The room, however, was crowded and Bond recognised most of the faces from Erewhon. Only Tigerbalm and Happy appeared out of their depth, heavy and sly among the sunburned, soldierly young men.
‘James, great to see you.’ Simon stood at his elbow.
‘Wondered where you’d got to.’
Bond studied the face carefully. The openness, so noticeable at Erewhon, had become artificial. Simon’s pretence told Bond far more about the situation than all the double-talk in the world. Whatever the plot set in motion by SPECTRE through these people, it was already running. D minus two, three, four or five, he reckoned. Then he drastically reduced the odds as he spotted Tamil Rahani, seated on one side of St John-Finnes, with General Zwingli on the other. The three men sat apart from everyone else at a smaller table, and were being served with food by a pair of younger soldiers. Like the others, they were dressed in uniform olive slacks and drab green pullovers, their heads bent in deep conversation.
For a second Bond’s mind drifted off to M’s surveillance team in the village. Had they noted the comings and goings? Were they aware of the dangerous powers gathered together in this place?
‘I said, did you rest well?’ Simon was repeating.
‘Rest? Oh, rest, yes.’ Bond managed a smile. ‘I had no alternative, Simon. You saw to that.’
‘Come on, have some food.’ He began piling salads and cheese on to a plate until Bond had to stop him with a gesture of his hand.
They sat together at the end of one of the longer tables, Simon seeing to it that Bond had his back to the three leaders.
‘Security,’ said Simon with a grin, in answer to Bond’s last remark. ‘You know all about security, James. Perchance to dream, and a ride on the magic carpet. You go to sleep in a hot dusty climate, and wake up in a quiet English village. Would that all travel were so easy.’
‘I prefer to know where I’ve been, and where I’m going. I like to be aware.’
‘Sure.’ He took a mouthful of bread and cheese, chewing on it, sucking the juices back into his throat. Simon, Bond thought, was every inch a trained soldier. His face was the face of millions of men who marched from the Battle of Kadesh to the urban horrors of the present day.
‘Hallo, the Professor’s coming your way, James. Looks as if he’s got orders for you.’
St John-Finnes leant over them. ‘James,’ his voice had a quiet, confiding tone, as though trying to calm a wayward child, ‘can you spare an hour or two?’
Bond just checked himself from making a fatuous remark, nodded and rose, winking at Simon as he followed the Master of Endor, as he now thought of him, from the room. He could feel the eyes of Rahani and Zwingli on his back as they left.
There was a young man guarding the stairs down to the laboratory. He did not even signify that he had seen them, almost ostentatiously looking the other way.
‘I thought I’d give you a chance to lose the American Revolution to me,’ Jay Autem said as they began the descent. ‘It’s an easy enough simulation at this level, so we can, perhaps, talk about your plans as we fight. Yes?’
‘Whatever you say.’ Bond appeared noncommittal, but ran his plan for getting the EPOC frequency through his mind.
Neither Cindy nor Peter was in the main laboratory, and there had been a radical rearrangement. The largest area was now filled with collapsible wooden chairs, arranged in rows like a school assembly hall. At the far end, facing the chairs, were a large television projection screen and Jay Autem Holy’s version of the Terror Twelve on a movable table.
Bond noticed two modern typing chairs and the big, chunky joystick controllers near by. A training session had obviously been going on earlier that day. The Balloon Game? Almost certainly.
They passed through into the long room with its map of the Eastern seaboard of eighteenth-century America; Boston with Bunker’s Hill and Breed’s Hill to the north, Dorchester Heights jutting out to enclose the harbour, and the townships of Lexington and Concord inland. For no apparent reason, Bond recalled hearing Americans pronounce Concord with a shortened second syllable so that it sounded like Conquered. Jay Autem Holy was smiling down at the board, with its movable open rectangle, and all the games paraphernalia set at the players’ places.
Bond noticed the smile and the look, and in that second saw, for all the man’s brilliance, the chink in his armour revealed. His interest in strategy and tactics had become an obsession – an obsession with winning. Holy was interested only in winning. To lose was the ultimate failure. Like an over-indulged child, to win was necessary, otherwise he could not live with himself. Had he lost some internal Pentagon battle when he disappeared all those years ago? Bond wondered, steeling himself.
This fanatical Games Master was now issuing rapid instructions. Bond prepared to win the American Revolution, and so put Jay Autem Holy at a psychological disadvantage.
The rules were simple enough. Each player took a turn, which was divided into four movements: Orders, Movement, Challenge and Resolution. Some of these moves could be made in secret by marking the location of troops, or matériel, on a small duplicated map of the playing area, a pile of which rested in front of each player.
‘When we transfer the whole thing on to computer there will be a more ingenious method of making the unobserved moves,’ Holy told him with all the pride of a small boy showing off a collection of toy soldiers.
The playing area itself, on the grid of the large map, was marked out in hundreds of black hexagonals. Each player had counters which represented the number, strength and type of unit – black for a piece of cannon with horses and crew, green for five men, blue for ten, red for twenty, and so on. There were also counters overprinted with a horse, denoting mounted troops, and special counters to represent arms caches and the rebel leaders.
