‘Driven to it, I suppose,’ Bond smiled. Then glanced around. Easy had taken the initiative with the tough who had been hauling her by the arm. He did not see the moves but they were obviously well coordinated, for the man’s arm now hung at a strange angle as she spun him around and flipped him onto his back: the whole move timed so that his head smashed against the pavement with the sound of dry sticks being broken.
Praxi had also finished off her assailant: her hands linked behind his neck, went with his backward movement then pulled him forward, bringing her knee up to his face, then a similar action to the groin which gave them the second screamer of the night. As he went down, she followed through with two quick chops to the back of the neck. The blows were well placed for he dropped like an animal in a slaughterhouse, and remained silent.
‘Very humane, Praxi,’ Bond applauded.
Tester was already in the driver’s seat, with the engine turning over, yelling for them to get in. As people began to spill out of the hotel and a couple of nearby cafés, the Toyota moved off. Everyone, and the luggage, on board, the vehicle picking up speed, eventually turning into the Avenue Victor Hugo and mixing with the deadly stream of traffic. No sirens sounded in their wake.
In Paris, drivers seem to be a law unto themselves, and Tester was no exception. ‘Where the hell do we go now?’ he shouted, brushing dangerously near to a Citroën driven by an elderly lady who looked like death on wheels, then sashaying into the far lane, picking up more speed to overtake a bus, heading towards the race track that was the Place Charles de Gaulle, with the Arc de Triomphe at its centre.
‘There’ll be the French equivalent of an APB out on us by now.’ Bond was surprised to hear himself speaking calmly. The fight around the Toyota had taken less than two minutes, and they all looked reasonably pleased with themselves. He reflected that, as a team, they had been impressive.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’ Praxi was breathing hard, winded, and occasionally closing her eyes as her colleague did things with the van that would not be found in any driving manual.
‘The one in the grey coat is part French, part English,’ she said. ‘Ex-DGSE. Now one of Weisen’s lackeys. He got bumped from DGSE for irregularities during interrogation which put him on the Poison Dwarf’s wish-list straight away.’
‘He was the one that caught up with me in the Faubourg St Honoré. But it doesn’t mean the cops aren’t looking for us.’ Bond glanced back through the rear window. ‘Too many bystanders.’
‘Nobody tried to step in, though,’ from Tester. ‘You want to try and make the airport?’
‘We’ll never get anything out at this time of night, and I don’t think I can raise one of my people’s safe houses. Now we’ve crossed swords with these buggers, my Service’ll deny me a dozen times over. Any other ideas?’
‘Dump this thing,’ Easy said softly. ‘I have access to a place in Paris. Sleep all of us at a pinch.’
They rounded the Place Charles de Gaulle for the second time. ‘Beat that bastard in the Lamborghini,’ muttered Tester.
‘Really, I think we should dump it,’ Easy repeated. ‘I can get us a place to sleep. Safe as well as sound.’
‘There won’t be much sleeping done tonight,’ Bond said grimly as Tester finally pulled the van into the Avenue Foch. He recalled that it was here, on this street, during the German occupation in World War II, that the Gestapo had their headquarters. It was where they performed most of their diabolical interrogations. Well, he had a lot of interrogating to do before the morning.
10
APPOINTMENTS WITH DEATH
Safe houses usually reek of transience. Normally they are small, ill-furnished, and exude an aura of sadness. These are places used for brief meetings by men and women with much to fear, and they contain only the appurtenances of clandestine activity. The safe house provided by Easy St John was altogether different. For one thing it was palatial.
Dumping the van made sense, yet Bond was uncertain about the provision of a safe house – presumably supplied by Easy’s masters at Langley, Virginia.
They finally abandoned the Toyota Previa in a parking lot off the Boulevard St Michel on the Left Bank, after which they waited for fifteen minutes while Easy made a telephone call.
‘An hour and a half,’ she said on returning. ‘They need an hour and a half to have the place ready.’ She then gave them the address, at which Bond’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Les Appartements Atlantique?’ he queried.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘That plush building near the Elysée Palace?’
‘Apartment twenty-six. One of the corner ones.’
‘With a view?’
‘With a great view.’
‘Easy? You’re sure?’
‘ ’Course I’m sure.’
‘We’re talking billionaire class.’
‘That’s right.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Did you think it was an Agency property?’
‘Well, yes. Naturally.’
‘Wrong, it belongs to Daddy’s company. We always use it in Paris. Daddy does a lot of business in France.’
‘He does? What’s he in? Private gold and diamond mines, or dodgy arms deals?’
‘Something like that.’
They split up, Easy with Praxi, and Bond with the man who he had become almost certain was the true Harry Spraker. He was sure nobody had them in their sights, and the four of them met up an hour later at the open-all-hours huge Pub St-Germain-des-Prés where they took a taxi across Paris to the luxurious Appartements Atlantique. There the doorman and reception staff greeted Easy not only like a long-lost friend, but also as a sort of queen. The apartment had been fully cleaned and made ready, they assured her. The girls had been brought in especially, at this time of night, and the refrigerators – Bond noted the plural – had been stocked as Mr St John had suggested.
