Forever and a Day, Page 2

  Rolf Larsen had definitely had what is called a good war. Starting as the handsome, courageous editor of a clandestine counter-propaganda newspaper, he had escaped from Norway in 1942, reaching England via Sweden. He had joined the famous Kompani Linge, where he had received paramilitary and parachute training, returning to his own country in time to play a key role in Operation Mardonius, an attack on Oslo harbour with limpet mines delivered by canoe. He had become a member of the sabotage group known as the Oslo gang and took part in the destruction of the Korstoll Depot, a repair shop where several German fighter aircraft were destroyed. He had finished the war with a DSO from Great Britain, a War Cross with Sword from the Norwegian government and the admiration of just about everyone who knew him.

  Almost immediately, he had moved to Stockholm, taking advantage of the extraordinary financial and social surge that had come from low taxes, a small public sector and a largely unregulated market. He had made millions in ‘green gold’, exporting sawn timber goods and pulp from Sweden’s pine forests. He married Selma Ekman, a Swedish heiress, at once doubling his fortune, and the two of them had two young children. Bond had seen the well-dressed, respectable family the day before as their chauffeur dropped them off at Östermalm’s Saluhall, the old food market in central Stockholm. Rolf was in his forties now, his thick hair midway on its journey from blond to silver, his ruddy face and expanding belly the two signposts of a life well lived and a genial acquiescence to middle age.

  Except that it was all a lie.

  It turned out that Rolf Larsen had been a highly successful double agent, working for the Nazis, taking part in small-scale operations while at the same time keeping his masters informed about the bigger picture. He had been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Norwegian agents, including some who had actually fought at his side. But that wasn’t what had signed his death warrant. In 1944, a plan was put forward by the British for an assault on northern Norway, with troops leaving the Shetland Islands on fishing boats, penetrating the fjords under cover of darkness and fog. Two men had been sent ahead to pinpoint a suitable landing position and Larsen had betrayed them both. They had been captured, tortured and killed. The assault had been abandoned.

  British intelligence made many mistakes during the war but what the Germans never understood and what a man like Rolf Larsen would never have believed was how doggedly they would work to put things right once it was over. Two men from No. 4 Commando had disappeared after parachuting into enemy territory. But that wasn’t to be the end of the story. It was just the beginning. Even before the war ended, the wheels had started turning and slowly, irrevocably the truth had emerged, the investigation closing in on the young hero who was now the wealthy family man. It would be six whole years before the final proof was discovered and by this time there had been several thousand trials and forty executions. A new decade had begun. Dragging a twice-decorated man like Larsen through an exhausted court system would be of benefit to no one. Someone high up had made the decision. This one could be dealt with unofficially.

  As he pushed away his plate and called for a coffee, Bond considered what that meant. Nobody in Stockholm knew that he was here: not the police, not the government, not Säpo, the Swedish security service. This had to look like a straightforward murder and to all intents and purposes that was exactly what it was. Larsen was alone. Only that afternoon he had put his wife and children on the train to Uppsala where they were spending the weekend. Bond had watched them kiss goodbye on platform five of the Central Station. Larsen planned to follow them the next day. Right now he was at the Stockholm Opera House, watching a performance of Tosca. Bond had always had a loathing of opera; its absurdly large women, its histrionics, its noise. The fact that Larsen was spending his last night there was somehow fitting. He was on his way from one hell to another.

  There were to be no guns. Bullets came with a history that stab wounds did not. Bond wondered if this task had been chosen for him deliberately. His first killing had taken place at a distance, on the other end of a telescopic sight. He had been fifty yards away from Kishida when he died. Barely even a witness. In fact, for all Bond knew, the Japanese cipher expert could still have been breathing as his assassin took the lift back down to the ground floor – although this was admittedly unlikely after a bullet had just torn through the back of his throat.

  This time it was going to be close quarters. Larsen’s family home was spread over the top two floors of a building just round the corner from the restaurant. A room upstairs was occupied by a manservant called Otto who had come out of Säpo and who had the physique and watchful eyes of a professional bodyguard. Otto was a Swede with no criminal record and Bond knew he had to be left alone. The entire house was alarmed, connected to a police station just two blocks away. The kill had to be fast, efficient and, above all, silent.

