‘Unlike you, James, to let a girl get the better of you. And after a night on the sofa, too! You must be losing your touch.’ Charles Henry Duggan let out a bellow of laughter and threw back the last of the Selbach-Oster Riesling which he had ordered with lunch and most of which he had consumed himself. Bond was not fond of German wine, particularly the Auslesen which were too sweet, too heavy – too German at the end of the day. Duggan had picked out the most expensive bottle on the menu. ‘The food here’s bloody awful so we might as well make up for it. Bloody Jerries! If I’d known I was going to be packed off here until I popped my clogs, I might have thought twice about joining the service.’
‘Nonsense, Charlie. You love it here.’
‘Bad Salzuflen? Even the name sounds like something you might catch in a brothel. All they’ve got are spas and salt springs. Most of the people are here for their health but the one thing they haven’t got is a cure for terminal boredom.’
Bond had driven north-east to the famous health resort close to the Teutoburg Forest mountains. His first thought had been to return to London but he had a feeling he had no time to lose. There had to be a reason why Sin was examining photographs of an American rocket in his private office, just as there had to be a reason for Jeopardy to steal them. Back in 1946, the SIS had set up a sub-section of the Intelligence Division whose primary role was to keep an eye on the buoyant economic and political scene in Germany with particular reference to any resurgence of Naziism on the one hand and to the ongoing activities of the communists on the other. Things had quietened down since then but the section – now known as Station G – was still a vital part of intelligence gathering, particularly with reference to Eastern Europe. It was housed in a nondescript office building close to the railway station. For the past ten years, it had been headed by Duggan and he had turned it into his own fiefdom with a staff that turned a blind eye to his idiosyncrasies. Bond was right. The post suited him well. And at the weekends there was always Berlin with darker backstreets and racier clubs than he would ever find at home.
Duggan had already given Bond a full debriefing. Together, they had sent a signal to London giving a detailed (if not comprehensive) account of what had occurred at the Schloss Bronsart. Bond had requested further information about Sin Jai-Seong, about a woman calling herself Jeopardy Lane and about all the imminent rocket launches in the USA. There was nothing more to do until a reply came in so the two men had gone to a local restaurant for lunch.
Duggan was a great many things that are unusual in the world of the secret service. He was fat – really fat – loud, bearded, frequently indiscreet and often, at least in appearance, drunk. He dressed badly in clothes that would have more suited a country squire – jackets and waistcoats in heavy checks and brightly coloured ties. He was also homosexual and didn’t care if people knew it. He and Bond had almost come to blows late one night in a Montmartre bar on the only occasion when the topic had come up, Duggan damning him for his Protestant upbringing and his blinkered world view. ‘The trouble with you, James, is you’re basically a prude. I bet half the boys at that bloody public school of yours were buggering each other blind and you didn’t even notice or looked the other way. Anyway, the service is crawling with sisters. You know it and I know it. Look at that dreadful man Burgess. It’s a gift to the Soviets, letting them set up their honeytraps, snaring civil servants who are too young and too scared to know better. God knows how many secrets we’ve lost that way. Change the law and let people be what they want to be – that’s what I say. And as for you, maybe you should try to be a bit less of a dinosaur. This is 1957, not the Middle Ages! The second half of the twentieth century!’
There were very few people who could talk to Bond in this way but the two of them had served together in the RNVR during the war and had even shared a flat for a short while in Victoria, sometimes travelling home together through the blackout. Fifteen years later, Bond couldn’t help liking Duggan. The man was loyal to his friends, reliable in his judgement and ran a first-class operation. Immediately after the war, he had helped set up JUNK, an underground railway that ran agents into the satellite states of Russia. He had cheerfully sold cheap Swiss watches behind the Iron Curtain, using the money to entice wavering apparatchiks to defect. It was thanks to his efforts that a great many clues about the Soviet chemical and biological warfare capability had come to light. He was good company. He knew how to live.
He could also be discreet when he wanted to be and as he waved for the bill he lowered his voice. ‘This business with the rockets,’ he muttered. ‘I have to say, I don’t like it at all. If you ask me, the chickens are coming home to roost.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘After the war, you were too busy running around saving the world. But some of us were thinking ahead. It was obvious that rocket technology was going to shape the future – and I’m not just talking about ICBM’s. I got drawn into it for a while. There was an operation called Backfire. We took a close look at any of the V2’s we could get our hands on and saw just how very good they were. So then we tried to recruit some of the boys from Peenemünde. We even had Wernher von Braun in London for a while. Horrible man. Anyway, we didn’t have any luck. There was that debacle with Colonel Tasoev who changed his bloody mind and then there was Professor Tank who disappeared to Argentina with all his plans hidden in his underpants, would you believe it! We managed to bag a few German engineers but none of the scientists were interested. They loathed the French. They were terrified of the Soviets, of course. But we couldn’t afford what they wanted to be paid so the whole lot went off to America and they’ve been there ever since.
