Smolin’s smile was overtly happy. ‘Much more dangerous. Good, I’m glad we know where we stand. It has been a longheld ambition of mine to meet you face to face, Mr Bond. Was it you, perhaps, who concocted the ill-conceived Cream Cake plan?’
‘There you have me, Colonel Smolin. I know nothing of such an operation.’
One of the drivers shouted something from the front of the ambulance and Smolin said, almost apologetically, that they would soon have to take measures to ensure Bond and Heather were silent. The ambulance slowed down, lurched, leaned heavily to the left so that it was necessary to hang on tight as they bumped over rough ground. Gradually they rumbled to a halt. From the front came the sound of the cab door being slammed shut. Then the rear doors were opened and a short, red-faced man dressed in the dark uniform of an ambulance driver peered in.
‘They are not here yet, Herr Colonel,’ he said to Smolin in German.
The Colonel merely nodded in an off-hand way, and told them to watch and wait. Bond craned his neck in an attempt to see out of the rear. A view of trees backed by rocky slopes bore out his original feeling that they had taken a route into the bleak Wicklow hills.
‘Get the girl ready.’
Smolin half turned his head, giving the order to one of the men in the front. The man fumbled with a briefcase and Bond saw a hypodermic syringe being prepared. He made a move towards the syringe bearer, whose partner immediately produced an automatic pistol, the muzzle pointing steadily at Bond. Smolin raised an arm, as though both protecting and restraining Bond.
‘It’s all right. The girl will not be harmed, but I think she should be put under a mild sedation for a while. We have a long drive ahead, and I don’t want her to be conscious. You, friend Bond, will lie on the floor in the back of the car that will arrive at any minute. You will have your face covered and as long as you behave, no harm will come to you.’ He paused, smiled, then added, ‘Yet!’
Heather moved slightly and groaned, as though regaining consciousness. The man with the syringe quietly prepared her for the injection, which he gave skilfully, sliding the needle through the skin of her bared forearm at a neatly calculated angle.
‘So, James Bond, you say that you know nothing of any operation coded Cream Cake?’
Bond shook his head.
‘And I suppose,’ Smolin continued, ‘you’ve never heard of Irma Wagen?’
‘It’s a name not known to me.’
‘But you do know Heather Dare?’
‘I met her once before we saw each other in the airport departure lounge, yes.’
‘And where did you meet her, “once before the airport departure lounge”?’
‘At a party. Through friends.’
‘Friends as in professional friends? I believe, in the terminology of your Service, “friends” are other members of that Service. Or, at least, your Foreign Office refers to them as “the Friends”.’
‘Ordinary friends. A couple called Hazlett – Tom and Maria Hazlett.’
He gave an address in Hampstead, knowing it could be checked with impunity, for Tom and Maria were an active alibi couple. If asked, even in a roundabout way, whether they knew Bond or Heather they would answer, ‘Yes, and isn’t Heather wonderful?’ or ‘Of course, James is an old friend.’ They would also have a surveillance team on to the questioners in double quick time. That was what the Service had trained them to do.
‘So you would claim you did not know that Irma Wagen and Heather Dare of the Dare To Be Chic beauty salon are the same person?’
‘I’ve never heard of any Irma Wagen.’
‘No. No, of course you haven’t, James. You must call me Maxim by the way. I do not respond to the diminutive, Max. No, you haven’t heard of Irma, neither of the doomed Cream Cake operation.’ His smile did not change, but the disbelief rang through his words. Then he came out and said it aloud. ‘I just do not believe you, James Bond. I cannot believe you.’
‘Please yourself.’ Bond gave the impression of complete lack of concern.
‘Where were you driving Fräulein Wagen, whom you know as Heather Dare?’
‘To Enniscorthy.’
‘Why should she want to go to Enniscorthy?’ Smolin shook his head, as though to underline his disbelief. ‘And where were you going that enabled you to be able to help her that way?’
‘We simply recognised each other at the airport and sat next to one another on the aeroplane. I told her I was going to Waterford and she asked if she could cadge a lift.’
‘What were you going to do in Waterford?’
‘Buy glass, what else? I’m very fond of Waterford crystal.’
‘Of course you are. And it’s so difficult to buy in London, isn’t it?’ The heavy sarcasm betrayed Smolin’s Russian side.
‘I am on leave, Herr Colonel Smolin. I repeat, I know of no Irma Wagen and have never heard of an operation called Cream Cake.’
‘We shall see,’ Smolin replied smoothly. ‘But just to clear the air, I will tell you what we know of this ludicrously named operation. It was what used to be called a honeytrap. Your people baited it with four very young and attractive girls.’ He held up four fingers, grasping one for each name, as though ticking them off. ‘There was Franzi Trauben, Elli Zuckermann, Irma Wagen and Emilie Nikolas.’ He laughed pleasantly again. ‘Emilie is a good name when you consider that we always spoke of our honeytrap targets as Emilies. But you know all that.’ He ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘Each of these girls had a well placed target, and they might have got away with it but for the fact that I was included.’ Suddenly his whole demeanour altered. ‘They used me as a target for their games. Me, Maxim Smolin, as though I could be caught and netted by a slip of a girl with about as much idea of how to set up an entrapment as a raw recruit.’ His voice rose. ‘That’s what I can never forgive your people for doing. Sicking an amateur on me; so amateur that she gave the game away within minutes of her first pass at me, and eventually brought down the whole nasty little network. Your Service, Bond, took me for some kind of fool! A professional would have been different but an amateur like her,’ he jabbed a finger towards Heather’s prone body, ‘an amateur I can never forgive.’
So, this was the real Smolin – proud, arrogant, and unforgiving.
‘Surel y the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye also uses casual labour from time to time, Maxim?’ Bond asked the question with the ghost of a smile.
‘Casual labour?’ A fine spray of spittle clouded the air in front of Smolin’s lips as he spat the words out. ‘Of course we would train casual labour but never would we use it against a target of my importance.’
There he had it. My importance. Colonel Maxim Smolin regarded himself as inviolable, essential to the smooth running of one of the topmost secret organisations within the Soviet Union. The other was Bond’s older enemy, the onetime smersh, now totally reorganised as Department 8 of Directorate S, following their loss of credibility as Department V as in Victor. Smolin was breathing heavily, and Bond felt that old and ice-cold hand trace an invisible finger down his spine, an indication of fear. He recognised the stone-hard face of a killer, the muscular body, that brightness in the dark eyes.
From far away came the sound of a car’s horn. It gave three short blasts followed by a longer one.
‘They’re here,’ said Smolin, speaking again in German.
The ambulance doors were opened, revealing the full view of green slopes strewn with outcrops of grey rock and a half circle of trees. They were parked well off the road. Two cars, a BMW and a Mercedes, were making slow progress towards them. Bond looked at Smolin and cocked his head towards Heather.
‘I honestly have no knowledge of this Cream Cake business.’ He spoke quietly, hoping that in his blind rage Smolin might believe him. ‘It sounds more like a BND job than our people . . .’ Smolin turned. ‘It was your Service, James Bond. I have proof, believe me; just as you must believe we’ll sweat you until your very bones turn to water. There are still a couple of mysteries that need solving, and I’m here to solve them.’