John Gardner - No Deals, Mr. Bond

There was no doubt about it. Colonel Maxim Smolin had a great deal of charm, even when it was laced with threats.

8

COCKEREL OR WEASEL

The ambulance swayed and bounced, slowed, swayed again, then accelerated. Bond reckoned they had very quickly left the main road and were probably doubling back. They could be edging up into the hills, even climbing through the wild and craggy Wicklow Gap. He glanced at Heather, who lay unmoving on the stretcher bed, and hoped that the force of the blow had not done her any serious damage.

‘She’ll be fine, Mr Bond. My men had orders not to kill, merely to render unconscious.’

Close to, Smolin was an even more impressive figure, and his quick response to Bond’s anxious look showed an intelligent and observant awareness.

‘And your people are well trained in how to kill and not quite kill, I’m sure.’ He almost added Smolin’s name, but held back.

‘Trained to perfection, my dear sir.’

Smolin spoke nearly faultless English, though a discerning ear would pick up the fact that it was just a shade too perfect. His charm of manner took Bond by surprise, yet behind it there was an undeniable sense of absolute power and confidence. Smolin was a man who expected to be obeyed, who knew that he would always be in control. He was somewhat taller than Bond had supposed from his previous two sightings, and his body was fit and well-muscled under the expensive anorak, cavalry twill trousers and rollneck.

Smolin looked hard at Bond and there was the trace of humour in his dark, slightly oval eyes. The smile around his mouth appeared amused rather than mocking.

‘May I ask what all this is about?’

Bond had to speak loudly above the engine noise and rattling of the swaying ambulance. Either the driver was unused to handling such a vehicle or they were indeed on a difficult mountain road. The smile turned into a short, almost pleasant chuckle.

‘Oh, come on now, James Bond, you know well enough what it’s about.’

‘I know that I was giving a lift to a lady friend of mine, and suddenly I find we’re kidnapped.’ He paused, then added with mock puzzlement, ‘And you know my name! How the hell do you know my name anyway?’

This time Smolin gave a full-blooded laugh. ‘Bond, my dear good fellow, don’t make me into a fool.’ He nodded his head towards Heather. ‘Do you know who your lady friend is and what she has done? I suspect you know exactly what she has done and exactly who I am. After all, my file is with many foreign agencies. Surely the British Secret Intelligence Service has a dossier on me, just as my own Service has one on you? You know everything about the operation called Cream Cake, and I would be most surprised if you did not have all the details of the punishment at present being dealt out to its protagonists.’

‘Cream Cake?’ Even Bond was pleased with the convincing mixture of query, bewilderment and surprise.

‘Operation Cream Cake.’

‘I know nothing about cream cakes – or chocolate éclairs!’ Bond was pacing himself now, allowing time to build up a good, healthy anger. ‘I do know that Heather asked me to give her a lift . . .’

Smolin gave a rueful smile. ‘Would this be after the little problem in her beauty salon last night?’

‘What problem?’

‘You’re trying to tell me that you were not the man who was with her when some ill-advised idiots tried to kill her in London? That you’re not the man who drove her to the airport . . .’ A hint of uncertainty crept into the smile.

‘I bumped into her in the departure lounge at Heathrow.’ Bond stared at him unwaveringly. ‘I’ve met her only once before. Look, what’s this all about? And why did you set up that road block? Are you a terrorist involved in the North or something?’

He was sizing up the opposition while playing for time. Heather still lay unconscious, Smolin sat quite close to him and the four other men were distributed around the ambulance. Two were in front, the other two by the doors. All were clinging on hard for the roller coaster ride. He could not drag the charade on for much longer and, as they had disarmed him, neither could he contemplate escape.

‘If I didn’t know who you are and had not watched you making your own security precautions, I might just wonder if I’d got the wrong man.’ Smolin was smiling again. ‘But the set-up, together with the weapons you were carrying. Well . . .’ He allowed the conclusion to hang in the air.

‘And what of your set-up?’ Bond asked innocently.

‘I suspect the arrangements were exactly as you would have made in similar circumstances. We had a back-up in radio contact watching you while we went on ahead. We simply closed off the far end of the road a mile farther on. Then we shut off the road behind you when we had you in our zone. It’s the old funnel principle.’

Bond could dissemble no longer. ‘They teach you those kind of skills in that centre of yours on the old Khodinka airfield, do they Colonel Smolin? The place where most of you end up, one way or another, either neat in a box in the crematorium, or alive and screaming because you’ve betrayed your Service – the organisation you jokingly call “The Aquarium”? Or do you learn them in your offices on Knamensky Street?’

‘So, Bond, you do know about my Service. You know about GRU. And you know about me too. I’m flattered – and happy that I was right about you.’

‘Of course I know, along with anyone who takes the trouble to read the right books. We have a saying in my Service that the tricks of our trade are far from secret. You have only to find the right bookshops in the Charing Cross Road and you can learn it all: tradecraft, addresses, organisation. It just requires a little reading.’

‘Rather more than that, I suspect.’

‘Perhaps, because the GRU likes to let the KGB have the glory, pretending to be backseat boys who bow to the grey men of Dzerzhinsky Square. Yes, we do know you’re more fanatical, more secretive and therefore more dangerous.’

Smolin’s smile was overtly happy. ‘Much more dangerous. Good, I’m glad we know where we stand. It has been a longheld ambition of mine to meet you face to face, Mr Bond. Was it you, perhaps, who concocted the ill-conceived Cream Cake plan?’

‘There you have me, Colonel Smolin. I know nothing of such an operation.’

One of the drivers shouted something from the front of the ambulance and Smolin said, almost apologetically, that they would soon have to take measures to ensure Bond and Heather were silent. The ambulance slowed down, lurched, leaned heavily to the left so that it was necessary to hang on tight as they bumped over rough ground. Gradually they rumbled to a halt. From the front came the sound of the cab door being slammed shut. Then the rear doors were opened and a short, red-faced man dressed in the dark uniform of an ambulance driver peered in.

‘They are not here yet, Herr Colonel,’ he said to Smolin in German.

The Colonel merely nodded in an off-hand way, and told them to watch and wait. Bond craned his neck in an attempt to see out of the rear. A view of trees backed by rocky slopes bore out his original feeling that they had taken a route into the bleak Wicklow hills.

‘Get the girl ready.’

Smolin half turned his head, giving the order to one of the men in the front. The man fumbled with a briefcase and Bond saw a hypodermic syringe being prepared. He made a move towards the syringe bearer, whose partner immediately produced an automatic pistol, the muzzle pointing steadily at Bond. Smolin raised an arm, as though both protecting and restraining Bond.

‘It’s all right. The girl will not be harmed, but I think she should be put under a mild sedation for a while. We have a long drive ahead, and I don’t want her to be conscious. You, friend Bond, will lie on the floor in the back of the car that will arrive at any minute. You will have your face covered and as long as you behave, no harm will come to you.’ He paused, smiled, then added, ‘Yet!’