Brokenclaw

9

BEDTIME STORIES

Myra hovered by the door, ready to snatch at the handle as soon as her old friend hit the buzzer. On the other side of the room, Bond tapped out a number on the telephone. But it was not the number Myra had given him. It rang twice, then a voice at the distant end said, ‘Curve’s Deli, Howard speaking. How can I help you?’

‘Oh, sorry, I think I’ve misdialled.’

‘Okay, sir.’ The line closed and Bond put down the instrument and began to move towards Myra and the door. There were ten combinations of the misdialled, or misrouted, code that he could have used. The ‘Oh, sorry,’ prefix meant that Grant’s people had to get a message urgently to Rushia and stand by for another call from Bond – Custodian.

The door buzzer gave two quick brrrrps and Myra wrenched at the handle. ‘Jenn . . .’ she began, then stepped back into the room, her mouth open. ‘You’re not!!’

‘Not Jenny Mo,’ Bond said, standing directly behind her as Chi-Chi came in, dumping her case and the canvas bag on the floor.

‘I don’t . . .’ Myra looked around her, eyes wide with terror. ‘Who are you? I thought Jenny . . .’

‘Get her into the bedroom, over there,’ he said sharply, and Chi-Chi moved in, caught Myra’s right wrist, spun her around and hissed, ‘Move.’

Myra tried to protest, but Chi-Chi merely applied a little pressure and she had no option but to do what was commanded.

‘Just keep her quiet in there. We’ll sort her out later.’

Chi-Chi said nothing, but indicated with her eyes that she could handle it. When the bedroom door closed he went to the phone again and tapped out the number Myra had given to him. It rang for quite a long time before a gruff, accented voice answered with a grunt.

‘I had a message to call you,’ Bond said.

‘Your name?’

He took a deep breath and prayed that Franks and Orr had got it right. ‘Peter Abelard.’

‘So you’ve arrived. Is Héloïse with you?’

‘Yes, but she’s pretty tired. It’s been a long trip.’

‘We have your wellbeing at heart.’ The voice became strong and not unpleasant. ‘That’s why we arranged an overnight stop before you come on to San Francisco. You leave tomorrow night, or tonight in your case, for it must be after midnight. American Airlines Flight 15, leaving JFK at nine fifteen. The tickets are being held in your names at the desk. Just be there before eight fifteen to pick them up. You get in here about half past midnight, and you will call this number as soon as you’re through the gate. You understand?’

‘We’ll be there.’

‘Good.’

Bond stood, silent and looking at the handset for a few seconds after they had disconnected, then he called to Chi-Chi, ‘Bring her out here, we’ve a whole lot of talking to do.’

Chi-Chi did not have Myra under restraint when the women came back into the room, and it was obvious that the tall girl was confused and upset; her eyes were red and filled with tears.

Chi-Chi sat her down in one of the leather chairs. ‘Tell my friend what you’ve told me.’ Her voice had almost a parade ground snap in it.

Myra looked up at Bond, and then away again quickly, as though very frightened. ‘Just tell him,’ Chi-Chi commanded again.

‘I was expecting my old friend, Jenny,’ she began.

‘Yes, we all know that. Tell him why you were expecting her.’

She bit her lip. ‘They told me that she was one of the people who would come during the period from twenty-seventh of September until seventh of this month.’ She was still very tearful.

‘And you were to identify her for them? Whoever “they” happen to be.’

‘No . . . No . . . No,’ in rapid succession, with a wild shaking of the head. ‘No, they had no idea that I’d ever known anyone by the name of Jenny Mo.’

Bond thought this was an unlikely story, but he kept up the fiction. ‘Myra, who are they?’

‘I . . .’ she began, then faltered and started again, ‘I don’t really know. People I am indebted to.’

‘That’s as far as I got with her,’ Chi-Chi muttered.

