COLD COLD WAR

I.

The field-mouse froze in its track. It was a shabby, thin mouse. Its ribs were visible through the brown fur, and its whiskers moved like trembling leaves in the moonlight. The dark eyes darted about. The mouse didn't like the silence. It ran a few steps and stopped again. The nose wrinkled. Perhaps it was thinking of the five little mice hidden in a hole in the frozen ground The nervous little feet scratched at the snow-covered soil. They scratched some more. Then, death came.

A whooshing sound filled the ice-cold air. Riding on whispering wings a gigantic owl was suddenly on top of the mouse. A thin piercing scream drifted over the field and towards the dark patch of forest beside it. Then, silence.

James Bond shifted his binoculars from the dramatic wildlife scene back towards the little village. If it hadn't been so cold he would have shrugged. The mouse had it coming. Little mice shouldn’t go out on a snowy, moonlit night. Eventually the owl will get them. How fitting, he thought and allowed himself a cruel smile. The cold made his lips hurt. Even here in the shadow under the trees the frosty night bit through his clothes and nipped at his exposed face. The scar on the back of his hand hurt. The hair in his nostrils was frozen. Bond listened into the darkness. No sound. They would not come for another twenty minutes. So he took the metal bottle out of his coat jacket, carefully unscrewed it and prepared for the home-made sloe gin Heinrich had given him. “You have to wait for the first frost of winter. Then the sloe berries are perfect and will make a sweet gin. If not – your mouth will wrinkle from the bitter taste.” Heinrich had grinned at him. Well, no shortage of frost here. Bond offered a silent toast to his Austrian benefactor and took a long sip. The sweet liquor ran down his throat and warmed his stomach. Well, actually it probably didn’t. But it was better than just lying around in this numbing cold. Bond suddenly felt a longing for the soggy cold of the London winter he had left behind just three days ago.

He had known it the moment he had entered the antechamber of M.’s office. He had been called urgently from a round of firearm practice in the bowels of the building on Regent’s Park. Moneypenny lifted her eyebrows in disapproval while her thumb showed Bond the way to the wooden door. “Two minutes late” she scowled. “Oh, it’s one of those days?”, Bond smiled. She nodded solemnly. Her hand brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Her smile was cool. “I’d cut the quips if I were you. This is serious.” Bond straightened his tie. “Isn’t it always?” he murmured. Then he entered the sanctuary of M.’s office. 

M. didn’t look up when Bond entered the room. “Sit down, 007”, grunted the old man that Bond revered more than anything in the world. M. pushed his pipe into the other corner of his mouth and thumbed through the pages of a report. Then he lifted his cool, grey eyes. He looked at Bond silently for three seconds and returned to the report. “Hand healing well?” he muttered absent-mindedly. “Oh yes, Sir”, Bond replied and subconsciously massaged his skin where a pale scar was all that remained of the word “Shmersh” that had been cut into Bonds hand last summer in Royale-Les-Eaux.

M nodded, then looked out of the window at the light, depressing drizzle that hat bothered Bond since days. “I understand you know Austria a bit, 007?” Austria? He was not aware of any problem in Austria. Bond was surprised but nodded. “Well, yes, sir, I spent some time there before the war. Mostly skiing, and mostly in the west of the country, the Kitzbühel area. But I understand some things have changed now that the country is divided into four occupation zones.” “And your German?” “Passable, I should say. I have been doing some reading.” “Reading, eh?” M lifted his eyes and scanned Bonds face for a second, and funnily enough now he looked as if he knew the “reading” that Bond was alluding to were cheap thrillers like the erotic adventures of Countess Josephine Mutzenbacher that Bond had been fond of in his teens. He had, in fact, found several dusty copies of those at Portobello Road a few weeks ago and rekindled his old love for them. But he couldn’t know that. Couldn’t he?

“So I take it you’ve never been to Vienna, haven’t you?” Bond shook his head. M nodded, then he got to it. “Section V is in a bit of a fit right now, and I need you to look into it. One of their men has been behaving strangely. Disappearing over long stretches of time, and into the Sowjet sector, too. Not exactly Vienna, it's Nether Austria hinterland, not too far from Krems. He's gone again for two days as we speak. Anyway, it's fishy and it’s all in here.” He waved vaguely at the report on his desk, then continued. “Chief of staff will fill you in on your trip and all that. Now the reason I’m sending you is twofold. One, I would like your discreet opinion on Saunders, head of section V. As you may know Vienna right now is one of the hottest spots in this cold war, with four nations rubbing shoulders and it being the gate to the east and all. This little story you will look into is not the first disturbance, and I’m wondering how things are running there. An outside view on the man. Eh?” Bond nodded. “Of course. And the second reason?” M looked at him. “You have met the man in question. It's 535, or William Peeters.”

