John Gardner (8 page)

“We’ve got a match. Your missing Tigre.” There it was, the black shape quite clear against the snow. The technician opened up a smaller screen next to the video screen and up came the helicopter again, shown in both plan and section.

“From Monte Carlo to the far north of Russia. That’s quite a leap.’ “Personally, I think that it completes your own theory about the Janus syndicate. Pity the Evil Queen of Numbers won’t let you run with the ball.”

“You were saying?” M’s voice came from right behind them.

“I was just

“Making an unnecessary comment on a nickname I have already heard, Mr. Tanner. I happen to believe in numbers. Numbers are more accurate than human beings.”

“With respect, Ma’am, numbers are only as pure and accurate as the person who’s inputting them.”

“That goes without saying.” She gave Tanner a look that would cause concern to the toughest of men. “Now, the Prime Minister’s waiting for an update on the situation, so please proceed with your briefing, Mr. Tanner.” Bill Tanner paused for a moment, then walked across to the video wall. Bond had never seen Bill Tanner fazed by anyone, and the new M, hard as she was, seemed to have little effect on him.

“After the distress signal, James, the helicopter took off.

Seconds later the Russians scrambled three “Flogger-Ks” from the Anadyr base. They’re heading towards Severnaya, as is some unidentified piece of space junk - at least that’s what we’ve always thought it to be.’ “Severnaya’s supposed to have been dormant since “90, you think it’s operative again?”

“I think it’s been operative all the time. The ruins and general mess around it are, I believe, merely cosmetic.”

“So what’re they using it for?”

“There was a time,’ Tanner looked very troubled as he spoke, “when we suspected that Severnaya might just be the ground control station for that secret space-based weapons programme they coded GoldenEye. But M chipped in. “But our statistical analysis; our electronic and satellite intelligence could see they had neither the funds nor the technology to implement it.”

“Statistics, Ma’am, were never my strong point. Elint and Satint only go so far. With respect, you can read numbers from these sources, you can analyse them, but you can’t get into the heads and hearts of the people operating whatever your target happens to be. These pictures live?” M gave a short, dismissive laugh. “Unlike the American government we prefer not to get bad news from CNN. Of course they’re live.” She looked up and, like the rest, saw the pulsing red icon, the highlit area of Severnaya, and the moving pinpoints of light that were the Russian aircraft, heading towards the facility.

Below the ground at Severnaya, Natalya stood in the doorway, looking at the ripped and sprawled bodies of her friends. She felt shock and disgust, also a terrible fear seemed to clutch at her, icing her heart and sending her into a momentary depression.

She looked up at the map, saw the counters below it ticking off their numbers, took in the various icons and symbols, knowing what it meant. With that knowledge came action. She turned and dashed for the door that led towards the sleeping quarters. She had to get out of here very quickly indeed, and, if she had to face the snow and ice above ground, she needed more than the black skirt, the shirt and the skimpy underwear she wore with comfort in the air conditioned, underground facility which had been her natural habitat.

In her room she quickly changed into thermal underwear, jeans and her stout leather boots which she had bought during her last leave.

She shrugged herself into a thick fur coat, jammed a fur hat onto her head and was already drawing on fur-lined gloves as she ran back to the charnel house that had been the work area.

She could not hear the three jets, now in tight formation, at four thousand feet above the complex, their leader talking to base, saying that all seemed normal.

Above the aircraft, things were far from normal. The piece of space junk was changing shape, a hundred kilometres up. It appeared to detach pieces of charred and blackened metal that were merely outer covering. Petya was revealing itself as a hard steel core, while around it, a series of shields fanned out, like the ruff which opens up on some threatened reptile. Then, as it rolled slightly downwards, it detonated.

The immediate area around Severnaya was suddenly lit up by a cone-shaped blinding light. Within the light there were hundreds of writhing electrical charges, like long blue snakes.

Two of the “Flogger-Ks’ - one stationed just above the other were immediately engulfed in coils of electricity.

The upper aircraft seemed to be slammed down by the charge. The two aircraft merged together as one in a brilliant flash and explosion.