‘See if you can rustle up some coffee or something.’ Bond moved to sit near Myra, but the girl half rose. ‘How stupid of me, I have food waiting for you. I’m sorry to be so damned wet, but – well, I’ve so looked forward to seeing Jenny, and this is a blow. I thought she was dead.’

‘Sit down,’ Bond spoke softly, gently, glancing up at Chi-Chi. His eyes tried to indicate that they should play the good cop, bad cop routine. ‘Just coffee.’

Chi-Chi nodded and went towards the kitchen.

‘These people you say you’re beholden to – who are they, exactly?’

‘Are you police?’ A very small voice.

‘No. If you tell us the truth, Myra, nothing bad will happen to you.’

‘Then . . .’

‘I should warn you, Myra,’ Chi-Chi stood in the passageway to the kitchen, ‘if you do not tell us the truth, we shall know. Then you will wish you had never been born.’

Bond nodded to Myra, as though bearing out the Chinese girl’s words, while at the same time showing his own compassion.

There was a long, drifting hesitation, then Myra started again. ‘I’d better begin at the beginning, for I was born in China, just outside Peking, as they called it then, in 1948.’

So, Bond thought, she was older than he had suspected. Over forty in fact.

‘My parents had spent most of their lives in China. They were American citizens, Baptist missionaries, and you will know that things were chaotic in that strange country during the late 1940s . . .’

‘And after,’ Bond commented.

Myra gave a little nod. ‘When I was born, in the November of ’48, there was bitter fighting around Peking. But the memory of my childhood in Peking itself was one of happiness. We lived in a small but pleasant house on the outskirts of the city. My parents taught me and brought me up as a Christian, which I thought odd, because the Communist Revolution was in full flood and I knew that we were different by the time I was seven or eight. There seemed to be no other Americans that we could mix with. In fact, we saw very few white people, though a number of Chinese, most of them officers of the Red Army, visited us.

‘When I was sixteen, I was told what had happened. During the fighting between Mao’s Red Army and the Nationalist troops at the time of my birth, my parents had sheltered a young Red Army officer. He had been badly wounded and my mother nursed him while my father lied to the Nationalist soldiers who came looking for Communist stragglers.

‘When Peking was taken and the Revolution began in earnest, the young officer told my father that he would see to it that we were not harmed. Later, he returned and said it was impossible for him to get us out of the country, but if we made no political trouble, he would ensure that we could live in peace. The house was found for us and there we lived. Both my father and mother embraced Mao’s brand of Communism and my father did some translation work for the new government. For this, we were left in peace.

‘I understood little of the political implications, though I know that in my late teens I began to feel very uncomfortable about some of the things my father had to do.’

She stopped, as though a host of memories had come drifting back to her, and Bond was forced to prompt her to go on.

‘I was twenty-four when the officer who I had been told was the man my parents had sheltered came late one night and spent hours alone with my father. It appeared that he could do little to help us any more. I didn’t understand it all, but he seemed to have lost some of his previous power. For several weeks we were confined to the house and there was an armed guard at the door. Then he came again. Apparently there was one way he could save us from being tried as spies and probably executed – we knew many had faced trials and summary death for what was called spying. If my parents would consent to my being taken to the United States, they would be safe. I was to find work in New York and we would be allowed to exchange letters once a month. The officer told me it was not likely that I would ever see my parents again, but at least I would be sure of their safety in their old age if I did as I was told.’

‘So you came to America?’

She gave a small nod, biting her lip. ‘I think I should have stayed. I was ordered to do anything my parents instructed me to do. I don’t think they’re alive any more, but I still get letters which appear to be from them.’

‘And you obey instructions?’

‘Yes. There was no problem with my passport, social security, anything. There was even a job for me. I am a translator at the UN. I speak several Chinese dialects; German, quite good Russian, and French.’

‘Your mother must have been an amazing lady.’ Chi-Chi had come through with a tray loaded with cups and a large thermos of coffee.

‘Oh, she was. She taught me well.’

