Страница 619 из 624
Number 2 of Secret Service Station W.B. was a lean, tense man in his early forties. He wore the uniform of his profession – well-cut, well-used, lightweight tweeds in a dark-green herringbone, a soft white silk shirt and an old school tie – in his case Wykehamist. At the sight of the tie, and while they exchanged conventional greetings in the small musty lobby of the apartment, Bond’s spirits, already low, sank another degree. He knew the type: backbone of the Civil Service; over-crammed and under-loved at Winchester; a good second in P.P.E. at Oxford; the war, staff jobs he would have done meticulously; perhaps an Q.B.E.; Allied Control Commission in Germany where he had been recruited into the I Branch and thence – because he was the ideal staff man and A.1 with Security and because he thought he would find life, drama, romance, the things he had never had – into the Secret Service. A sober, careful man had been needed to chaperon Bond on this ugly business. Captain Paul Sender, late of the Welsh Guards, had been the obvious choice. He had bought it. Now, like a good Wykehamist, he concealed his distaste for the job beneath careful, trite conversation as he showed Bond the layout of the apartment and the arrangements that had been made for the executioner’s preparedness and, to a modest extent, his comfort.
The flat consisted of a large double bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen containing ti
Captain Sender said, ‘Care to have a look at the field of fire? Then I can explain what the other side have in mind.’
Bond was tired. He didn’t particularly want to go to sleep with the picture of the battlefield on his mind. He said, ‘That’d be fine.’
Captain Sender switched off the lights. Chinks from the street light at the intersection showed round the curtains. ‘Don’t want to draw the curtains,’ said Captain Sender. ‘Unlikely, but they may be on the look-out for a covering party for 272. If you’d just lie on the bed and get your head under the curtains, I’ll brief you about what you’ll be looking at. Look to the left.’
It was a sash window and the bottom half was open. The mattress, by design, gave only a little and James Bond found himself more or less in the firing position he had been in on the Century Range, but now staring across broken, thickly weeded bombed ground towards the bright river of the Zimmerstrasse – the border with East Berlin. It looked about a hundred and fifty yards away. Captain Sender’s voice from above him and behind the curtain began reciting. It reminded Bond of a spiritualist séance.
‘That’s bombed ground in front of you. Plenty of cover. A hundred and thirty yards of it up to the frontier. Then the frontier – the street – and then a big stretch of more bombed ground on the enemy side. That’s why 272 chose this route. It’s one of the few places in the town which is broken land – thick weeds, ruined walls, cellars – on both sides of the frontier. He will sneak through that mess on the other side and make a dash across the Zimmerstrasse for the mess on our side. Trouble is, he’ll have thirty yards of brightly lit frontier to sprint across. That’ll be the killing ground. Right?’
Bond said, ‘Yes.’ He said it softly. The scent of the enemy, the need to take care, already had him by the nerves.
‘To your left, that big new ten-storey block is the Haus der Ministerien, the chief brain-centre of East Berlin. You can see the lights are still on in most of the windows. Most of those’ll stay on all night. These chaps work hard – shifts all round the clock. You probably won’t need to worry about the lighted ones. This “Trigger” chap’ll almost certainly fire from one of the dark windows. You’ll see there’s a block of four together on the corner above the intersection. They’ve stayed dark last night and tonight. They’ve got the best field of fire. From here, their range varies from three hundred to three hundred and ten yards. I’ve got all the figures and so on when you want them. You needn’t worry about much else. That street stays empty during the night – only the motorized patrols about every half an hour – light armoured car with a couple of motor cycles as escort. Last night, which I suppose is typical, between six and seven when this thing’s going to be done, there were a few people that came and went out of that side door. Civil servant types. Before that nothing out of the ordinary – usual flow of people in and out of a busy government building – except, of all things, a whole damned women’s orchestra. Made the hell of a racket in some concert hall they’ve got in there. Part of the block is the Ministry of Culture. Otherwise nothing – certainly none of the K.G.B. people we know, nor any signs of preparation for a job like this. But there wouldn’t be. They’re careful chaps, the opposition. Anyway, have a good look. Don’t forget it’s darker than it will be tomorrow around six. But you can get the general picture.’
Bond got the general picture and it stayed with him long after the other man was asleep and snoring softly with a gentle regular clicking sound – a Wykehamist snore, Bond reflected irritably.
Yes, he had got the picture – the picture of a flicker of movement among the shadowy ruins on the other side of the gleaming river of light, a pause, then the wild zigzagging sprint of a man in the full glare of the arcs, the crash of gunfire and either a crumpled, sprawling heap in the middle of the wide street or the noise of his onward dash through the weeds and rubble of the Western Sector – sudden death or a home run. The true gauntlet! How much time would Bond have to spot the Russian sniper in one of those dark windows? And kill him? Five seconds? Ten? When dawn edged the curtains with gun-metal, Bond capitulated to his fretting mind. It had won. He went softly into the bathroom and surveyed the ranks of medicine bottles that a thoughtful Secret Service had provided to keep its executioner in good shape. He selected the Tuinal, chased down two of the ruby-and-blue depth-charges with a glass of water and went back to bed. Then, pole-axed, he slept.
He awoke at midday. The flat was empty. Bond drew the curtains to let in the grey Prussian day and, standing well back from the window, gazed out at the drabness of Berlin and listened to the tram noises and to the distant screeching of the U-Bahn as it took the big curve into the Zoo station. He gave a quick, reluctant glance at what he had examined the night before, noted that the weeds among the bomb rubble were much the same as the London ones – rose-bay willow-herb, dock and bracken – and then went into the kitchen. There was a note propped against a loaf of bread: ‘My friend [a Secret Service euphemism which in this context meant Sender’s chief] says it’s all right for you to go out. But to be back by 1700 hours. Your gear [double-talk for Bond’s rifle] has arrived and the batman will lay it out this p.m. P. Sender.’
Bond lit the gas cooker, burned the message with a sneer at his profession, and then brewed himself a vast dish of scrambled eggs and bacon which he heaped on buttered toast and washed down with black coffee into which he had poured a liberal tot of whisky. Then he bathed and shaved, dressed in the drab, anonymous, middle-European clothes he had brought over for the purpose, looked at his disordered bed, decided to hell with it, and went down in the lift and out of the building.
James Bond had always found Berlin a glum, inimical city varnished on the Western side with a brittle veneer of gimcrack polish, rather like the chromium trim on American motorcars. He walked to the Kurfürstendamm, sat in the Café Marquardt, drank an espresso and moodily watched the obedient queues of pedestrians waiting for the ‘Go’ sign on the traffic lights while the shiny stream of cars went through their dangerous quadrille at the busy intersection. It was cold outside and the sharp wind from the Russian steppes whipped at the girls’ skirts and at the waterproofs of the impatient hurrying men each with the inevitable briefcase tucked under his arm. The infra-red wall heaters in the café glared redly down and gave a spurious glow to the faces of the café-squatters consuming their traditional ‘one cup of coffee and ten glasses of water’, reading the free newspapers and periodicals in their wooden racks or earnestly bent over business documents. Bond, closing his mind to the evening, debated with himself about ways to spend the afternoon. It finally came down to a choice between a visit to that respectable-looking brownstone house in the Clausewitzstrasse, known to all concierges and taxi-drivers, or a trip to the Wa