Bond thought for a while before answering. “Yes, sir, we served together, in the Royal Navy. Haven't met him since the war, though.” M leaned forward and put the tips of his fingers together. “And how would you describe him?” Bond hesitated, his eyes wandering through the room. “It's been a few years, sir. I'd say overall he was reliable. Nice chap. Perhaps enjoying the fine things of life a bit too much. If I was to think of a weakness.” M's eyes watched him cooly. Then he pushed the folder with the red star towards him. “I want you to think again, 007. I want you find Peeters and make sure whether he is dabbling with our Communist friends. And if so, I want you to act accordingly.” 

Bill Tanner had a twinkle in his eye when Bond visited him in his office down the corridor. While he lit a cigarette and took a deep puff from it he grinned boyishly. “So, back to adventure it is. Still, don't know if I should envy you, James. Saunders is not the kind of chap I'd want to spend an evening with. And Vienna is a grim place right now. By the way: they're having one of the coldest winters on record over there so I'd pack some warm clothing.” Bond shrugged and looked out the window. “London isn't exactly the Caribbean either, Bill. Any more surprises?” “I'm afraid yes. As the airport of Schwechat is smack-dab in the Sowjet sector and we don't want to send our Russian friends a huge warning flag you will land on a small airstrip in the British sector. Which means transportation in a cramped, single-engine plane. Sorry for that, James. On the other hand, you will land just beside the old Hapsburg castle of Schönbrunn, so you won't even have to buy a ticket. You flight leaves in three hours, so you have to beat it.” He smiled. “Is there anything I can do to make your trip more pleasant?”

James Bond nodded. “There is, in fact. I need recent military maps of Nether Austria. A guide of Vienna. And please get Saunders to contact an old friend of mine down there. I think his help would be very helpful. Goes by the name of Heinrich Fehringer and lives in a tiny village not too far of Krems. The name's Oberndorf.” Bill Tanner scribbled down the facts. “I thought you haven't been to the East of Austria?” “No, but Fehringer's married to the sister of an old friend of mine from Kitzbühel, Oberhauser. Fehringer’s a great fellow. We skied together several times, and Heinrich's invited me to drop in at his place whenever I came near Krems. But of course all that was before the war, so I wonder if he and I are still on the same side. Anyway, ask Saunders to find the man – if he's still alive.”

“I'll do that, James. Now get moving, don't forget to drink a schnapps to my health in Vienna, and don't let the Third Man bite you.”

 

II.

The Beechcraft Bonanza C35 swung deep over the white hills of the Wienerwald, towards the Wienfluss Valley. Bond looked up from the Guide of Vienna he had been reading when the pilot tapped his shoulder and pointed forward through the wind-shield. The monosyllabic Welshman who had spoken three lines throughout the flight so far now showed something akin to enthusiasm. “Schönbrunn Airstrip coming up in five minutes. You want to watch for the castle, it's quite a sight. May be one of the last times, too, they are just building another airstrip further to the right, on the Küniglberg.” It was difficult enough to discern too much with the snowflakes whirling everywhere, so Bond craned his head and squinted his eyes. Winter indeed, he thought shivering.

It had been smooth flying across the channel and through the Benelux countries. The soft droning of the single propeller had not turned out to be as numbing as he had feared, and while there was very little space to move in the cockpit, he never missed the comfort of the great transatlantic flights with their service. Bond was engrossed in the Guide of Vienna, discovering a world he had so far ignored. From time to time he looked out of the window. Over wide stretches of Germany, peppered with ruins and destroyed buildings, still ravaged by traces of the war, the wind had taken up, but it was only after Munich and in the shadow of the Alps that the winter truly began to flex its muscles. Icy winds and clouds of snow buffeted the small machine, and Bond had given up the book, instead concentrating on what he knew of Peeters.

