‘He’s everything, our Maxim: a mole within a warren of moles, working with the HVA, which has to work with the KGB, yet all the time doing little jobs on the side because he’s really a member of the GRU.’
‘You have the man to a T.’ Murray beamed at them. ‘You know what they say about the GRU? They say it costs a rouble to join, and two roubles to get out. Almost an Irish saying, that. It’s very difficult to become a GRU officer. It’s even more difficult to jump over the wall once you’re in because there really is only one way out – in a long box. They’re very fond of training foreigners, and Smolin is only half Russian. They tell me he holds great power in East Germany. Even the KGB men there are in awe of him.’
‘Well, Norman? Have you something new to tell us about him?’ asked Bond.
‘You know, Jacko, the whole world thinks that we have only one problem on this divided island, the North and the South. They’d be wrong and I’m sure you’re aware of it, so. Your man Basilisk arrived in the Republic two days ago. Now, Jacko, when I heard of that terrible thing at Ashford Castle, I recalled there’d already been two just like it over the water, and a little quotation came to mind.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘There’s something most pertinent been written about your Soviet General Staff Chief Intelligence Directorate – your GRU. The fella was a GRU defector, name of Suverov. He was writing about people who can’t keep quiet, who leak secrets. He wrote, “The GRU knows how to rip such tongues out!” Interesting, Jacko?’
Bond nodded, looking solemn. The historians of the intelligence services tended to dismiss the GRU as having been swallowed by the KGB. ‘The GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) is completely dominated by the KGB’, one writer had maintained. Another had written, ‘It is an academic exercise to consider the GRU as a separate entity’. That was wrong on both counts. The GRU fights hard to keep a separate identity.
‘Penny for them, Jacko?’ Murray was making himself comfortable on the bed.
‘I was only thinking that the cream of the GRU are richer and more deadly than their opposite numbers in the KGB. Men like Smolin are better trained, and have no scruples at all.’
‘And Smolin’s here, Jacko and . . .’ He paused and the smile vanished from his face to be replaced by a hard look, ‘And we’ve lost the bastard, if you’ll pardon the language again, Miss Dare.’
‘Arlington,’ Heather mumbled without conviction. Bond saw that she looked both nervous and a little sad.
Norman Murray lifted his hand and tilted it. ‘Dare, Wagen, Sharke, so who’s counting?’ He yawned and stretched. ‘It’s been a long night. I must away to my bed.’
‘Lost him?’ Bond asked sharply.
‘He did the vanishing trick, Jacko. But Smolin’s always been good at vanishing – he’s a proper Houdini. Talking of Houdini, Smolin’s probably not the only one that’s on the loose in the Republic.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost the Chairman of the Central Committee as well?’
‘It’s no time to be joking, Jacko. We’ve had a small tip off. Nothing elaborate, but a straw in the wind.’
‘A straw to clutch at?’
‘If it’s the truth, you wouldn’t be after clutching at this one, Jacko B.’
‘Well?’ Bond waited.
‘The word is that someone much higher up the ladder than Smolin is in the Republic. I’ve nothing firm but the word’s strong enough. There’s someone here from the top. Now that’s all I can give you. I’ll be saying goodnight to you both, then. And sweet dreams.’ He rose, walked to the corner of the room and retrieved his Walther.
‘Thanks, Norman. Thanks a whole bunch,’ said Bond, walking him to the door. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Ask away. There’s no charge.’
‘You’ve lost sight of Comrade Colonel Smolin . . .’
‘Yes. And we haven’t even had a sniff at the other one – if he’s here at all.’
‘Are you still looking for them?’
‘We are, in a way, of course. Manpower’s your problem, Jacko B.’
‘What would you do if you cornered either of them?’
‘Put him on an aeroplane to Berlin. But those fellas would complain and dodge into that den of iniquity in Orwell Road. You know, the one that’s got about six hundred pieces of aerial and electronic dishes on the roof. Bit of an irony, isn’t it? The Soviets having their Embassy in Orwell Road, and building a forest of communications hardware on top of it. That’s where your man would hide.’
‘And he’s not there at the moment?’
‘How would I know, so? I am not my brother’s keeper.’
They came into St Stephen’s Green from Grafton Street, with Heather clutching bulging carriers from Switzers and Brown Thomas. Bond walked two paces behind her and slightly to the left. He carried one small parcel and his gun hand hovered across the front of his unbuttoned jacket. Ever since Norman Murray had left the hotel he had been increasingly uncomfortable about the way things were turning out. Heather had been furious that he had not told her Ebbie was alive.
‘But why didn’t you tell me? You knew how I felt. You knew she was alive . . .’
‘I knew she was probably alive.’
‘Then why couldn’t you have the decency to tell me?’
‘Because I wasn’t certain, and because your precious Cream Cake strikes me as having been a lash-up operation from the start. It’s still a lash-up.’
He stopped himself from saying more, for his humour was rapidly fraying at the edges. In theory Cream Cake had been a good operation, but if Heather was typical of the five young people chosen to carry it out, the Operations Planners were criminally at fault. There would never have been time to train them properly. Yet the fact that their parents were in place was considered to be enough.
Their names ran repeatedly through Bond’s mind like a gramophone record stuck in a groove: Franzi Trauben and Elli Zuckermann, both dead, skulls crushed and tongues neatly removed; Franz Belzinger, who liked to be called Wald; Irma Wagen herself and Emilie Nikolas, who should be in Rosslare. He asked himself why Franz liked being nicknamed Wald. But no, he told himself, he must start thinking of them by their English names, though much good they had done them. He must think of the dead Bridget and Millicent and the living Heather and Ebbie; of the presumably living Jungle Baisley.
While he thought about these five characters, Bond was conscious of the other dark figures, especially Maxim Smolin, whom he had seen so many times in grainy surveillance photographs and jumpy films, distorted through fibre-optics lenses, and – only once – in the flesh, as he came out of Fouquet’s on the Champs Elysées. Bond had been sitting almost opposite at a pavement café with another officer and even at the distance provided by that wide street with the distractions of its traffic, the short, tough, military figure of Smolin had a profound effect on him. It may have been the way he carried himself like a professional soldier, but exaggeratedly so; or perhaps it was his look, the eyes never still, and his hands held with one fist clenched, the other flat making a tough cutting edge. Smolin appeared to radiate energy and a malevolent power.
The seventh protagonist, the ‘someone higher up the ladder than Smolin’, unnamed by Norman Murray, threw a much darker shadow over the entire business.
Bringing his mind back to the present, Bond noticed the rain had gone, yet there was a chill in the air and gunfire-smoke clouds raced each other over the rooftops. They paused for the traffic lights and Bond caught sight of the black-bearded, tousled-haired Big Mick Shean at the wheel of a maroon Volvo. The Irishman showed no sign of recognition but Bond knew he would have already identified the parked car and he and Heather as they waited for the lights to change. They crossed the road on the green light and began to walk slowly. He had told Heather not to rush.