The lead “Flogger-K’ was hit by a similar bolt of electricity. It simply turned on its back and began to plunge earthwards, the pilot desperately pulling on the eject handle. He was still pulling when the machine bulleted into the huge radio telescope dish and burst into a fireball.

Below ground, Natalya Fyodorova Simonova thought there had been an earthquake. The entire complex shook violently and was plunged into darkness so that she found herself in the middle of the technical area with crackling blue lights circling and in constant movement around the masses of electronics which were scattered across the once pristine, hygienic computer room.

Her fear fed on the already obvious need to escape, and by the flickering deadly lights she dodged across the room, through what had been the main control section, stepping over the Duty Officer’s body, then running to the voice recognition unit. Twice she called out her name, but nothing happened. She thought of Boris and again crossed the minefield of ceaseless electrical charges, making her way towards the now blocked utility escape door.

At one point, when she had almost reached the door, Natalya screamed as a great creaking started above her.

She leaped to one side as two wall-mounted monitors came hurtling down. Then the creaking began in earnest and she saw in the dim light that the ceiling had begun to cave in.

She had never known dread or claustrophobia like this before. Her years of working in closed off facilities had never once produced anxiety or the horrible vision of being buried alive. Now it had changed. If she had to claw her way out, she would do it. Above her the groaning of weight against stressed concrete became louder; grit began to fill the air, stinging her eyes and drying her throat. She clasped a hand over nose and mouth, and when the final crash came she pushed her back against the wall as though it might be possible to physically penetrate the brick, steel and concrete.

Blood pounded in her ears and the rending, tearing, sliding sound of a whole section of the bunker finally giving way removed, for a moment, all her senses.

With a final grinding explosion half the roof collapsed, and with it the electronics and part of the huge radio telescope dish, mingled with pieces of the aircraft.

It was only when the dust started to clear and she felt the cold night air descending into what could have been her tomb, that Natalya began to move forward. Slowly at first, and then, as some of her courage returned, more surefooted. She climbed and thought of her grandfather’s big old apple tree she had climbed as a child. For a few moments she seemed to be fantasising that it was the tree itself, not flat and unstable concrete slabs, that it was summer again and her grandfather was chuckling, calling her a little monkey as she went upwards through the branches and leaves.

Then she remembered Boris, and recalled he was going out for an illegal smoke. She began to call, as she climbed into winter high above her -“Boris! … Boris Ivanovich!

Boris, can you hear me?” She was out in the cold, fresh, clear night air, standing alone in the snow.

Tanner was still standing with M and Bond when the screens went blank with a searing white flash.

“What the bloody hell was that?” Tanner jumped visibly; M flinched, and Bond moved, as though ready to throw himself to one side.

Seconds later both M and Tanner had grabbed telephones.

(Far away, Xenia Onatopp and General Ourumov, in the Tigre, felt themselves thrown from side to side as the machine bucked to the snarling rhythms of the dancing snakes of blue electrical fire which reached them, even fifty miles away. Xenia thought to herself that the French had done well. The Tigre was indeed invincible.) Bill Tanner called out from the telephone -“Our satellite’s been knocked out; so have two of the Americans’.

We’ve got one coming into range any second.” The screens cleared and the satellite images were replaced on the screen. Severnaya dark, except for odd spot fires. Then the dish, tilted and askew, with the wreckage of the burning “Flogger-K’.

“Good God,’ someone said.

“Two of the “Floggers” are down. Power’s out.

M moved closer. “Looks as though the third aircraft went into the dish.” She turned her head and asked Bond, “What do you think, 007?” He had been standing calmly trying to analyse what he could see. “Well, the buildings are standing. No car or truck movement. Not even a headlamp. I’d say EMP.” Tanner nodded. “That would account for the aircraft and satellites..

“And the cars,’ Bond added.

Bill Tanner turned to M. “EMP, Ma’am. ElectroMagnetic-Pulse. A first strike weapon developed by.

M cut in, “I know what EMP is, Mr. Tanner. Developed by both the Americans and the Soviets during the Cold War. Someone wrote about the theory after Hiroshima.

