When he woke, Bond knew that May had allowed him to sleep late. The numbers on his digital bedside clock showed that it was almost ten. Within seconds he was calling for May to get breakfast. A few minutes later the telephone rang.
M was shouting for him.
The extra time spent in London paid dividends. Not only was Bond given a thorough rundown on his partners for Operation Icebreaker but he also had an opportunity to talk at length with Cliff Dudley, the officer from whom he was taking over.
Dudley was a short, hard, pugnacious Scot, a man whom Bond both liked and respected. ‘If I’d had more time,’ Dudley told him, ‘likely I’d have sniffed out the whole truth. But it was really you they wanted. M made that clear to me before I went. Mind you, James, you’ll have to keep your back to the wall. None of the others’ll look out for you. Moscow Centre are definitely on to something, but it all stinks of duplicity. Maybe I’m just suspicious by nature, but their boy’s holding something back. He’s got a dozen aces up his sleeve, and all in the same suit, I’ll bet you.’
‘Their boy’, as Dudley called him, was not unknown to Bond, at least by reputation. Nicolai Mosolov had plenty of reputation, none of it particularly appetising. Known to his friends within the KGB as Kolya, Mosolov spoke English, American-English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, Spanish and Finnish fluently. Now in his late thirties, the man had been a star pupil at the basic training school near Novosibirsk, and worked for some time with the expert Technical Support Group of his Service’s Second Chief Directorate, which is, in effect, a professional burglary unit.
In the building overlooking Regent’s Park they also knew Mosolov under a number of aliases. In the United States he was Nicholas S. Mosterlane, Sven Flanders in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. They knew, but had never nailed him – not even as Nicholas Mortin-Smith in London.
‘Invisible man type,’ M said. ‘Chameleon. Merges with his background and disappears just when you think he’s bottled up.’
Bond was no happier about his American counterpart on Icebreaker. Brad Tirpitz, known in intelligence circles as ‘Bad’ Brad, was a veteran of the old-school CIA and had survived the multitude of purges in his organisation’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia. To some, Tirpitz was a kind of swashbuckling, do-or-die, hero: a legend. There were others, however, who saw him in a different light – as the sort of field officer capable of using highly questionable methods, a man who considered that the end always justified the means. And the means could be, as one of his colleagues put it, ‘Pretty mean. He has the instinct of a hungry wolf, and the heart of a scorpion.’
So, Bond thought, his future lay with a Moscow Centre heavy and a Langley sharp-shooter who tended to shoot first and ask questions later.
The rest of the briefing, and the medical, took the remainder of that day, and some of the following morning. So it was not until the afternoon of this third day that Bond boarded the two o’clock TAP flight to Lisbon, connecting with one of the Boeing 727 shuttles to Funchal.
The sun was low, almost touching the water, throwing great warm red blotches of colour against the rocks, when Bond’s aircraft – now down to around 600 feet – crossed the Ponta de São Lourenço headland to make that exhilarating low-level turn which is the only way to get into the precarious little runway – perched, like an aircraft carrier’s flight deck, among the rocks – at Funchal.
Within the hour a taxi deposited him at Reid’s Hotel, and the following morning found him searching for either Mosolov, Tirpitz, or the third member of the Icebreaker group – the Mossad agent whom Dudley had described as, ‘An absolutely deadly young lady, around five-six, clear skin, the figure’s copied from the Venus de Milo, only this one’s got both arms, and the head’s different.’
‘How different?’ Bond had asked.
‘Stunning. Late twenties, I’d say. Very, very good. I’d hate to be up against her . . .’
‘In the professional sense, of course.’ Bond could not resist the quip.
As far as M was concerned, the Israeli agent was an unknown quantity. The name was Rivke Ingber. The file said ‘Nothing known’.
So now James Bond looked out over the hotel’s twin swimming pools, his eyes shaded by sunglasses, as he searched faces and bodies.
For a moment his gaze fell on a tall, arresting blonde, in a Cardin bikini, whose body defied normal description. Well, Bond thought as the girl plunged into the warm water, there’s no law against looking. He shifted his body on the sun lounger, wincing slightly at the ache in his now rapidly healing shoulder, and continued to watch the girl swimming, her lovely long legs opening and closing while her arms moved lazily in an act of almost conscious sensuality.
Bond smiled once more at M’s choice for the rendezvous. Reid’s remains one of the few hotels, among the package tour traps which run from Gran Canaria to Corfu, which has maintained standards – of cuisine and service – dating back to the1930s. The hotel shop sells reminders of the old days – photographs of Sir Winston and Lady Churchill taken in the lush gardens. Lath-straight elderly men, with clipped moustaches, sit reading in the airy public rooms; young couples, dressed by YSL and Kenzo, rub shoulders with elderly titled ladies on the famous tea terrace. He was, Bond considered, in ‘the Butler Did It’ territory; undoubtedly M’s cronies came to this idyllic time warp with the regularity of a Patek Philippe wristwatch.
As he lay there, Bond covered the pool and sunbathing area with carefully regulated sweeps of the eye. No sign of Mosolov. No sign of Tirpitz. He could recognise those two easily enough from the photographs studied in London. There had been no photograph of Rivke Ingber, and Cliff Dudley had merely smiled knowingly, telling Bond he would find out what she looked like soon enough.
People were now drifting towards the pool restaurant, open on two sides and protected by pink stone arches. Tables were laid, waiters hovered, a bar beckoned, and a long buffet had been set up to provide every conceivable kind of salad and cold meats, or – if the client so fancied – hot soup, quiche, lasagne or cannelloni.
Lunch. Bond’s old habits followed him faithfully to Madeira. The warm air and sun of the morning watch now produced that pleasant need for something light at lunch-time. Putting on a towelling robe, Bond padded to the buffet, selected some thin slices of ham, and began to choose from the array of colourful salads.
‘Don’t you fancy a drink, Mr Bond? To break the ice?’ Her voice was soft and unaccented.
‘Miss Ingber?’ Bond did not turn to look at her.
‘Yes, I’ve been watching you for some time – and I think you me. Shall we have lunch together? The others have also arrived.’
Bond turned. It was the spectacular blonde he had seen in the pool. She had changed into a dry black bikini, and the visible flesh glowed bronze, the colour of autumn beech leaves. The contrast of colours – skin, the thin black material and the striking, gold curls cut close – made Rivke Ingber look not only acutely desirable, but also an object lesson in health and body care. Her face shone with fitness, unblemished, classical, almost Nordic – with a strong mouth and dark eyes in which a spirit of humour seemed to dance almost seductively.
‘Well,’ Bond admitted, ‘you’ve outflanked me, Ms Ingber. Shalom.’
‘Shalom, Mr Bond . . .’ The pink mouth curved into a smile which appeared open, inviting and completely genuine.
‘Call me James.’ Bond made a small mental note of the smile.