‘Finally, and here’s the rub, to do this properly, Moscow says you’ll have to operate under
‘Not really, sir.’ Bond had already heard the warning bells ringing behind the technicolor pictures of disaster which he could not exorcise from his mind.
3
FIRST LONDON BRIEFING
Holiday Avenue is, perhaps, the most exclusive street in the small community of Holiday which lies off Route 19, a few miles north of Tampa, Florida. It is a side road, flanked by luxury single-storey dwellings, set back from well-manicured lawns, shaded by palms and foliage.
Most of these houses show outward signs of protection. The windows are tastefully barred, and telltale red boxes, or stickers, let the casual and not so casual passer-by know that they are shielded by such and such a security firm or system.
In this pleasant, affluent little cul-de-sac, the homes are owned by retired doctors, lawyers or former financial Indian chiefs from the East coast. These good people live out the September of their years in the mild climate, shielded from the sun by a well-ordered rearrangement of nature’s bounty, from poverty by their own good sense and careful management and from the would-be criminal by electronic devices which alert the nearest police headquarters in seconds.
They live quiet, though rich, lives these people of Holiday Avenue. They attend the same cocktail parties, meet at the same nearby ‘country’ club – an excusable misnomer in this part of Florida – and they lounge by their secluded pools, exercising with a daily swim most of the year round, though this turning of the year had been one of the coldest on record, with the citrus fruit hanging encased with ice, an indicator of hardships yet to come.
On this particular afternoon, while most of the good senior citizens of Holiday Avenue were having a light lunch or taking their afternoon nap, a Federal Express van pulled up in front of 4188, a white stucco, red-roofed, Spanish-style place, almost hidden from sight by judiciously placed fronds and trees.
The Federal Express man got out of his van with a long parcel, checked his clipboard and walked up the path to the stout oak, metal-studded door. He rang the bell and, as he did so, another smaller van pulled up almost silently to park behind the FedEx vehicle. As he stood waiting, the FedEx man was conscious of the lawn sprinklers, of the spick-and-span nature of the property and the heavy wrought-iron grilles – again Spanish-style – which protected the windows. He rang the bell for a second time and heard a grumbling from behind the door.
Finally the door was opened by a tall, elderly man, grey-haired but with a figure not yet run to fat, and a back ramrod straight suggesting a former military career and a mind conscious of health and physical fitness. His eyes were hidden by dark prescription sunglasses and he wore expensive designer jeans and a leisure shirt which could not have left much change out of two hundred dollars. He remained in the shade of the doorway, his body braced between the door and the jamb, as though uneasy and ready to slam the port in his visitor’s face.
‘Package for Leibermann,’ the FedEx man smiled. ‘Has to be signed for, sir.’ He balanced the package under his left arm as he proffered his clipboard and a pen.
The older man nodded, his face turned, looking curiously towards the package as if trying to see who it was from. He reached out for the pen and as he did so two men in dark slacks, sneakers and black turtleneck sweaters slid from the rear of the FedEx van and began to run soundlessly towards the house, keeping well out of the sightlines from the door.
At the same moment, just as Mr Leibermann held the clipboard in one hand and the pen in the other, the FedEx man shifted the parcel slightly under his left arm. It was an oblong package, around eighteen inches in length and some two inches square. His right hand moved beneath the package which he raised like a weapon.
There was a ‘plop’. No more than this. Not a bang nor even a pop. Simply a plop. If heard it would raise no alarms nor cause dismay.
The plop came from a small air pistol within the package, the barrel held firmly in place by a snugly fitting wooden jig, the butt and trigger accessible through a hole cut neatly in the rear underside. Leibermann dropped the pen and the clipboard, his right hand clutching at his shoulder where the dart had penetrated with the sting of a bee.
He said nothing and did not even cry out as the strong, carefully measured anaesthetic moved rapidly into his bloodstream, paralysing him for a second, then plunging him into total unconsciousness. By the time he crumpled, the two men from the back of the FedEx van had caught him. The FedEx man swept up his pen and the clipboard then closed the door firmly. By the time he reached his van, the other pair had carried Mr Leibermann from the house and bundled him into the back.
The FedEx van drove away in no haste and the smaller vehicle remained, its occupants scanning the street for any sign that this small act of violence might have been spotted by an inquisitive neighbour. But the good people of Holiday Avenue did not stir. The only observer appeared to be a tired dog who dozed under a tree bordering 4188 and 4190. The dog opened one eye, then closed it, stretched its body lazily and returned to sleep.
Yet somebody else did see the entire drama. Across the street at 4187, the elderly couple called Lichtman viewed the whole thing and took frantic action. Nobody knew the Lichtmans well. They were the kind of couple who kept themselves to themselves, and in the two years since they bought the house there had been much neighbourhood talk about the good-looking young men who visited them and stayed, sometimes for a week. Mrs Goldfarb, who knew everything, was one of the few people who had managed to get the Lichtmans into her home, for lunch, and she told other people that the Lichtmans had seven sons and fifteen grandchildren who visited all the time.
Asher Lichtman was on the telephone at this very moment talking to one of his ‘sons’, describing what had taken place, giving the licence number of the FedEx van and the smaller vehicle still outside 4188.
They had used 4187 as a surveillance post for two years. In fact, everyone was keyed up, expecting the order to snatch Leibermann any day. Now, under their very noses, the target had been grabbed, disappearing almost into thin air.
After waiting for five minutes, the other van drove away, the figure in its passenger seat talking rapidly into a microphone.
Markus Leibermann was due to be at a small dinner party that evening, given by the Rubinsteins at 4172, so that a few of their friends could meet their son, the psychiatrist, Adam, on a short visit to his parents. Adam did not get to meet Mr Leibermann, and though he was not to know it, he did not miss much.
Natkowitz did his stuff with the assistance of two slide projectors and a large computer screen, the kind software manufacturers use at trade shows. They had all trooped down to one of the secure briefing areas shielded from external directional mikes and bugproof, forty feet below ground in the huge basement, half of which was car park, the rest being rooms like this, or debriefing facilities.
The room was not unlike a film company’s screening theatre. There were no distracting pictures on the bare walls and it was furnished with soft, comfortable chairs which were bolted to the floor. A little console of coloured telephones was built into an enlarged armrest in the seat reserved for M. Apart from Bond and Natkowitz, M and Bill Tanner were joined by the man they all referred to as the Scrivener, Brian Cogger, an officer of great skill when it came to the preparation of documents, mainly passports and assorted pocket litter which made up the outward and visible signs of many an agent’s inward and spiritual cover. It was a hint that M had already made up his mind about the operation into Moscow. The Scrivener’s art was a dying trade, yet he was a busy man and his presence suggested that his talents would be required.
Bond wondered if they were taking precautions out of habit or whether there was yet cause to believe the old Eastern Bloc and Soviet intelligence communities were still at it and could pose security problems. Eventually he decided that, whatever the politicians said out loud, tolling the tocsin for Communism and the Cold War, the secret world would go on playing by its own rules. It was safer that way.
The hearty dilettante farmer image Natkowitz had presented in M’s office seemed to slide away once he