‘Your father fixed it all?’ Bond said to her quietly, as the elevator hurried them up to a huge and truly beautiful apartment.
‘I just called Daddy and he said, “Okay, leave it to me.” He’s usually very good about these things. Lucky his people didn’t have anyone staying here.’
There were incredible views from the balcony windows, magnificent furnishings, marble floors, a massive kitchen with everything they required, and more.
‘It should be safe to use the telephone here,’ Easy said, but Bond did not reply at once. He was taking a long look at the original Jackson Pollock which hung over a fourteenth-century stone mantel, imported from lord knew what chateau.
Having already seen two Chagalls and a Picasso, he was impressed. Also he counted the photographs of four United States Presidents who had stayed in this very flat. He considered that might just be a minus as far as security was concerned.
Easy repeated that she thought it safe to use the ordinary telephone.
‘Depends what your father’s really into.’
‘I doubt if the DST listeners would be interested.’
‘Who knows?’ Bond decided immediately that they should not take the risk, and instructed Praxi to connect the 800 machine and call in Ariel.
While they were waiting for this last member of the party to arrive, Easy and Praxi prepared omelettes and a large salad. Not that it was woman’s work. Easy tipped off Bond that she was trying to get closer to Praxi, a tactic which was doomed to failure. It had very quickly become obvious that the women had taken to each other as an arachnophobic would take to a tarantula. They were physically and mentally two very different people and, while they kept up a pretence of harmony, the mutual unease showed through as clear as the sun at high noon, and could be felt like a freezing dawn.
Finally, around one in the morning, Ariel arrived, all six foot three of him: a very visible spy with a pug-ugly face, knuckle-dragging arms and the smile of a saint. Within minutes it was obvious that he was particularly protective of Praxi and not a man to be roused. ‘Call me Bruin,’ he growled. ‘Like the bear, yes? I answer to Bruin from everyone. Okay??
??
Of course it was okay. Bruin was not a person with whom you picked a fight, even though Bond had an inkling as to why he preferred to be called Bruin. His real name was slightly ridiculous – Karl Kuckuck. In English, Charlie Cuckoo. In London someone mentioned he was touchy on the subject.
They ate, and afterwards, when Praxi started to talk about being tired, Bond began the unpleasant part of the night’s work.
‘There won’t be sleep,’ he announced. ‘At least not for some time. There are a heap of unanswered questions about Cabal, and what’s been going on. Our job is to make sense of the situation, and then see what has to be done.’
They sat and lounged around the long, high-ceilinged, main living room, and he told them that he had to approach the whole business like a detective. ‘You’ll have to bear with me,’ he said calmly. ‘This is essential. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but it’s going to sound as if I am. Eagle here’ll be my Doctor Watson.’
He wanted to start straight in on the deaths of the original Vanya and Eagle, but felt he should not get there by the direct route.
‘Praxi, I want to ask you about the Nacht und Nebel order. What were the protocols for this signal?’ he began.
She went into a lot of detail. The Nacht und Nebel signal had been devised in the mid-’80s. ‘Things got very tense at one point,’ she said. ‘So London and Washington gave us the safest method they could think of. If we received the signal, everyone was to disappear and there was to be no contact with either London or Washington. This was stressed, absolutely no attempt was to be made to get in touch with our controls. It was for our benefit, in case the controllers had been blown. I actually passed on the instructions separately to every agent in the Cabal network. I know everyone understood. Basically we were to set up bolt holes. Places which we could run to. Places which had to remain private to each member of Cabal. I warned everyone not to say where they would go.’
‘And you think they all complied?’
‘I’m pretty sure of it, judging by what happened after the signal arrived.’
‘Cabal would scatter, I realise that, but was there any stipulation about where individuals would go?’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘I mean could they stay in the East? – after all, this was set up long before the Wall came down. Or were there specific instructions to get into the West? I presume most of you did go into the West regularly.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say regularly. I suppose all of us went over a few times. Vanya and Eagle did not, as a rule, come into the East. If it was necessary, individuals went out to them, though in certain cases this was not possible. I know Vanya came in to debrief at least two people in the past three years. Eagle made occasional visits. But normally information was supplied on the spot: the usual games, dead-drops, the odd brush pass. Vanya and Eagle had drones they would use. As did Cabal. We had quite a lot of specialists who were not strictly within the Cabal network. I’m still using some of them.’
Bond nodded, ‘And you think everyone did as they were told? They scattered as soon as the storm warning came in?’
Praxi gave a sad little smile. ‘In the first four months after the instruction came, we lost no less than eleven people right there in the East: four in Berlin, two had gone into Poland, three in Czecho, and a couple who had holed up in Yugoslavia.’
‘So, even though by that time Germany was unified again, and the other barriers had come down, it wasn’t safe to stay on old Eastern Bloc turf?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘So, Praxi, how did the instruction arrive? Did you get it on the 800 number or some other way?’
