work.
“That Julian. Y’know he couldn’t pour piss outa a boot, even if the instructions was written on the heel. You fancy some chow, James?
We’re havin’ a full old-fashioned Christmas dinner tonight. Turkey “n’ all the trimmings, plum pudding, the entire works.”
“Sounds fun.” He looked at his watch. “But first I should make a call.”
“Yeah?” Was the suspicion imagined?
“Change of contact code for the day. It’s past time.”
“Of course it is. Sure, use the “phone here.” He pointed to one of five different coloured telephones on his desk. “You want me to leave?”
“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary.” Bond was already dialling.
This time London picked up on the fourth ring. “Predator,” said Bond. “Day three.”
“Catclaw,” the voice said from the distant line. “Repeat.
Catclaw.”
“Acknowledge.” Bond was about to put down the receiver when the distant voice asked, “Is everything smooth?”
“They tell me it is.”
“Acknowledge,” and the line went dead. So they were still being clever. But this time the code was very much tied to the situation. Dante’s lines once more went through his head Front and centre here, Grizzly and Hellkin .
You too, Dead dog.
Curlybeard, take charge of a squad often.
Take Grafter and Dragontooth along with you.
Pigfusk, Catclaw, Cramper and Crazyred.
“You want an okay from me?” Toby was adjusting his tie in a wall-mirror overprinted with the cover of Time magazine, so that you got on that coveted cover every time you looked.
“Be mighty civil of you, Toby.” Lellenberg gave him a little leer, “You being’ funny, son?”
“Good,” he grinned. “My money today’s on Catclaw.”
“And you’d be right,” Bond laughed, and they left the office together.
The party was held in a large room which was obviously used as the officers’ canteen in the senior ranks’ hut. They had it decorated with the kind of stuff you picked up for a small fortune at stores in the US with names like Ito Oor ma. It all looked lovely and unreal. Magnificent angels held unknown wind instruments to their lips as they shimmered on trees dripping snow; piles of gifts were heaped under the largest, and most magical tree which had “Victorian” trimmings hanging from it, and electric lights that looked like real candles with moving flames.
Clover Pennington was the only woman present and, when she saw Bond, she detached herself from a handful of young officers and came over to him. She wore a tight little black number that had probably come from Marks and Spencer but looked quite good among the suits.
“Forgive me, sir,” she said, kissing him, a little hard and on the lips. “It’s allowed.” She pointed above him at the dangling mistletoe.
“You’re going to do sterling service tonight, First Officer Pennington.” Bond smiled but did not unbend.
“Catclaw,” she said quietly.
“Correct. Catclaw.”
“They’ve put me next to you at dinner, sir. Hope you don’t mind.
“As long as we don’t talk shop.” She nodded, bit her lip, and, together they moved into the crowd.
During the meal, he did not do much talking. In his time, James Bond had learned around four hundred ways of killing: four hundred and three if you counted gun, knife and strangling rope. He was also aufait with the art of paper-tripping- supplying oneself with necessary documents to survive in a foreign country.
Now, he figured out what he could recall of the number of ways he could fake a death. Die, yet not die, at home or abroad. Privately or in full, plain sight. They added up to around a score, though he was in two minds whether he now knew the twenty-first way of doing it. Or was it still wishful thinking?
The dinner was excellent, and Bond watched his intake of alcohol, though others did not. Julian Farsee was well away, while one or two of the other staff became rowdy. One couple of heavy, battered men even had a row which almost led to a full-scale fight until Toby Lellenberg stepped in, his slow drawl taking on a whiplash quality.
“Just like Christmas at home,” Bond said, unsmiling, to Clover.
“You staying here long, by the way?”
“I leave on thirty-first to get the Wren draft ready.”
“Back to RNAS Yeovilton?”
She nodded, “I thought this was a no-shop evening.” Then, quite suddenly, “Can’t we make it up, sir? Sort of start again James?
Please.”
“Maybe, when it’s all over. Not yet though. Not until you know-what’s out of the way.
She nodded and looked miserable, though not as miserable as some of the faces Bond saw at breakfast the next morning. The party, they told him, had gone on quite late.
Braying Julian came over during breakfast and said it would be nice if he could be in Suite Number Three at ten-thirty. “The debrief,” he explained.
So, at ten-thirty on the dot Bond met the two American officers Mac and Walter - and the man from his own Service, Draycott, who was not quite what he expected.
The debrief was exceptionally thorough. Much more so than he had anticipated. Walter was elderly, but had the knack of slipping off into tributary questions which suddenly ended up becoming very searching. Mac, who was, as Toby had suggested, “built like a fire-plug”, had one of those faces that remained permanently impassive.
Though he did smile a great deal, the face and eyes remained blank, and rather tough: impossible to read. Mac was inclined to chip in with subsidiary questions which turned out to add a lot to Bond’s testimony.
Draycott was also deceptive, in the mould of the legendary Scardon: a man who looked very ordinary, as though he would be happier in the English countryside. He smoked a pipe, used to great effect - to add in pauses when he fiddled with it, or to break questions in two halves when he smoked.
They took Bond back to the beginning, telling him the stalking-horse theory of the operation,just so that he would know they were pretty well-briefed themselves. On the fifth day, the trio walked off with practically every second Bond had spent in Ischia accounted for: naughties and all.
When the debrief was complete all three of his interrogators seemed to vanish. At least Bond did not set eyes on them again.
On December 31st, Clover came to his quarters to announce that she was leaving. He did not keep her long, though she obviously wanted to linger. “See you on board, then,” was his final, sharp word, and he thought Clover’s eyes were moist. She was either very much for real, or had become one hell of an actor.
Two days later it was Bond’s turn. Toby showed him M’s latest signal and he repeated the contents so that Northanger’s CO was satisfied he was word perfect.
They took him in the elderly helicopter to Rome where he went to the Alitalia desk and they provided him with tickets and a baggage claim check.
The flight from Rome to Stockholm was uneventful. He had one hour’s wait for the military transport that ferried him to the West German naval base at Bremmerhaven where he stayed for one night.
On the morning of January 3rd, James Bond, in uniform, stepped aboard a Sea King helicopter which took him out to invincible and her gaggle of escorts which lay twenty miles offshore.
By the following night they were one hundred miles into the North Sea, cruising slowly.and waiting for the orders to be opened which would start Operation Landsea.
They were loading staff at Northanger into innocent-looking buses within four hours of Bond’s departure. Julian Farsee, dressed in olive drab trousers and a military sweater complete with reinforced shoulder and elbow pads, walked into the CO’s office, not even knocking. The CO was shredding documents and hardly turned to look at his Second-in-Command as he came and sat on the desk.
“Well? You think they bought it?” asked All Al Adwan, Farsee’s true name. In the hierarchy of BAST, Adwan
