John Gardner - Man From Barbarossa

‘You’re absolutely sure about this?’ Bond eyed the room with deep suspicion. He was leery of talking in a place which, to his knowledge, had not been examined and swept. As he often told other people in the business, he preferred the Russian tradecraft of talking only in the open, and where they could not bring directional microphones to bear.

‘I’m certain. Three hundred per cent certain. But for you one-fifty.’ Natkowitz’s eyes danced with pleasure.

‘And Natasha?’ Bond was asking about her security clearance.

Natkowitz’s face went dead, the eyes suddenly becoming hard. ‘If I tell you she’s okay, you should believe me, James. To be honest with you, when she turned up in Moscow the other night – before they put us to sleep for a hundred years – I couldn’t believe my eyes. She’s with me, if you see what I mean.’

‘The Mossad has penetrations in Russia?’ Bond looked surprised, even a little awed.

‘You betcha.’ Natkowitz cocked his head to the left, as though to underline the statement. ‘The media in the West says the intelligence agencies of Britain and America are dinosaurs now that the Cold War’s over, that their minds are for ever frozen into the NATO-Soviet locking of horns in Europe. But they’re wrong, as we both know, James. Even the Mossad have kept a watch on the Volga, as it were. Too dangerous not to do so. Natasha and a couple of others have been here for some years. We implanted them in the early seventies when they were children. Them and their parents; and look where it’s got us. Really I . . .’ He stopped short at the noise which came from the far side of the door.

Bond moved like a cat, springing silently against the wall on the hinge side of the door, his right hand closed into a fist, thumb tucked into the palm and the knuckles of his first and little fingers protruding slightly, his arm bent at a right angle, making an L-shape, square with his body.

Natasha was flattened against the wall on the other side, ready, tense. Natkowitz and Nina did not move as the door handle slowly turned and a voice from outside whispered, ‘All families resemble one another.’

Nina drew in her breath, and the sound seemed to fill the whole room as the door closed behind the pair of tall figures who entered.

‘But each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Nina’s voice broke as she completed the quotation from the opening words of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Then she flung herself forward into the arms of the elderly man and woman who stood silent and erect three paces inside the room.

The three of them embraced. Together. Their arms wrapped around one another so that they became a small tight circle of loving human beings – a little knot of love and comfort.

Bond took a pace forward, but Natkowitz slipped from the crate and restrained him. The trio remained, clinging to one another for several minutes. When they separated, each of them had cheeks damp with tears.

The man still had about him the stance of an old military officer, his back straight as a plank, the hair neat but iron grey. The moustache had gone, and his skin was like old, uncared-for leather, but the eyes still carried the missionary zeal he had practised all that time ago in the service of his country.

The woman had not stood the test of time as well as her husband. Gone was the beautiful jet black hair, replaced now by a short, pure white cap, still silky but thin. Her hands were those of an old woman, stained with liver spots and loose skin. There were cracks around her mouth, and her eyes spoke of a hard life since she had left the relative comfort of London. She looked, in effect, far older than her years, but, when she spoke, her voice was strangely young. ‘You think we’re traitors, I suppose, James? I know who you are. Known of you for a long time,’ Emerald Lacy said.

‘Dead traitors at that.’ Michael Brooks still had his charming smile. In the old days they said Brooks could charm scorpions with his smile.

Bond shook his head. ‘No.’ He moved closer to them. ‘No. I know that you’re the Huscarl. I’ve known for some time.’ He turned to Nina, ‘That’s why I wasn’t surprised at your parents being alive. When I told you last night, you didn’t question me, but you looked a little frightened.’

‘Because she doesn’t know quite everything.’ Brooks put out a hand and fondled his daughter’s shoulder.

The name Huscarl went back to the eleventh century, during the time England was ruled by the Danes, paying the iniquitous tax, Danegeld, which some students claim still smarts within the Anglo-Saxon collective consciousness, thus provoking the British to find more and more ways around current tax laws.

For years the English suffered Viking raids which decimated entire communities, but they fought on, led by a succession of kings, such as Aethelred and Edmund Ironside. Then, in 1016, the country was finally overcome by the Danish king, Cnut.

Cnut made some changes in the kingdom’s military structure, including the introduction of a kind of ‘Home Guard’ – the Huscarl , the professional household warrior, armed with the great two-handed Danish axe, ready to do battle with any possible commando raid launched by other Scandinavian countries.

It was this weapon which prompted those who chose pseudonyms – cryptos for agents, or operations – to name Michael Brooks and Emerald Lacy the Huscarl , for they were a new, two-handed assault upon the reigning regime at Moscow Centre.

With the scandals of the first British traitors undermining both effectiveness and morale in the mid-1960s, Bond’s Service had planned a fast counterstrike. Michael Brooks had long been involved with the brilliant cipher wizard, Emerald Lacy. Now, the Service let him go, dropping veiled hints that he was under a cloud, hints which paid off handsomely.

Brooks severed all his Service connections with the exception of Emerald. He also made oblique comments to people who were suspected of being close to KGB sources in the Russian Embassy. Then he sat back and waited. Eventually, KGB took the bait and he disappeared. In fact they had only taken him to Denmark where experienced KGB inquisitors gave him what they termed ‘deep analysis’. In plain language, they were drying him out, but Brooks had been very carefully briefed before leaving the Service. He had been seeded with what appeared to be first-rate intelligence concerning the NATO forces and the various connections they had with the main intelligence communities. The Moscow Centre inquisition was impressed by the ease with which Brooks passed on the information and finally they asked him to defect to Moscow.

Once the offer had been made, the trump card was played. Brooks said he would come to them only if his fiancée were included in the deal. When Moscow realised his fiancée was Emerald Lacy, they leaped at the prospect.

Emerald had also been prepared. Skilled psychiatrists had blanked out whole sections of her mind which held vital information. They did this over a lengthy period using the latest hypnotic techniques. After this, they gave her other information, what they called ‘costume jewellery’, because it looked real and glittered in the kind of gaudy manner beloved of KGB intelligence gatherers.

So Emerald Lacy had ‘defected’ to Moscow, where she had married Brooks, remaining to do much good work for the British until 1989, when their deaths were faked in a car crash. But that was another part of the story and their secret presence in Russia since their ‘deaths’ had been of major importance to the NATO countries.

In the small room at the top of the strange wooden building they had been told was the Hôtel de la Justice, they sat down to speak of this seemingly insoluble, inexplicable operation in which they had now become joined.