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interested. "So that, in theory, there is no reason why this emerald ball
should not have been unearthed from the Kremlin, furnished with a faked
history to establish ownership, and transferred abroad as a reward to some
friend of Russia for services rendered?"
"None at all. It would be an ingenious method of greatly rewarding the
beneficiary without the danger of paying large sums into his, or her, bank
account."
"But the final monetary reward would of course depend on the amount realized
by the sale of the object the auction price for instance?"
"Exactly."
"And what do you expect this object to fetch at Sotheby's?"
"Impossible to say. Wartski's will certainly bid very high. But of course they
wouldn't be prepared to tell anyone just how high
either on their own account for stock, so to speak, or acting on behalf of a
customer. Much would depend on how high they are forced up by an underbidder.
Anyway, not less than £100,000 I'd say."
"Hm." M.'s mouth turned down at the corners. "Expensive hunk of jewelry."
Dr. Fanshawe was aghast at this barefaced revelation of M.'s philistinism. He
actually looked M. straight in the face. "My dear sir," he expostulated, "do
you consider the stolen Goya, sold at Sotheby's for £140,000, that went to the
National Gallery, just an expensive hunk, as you put it, of canvas and paint?"
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M. said placatingly, "Forgive me, Dr. Fanshawe. I expressed myself clumsily. I
have never had the leisure to interest myself in works of art nor, on a naval
officer's pay, the money to acquire any. I was just registering my dismay at
the runaway prices being fetched at auction these days."
"You are entitled to your views, sir," said Dr. Fanshawe stuffily.
Bond thought it was time to rescue M. He also wanted to get Dr. Fanshawe out
of the room so that they could get down to the professional aspects of this
odd business. He got to his feet. He said to M., "Well, sir, I don't think
there is anything else I need to know. No doubt this will turn out to be
perfectly straightforward (like hell it would!) and just a matter of one of
your staff turning out to be a very lucky woman. But it's very kind of Dr.
Fanshawe to have gone to so much trouble." He turned to Dr. Fanshawe.
"Would you care to have a staff car to take you wherever you're going?"
"No thank you, thank you very much. It will be pleasant to walk across the
park."
Hands were shaken, good-byes said and Bond showed the doctor out. Bond came
back into the room. M. had taken a bulky file, stamped with the top secret red
star, out of a drawer and was already immersed in it. Bond took his seat again
and waited. The room was silent save for the riffling of paper. This also
stopped as M. extracted a foolscap sheet of blue cardboard used for
Confidential
Staff Records and carefully read through the forest of close type on both
sides.
Finally he slipped it back in the file and looked up. "Yes," he said and the
blue eyes were bright with interest. "It fits all right. The girl was born in
Paris in 1935. Mother very active in the Resistance during the war. Helped run
the Tulip Escape Route and got away with it. After the war, the girl went to
the Sorbonne and then got a job in the Embassy, in the Naval Attaché's office,
as an interpreter. You know the rest. She was compromised some unattractive
sexual business by some of her mother's old Resistance friends who by then
were working for the NKVD, and from then on she has been working under
Control. She applied, no doubt on instruction, for British citizenship. Her
clearance from the Embassy and her mother's Resistance record helped her to
get that by
1959, and she was then recommended to us by the FO. But it was there that she
made her big mistake. She asked for a year's leave before coming to us and was
next reported by the Hutchinson network in the Leningrad espionage school.
There she presumably received the usual training and we had to decide what to
do about her. Section 100 thought up the Purple Cipher operation and you know
the rest. She's been working for three years inside headquarters for the KGB
and now she's getting her reward this emerald ball thing worth £100,000. And
that's interesting on two counts. First it means that the KGB is totally
hooked on the Purple Cipher or they wouldn't be making this fantastic payment.
That's good news. It means that we can hot up the material we're passing over
put across some Grade 3 deception material and perhaps even move up to Grade
2. Secondly, it explains something we've never been able to understand that
this girl hasn't hitherto received a single payment for her services. We were
worried by that. She had an account at Glyn, Mills that only registered her
monthly paycheck of around £50. And she's consistently lived within it. Now
she's getting her payoff in one large lump sum via this bauble we've been
learning about. All very satisfactory."
M. reached for the ashtray made out of a twelve-inch shell base and rapped out
his pipe with the air of a man who has done a good afternoon's work.
Bond shifted in his chair. He badly needed a cigarette, but he wouldn't have
dreamed of lighting one. He wanted one to help him focus his thoughts. He felt
that there were some ragged edges to this problem one particularly. He said,
mildly, "Have we ever caught up with her local Control, sir? How does she get
her instructions?"
"Doesn't need to," said M. impatiently, busying himself with his pipe. "Once
she'd got hold of the Purple Cipher all she needed to do was hold down her
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job. Damn it man, she's pouring the stuff into their lap six times a day. What
sort of instructions would they need to give her? I doubt if the KGB men in
London even know of her existence perhaps the Resident Director does, but as
you
18
know we don't even know who he is. Give my eyes to find out."
Bond suddenly had a flash of intuition. It was as if a camera had started
grinding in his skull, grinding out a length of clear film.
He said quietly, "It might be that this business at Sotheby's could show him
to us show us who he is."
"What the devil are you talking about, 007? Explain yourself."
"Well sir," Bond's voice was calm with certainty, "you remember what this Dr.
Fanshawe said about an underbidder someone to make these Wartski merchants go
to their very top price. If the Russians don't seem to know or care very much
about Fabergé, as Dr.
Fanshawe says, they may have no very clear idea what this thing's really
worth. The KGB wouldn't be likely to know about such things anyway. They may
imagine it's only worth its break-up value say ten or twenty thousand pounds
for the emerald. That sort of sum would make more sense than the small fortune
the girl's going to get if Dr. Fanshawe's right. Well, if the Resident
Director is the only man who knows about this girl, he will be the only man
who knows she's been paid. So he'll be the underbidder. He'll be sent to
Sotheby's and told to push the sale through the roof. I'm certain of it. So
we'll be able to identify him and we'll have enough on him to have him sent
home. He just won't know what's hit him. Nor will the KGB. If I can go to the
sale and bowl him out and we've got the place covered with cameras, and the
auction records, we can get the FO to declare him persona non grata inside a
week. And Resident Directors don't grow on trees. It may be months before the
KGB can appoint a replacement."
M. said, thoughtfully, "Perhaps you've got something there." He swiveled his
chair round and gazed out of the big window towards the jagged skyline of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]