by John Gardner
‘I’m not thinking about the North,’ said Smolin. ‘If we do get out, we’ll have to pull some kind of deception. We’ll make them think we’re heading for Dublin, then double back. I want to get us into west Cork. From there I know how we can be moved out with the minimum fuss. Okay?’
Bond nodded. ‘You’ll be at the wheel, so you take the lead.’
Smolin gave his first cheerful smile for some time. ‘At least I know where we can switch cars,’ he said with some pleasure, as though he had only just thought of it. ‘I also know a nice quiet hotel where they’re unlikely to think of looking for us.’
‘Well . . .’ Bond began, then changed his mind. ‘How many telephones have they got in this place?’ he asked, as though suddenly struck with another idea.
‘There’s one here, in the hall,’ said Smolin pointing to a small table set under the stairs. ‘There’s one in the Communications Room – the door to the left at the top of the stairs – and one in the main bedroom, that’s the next door along.’
‘They’re all extensions of the same number?’
‘Yes.’ Smolin gave the number, which Bond instantly committed to memory. ‘The line in is in the Communications Room, where they keep the radio equipment. The others in the hall and main bedroom are the extensions. Why?’
‘I just have a little idea. Keep the girls happy. Get them outside with you. It’ll only take ten minutes.’
Smolin raised his eyebrows. ‘If we’ve got ten minutes. This is necessary?’
‘I think so, yes.’
Bond gave a cheerful smile and turned away, taking the stairs as quickly as he could. His arm did not hurt so much, but he still felt weak.
The Communications Room was small, with most of the space taken up by banks of radio equipment, tape machines and a computer ranged against the longest wall. They were set on modern office desks, which were littered with pads, blotters and calculators. The telephone stood on the central desk, in front of the main radio. Almost before he was in the room, Bond had unclasped his belt and begun to remove the ingeniously hidden miniature tool kit put together by Q’ute some time ago. It contained an assortment of compact tools, detonators, picklocks, wire and fuses, folded into an almost flat leather container.
Bond removed the top from a small plastic cylinder and selected a screwdriver head that would easily fit the screws on the underside of a standard telephone. He slid the head into the other end of the tiny cylinder, which became a handle. Then he removed the four screws at the base of the instrument. With the telephone open, he took out his wallet and extracted a small packet that Q’ute had given him just before he had left the Headquarters building. It contained six tiny black grains, each with two wires trailing from it. He changed the screwdriver head, this time taking one used by jewellers.
The grains were the latest advance in what at one time was known as a ‘harmonica bug’. It took Bond less than four minutes to attach one of the bugs to the appropriate terminals and then close the telephone up. He breathed a silent thank you for these skills, which he had learned many years ago from Q Branch’s special telephone instructor. He was a perky cockney called Philip, known to all at the Regent’s Park Headquarters as Phil the Phone.
Bond next went to the main bedroom and quickly inserted another of the tiny devices in the telephone there. Downstairs, he went through the same routine with the third instrument.
Smolin and the girls were outside, and the sun was quickly sinking. Bond had hardly completed his work on the last telephone when Smolin opened the door and called out, ‘I’m going to the car, James. He should be here by now. All right?’
He squared his shoulders, pushed open the heavy front door and walked slowly towards the BMW. He played around with the boot for a while before going to sit behind the wheel to operate the central control to open the windows. They heard the first sound of the helicopter’s engine in the distance. Smolin started the engine, leaned over and opened the passenger door, shouting for them to come on.
Hardly had they reached the car, with the helicopter clearly visible against the red glow of the sky, when the first shots came down from the overlooking hills. They were warnings, smacking against the driveway, well away from the car. Inside Maxim Smolin was crouched over the wheel and the others as near to the floor as they could get. Ebbie, close to Bond, tensed as a second round of bullets hit the ground near by.
Smolin took off like a racing driver. He weaved as he went, building up speed to take the bumps along the rough track that led to the main entrance two miles on.