‘The jobs you were asked to do . . . ?’ Bond began.

‘There haven’t been all that many. I carry a great sadness about my family, but I live comfortably, my work is interesting. I’m modestly happy.’

‘The jobs?’ he prompted.

‘Delivering messages. Picking up letters and forwarding them to various people, both here and abroad. This is only the third time I’ve had to let people stay here.’

‘Chinese people?’

‘The first time – oh, six years ago – there were two Caucasians, foreigners who did not speak English well and a Chinese – a young man who was very kind. He comes back to see me quite regularly. He’s a good man. Then, last year, there were two Chinese, a man and a woman. They stayed for six days. There were telephone calls and, finally, a rough-looking Chinese came and took them away.’

‘This Chinese? The one who comes back to see you. Does he ever give you instructions?’

‘No. No, never. We have a kind of . . . well . . .’

‘You sleep with him,’ Chi-Chi said harshly.

‘Yes. Yes, I sleep with him from time to time.’

‘Can I make a guess at something?’ Bond took a proffered cup of strong black coffee.

‘What?’

‘I would guess that the young officer your parents saved – the one who had you brought to America – is called Hung Chow H’ang. Right?’

Myra gave a little gasp, ‘Yes. How did you . . . ?’

‘One of the injuries he suffered when your mother nursed him was to an eye, right?’

‘Why, yes. He wears a patch over his left eye.’

‘Has he ever visited you here?’

The hesitation was too long. ‘He has?’ Bond nudged her and she gave a minute nod.

‘He’s quite an old man now.’ She was almost whispering. ‘But he visits about twice a year. Always calls a week ahead. Takes me out and buys me dinner. Always correct, but he lies to me.’

‘About your parents?’

‘He tells me they are fine, but in his stories they are just the same as when I left China.’

‘Do you know what you’re doing when you pass on messages, post letters and put people up?’

‘I think so.’ Again the very small voice.

‘Then tell me.’

‘I think it’s something to do with . . . with spying, espionage.’

‘It would seem that way. Drink your coffee, Myra. Then tell us about your friend Jenny Mo.’

She sipped nervously at her coffee, eyes restless and cheeks flushed as though she were running a fever.

‘She worked in one of the accounts departments at the UN. I got to know her well and we became friends.’ There was an extended pause. ‘Close friends.’ Another silence as though she were trying to tell them more. ‘One day, Jenny said she was having problems with the lease on her apartment, so I let her use the spare room here. We shared this place until two years ago, when she was offered a very highly paid job in San Francisco. So she left. I had a couple of telephone calls and several letters, then she wrote to me saying she was worried. She said she thought it was necessary to go to the police . . .’

‘She tell you why?’ asked Bond.

‘You still have the letter?’ asked Chi-Chi.

‘Yes, I still have it. You want to see?’

‘Later, maybe. Just tell us what else happened.’

‘Nothing happened. Just this strange letter, then nothing, except the Chinese boy, the one I told you about, the one who still visits from time to time. He made a remark one night when he was here. I thought it odd.’ She stopped as though that was all there was to it.

‘How odd?’

‘Well, he was always nice. Kind and good. But he was pretty casual. I mean he usually wore jeans and a shirt, or a windcheater. Then, on this particular night, he arrived wearing an Armani suit. He had a gold Rolex and a heavy gold ID bracelet, two gold rings on his fingers. I was only joking. I said, “Business must be good,” and he just laughed. So I told him maybe I would have to go to the police and inform on him if business was that good. I was teasing him. He slapped me, beat me up, but before he left we made it up. He apologised, but he did say that I should be careful talking like that otherwise I’d end up like my old friend Jenny Mo.’

‘You follow up on that?’

‘I asked him what he meant, and he said he wasn’t being serious, only, as I hadn’t heard from Jenny in a long time, she must have disappeared. It worried me. Then I had the instructions about you. They simply said that a man called Peter Argentbright, who would identify himself as Peter Abelard, would call and then come with his wife, who would be called Héloïse, but was really Jenny Mo. I thought . . . I thought, well, I thought it must be Jenny. It’s been so long, and I had been very worried. Then, when you came, it was as though she were truly dead.’

