John Gardner: No Deals, Mr. Bond

Bond pushed through the swing doors and walked up to the porter’s lodge. Brevett knew Bond as a very occasional guest at the club and greeted him accordingly. Bond could not help thinking of the man’s father, who had been porter at the time of the great card game when 007 had at M’s instigation unmasked the evil Sir Hugo Drax as a cheat. The Brevett family had been porters at Blades for well over a hundred years.

‘The Admiral’s already waiting in the dining room, sir.’

Brevett motioned discreetly to a young page boy who led Bond up the wide staircase and across the stairwell to the magnificent white and gold Regency dining room. M was seated alone in the far left corner, away from windows and doors and with his back to the wall, so that he had a view of anyone entering or leaving the room. He gave a curt nod as Bond reached the table and glanced at his watch. ‘Bang on time, James. Good man. You know the rules. What d’ye fancy? – bearing in mind we haven’t got all day.’

Bond ordered grilled sole with a large salad, asking for the dressing ingredients to be brought, so that he could prepare it himself. M nodded approval. He knew his agent’s likes and dislikes as well as his own, and appreciated that it was difficult to get a dressing made to your own liking.

The food arrived and M waited in silence as James Bond carefully ground half a teaspoonful of pepper into the small bowl provided with the ingredients. This was followed by a similar amount of salt and sugar, to which he added two and a half teaspoonfuls of powdered mustard, crushing the mixture well with a fork before stirring in three full tablespoons of oil, followed by one of white wine vinegar, which he dribbled in carefully. He added a few drops of water before giving a final stir and pouring the mixture over his salad.

‘Make someone a damned good husband, 007.’ The clear grey eyes showed no apology for mentioning marriage, a topic people who knew Bond well steered clear of, and had done since the untimely death of his bride at the hands of spectre.

Bond ignored his Chief’s lack of taste and began to attack his fish with the skill of a surgeon.

‘Well, sir?’ He kept his voice down.

‘Time enough, yet not enough time,’ M said coolly. ‘Words of our late Poet Laureate, not that you’d recognise Betjeman from Larkin, eh?’

‘I know a few good ribald rhymes though, sir – The Jolly Tinker; The Old Monk of Great Renown? I can even recite you the odd limerick.’

M chewed on his fish – he too had ordered the sole, but with new potatoes. He swallowed and looked at Bond, his clear grey eyes cold.

‘Then recite me one about Seahawk, James. You remember Seahawk?’

Bond nodded, remembering vividly though it was now five years ago. Dave Andrews had been killed on the Seahawk mission and Bond would never forget the days and nights spent in the cramped quarters of the submarine, trying to calm and comfort the two girls.

‘What if I tell you the truth about Seahawk?’ said M.

‘If there’s need to know, sir.’

The Service always operated on a need-to-know basis so that all Bond had been told about Seahawk was that he had to take off two agents. He remembered Bill Tanner, M’s Chief-of-Staff, saying the two he was to rescue were getting out in their socks, meaning they were leaving fast to save their skins.

Almost to himself, he said, ‘They were so damned young.’

‘Eh?’ snapped M.

‘I said, they were very young. The girls we got out.’

‘They weren’t the only ones.’ M looked away. ‘We pulled the whole shooting match out over a matter of seven days. Four girls, a young man and their parents. We did it; you brought a couple of girls home. Now, James, two of the girls are dead. You probably read about it this morning. They had new names, new backgrounds. They were untraceable. But someone’s got to at least two of them. Brutally killed, their tongues removed. You read about the maniac on the loose?’

Bond nodded. ‘You mean . . . ?’ he began.

‘I mean that both those young women were rehabilitated after doing sterling service for us, and there are still three agents out there waiting for an executioner who cuts out tongues.’

‘A KGB hit squad leaving us a message?’

‘With each death, yes. They’re slicing up Cream Cake, James, and I want it stopped – fast.’

‘Cream Cake?’

‘Finish your lunch, then we’ll take a stroll in the park. What I have to tell you is too sensitive for even these walls. Cream Cake was one of our most effective operations in years. I suppose that’s why there’s a penalty. Revenge, they say, is a dish best eaten cold. Five years is cold enough, I reckon.’

M did not look at Bond, as they strolled – two businessmen reluctantly returning to their offices – through Regent’s Park.

‘Cream Cake was a ploy to get our own back. You know what an Emily is?’

‘Of course. The jargon’s outdated, but I know what it means.’

Bond had not heard the term Emily for years. It was the name their American sister service used to denote special targets of the KGB. Emilies had been found mainly in West Germany. They were usually colourless girls leading dull lives, destined to remain single for the rest of their days. The lack of romance in their lives was often the result of their having to look after an elderly parent so that they had little time to spare – working all day and looking after an ailing mother or father at home. But Emilies had something else in common. They usually worked for a government department, mostly in Bonn, and often as secretaries inside the BfV. The Bundesamt für Verfassungersschutz was the West German equivalent of MI5, but attached as a department to the Ministry of the Interior, or the BND (the Bundesnachrichtendienst ). This intelligence-gathering organisation works very closely with the British SIS, the American CIA and the Israeli Mossad.

The KGB had exploited numerous women in the Emily category over the years. A man would suddenly come into an Emily’s life and quite quickly the drabness would disappear. She would receive gifts, be taken to expensive restaurants, theatres, the opera. Above all she would feel attractive and wanted. Then the unbelievable would happen – she would sleep with the man. Being in love, nothing else would matter, not even her lover asking her to do little favours such as smuggling a few documents out of the office, or copying some unimportant details from a dossier. Before she knew it, an Emily was in so deep that if things went wrong she had to flee eastwards with her lover. When she was set up in a new life in the DDR, or even Russia itself, the lover would disappear.

Bond thought for a second. Emilies had certainly not gone out of style, for there had been several recent defections in that category. Neither were Emilies confined to the female sex.

‘We decided to use the Emily ploy in reverse,’ M said, cutting through Bond’s thoughts. ‘But our targets were very big guns indeed, senior officers of the HVA. It was they who began the Emily business themselves, and even trained the seducer agents.’

Bond nodded. M spoke of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung , or Chief Administration, Intelligence – the most efficient organisation next to the KGB in the Eastern Bloc.

‘The targets were senior HVA and attached KGB officers, including one woman. We had several sleepers but they’d been left so long that they were really past it. They were married couples we had thought would be of great use. In the end, we used their children. Five families were chosen because of their kids. They were all attractive, in their late teens, over the age of consent, if you follow me?’ M sounded embarrassed, as he always did when discussing ‘honeypot ops’, as the trade knew them. ‘We sounded them out. Satisfied ourselves. Slipped in a bit of on-the-ground training. We even brought two of them into the West for a while.’ He paused as they passed a group of nannies wheeling perambulators and chatting about their employers.