  And what then? Two little girls, aged five and three, would find themselves without a father. A plump, happy wife would become a widow. The newspapers would celebrate the life of a war hero and demand action against the rising crime rate in Stockholm. And, all being well, Bond would be awarded his Double-O number. He would have earned his licence to kill.

  It was something that he wanted more than anything in the world – and he had wanted it from the moment he had entered the secret service. Why? Was it a hangover from the war, all those years in the RNVR where killing the enemy had been taken for granted and where any talk of morality or proportionality would have been seen at best as an irrelevance but more likely as a sign of weakness? Or was it the same drive that had taken him climbing in the Aiguilles Rouges and boxing at Fettes, simply the desire to be the best at everything he did? That was it, really. It didn’t matter if he was serving his country or his own interests. There were only three Double-O agents in the entire building and they were respected like no others. He was going to be the fourth.

  The steak was still sitting, desultorily, on the side of his plate. He gestured at the waiter to take it away, then drew a cigarette, a Du Maurier, out of its signature red packet, already enjoying the comforting flick of his old Ronson lighter. He had been wrong to blame the restaurant for its food. The truth was that he had no appetite, knowing what lay ahead. He glanced at his watch. Five past ten. The fat woman would be poisoning herself or throwing herself off a tower or whatever else it was she did in the last act of Puccini’s masterpiece, and soon the audience would be on its way home.

  And then …

  Bond took his time with the cigarette. He had another glass of wine, leaving half the bottle, not wanting the alcohol to dull his senses. Finally, he called for the bill, paid and left.

  He found himself in a narrow street, hemmed in on both sides with the great bulk of Stockholm Cathedral rising up at one end. Bond had a sense of being trapped, but that was the trouble with this city: as handsome as it might be, it had been cut into fourteen separate islands with everything bunched together so that to the malefactor it might become nothing more than a series of traps, particularly on a night such as this. He looked up and saw a full moon glowing a deep red in a cloudless sky. A strawberry moon. It was a name from his childhood and brought memories of a life long gone. Now it was a single eye watching him as he walked down the black and empty street, somehow complicit in what he was about to do.

  Half an hour later, shortly after eleven o’clock, a light blinked out on the sixth floor of the ornate mansion block that the Larsens occupied. Bond knew his moment had come. He stepped out of the shadows, glanced up and down the empty street, then withdrew a thin strip of plastic from his jacket pocket. The front door, with its Yale-style lock, offered no resistance. Ignoring the lift he climbed six floors to a square hallway with black and white tiles and another door, as ineffective as the first. As Bond eased it open, the blue metal box with the Rely-a-Bell alarm logo mounted high up on the wall blinked but did not sound. The system had been imported from London, and only the day before two men claiming to come from the Wilson Street office had arrived
to give it a complete overhaul. They had been carrying the necessary identification papers and seemed to know what they were doing. Nobody had given them a second thought and now the alarm slept peacefully, unaware of the figure slipping past below.

  Bond found himself in an expensive, old-fashioned apartment, its furnishings more German than Scandinavian with heavy dark furniture, rugs, chandeliers. He had brought a torch but didn’t need it. The curtains were tied back and rose-coloured light was seeping in through double-height windows. He made no sound as he climbed the stairs, past oil paintings brooding in overwrought gold frames. He had studied plans of the building and knew exactly where he was going. He turned a corner and padded down a corridor with an antique mirror at the end. More chandeliers hung overhead, the glass beads forming shadowy cobwebs. The third door opened into the master bedroom. Bond’s hand clamped down onto the needlessly elaborate brass handle. Very slowly, deliberately, he squeezed it open.

  This was it. He was there.