‘I don’t know how much you know about the space race, James. I know that old bastard M keeps you on more or less full-time active service. But right now you should be looking to the stars. Let me tell you, that’s where the next war is going to be fought and that’s where it’s going to be won. Did you ever see that article in Collier’s magazine? Written by Wernher von Braun, God rot him. A fully paid-up member of the Nazi party now working for the Yanks! Anyway, he claimed it was possible to establish an artificial satellite in outer space – he called it a space station. It would have people living and working outside the earth’s atmosphere. Using telescopic cameras, they’d be able to see the face of every single human being on the planet. You light a cigarette in Leicester Square and they’d clock it. And they’d be able to launch guided missiles with pinpoint accuracy – this was written a few years back, remember – and von Braun concluded: “The first nation to do all this will control the earth.”
‘Since then the superpowers have been going at it hammer and tongs. Or maybe that should be hammer and sickle and tongs. The Americans have got Cape Canaveral. The Russians have got some sort of space city in a hellhole called Tyuratam in the middle of the Siberian desert, as far away from Western listening posts as they can get. They’ve built towers, bunkers . . . they poured a million cubic feet of concrete into the launch platforms alone. We don’t know very much, to be honest with you. As you can imagine, it’s a hellish problem getting information out. But their aim is to get a thermonuclear device weighing five tons into outer space and they may get there eventually. If they don’t, it certainly won’t be for want of trying.’
The waiter came over and they paid the bill. It seemed to Bond that the effects of all the alcohol Duggan had consumed had vanished in an instant. As they walked back through the town, he was utterly serious.
‘The thing about the space race is that it’s a strange mixture. You’ve got the scientists on the one side and the military on the other. So it’s all about exploring other planets, new frontiers and living together in peace and harmony. Or it’s about blowing the hell out of your enemy, utterly destroying them and devastating their country. It just depends who you talk to. The scientists need the money. The money comes from the military. But at the same time there’s something about space travel that’s really caught hold of the public imagination. Wernher von Braun even made a television programme, for heaven’s sake! Walt Disney’s Man in Space, also known as Mickey Mouse on the moon! But it worked. Forget the fact that the Americans and the Russians actually want to wipe each other out. Forget the fact that the entire space race began with the Korean War and the Americans’ ever-so pressing desire to drop a nuclear bomb on the Chinese. Suddenly it’s all twinkle, twinkle little star. Satellites. Communications. Artificial stars circling the earth in just two hours. Passenger rockets. Trips to Mars! Of course, a lot of it is hogwash but it’s still managed to weave its way into the dreams of ordinary people and suddenly it’s all become about prestige. You don’t even have to go to war. If you want to rule the earth, you’ve got to rule outer space. It’s as simple as that.
‘And this is a particularly interesting year, as it happens. They’ve even got a name for it. The International Geophysical Year. It’s something to do with an eleven-year cycle. Sun spots are particularly active at the moment. I was never good at science at school and it’s above my head in every sense but the point is that there’s never been a better time to measure radiation in the upper atmosphere and around seventy countries have come together to get a slice of the action, including the USSR. They’re all talking about mutual goals, a new spirit of co-operation and all the rest of it, but that’s the scientific side. The military boys are as busy as ever.
‘This is how Eisenhower sees it. The Americans put a civilian rocket into space for the sake of meteorological and radiological research. They get the prestige. The whole world applauds. But more than that. Suddenly they’ve got a satellite over Russian air space. They’ve set a new precedent – “freedom of space” – and the Russians can’t complain. They’re part of the same effort. And the next rocket that goes up might contain weapons. It might contain spy satellites. You see what I’m saying, James? Right now there’s an opportunity for the Americans to take a giant step forward in the space race and the Russians are actually helping them on their way.’
Bond thought about the photographs he had seen in Sin’s office. American rockets being studied by SMERSH – or perhaps by a small, specialised team within SMERSH. He remembered his meeting with M in London. Suddenly he saw the connection. ‘You talk about prestige,’ he said. ‘The Russians were at Nürburgring because they were worried about their chap coming second. It was all about Soviet technology. They wanted to prove that the Krassny was the fastest car on the road. Suppose you took the same principle and applied it to space travel?’
‘Russian rockets beating American ones? The R-3 against the Atlas or whatever? I suppose it makes sense. And it would explain what Sin was doing here in Germany. A bit like that chap in Crab Key . . .’
