russian.”

“Particularly when they're Armenian,” Ian suggested.

She threw him her crooked smile. “Come. Zadiq is waiting.”

“Zadiq?”

“Arev's father. Also his boss.”

The young man did not react to this exchange; he did not speak English, Ian realized. But he led them back along the passages to the room where they had met the man with the ferret. Two of the high-backed chairs were drawn up to the wooden table now, and Zadiq had spread out a map.

“Here, here, and here,” he said, stabbing the heavy paper's surface. “That is where we found them. Thirty Nazis. Special Forces. And all their matériel.”

Ian leaned over the table. Tehran sat in the northern saddle of the country, not far from the Caspian Sea. Between sea and city were the Elburz Mountains. He noticed, as if for the first time, how close the Soviet Union was—just the Caspian separated Iran from Russia. Less distance separated both from what had once been Armenia.

Zadiq had pointed to the foothills north of the city, on the fringe of the Elburz range. “They dropped here, south of Tochal. That peak. We were waiting for them.”

“You knew they were coming?” Ian asked.

“We turned two German agents a year ago,” the commander said simply. “They preferred to help us rather than die. A few weeks ago they gave us the drop zone coordinates.”

“Nazir said that you missed a few.”

Zadiq's expression turned ugly. “You should do so well, Bond. A half dozen men escaped. No more. We will find them in the end.”

Ian held the man's gaze. “Berlin must know that they came to grief.”

“Our double agents blamed the failure on a drunken traitor. Another German. I regret to say that he was turned by the English.”

“Allies
do
come in useful, don't they?” Ian murmured.

“In moments,” Zadiq conceded. “Each of our agents accused the English spy independently of the other. That carries truth in Berlin. Sadly, we do not expect your Nazi traitor to live much longer.”

“Probably better that I don't know,” Ian said.

Siranoush was frowning. “Are you tracking the Germans who slipped through our fingers?”

“Our agents are in radio contact with them,” Zadiq said dismissively. “We do not think the paratroopers suspect that these two Germans were turned.”

She made a small sound of protest. “Then you
must
know where they are! You can locate the transmission signal, surely?”

“How like a woman,” Zadiq retorted. “Such foolish questions. These Nazis are constantly on the move.”

“What do you know about the Fencer?” Ian asked. The code name dropped like a weight in the middle of the table. “These are his men, I gather?”

“Ah.” Zadiq's black eyes flicked over him appraisingly. “We do not know who this Fencer is. Or where he operates. And if the paratroopers are talking to him”—he shrugged—“we cannot listen. We do not know the Fencer's frequency.”

Ian looked up from the map. It was an Enigma frequency. As he well knew. Bletchley suspected the Soviets had never broken Enigma codes. But . . . “Nazir said that you intercepted the Fencer's operational plan to kill the Big Three.”

Zadiq held up his hand. “We intercepted
Berlin's
communication of Operation Long Jump to our German double agents. The Fencer was mentioned, yes. But of his personal radio transmissions, we know nothing. If he is directing these surviving men—what remains of his team—we are blind and deaf to their orders.”

Ian considered this rapidly. The Fencer must be sending out reams of code right now, to Berlin as well as the paratroopers hiding out near Tochal.

Which meant Alan Turing ought to be intercepting the traffic.

“I think,” he said carefully, “I might be able to help you. Could someone take a message to the British Embassy?”

—

P
AMELA KNEW NOTHING
about Tehran. She was accustomed to the men in her life managing such things as taxis and fares and destinations and drinks. But she was feeling mutinous and desperate to get away,
so she hurled one word at the driver:
Casino
.

He drove her to the finest hotel in Iran.

The Park had been open only three years. It was the brainchild of Abolhassan Diba, an Iranian with royal blood in his veins, a Sorbonne education, and a considerable fortune in Swiss bank accounts. Diba was an engineering titan intent on modernizing his country. He replaced camels with trucks, plows with tractors, dirt with asphalt. The first telephone exchange in Iran was established by him—and the first Western-style five-star hotel.

You could get a good, stiff drink at the Park, one reason the Armies of Occupation loved it.

A liveried doorman swept open Pamela's cab and offered her his hand. She exited with her usual grace and stood blinking on the pavement, transported for an instant to Mayfair, years before the war, free of sandbags and rubble and blackout shades. This was how life ought to be. A pang of nostalgia and self-pity pierced her. Then she gathered her furs more closely about her shoulders, lifted her chin, and gave the doorman a dazzling smile.

By the time Michael Hudson walked into the Park Casino, Pamela was tossing dice with Mr. Diba.

—

B
OURBON AND RYE
were unknown in Iran, so Hudson fetched himself a Scotch, with a mental nod at Fleming. Pamela hadn't noticed him yet, too absorbed in the novelty of this streetwise game and her suave partner. Diba was dark and protective; he was immaculately tailored and entirely in command of his world. From the lovely flush on Pamela's skin and her effortless peals of laughter, Michael guessed she was tight. It was the right hour for it. What was she doing here? Had Harriman brought her?