  Rolf Larsen slept in a king-sized nineteenth-century bed with carved headboard, legs and finials, everything white. Without his wife at his side, the amount of space that he occupied was almost obscene. He was a small figure, lying on his back with his head resting on one of five pillows that were grouped around him, as if whispering to him while he slept. It was a warm night. He had thrown off the blanket and was covered by a single white muslin sheet that seemed to stretch out forever, like a ghostly sea. Bond could make out his silver hair, the rise and fall of his chest. He was aware of his own heart beating faster. There was a metallic taste in his mouth. When he had killed Kishida, he had felt less involved. His only concern had been that he shouldn’t miss. But this was different. He could smell Larsen. In the all-embracing silence of the room, he could easily make out the sound of his breathing.

  Bond reached into the left sleeve of his jacket and pulled out a blade – seven inches long with a Dunlop rubber handle. All the time he had been eating his dinner at Cattelin, the knife had been resting in its leather scabbard, known as the X-sheath because of the way the straps crossed his arm. It was an old-fashioned weapon and one he had last used behind enemy lines. Bond had chosen it in part because it seemed appropriate, but mainly because it would be undetectable until the moment of use, when the quick-release buckle would deliver it neatly into his palm as it had just now. For a moment, he felt the weight of it in his hand. Rolf Larsen stirred in his sleep, some animal instinct screaming at him to wake up. The time had come. Bond acted.

  Using the edge of his knife hand he flicked on the bedside light. At the same time he leaned forward, his other hand clamping down on Larsen’s mouth before he could call out for help. Larsen’s eyes opened, filling almost simultaneously with surprise, understanding and terror. He saw a man aged about thirty, clean-shaven with black hair curving down across his forehead and very straight features; the nose, the mouth and the eyes almost mathematical in their precision. A three-inch scar on the man’s right cheek destroyed the symmetry. The man was wearing a dark suit, a white shirt and a knitted tie. His hand was pressed against his mouth with unusual force, making it almost impossible for him to breathe.

  ‘Larsen?’ The man had only spoken a single word but somehow Larsen knew straight away that he was British.

  Larsen nodded, his head making a space for itself in the softness of the pillow. The man’s hand moved with him, not allowing him the tiniest chance of escape.

  ‘I’m here for Bourne and Calder.’

  Bourne and Calder. The two men sent to the northern coast of Norway. The two men Larsen had betrayed. It hadn’t been part of Bond’s brief to extract any information from the traitor before he killed him, but he had to know for his own peace of mind.

  ‘Do you understand?’ he asked.

  Larsen hesitated, then nodded very slowly. He didn’t need to make any movement. Bond had already seen what he needed in the man’s eyes; the acknowledgement of guilt. So be it. Without a second thought, he drove the knife forward, into the neck muscle, slanting it towards Larsen’s brain.

  He drew back. He had expected death to be instantaneous but in the glow of the bedside lamp he saw that Larsen was very much alive, staring at Bond as if puzzled by what had just happened, his mouth opening and shutting, blood already flecking his lips. He couldn’t speak. The blade must have severed his trachea. It had also opened the carotid artery. As Bond sat there, perched on the side of the bed, he saw the most extraordinary sight. Blood was spreading underneath the sheet. There was a perfect circle of it, growing larger and larger. It was like the strawberry moon that Bond had seen outside, sliding out from behind a white cloud. And still it came. Larsen was staring at it, quite literally transfixed, dying by inches. The moment of death, when it finally arrived, was anticlimactic. His lips were still moving, but more slowly. Then they stopped. His eyes continued to stare. The blood crept another inch, almost touching Bond. Suddenly there was only one person breathing in the room.

  Bond removed the knife, wiped it clean and returned it to its sheath. He looked around him, then took Larsen’s gold cufflinks, his Rolex Speedking and a wallet containing 300 Swedish krona. It was hardly a reasonable motive for such a violent crime but it would have to do. He glanced one last time at the unmoving pile of flesh that had once been a human being, then turned off the lamp and left. He climbed back down six flights of stairs and let himself out into the street. Crossing the Strömbron Bridge at the northern corner of the island, he dropped the objects he had taken into the water below.