The helicopter had turned away from its first run in, as though alerted by the gunfire. It circled low and came, as Bond had hoped, between them and some of the marksmen. He could see that it was a version of the big twin-finned, double-rotored KA-25 – the Hormone as NATO dubbed it.
‘If we do get out,’ Heather shouted, ‘where are we heading for?’
‘If we make it!’ Smolin yelled and at that moment they heard the roar of the helicopter just over the roof, and the sudden rattle of automatic fire kicking up the dust and stones to their right. Bond raised his head and watched as the cumbersome machine turned on its own axis and started to run in again, towards them, its two huge rotors whirling fore and aft. He felt the downdraught of the Hormone battering the car like a gale. It was low and chopping in alongside them, one man half out of the rear sliding door manning a machine pistol.
Bond had the ASP clasped in his right hand. He fired twice and felt the kick as the marksman was cut straight out of the door, taking part of the fuselage with him. Bond steadied his hands, lifted the weapon slightly and fired another two rounds at the lower rotor blades. The Hormone faltered and began to fall away. The forward rotors whined as a section of one blade was torn off.
Smolin let out a roar of laughter. ‘You got the bastards!’ he shouted, ‘The stinking, rotten bastards! There they go . . .’
Bond glanced back through the rear window and saw the helicopter put down with a jolt that almost crushed one of the wheels of its undercarriage, sending it into the fuselage.
‘They won’t get that fixed at the local garage in a hurry,’ he muttered.
Then the bullets hailed down on them again and he had to fold himself flat on the floor, so close to Ebbie that he could smell the fresh scent of her body.
‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ Smolin called. ‘Hang on tight! I’m going to take a short cut.’
12
STRANGE MEETING
In the rapidly darkening landscape the forward lights of the grounded helicopter blazed down the main track, barring any exit there but a suicide dash. Smolin heaved the BMW away, swinging it over the uneven rutted meadow towards the rising ground. It lurched to right and left. At one point there was a thump and a bang which knocked the vehicle precariously to one side. Heather and Ebbie screamed, and for a second even Bond thought they would turn over. He recognised the impact of a heavy calibre bullet, and knew what it was capable of doing. Miraculously the BMW righted itself. The castle was to their left now and the helicopter a long way behind.
Three more shots reached them, one hitting the front passenger door but causing no damage. The long-range snipers were almost certainly using night scopes.
‘Should we try it on foot?’ Bond shouted to Smolin above the noise.
‘On foot they’d get us. There used to be a gap along this side – overgrown but not properly sealed off.’ He sounded perfectly calm as another shot from somewhere above them ricocheted past. ‘It’s our only chance.’ He drove without lights, craning forward to see into the darkness, the engine whining under stress.
‘There!’ he called triumphantly. ‘Now pray.’
The car slowed as he began to change down, pumping at the brakes. They were moving right, the wheels protesting and the back swinging violently.
‘Have you ever done any rallying?’ Bond called casually to divert the girls from the alarming experience.
‘No!’ said Smolin with a laugh
. ‘But I’ve done the GRU course – Scheiss!’ It looked as though they were hurtling towards an impenetrable wall of trees.
‘Get down and hang on!’ Bond shouted.
There was a violent blow and a grinding noise as the underside of the car pulled across the roots of bushes and undergrowth; then the rustling of branches and foliage parting against the vehicle. While the dense growth had slowed them, the car did not stop. It crunched and bounced, then, as suddenly as they had struck the barrier, they were through and facing a barbed wire fence a good seven feet high.
Smolin changed up, accelerated and rammed the fence head on. This time the impact was more dramatic. Smolin and Heather were thrown against the dashboard and Bond catapulted hard against the back of Smolin’s seat. Ebbie came off best, having stayed on the floor. As Bond gave a small cry of pain when his injured arm hit the driving seat she called anxiously,
‘James? Are you . . . Ouch!’ as she was rolled back by the jolt.
Half way on to the road ahead, tangled in wire, the car spluttered and stopped. Smolin forced his door open, calling, ‘Get out if you can!’