‘So.’ Bond walked over to the telephone, then decided against it.

‘Am I in trouble?’ Myra asked.

‘You mean police? No, but I think some other friends of ours will probably want to see you, maybe keep you in a reasonable place – a house somewhere – and ask you a lot of questions. If you go along with them, you’ll be safe, but I believe if you stay here you’ll probably be dead inside a week.

‘You manage if I go out for a while?’ he asked Chi-Chi.

‘Telephone?’

‘Yes, I don’t fancy this one after the last call. I might have screwed things up as it is. Shouldn’t be long. Only open up to me – or Indexer of course.’

There was still plenty of traffic on the street even at this time in the morning, and Bond cursed for not having put on a warmer jacket for there was a rising cold wind.

He turned left out of the apartment building and walked a block down to the Parker Meridien. Across the street, Ed Rushia, in a chauffeur’s cap, nodded at the wheel of a stretch limo. Bond smiled to himself. Ed was certainly an operator. They had told him to hire a car and back up. He had obviously done just that and hired a stretch limo.

The night porter was on duty outside the 56th Street entrance to the imposing hotel, and as Bond approached him, he stepped forward.

‘I help you, buddy?’

‘I need to use one of the public telephones.’ He slipped a ten into the man’s hand.

‘Oh, okay, sir. Thank you. You want I should get you a cab?’

‘I’ll be just fine,’ and Bond disappeared into the brightly lit interior. A minute later he had swiped a credit card through one of the telephone booths and dialled the same local number as before.

‘Curve’s Deli, Joe speaking. How can I help you?’

‘Custodian! Patch me through to whoever’s the senior officer.’

There were a couple of clicks, then a voice he recognised as Grant’s answered. ‘Custodian? Where the hell’re you calling from?’

‘Public booth. Listen, we could have a serious problem. Our hostess seems to have been expecting the real Mo girl, but we’re not certain if it’s Eeny, Meeny, Miney or Mo, if you follow.’

‘I don’t, but go on.’

‘Our hostess seems to have been working for the people at the old French Legation, but swears she didn’t know what she was really up to. I would suggest you make arrangements to have her dried out once we’ve left. We’re off to sunny California tonight.’

‘Jetsetter!’ Grant was actually trying his hand at a joke. Pity it was so limp.

‘You’re in touch with Indexer?’ Bond did not even have a smirk in his voice.

‘Of course.’

‘Then use whatever means you can to put a photograph of the Mo woman on the wire and get it to him.’

‘Then what?’

‘He knows where I am, and you know, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Are we alone, or does Indexer have company?’

‘He says not, and he’s usually accurate.’

‘I’ll call back from the apartment and order pizza or something. You can send a lad down with them. Just get Indexer to intercept and bring the items up.’

‘Will do.’ Grant hung up and Bond left the hotel.

‘Okay, sir?’ The doorman would remember him, but that couldn’t be helped.

‘Sure. Fine. My phone’s out and my girl just stood me up.’

‘Women!’ said the doorman, as though this was the cause of all the world’s problems.

‘Everything normal?’ he asked when he got back into the apartment. Chi-Chi or Myra or both had made more coffee, and there was a plateful of sandwiches.

‘Fine.’ Chi-Chi smiled at him, as if to say together they could conquer the world. ‘Myra’s worried about getting arrested.’

‘Don’t lose a wink over it, Myra. I’ve been arrested a hundred times. Nothing to it.’ He picked up the apartment phone and called the contact number, spending several minutes ordering three jumbo pizzas with all the trimmings while the women sat open-mouthed.

‘Myra has enough here to feed an army.’ Chi-Chi held out the plate which looked as though someone had tried to make a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa from bread, smoked salmon and cheese.