They had served on the same ship in the Royal Navy for several weeks in '44, travelling it to Jamaica. Bond recalled a impossibly long, thin man with reddish hair and freckles, large ears and an eternal grin etched to his face. Petters was several years Bonds senior (Bond had been impossibly young when he entered the Volunteering Reserve), always good sports, always there for fun; Bond especially remembered a night in several joints in Kingston where they blew off steam, drank copious amounts of  unbearably sweet Pink Cow and barely made it back to the ship in time. Bond had observed that Petters had flirted far more with the local beauties (which Bond found rather vulgar) and in the end spent so much that he had to borrow from Bond; but apart from that he had found no real spot on Petters vest. After several weeks their paths had separated. The rest Bond gleamed from the dossier. Like him Petters had joined the Secret Service, with stints in Berlin and Rome, to finally arrive in Vienna in 1949. There he was an active member of the team that dug the tunnels in Operation Lord, a successful British attempt to listen in on the communications of the Sowjet High Commissariat in the Hotel Imperial. Until last year the Russians had no idea that the Western powers were following their every communication from Vienna; then a road caved in and this source was dried out.

And now this relieable Petters was behaving erratically. Was perhaps switching sides. What had happened? Bond knew that members of the four Secret services were approached by enemy nations all the time; Saunders of Section V must have chosen his staff well, taking in only those that were immune to such approaches. But he would learn more from Saunders in a few minutes. The prospect wasn't pleasant. Hw swallowed at the thought that one of the outcomes of this story could see his old comrade Peeters at the receiving end of one of Bonds bullets. Well, that's part of the dirty game they all played. You obey the rules - or else, you died.

The plane straightened out from a last dipping swerve and now Bond could see a soft white valley sprinkled with houses. In the middle of it a river ran due east, bordered by trees: the Wienfluss. And just to the right in front of them a huge structure became visible – the endless walls of the monumental Castle of Schönbrunn, seat of the Hapsburgs. Behind it lay a large empty park that slowly climbed a hill until it ended in a small building that Bond knew to be the Gloriette. He smiled grimly at this symbol of the past and recalled the words he had just read in his guide: “With the total absence of an aristocracy or any other elite (except the ski champion), the Austrian bureaucrat, who is essentially a small man waiting for his pension, has complete control over the country.” But his thoughts were cut short when the ground was suddenly rushing closer, the Beechcraft bumped across the icy landing strip, and Bond saw, in the falling darkness of the afternoon, a single man standing near the tiny hut that doubled as the air control.

 

The numbing cold grasped Bond in an icy grip as he left the plane. This is Siberia, he thought, straightening up the collar of his coat against the chill. Little wonder that Saunders' hand that shook his was gloved. The head of Section V wore a coat, was small with a pencil moustache and wore a melancholic expression on his reddish face. There was little warmth and sympathy in his curt "Welcome to Vienna, Commander Bond". Then he asked for Bonds papers and handed them to his young, pimple-faced ADC who disappeared in the small hut. "Let's get somewhere warmer, shall we?" Saunders turned on his heels and walked briskly towards a car that stood some forty yards away, just in front of the mighty iron gates of Schönbrunn. Bond threw a last look towards the plane and the pilot who gave him a quick salute. He grimaced and followed his host through the falling snow. No love lost here, Bond thought as walked to the car. Can't blame Saunders though. Having a man from headquarters fly in to clean up your mess is never fun. He drew the icy air into his lungs and risked a glance through the huge iron gates of Schönbrunn. He saw very little. He only knew that somewhere back there in the darkening evening and whirling snow stood a castle that was as cold as he was. 

 

The car that ferried Bond to the centre of Vienna turned out to be a beautiful Goliath GP 700 in jet-black. Saunders drove himself, while Bond sat beside him and the ADC squeezed in the backseat. Bond had instantly identified the bold and innovative design while getting in, the long elegance of the traverse-mounted motor with its fore- wheel-drive. He ventured a compliment to Saunders. Saunders continued to look forward as he answered. „I am very happy that you can identify the latest car models. I'm sure that it comes in handy sometimes. However, you will find that the intrinsic problems of the Vienna Secret Service marketplace are far less easy to identify.“ He turned and caught Bonds eyes. „Let me be very frank, Commander Bond. It takes years to get to know Vienna and the cat- and mouse-games that are played here day and night between the Russkies and the French and so forth. Sometimes my head aches just thinking about it. I don't quite see how London expects you to jump in here and solve the Peeters case when our office hasn't been able to understand what is happening...“ Fair enough, Bond thought as he clasped his hands and looked out at the dark silhouette of the town growing around him. Snow was still falling, perhaps less intensely less than before, and  danced around the rare lamp-posts. People hurried by, packed in coats and wearing hats and caps.