He smiled. ‘As a matter of fact I agree, but don’t spread your ideas too widely or I’ll find myself out of a job. Anyway, once the come-over has got through the strainer in Berlin, he’s flown to England and the bargain gets made – you tell us all you know about the Russian rocket sites and in exchange we’ll give you a new name, a British passport and a hideout where the Russians will never find you. That’s what they’re most frightened of, of course, the Russians getting after them and killing them. And, if they play, they get the choice of Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Africa. So, when they’ve told all they know, they get flown out to the country they’ve chosen, and there a reception committee run by the local police, a very hush-hush affair, of course, takes them over and they’re gradually eased into a job and into a community just as if they were a bona fide immigrant. It nearly always works all right. They get homesick to begin with, and have trouble settling down, but some member of the reception committee will always be at hand to give them any help they need.’
James Bond lit another cigarette. ‘I’m not telling you anything the Russians don’t know. The only secret side of the business is the addresses of these people. There’s a man I’ll call Boris. He’s been settled in Canada, in Toronto. He was a prize – twenty-four carat. He was a top naval constructor in Kronstadt – high up in their nuclear submarine team. He got away to Finland and then to stockholm. We picked him up and flew him to England. The Russians don’t often say anything about their defectors – just curse and let them go. If they’re important, they round up their families and ship them off to Siberia – to frighten other waverers. But it was different with Boris. They sent out a general call to their secret services to eliminate him. As luck would have it, an organization called spectre somehow listened in.’
James Bond took a hard look at the two men on the other side of the room. They hadn’t moved. They sat there and watched and waited. What for? James Bond turned back to me. ‘I’m not boring you?’
‘Oh, no. Of course not. It’s thrilling. These spectre people. Haven’t I read about them somewhere? In the papers?’
‘I expect you have. Less than a year ago there was this business of the stolen atomic bombs. It was called Operation
‘Oh, yes. Of course I remember. It was in all the papers. I could hardly believe it. It was like something out of a thriller. Why? Were you mixed up in it?’
James Bond smiled. ‘On the sidelines. But the point is that we never cleaned up spectre. The top man got away. It was a kind of independent spy network – “The Special Executive for Counter-espionage, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion” they call themselves. Well, they’ve got going again and, as I say, they came to hear that the Russians wanted Boris killed and somehow they found out where he was. Don’t ask me how. These people are too damned well informed for comfort. So they put it to the top K.G.B. man in Paris, the local head of the Russian Secret Service, that they’d do the job for one hundred thousand pounds. Presumably Moscow agreed, because the next thing that happened was that Ottawa – the famous Mounties – got on to us. They have a Special Branch that we work with pretty closely on this sort of thing, and they reported that there was an ex-Gestapo man in Toronto, chap called Horst Uhlmann, making contact with the gangs there, and did we know anything about him? It seemed he wanted some unspecified foreigner bumped off and was prepared to pay fifty thousand dollars for the job. Well, two and two got put together and some bright chap in our show had a hunch this might be an attempt on Boris by the Russians. So,’ James Bond’s mouth curled down, ‘I was sent out to look into the business.’
He smiled at me. ‘You wouldn’t rather switch on the television?’
‘Oh, no. Go on please.’