‘An army doesn’t live on smoked salmon alone. Armies like us need other things – camp followers, nurses, air support.’

Chi-Chi raised an eyebrow at this piece of whimsy and Bond thought to himself that she had incredible control over it.

‘Will they put me in jail?’ Myra asked, anxious and getting quite close to hysteria.

‘Not if you’re a good girl and eat your sandwiches. Try to relax, Myra. I want you with all your wits about you. Another friend’s coming up shortly.’ He took his fourth sandwich and munched on it happily. ‘We could always play Trivial Pursuit while we wait. Do you have Trivial Pursuit, Myra?’

She shook her head, but did not speak.

‘How about Mahjong?’

‘Yes, if we have to.’

‘We don’t have to do anything, Myra. Just stay calm and wait.’

The downstairs buzzer went about half-an-hour later.

‘Pizzas from Curve’s Deli.’ Rushia’s growl came out covered in static.

‘Come right up,’ Bond answered.

He had the chauffeur’s peaked cap pushed on to the back of his head. ‘There’s your eats.’ He gave the big smile to the women. ‘Do yourself proud here. Very nice.’

‘You got the other thing?’

He nodded. ‘I’m to slog around passing messages for you, and I’ve got another little job if you can manage it.’

‘I hope you’ve got somebody watching that limo.’ Bond took the photograph. ‘Around here it could be on bricks by the time you get back.’

Rushia chuckled. ‘I sure fooled them. I let the air outa the tyres.’

‘Myra,’ Bond walked over to where she sat, holding the photograph out to her, ‘you recognise this girl?’

She had a very thin hand which shook slightly as she took the photograph and peered at it as though it were a holy relic.

‘No. No, I don’t recognise her. Should I?’

‘Only if it happened to be your old friend Jenny Mo.’

‘Oh, that’s not Jenny. She was rather intense-looking and wore big, black-rimmed glasses.’

‘Good.’ Bond handed the picture back to Rushia. ‘Just have this destroyed, my good fellow. Oh, and we’ll be heading for JFK tomorrow night. Nine fifteen to the city of Saint Francis.’

‘Make a nice change. I’ll fix it, even if they have to offload some poor tourist.’ He ran a long finger down the side of his nose. ‘A word in private, your honour.’

They stepped over to the door.

‘Got a couple of Mickey Finns here for the lady.’ Ed spoke out of the corner of his mouth, a parody of every Hollywood jail movie.

‘How fast, and how long?’

‘’Bout two minutes and twenty-four hours.’

‘Okay. Would you tell whoever’s going to clean up that we will be away by seven tonight.’

‘Anything else I can do? Massage your back? Wash the dishes? Sing a coupla choruses of “Oh dear, what a calamity”?’

‘Just keep doing what you’re good at, Ed.’ Bond took the pills in their little silver foil packet and showed him out of the door.

‘Time for sleep,’ he announced when Rushia had finally gone. ‘Get Myra to bed, then call me in. You’re pretty wired – strung up – Myra. I’ve got a couple of pills that will make certain you’ll rest.’

She looked up in alarm. ‘You’re not going to poison me! No!’

‘NO!’ Chi-Chi said firmly. ‘Come on, let’s get you to bed, Myra. Nobody’s going to poison you. We all need rest, and you’re going to have problems sleeping.’

Twenty minutes later, Chi-Chi came out of the master bedroom. ‘Give me a glass of water, James. I think she’ll let me do it.’

‘I wish it was an injection. Safer. But make sure she swallows them. Should take two minutes max.’

It took under sixty seconds, Chi-Chi told him when she came back. ‘Went out like a candle in a hurricane.’

‘Well, we’ve certainly had a long bedtime story tonight. I wonder how much of it was a fairytale?’

Chi-Chi smiled up at Bond, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘I suppose we’ll find out eventually, but now, husband, how about bed?’

‘You hussy.’ Bond smiled down at her. ‘But can I take a raincheck? I have one hell of a headache.’