In good weather men could move five hexagonals on foot, seven on horseback, and cannon only two. These moves were restricted by bad weather, woodland or hills.
Once Orders had been noted, the player moved and then challenged, either by coming within two hexes of an enemy counter or by declaring that he had sight over five hexes, thereby revealing any hidden moves. After the Challenge came the Resolution in which various strengths, fatigue, weather, were taken into consideration, and the outcome of the Challenge would be noted, one or the other player losing troops, materiel, or the action itself.
As each turn, at the beginning, covered a time-scale of one day – and the whole episode lasted from September 1774 to June 1775 – Bond realised they could be at it for many hours.
‘Once we get it on computer, the whole business becomes faster, of course,’ Holy remarked as they began their Orders phase – with Bond playing the British. He remembered what Peter had told him: that his opponent almost expected the British to make the same moves – and mistakes – as they had in history.
As Bond recalled it, the garrison commander had been hamstrung by the length of time orders took to reach him from England. Had he acted decisively in the first weeks and months, this opening period could have had a very different outcome. While Independence would almost certainly have followed eventually, lives as well as face might have been saved.
Bond opened by showing patrols going out of Boston to search the surrounding countryside. He also made secret forays in order to gain control of the high ground at Bunker’s and Breed’s Hills, together with the Dorchester Heights, at an early stage.
He was surprised to find how much faster the game moved than he had expected.
‘The fascination for me,’ Holy observed as Bond took out two arms caches and around twenty revolutionaries on the Lexington road, ‘is the juxtaposition of reality and fiction. But, in your former job, this must have been a constant problem.’
Bond secretly took three more cannon towards Breed’s Hill, and a section of thirty men in a final move to the top of Dorchester Heights, while showing more patrols on the ground along the Boston-Concord line. ‘Yes.’ Be truthful, he thought, ‘Yes, I have lived a fictiti
ous life within a reality. It is the daily bread of field agents.’
‘I trust you are living in reality now, friend Bond. I say that because what is being planned in this house can also change the course of history.’
Holy revealed two strong bodies of the Colonial Militia along the road, attacking the British patrols so fiercely that Bond lost almost twenty men and was forced to withdraw and regroup. Secretly, though, he still poured men, and weapons on to the dominating ground. The Battle of Bunker’s Hill – if it ever came – would be completely reversed, with the British forces in a strong and dominant position, defending instead of attacking under the withering fire of the entrenched Militia.
‘One hopes that any change can only be for the good, and that lives are not put at risk,’ Bond said after a pause.
‘Lives are always at risk.’
The Master of Endor found himself losing four caches of weapons and ammunition in a farmhouse on the far side of Lexington. He realised that Bond had also begun to move his forces on Concord. He shrugged. ‘But, as for your own life, I know there is no point in threatening you with sudden death. Any threat to your person is of little importance.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Bond found himself smiling. ‘We all like life. The thought of being separated from it is as good a lever as any.’
The date on the calendar easel showed them almost at the end of December, and the weather was against both sides. All either of them could do now was consolidate – openly, or by using the clandestine option. Bond decided to divide his forces, encircling the road between Lexington and Concord, while his remaining troops continued to fortify the hills and heights. Jay Autem Holy appeared to be playing a more devious game, sniping at British patrols and, Bond suspected, moving forces on to the high ground already occupied by the British. They played, turn after turn as the weather grew worse and movement was constantly restricted. Throughout this phase, the Master of Endor carried on a conversation that appeared to have little to do with the simulated battle.
‘Your part in our mission . . .’ he took out five of Bond’s men ‘. . . is of exceptional importance, and you will undoubtedly have to use much fiction and illusion, to accomplish it.’
‘Yes. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.’
‘Have you given thought to the way governments mislead their gullible peoples?’
‘How do you mean?’ Bond now had sizeable forces on all three sections of ground overlooking Boston.
‘The obvious, of course, is the so-called balance of power. The United States does not draw attention to the fact that it is outnumbered in space by Russian satellites – not to mention things like the fractional orbital bombing system, in which the Soviets hold a monopoly of seventeen to zero.’
‘The figures are there for anybody to see.’ Bond would soon have to make a serious challenge from the high ground, as Colonial forces struggled upwards in increasing numbers, restricted by both the climb and the weather.
‘Oh yes, but neither side makes a big thing about figures.’ Holy scanned the board, brow creased. ‘Except when Russia takes umbrage at the deployment of Cruise and Pershings in Europe. Even when she can more than adequately match them. But James, what is the real conspiracy here? The British government ties up many policemen controlling anti-nuclear protesters. Yet nobody says to these well-meaning people, “If it happens, brothers and sisters, it’s not going to happen with the big nuclear bang. Cruise and Pershing are only for rattling. What could occur would be ten thousand times worse.” They do not stop to tell the worthy ladies at Greenham Common or the marchers in London.’
‘Nobody tells the protesters in the United States either.’ Bond watched as his opponent edged even larger numbers of men towards the waiting British guns, and fought a small skirmish along the constant battlefront of the country between Boston and Concord.
