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There had been talk of the search for von Glöda, of identifying him as the Commander-in-Chief of the NSAA, even as Aarne Tudeer. Yet von Glöda was there, at breakfast in the hotel, large as life, recognised by all. And nobody had appeared to be in the least concerned.

If Bond had started by trusting nobody, the feeling had now grown into deep suspicion towards anybody connected with Icebreaker. And that even included M, who had also been like a clam when it came to detail.

Was it just possible, Bond wondered, that M had deliberately set him up in an untenable situation? As they racketed and slid through the snow, he saw the answer plainly enough. Yes: it was an old Service ploy. Send a very experienced officer into a situation almost blind, and let him discover the truth. The truth for 007, hammered home again, was that he was well and truly on his own. The conclusion to which he had privately come earlier was, in reality, the basis of M’s own reasoning. There had never been a ‘team’ in the strict sense of the word: merely representatives of four agencies, working together, yet apart. Four singletons.

The thought nagged away at Bond’s mind as he heaved and hauled the scooter at speed, following Kolya over the never-ending snow and jagged ice. He lost all track of time, conscious only of the cold, and the motor growl, and the endless ribbon of white behind Kolya’s machine.

Then, slowly, Bond became aware of light somewhere ahead to his left – to the north-west – rising, bright, from among the trees. A few moments later, Kolya flicked off the small beam of his headlamp. He was slowing down, pulling into the trees to the left of the road. Bond brought his scooter to rest beside Kolya’s machine.

‘We’ll haul them into the woods,’ Kolya whispered. ‘That’s it over there – Blue Hare, with all the lights blazing like a May Day celebration.’

They parked the scooters, camouflaging them as best they could. Kolya suggested they get into the white snow suits. ‘We’ll be in deep snow, overlooking the depot. I have night glasses, so don’t bother with anything special.’

Bond, however, was already bothering. Under cover of getting into the snow camouflage, he fumbled with numbed fingers at the clips of his quilted jacket. At least he could now get at the P7 automatic quickly. He also managed to transfer one stun grenade and one of the L2A2 fragmentation bombs from his pack to the copious pockets of the loose, hooded white garment that now covered him.

The Russian did not seem to have noticed. He carried a weapon of his own quite openly on his hip. The large night glasses were slung around his neck, and, in the gloom, Bond thought he could even detect a smile on that mobile face as Kolya handed over the automatic infra-red camera. The Russian was carrying a VTR pack clipped to his belt, the camera hanging by straps below the binoculars.

Kolya gestured towards the point where the light now seemed to blast straight up between the trees, behind a slope above them. He led the way, with Bond close on his heels – a pair of silent white ghosts passing into dead ground, moving from tree to tree.

Within a few paces they had reached the bottom of the uphill climb. The top of the rise was illuminated by the lights, which cast their beams up from the far side. There was no sign of guards or sentries, and Bond found the going difficult at first, his limbs still stiff with cold from the long scooter ride.

As they neared the crest, Kolya gave a ‘get down’ signal with the palm of his hand. Close together, the pair squirmed through the deep snow which buried the roots and trunk bases of the trees. Below them, in a blaze of light, lay the ordnance depot known as Blue Hare. Having strained to see through darkness and snow for over three hours, Bond was forced to close his eyes against the sudden shock of arc lights and big spots. It was not surprising, he thought fleetingly as he peered down, that the men and NCOs of Blue Hare had been so easily suborned into a treasonable act of selling military weapons, ammunition and equipment. To live the year round in this place – bleak and uninviting during the winter, mosquito-ridden through the short summer – would be enough to tempt any man, even just for the hell of it.

As his eyes adjusted, Bond thought about their dreary life. What was there to do in a camp like this? The nightly games of cards; drink? Yes, a perfect place to post alcoholics; crossing off the days to some short leave, which probably entailed a long journey; the occasional trip into Alakurtii which, by his reckoning, was six or seven kilometres away. And what would there be in Alakurtii? The odd café, the same food cooked by different hands; a bar where you could get drunk. Women? Possibly. Maybe some Russian-born Lapp girls, easy prey to disease and the brutal, licentious soldiery. All soldiers were, in the civilian mind, brutal and licentious, Bond thought. Syphilis and other venereal diseases would be rife. The occasional case of rape hushed up, paid off so that the soldiers of Blue Hare could remain untroubled.

Bond’s eyes had cleared now. He studied Blue Hare without discomfort: a long, wide oblong cleared of trees, some of which had begun to grow again, encroaching on the tall wire fences with their barbed tops and angled lights. A pair of high gates had been hauled open immediately below them, and the road, snaking in through the trees, had been cleared of snow and ice, either by burners or hard sweat. Within the compound, the layout was neat and orderly. A guard room with wooden towers and searchlights on either side stood near the gate, and the metalled roadway ran straight through the centre of the base, around a quarter of a kilometre long. The storage dumps were placed on either side of this interior road: large Nissen hut-like structures with corrugated curved roofs and high sides, each with a jutting loading ramp.

It all made sense. Vehicles could drive straight in, load, or unload at the ramps, then follow the road to the far end of the camp at which there was a hard-standing turning circle. Any delivery or collection could be made at speed – the lorries, or armoured vehicles, coming in, taking off their cargo, and going on, to turn, drive back and out, the same way as they had come.

Behind the storage huts were long log cabins, certainly the troops’ quarters, mess halls, and recreation centres. It was all very symmetrical. Take away the wire enclosure, and the long lines of ramps, add a wooden church and you had the makings of a village, built to support a small factory.

Bond’s circulation had been restored slightly by the walk up to the ridge. Now the cold began to build in him again. He felt as though melting snow flowed through his veins and arteries, while his bones were made of the same ice that hung, sharp and glistening, Damoclean, from the branches above.

He glanced to his left. Kolya was already recording the scene for posterity, the VTR camera buzzing as he pressed the trigger, adjusted the lens, and pressed again. Bond held the small infra-red camera loaded in front of him. Leaning on his elbows, he raised his goggles and pressed the rubber eyepiece to his right eye, bringing the lens into focus. In the next few minutes he took a full thirty-five still pictures of the armament transfer at Blue Hare.

Kolya’s information was impeccable. The lights were on, heedless of any security. Drawn up beside the ramps were four big tracked armoured troop carriers. BTR-50s, just as Kolya had predicted. Give the man another crystal ball, Bond thought. Too good to be true.

The Russian BTRs came in various forms: the basic tracked amphibious troop carrier, for two crew and twenty men; the gun carrier; or the type now below them. These were strictly for transporting loads over difficult terrain. They had been stripped down to the bare essentials, with much of the support armour removed, and they sat on their well-chained tracks, each with a heavy bulldozer in front so that rubble, ice, deep snow, or fallen trees, could be swept from their paths. The BTRs were painted an identical grey, their flat tops unlocked and folded back down the sides, to reveal deep metal oblong holds into which crates and boxes were being stored quickly and efficiently.