She pouted. ‘Oh, I really thought we worked well as a team.’

‘We do, but I’ll feel safer if I lie across the door with a gun in my hand.’

‘Okay, but you don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘Oh, I think I do.’

Myra was still dead to the world when they left the apartment shortly before seven that night. Both had managed eight hours of sleep, Chi-Chi having taken over from Bond to, as he put it, lie across the door. They had eaten, showered and changed. Just before leaving, Bond stripped down his ASP 9mm and unlocked the shielded false bottom of the briefcase – his usual way of carrying arms illegally through airport security.

They had called for a limo from the nearby firm of Ryan & Sons whom Bond had used on other visits to New York. They were discreet, punctual and always friendly. They also did not know his real name, though all the drivers recognised his face. Tonight they had drawn the Ryan son, George, who pleasantly spent the ride out to JFK telling them the city was going to the dogs, how parts of the roadways were caving in, how a friend had been mugged and how the police didn’t seem to do much about it. ‘Look,’ he pointed out of the window, ‘see that guy there with the TV on his shoulder? Betcha he never bought that. He’s stealing that and nobody’ll do anything about it.’

Bond was glad to see Rushia’s car not too far behind them. He leaned forward. ‘George, you mind if I close the partition?’

‘You go ahead, sir. You do what you like. I won’t peek!’ The driver gave a jovial chuckle.

Bond leaned back, his shoulder touching Chi-Chi’s shoulder: ‘Now, tell me the story of your life,’ he said with a smile.

‘Didn’t they give you my dossier? It’s all in there.’

‘They told me you were a Cantonese speaker . . .’

‘And a few dialects. You see, they should have given you my file.’

‘Okay. So you tell me.’

‘Fourth generation American. Joined the US Navy to see the world and saw nothing but the inside of offices. They gave me a commission. My father was very proud, but the man I was going to marry was humiliated – it was some foolish business to do with class – and he would not go through with the contract.’

‘And you still love him?’

‘Until quite recently, yes. Now I see how foolish I was even to grieve. I know that it was my vanity crying, not my heart.’

‘They tell me it takes three years to get over a really broken heart and accept the facts.’

‘You are a chauvinist pig, James. For men, maybe only three years; for women it can be much longer – if ever.’

He laid a hand on her arm. ‘You may be right, my dear. A very wise man once told me that if a woman stopped loving you, there was nothing you could do about it except put your hands in your pockets and walk away. I believe the same is also true for women.’

‘It’s a blow to pride, to vanity. But that’s all one now. You still want to hear my life story?’

‘You’re only giving me the later parts.’

‘Okay, maybe I don’t want you to know about my terrible teenage days when I ran riot with friends, smoked pot, stayed out all night in line for a Who concert, lost my virginity at sixteen . . .’

‘Beat you by almost eighteen months.’ Though Bond said it lightly enough, he was slightly concerned about Chi-Chi. He had known many good women operatives, but they only remained good if they did not carry around a great load of what he liked to think of as ‘emotional baggage’. He hoped that Sue Chi-Ho did not have a cabin trunk of emotions chained to her ankle. At last he said, ‘Well, you got through that. We all go through it.’

‘Some never come out the other side.’ She turned down the corners of what Bond appreciated as a wicked little mouth. ‘I had ten friends – ten who never made it. From pot to hard drugs, to theft and death.’

Bond nodded. Looking at her now he realised, as though for the first time, that beneath the fragility she was as hard as tempered steel. ‘The drug problem’s going to be the downfall of many empires, just as lead poisoning was the trigger to the fall of the Roman Empire. But, as to your own adolescent difficulties, you did get through them. If you kick all the bad habits, the only problem is if adolescence stays with you, makes you moody, short-fused and, well, downright immature. You’re certainly not that.’

‘Thank you.’ Was there a hint of uncertainty in her voice?

‘So you were commissioned?’ he prompted.