‘You know what I did?’ She chose not to pause for an answer. ‘I worked at the KGB facility in Karlshorst barracks. We all had Soviet military cover, so we were still there, even at the moment of reunification. I acted as liaison between KGB and the old Bulgarian Service: the Dajnava Sigurnost. During the run-up to reunification the Soviets were bending backwards to show they were helping. We were all doing jobs which made it look reasonable for us to stay on – for a while at least. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the unit would be closed down, and I thought, maybe, London and Washington would want Cabal to stay in place while things were sorted out. That made sense. What happened did not make sense. I received the Nacht und Nebel call on my extension at Karlshorst. Highly insecure, but it was obviously a flash.’
‘The caller? You recognised the voice?’
‘It was familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to it . . .’
‘Neither Vanya nor Eagle?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘So, how did you cross-check that the order was genuine?’
‘There were three built-in safeguards. All of them checkable very quickly. You must understand that if Cabal was to break and scatter, the instruction had to get to everyone very fast. In years past it was crucial. I suppose when it did come things were not quite so dangerous, but . . .’
‘The three safeguards, Praxi?’ Easy spoke for the first time.
Praxi, who back at that time had been Sulphur – the uncrowned leader of Cabal – frowned. ‘They were all there, just as both London and Washington had stipulated. One was a telephone number that would give out a disconnected tone when dialled; then a physical signal. This one was a chalk mark. A peace sign scrawled in green chalk on a wall near the Alexanderplatz. I did the telephone number as soon as I had put down the receiver after getting the original call. The chalk mark was out in the right place. I made a small detour on my way home. It was there.’
‘And the final one?’
‘From my home I called a number we had never used before. If the Nacht und Nebel signal was genuine, someone at the number would recite a particular line. Shakespeare – in German, of course. The code was changed every month.’
‘And that turned up trumps?’
‘As you would say, on the button. I still remember it. “Words without thoughts never to heaven go.” It is from Hamlet.’
‘I know, I saw the movie,’ Bond added with a hint of sarcasm, ‘I thought Mel Gibson was outstanding. Tell me, Praxi Simeon, how many Cabal members could have received the Nacht und Nebel order, and knew what to do? How to check the safeguards?’
‘Four. No, five including me.’
‘Any of them still around, apart from you?’
She nodded towards Harry Spraker. ‘He knew them. The others are all gone. Two of them definitely. One we’re not quite certain about.’
‘Who?’
‘Orphan.’
‘Who is, or was?’
‘A cop. A member of the old Vopos. A Captain, by the name of August Wimper. He was also on liaison work, but between the Vopos and the Soviet military. He often reported to Karlshorst and, to tell you the truth, he went missing before we received any orders to break up Cabal and run. His name was always a bit of a joke.’
Bond gave a tight smile. Wimper in German means eyelash.
Vopo was a contraction of Volkspolizei, the so-called People’s Police of the former East German State: the DDR. As well as performing normal police duties, the Vopos were heavily deployed along the former East/West border, particularly along the Berlin Wall.
‘The other two? They’re definitely dead?’
Praxi gave a quick nod and bit her lip. ‘I saw one of the bodies myself. The other, there is no doubt . . .’
‘But you’re not sure about Orphan?’ He remembered old Oscar Vomberg telling him that Orphan had been dragged out of the Grand Canal in Venice only a couple of days before his first, and last, meeting with the scientist in the Kempi. He also recalled that Vomberg claimed Sulphur – Praxi Simeon – had passed on the information, but he was not going to tell her about that conversation.
‘No,’ she answered without elaborating.
‘No, why?’
There was a long silence, as if Praxi was wrestling with her conscience. At last, ‘What do I call you? Vanya? Or something else?’ She began to so
und angry, her voice rising and a flush crossing her cheeks. ‘I mean we all knew the real Vanya. We knew his proper name as well, but . . . well, he was like a father figure to us. We don’t know you as Vanya. You aren’t our Vanya, any more than the lady here is our Eagle. D’you know what I mean? Or have you just come over to patch things up?’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’ Bond sounded genuinely sympathetic, for he had experienced situations like this before. Long-term agents often formed extraordinary relationships with their controllers, or case officers. Sometimes it was like a marriage without the sex. The ties were not easily broken by death. Always there was resentment.
‘You have to understand a number of things,’ he went on as calmly as possible. ‘First, you all have to realise that the so-called Nacht und Nebel instruction never went out. That is, it was never activated from either London or Washington. Imagine how everyone felt. Suddenly, a network – which had done incredible work during the Cold War – went dead. No explanation. Cabal just closed down. Then, old members of that network really went dead. Former agents were involved in accidents; or were overtly murdered. There was more than a natural interest. In many ways there was a kind of panic.
‘Your own beloved Vanya and Eagle came out into the field again. Late on, yes. Time had passed. There were no fresh trails. Everything seemed to have gone cold. Then both Vanya and Eagle were killed within a week of each other, and you – yes, you Praxi – were involved on the periphery of both their deaths. You can call us what you like. Call me James, and call Eagle Elizabeth or Easy. Which d’you prefer?’ He cut his eyes towards Easy St John who said she really preferred being called Easy.