‘Blowing up rockets. Setting back the American space programme . . .’
Duggan thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, James. You might be right but I just don’t see it. First of all, I don’t know how Sin could get access to American launch stations: Cape Canaveral, Cooke, Wallops Island, White Sands.’
‘He has a recruitment business.’
‘Cooks and cleaners, maybe. Not engineers. He’d have a hell of a job getting anywhere near and suppose he did manage to blow up a couple of rockets. Would it really make that much of a difference? The truth is, the Americans are managing perfectly well without him. Last January they fired off a Thor rocket. It managed all of nine inches before it broke in two and blew up. They say you could hear the explosion thirty miles away. So they tried again in April. Same thing: thirty seconds and then bang! It turned out that it was some safety officer who’d got it in his head – quite wrongly – that the damn thing was going to fall on Orlando, so he put his thumb on the self-destruct button and blew it up. The last I heard, by the way, he’d been given a new job on a small island in the South Atlantic.’ Duggan laughed. ‘But that didn’t stop them. One month later they were at it again. The third rocket sat on the launch pad quite cheerfully for a few minutes and then blew itself to smithereens. You see what I mean? Every failure just makes them redouble their efforts and the American public don’t give two hoots about all their tax dollars going up quite literally in smoke. Half the time, they don’t know. These launch stations are all remote, deliberately. And anyway, they think the prize is worth funding. Ownership of space. It would take a lot to make them change their mind.’
They had been walking through medieval streets largely untouched by the war. Station G loomed up in front of them; a red-brick building that could have been a guest house or perhaps the home of a minor government department. Nobody stopped them as they walked in. An elderly doorman, head buried in a newspaper, barely glanced up. But Bond wasn’t fooled by the seeming lack of security. The doorman would almost certainly be armed. Their entrance would have been filmed by cameras concealed somewhere in the cornices. A fluoroscope would have been triggered as they passed and if they were known to be unidentified and carrying concealed weapons, the entire building would have gone into immediate lockdown. Duggan’s office was on the second floor. He puffed and wheezed his way up the faded marble staircase, supporting himself on the handrail, and he was in a bad mood as he entered the room with its solid desk, comfortable chairs and antique, cast-iron stove.
‘Greta!’ he called out. ‘I want two coffees. Strong – black. And have we had anything from London?’
A moment later, a smart-looking girl appeared, dressed in a severe, grey suit and with her hair in a Paris cut, framing her face. She was carrying a file and after a cool appraisal of Bond, she left it with Duggan and went out. Duggan opened the pages and read them. Bond lit a cigarette and waited for him to finish. The girl came back with the coffees. Once again they were alone.
‘Well,’ Duggan said at last. ‘We’re not really any the wiser. First, nothing’s come up on Jeopardy Lane, not from the CIA or the FBI. But she certainly isn’t a journalist – no articles under that name and she’s not known at Motor Sport or any of the other magazines. Secondly, we’ve got a bit more information about your friend Sin Jai-Seong, but nothing to get too excited about. The Blue Diamond Recruitment Agency is an absolutely solid business with no associations, criminal or otherwise. It has a virtual monopoly when it comes to Koreans, obviously, but it also handles Puerto Ricans, Jews, Greeks . . . you name it. There are millions of them, all cheap labour, but you can see that he’s creaming twenty cents off every dollar they earn and he’s making a fortune.’
‘What areas are they working in?’ Bond asked.
‘Well, he has to be careful, particularly in New York. The Cosa Nostra control rubbish collection and construction and he doesn’t want to rub up against the unions. But he’s got his finger in pretty much everything from meat processing to the rag trade. Labourers, hod carriers, elevator operators. A lot of the work is seasonal and, as I say, all of it’s low-paid. He has a lot of people in transport – the subway system and buses. But no rocket scientists, James. The closest you’re going to get is someone sweeping the floor.’
Bond took this information in. ‘What else?’
‘You asked about launches and this time you may have struck lucky. I don’t know. The next one is five days from now.’ Bond raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I thought that might interest you. They’re doing a satellite test, blasting off a Vanguard rocket from Wallops Island and they’re determined this one’s going to get off the ground. I’ve managed to dig up an image for you. Does it ring any bells?’
Duggan passed a photograph across the desk. Bond examined it: a strip of coastline, white buildings, the pencil shape of the rocket, the empty horizon. He recognised it at once.
‘It’s identical,’ he said. ‘Or as near as dammit. This was the picture I saw on Sin’s desk.’
‘Then you’d better be on your way, old boy. You’ve already got the go-ahead from M. I’ll arrange the flight.’
That same evening, Bond left for New York.