‘Naval Intelligence for two years. Then an Agency talent spotter gave me an audition. The rest, as they say, is history.’ She quite suddenly looked up at Bond, her eyes mirroring a hint of anxiety. ‘This business? It is going to be all right, James, isn’t it?’

‘As long as you remember to call me Peter, and don’t forget you’re Jenny . . .’

‘And married to you, yes.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along the lips which Bond was finding more attractive every minute. He looked up to see they were just turning on to the airport ramp.

At the American Airlines desk, the tickets were ready for them. ‘There’s no charge, sir,’ the clerk told Bond. ‘They’ve been paid for.’ They checked in their luggage, only retaining the briefcase and the Scribner’s canvas bag – a relic of the old days when the now defunct business was one of the best book stores in New York.

They passed through the security and Bond made his excuses, going to the nearest restroom. Inside one of the cubicles, he worked the combination lock on the briefcase, removed the shielded false bottom and retrieved his pistol. In under two minutes he had reassembled the weapon, slipped a magazine into the butt, cocked it, activated the safety and slid it into his waistband, pushing it down firmly behind his right hip. Chi-Chi was waiting patiently for him and together they started the long walk down to the gate.

Back on West 56th Street, two unmarked cars and an ambulance drew up at the apartment building some ten minutes after Bond and Chi-Chi left. They got hold of the superintendent claiming there had been an emergency call saying a woman was unconscious in 4B. The super unlocked the apartment for them, and Myra, still unconscious, was taken down to the ambulance on a stretcher, causing the usual little morbid crowd to gather.

What the crowd did not see was one of the men from the accompanying cars loitering in the apartment until the ambulance rescue squad people had left. He went rapidly back into the bedroom and, using pillows and blankets from one of the closets and a wig he had brought for the purpose, constructed the outline of a body asleep in the bed. He was the last man out.

An hour later, as Chi-Chi and Bond were walking to the AA departure gate, a car drew up across the street from the apartment block. The driver stayed where he was and his passenger, a greying, respectable-looking man wearing a long raincoat over his suit, walked over to the building. He did not spend time calling the superintendent, but inserted a pick-lock into the door, and had it open in thirty seconds.

He carefully closed it behind him, then quietly went up the stairs to 4B, where the door yielded to his expertise in less time than the one downstairs. He wore gloves and opened up quietly, reaching under his raincoat to reveal a wicked-looking Skorpion machine-pistol, fitted with a noise suppression unit.

Slowly he crossed to the master bedroom, opened the door and fired four short bursts of 9mm rounds into the ‘body’ with a sound like a small child idly running an old glove along a row of railings.

He did not wait to look at his work. He had been told to kill quickly and efficiently and get away without being detected. Within minutes he was crossing the road to the anonymous car which drove away with great care.

Neither the driver nor his murderous passenger even noticed the battered Buick that had seen better days pull out and follow them about two cars back in the traffic.

They had almost made it to the gate and Chi-Chi was just wondering aloud if the movie would be any good, when the two men came up on either side of them. The one next to Bond had Oriental looks, and was a very large man, the one who began to keep pace with Chi-Chi was shorter and Caucasian.

‘Just keep walking past the gate, Mr Abelard,’ the big one said.

‘And please don’t make a fuss, this is for your security.’ The smaller man’s accent could have passed for British.

‘My name is Ding,’ the large one continued without breaking his stride. ‘My friends call me Bone Bender Ding. My partner, here, beside the lovely lady is called Fox, but he answers to other, less salubrious names. Mr Lee felt it safer to send his private jet down for you both. That will make certain that nobody’s on your tails, if you’ll excuse the expression, ma’am.’

‘And what if we prefer American Airlines?’ asked Bond.

‘Oh, Mr Lee would be very upset, sir. Also it would become unpleasant and Mr Lee cannot abide unpleasantness. Now, straight down to the end of this walkway. We have a car there ready to take you out to the jet.’