Set off a nuclear device in the upper atmosphere; this creates a pulse - a radiation surge actually - that destroys anything with an electronic circuit.” As she paused, so Tanner spoke again, “The idea was a weapon with which to knock out the enemy’s communications before he… she … they — - could retaliate.” M turned to Bond.

“So, is this GoldenEye? Does this mean GoldenEye actually exists?’ “Yes.

“Is there any chance this could be an accident?”

“Absolutely not, Ma’am, and this would explain the theft of the helicopter. It’s the perfect getaway vehicle if you wanted to steal a GoldenEye. You set the thing in motion, so that nobody can stop it. This, in turn, poses a problem. You have to get clear and wipe out all the evidence at the same time. i suspect GoldenEye is a unique triggering and guidance device. If you want to steal it, clean the place of any traces, you get out in something like Tigre.”

“So, you think its’s your wretched Janus Crime Syndicate?” There was just a trace of bitterness in her voice.

“Not necessarily.” Bond shook his head. “I’ve been inside that kind of Russian facility.” He peered at the screens. “The security is, as the younger generation would say, awesome. Voice-print activators only - which means you can keep the need-to-know down to a bare minimum.

You could even keep Yeltsin out of one of these places.

You would need two keys to fire the weapons; special access codes kept in a digital wall safe, the access to which is altered daily.” He paused, frowning. “There had to be an insider for this to work.” He asked one of the technicians to switch to infra-red.

“Now zoom in. No, to your right. A little bit more.

There.” The image left a lot to be desired, but a figure was climbing out of the wreckage around the base of the dish.

“As we can all see, someone is climbing out, which means that at least one person probably knows where the leak is; who it is.” Natalya was in the clear now, but the cold bit even through the layers of clothes she wore. She made herself go on, dragging one foot after another. The nearest village was at least twenty-five miles, but there was a small railway station twenty miles up the road. Trains were infrequent if she could make it that far.

She heard the dogs whining and barking before she saw them, disoriented and anxious pulling the wooden sled around in circles.

She thanked God, if there was a god. This could be her way out.

Maybe she would get to climb that apple tree again some day.

M was talking on the secure telephone when Bond arrived at her office. Moneypenny - usually keeper of M’s inner sanctum - had already gone off duty, but M waved him in, pointing to a chair in front of her desk.

“Sit,’ Bond thought. “Sit. Good dog.” He looked up at the wall behind her desk and wondered what the old M would have thought of the picture hanging there. In his day the old M had managed to get works of art on loan from the Ministry of Works. They were usually scenes of great naval battles or paintings of the sea.

The new painting was of different coloured rectangles, divided by triangles. “A daub,’ the Old Man would have called it. He would have hated it as much as he would have loathed the sterile atmosphere of the new office.

M finally completed her conversation with whoever had been on the other end of the line. The Prime Minister, Bond guessed as M lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and blew out the smoke in a long thin stream.

“That can damage your health, Ma’am, but I’m sure you know that already.” ~ She gave him the fish eye but did not answer.

Instead she said, “The Prime Minister’s talked with Moscow.

They’re saying it was an accident during a routine training exercise.’ “No comment on the type of weapon, I presume?” He allowed a thin smile, looking directly at M, as she shook her head. He shrugged, “Governments change, but the lies stay the same.

M grunted, and for a moment, Bond thought he was back with the Old Man who used to grunt regularly to avoid commenting on some questions.

“Tell me what else we know about the Janus Crime Syndicate.”

“Very big in the arms trade. Good smugglers with contacts everywhere. Their headquarters are in St. Petersburg and they were the first people who managed to get new supplies into Iraq during the Gulf War. Their head man’s unreliably described - which means our sources are very uncertain. So far the woman, Onatopp, is our only confirmed contact among the top people that is.” M grunted again. “Would you care for a drink?” What was this? he wondered. A retreat from alienation?

“Well, thank you. Your predecessor kept a very good cognac..

“I prefer bourbon.” She got up and crossed to a drinks cabinet.