Bond tried the door on his side but it became trapped in the wire so he followed Smolin. Once out, both men scrambled around the car, grappling at the wire with their bare hands. In moments they were cut and bleeding from the barbs, and each cursed in his respective language. Slowly the car was cleared of the tentacles that sprang up as each new strand was loosened.
‘Where now?’ asked Bond, breathing heavily.
‘We must dump this car, and get another one,’ said Smolin. He ducked to avoid a snake of wire that shot up and missed his face by inches.
‘Where?’
‘I have a good Rover Vitesse stashed away – that is correct, yes? Stashed?’
‘Yes,’ said Bond as he tugged the last piece of wire from around the rear bumper. ‘You’ve certainly got this country sewn up, Maxim, with cars stashed away and covert routes in and out.’
They got back into the car. ‘Not just me. I’m sure Chernov has more transport near by. We’ll be running another gauntlet.’
Smolin twisted the ignition key and the engine coughed and died several times. Eventually it fired. As though nothing had happened, Smolin slammed into gear and, still with no lights, he edged the car on to the road. He turned left towards the Dublin–Wicklow road.
‘They’ll send the Mercedes after us first, and there will probably be another couple of teams,’ said Smolin, ‘but our car switch should help. This one I kept up my sleeve. Nobody knows I have it. I did the whole thing alone.’
‘Is it far?’ Bond asked. He needed to get to a telephone.
‘It’s fifteen minutes as the crow flies. But have you noticed, the crows don’t seem to fly in this country? They litter the roads.’
They were moving swiftly through lanes that appeared to have been constructed from sets of left-over S-bends, overhung by bushes and hedges. Nobody spoke, though Ebbie’s hand stole softly into Bond’s palm, then was snatched back again as she peered in the half light at the blood flowing from so many cuts and gashes.
Without a word she reached down and lifted her skirt, exposing a generous segment of white thigh. She started to tear at her slip. When she had a sizable piece of light-coloured silk she put it to her mouth, biting to rip it into two pieces, which she then tenderly bound around both of Bond’s damaged hands.
‘Poor you,’ she whispered, ‘I’ll kiss them better.’
So saying, she bent her head and ran her lips over the exposed part of his fingers. First one hand, then the other, her tongue licking the flesh and her lips closing over the middle finger of one hand.
‘I don’t think anyone’s ever made love to my hands before,’ Bond whispered. ‘Thank you, Ebbie.’
Breaking the spell, she looked up at him, her eyes wide with innocence. ‘I hope your tetanus shots are up to date,’ she murmured.
After a couple of miles they turned off abruptly on to a narrow road leading to a large forest. It was completely dark now and the trees were grey against the headlights. Every few hundred yards there were stacks of timber on wooden bunkers. Half a mile farther on they turned on to a track leading directly into the trees. A notice clearly proclaimed: NO MOTOR VEHICLES. PEDESTRIANS ONLY.
‘Do you see that, Maxim?’ Bond asked.
‘We’re in Ireland, James. Notices like that don’t mean what they say. Anyway, I figured a car-free zone would be the best place to hide a car.’
‘Did the GRU teach you that as well?’
‘I suppose so. But I’m pretty certain that for all their clever ways Chernov’s lads will be looking for this BMW, not for the pretty lady over here.’
He flung the car sideways on, almost grazing the thick trunks of the fir trees before the headlights revealed a mound of branches in the centre of a small clearing.
‘Okay, everybody get out. Uncover that car, then use the stuff to hide this one. I have to look to my maps.’
In under ten minutes a dusty, but patently new black Rover Vitesse stood in the clearing, while the pile of branches covered the BMW. Smolin walked a few paces from the nearside front wheel of the Rover, dug into the moss-covered ground and retrieved a small package containing two sets of keys. Bond, standing over him, spoke in a low voice.
‘Get the girls into the car, Maxim. We need to talk.’
Smolin nodded. He carefully ushered Heather into the front and Ebbie to the back. Then he walked over to Bond, a short distance from the Rover, where the girls could not hear them.
‘First,’ said Bond moving very close to him, ‘when you were in Berlin, did you have a sidekick called Mischa? Because, if you didn’t, Maxim, you should look to your lady.’