  The wallet went first, then the cufflinks and finally the heavy silver watch. It hit the surface and Bond saw the ripples, a series of circles – zeroes, perhaps – closing in on themselves and then vanishing as the evidence of what had taken place sank out of sight.

  3

  First Day

  Breakfast, for James Bond, was the one meal of the day that he considered to be indispensable. Lunch was a pleasure, dinner often a celebration, but breakfast had the seriousness and the solemnity of a ritual, a time when he could sit back and contemplate the day ahead. It was one of the reasons why he was so demanding about the ingredients: the particular brand of jam or marmalade, the unsalted butter, the eggs from French Maran hens boiled for exactly the right amount of time. It wasn’t just faddishness. He was giving the meal the respect it deserved.

  Although Bond was perfectly comfortable in the kitchen, he made a point of never cooking for himself. He liked to sit down at exactly half past seven in the morning. Sometimes he read the newspaper, but he preferred not to talk and he never listened to the wireless. Whatever horrors the next seven or eight hours might bring, this was a time of quietness and one, it sometimes occurred to him, that hadn’t changed throughout his life.

  On the day after his return from Stockholm, he came down to the table in his Chelsea home and watched as his elderly Scottish housekeeper, May, came bustling in with a well-laden tray. It was just over a year since she had joined him. He had interviewed three women for the job, explaining that he was a civil servant who worked for an obscure department within the Tourist Office and that this would involve a great deal of travel. The other two had accepted this story but she had looked at him with a glint in her eyes and announced: ‘Aye, right! D’ye take me for a numpty, Mr Bond? I’ll ask noo questions but ye tell me noo lies!’ Bond had been so amused by her response, he had hired her at once.

  ‘Good morning to you’s,’ she muttered now, that last ‘s’ being as close as she would ever come to ‘sir’. ‘Did ye have a good trip?’

  ‘Yes. It went very well, thank you, May.’

  She continued setting the plates down. ‘I don’ rightly ken what they’re thinking, this business with the Koreans,’ she grumbled, handing over that morning’s edition of The Times. The headlines were full of the American attack on Chinju. ‘Ye’d have thought the werld would have had enough o’ war.’ She sighed. ‘It’s all the fault of these bawheid communists. I always said ye should never have trusted that Jo
e Stalin. There’s one with a face like a skelped bahoochie. Ah well, what will be will be, I suppose …’

  She left the room and in the silence that followed Bond enjoyed May’s scrambled eggs, which he seriously considered to be the best in the world, alongside hot buttered toast with heather honey from Fortnum & Mason and several cups of double-strength coffee. He smoked two cigarettes and read the news and it was only as he left that he acknowledged that he had been quite deliberately putting all thoughts of Stockholm and Rolf Larsen (the mouth opening and shutting, the eyes staring) out of his mind.

  Bond drove to work in a midnight-blue Jaguar XK 120, which he had bought after seeing it at the London Motor Show and which he had almost instantly regretted. It was the fastest production car in the world, easily capable of reaching the 120 mph that its name suggested, but there was something sluggish about the way it handled and Bond had quickly tired of its angry snarl every time he accelerated away from the lights. He still had the crumpled wreckage of a steel-grey Mark II Continental Bentley tucked away in a storage depot in East London. If he could just find the time to straighten it out and give it a total refit, it might be a worthy replacement.

  Bond was aware that his current salary would never have afforded these luxuries: the car, the Regency house close to the King’s Road, the full-time housekeeper. His parents had died when he was just eleven years old, leaving behind a trust fund he had inherited when he was eighteen. He sometimes wondered if his life would have turned out differently if they had survived the climbing accident that had taken them. Not having parents, not having the closeness of immediate family, emerging from this emptiness – had all of this in some way moulded the man he had eventually become?

  With these thoughts in mind Bond came to a halt on the edge of Regent’s Park and continued the last ten minutes to the office on foot. The doorman nodded at him as if he’d barely noticed him, though in fact he had a photographic memory and not only knew the names and the office locations of everyone who worked in the building but – without referring to any written notes – would be able to say exactly when they had entered or left.