They flattened out, beginning the straight run. If Brad had got it right, the whole thing would happen in a matter of minutes – two, three minutes at the most.
Kolya increased his speed, as though racing ahead to get well up front. Bond followed, allowing himself to drop back slightly, praying that Tirpitz was ready. Moving himself in the tough saddle, Bond glanced behind. To his relief, Brad’s scooter had dropped far behind, just as they planned. He could not see if Tirpitz was still there: only the blur and black shape as the scooter slowed.
As Bond turned his head, it happened. It was as though he had been counting the seconds: working out the exact point. Maybe intuition?
The explosion came later. All he saw was the violent flash from where the dull black shape sped behind him – the crimson heart of flame and a great white phosphorescent outline, lighting the column of snow which soared into the night.
Then the noise, the heavy double clump, stunning the ear-drums. The shock waves struck Bond’s scooter, hammering him in the back, propelling him off course.
12
BLUE HARE
At the moment of explosion, Bond’s reflexes came automatically into play. He hauled on the controls, throttling back so that his scooter slewed sideways into a long skid, then slowed towards its inevitable halt. Almost before he knew it, Bond came alongside Kolya’s scooter.
‘Tirpitz!’ Bond yelled, not really hearing his own voice, ears tingling from the cold and deadened by the passing shock waves. Strangely, he knew what Kolya was shouting back at him, though he was uncertain of Kolya’s actual words.
‘For God’s sake don’t come alongside!’ Kolya shrieked, his voice rising like the wind within a blizzard. ‘Tirpitz is finished. He must’ve strayed off course and hit a mine. We can’t stop. Death to stop. Keep directly behind me, Bond. It’s the only way.’ He repeated, ‘Directly behind me!’ and this time Bond knew he had heard the words clearly.
It was over. A glance back showed a faint glow as pieces of Tirpitz’s scooter burned out in the snow. Then came the whine of Kolya’s scooter, zipping away over the ice. Bond gunned his motor and followed, keeping close now and well in line behind the Russian.
If the plan had worked, Tirpitz would already be on the skis which he had smuggled out to the scooters a good hour before they were due to leave.
The idea had been to drop skis, sticks, and pack about three minutes from the point where Kolya had planned to have him taken out. A minute later, Tirpitz was to set and lock his handlebars; then make a slow roll-off, low into the snow, opening the throttle at the last moment. With good timing and luck, he could lie well clear of the explosion, then take to the skis almost at leisure. There was time enough for him to reach the point arranged with Bond.
Put him from your mind, Bond thought, in any event. Consider Tirpitz dead. It’s yourself and nobody else.
The far slope was not easy, and Kolya maintained a cracking pace, as though anxious to reach the relative cover of the trees. Half-way up the first flurries of fresh, falling snow started to eddy around them.
At last they reached the trees and their blackness. Kolya pulled up, beckoning Bond alongside him and leaning over to speak. But for the gentle throb of the idling engines, it was very still among the tall firs and pines. Kolya did not appear to shout, and this time his words were perfectly clear.
‘Sorry about Tirpitz,’ he said. ‘It could’ve been any of us. They may have rearranged the mine pattern. Now we’re still one short.’
Bond nodded, saying nothing.
‘Follow me like a leech.’ Kolya went on. ‘The first two kilometres are not easy, but after that we’re more or less on wide tracks. A road, in fact. Any sign of the convoy and I’ll switch off my light, then stop. So pull up if my light goes out. When we get near to Blue Hare we’ll hide the scooters and go in on foot with the cameras.’ He tapped the packs attached to the back of his machine. ‘It’ll be a short walk through trees. About five hundred metres.’
Around half a mile, Bond thought. That was going to be fun.
‘If we take it steadily – roughly an hour and a half’s ride from here,’ Kolya continued. ‘You fit?’
Bond nodded again.
Kolya slowly took his machine forward, and Bond, pretending to check his gear, yanked on the lanyard, pulling out the compass. He opened it, fumbling with his gloves, then laid it flat on his palm and lowered his head to see the luminous dial. He watched the needle settle and took a rough bearing. They were approximately where Kolya had said they should be. The real test, then, would come later, if they managed to follow the convoy from Blue Hare to the Ice Palace.
Bond slid the compass back inside his jacket, straightened himself and raised an arm to indicate his readiness to continue. Slowly they moved off, covering the difficult first two kilometres at almost a walking pace. It was obvious there would be a wider path leading into this protective stretch of woods, if the convoy were coming in from Finland.
As Kolya had predicted, however, once past the first stage they found themselves on a wide, snow-covered track – the snow hard and packed, frozen solid, but deeply rutted in places. Perhaps Kolya was playing straight after all. The ruts suggested a previous passage of tracked vehicles, though it was impossible to tell how recently they had been made. The cold was now so intense that anything heavy, breaking the surface of the frozen snow, would leave tracks frozen equally hard within minutes.
Kolya began to pile on the speed, and as Bond followed easily on the flat surface, numbed as his mind was by the chill and marrow-freezing temperature, he started to ask questions. Kolya had shown almost incredible expertise on the way over the border – particularly going through the forests. It was impossible for him not to have followed the same route before: many times. For Bond it had been a time of unrelieved concentration, while Tirpitz had stayed well to the rear for most of the trip. Now the impression came back to Bond that Brad Tirpitz had not even been close during the zig-zagging journey through the trees.
Had both of them crossed the frontier by this route before? It was certainly a possibility. On reflection, Bond was even more puzzled, for Kolya had kept up a rapid pace even in the most difficult areas, and had done so without reference to bearings by compass or map. It was as though he was being navigated through by external means. Radio? Perhaps. Neither he nor Tirpitz had seen Kolya out of his gear, when they met at the scooters. Had the Russian brought them through on some kind of beam? Earphones would be easy to hide under the thermal hood. Bond made a note to look for leads plugged into Kolya’s scooter.
If not radio, was there a marked path? That was also a possibility, for Bond had been so busy keeping his own machine on Kolya’s tail that it was doubtful whether he would have noticed any pinpoint lights or reflectors along the way.
Another thought struck him. Cliff Dudley, his predecessor on Icebreaker, had not been forthcoming about what kind of work the team had been doing, in the Arctic Circle, before the row with Tirpitz and the briefing in Madeira. Had not M suggested, or said outright, that they had wanted Bond on the team from the outset?
Indeed, what had those representatives of four different intelligence agencies been up to? Was it possible they had been into the Soviet Union already? Had they already reconnoitred Blue Hare? Yet almost all the hard information had come from Kolya – from Russia; from the hi-fly photographs, and the satellite pictures, not to mention the sniffing out of information on the ground.