‘And yet, if it came, James, what would happen?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. Certainly not the big bang and the mushroom cloud. More like the bright lights and a very nasty chemical cloud.’
‘Quite . . . I challenge from this hex.’ Holy’s arm moved out, to an area between Concord and Lexington, where British troops were now much thinner on the ground. ‘No, it will be neutrons and chemicals. A lot of death, but little destruction. Then a confrontation in space, with the Soviets holding the big stick up there.’
‘Unless the United States and NATO have done something to equalise things. That’s what is going on, isn’t it?’ Why this? Bond asked himself. Why talk to me about the balance of power, and the place nuclear weapons play in that balance?
Then he recalled the sound advice always given in classes on interrogation – listen to the words, ignore the orchestration that makes the banal words seem more intelligent; the clever, soaring strings that take your mind from the cheap potency of simple, emotional ideas.
By now it was late January in the game and, at a Challenge, Bond had to reveal there were British forces ringing the far side of Concord. Jay Autem Holy started to cut them apart with his Colonial Militia, sniping across the winter landscape. Bond saw how addictive this kind of exercise could become. You could almost feel the cold and fatigue which played havoc with men’s strength and fighting ability. You even heard the crack of musket fire, and saw the blood staining the dirty snow in some farmer’s field.
Dr Jay Autem Holy was not really talking about the lopsided balance of power. He was talking about the need to end the whole system which controlled that balance.
‘Would the world not be a better and safer place if the real strength were removed?’ he asked, making another foray into the bleak Massachusetts winter scene. ‘If the stings were drawn from the superpowers’ tails?’
‘If it were possible, yes,’ Bond agreed. ‘It would be better, but I doubt safer. The world’s always been a dangerous place.’ One more turn and he would have to declare his presence in the hills.
Holy leaned back, temporarily stopping play. ‘We’re involved in halting the race to the holocaust – nuclear, neutron or chemical. To you is entrusted the task of getting that EPOC frequency. Now, do you yet have a way?’ As though he did not expect an answer, he played through his turn, concentrating on bringing men well into the British firing zone.
‘I have the makings of a plan. It will require certain information in advance . . .’
‘What kind of information?’
‘When you need the frequency, I shall have to know, a little ahead of time, exactly who is the Duty Security Officer, for the night in question, at the Foreign Office . . .’
‘That presents no problem. One man does the job for a whole week, yes?’
‘As a rule.’
‘And he is a senior officer?’
Bond spread the fingers of his right hand, making a rocking movement. ‘Let’s say middle management.’
‘But you are likely to know him?’
‘That’s why I have to get a name. If you can’t provide it, I shall have to telephone . . .’
‘We can.’
‘Then, if I know him, I shall still have to make a call. If he is unknown to me – an unlikely possibility – I’ll have to think again.’
‘If you know him?’
‘I have a way of getting in. I should need an hour at the most in his company.’ Bond prayed it would work. He had to have some communication with the outside world.
‘I challenge you here.’ Bond’s finger hovered around the upper reaches of Breed’s Hill.
‘But . . .’ his opponent began, then realised the trap which Bond had sprung.
A few minutes later, as he faced slaughter on the slopes of Bunker’s Hill, having lost the majority of his men and arms on Dorchester Heights and Breed’s Hill, Jay Autem angrily told Bond that he would have plenty of warning. ‘You’ll know who the officer is, that I promise you.’ He watched as Bond revealed two more cannon to counter-attacking militia on the far side of the hill. ‘This is the wrong way round,’ he said, barely
controlling his rage. ‘And Bunker’s Hill shouldn’t happen until June. It’s hardly February!’
‘And this is the fiction,’ Bond said. ‘The reality’s history – even though a great deal of history happens to be fiction too.’
He was quite pleased with his showing on this simulation, and allowed imagination to run riot. The weather for this series of turns was heavy rain, with a cold blustery wind running up from the sea. The wind raged as men and guns were locked on the barren hill, their cries lost in the cold, while the rebels still in Boston were at the mercy of British guns from Dorchester and Breed’s Hill.
Then, suddenly, the storm broke. Jay Autem Holy’s chest seemed to swell, and his cheeks turned from red to crimson.
‘You . . . You . . . You . . .’ The voice rose to a scream. ‘You’ve beaten me! ME!’ One huge hand swept the papers from his playing area, then came down in a fist. ‘How dare you? How dare you even . . .’
It was an awesome rage as he spluttered, stamping his feet, kicking the table. Awesome, and yet funny, as a child’s tantrums are amusing yet distressing. He went on spluttering, blustering, out of control to the extent that Bond thought he would be physically attacked. The man was, as he had already thought, quite unhinged, with a dangerous, deep-seated madness.
Then, as suddenly as the rage had begun, it stopped. There was no dusk, no twilight, for sanity appeared to return, and he stood, looking for a brief moment like a chastened child.
‘The Militia could rally yet.’ The voice was small, throaty. ‘But we’ve played too long. I have other things to do. Better things.’
He stood, as though winning or losing a game were now of little consequence to him. When he spoke again, the tone was completely normal, as if nothing unusual had taken place, quiet and conversational, making it all the more bizarre.