Icebreaker

the Service. By this time his shoulder throbbed like a misplaced toothache, sweat dripped from his forehead, and he felt sick.

4

MADEIRA CAKE

‘They were definitely professionals?’ M had already asked the question three times.

‘No doubt on that score,’ Bond answered, just as he had done before, ‘And I stress again, sir, that I was the target.’

M grunted.

They were seated in M’s office on the ninth floor of the building: M, Bond, and M’s Chief-of-Staff, Bill Tanner.

Immediately on entering the building Bond had taken the lift straight up to the ninth floor, where he lurched into the outer office, the domain of M’s neatly efficient PA, Miss Moneypenny.

She looked up and at first smiled with pleasure. ‘James . . .’ she began, then saw Bond totter, and ran from her desk to help him into a chair.

‘That’s wonderful, Penny,’ Bond said, dizzy from pain and fatigue. ‘You smell great. All woman.’

‘No, James, all Chanel; while you’re a mixture of sweat, antiseptic and a hint of something, I think, by Patou.’

M was out, at a Joint Intelligence Committee briefing, so within ten minutes, with Miss Moneypenny’s help, Bond was down in the sick bay, being tended by the two permanent nurses. The duty doctor was already on the way.

Paula had been right: the wound needed attention, antibiotics as well as stitches. By three in the afternoon, Bond was feeling a good deal better, well enough to be taken back for an interrogation by M and the Chief-of- Staff.

M never used strong language, but his look now was of a man ready to give way to the temptation. ‘Tell me about the girl again. This Vacker woman.’ He leaned across the desk, loading his pipe by feel alone, the grey eyes hard – as though Bond was not to be trusted.

Bond painstakingly went through everything he knew about Paula.

‘And the friend? The one she mentioned?’

‘Anni Tudeer. Works for the same agency; similar grade to Paula. They’re apparently co-operating on a special account at the moment, promoting a chemical research organisation based up in Kemi. In the North, but this side of the Circle.’

‘I know where Kemi is,’ M almost snarled. ‘You have to land there en route to Rovaniemi and all places north.’ He inclined his head towards Tanner. ‘Chief-of-Staff, would you run the names through the computers for me? See if we have anything. You can even go hat in hand to Five: ask them if there’s anything on their books.’

Bill Tanner gave a deferential nod and left the office.

Once the door was closed, M leaned back in his chair. ‘So, what’s your personal assessment, 007?’ The grey eyes glittered, and Bond thought to himself that M probably had the truth already locked away in his head, together with a thousand other secrets.

Bond chose his words carefully. ‘I think I was marked – fingered – either during the exercise in the Arctic, or when I got back to Helsinki. Somehow they got a wire on to my hotel phone. It’s either that, or Paula – which I would find hard to believe – or someone she spoke to. It was certainly a random operation, because even I didn’t know I was going to stay until we landed in Helsinki. But they moved fast, and undoubtedly they were out to put me away.’

M took the pipe from his mouth, stabbing it towards Bond like a baton, ‘Who are they?’

Bond shrugged, and his shoulder gave a twinge at the movement. ‘Paula said they spoke to her in good Finnish. They tried Russian on me – terrible accents. Paula thought they were Scandinavian, but not Finnish.’

‘Not the answer, 007. I asked who are they?’

‘People able to hire local non-Finnish talent – professional blackout merchants.’

‘But why the hiring, then?’ M sat quite still, his voice calm.

‘I don’t make friends easily.’

‘Without the frivolity, 007.’

‘Well.’ Bond sighed. ‘I suppose it could have been a contract. Remnants of SPECTRE. Certainly not KGB – or unlikely. Could be one of a dozen half-baked groups.’

‘Would you call the National Socialist Action Army a half-baked group?’

‘Not their style, sir. They go for Communist targets – the big bang, complete with publicity handouts.’

M allowed himself a thin smile. ‘They could be using an agency, couldn’t they, 007? An advertising agency, like the one your Ms Vacker works for.’

‘Sir.’ Flat, as though M had become crazed.

‘No, Bond. Not their style, unless they wanted the quick termination of someone they saw as a threat.’

‘But I’m not . . .’

‘They weren’t to know that. They weren’t to know you had stopped off in Helsinki for some playboy nonsense – a role which becomes increasing tiresome, 007. You were instructed to get straight back to London when the exercise in the Arctic was completed, were you not?’

‘Nobody was insisting on it. I thought . . .’

‘Don’t care a jot what you thought, 007. We wanted you back here. Instead you go gadding around Helsinki. May have compromised the Service, and yourself.’

‘I . . .’

‘You weren’t to know.’ M appeared to have softened a little. ‘After all, I simply sent you off to do a cold weather exercise, an acclimatisation. I take the responsibility. Should’ve been more explicit.’

‘Explicit?’

M remained silent for a full minute. Above him, Robert Taylor’s original ‘Trafalgar’ set the whole tone of M’s determination and character. That painting had lasted two years. Before, there had been Cooper’s ‘Cape St Vincent’, on loan from the National Maritime Museum, and before that . . . Bond could not recall, but they were always paintings of Britain’s naval victories. M was the possessor of that essential arrogance which put allegiance to country first, and a firm belief in the invincibility of Britain’s fighting forces, no matter what the odds, or how long it took.

At last M spoke. ‘We have an operation of some importance going on in the Arctic Circle at this moment, 007. The exercise was a warm-up – if I dare use that expression. A warm-up for you. To put it in a nutshell, you are to join that operation.’

‘Against?’ Bond expected the answer.

‘The National Socialist Action Army.’

‘In Finland?’

‘Close to the Russian border.’ M hunched himself even further forward, like a man anxious not to be overheard. ‘We already have a man there – or I should say we had a man there. He’s on his way back. No need to go into details just now. Personality clashes with our allies, mainly. The whole team’s coming out to regroup, and meet you, put you in the picture. You get a briefing from me first, of course.’

‘The whole team being?’

‘Being strange bedfellows, 007. Strange bedfellows. And now we may have lost some tactical surprise, I fear, by your dalliance in Helsinki. We had hoped you’d go in unnoticed. Join the team without tipping off these neo- Fascists.’

‘The team?’ Bond repeated.

M coughed, playing for time. ‘A joint operation, 007; an unusual operation, set up at the request of the Soviet Union.’

Bond frowned. ‘We’re playing with Moscow Centre?’

M gave a curt nod. ‘Yes’ – as though he also disapproved. ‘And not only Moscow Centre. We’re also involved