Smolin nodded. ‘Yes, Mischa was around, but he was a KGB plant. You should know, James, that nothing can ever be straightforward between KGB and GRU. We are up to our ears in suspicion concerning one another. You ask about him because he’s one of Chernov’s killing party. He was in London, wasn’t he?’
‘That’s right. Now, further plans. I just about trust you, Maxim, but I need to know what we’re up to. You mentioned throwing them off the scent and getting to west Cork.’
Smolin smiled in the gloom. ‘You have special contacts, James. I too. I run two people in Skibbereen. They have a light aircraft. By night we can fly very low. We can escape detection and land, without anyone knowing, in a field in glorious Devon. I have done it several times.’
Bond knew it was feasible. Hadn’t Special Branch and ‘Five’ suspected illegal entry by light aircraft for some years now? No place had ever been pinpointed, yet they knew the lads from the North came in and thought other interlopers did too.
‘All right. Chernov wants us, the girls, and presumably Jungle and Dietrich. If we drive to Skibbereen now we won’t make it until the very small hours. That’ll mean holing up close to our departure point, not the best thing. We all need some rest. There are also things I have to do . . . the telephones at the castle. You follow?’
Smolin nodded.
‘Why don’t we drive part of the way tonight?’ Bond peered at his watch. ‘It’s eight-thirty now. We could be in Kilkenny by ten o’clock. We could stay there overnight, then continue the journey late tomorrow afternoon. I presume you can get hold of your people by telephone. Are they contained?’
‘How contained?’
‘From KGB doubling.’
‘KGB cannot know them. They’re mine. This will be the first time I’ve taken anyone in with me. Okay?’
‘Okay. They won’t be looking for a black Rover, but they will be on the trail of four people. Once we’re on the road we could telephone ahead and book in at two different hotels. You can drop Ebbie and me off near one and take the car to yours. We’ll have to arrange a meeting for the morning.’
‘That seems good. I have two cases in the boot. There’s nothing that will fit you, but it will make the right impression, yes? The girls can shop in Kilkenny tomorrow, as long as they’re
careful. Ebbie has some clothes in that big shoulder bag, so she may be all right.’
‘What kind of papers are you carrying, Maxim?’
‘A British passport, international driving licence and credit cards.’
‘Are they good?’
‘The best forgeries ever to come out of Knamensky Street. My name is Palmerston. Henry J. Temple Palmerston. Do you like it?’
‘Oh yes.’ Bond’s voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘You just have to pray that no Passport Control officer is a student of nineteenth-century politics.’
‘Correct.’ You could feel Smolin’s broad smile in the dark. ‘They are mainly people whose interests lie elsewhere – aeroplane modelling, railway trains, the novels of Dick Francis and Wilbur Smith. Very few of them graduate to Margaret Drabble or Kingsley Amis. We ran a thorough check through the mail. Simple questions but effective. Eighty-five per cent filled in our little forms. We said it was for market research and offered a prize of £5,000 sterling. A man working at Heathrow won the lucky draw, and all the others got small consolation prizes – Walkmans, pens, diaries. You know the kind of thing.’
Bond sighed. At least the Soviets were sometimes thorough. ‘Well, Mr Palmerston, don’t you think we should get going?’
‘If you say so, Mr Boldman.’
They arranged that Smolin and Heather should stay, not in Kilkenny, but at the Clonmel Arms Hotel, thirty minutes’ drive away. Bond and Ebbie were booked into the Newpark, near the famous castle, in Kilkenny. In Smolin’s opinion it was best that they were completely separated. Surprisingly, they had come across an unvandalised white and green booth marked Telefon only fifteen minutes after leaving the dense wood and had been able to make the reservations from there.
‘You can have the bed,’ Bond told Ebbie in the back of the car. ‘I’ll sit up and keep watch.’
‘Let’s wait and see.’ Ebbie’s hand slid into his. ‘I do know you’re a gentleman, James. But perhaps I don’t want a gentleman.’