found ‘quaint’. At her hotel, Paula gently gave him the elbow – king size.
Bond laid siege. First, he tried to impress, but she did not like the Connaught, the Inn on the Park, Tiberio’s, the Dorchester, the Savoy, or the Royal Garden Roof; while tea at Brown’s she found merely ‘amusing’. He was just about to take her on the Tramps’ and Annabel’s circuit when she found Au Savarin in Charlotte Street for herself. It was ‘her’, and the
They became firm friends very quickly, discovering mutual interests – in sailing, jazz, and the works of Eric Ambler. There was also another sport which finally came to full fruition on the fourth evening. Bond, whose standards were known to be exacting, admitted she deserved the gold star with oak leaves. In turn she awarded him the oak leaf cluster. He was not sure about that either.
Over the following years they stayed very good friends, and – to put it mildly – kissing cousins. They met, often by accident, in places as diverse as New York and the French port of Dieppe, where he had last seen her the previous autumn. This night in Helsinki would be Bond’s first chance to see Paula on her home ground.
‘Dinner?’ he asked.
‘If I can choose the restaurant.’
‘Don’t you always?’
‘You want to pick me up?’
‘That, and other things.’
‘My place. Six-thirty? You’ve got the address?’
‘Engraved on my heart, pretty Paula.’
‘You say that to all the girls.’
‘Mostly, but I’m honest about it; and you know I have a special liking for blondes.’
‘You’re a traitor, staying at the Inter-Continental. Why aren’t you staying Finnish, at the Hesperia?’
‘Because you get electric shocks off the lift buttons there.’
‘You get them at the Inter-Continental too. It’s to do with the cold and the central heating . . .’
‘. . . and the carpets. I know. But these are more expensive electric shocks, and I’m not paying. I can charge it, so I may as well have luxurious electric shocks.’
‘Be very careful what you touch. Any metals give shocks indoors here, at this time of the year. Be careful in the bathroom, James.’
‘I’ll wear rubber shoes.’
‘It wasn’t your feet I was thinking about. So glad you had a whim, James. See you at six-thirty’, and she rang off before he could come up with a smooth reply.
Outside, the temperature hovered around twenty-five degrees Centigrade below. Bond stretched his muscles, then relaxed, taking his gunmetal case from the bedside table and lighting a cigarette – one of the ‘specials’ made for him, by arrangement with H. Simmons of Burlington Arcade.
The room was warm and well-insulated, and there was a glow of immense satisfaction as he exhaled a stream of smoke towards the ceiling. The job certainly had its compensations. Only that morning Bond had left temperatures of forty below, for his true reason for being in Helsinki was connected with a recent trip to the Arctic Circle.
January is not the most pleasant time of year to visit the Arctic. If, however, you have to do some survival training of a clandestine nature in severe winter conditions, the Finnish area of the Arctic Circle is as good a place as any.
The Service believed in keeping its field officers in peak condition and trained in all modern techniques. Hence Bond’s disappearance, at least once a year, to work out with 22 Special Air Service Regiment, near Hereford; and his occasional trips to Poole in Dorset to be updated on equipment and tactics used by the Royal Marine Special Boat Squadron.
Even though the old elite Double-0 section, with its attendant ‘licence to kill in the course of duty’, had now been phased out of the Service, Bond still found himself stuck with the role of 007. The gruff Chief of Service known to all as M had been most specific about it. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you will remain 007. I shall take full responsibility for you, and you will, as ever, accept orders and assignments only from me. There are moments when this country needs a trouble-shooter – a blunt instrument – and by Jove it’s going to have one.’
In more official terms, Bond was what the American Service speaks of as a ‘singleton’ – a roving case officer who is given free rein to carry out special tasks, such as the ingenious undercover work he had undertaken during the Falkland Islands conflict in1982. Then he had even appeared – unidentifiable – on a television newsflash, but that had passed like all things.
In order to keep Bond at a high, proficient level, M usually managed to set up at least one gruelling field exercise each year. This time it had been more cold climate work, and the orders had come quickly, leaving Bond little time to prepare for the ordeal.
During the winter, members of the SAS units trained regularly among the snows of Norway. This year, as an added hazard, M had arranged that Bond should embark on a training exercise within the Arctic Circle, under cover, and with no permission either sought or granted from the country in which he would operate – Finland.
The operation, which had no sinister, or even threatening, implications, entailed a week of survival exercises, in the company of a pair of SAS men and two officers of the SBS.
These military and Marine personnel would have a tougher time than Bond, for their part would demand two clandestine border crossings – from Norway into Sweden, then, still secretly, over the Finnish border to meet up with Bond in Lapland.
There, for seven days, the group would ‘live off the belt’, as it was called: surviving with only the bare necessities carried on their specially designed belts. Their mission was survival in difficult terrain, while remaining unseen and unidentified.
This week would be followed by a further four days, with Bond as leader, in which a photographic and sound-stealing run would be made along Finland’s border with the Soviet Union. After that, they would separate – the SAS and SBS men to be picked up by helicopter in a remote area, while Bond took another course.
There was no difficulty about cover in Finland, as far as Bond was concerned. He had yet to test-drive his own Saab Turbo – ‘The Silver Beast’ as he called it – in harsh winter conditions.
Saab-Scania hold an exacting Winter Driving Course each year, within the Arctic Circle, near the Finnish ski resort of Rovaniemi. Arranging an invitation to take part in the course was easy, requiring only a couple of telephone calls. Within twenty-four hours Bond had his car – complete with all its secret ‘extras’, built in at his own expense by Communications Control Systems – freighted to Finland. Bond then flew, via Helsinki, to Rovaniemi, to meet up with driving experts, like his old friend Erik Carlsson, and the dapper Simo Lampinen.
The Driving Course took only a few days, after which – with a word to the massive Erik Carlsson, who promised to keep his eye on the Silver Beast – Bond left the hotel near Rovaniemi in the early hours of a bitterly cold morning.
The winter clothing, he thought, would do little for his image with the ladies back home. Damart thermal underwear is scarcely conducive to certain activities. Over long johns, he wore a track suit, heavy rollneck sweater, padded ski pants and jacket, while his feet were firmly laced into Mukluk boots. A thermal hood, scarf, woollen hat and goggles protected his face; Damart gloves inside leather gauntlets did the same for his hands. A small pack contained the necessities, including his own version of the SAS/SBS webbing belt.
Bond trudged through snow, which came up to his knees in the easier parts, taking care not to stray from the narrow track he had reconnoitred during the daylight hours. A wrong move to left or right could land him in snowdrifts deep enough to cover a small car.
The snow scooter was exactly where the briefing officers said it would be. Nobody was going to ask questions about how it got there. Snow scooters are difficult machines to manhandle with the engine off, and it took Bond a good ten minutes to heave and pull this one from its hiding place beneath solid and unyielding fir branches. He then hauled it to the top of a long slope which ran downwards for almost a kilometre. A push and the machine moved forward, giving Bond just enough time to leap on to the saddle and thrust his legs into the protective guards.
Silently, the scooter slid down the long slope, finally coming to a stop as the weight and momentum ran out. Though sound carried easily across the snow, he was now far enough from the hotel to start the engine safely – after taking a compass bearing, and checking his map with a shaded torch. The little motor came to life. Bond
