Icebreaker

with Langley and Tel Aviv.’

Bond gave a low whistle, which brought raised eyebrows and a tightening of M’s lips. ‘I said strange bedfellows, 007.’

Bond muttered, as though he could hardly believe it, ‘Ourselves, the KGB, CIA, and Mossad – the Israelis.’

‘Precisely.’ Now that the cat was out of the bag, M warmed to his subject. ‘Operation Icebreaker. The Americans named it, of course. The Soviets went along with it because they were the supplicants . . .’

‘The KGB asked for co-operation?’ Bond still sounded incredulous.

‘Through secret channels, yes. When we first heard the news, the few of us in the know were dubious. Then I had an invitation to step over to Grosvenor Square.’

‘And they’d been asked?’

‘Yes, and naturally, being the Company, they knew Mossad had been asked too. Within a day we had arranged a tripartite conference.’

Bond gestured, asking wordlessly if he could smoke. M went on speaking, giving a tiny motion of his hand as permission, pausing only now and again to light and relight his pipe. ‘We looked at it from all sides. Searched for the traps – and there are some, of course – examined the options if it went sour, then decided to nominate field officers. We wanted at least three each. Soviets heel-tapped on three: too many, the need to contain, and all that kind of thing. Finally we met the KGB’s negotiator, Anatoli Pavlovich Grinev . . .’

Bond nodded, knowingly. ‘Colonel of the First Directorate, Third Department. With cover as First Secretary, Trade, in KPG.’

‘Got him,’ said M. KPG meant Kensington Palace Gardens and, more specifically, Number 13 – the Russian Embassy. The Third Department of the KGB’s First Directorate dealt entirely with intelligence operations concerning the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia. ‘Got him. Little fellow, Toby jug ears.’ That was a good description of the wily Colonel Grinev. Bond had dealt with the gentleman before and trusted him as he would trust a faulty land mine.

‘And he explained?’ Bond was not really asking. ‘Explained why the KGB would want ourselves, the CIA and Mossad, to combine in a covert op. on Finnish territory? Surely they’re on good enough terms with SUPO to deal direct?’ SUPO was Finnish Intelligence.

‘Not quite,’ M replied. ‘You’ve read everything we have on the NSAA, 007?’

Bond nodded, adding, ‘What precious little there is – the detailed reports of their thirty-odd assassination successes. There’s not much more than that . . .’

‘There’s the Joint Intelligence Analysis. You’ve studied those fifty pages, I trust?’

Bond said he had read them. ‘They elevate the National Socialist Action Army from a small fanatical terrorist organisation to something more sinister. I’m not certain the conclusions are correct.’

‘Really?’ M sniffed. ‘Well, I am certain, 007. The NSAA are fanatics, but the leading intelligence communities, and security arms, are in agreement: the NSAA are led, and nurtured, on old Nazi principles. They mean what they say; and it seems as though they’re pulling more people into the net every day. The indications are that their leaders see themselves as the architects of the Fourth Reich. The target, at present, is organised Communism. But two other elements have recently appeared.’

‘Which are?’

‘Recent outbreaks of anti-semitism throughout Europe and the United States . . .’

‘There’s no proved connection . . .’

M silenced him with a hand raised. ‘. . . And, secondly, we have one of them in the bag.’

‘A member of the NSAA? Nobody’s . . .’

‘Announced it, or spoken, no. Under wraps tighter than a mummy’s shroud.’

Bond asked if M’s statement that ‘we’ had one meant literally the United Kingdom.

‘Oh yes. He’s here, in this very building. In the guest wing.’ M made a single stabbing downward motion, to indicate the large interrogation centre in the basement. The Headquarters had been redesigned when government defence cuts had denied the Service its ‘place in the country’, where interrogations used to take place.

M continued, saying they had taken the man concerned ‘after the last bit of business in London’, which referred to the slaughter six months ago, in broad daylight, of three British Civil Servants who had just left the Soviet Embassy after some trade discussions. One of the assassins had tried to shoot himself as members of the SPG closed in.

‘His aim was off.’ M smiled without humour. ‘We saw to it that he lived. Most of what we know is built around what he’s told us.’

‘He’s talked?’

‘Precious little.’ M shrugged. ‘But what he has said allows us to read between the lines. Very few people know about any of it, 007. I’m only telling you this much so that you won’t doubt we’re on the right track. We are 80 per cent certain that the NSAA is global, growing and, if not stopped at this stage, will eventually lead to an open movement, one which might become tempting to the electorates of many democracies. The Soviets have a vested interest, of course.’

‘Why go along with them, then?’

‘Because no intelligence service, from the Bundesnachrichtendienst to the SDECE, has come up with any other clues . . .’

‘So . . . ?’

‘Nobody, that is, except the KGB.’

Bond did not move a muscle.

‘They don’t know what we’ve got, naturally,’ M continued. ‘But they’ve provided a clue of some magnitude. The NSAA armourer.’

Bond inclined his head. ‘They’ve always used Russian stuff, so I presume . . .’

‘Presume nothing, 007, that’s one of the first rules of strategy. The KGB have persuasive evidence that the NSAA’s equipment is cunningly stolen within the Soviet Union and shipped out, probably by a Finnish national, to various pick-up points. That’s the reason they wanted it clandestine: without knowledge of the Finnish government.’

‘And why us?’ Bond was beginning to see light.

‘They say’, M began, ‘it’s because there has to be back-up from countries other than the Eastern bloc. The Israelis are pretty obvious, because Israel could be the next target. Britain and America would present a formidable front to the world if they were seen to be involved. They also say that it is in our common interest to share.’

‘You believe them, sir?’

M gave a bland, unsmiling look. ‘No. Not altogether; but I don’t think it’s meant to be anything sinister, like some complicated entrapment of three intelligence services.’

‘And how long’s Operation Icebreaker been running?’

‘Six weeks. They asked for you particularly at the outset, but I wanted to test the ice, if you see what I mean.’

‘And it’s firm?’

‘It’ll carry your weight, 007. Or I think it will. After what happened in Helsinki, of course, there is a new danger.’

There was silence for a full minute. Far away, behind the heavy door, a telephone rang.

‘The man you put in . . . ?’ Bond broke the silence.

‘Two men, really. Each organisation has a resident director holed up in Helsinki. It’s the field man we’re pulling out. Dudley. Clifford Arthur Dudley. Resident in Stockholm for some time.’

‘Good man.’ Bond lit another cigarette. ‘I’ve worked with him.’ Indeed, they had done a complicated surveillance and character assassination on a Romanian diplomat in Paris a couple of years before. ‘Very nimble,’ Bond added. ‘Good all-rounder. You say there was a personality clash . . . ?’

M did not look at Bond directly. He rose and walked over to the window, clasping his hands behind his back as he gazed down across Regent’s Park. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes. Punched our American ally in the mouth.’

‘Cliff Dudley?’

M turned. He wore his sly look. ‘Oh, he did it on my instructions. Playing for time, like I said, testing the ice – and waiting for you to get acclimatised, if you follow.’